Eventually. These things take time, after all.
EDIT: And while we're on the subject, I'm looking towards a re-edit of the "everybody finds out" sequence. What follows here isn't new material, just material cut up and shifted around a little. Tell me what you think.
SS Ciara, 510 km over Utah
18 November 2016, 23:59:45 UTC
Misha was alone on the bridge of the SS Ciara, doing her best to stay awake. Scratching at and an itchy ear with her claws, she was determined to make a good impression on her first bridge watch. She was responsible for the whole ship now!
Even if they were just in an easy orbit while everyone grabbed a few hours sleep, jogging around the planet on one engine until her sister fixed the failed one.
She looked ahead out the forward windows.
Lightning flashed far below. Not unusual for the US in November. If it wasn’t for that blown engine, she would’ve been underneath all that getting rained on.
And if there’s one thing Misha hated, it was rain.
~***~
“Look, we can't carry that much pressurised,” Garret spoke into the telephone, “We don't have enough space aboard,”
He yawned. It was too damned late for this.
“What about a cabin?” queried the voice. “If you weren't carrying passengers, you could stick some in free cabins?”
“That's not going to be cheap,” Captain Garret warned him. Never mind that on a Seattle trip, they'd probably have been empty going back up anyway.
“I can handle it, so long as you can handle American,”
“We prefer Euro's but sure. Pay us in cash at the dock,”
Payment upfront, as usual, to order fuel.
“No problemo man. Don't think you'll be gettin' in tonight though, there's some weird weather we got down here."
"Don't doubt the Ciara. We'll get in on time," he reassured him.
"I hope so man, I'l...fhsh...ee...you in ...jasshh,” Garret winced as the channel cut out with a static scream in his hear.
“Hello,” he tried.
Nothing but a hiss.
“Jimmy, you there bud?”
Silence
“Hello?” he tried one last time. “Bugger,”
“Come to bed,” Meg said sleepily from behind him. It's passed midnight.
Tempting, “The high-gain's buggered itself again.”
“Well it can wait until tomorrow. You work yourself too much,”
“That's the definition of Captain,” he smiled back at her. “I'll just sort this. It's probably nothing”
He contacted the bridge.
~***~
Milly Jackson had her feet up in the rebuilt server room, yawning as she watched the download come in. Stupid 'danelaw server was only pushing a few megabytes a second. She'd planned to get Sam, Seán and Sed back up and running hours ago, but the Fenspace mirror had crashed, so the only working one with decent speed was somewhere in the US.
She watched the bytes tick by.
Then stop.
Error: The source location on the server could not be read
She swore.
And tried to restart.
Error: Server not found.
She ping'd the local relay. It answered. She pinged the nearest node. It answered. She pinged her favourite Yaoi site. It answered. She pinged the download server.
Nothing.
She pinged Google.fen. It answered. She pinged her old home server back in Detroit. Nothing. She pinged Google.com, specifically trying the Mountain View address. Nothing. Then the orbital relays stopped answering.
“Oh for Cryin' out loud,” It looked like something had failed between orbit and ground. They could get Fensites fine, but nothing from below. They must've lost the base station. “That gosh-darned high-gain's gone down again,” she concluded.
She picked up the intercom, and called the bridge.
~***~
Aisha was busy in the engine room, doing the repair Orla had asked her to handle on number-two engine. One of the advantages of being a c'tarl-c'tarl type catgirl... she had nails that could be used to lever open access panels on the crankcase.
The other advantage, was that she was strong enough to easily lift the head off the cylinder all by herself, then lift the piston out from inside.
Third, she didn't have to worry about being biomodded by the black handwavium inside.
She didn't notice anything amiss.
~***~
Korolev Air Force Base, Luna
19 November 2016, 00:00:02 LST
The dimensional incursion detector on Sora’s workbench warbled, the diagnostic screen filling with information. The warble became a screech, and as Sora hastily reached to cut the power it died with a flash and a puff of smoke.
“GAH!” Sora yelped; the dying act of the detector burning her fingertips. “Itte...”
Mal stuck his head back in the workroom door. “Sora? You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah... just a little singed.”
“What happened?”
“It blew up on me!”
“Isn’t that what Kohran’s inventions usually do?” Mal asked. Sora gave him a dirty look.
“This one shouldn’t have. It’s been tested and we both certified it bug-free. Furthermore-”
What Sora was about to say was cut off by the base alarm system going off at full blast. “Attention all personnel,” GLaDOS’s voice sounded, “VVS data systems are under class one infowar attack. Network lockdown initiated. Central Committee please report to the situation room. All non-essential personnel are to remain at Condition Two status. Repeat, VVS data systems are under class one infowar attack. Network lockdown initiated. Central Committee please report to the situation room.”
Mal and Sora looked at each other, and he slammed down on the nearest intercom button. “GLaDOS, sitrep,” Mal ordered.
“General, your presence is required in the situation room.”
“I got that part. Summary please.”
“At zero-hundred hours VVS datasystems lost major internet connectivity on the terrestrial backbone. I concluded the network was under denial-of-service attack and sounded Condition Two. A full briefing will be available in the situation room.”
“Zero-hundred hours...” Sora looked thoughfully at the broken incursion detector.
“I don’t like what you’re thinking,” Mal said.
“Neither do I. GLaDOS, please grab the raw data from the laptop on my bench and move it into a navigational database accessible from the situation room, thank you.”
“Easier done than said, O Captain. Anything else? Doors opened?”
“Yes, please. Call Stellvia, priority channel. I need to talk to Kohran.”
~***~
SS Ciara
19 November 2016 00:04 UTC
On the bridge, Misha, Aisha's twin sibling by virtue of going through the machine ten minutes after her, was the one on watch... she stared at the comm's panel.
“Captain, Captain,” she said, sounding impossibly giddy thanks to having just downed her daily can of soft drink, “It's not us I swear.” she pushed a few buttons to be doubly sure, “High gain checks out A-Ok! We're sending and receiving, it's got to be a ground problem,”
“Try and find another downlink,” he ordered.
“Already on it,” she beamed, “But it looks like everything down in the litterbox has gone dead. I'm getting more than a lot of chatter on the radio too”
“Calm down will you. What are they saying?”
“Sorry,” she giggled. “Bad time of the day. Most are saying the same as us. They just lost all 'net and radio connections on this side of the planet,”
Outside the window, she could see the United States shrouded in night, a few sparks of light in the shadows marking the cities.
Hmm... it looked different somehow. There was less light on the Eastern side.
“Alright, I'm on my way up,”
She heard someone complain the in background before he hung up. A moment later, the call light lit up again.
“Bridge Misha,” she answered it.
“Misha,” the catgirl recognised Milly's voice. She sounded tired “Did we lose the high-gain again?”
“No no,” she reassured the computer tech, “High gain is working fine.“ she triple checked, “The problem's in the connection, and it's not just us,”
“Right, I'm coming up there. Hang on.”
The catgirl sighed. The first time they let her keep watch, and it wasn't going very well, was it?
~***~
Paul Platowski was in his cabin... legally also his prison cell.
He was woken, not by anything specific... just a dread feeling of unease. It was a feeling he'd learned well enough not to ignore. The last time he'd gotten it, had been right before his ship's engines had failed.
Which got him arrested.
He rolled over in his rack, lifting the blind that covered the porthole.
On the other side, should've been the United States, with the entire East Coast blazing. Instead... while the basic shape looked the same. The basic positions of the lights seemed right. They seemed a hell of a lot dimmer and smaller.
“What the hell?” he said to no-one in particular.
He got himself out of bed. Whatever was going on, was no small thing.
~***~
Main Operations Center, Stellvia Station
November 19, 2016 00:00:05 UTC
The first indication anyone had that anything was wrong was when the DQS alarm went off. The second indication was when the DQS detector exploded.
“What the hell did you do, Ray?!”
“Not my fault, I swear to God it’s not my fault.” The duty officer thumbed the intercom. “Commander Scott and Engineer Li to Ops.”
Kohran was the first to arrive, as the duty tech finished emptying a fire extinguisher on the abused DQS detection console. “Wah!” she cried. “What happened?!”
“Don’t know, ma’am,” the duty officer replied. “The DQS alarm went off and a second later the console blew up. Other than making sure there was no fire, we haven’t touched it.”
“Blew up?” Kohran said, confused. “It’s not supposed to do that. Let me take a look,” she said, scooting under the damaged console, tools in hand.
Noah Scott strode into the operations center, still buttoning his shirt. “Report.”
The duty officer swiveled her display so Noah could see. “Three minutes ago we had a massive DQS event. It was big enough that it fried the sensor.”
“Damn. Where in the station is the incursion?”
“We’re not sure it’s in the station, sir. Best we can determine is that it’s somewhere within two light-seconds of Stellvia. Beyond that...” the duty officer shook her head.
Noah paled. “Two light-seconds...” he said, staring at the screen, “for the incursion to burn out the sensors from that far away it must have been huge. Get Miyuri and Takami up here - I want an analysis of the data the sensor returned just before it burned out. We’ve got to find this thing, people.”
Safety drifted up to Noah’s ear. “Noah-san, VVS Korolev is on priority channel one, they want to speak with Kohran-san.”
Noah sat down and unlocked his private workstation. “I’ll take it here, Safety,” he said. Clicking on the monitor: “Hello, Mal.”
“Sorry Dad, wrong person.”
Noah blinked. “Sora?”
“Do you have any other Red daughters I don’t know about?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I need to talk to Kohran, please.”
“She’s a little busy, and we’re in the middle--”
“Of a huge dimensional incursion event that happened a couple of minutes ago and blew out the DQS sensor.”
“Yours blew up, too?”
“I’m afraid so, Dad.”
“Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked.
A muffled voice from behind Sora: (“What’s the holdup?”)
(“It’s Noah; Kohran’s busy,”) Sora replied. Then, to Noah: “Dad, we need your DQS readings, can you squirt it to us? I’m going to see if Kohran’s interferometer idea works and try to triangulate the event location.”
Noah glanced at Safety, who nodded sharply. “Data’s on the way, Sora.” he said.
Sora looked offscreen. “Got it,” she said. “Thanks, Dad. I’m running the results now.” She dropped out of view, leaving Noah face to face with Mal Fnord.
Noah found himself at a bit of a loss. “So, um,” he said, “how are things over there?”
“Hectic,” Mal replied dryly. “You?”
“Much the same.” The briefest of awkward pauses. “Do we know what we’re dealing with here?”
“Not yet.” Mal paused. “We have some really bad suspicions, but we’re running the data before panicking.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” Mal paused again, this time for longer. “Just after the incursion detector blew up, GLaDOS saw a huge chunk of the Internet backbone go missing.”
Noah ran the implications of that through his mind. “Oh,” he said faintly, “that’s not good.”
Mal nodded. “No it isn’t, which is why I want confirmation before--”
Sora popped back up into frame, eyes wide and face just as pale as her father’s. “I’ve got a location,” she said shakily. “The event epicenter w-was Earth, longitude 39 degrees, 50 minutes north, latitude 98 degrees, 35 minutes west. The approximate radius of effect was 2100 kilometers.”
Dead silence on both ends of the line.
“Well, fuck.” Mal said it with deep feeling.
“In accordance with the rules set down in the Articles of Convention,” Noah said heavily, “I am calling an emergency SMOFCon and Convention, to be held immediately.”
Mal nodded, eyes grim. “You round up the troops, I’m going to start recon, get some data on what’s going down. Be sure to get everybody, Noah. No stragglers.”
“Everybody?”
“Everybody. As Buckaroo might say, right now we’re all on the Global Frequency.”
~***~
“So that's it Captain. The whole lot's just not answering.” Misha finished her explanation.
Garret yawned and looked around
“Somebody took down the earthside receivers,” he concluded, “Which took down phone lines too, because they go through the same circuits,”
At least, he thought they did.
“Must be!” Misha chirruped, painfully cheerful
“What's everyone else saying?”
“The same thing basically. Everyone's going crazy. Major faction sites are starting to overload,”
Great. Just great, thought the Captain.
“Keep trying,” he ordered. “Listen for any signal at all coming up from the ground. Maybe we'll get some news from a major station.”
“Aye Captain,” she smiled.
Which made him smile slightly. “Good work,”
Yawning, he sat down in his customary chair, trying to figure out what was going on. A terrorist attack on the 'danelaw?
Milly burst through the hatch,
“Captain,” she blinked, surprised to see him there.
“It's not us,” Garret explained. “It's affecting all of Fenspace too,”
Milly's face turn the same shade of green as her hair. What could bring down the freakin' internet? Did somebody take out the downlinks? Had Congress pulled the plug on it using some sort of secret top-kill? Why?
She took the pilot's seat, not that she actually could fly the ship.
“Captain, I'm getting something from Earth,” Misha announced, “It's sounds funny though, on AM radio.”
“Put it through,”
"My name is Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the Truth." announced the speakers, before launching into a speech that sounded much like a dub of Adolf Hitler. With an American twang.
“I've heard that name before,” said Milly, calmly. “Where have I heard it?”
“Dunno, it's your head,” Misha giggled.
“Freedom!” cheered the crowd on the radio, “Freedom!” As the speaker promised the final solution the negro menace.
“Great, we picked up Klan FM,” deadpanned Garret.”Shut it off. Try and find something better,”
“AM,” Misha corrected him, “And done,”
The voice of Jake Featherston died abruptly, halfway through the word 'miscegenation'.
A few moments of silence, while the Captain, the catgirl and the computer specialist tried to understand what they'd just heard. Another button on Misha's panel lit up, flashing in time to an electronic chirp.
She pushed it, to be rewarded by a simple text message sent to the entire fandom.
“Captain,” she said, calmly, “Noah Scott of Stellvia just called an emergency convention,”
Silence again. The ship's engines kept running. Garret exhaled a long sigh, remembering what had happened the last time he'd heard the words 'emergency convention'... and what had happened to good friends of his afterwards.
“Alright,” he stood up, adjusting his old jacket, the one he'd had since launch day. “We need everyone awake. Bring the ship to battlestations.”
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
EDIT: And while we're on the subject, I'm looking towards a re-edit of the "everybody finds out" sequence. What follows here isn't new material, just material cut up and shifted around a little. Tell me what you think.
SS Ciara, 510 km over Utah
18 November 2016, 23:59:45 UTC
Misha was alone on the bridge of the SS Ciara, doing her best to stay awake. Scratching at and an itchy ear with her claws, she was determined to make a good impression on her first bridge watch. She was responsible for the whole ship now!
Even if they were just in an easy orbit while everyone grabbed a few hours sleep, jogging around the planet on one engine until her sister fixed the failed one.
She looked ahead out the forward windows.
Lightning flashed far below. Not unusual for the US in November. If it wasn’t for that blown engine, she would’ve been underneath all that getting rained on.
And if there’s one thing Misha hated, it was rain.
~***~
“Look, we can't carry that much pressurised,” Garret spoke into the telephone, “We don't have enough space aboard,”
He yawned. It was too damned late for this.
“What about a cabin?” queried the voice. “If you weren't carrying passengers, you could stick some in free cabins?”
“That's not going to be cheap,” Captain Garret warned him. Never mind that on a Seattle trip, they'd probably have been empty going back up anyway.
“I can handle it, so long as you can handle American,”
“We prefer Euro's but sure. Pay us in cash at the dock,”
Payment upfront, as usual, to order fuel.
“No problemo man. Don't think you'll be gettin' in tonight though, there's some weird weather we got down here."
"Don't doubt the Ciara. We'll get in on time," he reassured him.
"I hope so man, I'l...fhsh...ee...you in ...jasshh,” Garret winced as the channel cut out with a static scream in his hear.
“Hello,” he tried.
Nothing but a hiss.
“Jimmy, you there bud?”
Silence
“Hello?” he tried one last time. “Bugger,”
“Come to bed,” Meg said sleepily from behind him. It's passed midnight.
Tempting, “The high-gain's buggered itself again.”
“Well it can wait until tomorrow. You work yourself too much,”
“That's the definition of Captain,” he smiled back at her. “I'll just sort this. It's probably nothing”
He contacted the bridge.
~***~
Milly Jackson had her feet up in the rebuilt server room, yawning as she watched the download come in. Stupid 'danelaw server was only pushing a few megabytes a second. She'd planned to get Sam, Seán and Sed back up and running hours ago, but the Fenspace mirror had crashed, so the only working one with decent speed was somewhere in the US.
She watched the bytes tick by.
Then stop.
Error: The source location on the server could not be read
She swore.
And tried to restart.
Error: Server not found.
She ping'd the local relay. It answered. She pinged the nearest node. It answered. She pinged her favourite Yaoi site. It answered. She pinged the download server.
Nothing.
She pinged Google.fen. It answered. She pinged her old home server back in Detroit. Nothing. She pinged Google.com, specifically trying the Mountain View address. Nothing. Then the orbital relays stopped answering.
“Oh for Cryin' out loud,” It looked like something had failed between orbit and ground. They could get Fensites fine, but nothing from below. They must've lost the base station. “That gosh-darned high-gain's gone down again,” she concluded.
She picked up the intercom, and called the bridge.
~***~
Aisha was busy in the engine room, doing the repair Orla had asked her to handle on number-two engine. One of the advantages of being a c'tarl-c'tarl type catgirl... she had nails that could be used to lever open access panels on the crankcase.
The other advantage, was that she was strong enough to easily lift the head off the cylinder all by herself, then lift the piston out from inside.
Third, she didn't have to worry about being biomodded by the black handwavium inside.
She didn't notice anything amiss.
~***~
Korolev Air Force Base, Luna
19 November 2016, 00:00:02 LST
The dimensional incursion detector on Sora’s workbench warbled, the diagnostic screen filling with information. The warble became a screech, and as Sora hastily reached to cut the power it died with a flash and a puff of smoke.
“GAH!” Sora yelped; the dying act of the detector burning her fingertips. “Itte...”
Mal stuck his head back in the workroom door. “Sora? You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah... just a little singed.”
“What happened?”
“It blew up on me!”
“Isn’t that what Kohran’s inventions usually do?” Mal asked. Sora gave him a dirty look.
“This one shouldn’t have. It’s been tested and we both certified it bug-free. Furthermore-”
What Sora was about to say was cut off by the base alarm system going off at full blast. “Attention all personnel,” GLaDOS’s voice sounded, “VVS data systems are under class one infowar attack. Network lockdown initiated. Central Committee please report to the situation room. All non-essential personnel are to remain at Condition Two status. Repeat, VVS data systems are under class one infowar attack. Network lockdown initiated. Central Committee please report to the situation room.”
Mal and Sora looked at each other, and he slammed down on the nearest intercom button. “GLaDOS, sitrep,” Mal ordered.
“General, your presence is required in the situation room.”
“I got that part. Summary please.”
“At zero-hundred hours VVS datasystems lost major internet connectivity on the terrestrial backbone. I concluded the network was under denial-of-service attack and sounded Condition Two. A full briefing will be available in the situation room.”
“Zero-hundred hours...” Sora looked thoughfully at the broken incursion detector.
“I don’t like what you’re thinking,” Mal said.
“Neither do I. GLaDOS, please grab the raw data from the laptop on my bench and move it into a navigational database accessible from the situation room, thank you.”
“Easier done than said, O Captain. Anything else? Doors opened?”
“Yes, please. Call Stellvia, priority channel. I need to talk to Kohran.”
~***~
SS Ciara
19 November 2016 00:04 UTC
On the bridge, Misha, Aisha's twin sibling by virtue of going through the machine ten minutes after her, was the one on watch... she stared at the comm's panel.
“Captain, Captain,” she said, sounding impossibly giddy thanks to having just downed her daily can of soft drink, “It's not us I swear.” she pushed a few buttons to be doubly sure, “High gain checks out A-Ok! We're sending and receiving, it's got to be a ground problem,”
“Try and find another downlink,” he ordered.
“Already on it,” she beamed, “But it looks like everything down in the litterbox has gone dead. I'm getting more than a lot of chatter on the radio too”
“Calm down will you. What are they saying?”
“Sorry,” she giggled. “Bad time of the day. Most are saying the same as us. They just lost all 'net and radio connections on this side of the planet,”
Outside the window, she could see the United States shrouded in night, a few sparks of light in the shadows marking the cities.
Hmm... it looked different somehow. There was less light on the Eastern side.
“Alright, I'm on my way up,”
She heard someone complain the in background before he hung up. A moment later, the call light lit up again.
“Bridge Misha,” she answered it.
“Misha,” the catgirl recognised Milly's voice. She sounded tired “Did we lose the high-gain again?”
“No no,” she reassured the computer tech, “High gain is working fine.“ she triple checked, “The problem's in the connection, and it's not just us,”
“Right, I'm coming up there. Hang on.”
The catgirl sighed. The first time they let her keep watch, and it wasn't going very well, was it?
~***~
Paul Platowski was in his cabin... legally also his prison cell.
He was woken, not by anything specific... just a dread feeling of unease. It was a feeling he'd learned well enough not to ignore. The last time he'd gotten it, had been right before his ship's engines had failed.
Which got him arrested.
He rolled over in his rack, lifting the blind that covered the porthole.
On the other side, should've been the United States, with the entire East Coast blazing. Instead... while the basic shape looked the same. The basic positions of the lights seemed right. They seemed a hell of a lot dimmer and smaller.
“What the hell?” he said to no-one in particular.
He got himself out of bed. Whatever was going on, was no small thing.
~***~
Main Operations Center, Stellvia Station
November 19, 2016 00:00:05 UTC
The first indication anyone had that anything was wrong was when the DQS alarm went off. The second indication was when the DQS detector exploded.
“What the hell did you do, Ray?!”
“Not my fault, I swear to God it’s not my fault.” The duty officer thumbed the intercom. “Commander Scott and Engineer Li to Ops.”
Kohran was the first to arrive, as the duty tech finished emptying a fire extinguisher on the abused DQS detection console. “Wah!” she cried. “What happened?!”
“Don’t know, ma’am,” the duty officer replied. “The DQS alarm went off and a second later the console blew up. Other than making sure there was no fire, we haven’t touched it.”
“Blew up?” Kohran said, confused. “It’s not supposed to do that. Let me take a look,” she said, scooting under the damaged console, tools in hand.
Noah Scott strode into the operations center, still buttoning his shirt. “Report.”
The duty officer swiveled her display so Noah could see. “Three minutes ago we had a massive DQS event. It was big enough that it fried the sensor.”
“Damn. Where in the station is the incursion?”
“We’re not sure it’s in the station, sir. Best we can determine is that it’s somewhere within two light-seconds of Stellvia. Beyond that...” the duty officer shook her head.
Noah paled. “Two light-seconds...” he said, staring at the screen, “for the incursion to burn out the sensors from that far away it must have been huge. Get Miyuri and Takami up here - I want an analysis of the data the sensor returned just before it burned out. We’ve got to find this thing, people.”
Safety drifted up to Noah’s ear. “Noah-san, VVS Korolev is on priority channel one, they want to speak with Kohran-san.”
Noah sat down and unlocked his private workstation. “I’ll take it here, Safety,” he said. Clicking on the monitor: “Hello, Mal.”
“Sorry Dad, wrong person.”
Noah blinked. “Sora?”
“Do you have any other Red daughters I don’t know about?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I need to talk to Kohran, please.”
“She’s a little busy, and we’re in the middle--”
“Of a huge dimensional incursion event that happened a couple of minutes ago and blew out the DQS sensor.”
“Yours blew up, too?”
“I’m afraid so, Dad.”
“Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked.
A muffled voice from behind Sora: (“What’s the holdup?”)
(“It’s Noah; Kohran’s busy,”) Sora replied. Then, to Noah: “Dad, we need your DQS readings, can you squirt it to us? I’m going to see if Kohran’s interferometer idea works and try to triangulate the event location.”
Noah glanced at Safety, who nodded sharply. “Data’s on the way, Sora.” he said.
Sora looked offscreen. “Got it,” she said. “Thanks, Dad. I’m running the results now.” She dropped out of view, leaving Noah face to face with Mal Fnord.
Noah found himself at a bit of a loss. “So, um,” he said, “how are things over there?”
“Hectic,” Mal replied dryly. “You?”
“Much the same.” The briefest of awkward pauses. “Do we know what we’re dealing with here?”
“Not yet.” Mal paused. “We have some really bad suspicions, but we’re running the data before panicking.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” Mal paused again, this time for longer. “Just after the incursion detector blew up, GLaDOS saw a huge chunk of the Internet backbone go missing.”
Noah ran the implications of that through his mind. “Oh,” he said faintly, “that’s not good.”
Mal nodded. “No it isn’t, which is why I want confirmation before--”
Sora popped back up into frame, eyes wide and face just as pale as her father’s. “I’ve got a location,” she said shakily. “The event epicenter w-was Earth, longitude 39 degrees, 50 minutes north, latitude 98 degrees, 35 minutes west. The approximate radius of effect was 2100 kilometers.”
Dead silence on both ends of the line.
“Well, fuck.” Mal said it with deep feeling.
“In accordance with the rules set down in the Articles of Convention,” Noah said heavily, “I am calling an emergency SMOFCon and Convention, to be held immediately.”
Mal nodded, eyes grim. “You round up the troops, I’m going to start recon, get some data on what’s going down. Be sure to get everybody, Noah. No stragglers.”
“Everybody?”
“Everybody. As Buckaroo might say, right now we’re all on the Global Frequency.”
~***~
“So that's it Captain. The whole lot's just not answering.” Misha finished her explanation.
Garret yawned and looked around
“Somebody took down the earthside receivers,” he concluded, “Which took down phone lines too, because they go through the same circuits,”
At least, he thought they did.
“Must be!” Misha chirruped, painfully cheerful
“What's everyone else saying?”
“The same thing basically. Everyone's going crazy. Major faction sites are starting to overload,”
Great. Just great, thought the Captain.
“Keep trying,” he ordered. “Listen for any signal at all coming up from the ground. Maybe we'll get some news from a major station.”
“Aye Captain,” she smiled.
Which made him smile slightly. “Good work,”
Yawning, he sat down in his customary chair, trying to figure out what was going on. A terrorist attack on the 'danelaw?
Milly burst through the hatch,
“Captain,” she blinked, surprised to see him there.
“It's not us,” Garret explained. “It's affecting all of Fenspace too,”
Milly's face turn the same shade of green as her hair. What could bring down the freakin' internet? Did somebody take out the downlinks? Had Congress pulled the plug on it using some sort of secret top-kill? Why?
She took the pilot's seat, not that she actually could fly the ship.
“Captain, I'm getting something from Earth,” Misha announced, “It's sounds funny though, on AM radio.”
“Put it through,”
"My name is Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the Truth." announced the speakers, before launching into a speech that sounded much like a dub of Adolf Hitler. With an American twang.
“I've heard that name before,” said Milly, calmly. “Where have I heard it?”
“Dunno, it's your head,” Misha giggled.
“Freedom!” cheered the crowd on the radio, “Freedom!” As the speaker promised the final solution the negro menace.
“Great, we picked up Klan FM,” deadpanned Garret.”Shut it off. Try and find something better,”
“AM,” Misha corrected him, “And done,”
The voice of Jake Featherston died abruptly, halfway through the word 'miscegenation'.
A few moments of silence, while the Captain, the catgirl and the computer specialist tried to understand what they'd just heard. Another button on Misha's panel lit up, flashing in time to an electronic chirp.
She pushed it, to be rewarded by a simple text message sent to the entire fandom.
“Captain,” she said, calmly, “Noah Scott of Stellvia just called an emergency convention,”
Silence again. The ship's engines kept running. Garret exhaled a long sigh, remembering what had happened the last time he'd heard the words 'emergency convention'... and what had happened to good friends of his afterwards.
“Alright,” he stood up, adjusting his old jacket, the one he'd had since launch day. “We need everyone awake. Bring the ship to battlestations.”
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"