"...a Caltech scientist who is among those reporting an unprecedented disturbance in the world's oceans. Dr. Breg, can you give us a clearer explanation then we're getting?"

"They're acoustic shockwaves, like tsunamis, but with no seismological source. The waves are propagating toward the shorelines of every continent--"

Looking seaward past the Statue of Liberty, out past the Verazzano Narrows. Stacked up by perspective, the distant wave is a wall of water impossibly high, still miles out. Sirens wail as Russian sailors run from the docks of Petropavlovsk Naval Base. Some stand rooted as the black glacier of water, a thousand feet high and growing, thunders toward them in nightmarish slow motion.

A roar fills the air, a thunder which drowns out the people's screams, even the rotors of the news chopper as the camera teams scrambles aboard. They leave the announcer standing transfixed, his face blank, eyes tracking upward and upward as the ground begins to shake.

The Statue of Liberty looks like a souvenir figurine at the afternoon sun is blocked out by the cresting tsunami. Downtown Miami crouches in terror at the feet of the shimmering monolith. In a penthouse office suite, an executive watches the wave towering above him, blocking out the sun, a line of raging foam appearing as it arches over, about to break upon the teeming city.

It simply stops.
2600 feet high and motionless except for a shimmering undulation of its surface in the bright sun. There is quiet, a faint wind and calling of confused gulls. Various reactions, as the thunder fades and people recover, only to stand awed before the vast, inexplicable manifestation. A news helicopter passes in front of it like a dragonfly.