Christmas in July

“Daddy, Daddy! It’s snowing!”
Robert Thorn groggily opened his eyes and mumbled, "What is it sweetie?” His daughter, Susie, was standing by his bed.
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She loudly and excitedly exclaimed, ”It’s snowing outside!”
Robert groaned, ”It’s July honey, it can’t be-”
That was as far as he got because Susie was so excited that she was about to vibrate into another dimension trying to contain her anxiousness. She had never seen real snow before.
She ran off proclaiming, "I’m going to build a snow man!” Robert looked over at his tired wife and decided to see what the commotion outside was about.
Robert Thorn threw on a robe and proceeded outside. Much to his astonishment, it did appear to be snowing. White flakes fell in mass from the sky and had already begun to layer the ground. Susie ran around the yard, twirling and whirling about. She opened her mouth to the heavens to catch a few errant flakes before flopping on her back to make snow angels. He opened the door and was shocked at how warm it was outside. A part of him had actually forgotten it was July and they were in Escondido, California. The temperature hadn’t dropped below sixty degrees all week and it was absurd to think that it was winter.
He was about to call Susie inside when she spotted more kids and was off like a flash to play with them. There wasn’t any way to stop her short of yelling and Robert wasn’t worried. They were in a safe neighborhood, in a safe part of town, and he knew the kids she was going to play with. He knew that he had to let his daughter have some room to spread her wings. He could use this time to figure what was going on. He looked at the neighboring houses and found that all their lights were off. This wasn’t odd. It was after all 5:30 in the morning. He took one last look at the sky that was dumping white flakes all over the neighborhood. He went back inside and flipped on the television. He flipped to the local news channel. There had been breaking news. Robert began to fix himself some coffee while listening to the news. He never finished preparing the coffee.
The news report featured a stuffy looking man from NASA. He was at some sort of news conference and he was urging everyone to be calm. He talked about how NASA hadn’t had any communications from a ship reported to have been sent off decades ago. They had performed an override on the controls and began recalling the ship years ago. Robert Thorn mused that they had probably only wanted the billions of dollars worth of equipment back. It was the next words that made the father drop the coffee mug on the ground, shattering it into pieces.
The NASA expert urged the press that the debris was not dangerous. There had been a miscalculation in the recall of the ship named Exogenesis and it had entered the stratosphere without atmosphere-entry preparations. The ship had burnt up in the atmosphere. He urged the audience again that the debris was so infinitesimally small that it posed no real danger to anyone’s health. Robert’s mind flashed to an image of his daughter, Susie, catching ‘snowflakes’ with her tongue while laughing all the while. He didn’t even hear the part where the press asked the NASA official if there were any crew on the ship. Outside, ashes rained from the sky and continued to blanket the small town of Escondido and its neighboring cities.
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