Trails: First Generation

Parkfield, California

Parkfield, CaliforniaAmber shifted in her chair at the front of the geology classroom.

The teacher explained her version of the geologic history behind the 1906 San Andreas Fault quake.

Some of the myths were close to reality. Others made the news as a sensation at the time, and no one corrected the mistakes.

Amber groaned at one story in particular. Leaders knew the water infrastructure was too weak to handle fires, with no intention of updating lines. They even gave up a famous designer's dream plan of the city, both in the weeks before, and the weeks after the quake.

Behind her and Karen, the rest of the room couldn't hear the teacher. Students laughed, joked, and planned the evening's festivities. The high school spring dance tonight filled their hearts and minds more than a history they couldn't see or touch.

Parkfield nestled merely miles away, the epicenter of many of California's deadliest earthquakes. The others should be listening, regardless of the accuracy of the geology teacher's information. A paper plane whizzed by her head and hit the map near the quake's historic epicenter.

Amber's cell phone vibrated. She glanced down at the text message. "Increased activity. Will be in the field tonight. Pick you up to help us after school."

The teacher droned on.

Amber ignored her. It would be more fun to be at the research center, determining the current quake's epicenter, rather than stuck at home watching the computer.

She turned to Karen. "We are going to the field tonight."

"Great!" The bell rang, and everyone jumped up to go to the next class. "See you in an hour."

Amber sat down in senior history class. She never did well in history. Except on the ancient time scale, the history of science, especially geology.

The teacher rattled on about how Roman civilization survives in the current era. Laws and construction examples rambled into a jumbled mass.

Amber ignored her. The mountains and valleys of California had survived the ages of time. Today's series of minor quakes would have adjusted them, imperceptible to most. Any movement would affect the future. Out there, measuring, and predicting the next quake would be far more interesting than studying the people of the past. The month until her summer internship, stretched on endlessly.

"Amber?" The teacher raised her eyebrow.

Amber highly doubted the history teacher would ask her to explain geology to the class. It was easiest to confuse everyone anyway. "Mom is spending so much time in Parkfield. Lots of little earthquakes we may not even recognize. We should be thinking about how they will change our future, geographically, and financially."

"Earthquakes? They happen all the time. We ignore them," one person behind her said.

"There was a rumble a few minutes ago. Didn't you feel it? Scared you?" That boy lounged in his chair, feet sprawled in the chair in front of him, with his head on the desk behind him.

Her face didn't even turn red anymore as the class laughed.

The teacher didn't laugh. She shook her head and turned to someone else.

The release bell soon overrode the teacher's drone.

Amber's mom drove them to their study location.

Rocky walls glistened. Amber grasped her trowel and gently removed the outer layer of dust from the colorful lines within the rock. Swirls of color intrigued her to search deeper. By tracing their path through the rock, she could read their history. More swirls meant a highly geologically active region.

Her trowel hit an object. She sighed. Another arrowhead, most likely. Oh well, the archeological team could check, and she could clear another bank.

"Karen, call the assistants. I found something."

"Oh, what is it?" Karen brushed up against her, and peered deep into the grooves between the rocks.

"Not sure. Don't want them to yell at us for damaging something important." Amber leaned back. The archeological team had set up next to her mom and Brandon. There had been too many tremors of late, to skip caution.

Rocks skittered down the embankment to her feet.

Clutching the trees above them stood five teens from their senior class.

"Scared ya, huh?" One girl said.

Amber couldn't even remember her name.

The teen slid down the hill. "Jerry said you'd be here. He wanted to see Karen, no idea why." She laughed and sauntered off away from the work center, followed by her friends.

Jerry was the last to slid e down the embankment. "Sorry Karen. I said I was coming out here, and they insisted on following."

He glanced at Amber.

Jerry touched Karen's hand. "Can we walk, alone?"

Karen's face glowed red.

Amber turned back to the bank. "Not my decision. You better ask Brandon."

Karen grabbed her arm. "He'll never let me go without you."

Amber pulled back. "Tell him to come over with the archeology team. Mom won't be back for half an hour. You can stay on that side of the clearing, in sight, and out of hearing, if you really want to. And holler if anything important comes up."

Karen hugged her. "You're the best friend in the world."

"Uh huh. Hope Jerry's friends didn't destroy a priceless work of history."

"I'm sure they didn't." Karen grabbed Jerry's hand and raced off to the instrument mound in the center of the ravine.

Joking about quakes could be dangerous. It hadn't been too long ago, geologically, that where she was standing would have been deep inside the earth. She touched the twists that showed how the earth moved and opened the ravine. If not those specific twists, then ones very similar, and nearby. Pebbles had rattled loose by the earlier quakes from today. One level of soil appeared pushed up higher than last week's observations.

"Hey Amber, what'd you find?" Brandon asked.

"Good question. Probably an arrowhead." She pointed to the darkened earth. One of the archeological students looked the area over.

"Might be. Or might be campsite soil. I'll have to check it." The student eagerly grabbed her tools and set to work examining the dark lines. Her friends scribbled her words onto the paper to be transcribed later.

More of a wait. If only Amber could find something important about quake history, and unveil something no one else knew, then her mom and Brandon might take her more seriously.

"Let's check over here," Brandon said.

He led her them to another section still covered in plants clinging by thready roots to cliff walls. "Tell me what you think these swirls mean."

Amber sighed. At least Brandon included her, and wanted her to learn. This was her life's work, and she didn't enjoy explaining it to others, especially those who already knew what it meant.

Karen and Jerry sat in the sunlight chatting. Karen would check the dials on the machines, and monitor the equipment for changes. If a substantial quake occurred, she'd let them know. If Jerry didn't occupy her mind too much.

The archeology students a few feet away examined the dark patch of earth. They squealed with delight at whatever the find the signified. One pulled out a phone to save a voice file of time, location, and potential composition.

Archeology might be exciting, and it played along with seismology. Today, though, Amber wanted to focus on finding a fault line that would give her status at the research center for her summer paid internship. Not another arrowhead to add to the thousands already in the museum.

Brandon was Karen's dad, and her mother's significant other, wanted to listen to what she knew about the rocks and the visible fault lines.

A stick knocked down by the high school teens made a good pointer. She explained what each change in the rocks meant.

"This swirl may have been caused by the 1906 San Andrea's quake."

Amber's mom walked up and listened to her explaining to Brandon what she saw in the quake record.

"Do you remember what happened after that?" Her mom asked.

"Sure do. The town burned to the ground from a fractured water supply system."

Brandon hadn't been making comments as he usually did when he encouraged her, or Karen, to relate the rock's stories. He should have picked up on that exaggeration.

Brandon glanced to Jerry and Karen, and back to her. "You think he's okay?"

Amber rubbed her toe in the dirt. If she were completely honest, Karen would be in big trouble, and so would she. Then again, she didn't know anything for sure. Suspicions of what went on behind closed doors on some of his visits when their parents worked late at the lab, yeah. Facts, no. "He's okay, I guess. Typical teen male. No interest in science."

"That's what I'm worried about," Brandon said.

"Actually, the type of science he's interested in, is what we worry about." Her mom gave her a hug.

Amber's face turned red.

"Let's go interrupt them, shall we?" Her mom wrapped her arm around Amber's shoulder and led her to the center of the field.

Karen glanced up from monitoring the equipment.

Jerry tried to pull her away.

"Dad, you had a call."

Brandon grabbed his phone next to the seismometer.

"Activity is up again. Several small quakes locally; and an unusual pattern across the country."

"More data like the last few weeks?" Amber's mom asked.

Brandon closed his phone and picked up his pack. "They need us at the lab, now. The patterns forming are not a good sign. Come on girls, we better leave the archeology team to their work."

Jerry groaned. "My friends'll be back in five minutes. Can you stay that much longer?"

"No." Brandon said. "Come on Karen."

"You'll be at the dance, right?" Jerry called.

Brandon walked on up the trail and ignored Jerry.

Karen nodded to Jerry behind her father's back.

Amber picked up her backpack.

As they left the clearing, Jerry's friends clambered down the embankment near them. "Scared of a little quake? We can make the ground shake for you."

Amber shivered. Home would be far safer than in the woods with these characters. A few more weeks of school, and she'd be done with them, and those teachers who didn't know as much about the region's quake history as she did, forever.

Brandon drove directly to her and her mom's home. "Girls, go inside. We have work to do. We'll be home late tonight."

"What about the dance?" Karen asked.

Yeah right, like Brandon would let her go with Jerry now?

"Let her go. It's within walking distance, and Amber won't let anything happen." Amber's mom said.

Amber knew she'd try not to let anything happen. Karen was her best friend and should be by her side, not beside some guy. Of course, Jerry had said he'd find someone to dance with her. Hopefully, not some stinky ball player, fresh from that kind of field.

Brandon sighed. "Okay. Call me when you reach the school, and when you make it home, only the two of you. Understood?"

"Yes," Karen said.

"Sure thing. Thanks mom!" Amber closed the car door and ran to the house.

If their parents were going to work, so were they. They'd have to research from home, and quickly, before the dance.

"We have two hours." Karen locked the door.

Amber flipped on the TV to national news. She powered up the computer terminals.

Karen watched the television for a few minutes while the computers hummed to start screens.

"Any news?" Amber asked as she logged into the site her mom would send updates too.

"Nothing. Are they up?"

"Yes. Use my homework computer. I'll use my gaming computer."

"As if you ever played games on it," Karen said.

"Sure do. I play games that let me build my own solar system, or repair the earth after super earthquakes." Amber scanned her email for any important news.

Karen laughed as she sat down. A startled gasp came from her.

Amber turned to Karen's screen. The reporting site their parents worked for buzzed with activity. The stream logged real time comments and events, and neither of them could keep up with the lines of comments as they flew down the screen.

The comments slowed down.

The line blinked, waiting on the next report.

Karen sighed and leaned back. "If the event is over, I guess we wait. They'll be hours putting the pieces together. The epicenter couldn't have been too close, or too strong. We would have felt something if it had been. We'll have to fix dinner."

Amber clicked her keyboard. "You can order a pizza. I'm going to analyze the data."

She turned back to her own screen and pulled up the same site. She opened another window and pulled up a site her mom showed her the night before. California wasn't the only place with unusual readings right now. The scientists hadn't pinpointed where the other readings originated, or at least not as of last night.

Columns scrolled down the screen. Similarities between the earthquake and data in California and other regions of the country grabbed her attention. The pieces of the puzzle began to take shape. Danger lurked deep underground in several places, and may have been overlooked by people focusing only on their local area. Brandon had hinted at the idea.

Amber grabbed her phone and turned the speaker on as she dialed her mom.

"What, Amber? You should have texted. We have a lot of work to do."

"Mom." Amber's voice faltered as her finger pointed at the data.

"Yes?" Her voice lifted as she tapped something in the background.

Her mom sounded both hopeful, and annoyed. Amber gulped and tried again. "Mom, I'm layering the maps from last night. It's not good."

Static sounded in the background as someone interrupted her mom.

The background chatter stopped. "Yes. What do you see? I haven't had time to review yesterday's notes."

"It's important." The last map slid into place. Place names slid over the geological map, and over the recent earthquake data. "The recent earthquakes are centered in New Mexico. The San Andres Northern Mountain Fault may be trying to fracture. They seem to be spreading there as well as here."

Silence on the other end.

Amber couldn't determine if her mom was annoyed, worried, or both.

"Amber, please save that file. Email it to me. Have you seen today's data?"

Amber gulped. "We saw it flying down the screen a minute ago. Karen and I haven't analyzed it yet. Where was it?"

"A tiny slip on the San Andreas. Keep Karen there with you. Have her run home long enough to pack a change of clothes, and return to our house. Keep her there." The phone clicked off.

Karen's face paled. She ran out of the house.

How could this be happening? Tonight I wanted to have fun and dance. Karen planned to dance with Jerry. And, Jerry planned to introduce her to one of his friends, maybe. Why tonight?

A buzz interrupted her thoughts.

It wasn't her phone, or Karen's. She checked both.

The buzz sounded again.

Pizza delivery was at the door.

She laughed as she searched for money. He probably thought she was crazy answering the door without it.

Chapter 2