As the asteroid debris rebounded from the newly-excavated crater at orbital velocities less than one hundred kilometers from where he was standing, he found himself lifted by the radiating ripple of the ground wave, sliding across the world carpet like a mountain tsunami at five times the speed of sound, a wall of instant Alps compressing and stretching the surface with nowhere to go but up, rising mile after mile with spine-crushing force, the building disintegrating around him, the toppling, liquefying landscape erased under a storm of debris that fortunately blocked the horizon-devouring fireball that in minutes would be the size of a small moon, soon to be supplemented by secondary meteors and the all-devouring blast wave.
Somehow avoiding the relentless onslaughts of the airborne avalanche, he rolled almost weightless in the rarefied air, his continued existence filtering ever-remoter probability slices, approaching the decision-point between truth and transcendence.
Suddenly deafened, or every sound cancelled out by the wave-top cyclone, he noticed a rock-steady black dot behind the raining debris, a guided missile on terminal approach.
Leaning forward like an intercontinental ski jumper, the thick hair standing up on pounding legs furiously surfing a thousand newly formed rocks per second along the back bowl of a curving rockslide that would soon cover sixteen former states, eyes glaring ultraviolet under the fiercest brow: it was none other than Hanuman, also known as Maruti, special servant of supreme interests, the Hindu monkey god!
He had time for exactly one stupid question:
"What took you so long?"
