DISCLAIMER: they don’t belong to me
AUTHOR’S NOTE: i’m writing this on tuesday, september 11, 2001. i live in NYC and outside my window i can still see smoke billowing to the sky. i can’t believe it, but it happened, and so here goes. oh yeah, and the times given are just a guide -- each section takes up no more than ten minutes of time, which at some point covers the given time. hope i didn’t confuse ya.

The Morning the Skyline Changed
by kaydee falls

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8:45 AM

Joanne was probably the only one of her friends who was actually fully awake at that hour. For her, the workday started at 8 AM, sometimes even earlier. How else could she leave the office in time to help Maureen on her mad escapades? Normally, she made the sacrifice willingly.

She stared wistfully out her window. It gave her a clear vista of Sixth Avenue, heading south. Unless it was pouring rain, she could see the Twin Towers from here. Pouring rain it was not. On the contrary, it was perfect outside. Warm, clear, sunny. What the hell was she doing in her office?!

Dreamily, Joanne pictured Washington Square Park, only a few blocks from the office. She thought of the green trees, the warm air, the cute joggers....

No. Not for her. Not now. Maybe she would step out for lunch. But right now, it was time to work. Work, work, work.

What harm could it do to open the window? No harm at all.

God, she wanted to go outside. She gazed up at the smooth blue sky, hardly a cloud in sight. The sun wasn’t so high yet, she should get out now, before the oppressive heat of noon bore down.

Oh, hell, she just wanted out!

An airplane cut its way across the perfect sky. Take me with you! the rebellious part of Joanne’s mind cried.

Joanne shook her head firmly. None of that! Work. Work, work, work. To accent her point, she slammed the window shut and pulled the shade down, turning up the radio. Work.

* * * * *

Collins jerked himself awake. It is always wise to be fully conscious when the train you’re on approaches your stop, and apparently his unconscious realized this fact in the nick of time. Muttering curses at the indecent hour of his interview, he jumped out of the subway car just before the doors closed.

He glanced at his watch. Perfect. A little more than fifteen minutes before he had to be at Stuyvesant high school, several blocks away from the train station. Just enough time to enjoy the stroll down the city streets. It really was a pity that he’d scheduled this interview before noon, but it was the only slot Stuy’s administration had allotted him. And, he admitted to himself, although a job as a substitute teacher at a high school isn’t exactly my first choice, the extra cash will come in handy. One couldn’t depend on rewired ATMs forever.

The stark chill of the air conditioning startled the remaining sleepiness away, as he emerged from the subway into the lobby of the World Trade Center. Even at this relatively early hour the Center was bustling, with men and women in business suits dashing back and forth, chattering on cell phones, and even an early bird group of tourists gawking at the high ceiling and marble floors. Collins chuckled a little as he darted around them. They ain’t seen nothing yet, he thought. Wait until they get to the top!

Outside, the air was warm and a little humid. It was a gorgeous day, more reminiscent of summer than September. Making his way across the plaza, he glanced up at the clear blue sky. The high whine of a jet mingled with the blaring horns of traffic. Collins glanced at the plane, lazily following its course across the sky.

It occurred to him that that plane was coming in way too close.

He heard the crash, the roaring thunder, as the jet flew straight into one of the Twin Towers. Instinctively, he jumped back the way he had come, where there would be an overhang to protect his head. He could already see bits of debris leaping, and he had no illusions as to where they would be coming down.

Belatedly, he realized that entering the building might not be such a hot idea, but it was too late to find a new shelter.

Collins was lucky. The fire caused by the crash remained isolated to the higher floors, and after the initial rain of rubble, he could emerge cautiously. Surveying the plaza, it was hard to contain his dismay. The dust had hardly begun to settle, but already he could see people, scattered across the ground. A few, like himself, had been relatively protected. Many had not.

An ambulance siren blared in the background, rapidly coming closer. With a rueful sigh, Collins realized that he’d better try to help these people, and forcibly shoved any thoughts of interviews or common sense out of his head. He glanced up at the massive building.

It was singularly disconcerting to see a gaping hole in the Twin Tower. Black smoke billowed upwards, almost concealing the orange glimmer within.

With a distant, detached corner of his mind, Collins acknowledged that something had just gone horribly wrong.

------------------------------

9:00 AM

Mimi was bored. For some unaccountable reason, she had woken up. And couldn’t fall asleep again.

With a sigh, she admitted defeat and rolled out of bed. Roger muttered something to himself and curled up, pulling most of the blanket with him. Mimi eyed him, and briefly considered pushing him off the bed, just because he was still asleep and she wasn’t. But what was the point? Shaking her head, she found reasonably clean clothing in the closet and pulled it on. She didn’t have to go to the club until that afternoon, so why should she care what she wore now?

The kitchen was empty, and decidedly boring. So was the bland cereal that claimed to be breakfast. A few minutes of examining various cupboards yielded nothing further, so Mimi resigned herself to Cornflakes and plopped down at the kitchen counter. Reaching over, she flicked on the radio.

Static. Great. What an exciting day this was looking to be. She tried a few different channels, without much success. Finally, she found something resembling voices, and adjusted the tuning a little.

“Crackle crackle yes, Jim, we have visual confirmation crackle buzz unidentified airplane crashed hiss crackle hiss one of the Twin Towers at the World Trade crackle crackle...”

Mimi frowned. Picking up the little radio, she brought it over to the open window. Immediately, her reception improved.

“...assuming this was an accidental collision, but we really aren’t quite sure what’s going on up there. World Trade Center One is on fire, the upper stories are on fire, you can definitely see the smoke from here. We’re awaiting confirmation on damages. This is quite an catastrophe, Jim, but we’re hoping that the damage will be isolated to this one building. Okay, I’m approaching the building, I’m about two blocks away. There is a gaping hole in the -- wow, this is really amazing. A number of rescue crews are being dispatched, and the entire World Trade Center is being evacuated as we speak. I haven’t heard any reports on casualties as of yet, Jim, but as soon as we find out -- oh my God!”

The voice on the radio was drowned out by background noise, loud. The static kicked in again. Mimi stared at the radio for a second, then carefully put it down on the window sill. She quietly went back into the bedroom and shook Roger awake.

“Hmmmwha?” he mumbled.

“Roger, honey, I think you should listen to this....”

* * * * *

Joanne was listening to the same radio report, but with significantly less static. She hastily pulled up the shades covering her window, and stared down the avenue. She had always been able to see the Twin Towers from her office. And now, sure enough, one of them was belching thick, black smoke.

She stared at this for a few minutes. Then she looked hard at the other, undamaged Tower. And watched a bloom of flame appear on its previously unblemished side.

* * * * *

A hell of a lot of firefighters and EMS workers were ordering Collins to get the hell out of there. He ignored them steadily, and they were too busy to enforce their halfhearted demands. Besides, he had taken charge of his own situation, and was calming down people in the lobby and making sure those in his little section didn’t trample each other in the course of evacuation. So the well-meaning professionals eventually gave up and left him to his own devices.

Collins felt very good about himself. In a disaster situation, he was aiding the evacuation of a major world business building. It was noble. It was daring. It was something Angel would have been proud of. Stepping outside to point out the nearest medical personnel to a man with a bleeding leg, he mentally dared the world to do its worst.

The world obliged.

Collins didn’t see a damned thing, but he heard the explosion. Without thinking, he dropped to the ground, covering his head with his hands. A light shower of soot and debris particles covered him as the second Twin Tower burst into flames, ninety-odd stories above the plaza.

------------------------------

9:30 AM

Roger cursed vividly. His attempts to repair the dinky little radio had failed miserably, and he and Mimi really wanted to know what the hell was going on. Finally, they gave up, and left the loft entirely.

Mimi led the way, dragging Roger down the street. At every store they stopped in, the friendly salespeople had heard different rumors.

One said that the World Trade Center had been bombed again, like back in ‘93.

Another said that a commercial airliner had been hijacked and flown into one of the towers, and that the fire had spread to both of them.

Another said that there had been two hijacked planes, one per tower, but that the entire area had already been evacuated.

The last one darkly suggested that those folks who made the movie “Independence Day” had known about this the whole time, and that the aliens were undoubtedly responsible.

After that, Roger and Mimi gave up on store clerks.

* * * * *

“Shit!” Joanne and most of her colleagues were clustered around the TV that had been wheeled into a conference room. Over and over, they were shown the same footage of the second plane making its beeline for the second tower. And the grand explosion that followed.

“I feel like this is a fucking movie,” someone muttered. “Fucking special effects.”

“Extra-special effects,” someone else commented dryly. “So special, they’re real.”

“Terrorists,” Joanne said, voice tight. “Holy crap. I can’t believe this is happening.” She closed her eyes for a long moment.

For a few minutes, the TV droned on, as eleven drawn, nervous faces stared at it.

“My wife works a block away from there,” one man finally said, standing abruptly. “I have to call her. I have to hear that she’s out of there, that she’s all right.” He walked out of the room.

A few other people saw this as only sensible, even if they didn’t have relatives so far downtown. “Oh, fuck it,” Joanne mumbled, pulling out her own cell phone and dialing a familiar number.

Busy signal.

Funny, Maureen shouldn’t even be awake at this point, let alone on the phone. Joanne tried again.

Busy.

And, she realized, looking around at the eleven frustrated people she worked with, they’re all having the same problem.

Busy signal.

Our cell phones are all down.

* * * * *

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Collins did not like the feeling in his arm. Removing it from its position covering his head, he examined it closely.

There was a largish patch of seared skin, right across the top of his forearm. Something small and very, very hot had apparently played ping-pong with his arm. That was not cool. Very not cool.

Fuck.

Nursing the arm, he looked around him. The worst of the falling rubble had passed, and again, Collins had been one of the lucky ones. In spite of an very sore arm. The dust was a bit thicker now. So was the soot. All in all, being lucky and being comfortable were apparently not related in the slightest.

More sirens. What the hell was going on?

It’s was painful to look up, in the direction the soot was falling from, but he did. Both of the Twin Towers were now burning merrily, underneath the blanket of foul-smelling black smoke. The roar of flames was almost constant. Periodically, a sudden rumbling would indicate a chunk of Twin Tower that had come unattached.

Collins was pretty sure that there were more medical guys somewhere out there, who would probably tend to his arm very nicely, and stick him on a stretcher and drag him away. On the other hand, there were still a hell of a lot of people who were still in the World Trade Center. It wasn’t too difficult a choice.

Collins decided to save his own skin and get out of there.

But on his way toward the sound of sirens, he stumbled over something -- someone? -- and fell, clutching his arm. A form loomed over him through the smoky air. He looked up.

Angel. It had to be Angel. He could practically hear that smooth voice in his ear again. ‘You okay, honey?’

Angel...!

In that brief moment, a thousand things flashed through Collins’s mind. The one that stuck was the image of Angel, playing nurse to Collins’s bleeding knee. Angel, helping those tourists find their way around the big city. Angel, wiping Mimi’s tears after she’d had a spat with Roger. Angel, who had devoted his painfully short life to helping others.

Collins knew that he couldn’t run away now. Angel sure as hell wouldn’t have. He’d have been in the thick of things, pestering the medical workers until they let him help out, making sure everyone got out of the building quickly.... No. Collins had to keep helping, until the firefighters physically dragged him away.

You’ll help me, won’t you, Angel? he thought, and reached his good arm up to his lover. Just help me up.

But it wasn’t Angel who pulled Collins to his feet this time. It was Benny.

-------------------------------

10:00 AM

Mark really wished that his sister hadn’t decided to move to New Jersey. But Cindy was as stubborn as their mother, and when she decided that her family needed a change, she moved.

Fine, Mark thought crossly. So why did she decide that she needed her little brother to help her move?

So, for the entire weekend, Mark had been ferrying boxes from Scarsdale, New York to Freehold, New Jersey. Westchester to Jersey to Westchester to Jersey...ugh! It was a relief to be rid of that cumbersome van and back in the less-than-new Toyota that Joanne had lent him for the weekend.

Of course, ‘the weekend,’ according to Cindy, also included Monday. By the time Monday night rolled around, Mark had had enough of his family. There was good reason he never returned their phone calls! Forced to stay the night, he made his escape as early as possible on Tuesday morning.

So why the hell was the Turnpike closed?!

Trying out a variety of back roads and seeing far more of the Garden State than he had ever wanted, Mark finally made his way -- almost! -- to the Lincoln Tunnel.

Which, apparently, was closed.

What the hell was going on around here?!

The car radio was not exactly in working order. So the ever-resourceful Mark Cohen chose a new back road. He was pretty sure it would eventually dump him in a position to view the great Manhattan skyline.

Maybe that would give him a clue as to why he was stranded in New Jersey.

* * * * *

Joanne was frustrated. To put it mildly.

She could not get a hold of Maureen to save her life. Nor could she reach the loft. In fact, any number that she dialed with her cell phone got her a busy signal.

Work had more or less ceased when CNN announced that a new aircraft had done a swan dive into the Pentagon.

That’s when everyone really started getting scared.

‘No wonder it’s called terrorism,’ Joanne thought, glaring at her innocent-looking cell phone. ‘Terror. Ism. To inspire terror. Well, it worked!’ She was surprised that no one was rioting in the streets. She had a few riots she wanted to start. The first would be directed at the cell phone companies. Maybe a protest would be better. Starring Maureen as the evil cellular phone conglomerate.

Joanne felt extremely foolish when she remembered that there was a regular phone in her office.

That one was working better. She didn’t get a busy signal when she called home. Instead, the phone rang. And rang. And rang.

Maureen was either not home, or deaf. Lovely.

Joanne barely suppressed a scream of frustration. That’s when Steve yelled for her to get her ass over to the television, and quick!

She obeyed. And gaped at what she saw on the screen.

* * * * *

Roger and Mimi were comfortably settled on the roof of their loft. It was the best view they could get of the World Trade Center, and every now and then the bitchy little radio gave them more than crackling.

For example, they heard that the Pentagon had been bombed, too. Dive-bombed.

Mimi decided that this was really not turning out to be a good day, in spite of perfect weather.

They stared at the vague outline of the Twin Towers, all they could see through the thick smoke that surrounded that area like a fog. Fortunately, they were far enough uptown to avoid catching a whiff of the smoke itself.

That’s about when Roger remembered where Collins was supposed to be that morning.

“Mimi,” he said hesitantly, “exactly how close to the fire is Stuyvesant High School?”

She stared at him. “Too close. But I’m sure they’re out by now, away from it. I don’t think anything else is burning.”

“Uh-huh,” Roger agreed. They looked at each other for a long moment, then turned back to the spectacular, unforgettable sight of the Twin Towers spewing smoke. Neither felt reassured.

* * * * *

Benny had been meeting a possible investor that morning. The investor’s office had been on one of the lower floors of a World Trade Center building. They had been evacuated pretty quickly, and without much trouble. Benny didn’t understand why two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers that morning, but he understood that in spite of a thin coating of soot, he was unharmed. He understood that there were a lot of firefighters and police officers and medical personnel in the area who wanted to help people like him get out.

He certainly did not understand why Collins was trying to go back inside the buildings.

“Collins!” he shouted in his one-time friend’s ear. “Out is this way, dammit!”

“So go,” came the muffled reply. “There are still people trying to be evacuated. They need help getting through all this dust and junk.”

“True! Very true! This is why we should leave before it gets worse!” Collins ignored him. “Look, Tom, there are professionals here, people who are supposed to be doing this! Not us. Let’s just go already!”

“I said I can’t,” Collins replied. “He’d never forgive me if I turned my back on them now.”

“Consider yourself forgiven. Come on!”

“Not you, Benny. You can go. Save your sorry ass. I’m just trying to save a few lives, no big deal.”

Benny rolled his eyes. “Collins, this is not exactly the time to play hero.”

“You can think of a better time?”

“Collins, dammit, the World Trade Center is burning down! Has this not occurred to you? Get the fuck out while you can! Christ, Tom, we don’t know how far the fire has spread inside, we don’t know what kind of structural damage has been done, it’s fucking dangerous in there and your friends will kill me if I let you go back in for the purpose of some hollow self-sacrificial quest!” He grabbed the other man by the arm. Collins yelled in pain and jerked away. Mentally cursing himself, Benny let him go, helpless.

Collins was practically blinded by the pain Benny had caused by grabbing his burned arm. In a temporary stupor, he stumbled towards the south tower, into the lobby. It was a shadow of its former glory, but he didn’t notice. Angel was there. Angel would show him how to help all these people. The naive tourists he had seen before, when everything was normal. Angel would help them, help him, help him help them....

Benny was furious. “Fine, fuck you then!” he shouted in the direction Collins had gone. Turning his back, he started jogging away from the buildings, towards streets and sirens and safety.

He heard a loud rumbling sound behind him, and turned. Panic gripped his chest. “Collins!” he screamed, but no one heard.

* * * * *

Safe on the roof of their loft, Roger and Mimi struggled with a dying radio and watched the Twin Towers burn. Suddenly the dust around those buildings seemed to get thicker. Mimi gasped and pointed -- as though Roger didn’t see the same thing.

The south tower suddenly lost its identity as a solid structure. It collapsed into itself, rapidly, completely.

The Twin Towers were no longer twins. There was only one left. It continued burning merrily.

----------------------------------

10:30 AM

Benny was frantic. Ducking behind a car and pulling his shirt up over his nose had protected him from the worst of the debris and dust that had poured out from the collapsed tower. But he had lost Collins. A calm, reasonable voice in the back of his mind informed him that his former friend had entered the building that was now solely rubble. The rest of his mind utterly rejected that fact.

The dust was much thicker now. Benny could hardly see. He had no idea which direction he was headed in, but due to the heat, he was pretty sure that he was getting closer to the smoldering remains of the collapsed tower. Collins was there somewhere. He had to be.

A firefighter found Benny there, stumbling blindly through the suffocating air. “Sir,” he said loudly. “Sir, you’re going in the wrong direction. You can’t go back there. Sir! Come with me, you’ve got to get out of here!”

The argument sounded vaguely familiar to Benny, but he shook it off. They’d kill him if he went back without Collins.

The fireman grabbed Benny by the shoulders. “Sir, you are coming with me, we’re gonna get you out of here, are you seriously injured in any way?”

“No,” Benny mumbled. “No, I’m fine. It’s just my friend...”

“Where’s your friend?” Urgent.

“He’s in the building....” Benny trailed off helplessly.

“Which building? Can you tell me which building?”

“It’s not there any more.”

The firefighter sighed. “A lot of people were in there,” he said quietly. “A heckuva lot of people. Let’s get you out of here, fast.”

Benny didn’t resist further. Finding a grain of common sense, he clung to it, and let the other man half drag him away.

That’s when he heard the rumbling sound again. He broke into a run.

The second tower followed the example set by its twin. But this time, the cloud of dust and debris was much larger, faster, and more violent. And Benny realized quickly that it would overtake him long before he reached the next block.

* * * * *

Joanne and her friends were still plastered in front of the TV, hungrily devouring every scrap of information as it came. This was surreal.

A cell phone chirped. Everyone in the room grabbed for their phone, but Joanne emerged triumphant. “Maureen!” she cried into it.

“Um, no, Joanne, it’s Mimi,” the slightly accented voice on the other end corrected. “I’m glad the phone is working. Roger and I have been watching from the roof. You know what’s happening?”

“Mimi, I’ve been glued to the television set. Have you heard from Maureen?”

Mimi sighed. “I haven’t heard a thing from anyone. Can you believe this? I actually watched the tower collapse, Joanne! Right in front of my eyes! It’s amazing.”

“It’s unreal.”

“That, too.” Mimi paused for a moment, then spoke again. Now her voice was wavering. “Joanne...do they know how many people have died?”

“It’s not over yet,” Joanne replied wearily. “A lot, I think.”

“I think so, too,” Mimi agreed softly. “I can’t believe this is happening....”

Joanne almost dropped the phone at the latest update. “Holy mother of God,” she breathed.

“What? What’s happening?” Mimi asked sharply. “I’m in the loft, we have no radio, I can’t see...!”

“The second tower,” Joanne said quietly, awed. “It’s gone, too.”

“The World Trade Center is gone?” Mimi repeated, numbly. “Completely gone?”

Joanne nodded, as though Mimi could see her. “There is no more World Trade Center.”

* * * * *

Mark didn’t like this. Back roads were not supposed to have traffic jams. It went against all sorts of laws of nature. Back roads were especially not supposed to have traffic jams on ridiculously warm September days when the car has no air conditioning.

Then Mark noticed something interesting. People were getting out of their cars, and walking ahead on the road, where it curved. Lots of people. And they were talking amongst themselves, complete strangers discussing something. He could faintly hear a bunch of car radios playing.

This was definitely interesting. Why oh why had he left the camera at the loft for once?

Well, when in Rome....

So he turned off the motor, got out of the car, and jogged lightly down the road. He was thrilled just to be moving again, after sitting in that damn Toyota for what seemed like hours. Also, he had a pretty good idea of what was beyond the curve of the road.

He was right. The road proceeded to overlook the Manhattan skyline. It also brought something resembling a breeze from the Hudson River.

Mark did a double take.

There was something wrong with the skyline. It took him a moment to place it, even with the obvious clue of billowing smoke down at the southern tip of the island. At first he just thought it was a fire.

Then he realized that something was missing. A very tall something. Two very tall somethings, to be exact.

No doubt about it, he thought, as his mouth dropped open. The skyline has changed.

--------------------------------------

11:00 AM

The incessant ringing of the phone woke Maureen up. She dragged herself out of bed and to the phone, then glared at it. How rude. It had done this earlier, too, but she had managed to ignore it. This time, it was just driving her crazy.

“What?” she mumbled, after the eighth ring.

“Maureen, it’s Mark,” came the response.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Mark was taken aback. “Well, I tried calling the loft, but no one picked up, and I can’t remember Joanne’s cell number, so I called your home,” he said, very reasonably.

“Why?” Maureen demanded. She squinted at the wall clock. Just before 11 AM. A ridiculous hour. She should still be in bed right now.

“Um, Maureen? Did you just wake up or something?”

“Yeah, so?”

Mark sighed. Okay, your ex-girlfriend is in a pissy mood, which will only get worse when she realizes that she missed probably the most historic moment in her lifetime, and you have to break the news to her. How do you handle this? “Uh, if you look out your window, you might notice that the Twin Towers are gone.”

“Huh?”

“Two planes were hijacked this morning,” he explained patiently. “They were flown into the World Trade Center towers. Since that time, the aforementioned Twin towers have completely collapsed. They’re gone. Another plane flew into the Pentagon, too, by the way. Another plane also crashed in the middle of Pennsylvania, but we don’t know what that has to do with anything yet. You should probably turn on the TV, or radio, or something.”

There was a long moment of silence while she processed this information. Then, “Why didn’t you call me earlier, dammit?!”

“I only recently found out. I’m trapped in New Jersey, which is why I’m calling in the first place. Apparently no one is being allowed to drive into the city. Would you please tell Roger, somehow? Thanks.” He hung up.

Maureen stared at the phone. Then she called Joanne.

* * * * *

Roger was still in shock at having watched both of the Twin Towers vanish into a pile of rubble and smoke. Mimi was crying over the untold number of dead or wounded. Neither was in the mood to answer the phone. So they didn’t.

After a little while, Roger realized that the unknown caller might have been Mark. And that there was no way he could return the call. But maybe Mark had called Joanne instead. So it was logical that Roger should call Joanne and check to see if she’d heard from Mark.

Well, it made sense in his head, anyway.

Besides, he was really getting nervous about Collins.

* * * * *