When the girl was woken up by a high-pitched beep the next morning, she was hungry as a bear. After changing clothes, she crept quietly into the kitchen. There she stole a loaf of bread and ran to the World Trade Center. Since her home was not too far from the buildings, she was already there after a 10-minute bus ride. People went in and went out again. It looked like the president had either achieved nothing or simply done nothing. She looked up to look for the planes that would soon bring down two towers. The cloudless, deep blue sky promised a wonderful sunny day. The sun smiled gently down on New York City and the birds chirped in happy exuberance. It was a morning that couldn't really start any better; a day like in a picture book.
The girl was sitting on a bench near the first tower. At 8:46 a.m., she spotted the plane hurtling into the building. On impact, the fuel exploded and a ball of fire shot out of the building. Wreckage of the aircraft and rubble of the building fell to the ground, killing passers-by. The tower swayed frighteningly. The shock wave that followed each explosion shot through the building. People fall to the ground, hit the walls, or burn up in a matter of seconds in the tremendous heat of the fire. Kerosene tumbled down the elevator shafts, burning up elevators with people in them.
The streets, where the normal hustle and bustle had taken place a few minutes ago, now reigned silence. They looked up. Where the plane had crashed into.
At 9:02 a.m., the second hijacked plane crashed into the south tower. An explosion, the shock wave afterwards killed and burned people. People started screaming and running to where they carried their legs. Others were still staring up at the smoke-darkened sky. A few pulled out their cell phones and called the police. The police could no longer save themselves from phone calls. The chiefs of the authorities knew immediately. They too had to see that the girl was absolutely right. Internally they cursed, but first all units had to go to the action to evacuate the place.
An hour and three minutes later, the second victim collapsed. The north tower also collapsed just 23 minutes later. Concrete, steel, glass, cables, facilities and human bodies formed the rubble that piled up to form a gigantic mountain.
Meanwhile the President was sitting in a classroom. The class teacher read a story to her young elementary school students. However, George couldn't focus on the story and the children. He waited. He shifted nervously in his chair. "Sir," an officer whispered in his ear.He quickly and quietly explained that the World Trade Center had collapsed. He sighed and dropped his head. It seemed to have happened exactly what the girl had told him. He got up, apologized, and went out with the security guards. He got in the car and drove back to the White House. He had hoped that the girl would be wrong just this once, because he hadn't been able to get many people not to go to work in the WTC today.
But he couldn't worry about that at this moment. He had to stand by his people and see to it that more people did not throw themselves into misery through their panic. So he held interviews, crisis meetings, condolences and and and. As evening approached, after hours of hard work, he sank into an armchair and closed his eyes for a few seconds.
George pulled himself up too and turned on the television. He looked again at the terrible pictures that were to be seen all over the world and was just about to switch it off, when the reporter appeared on the screen and said that she had Chuck Allen, the head of IT at Lava Trading, who was still there had managed to escape from the building together with a colleague in time.
At 8:46 am he was sitting with his back to the window in his office, which was on the 83rd floor of the north tower, when he heard a dull, sucking, unbearably loud noise. From the office box next door, Liz Porter, his programmer, called, "What the hell is that?"
Everyone knew this sound, because he had only passed his pilot's exam a few years ago. He knew what it sounded like when the pilot pushed the throttle forward to give the turbine maximum thrust. “You can steer an airplane by modifying the thrust alone. At full thrust, the nose of the jet rises.” It was exactly this sound that Chuck Allen heard behind him.
Allen and Liz Porter immediately went downstairs. On the way, other employees of the north tower joined them. After a long descent, they reached the plaza of the north tower. The courtyard was full of great debris. And they saw people. There were maybe 20, 30, 40 dead. They were parts of people.
They saw a torso with a belt around the waist, a second, third, fourth ... They were all wearing the same wide black belt. It was a moment before Allen and his companions understood that they were the passengers on the plane. Only one little girl, who must have been sitting on a bench, had none of these belts around her waist. She had been killed by one of the falling bodies.
The President of the United States sat with his eyes wide open and he felt it. There was no doubt for him. The girl Chuck Allen saw was ... America's Kassandra!