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Taylor Varga (Worm/Luna Varga)

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Saurial said:
(In character) Thanks for the tips. But remember she also has a teleport to the city of doors. How do I deal with that?
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Put in a doughnut shop.
grommile said:
Instead of trying to keep someone with the Lady's favour confined in a box, get them to tell you where they're going and when to expect them back by.
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...or that. Or you could give a tracker to her... might want to make sure she knows to not leave without it.
 
PhoebusArtemis said:
Put in a doughnut shop.

...or that. Or you could give a tracker to her... might want to make sure she knows to not leave without it.
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You come home to find the tracker sitting in a corner babbling after the first time she takes it with her. "Can't sleep, the kobolds'll get me...Can't sleep, the kobolds'll get me...Can't sleep, the kobolds'll get me...Can't sleep, the kobolds'll get me..."

How a piece of technology without speech capabilities manages that is an exercise best left to certain snickering lizards and animated clothing...

Tekeli-li!
 
Kryslin said:
How a piece of technology without speech capabilities manages that is an exercise best left to certain snickering lizards and animated clothing...
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Being around... certain sort of being can do that to some stuff. Sounds like Lizard work...

When bits of tech start sitting in corners, in bars, and drinking to forget, yeah, it's been a Demonic Trolling Lizard Situation (tm).

Now, when said tech starts writing semi-autobiographical novels, you know things have gone reeally weird.
 
I am reminded of the sanest man on earth, who lives in an inside out house, to keep the rest of the world in it's asylum. I can't remember the exact details, it somewhere in one of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker books.
 
duckblaster said:
I am reminded of the sanest man on earth, who lives in an inside out house, to keep the rest of the world in it's asylum. I can't remember the exact details, it somewhere in one of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker books.
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Aineko said:
Wonko the Sane. So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, I believe.
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Just so. He built Outside The Asylum (the central "front yard" the inside out house surrounds) for that one place that isn't part of what he considered to be an irretrievably insane world. I should add that he is Wonko the Sane because his mother called him Wonko as a term of endearment and he is sane.

As for his conviction that the world is completely Froot Loops, he had the proof of it blown up (the image, that is) and hung on a wall; detailed instructions on the use of toothpicks, printed on the box containing them.
 
BlazeStryker said:
As for his conviction that the world is completely Froot Loops, he had the proof of it blown up (the image, that is) and hung on a wall; detailed instructions on the use of toothpicks, printed on the box containing them.
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Problem with that is... What is 'intuitive' and 'obvious' to one, may be 'I wish someone had explained that, years ago' to others... Toothpicks? Misuse of them might cause gum damage, as a quick, off-the-top-of-my-head, example...

One reason the human race has survived is neuro-diversity. Stable(ish) times, being 'different' is a problem for the individual, when stuff goes weird, from society's PoV, having enough diversity that someone might come up with a solution is good. Go on, surround yourself with people who agree with you, then be surprised by the Outside Context issue. :)
 
(in character) you guys do realize how powerful the lady of pain is right. And how big sigil is. I do not think that she would like me putting the city of doors in a box.
 
Ace Dreamer said:
One reason the human race has survived is neuro-diversity. Stable(ish) times, being 'different' is a problem for the individual, when stuff goes weird, from society's PoV, having enough diversity that someone might come up with a solution is good. Go on, surround yourself with people who agree with you, then be surprised by the Outside Context issue. :)
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I didn't say Wonko was entirely correct, friend. Heinlein said essentially the same thing you did when he spoke of the troublesome minority of creative people and how society tends to decline as soon as said bothers are quelled.
 
BlazeStryker said:
I didn't say Wonko was entirely correct, friend. Heinlein said essentially the same thing you did when he spoke of the troublesome minority of creative people and how society tends to decline as soon as said bothers are quelled.
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I might be a fan of Heinlein... He was, a 'man of his time', but he managed quite a lot of 'yer wot?' statements, which are pithy and can be remarkably deep, useful and 'why wasn't this generally accepted?'.

I'm pretty sure he'd have got a Demonic Seal of Approval, with seal in dodgy hat, clapping flippers, possibly blowing a musical instrument, and thoroughly amusing themselves. :)
 
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Yakopak said:

Coil vs Agent C4T
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I haven't read the thread, so forgive me if someone else has already brought this up.

You need to upload your image/art somewhere to be viewable. Since the start of 2024, discord made it so any link expires after some time (2 weeks?) if it is external to the Discord app.
 
Hi there, hello. It is I, the Author.

I must make my apologies for having (A) done little wording in general for some weeks, and (B) done little lizarding at all for far too long. Unfortunately, life being what it is, and the search for ways to make it work being what they are, an awful lot of my time has been taken up with all too many different things for much longer than I really desire. Such is the way of the world, unfortunately.

However...

I have no intention of letting it get entirely on top of me, and I can assure you that behind the scene, when I can steal a moment here and there, I am still banging the rocks together and making sparks, I mean wordz, and these are being carefully hoarded away for use later. As time permits I will extrude actual documents comprised entirely of home made wordz, many of which will relate to lizards. Because they won't let me get away with doing otherwise, you know :)

Many will relate to other things, of course, but even there I fear lizards may make the odd appearance. This is their nature, as we have ample evidence for.

Anyway. For now, as a little present and reward for patience, I have put together a probably, but not definitely, non-canon side story to entertain the masses. IE, you lot. You will find it immediately below this post. Yes. Right there. Down a little... further... That's the spot.

Read. Enjoy. Complain.

Or something along those lines...

Until later, my dudes. (That's how you say it, right? :) )
 
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Omake - A Blast from the Past...
  • Sidestory
    • Who knows? This probably isn't canon, but you never know for sure around here...​

    The mood in the room was somber. A project more than four decades in the making had finally ended the day before, with success, yes, but at a great cost. Lives, resources, time, all had been spent on a desperate attempt to save as many as could be arranged, which wasn't as many as would be ideal. Hopefully, though, it would be enough.

    No one would know for a very, very long time. That had been understood right from the beginning, and accepted in the end as there was no other choice. Or rather, there was no other practical choice. There were far too many impractical ones, as was always the case.

    Muted sounds from around the room came and went, everyone busy with their own thoughts, some making idle notes, some working on various instruments more out of something to do rather than necessity, some merely staring at the walls and lost in their own thoughts. To one side a display showed telemetry received from the already far distant last hope of civilization as it steadily traveled towards its destiny, far from here and now. Lost to deep time, and safe from the disaster their home would encounter much too soon, even if still in real terms a long way away. Enough for a full life, but all too soon even so.

    The signs had been well known for several centuries. Volcanic activity had been steadily rising, always falling back after a while, but each time more vigorous. Vast areas of land submerged beneath lava flows, the atmosphere choked with dust and toxic gasses, wild temperature variations easily ascribed to sunlight being blocked by contaminants high in the stratosphere; all of it causing climatic instability that was perilously close to tipping over into a quite different metastable state, one that was unlikely to be conducive to life in the way they were used to. Such had happened before, research had proven that beyond doubt a long time ago, but no one wanted to believe they were experiencing something that world shaking in their own lifetime.

    It had taken decades of steadily worsening problems before people accepted reality, having pushed back against the scientists who had been raising the alarm for far longer than they wanted to think about. Wasting time that could have been used to save more people, more resources. But this was an unfortunate aspect of life. People were resistant to change, and the more dramatic and inconvenient the change the more resistant they were. And, of course, no one wanted to contemplate not only their own mortality, but that of their entire civilization, and indeed world.

    It was not a comforting thing to know that all too soon everything you knew, everything you and those like you had built from the moment your species gained sapience, would be lost forever. Buried under ash and lava, possibly, or swamped by rising sea levels as ice caps melted, or even buried under ice given the projected long term effects of the current problem. Global warming would, eventually, give way to global cooling on a vast scale. It would take hundreds of thousands of years, obviously, long, long after they were dust, but the glaciers would come again, inching equatorwards from both poles and grinding everything they encountered to fragments, then those fragments to powder.

    Everyone knew this. Everyone, now, accepted this.

    No one liked this.

    And they didn't want to vanish into history, leaving nothing behind except possibly a few fossils for far future life to puzzle over. Which is why they'd turned their entire civilization towards trying to preserve as much as they could, even if there was no guarantee it would actually succeed. Some chance, however small, was better than no chance.

    Never let it be said that they gave up easily. Even if it took the end of the world to spur them into action…

    So now, at the end, their grasp at some form of rebellion against mortality was set on a course that would hopefully save that small part of their culture they'd been able to pack into their crowning achievement. Too little, too late, in some ways, but with luck enough.

    The job was done.

    And those left behind were at something of a loss as to what to do with the time they personally had left.

    Hence the somber mood. It was still sinking in, that the project that had been the singular focus of so many for so long was complete.

    What next?

    None of them wanted to simply sit and wait for the end. It would take long enough most would live their entire lives naturally before something critical broke, but they all knew something critical would eventually break. Already, far too much of the world was functionally uninhabitable, and so many resources had been used on the great project there was little left to attempt to fend off nature taking its inevitable course. On the other hand, few felt like ending it any sooner than they absolutely had to. Life, despite everything, was precious, and valued.

    So they sat, watched the instruments, waited, and thought. Trying to come up with something practical to do, in the time they had left now that the task that had taken every scrap of effort for entire lifetimes was finally over.

    And, rather remarkably, one bright spark had an idea. It was totally ridiculous, utterly impractical, and just plausible enough that after much discussion, they decided it was worth a shot.

    After all, what else was left?

    Leveraging a fringe theory that was an offshoot of the research that had led to the success of the great project was at least something to do. It probably wouldn't work, of course, as it was something that had been studied and dismissed fifty years ago as pseudoscience at best, but even at the time there had still been some fascinating indications that something unexpected was lurking deep down in the math. No time had been wasted on trying to wrest truth from fantasy, as it was so unlikely success would be possible, but they had nothing but time now, so why not?

    Research groups were assembled, what resources were left were brought into play, and they got to work. Perhaps something would come of it, perhaps it would prove pointless, but the only way to find out was to do it.

    So they did.

    It took them twenty one years.

    Then another ten to build the machine.

    But it worked.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    "We've located a suitable site. Our best projections are that it's seismically stable for an extremely long period of time, it's well away from current coastlines, isn't near any faults, and overall is probably the best location available to us. With so much tectonic activity opening new faults all the time, this is probably the only real choice we have. It was suggested that there might be similar, or even better locations deep underwater well away from plate boundaries, but that adds a level of engineering complexity that would take too much time to come up with practical solutions for. So this is our best bet, the research teams feel."

    "Once the machine is activated, tectonic activity won't be much of an issue."

    "Certainly, while it's operating. I agree. But until that point it's a problem, and when it shuts down, I'd prefer not to be under thousands of meters of lava…"

    "No, that would be… suboptimal."

    "To put it mildly."

    "The safeties would prevent that happening, surely, though?"

    "In theory, yes. The problem is that actually testing that theory is rather an all or nothing process. We feel minimizing the likelihood of something like that happening in the first place is probably a good idea. Not to mention it would likely dramatically extend the run time, which is already going to be somewhat preposterous."

    "Do we know how long yet? Even a rough idea?"

    "A long time. A very, very long time. Megayears at least."

    The two speaking looked at each other, the others present in the room watching silently. It was quiet as the information was absorbed, which took a few seconds. Eventually, the conversation restarted.

    "Whatever happens, our world is not going to be what we find at the other end. There's no way around that. The sheer amount of time will change everything. Even the landscape. Even the continents. But we don't have any choice, really. And this way we can, with luck, keep far more of our civilization going than we expected all those years ago."

    "I wish we'd put in the time to research this back then. It would have…"

    "I know. But that's far past anything we can change. We'd have had a much better solution, probably many of them, and even the one we chose would have been far more effective. On the other hand, it took a major and unlikely breakthrough to make this work at all, and perhaps without the exact group of people under the exact pressures we were affected by, we wouldn't have come up with this at all. We'll never know. The original project succeeded admirably, despite being something we could have improved on, and we had no way to predict those improvements at the time. All we can do is continue with this new project and hope both are successful."

    "True enough."

    "And on the bright side, we might be there to welcome them back."

    "Which will be a surprise for them."

    "Indeed."

    Several people laughed at the dry tone. Turning to another department head, the one in overall charge of things asked, "How is the status of the biological preservation process?"

    "Excellent, as it happens. We've managed to collect a vast amount of viable samples of everything we could locate, from cell samples right through embryos up to living examples, as far as the animal life goes. We even found a number of organisms that were feared extinct, which was a stroke of luck. Likewise, for plant life, we have seeds, cuttings, fully developed samples, genetic data… It will take time, but we can rebuild. As long as there's air and water, we can rebuild. Hopefully we'll have a little more than that, but we're as prepared as we'll ever be. Another decade though… we'd have lost eighty percent or more of what was left. The environmental damage is close to a tipping point as it is, even in the absence of new stressors."

    "Which will happen, that much I can guarantee. This current tectonic phase is only just starting," one of the vulcanologists put in, looking worried. "It's going to get much worse before it improves. We're in no doubt of that."

    Again, they were silent for a moment, thinking of how their world was ending. Several sighed heavily.

    "How long until we execute the final stages?"

    "Four and a half years. We're in the final stages of construction at the moment, which will take half a year or so, then we need to get everything calibrated and tested, round up everyone who's willing to join us from all over the planet, make certain we've not missed anything… It will take quite a while to do all we need to do, but the end is in sight."

    "Hopefully just the end of the old world. The beginning of the new one."

    "That is something that we won't know for longer than is easy to comprehend."

    "I suppose so. I'm torn between wanting to see what happens, and terrified of it happening."

    "You're not the first one to tell me that, oddly enough."

    A certain ripple of amusement went around the room, then they all got back to work. Four and a half years wasn't a lot of time, and there was still so much to do.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    They looked up at the great construction, shining in the reddened sunlight colored by dust in the upper atmosphere. It was a triumph, a monument to the sheer effort and skill involved from what was left of their people coming together and working flat out for years, all to bring about something that half a century ago would have been considered fantasy. The previous Great Project had been extraordinary. The one started almost as a side effect of that was far more.

    Off in the distance, long columns of vehicles and people were heading towards, into, and deep inside their final hope, all bringing with them everything they valued. From far and wide, as many as were left who were willing to take the chance had come here, to a remote location far from the remnants of civilization, while the small, but still sadly too large, fraction of the population that had turned down the offer watched with interest but no desire to follow. They'd chosen to live out their lives surrounded by what they knew, rather than dive into the unknown, which was their choice and respected as such. The end was still some distance in the future, after all.

    But it came closer steadily and there would be no escaping it. Some accepted that, the people entering the vast construction in front of them didn't, and that was just how things worked.

    Exchanging glances, the small group joined their fellows and headed for the facility that so many had labored on for so long. Disappearing inside, they looked back for one last view of their old world, before as one taking a deep breath and looking forward to the new one, however long it would be before they could walk upon it. The crowd outside slowly diminished as everyone and everything embarked on their vessel that would sail the seas of time, in a manner that defied easy understanding for those not scientists or engineers. And even for a lot of them.

    And finally, as the sun slowly set in a blazing red sky that stank of volcanic ash, even though the volcanoes in question were half a planet away, the command was given. All exterior openings closed, mechanical rumblings echoing across the plain. The few watchers, safely distant, waited silently until, with no warning other than one last broadcast of farewell, the entire edifice suddenly turned into a perfect, oddly shaped, mirror.

    And time, inside the huge machine, came to the next best thing to a halt.

    It would be like this for a number of years that boggled the mind.

    Far longer, in fact, than the builders had planned.

    For they hadn't factored in a rather large asteroid.

    Oh well. These things happen.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    Rocks glistened with dew in the dawn light. Only sounds of nature filled the air, insects buzzing and humming as they went about their business while the sun rose, birds chirped and cawed, some hunting those insects, others finding different sources of food. Far off in the distance faint rumbles betrayed a dwindling thunderstorm as it flashed and flickered on the horizon, sheets of rain visible to an observer if they were high enough, but moving steadily away. Above, stars twinkled, dimming one by one as day broke. A few errant clouds chased after their more enthusiastic compatriots, scudding across the sky at speed, although at ground level the breeze was mild at best. All in all, there was ample evidence that the new day would be, as it often was in this part of the world at this time of year, quite a nice one.

    Not that there was anyone around to notice, of course.

    As it rose higher, the sunlight fell on the vertical cliffs facing it, warming them steadily from the freezing temperatures attained overnight. The cycle had repeated regularly since the rocks had first formed, expansion and contraction of water in minute cracks slowly but remorselessly prying away at the stone, with the inevitable effect that eventually something would give way. Gravity would then spring into action, cheerfully accelerating the newly freed chunk of rock downwards at gathering speed until it smashed to pieces on the slopes below, made mostly from previous such events. This had been an ongoing process for time immemorial, and would continue until some time in the far future when the extrusion towering high above the surrounding landscape was inevitably worn down to nothing.

    And, not surprisingly, this morning something finally hit a tipping point. Rock groaned, creaked, cracked, splintered, and slid. Dust billowed into the air, the roar of collapsing stone echoing out across the forested slopes below and causing the birds nearby to rise and flee in a squawking protesting cloud of feathered irritation, other animals either running too, or freezing and waiting for the sound to die away.

    Unlike all the previous times, though, this time something unusual happened.

    The slide was larger than normal, but not exceptionally so. Great columns of rock had broken loose and toppled outwards, a cascade of deadly force knocking loose other barely-connected edifices, in a chain reaction that continued for several minutes. Even when the main bulk of the fall had finally rolled to a halt, small lumps kept dropping free for quite some time. Creaks and grinding sounds slowly diminished, occasional sharp cracks resounding through the trees as chunks of rubble fell from far above, exploding into shrapnel as they struck the scree slope.

    The sun arced further into the sky, the rays slowly beginning to illuminate the bottom of the cavity left by the thousands of tons of rock that had decided it needed to be elsewhere with some urgency.

    Eventually light hit the very innermost wall of the new opening, and reflected brightly from the mirrored surface that lay deep within the rock extrusion. A surface that hadn't seen the touch of sunlight for a time far beyond easy understanding. Covered ever since a slow volcanic oozing of liquid magma, sparked by a fault opening where there shouldn't have been one, as the planet rang like a bell following the ruinous impact of cubic kilometers of rock striking thousands of kilometers away like the fist of an angry god.

    That impact had global effect, causing catastrophic damage across the entire world, contributing to the end of a vast proportion of life everywhere. But what lay buried beneath the long-cooled basaltic rock had survived without damage, insulated as it was by esoteric physics from the rest of the universe. Hidden for so much time, finally exposed to air once again long, long after its creators had expected to find their final project finishing, the construction within was now able to take notice of the outside world.

    It was several weeks of real-world time before the internal sensors, running at a rate many millions of times slower versus the rest of reality, noticed what had happened, as fast as they were in real terms. But in the end, the system detected that external conditions were now acceptable, as well as realizing that only one small part of the outside wall was exposed to normal environmental conditions. It concluded that the vast bulk of the facility still required structural reinforcement due to being covered with an unknown amount of rock, but that was something that had been planned for.

    Almost everything had been planned for.

    Admittedly the asteroid had been something of a surprise, but no plan is capable of anticipating everything no matter how much time is spent on it. At least the aftereffects had been within acceptable parameters even if the cause was rather unexpected.

    So, having notified its creators and received the go ahead command, the system reduced the time dilation field internally to a 1:1 ratio while keeping the outer skin at the inconceivably higher one, neatly avoiding a sudden load of billions of tons on the construction deep underground. Resynchronized with real time, the inhabitants checked their instruments. Read with disbelief just how long it had actually been since they had first activated their lifeboat. Grieved for the loss of their entire world, so far in the past it defied comprehension other than as numbers on a screen.

    And made plans for venturing out to see what had become of that world, and finding their place in whatever lay beyond their safe refuge.

    Of course, that process was one that needed to be done carefully. Who knew what might be lurking out there? A team would have to be assembled, briefed, equipped, and sent forth to investigate the external environment. A job that would require intelligence, care, and bravery in equal amounts.

    They'd planned for that too, of course.

    Four of their best were summoned, and informed that they had the honor of being the first of their kind to stand in the sun for millions and millions of years.

    Then a small opening in the outer skin was created, where the overburdening rock had finally given way, and the exploration team left through it, blinking madly at the brilliance of the sun shining directly in their faces on that memorable early day.

    As soon as they were out, the field was reestablished. Just in case. You couldn't be too sure in cases like this.

    The exploration team, well, they were highly trained. They could look after themselves.

    Hopefully…

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    "Fuck, that's bright."

    "Don't look right at it then."

    "I didn't look at it on purpose you know."

    "Yet you still looked at it."

    "Stop bickering, you idiots, we've got a job to do. Who's got the portable environmental sensor pack?"

    "I have, sir." One of the team members held up the device.

    "Good. Run a scan, I want to be sure it matches the internal sensor readings."

    She nodded, already working with the equipment, as her three companions carefully fanned out across the vertiginous hillside, which was very steep indeed, piles of rocks ranging from many times their size to gravel resting at the angle of repose and presenting an unsteady surface that they found hard to walk on. The slope terminated quite an impressive distance down at the treeline. "I don't recognize any of those trees," one of the others commented somewhat uneasily as he stared at them through an optical imaging device he was holding to his eyes, his sidearm slung on his back. "Or any of those… what are those things?"

    He pointed, the other two following his finger while the first kept fiddling with her device. All three of them watched as half a dozen large darkly feathered creatures flew past, croaking at each other in the distance. They exchanged glances.

    "Weird. Some peculiar sort of bird presumably. Evolution in action, I suppose. It's been a long time."

    "We're probably going to find all sorts of things like that, I'm afraid," the one with the imager commented, as he lowered it to look at the others. "We may well not find anything recognizable beyond the basics. The instruments showed the planet went through several volcanic periods nearly as bad as the one we left, and at least one near total glaciation period. It's still coming out of that one actually."

    "Is that why it's so cold?" one of the others queried, sounding enlightened. "I assumed it was winter."

    "It's not far off winter, but the global temperatures are probably quite a lot lower than we're used to," his companion replied. "And of course we're quite a long way up, which isn't helping. It should be warmer down there, and later in the day." He waved a hand at the scenery.

    "The scan is complete, sir," the lone female of their group reported, peering at the readout she was studying with a mildly confused expression. "In fact I ran it twice to be sure. It's… odd."

    Everyone else turned to her. "Odd how?" the leader of the squad asked curiously.

    "Oxygen level is a little lower than before, but well within tolerable limits. We won't notice at all except at much higher altitude. Carbon dioxide is down too, which partly explains the lower temperatures. But…" She tapped a couple of controls, then shook her head. "The odd part is all the other things in the air."

    "Such as?"

    "Hydrocarbon traces are much higher than I'd expect, and I'm reading tiny but definite traces of fluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, and a number of other industrial gaseous compounds." She looked at them, then back at her scanner. "None of those can be formed naturally as far as I'm aware, at least in conditions anywhere near what we have here. Even if they could, it would be trace amounts, thousands of times smaller than what I'm detecting."

    They all stared at her, then each other.

    "Artificial?" the leader queried, very carefully, so as to be absolutely sure he was understanding things properly.

    She shrugged somewhat helplessly. "As far as I can tell, yes. We've got the signatures in the database from our own history, because we used to use a number of these compounds way back then, but these traces are fresh. A lot of them are very stable but they'd have broken down a long, long time ago if they were left over from us. Something is still producing them right now, or up until very recently…"

    Puzzled and somewhat worried glances were exchanged once again. She thought for a few seconds, then squatted down and examined the ground very carefully, before shaking her head. "Too fresh. I need an older soil sample."

    "Why?"

    "To check something," she replied, looking down the slope to the treeline, then putting the scanner away and starting the careful and somewhat perilous descent. "Come on, don't just stand there, we have a job to do!"

    The three left behind looked at each other, as one sighed faintly because this was just like her when she got curious about something, retrieved all their gear along with the pack she'd left behind, and followed.

    Quite a lot of cursing and general mutters of complaint accompanied the climb down to something closer to flat ground, but no one managed to collect any serious injuries. Eventually they found themselves entering the forest, a scene both familiar and not at the same time. The overall effect was something they'd all experienced many times, but the details were alien and strange.

    "These are really weird trees," one of them commented, looking up at the branches some distance above them, dark green needles sticking out of the twigs and blocking out much of the sky. "Never seen conifers before, they grow up in the cold mountains as far as I know. And these certainly don't look like anything I've seen in the records." He prodded the bark carefully, then sniffed. "Strange smell too. Not bad, but… strange." Scuffing a foot through the loam and the dead vegetative material covering it, he knelt to inspect the gouge with interest. Pulling out a few small containers he took samples, then tucked them away as he stood. "The scientists are going to be working on this for months," he added, smiling slightly.

    "Aha! I was right," the female exclaimed triumphantly, from somewhere further down the slope in the trees.

    "Right about what?" their leader asked, as they all wandered over to find her. She was standing near a small pit in the ground which she'd obviously excavated, holding the scanner remote probe in one hand and a clump of loam in the other. As they watched, she ran the probe over the dirt, nodded in satisfaction, and dropped it back into the hole.

    Turning to them, she announced, "Microplastics."

    "Microplastics?" the leader echoed, mystified.

    "Microplastics," she nodded. "Little teeny tiny pieces of polymer. Lots of them, many kinds, including fluorocarbons. Spread all through the ground, but increasing in quantity the closer to the surface the samples come from."

    "That… can't be natural," one of the others said slowly.

    "No. It's not. Something is making these compounds, and has been for… probably at least a century, based on the depths I found them at," she responded. "And it's making a lot of them. They're everywhere, which means that the quantities involved must be enormous to have ended up in the middle of nowhere like this. It's contaminated the entire environment. I'd be interested to get samples from lakes and rivers, the sea as well, but I suspect we'll find it there too. Whoever or whatever is responsible isn't clearing up after itself very well."

    "Intelligent life," the leader stated flatly. She nodded.

    "Has to be. There's no way there's a polyethylene tree or something like that. Evolution doesn't work like that. It's something doing it on purpose."

    "Our descendants?"

    She shrugged a little helplessly. "I have no idea. It's been so long… Perhaps, or perhaps something else evolved to sapience."

    "Or aliens moved in."

    Both of them looked at their companion, who flinched slightly at the twin gazes. "It might be aliens," he added weakly.

    "It's almost certainly not aliens," she replied with a sigh. "Try to be sensible."

    The fourth member of their team was fiddling with another piece of equipment he'd pulled out of one of the packs, causing them to turn and look at him when a nasty whistling hiss suddenly sounded. "What are you doing?" the leader queried.

    "Checking a guess," the other one replied slightly absently as he worked. Other strange sounds came and went, until finally, as he made fine adjustments, they heard… music?

    It was very strange music, definitely, with a bizarre scale and tuning, but it was recognizably patterned notes layered in a manner that sounded weirdly familiar to them. Not what it was, but how it was, in essence. And it certainly wasn't a natural phenomenon.

    Something was out there broadcasting music over RF frequencies.

    Which set the seal on the whole intelligent life proposal.

    The voice that spoke after the music trailed off, before a new and different piece began playing, merely finalized that idea.

    They stared at each other while alien music echoed around them in the unfamiliar forest, trying to get to grips with the concept that they weren't alone in this world of the future.

    Eventually he turned the radio receiver off.

    "Well. That's certainly changed the mission a little," he said slightly unevenly.

    "Why didn't they pick it up inside?" the female asked.

    He shrugged. "My best guess is that the shield blocks the signal just enough that combined with the rock, it's not detectable inside," he replied. "It's not a very strong signal in the first place. The source is probably quite a long way off. I can triangulate on it if we move, but it may well be far enough away we can't get to it easily without transport."

    "Should we go back and report on this?" the third team member asked, looking between his companions.

    The leader thought for a moment, then finally replied, slowly, "No. I think we need to confirm our findings first. We need proof of what's doing it. For all we know, it's some automatic system, and whatever created it isn't around any more. I'd prefer it if we can find something more substantive than weird music and an alien voice. No one is going to believe us otherwise."

    He turned to the one with the receiver. "File the report, say we found evidence that we might not be alone, but tell them we don't know who or what it is yet and we're going on with the mission."

    The other team member nodded, pulling out a handheld device which he worked on for a few seconds, sending a secure message to the base high above them via something more advanced than old fashioned radio, something that could penetrate the rock and be received by those still inside. They waited after he finished, until a while later the device pinged and he read the incoming message. "They say we're clearly suffering from the effects of the lower oxygen and hearing things, but acknowledge our report and wish us good luck. And say to check in regularly, don't take silly chances, and try not to get eaten by something with too many teeth."

    The leader sighed faintly. "I swear the comms department has a worse sense of humor than we do," he grumbled, turning away to start the slow descent to the actual flat ground quite a long way off. The other three smirked a little at his back, glanced at each other, and followed, taking measurements and samples the entire way.

    When, some time later, they came across what could only be a road, they stopped at stared at it for some time in baffled surprise.

    "That's a road."

    "Yes, I know it's a road."

    "For vehicles."

    "So it would seem."

    "And the hydrocarbon traces on it are fresh. As in no more than perhaps two or three days old, fresh." She was running the scanner probe over the black surface and inspecting the results. "Combustion byproducts. Some sort of polymer, a flexible long chain one I think… lead? Weird, there's a lot more lead here than you'd expect. It's older than the rest, but higher than background levels by a massive amount. I wonder why? Traces of asbestos, refined steel, aluminum, several other types of polymer…" Straightening up, she turned to them. "I think they're using some sort of internal combustion engine. Probably running on hydrocarbons. It explains the atmospheric byproducts pretty well."

    "Primitive." Their leader shook his head. "But I suppose it's a viable method if you don't know better."

    "Bad for the environment though," one of the others remarked, getting nods in response. "Mind you, it's better than all the volcanoes, so there's that."

    "Maybe they don't know?"

    "It's pretty obvious, surely they've worked it out."

    The female shrugged. "We can ask them if we can find them and work out how. Assuming they're friendly."

    "What if they're not?"

    They looked at each other, the road, then the treeline. After a mutual decision, all four returned to the sparse cover of the lower altitude forest, then began carefully following the road from the cover of the trees, having had a short argument as to whether to go left or right. Left won in the end. As they traveled, taking radio bearing readings intermittently, they tried to figure out what sort of intelligent life might now be present on their world, and how it would react to them.

    Looking back at the towering rock edifice behind them, their leader chuckled for a moment. "At least we won't have any trouble finding our way back." Returning his gaze to the front, he kept jogging, wondering what they'd find.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    "Are we there yet?"

    Sighing, the leader of the small exploration group cast a somewhat tired look over his shoulder, meeting the slight expression of amusement of the rest of his team. "Will you please stop asking that?" he requested with a long-suffering note to his voice. "It stopped being funny about four times ago."

    Returning his gaze to the area in front of them, he motioned for the rest to get lower to the ground. They'd left the trees behind them as they'd proceeded on their trek, having spent some time now moving across grassland and small groups of large bushes, keeping the alien road to their right over the other side of some hills and rises and occasionally climbing one of these to check they were going in the right direction. It had intersected a considerably wider one some distance back and they'd turned left again to keep the new road on their right still, since it seemed to be leading them roughly on the bearing the radio broadcast was coming from according to the readings taken at intervals. So far they hadn't seen either any vehicles, nor any sign of intelligent life other than various artifacts including a couple of very basic fences constructed from wood and metal wire, and quite a lot of detritus that seemed to have been abandoned carelessly.

    The biggest artifact had been the remains of a building, quite a large one, that had clearly been destroyed by fire some time ago. Only a few parts were still even recognizable, the main structure having been pretty much erased by whatever had happened to it. There had been a large expanse of the same material the road was made of with faded markings painted on it, which they worked out was probably some sort of area for parking vehicles, but it was covered with dust and debris and showed almost no signs of any recent visitors on foot or otherwise. Several badly damaged and almost unreadable signs had been dotted around and they'd spent a while photographing them all for later investigation before moving on.

    They certainly had a fair number of intriguing samples for the scientists to examine, and their own technical expert had amused herself by taking readings constantly of everything they ran across, such as the small river they'd forded a little while ago. She'd also muttered that the microplastics were in the water along with a number of fairly dangerous organic chemicals and whoever was creating them really should be more careful about cleaning up after themselves, but none of the others was all that interested in such things right at the moment as they had bigger problems to consider.

    Now, they were facing a large expanse of grassland with almost no cover at all, other than dips and depressions in the ground and a few small hills. The rising sun cast long shadows across the land, and they could see a few larger animals moving around some distance off. He inspected those carefully through his optics, wondering both whether they presented a danger, and after deciding they were probably herbivores of some sort, what they tasted like.

    Perhaps they could find out at some point. But right at this moment they had other concerns. At least the things didn't look particularly hazardous, although he knew full well that some herbivores could be unexpectedly lethal if sufficiently provoked. And since they had no idea what these really were or anything else about them, it would be best to steer clear of the animals for now anyway. Since they were off quite a long way they could easily move around them, so that wasn't much of a problem.

    But he was still worried about the local intelligent life, assuming it was actually out there, which they didn't yet have positive proof of. Although the circumstantial evidence was extremely strong and getting more so as they progressed. Many of the odds and ends they'd run across seemed far too recent to be something left behind for years, if only because they tended to be right on top of the ground, not buried in it to any depth.

    So in all likelihood these putative sapient creatures were still here, somewhere. And as they had absolutely zero information on them, the safest basis to work on was that they might be hostile, might well be dangerous, and could appear at any moment. Hence the care in plotting a route and avoiding any surprises.

    "Bearing to the radio source?" he said in a low voice over his shoulder.

    "Roughly there, sir," the one with the radio equipment said after a few moments, his hand appearing over the leader's shoulder and pointing. He squinted along the arm, nodded, and turned to his companions.

    "All right. Let's go over in that direction, it seems to have better cover if we follow that stream, which is heading more or less the way we want to go. Hopefully it will provide enough cover we won't get spotted. " He indicated to the left, towards a taller rise. It would take a little while to get there, but they could then climb it and have a look what was on the other side without exposing themselves too much. For a moment he regretted not going back and requesting a couple of small observation drones, but it hadn't seemed worth it at the time, and by the point it was worth it, he felt that trekking all the way back then out here again was more effort than it was worth for the initial exploration mission. Hopefully that wouldn't come back to haunt them…

    Keeping as low as possible he looked around once more, then dashed for the stream, hearing the footsteps of his team follow rapidly. It wasn't long before they were splashing through the fairly shallow water towards the taller features a handful of minutes away. The large animals they'd seen raised their heads at the sound, seemed to stare at them for a few seconds, then trotted off to a greater distance before stopping. He was fine with that, as he had no wish to get any closer himself just yet. At least they hadn't decided to charge or something. He didn't much want to have to shoot the damn things.

    Although he once more wondered what they might taste like…

    Reaching the point they could climb the bank of the river, they did so, before stopping to look up at the escarpment in front of them. "Not too bad, as far as I can see," he noted.

    "Looks simple enough although we should probably go that way a bit, it looks like there's a small canyon that should be easier to climb through over there," the female pointed out, indicating what she'd seen. He peered at it and nodded agreement.

    "Good idea. Come on, I want to see what's on the other side."

    They all trooped off in that direction, keeping an alert eye out all around for any signs of the inhabitants. It was quiet, only the sound of the shallow river behind them along with the wind and insects as well as the odd birds, of which there were a wide variety, breaking the silence. All of them thought it eerie, in a sense, as well as peaceful. The differences from what they were used to contrasted weirdly with the similarities and left them all slightly uneasy for some reason.

    Eventually topping the fairly small hill, pushing their way through bushes and low trees and stopping occasionally to take photos of interesting animals, they found themselves looking out at a vista of distant larger hills interspersed with small groves of trees, all of it shimmering in the warming air as the sun rose. But after a brief glance at this, they all found their attention drawn sharply to something much closer and far more intriguing.

    "Down," he hissed urgently the moment he spotted what lay below them in a shallow valley, hitting the ground as he spoke. The other three dropped even as he said it, two on one side and one on the other. They exchanged a glance, then very carefully wormed their way up the remaining hill until they could peer over the top.

    Below them, a cluster of buildings lay, a couple of fairly large ones which gave the impression of being somewhat industrial in nature, along with half a dozen or so smaller ones, and a handful of obvious storage buildings, the sides open to the air. They were constructed of wood, metal, and probably polymers of some sort, and there were several machines that appeared to be vehicles scattered among them. Surrounding the buildings were fenced in areas of land, which were so obviously fields they immediately concluded this had to be a farm.

    A farm that was on fire...

    By the looks of it, it had been on fire for quite some time. Even as they watched, the metal roof of one of the large constructions slowly collapsed with a rumble and a shower of sparks and smoke, fragments of burning material being scattered sideways for some distance as it did this. Several more had done the same at some point in the recent past, and a couple had burned out entirely, only heaps of ashes with smoke rising from them left.

    "I thought I smelled smoke a while ago for a moment when the wind changed," the comms expert mumbled. His leader looked at him then back at the scene below. He couldn't see any signs of movement, although when he peered through his imager, he could spot at least two motionless bodies lying in the open near one of the vehicles.

    They didn't know what had happened, but whatever it was, it had come fast and viciously.

    "I can't see anything moving," the female commented, her weapon aimed at the distant scene. She was looking through the scope mounted on it, panning it slowly across the area and making fine adjustments now and then. "Nothing on thermals but there's so much fire down there it might be masking any life signs."

    Retrieving his own weapon he did the same, as did the others. They spent some while carefully examining the destroyed farm, checking for whoever had done it, before he finally said, "I'm pretty sure whatever was responsible for this is gone. No signs of anything living down there at all. Anyone else got anything?"

    "No."

    "Nothing."

    "There's no one alive down there, sir. Not any more."

    He nodded slowly. "Report it, then we go and have a look."

    "Are you sure?"

    "We need information on these people, and we can probably get at least some of that from down there," he replied, shaking his head slightly.

    "What if someone comes to investigate? If they find us there, they might assume we're who did it."

    "It's been burning since at least the middle of the night, based on the damage," he pointed out, glancing to the side at his companions. "If someone was going to check on what happened, they'd probably already be there by now, I'd have thought. Unless the nearest place they could come from is a long way off. That might be the case so we keep our eyes open, but we need to get what data we can while we can. It may tell us something critical."

    "It already tells us that there are hostiles in the area."

    "True enough. So keep your weapons ready. Stun only for now. We don't want to kill any of these people unless we have to."

    "And if we do have to?"

    "Don't miss," he remarked as he rose carefully, checking one last time for movement, then slowly headed down the hillside towards the battle site. The others followed, the one at the rear keeping an eye behind them. Reaching the nearest building, which seemed to have burned itself out without totally collapsing, the small team stacked up against the wall behind him as he peered cautiously around the corner, looking for anything ominous. Now that they were down among the buildings the scent of burning and death was all too clear, since the wind wasn't behind them any longer as it had been up until now.

    "Clear," he said in a low voice. "Cover me." He crouched, his weapon ready, then dashed for the next piece of cover a short distance away, a pile of dried grasses bundled into cubes, and dived behind it. Rolling to his feet he checked both sides, then waved one of the others across to join him. With quick hand signs, he indicated that the remaining pair should move down their side of the area they were exploring while he and his companion would take this side.

    It took them some while to check every building and vehicle for any signs of life, but in the end they regrouped in the middle of the farm, having found only death. "Nineteen bodies," the female commented as she looked around. "Most burned so much they're almost unrecognizable. I'm not sure what actually burned them, though. The damage is very… targeted. A flame thrower, perhaps? It looks deliberate and focused, it's not just a random fire, or some accidental disaster. Whoever did this was trying to kill everyone here and destroy as much as they could."

    "I agree," he replied, looking around as well. The burn patterns he'd seen showed that whatever the cause had been appeared to have originated in one spot and propagated in more or less a straight line towards its target, multiple times, and had moved from building to building in the process. It was most definitely an attack, not something that had resulted from an industrial accident or a natural cause of some sort. "I wonder if this was a military operation, some sort of criminal, or a random attack?"

    "No way to be sure," one of the others said.

    "Not at the moment, no," he agreed. Moving over to inspect one of the more or less undamaged bodies, he squatted down and studied it. "At least we know what they look like." The others joined him and also gazed at the deceased creature. It was wearing clothes made from, according to their instruments, a mix of natural and synthetic fibers, leather of some sort, and a few pieces of metal. The female pulled out another instrument and carefully scanned the body, studying the results carefully.

    "Warm blooded, large brain, fast metabolism, quite strong I'd imagine, although probably not as strong as us. Teeth indicate an omnivore. Looks like decent eyes, although I suspect the sense of smell isn't very good. Hearing could be quite effective. Obviously sapient. This one is a male, most likely mature but quite young. That other one is a female, roughly the same age." She indicated the other body a short distance away. The one they were examining was lying on his back, the female was face down. Both had severe wounds from some sort of projectile weapon, by the looks of the damage, roughly in the middle of the torso.

    Taking a small tool out of her pack, she got a tissue sample, then inserted it into yet another instrument and prodded it for a moment. "Genetically… interesting. Definitely evolved here, they share some genetics with us. A long, long time ago, but they're related. Not aliens." She gave one of her companions a look, making him shrug. "No matter what some people say. Distant, very distant, cousins, essentially." She shook her head rather sadly as she stood up again. "Poor bastards. I wonder why this happened?"

    They looked at each other, then around at the devastated scene. "I have no idea but we have proof that there's a hostile force out there, so keep alert," the leader finally said. "Come on, I don't want to risk staying here any longer. Let's find somewhere safe, report back, and then work out what the next move is." Glancing up at the sun, he added, "We've still got hours of daylight left."

    The team moved back up into the low hills to the south of the destroyed farm, finding a location where they could observe the scene and keep an eye out for any response or the return of the perpetrators, while reporting their findings back to base and uploading all the data so far collected. This didn't take long, and after a discussion with their superiors, they got the go-ahead to proceed with the mission, although they were told to be particularly cautious now that intelligent and clearly potentially hostile life had been confirmed to exist. Everyone back in the facility was simultaneously alarmed, intrigued, and concerned by their findings. But it was deemed critical to collect as much information as possible.

    Even as they resumed heading in the direction the road was going and the radio transmissions were coming from, back with the rest of their people precautions were being initiated to either back them up if required, or fend off potential attackers. Several combat ready groups were alerted and on standby should they be required, although that was ideally a last resort.

    The exploration group went back into cover and kept pressing on, wondering what they'd find.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    It didn't take very long before they found it.

    Having swung well away from the road, just as a precaution, they'd only been traveling for a short time before they climbed another, somewhat higher, escarpment and found themselves looking down on a much larger group of buildings. It appeared to be a small town of some sort, the roads arranged on a logical grid pattern in what appeared to be the main section somewhat north of their position, while closer at hand, nearly directly in front of them, was a group of large buildings forming some sort of industrial facility, piles of what they quickly identified as logs likely from the surrounding forests in several places. They studied this closely for some time, seeing no signs of life at all, although no signs of damage either.

    "This is giving me a strange feeling," the female commented uneasily. "All these buildings, vehicles, roads, and no people. Except dead ones back at that farm. Look, there are houses or whatever those are all over the place on the hills there, and not a sign of anything other than animals around any of them. Where is everyone?"

    Their leader shook his head. "I have no idea, but I agree, there's something very odd going on. It's nearly the middle of the day now. I'd have expected someone to be using the roads. I mean, we don't know anything about what these creatures do habitually, but there's ample evidence the roads are used, and there's lots of heat sources down there. It's not abandoned due to some natural disaster or something. Those are some sort of power connection, see?" He pointed at cables strung between tall wooden poles at intervals down the sides of the roads in front of them. It was primitive, but obviously a power distribution network, she agreed. And even from here they could easily tell it was active. Power was flowing, transformers were emitting heat, lots of machinery of one sort of another was consuming energy in the buildings visible to them, but there was no sign of life whatsoever. Not even thermal residues of the inhabitants.

    After discussing things for a little while, they decided that they'd have to get closer to the town itself. Perhaps the answer lay there. Descending the steep hillside, they avoided crossing the industrial facility as they had no idea what hazards might lie within, passed over another road that ran from right to left, and went straight up the hillside on the far side of it. Reaching the top they looked down at the town in front of them. All four scanned it carefully with their various instruments, looking for any signs of the inhabitants. As before, they could see lots of active equipment all over the place, but no life signs.

    Eventually she spotted something interesting. Aiming her instruments at the cluster of buildings at the far north end of the town, which seemed to form a single substantial edifice, she switched through various sensory ranges. "I found something," she said a moment later, staring at the information in front of her. The other three clustered around her and also looked. Raising her head, she pointed. "That big asymmetrical building group over there. I'm getting indications of movement from the largest open space inside it. At least…" Studying the screen she pondered what it was telling her for a moment. "...Probably two hundred life signs? Might well be more. They're all packed in right next to each other, so it's hard to differentiate them at this range." Tweaking the settings, she squinted at the results, curiously.

    "And there's some very odd energy readings there too. I have no idea what it is, it doesn't match anything in the database, but there are indications of exotic radiation of some sort I can't quite pin down. Faint, but definitely there." She looked at the team leader, who was inspecting the scanner with interest and puzzlement. "What next, glorious leader?"

    Even as he opened his mouth there was a sudden flare of thermal energy on the other side of the building in the distance, along with a visible flash of light, and a peak in the weird readings she was detecting. They all stared at the scene, wondering what was happening. Shortly thereafter they heard a very faint sound, which gave the impression of being an agonized scream from something none of them had ever encountered before. Despite not knowing precisely what had made it, every one of them felt it was not a good thing.

    The team leader was silent for a moment, then replied, not looking away from the building all the way across the town, his weapon held raised in his hands, "We investigate. I don't like this. I don't like it at all." Finally turning to meet each of their gazes in turn, he went on grimly, "Assume hostile action, weapons ready. Be prepared to return fire."

    "Still stun, sir?"

    The flick of a finger on a selector switch was the answer. Each of them followed suit, then the entire group slowly began making their cautious way towards the distant mystery, which was giving them all the willies. The entire time they were traveling, there wasn't a single sign of intelligent life anywhere except their target, although the flash and the thermal burst happened twice more, along with various sounds that were unnerving in the extreme.

    By the time they were clustered in a group behind a building directly opposite the much larger construction on the other side of the road, they were close enough to get a good reading on the scanner. "I'm making it two hundred and thirty six definite life forms in there," she reported, double checking the results before speaking. He nodded thoughtfully, watching as one of the other pair peered around the corner at the target building. A moment later the thermal bloom happened again, and this time the scream was easily audible mere moments later. She checked the instrument and winced. "Two hundred and thirty five now," she said in a low voice.

    "What is happening in there?" the comms operator queried, a sick expression on his face.

    "Nothing good," their leader responded flatly. He checked his weapon was set to something pretty definitely lethal, nodded to the others, and motioned. They moved to a position they could check for observers, made sure there were none, or anything technological doing the job, then, covering each other, leapfrogged their way from cover to cover across the street and towards the building from which horrible sounds emanated at random intervals.

    It took only a short time to find a way inside. The door wasn't locked, and operated in an obvious manner. Taking every precaution they moved with extreme care through alien but recognizable corridors, following the scanner data, stopping at each corner to check for hostiles. Twice more the scream and the thermals happened, now close enough to make them wince, and accompanied by an unnerving low roar that implied something hot and lethal was the source. It sounded like a powerful energy burst. The odd exotic radiation output was also much more prominent, the source being in the same direction as all the other oddities.

    Finally reaching a point where they could see the source, all four of them stopped and inspected the scene before them through the glass window in one of the wide doors that led into a very large room with a ceiling at least three times as high as the corridors they'd traveled down to this point. The floor was polished glossy wood covered in colorful markings, and from the high ceiling dangled numerous lighting fixtures of some sort. High windows covered the tops of the walls admitting sunlight which brightly illuminated over two hundred of the sapient creatures that had built all this. Every one of the ones visible was sitting on the floor, and they all gave off an air of desperation and terror that transcended species.

    The exception to this were three individuals, one female and two male, wearing odd clothes quite unlike anything anyone else had on, including facial coverings. One had a bright orange and skin tight outfit, one was wearing dark red and gray, and the female had an elaborate set of clothing in shades of a rather unpleasant dull green. She was holding a weapon of some sort, a multi-barreled machine that appeared to be a high rate of fire projectile system, which was linked to a pack on her back via some sort of ammunition feeder. It looked far too heavy for a creature of her size to reasonably wield but she showed no difficulty in waving it around at any of the obvious captives who moved.

    The orange-clad one was saying something in a totally incomprehensible language that even so managed to sound gloating and unpleasant, while the remaining one was standing with his arms folded, motionless and watching. After speaking for a while, the orange orator pointed at one of the seated figures, who instantly cried out in a terrified tone. The dark red and gray person stomped over, grabbed the indicated individual, and heaved her to her feet without any care at all, before pushing her in front of him and shoving her through the open doorway behind the orange one, into the large expanse of stone-like flat ground outside the building. She stumbled, nearly fell, then began running frantically, even as the orange person emitted a sound of triumph and pointed his hand in her direction.

    None of the team expected what happened next, but the source of the thermal bloom and the roaring sound was instantly obvious as a blast of flame so hot it was almost plasma left his hand, somehow, and covered the distance to the fleeing figure before they could blink. An awful scream was cut short, the energy burst terminating almost as soon as it started. What hit the ground was not much more than ash and bone.

    They stared in shock and horror as the orange-wearing thing turned back to gloat at the remaining victims. Which they clearly were. Pulling back around the corner, the team exchanged stunned glances.

    "What the fuck was that?" the leader said after a long moment.

    "I have absolutely no idea," she replied, shaking her head in disbelief. Checking her scanner, she pointed it towards the large room. "Exotic radiation peaked when he did… whatever it was he did. It's dropped back again now. And… there's more than one source." She made adjustments, before nodding. "Three sources. Which suggests…"

    "Each of those ones is one of them."

    "Yes."

    "How could they possibly produce that much energy from an organic body?" one of the others queried. She shrugged helplessly.

    "I don't have the faintest idea. But we just saw it happen. They're killing those people using something I don't understand at all, but I think we can be pretty certain they're about as hostile as it gets. There's no way this is a sanctioned official act, assuming they're even vaguely civilized."

    "We don't know that for sure," the comms operator cautioned. She gave him a look, then pointed in the direction of the atrocity they'd witnessed.

    "You saw that, right? He enjoyed killing that female. And he's killed at least six others since we got here. I very much doubt this is anything other than a mass crime scene happening right in front of us. I don't know who those lunatics are or how they're doing what they're doing, but…" She looked meaningfully at their leader, who was listening carefully while thinking hard.

    "Sir?"

    He nodded a little reluctantly. The sound of another scream made his face harden a moment later.

    "We're going to get in so much trouble," he commented as he raised his weapon and moved back to the corner.

    "I can live with that," she replied, putting the scanner away and joining him. Their compatriots, with a glance at each other and a pair of nods, did likewise. "I expect these people can as well."

    "I've got flaming hands."

    "I've got the red and gray one."

    "You two take the one with the rotary cannon. On my mark."

    Everyone carefully aimed through the glass, which wasn't going to make the slightest bit of difference to their weapons. "Center mass, we don't know enough about their anatomy to be sure otherwise. Don't miss."

    "Ready."

    They waited for each of the targets to stand still. The moment this happened, he snapped, "Fire."

    Four triggers were depressed as one, four weapons spoke simultaneously, and three bodies hit the floor, smoking slightly from the fist sized holes through their chests, a heartbeat later.

    They stared at the melted holes in the glass window, exchanged glances, then slowly and carefully moved forward as absolute chaos broke out in the huge room.

    "So much trouble," their leader muttered under his breath as they pushed the door open and watched as the creatures running about screaming and carrying on in the room all stopped dead as they were spotted.

    The weirdest part of the whole thing was how, after a long long mutual silence, every one of the people in that room seemed to look relieved. They exchanged confused glances as the people they'd expected to get very upset about seeing someone not of their own species arrive out of nowhere instead started organizing themselves into various groups, some going to check on the bodies, some comforting others, and a couple heading their way.

    "This is weird, right?" the comms operator hissed out the side of his mouth as they watched one of the odd creatures stop in front of them, look them up and down, then hold out his hand.

    "It's very weird," the leader replied as quietly, while he inspected the offered hand, all of them wondering what it was for. It took a while to work it out, and a certain amount of miming and demonstration, but in the end all four of them shook hands with their new apparent friends, while wondering what the alien words 'The Family' actually meant.

    The linguists were definitely going to have their work cut out for them, that much was certain.

    And the scientists were going to lose their minds when they got these recordings.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    Emily put the phone down, stared at it for some time in total bafflement, then got up and walked over to the window. She looked towards the DWU compound, miles away across the city, wondering what the fuck the lizards had done this time, before she headed off to have a large coffee, talk to her people, and call Saurial, in that order.

    She just knew this was going to be a bizarre one. And around here, that was saying something.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    Taylor gazed at her phone, then at Amy and Lisa, who were staring in bemusement. She glanced at the Varga who shrugged. "Well, I didn't expect that," she commented after some time.

    "We probably should have," Amy replied with a shake of her head and a strange smile. "It's on brand at least."

    "In the most insane way possible, yeah," Lisa agreed, sighing faintly.

    "Well, we should probably go and greet our cousins from long ago," Taylor said, grinning. "Before the humans get too confused."

    "Because we need to confuse them first, right?" Lisa chortled.

    "Of course. Come on, I've always wanted to visit Wyoming."

    The four of them made their preparations, and shortly were headed out for the most interesting field trip so far.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    Dropping her phone on the table Rebecca put her hands over her face and squeezed hard enough to turn coal into diamonds. "More fucking lizards," she moaned. "I can't take much more of this. Where are they coming from?"

    Eventually she dropped her hands, groaned in complete resignation, and got up to find something to do she could deal with. Let someone else handle whatever the fuck was happening this time.

    She really, really needed a vacation, she thought despondently.

    As soon as possible...
     
    Last edited:
  • Sidestory
    • Oh god. Saurians. Tay's definitely getting adopted, and I'm pretty sure they just took out the Teeth. (Also, watch Vargas actually be some kind of God or something to them)
     
    At first, I didn't have a clue what the crossover was, then I was thinking of that tv show where they travel to the prehistoric past to escape from the present, then at the end I was thinking of the Silurian from Doctor Who.
     
    I'd say not so much asleep, as in a time-dilation field.

    In terms of subjective time, it might have been only a decade or two for them, at most...
     
    Dr. Thunder said:
    Judging by them digging underground to avoid a volcanic apocalypse and missing an asteroid impact I'm guessing they're from roughly the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event (aka The Great Dying) and thus have been asleep for 250 million years or so. Also not dinosaurs.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    The PRT thought they were Family members. So they are clearly anthromorphic dinos. Hence saurians
     
    Ahaha, Glorious Stargate exploration vibes mixed with the Family's tendency to be in the right place at the right time... it's time for these time-jumpers to meet their cousins! XD
     
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