Leigh Kimmel says:

The first warning was the sudden flashes of light in the slate-gray sky, bright enough to break through the Rayleigh scattering of the reddish-orange light of this world’s primary. The distant wail of the civil defense siren in the nearby town came almost as an afterthought, as Cece was already halfway to the shelter. Cece forced himself to slow down on the stairs. No use being first one down if it meant going head-first.

Once everybody was in, Dad did a headcount and fastened the door closed. It wasn’t the first time Cece had been down here — they’d done a couple of drills when the word had first come through that the fighting was coming closer to this system. But he’d forgotten just how bare-bones this place was, with its bare concrete floor and the steel-frame bunks and shelves full of supplies. The lamps were old-school battery lanterns, tiny incandescent bulbs rather than LED’s. No computers, no cell phones, nothing with integrated circuits — according to the Kitties, the Lobsters could detect the tiny shifts in quantum fields caused by advanced electronics, and use them to target habitations and workplaces.

Everyone was oddly quiet, even his younger siblings and cousins looking around wide-eyed as Kitties. Probably too scared to raise a fuss or cut up — the teachers down at the education center would say it was a holdover from ancient times when humans still lived in tiny wandering bands no bigger than a community of chimpanzees, when predators were a continual threat to campsites.

After an eternity that was probably more on the order of ten or twenty minutes, Grandma came over with an old-fashioned hand-bound book. “I think you’d like to read this. It was my grandmother’s, and I think she’d want you to read it now.”

Cece had seen it a few times, during visits to his grandparents back when they were still on Earth. It had been on a high shelf, the sort of thing you don’t ask about and certainly didn’t try to get down and read. But here Grandma was handing it to him, so he sure wasn’t going to turn it down.

It took a little work to read the old-fashioned script, the unusual spelling — and then he remembered hearing that his twice-great grandmother had been a war bride in World War II. He still remembered the story about her arriving in Houston and discovering there was a big difference between an English farm and a Texas ranch.

However, the page Grandma had opened it to was earlier. It started with a vivid account of coming out of a bomb shelter to see a familiar building broken in half, with segments of floors and walls still sticking out, and the incongruous sight of a dresser still standing untouched only a few feet away from the abyss.

As Cece read on, the Battle of Britain stopped being dry history to memorize, and became a frightened young factory worker’s daily life. He looked up at the support beams overhead, wondering how future generations would remember this battle.

He looked over at Grandma, resolved to ask about getting some paper to write down his own experiences. Make it a promise that there would be future generations to read his account.