The government called it a temporary outage. That was six years ago.

From Downward Cycle, book 1

As the miles quickly passed by, Scott found his rhythm again. He felt a car coming up behind him, close. It was another one of those senses that seem to sharpen for cyclists: the feel of danger before you hear or see it. Although no one else was even on the road, the large cream colored luxury SUV passed within inches of Scott. The asshole blew his horn just as he got beside him. So much for the three feet of clearance required by law, thought Scott. He could also see the top of the guy’s outstretched hand flipping him the bird as he passed. Some drivers did not like sharing the road, especially with bikes. Scott could never understand why. Just another asshole rushing to be somewhere. That was one more reason he loved it down here at the beach; life was slower, less rushed than the city-life he had escaped. He pumped his legs furiously to get exactly nowhere just as fast as he could. Scott always felt invincible out on the bike, much less so when he was off.

Getting close to the beach but still about ten miles from home, he noticed the bike’s GPS was giving an odd reading. He honestly wasn’t sure he’d even restarted it after changing the tire, though he felt pretty confident he had. For whatever reason, though, it was now giving the wrong information. Instead of the total miles, which should have been about fifty by this point, it was reading a hundred-and-twenty-six, then five, then it switched to kilometers. Then the numbers went away and the screen remained blank for a few seconds, the ‘Acquiring Signal’ error flashing. Probably just a dead battery. What had begun as a great ride on a beautiful day was starting to get rather tedious.

He topped a small hill revealing a great view of the wetlands that stretched several miles over to the Gulf of Mexico. This was one of his favorite sections of the ride. Coming down the other side of the hill was another speed stretch where he would be in a full tuck position to minimize wind resistance. Some moments on the ride seemed more like flying than riding.

As he moved to readjust his hand positions on the bars, he caught sight of a jet’s telltale contrail in the distance and could just make out the passenger jet, probably heading to South Florida or maybe even somewhere tropical with its load of late summer vacationers. The normally arrow straight vapor trail emitted by the engines seemed unusually erratic. The closer he looked the more it seemed like the profile of the jet was…well, wrong. Although far away it seemed like he could see more of the jet than was normal… maybe it was just a different angle. As he slowed to watch it also seemed to be descending too quickly toward the horizon. For a second Scott would have sworn it was dropping toward the sea as the contrail suddenly ceased, but the jet appeared to continue on. He assumed it was normal, probably altitude change or something similar. Still he watched with an uneasy feeling as it faded from sight over the sliver of ocean that was visible from here. Immediately dismissing the scene, he dropped back down into the tuck position and began the exhilarating descent.