Luca DR
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15 – New exciting things (1/2)
🕑 Added 2023-05-12 10:19:46 +0000 UTCTryte – 122km from Temalas City
Monday, September 22
Samantha studied the swirling clouds with a somber expression, eyes unfocused glossing over the stream of soon-to-be rain rapidly passing over her head. The stormfront was looming in the distance and getting closer, the actual center of the vortex moving together with the event that was causing it. Far away, extending all the way to the horizon and beyond, streaks of barely formed clouds were visible extending outwards from the supercell until they disappeared into barely perceptible mist. Those were the arms of the spiral upon which the storm was feeding, and although they looked insignificant from the ground, they stretched across most of the north American continent from one coast to the other. And they were growing.
In the distance the storm assumed the form of a vertical wall of rain. Above the rain line the clouds were still visible, like a gigantic rotating anvil suspended a few thousand meters above the ground. She felt that she could see it inch closer with her every heartbeat.
“The storm will get here in less than two hours.” Said SpaceOps, returning from the top of the town bell-tower in a hurry.
“How are we on the evacuation?”
“Ongoing. I will have to do three more trips.”
Samantha nodded. “Go.”
The diminutive man disappeared in a flurry of limbs and brass instruments haphazardly fastened to his toolbelt. Their clamor died down as he grew distant and as the wind picked up, washing the town with the smell of rain. Sliding down her personal pair of goggles, slightly wet from the drizzle of icy rain, Samantha regarded the incoming storm through magically enhanced lenses. At the center, beyond the otherwise inscrutable veil of rain, something was forming. The eye of the storm was not as tranquil as one might usually expect it to be, instead when watched through the instrument it was bustling with spatial activity.
Something was trying to squeeze through a rift in space, forcing itself through a gap in reality itself from an unknown place. Nothing good, and if the signature was right, it was coming from the same place as the eggs. A text message made her smartphone vibrate in her pocket, and she reached for it with shaking fingers, discolored by the anomalous cold. She unlocked it and read the notification, coming from the Quadrangle.
It was a live video feed, coming from the storage room where all the eggs were being stored.
“Are they vibrating?” She spoke into the microphone, to which the Quadrangle responded by enhancing the image with false color corresponding to harmonic motion and displaying a menu she could interact with to access even more tools.
They were vibrating. Oscillating, according to some unknown equation that regulated their ever-changing pattern of motion. Ever faster. And the culmination of this motion, she feared, was going to overlap with the final burst of spatial energy in the middle of the event location, in the eye of the storm, wherever it happened to settle in the end. There was not much hope for the town of Tryte, she feared.
Behind her, the jeeps and trucks carrying military equipment were on standby. She had been granted the funding and the equipment for the containment procedures, as it appeared that thankfully her boss was not completely moronic. Although it did take a small push from PsyOps to convince him. They were waiting for her order them to set up a perimeter and make camp, but she could not give the order until the storm came to a definitive stop.
Another message.
Energy buildup will reach maximum threshold in 1 hour 39 minutes.
It was from the Quadrangle. The mainframe had finished running the numbers on the eggs, it seemed, and this was the result. A map appeared, showing that the eye of the storm would come to rest right in the middle of Tryte. Finally she could give the order. And she did. The military personnel were to create a perimeter all around the town, according to the projected size of the event in its terminal phase, cutting off the area from the outside. They were also to deploy the barriers in order to try and funnel whatever was going to emerge from the rift into an easily defensible location, looking away from Temalas City.
“You humans have such weak minds.” PsyOps, who had been given the assignment to scan the minds of the residents of the town in search of any anomalous memories, just came back from his mission, hopping along one of SpaceOps’ round trips carrying everyone to the closest military shelter to be sorted. Having a conversation with him was the last thing Samantha wished to do today, yet it seemed that she could not avoid him lest he cause some damage if he was too bored.
“You humans?” She parroted, trying to come to grips with the inevitable consequence of this sentence. “Don’t be so smug, you’re a human yourself, just a bit enhanced.”
“Am I though?” He stared at her. She almost sighed but did not.
She made sure that he was not scanning her mind, and spoke slowly.
“You are. And there is no benefit in inquisition on these matters. Move on.”
PsyOps was momentarily dazed. He looked around, as if he was lost and did not know how he got here or what he was doing.
“…right. What were we saying?
“You were telling me about what the people in Tryte saw during the event.”
