CatastrophicFailure

Relevant, interesting vid...

Addendum:

[see addendum]

Well, I mean, you will, grabbity being what it is, just a bit later and, ironically, faster than you had planned...

Real good look at the business end around 7:30... and they are not gentle when they flip that thing over!

Ooh ooh when do you get your keys to the Forbidden Library?

Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. These are the Great Old Ones whose times have come and gone, their memory faded to legend and myth and finally just... guest. Because computers aren’t very poetic... ...or maybe it’s just that boring stuff @Vanamonde said...

Quite.

Aaaaaand continuing that “fasten yo seatbelts, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride” theme... Lunar hoverslam. Dig it. altho I suppose Apollo did the same thing on a smaller scale so...

Well, in all fairness, He-Who-Shoulda-Just-Stuck-To-Lousy-Painting was only one in a long line of landgrabbers going back a couple of eons at this point. I don’t think any group around today has entirely clean hands in that aspect.

Also, RE: discussion of the emergency pad egress system: You can see here there are several ziplineOHCRAP! baskets, so the idea is indeed that this could egress the pad crew as well as the flight crew. A “normal” fire breaking out, for example, would be one such use. Looks like there’s an automatic shower in play, too, for fire protection or chemical spill.

BUT WAIT, THERES MORE!!! Now THAT’S more like it!

And after years of begging, they’ve finally released the Bulgariasat landing! And it’s... not that remarkable...

It's midnight, do you know where your header tank is? SN4's is right here...

Aaaaaaaaaand the power just went out. Its back on but yeesh, plague all around I flarp near died of a lousy heart attack.

<I’ll percolate on the Kerm-Borg later>

Confirmed, testing configuration error on SN3: Tho, one is given to wonder how such an error was made in the first place...

...we now return you to your regularly-scheduled apocalypse, also already in progress... Seriously, people, stay safe. Stay home. Wash yo dang hands. and don’t say “glorp.”

Do svidaniya, byehreg rodnoy, Kak nam trudna predstavit’ Shto eto nyeh son’. Rodina, dom radnoy, Do svidaniya, rodina. Chapter 43: Stormwinds The bosun’s whistle piped out three shrill notes, only for the wind to tear them away. “Admiral on deck!” Fyodor Kermanivetch returned the executive officer’s salute, “make ready to cast off at once, Commander. I want to be underway within the hour.” The junior officer’s eyes widened for just a moment before he snapped another salute, “aye, aye, sir!” and turned on his heel to bark orders at the gathered sailors. With a thoughtful nod, Admiral Kermanitov himself turned, and began the the long climb up the exterior ladders towards the bridge. The wind whipped at the collar of his greatcoat, tore at his fur-trimmed ushanka as if personally offended by his presence, yet the hat did not move. The wind and he were old comrades, after all, and had long since come to an... understanding. He swayed this way and that, not for any motion of the moored ship but as busy crewkerbs made way at his passing, striped telnyashka peeking out from their blue jumpers. Salutes were neither offered nor given, for here, too, there was... understanding, and what had moments ago been a mere flurry of activity was now becoming a fury. He paused at the next deck, oblivious to the wind that tried to blow him over the railing. His slate-grey eyes gazed out over the harbor, set beneath a sky of the same color. The harbor itself was as white as a wedding-day dress. Ice. So much ice. The harbor of Kerbelsk was surely no stranger to ice, but to be utterly choked with it, before even the Harvest Mün, this was something the Admiral could not recall seeing in all his long years in this place of ice and snow. Towards the center, led by a pair of massive nuclear-powered icebreakers, the rest of his flotilla circled. The cruiser Aurora, two frigates and a handful of destroyers, the only remnants of the once-mighty Yaltik Sea Fleet that could be dragged out of mothballs on such short notice. It was thought, not that long ago, that they were no longer needed. Relics of another time, now an unjustifiable drain of the people’s resources. Even the grand Tethys Sea Fleet had been mostly deemed surplus to requirements, and now all that had not lay at the bottom of that sea... or upon the beaches. The Admiral closed his eyes, the barest shake of his head nearly invisible as his coat ruffled in the wind. He, too, was a relic, and that he well knew. And his ship... One gloved hand clasped the railing before him, softly, almost tenderly. The Admiral Kermanitov was... never a grand ship to begin. Called a pocket battleship, she had been built to comply with some treaty or another when the power of the Ever-Glorious Ussari Union had begun to scare the Foreigners across the sea. Her trio of turrets bore only a pair of 30cm guns each, her flanks were strong but her decks hardly armored at all, as it was thought what she lacked in strength she could compensate with speed. She would need no icebreaker escort from the harbor. Built specifically for these cold waters, her hardened steel hull and sharpened prow could slice through even the thickest ice with sheer brute force. The railing began to vibrate, and the Admiral’s eyes drew open. The starboard engine coming to life, hesitant in the cold, the number 15 cylinder sluggish as always. No kerb alive or dead knew these decks better than her current Master. Indeed, it was on these very decks that the now-Admiral had taken his first duty cruise decades ago, following the tutelage of Admiral Kermanitov himself. But, he knew, that would not be enough. His other hand tightened on the envelope containing his orders. They were short, and very specific. Proceed to the designated area. Present a show of strength. Observe, and report. Do no not engage under any circumstances, even under fire, without explicit authorization. The timbre of the metal railing trembling under his hand changed. It grew in intensity, now coming through his feet as well... and then drawing greater still. The very air seemed to resonate, and soon a sound emerged from the reverberations: a low droning, a thing so loud it was nearly more force than sound. It rose higher and higher, digging into the Admiral’s ears like blades, in time sending even the howling wind to flee. The Admiral looked up, as a trident of Kuploev-95D bombers lumbered overhead, their counter-rotating propellers clawing at the air for every scant meter of altitude astride their heavy burdens. He watched them go, taking their sound with them, eventually disappearing into the cloud deck heading southeast. His orders, the ones on paper, and recorded on every traceable source in the vast bureaucracy, were clear. But the Secretary had given him very different orders, for his ears only, even as she handed him the envelope. Orders that, even if he was successful— especially if he was successful— would see him and his crews disowned, cast out as rogue agents, denounced as traitors and warmongers. Break the blockade at any cost. Yet if they were not successful, the burdens those bombers carried would come to bear, and he among a scant few people knew exactly what they were. A desperate act, to outmatch the unmatchable: a monstrosity created only to see if such a thing could even be done, a ship whose builders were far more concerned with whether they could than if they should... the most fearsome warship the world had ever known, crafted without purpose, and the Admiral had seen enough in his long years to know that a weapon made without purpose... eventually found one. It was an ultimatum for which the Ussari Navy, modest even in the best of years, simply had no answer. The Ussari Air Force, perhaps, could answer, but only with a slight which could not be taken back, an offense so grave as to shake nations and shatter worlds... if the Admiral did not succeed. It was... impossible. The last vibrations of the droning finally died away, yet the Admiral stood there, his eyes still cast skyward. Presently they drifted to the mainmast, where the tricolor naval ensign clung stubbornly to it against the raging wind. Once, beneath a very different flag, he had spent what years he did not spend on these icy waters hunting Erakonian partisans hiding in converted fishing trawlers. But now... those same defiant kerbs and kerbelles were allies and neighbors, and that frightful crimson banner had been relegated to its rightful place in a museum of shame. He had seen the impossible. He had lived through the impossible. Perhaps... he could even do the impossible. Unbidden, one gloved thumb moved to feel the golden band on his finger. Of course, there was always... a price. Yet the Admiral set his jaw, and mounted the last few steps to the bridge. As he passed through the half-meter-thick hatch of steel and concrete, his crew snapped to attention. “Admiral on deck!” “Good morning, sir!” He stood there a moment, one hand clutching his ushanka beneath his arm, and marked every kerb in the room with his eyes before putting on an encouraging smile. He said simply, “comrades... we sail into history.“ Then turned to the navigator, “Mister Kerman, set your course for the Strait of Kerfrica.” *** Lolli Kerman drifted in downy-soft warmth, her extremities fuzzy and distant. The scent of food wafted through her mind, and a warm body next to her— Wait, what? Lolli Kerman woke up screaming. Cal looked up from across the small room, “what?” She frantically looked around and found... blankets. To her left was a rolled up mound of blankets. To her right was a rolled up mound of blankets. In fact, she seemed to be laying on a huge pile of blankets. Bright, fluffy, dreamily soft blankets. She raised a quizzical eye at Cal. He shrugged, returning to what he was doing, “fire sale down at the Buy-N-Large. Everything must go.” Fire...? She looked around more in the delightful warmness, and found she was in... some sort of oblong, shiny steel tube filled with stuff, and right in the center was a flickering— “Gah! You can’t have a fire in an enclosed space like this! We’ll suffocate!” He just blinked at her, unfazed. “Oxygen candles,” he shrugged again, “fire sale down at the milsurp store. Everything must go. More worried they’ll burn through the metal.” Lolli frowned at this, but took another look around their accommodations, “where are we, anyway? A... milk truck, or something?” Cal didn’t look up, “something like that.” She frowned at that too, moved to brush her fingers through her hair, and for the first time noticed the thick white bandages covering her hand. “I stitched your fingers up. You’ll have scars,” Cal still didn’t raise his head, but held up a little glass vial, “gave you some of this, too. You might feel kind of... fuzzy.” He flashed another vial, “and this, too. Booster shot every day for a week ‘til infection danger’s passed.” “Was there a fire sale at the pharmacy, too?” she smirked at him. One eye flicked her way, and she felt a twinge of red hit her cheeks at the sharpness of it, “something like that.” “Thanks,” she said more softly, “really, you saved my life.” She flexed her bandaged hand, a dull pain flashed somewhere off in the distance. “D’mentionit,” Cal mumbled, his eyes back on whatever he was doing. As he was sitting, he spun around in a little half circle to face the far wall, “there’s fresh clothes there. And water. But don’t drink it, it’s not treated.” “Hm?” Lolli looked around herself, still struggling a bit to focus, and indeed found a little pile of clothing, and a small basin of water that was at least clear. The first pass of a washcloth across her face turned it murky brown. “So,” Cal said at length to the steel wall, as if to break the uncomfortable silence, “how did the latest winner of Clog Dancing with the Stars end up being chased through what used to be downtown Kermsburg by a bunch of thugs?” “Vinewood fire,” she said simply. “There was a fire in Vinewood?” “Vinewood... Cleverly Hills... Hawkthorn... basically the entire greater Los Santos region, maybe even more, for all I know. You didn’t hear?” “Information has been a bit hard to come by lately.” She gave a bitter little laugh, “we were all trying to escape, everyone at once I think. My plane crashed.” “Into the fire?” she could almost sense a slight half-turn. And nodded, even if he couldn’t see, “it’s ironic... someone should write a song about it... I woke up in the wreckage in a swimming pool. Lots of those in Cleverly Hills. I don’t remember how I got there, but everything around was on fire. Somehow, the oxygen mask I had on still worked.” The rag stained the water darker still as she wrung it out, “I’ve never seen anything like it, how fast it moved. I waited in the water until I was freezing, then just started walking. I don’t know how long, between the clouds and the smoke, you couldn’t tell if it was night or day. Just... walking, by the light of little fires that remained.” With a frown, she squeezed a few last drops of nearly black liquid from the rag, and gave up on it. At least her skin was something close to green again, “I found some other people, just walking... and I started walking with them. No one said anything, just kinda... stared off into the distance, or at the ground. Eventually, we came across someone who’d gotten an old diesel farm truck running. He was nice, offered to take us all, everyone... somewhere. We decided to head north, toward the army... or whatever was left of it. Maybe try to cross into Nefcarkaland...” “Oh, you don’t wanna go north,” Cal said, “it’s impassible. Just a line of craters all the way to the sea.” Silence stretched out. “Er... sorry...” he mumbled, “you were saying?” She picked up a soft flannel shirt that still had the tags on it, “we drove for a long time. I didn’t know we made it as far as Kermsburg. Those jerks must’ve been following us. They blocked the road, and when we stopped, they... they... everyone...” It snagged a little, as she pulled it over her head, or perhaps she just paused to press the soft, dry cloth to her face, “I just ran. I just...” her mouth suddenly felt as dry as the shirt. Still facing the wall, Cal rolled a dented metal canteen toward her. Lolli swept it up and pulled the cap off. “Gah! Faugh! Are you trying to poison me?! This taste like drain cleaner!” “Sodium dichloroisocyanurate,” he almost-but-not-quite turned his head to her, “bit of an acquired taste but it’s better than Cryptosporidium, believe me.” She frowned back at him, but drank anyway until it became an undirected scowl. Finally she set the empty canteen aside and took a moment to regard herself. “You can turn around now,” then a quiet sigh, “I look like a lumberjack.” “Smell like one too,” Cal smirked as he pivoted around. “Hey!” He proffered an unlabeled tin can from beside the fire, “and speaking of acquired tastes...” “What... is it?” she poked at something roughly brown and mushy.” “I’ve found it besht not to ashk,” he said around a mouthful from his own can, “or... think about it too hard,” gulp “it’s food. They don’t put not-food in cans like that.” “Yeah, that’s in the bin under Hull Repair said” mumbled Lolli, a distant memory brushing her still-foggy mind. She scooped out a lump of goop, and tried not to think about it too hard... ...and apparently succeeded, snapping back to something resembling reality to find her can empty, her spoon licked clean of any trace, and Cal staring with wide, bulging eyes. More so than usual. “I take it you liked it.” “I... um...” the spoon rattled once more in the empty can. He raised an eye, “when’s the last time you ate, anyway?” “Um... what day is it?” “No idea,” Cal shrugged, “found it best not to think too hard on that, either.” He returned to fiddling with something in his lap. She frowned, leaning over to him, “what’re you doing over there, anyw—GAAAH! MAGGOTS!” “I told you,” he returned an irritated look, “maggots always find a way.” “You-you-you need to clean that out right now!” “They’re working on it,” he gave another shrug, “sterile medical-grade maggots, Lucilia sericata. More precise than any blade and leave natural healing compounds behind.” His boot came down with a thud beside the fire, and Cal pointed to his calf with a proud smile, “this one’s Chewie, and there’s Squirmy, and Wiggly, and Itchy, and Scratchy, and Bob. And... well I sorta ran out of names.” “Gagh,” Lolli pressed hands to her mouth, “I think I’m gonna be sick...” “Not after the way you wolfed down that can, you’re not.” She scowled back at him, but... after a very emphatic argument with itself, she found that her stomach was not about to give up what it had finally gained, whatever its better sense said. Cal smirked over at her, “see?” He began wrapping fresh bandage around his leg, guests and all. Lolli quickly looked away, and, well, tried not to think about it too much, “how are you even here?” memories of a conversation that seemed more like a dream wafted up, “if you were in the city... and those things...” He returned a quick, sharp look, but gave a long sigh, and stared off at the steel wall, “like I said, we were one of the last units in. Got mobbed by infected. I ran until I couldn’t, fired until I was empty, they were everywhere. Finally cornered me. I thought I was done, then. It took me a while to realize they weren’t trying to hurt me, just kind of... pawing at me, with those awful, pleading eyes. And that I wasn’t becoming one of them. They’re tenacious, but, well, not that bright. I was able to duck down and slip away from the hoard. I was covered in black goo and somewhere I’d cut my leg real bad, but I was still me... Mostly... Whatever brain cells I still had firing figured out there was no way I was getting out of the city through the streets, there were just too many. So I thought I might be able to slip down a manhole cover to the storm drains.” He let out another very, very long sigh, “nope, it was the sewer. Little too late to change my mind at that point, though. I waded or floated through crap-smelling foulness for, I dunno how long. They gave us really good flashlights, thankfully. They say it always rolls downhill, right? I guess I figured it would take me to the river sooner or later, if I didn’t asphyxiate or turn infected first. I was almost there, could see light at the end of the tunnel... “Turns out I was just on the edge of passing out and probably hallucinating, but it didn’t much matter after that. Suddenly all that sludge slammed into me hard and just took me along for the ride. Before I could contemplate drowning I was flying through open air and then sure enough, right into the river.” A shrug, “not that it was much of an improvement. Somehow I got to shore, and... that’s when I saw the cloud...” Lolli peered at him, “the... bomb?” He nodded, “protected by dozens of meters of solid ground and concrete only to be ejected a moment before death by a high-pressure jet of raw sewage. Didn’t take long to figure out what had happened, and that no one was gonna come looking for me. So,” he glanced to her, “I just started walking. “And that was... more of an accomplishment than it sounds,” Cal reached down, wrapping a final bit of white tape over his bandage, “I guess raw sewage is not the best thing to marinade an open wound in. It hurt, everything hurt, but I was pretty much a zombie at that point. No, not that kind. I just kept walking, for lack of anything else to do, still expecting to become a real zombie at any moment. I’m not sure when the red streaks starting working their way up toward my knee, or when the ruined landscape became a fever dream that I couldn’t tell from reality anymore. When I found the truck, I... thought it was just another hallucination.” Cal shuffled around on his own pile of soft, fluffy blankets, until he could lean back against the steel wall and stare up at his distorted reflection on the ceiling, “or... maybe it was worse than that. When I saw, I remember thinking, maybe this is the demon waiting to take me down to the next Hell.” “W... what?” Lolli peered at him. “Infection is bad,” he said to shifting specter overhead, “but burns... burns are really bad. I think the windshield stopped some of the thermal, but not all. He must’ve been looking right at it when it went off, and...” Cal suddenly threw his arms up in front of his face, as if warding. Then slowly, his open hands dropped to his lap, his eyes following them, “I... thought he was dead... no person could survive like that... and then he moved, and I thought I might just lose my mind then and there. “He’d been sitting there the whole time, days... I dunno,” Cal flexed his fingers, “couldn’t even open the door. Couldn’t see even if he could. But he could still talk. Mostly. No, not a demon, that kerb was... an angel. He was a doctor from way down south. Somehow he’d found a way around the roadblocks, had his truck loaded with food and water, medicine, even a portable AutoDoc. Was determined to find a way into the city and help however he could, no matter what the government said. It was all... gone, of course, everything but the medical bag on the seat next to him.” Cal’s eyes drifted to the pack with the white cross at his feet. He drew it nearer. “He told me how to fix up my leg, how to reconstitute the maggot eggs, how much Cheeflex to take so I didn’t die of sepsis just standing there.” He produced a little glass vial from the bag, and began turning it over in his fingers, “and a little of this to take the edge off.” Specters continued to dance above as Cal leaned back again, still twirling the little bottle as he watched them, “yeah, burns are bad. Don’t really hurt much, all the nerve endings are gone. But... the bacteria just naturally on your skin, there’s nothing to keep them out anymore, and they find a microbial paradise. Then once they get into your blood, they get everywhere, eating you from the inside out. Lactic acid builds up in the muscles, turning every movement into agony. Organs shut down one by one. If you’re lucky, your mind is already gone when you start gasping for air. If you’re lucky.” He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head back and forth, “either way, your last conscious moments are nothing but pain, and... fear.” Cal’s eyes drew open again, finding the little vial in his fingers, but looking straight through it, “this... incredible stuff. Just a little bit, and you stop hurting. A little more, and you stop caring. A little bit more, and you stop breathing. I, um...” Cal’s throat gave a twitch, “he had a whole crate of the stuff. Wouldn’t let me give him a single drop. Insisted I save it for people it could actually help.” His eyes now turned to Lolli, dark and heavy, “trust me, infection is a really lousy way to die.” A soft, mournful wind rose up outside, causing the structure to sway just slightly, as the two sat in silence by the ruddy glow of surplus oxygen candles. Cal crumpled back against the wall once more, deflated. “I stayed with him a few more days, until... until there was no more point,” he said, “just another pile of rocks in the wasteland. I tried going north, towards the border, but it’s impassible. I dunno what happened there, somehow... it looks even worse. Dozens, maybe hundreds of craters layered on each other stretching all the way to the sea. So I tried going south again, thought I could find whatever was left of the chain of command towards Capitol City.” “Oh, that’s the last place you want be,” Lolli quickly shook her head, “it’s worse than a war zone. You, um... heard?” Cal nodded, glanced to a stack of old newspapers in the corner. Lolli drew her feet up until she could hug her knees, “I... never thought it would be like that. I never thought it would be at all, it felt like... everything was going so good until this year. I... watched Bangkong tear itself apart on live TV, eating cheese doodles and sipping Chablis with my friends on a big leather sectional, scrolling through Twits on my phone and saying ‘how awful!’ before going back to another stupid Mugbook ‘What’s your Omish name?’ quiz. Then the rest of the world started coming apart, and I thought, ‘it’ll all blow over, it’s all over there, not here. The President gave his resignation speech, and all the talking heads on TV could do was yell at each other about it. Things started getting weird, but it was always somewhere else, it felt so far away, y’know? And all the while, the talking heads kept arguing, calling each other awful things all ‘cuz they didn’t agree on how to spend other people’s money and thought their guy needed to be the one in charge, that was all that mattered.” She didn’t listen for an answer, just shook her head, “and then, one day, just like that, all the stores were out of toilet paper.” “Wait what?” Cal raised an eye... bulge, “toilet paper?” A nod, “stupid thing, right? The talking heads kept saying awful things, and dire things, and everybody just started hoarding toilet paper.” Grabbing the stack of newspapers, Cal ruffled through them, but only looked back at her more confused. “I laughed about it, Twitted out a bunch of stupid jokes, told people ‘stop buying toilet paper!’ and everyone was saying ‘stop buying toilet paper!’ but people just kept on buying toilet paper. And like...” her hand rose up, just below her throat, “I started getting this weird feeling in my chest, I thought it was just indigestion from too many cheese doodles— plenty of those still around— but... it never went away. “And then... the stores started running out of rice, and chicken... the Governor tried to shut everything down, implement rationing, went on TV and told everyone ‘the situation is under control!’ But this little... spot, right here, just kept getting heavier... like someone was reaching in and squeezing my heart, all the time. I took a-a couple of Darnitol™️ just to sleep at night. People started fighting over toilet paper, and then... then they started killing over it. “And the talking heads and the pundits and the Twit Lords just egged them on, said it was okay as long as they were the wrong kind of people who thought the wrong things, and I just kept watching from my couch, eating and drinking, saying everything was fine while this lump got heavier and heavier. The fighting moved from the stores to the streets, these huge crowds throwing rocks and bottles at each other, and then sticks and clubs. And the TV kept showing it, and it was always some place away, and then everything started burning. “I sent the staff home early, told them everything would be back to normal in the morning, and I just sat there and watched it all. But not here. Can’t happen here. And then... the power went out.” Lolli stared down into the glow of the oxygen candles, as if trying to burn away the shadows and specters that still danced upon the metal walls, “even then, I tried to convince myself it was just a circuit breaker, a blip in the system... it’ll come back on any minute now... just any minute. I sat there in the darkness, staring at a blank wall, feeling my heart beating faster and faster while something squeezed it tighter. And that was the first time I realized... I was afraid. “Like,” she gagged down a dry lump in her throat, “like I never had been before. Kerbonaut training was scary... the first time I stepped up to the microphone before that chanting crowd... signing my first check with more zeros than my last family reunion,” she shook her head, “but... nothing, ever, like what I felt that night... and still do right now. “And then the fires came, and I tried to get everyone out, but... I just made it worse. I... shouldn’t have waited but I needed to see, see with my own eyes,” Lolli squeezed those eyes shut, leaned back a bit to drive the heels of her hands into them, wiped her face on a sleeve. “Hey, um...” Cal slid over next to her. He reached out a hand, hesitated, then gave her a soft but awkward pat on the back, “you’ll be okay. This isn’t easy, none of it, but you’ll make it though.” She shook her head, “how can anyone? The whole world has gone mad.” “I didn’t say anyone,” he gave her a nudge, “I said you. You’re gonna get through this, but We the People are pretty much boned.” “I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said to the floor, “I didn’t think it would... be at all. And here I am, sitting in a milk truck with a strange kerb eating dog food by candlelight.” Cal shot up, “wait, you, um, knew?” The barest, most fleeting shadow of a smile crossed her face as she glanced up at him, “I buy the same stuff... I’d know that can anywhere.” It crept into a smirk, “try not to think about it too hard, right? At least it’s not seafood flavor.” “That’s what I mean,” Cal chuckled, “you’re a survivor, like me. You’ll do fine. And since you’re not coughing yet I guess I’m not contagious, either.” “Wait, what?!” Lolli shot back from him, “you mean you weren’t sure?!” “Well I... it was a theory!” his arms went up, “can’t exactly do clinical tests out here, y’know? I might be immune but there was still a small chance I was a regular Typhoid Larry, but no, I wasn’t sure. Thanks for confirming my research, though.” He grinned widely at her. She threw an empty dog food can at him. “You’re a lousy medic, you know?” she glared at him over crossed arms. “Oh, I’m not really a medic, I’ve just had some training.” “What?!?” Lolli’s eyes shot wide, then dropped to her bandaged hand, “but-but... you know suturing... and Cheeflex... and Lucile staccato!” “Lucilia sericata.” “That too!” She scowled, “I thought you were one of those guys using the reserves to pay your way through med school!” Cal followed that with a long, bitter laugh, “med school? No, never been. Med schools usually prefer if you’ve been to college first, and colleges usually prefer if you’ve actually, well, graduated high school.” “You... didn’t?” she said a bit more softly. He shook his head, “I... have trouble reading. The letters get all... turned around.” A chilling thought occurred to her, “but... if you can’t read then how did you know which vial to—“ “Relax,” Cal rolled his eyes, “there’s nothing wrong with my memory. If I see something once it’s locked in my head like I’m a walking filing cabinet, I know which bottle is which. But, that only gets you so far taking a test, or trying to write something.” Silence stretched out before she spoke again, much more softly, “so, um... what did you do, before?” “Hm?” he started, “oh, I was a janitor. The hours are crap but the pay is... well, pretty crap too. But I got to meet Edmund Kerman.” “What?!” Lolli shot straight up, “how did you meet Edmund Kerman? I never even met Edmund Kerman! Well, not officially...” Cal leaned back again and sighed, “well, it was a long time ago. Right after that thing on the Mün but before he got, y’know, sick. I was cleaning a building where he’d leased an office, and one night I found him in there working late. I offered to come back later but he was real personable, invited me right in and we chit-chatted while we worked. He found out I was in the service and called me a crayon-eating blue rocket cornflake, so I called him a primped-up numpty chairforce zoomie.” Lolli could only blink and stare. Or stare and blink. Cal laughed, “and then it was like we were old buddies, he whipped out some dusty old highland naln— the good stuff, in the fancy bottle— and we traded stories for a while. You remember Hurricane Bertha, smacked up Zaroeka ‘bout fifteen years ago?” “Of course, how I could I forget that?” she raised an eye at him. “That was my first call-up after basic, though by the time I got there it was... just a recovery operation. But it turns out Edmund and I were deployed to the same airbase, not far from here, actually. He’d been flying rescue missions since day 1. We’d probably walked past each other dozens of times without realizing it. Even ticked off the same obnoxious Coastie Captain." He chuckled to himself, found his old flask and turned it over in his hands, "yeah, real class act, that guy. Edmund, not Captain Underpants. We shot the scat a little bit longer before I had to move on, but not before he looked me right in the eye and said he said he knew a guy who knew a guy, and he'd put in a good word for me. And sure enough, he did. Two weeks later I was working the custodial night shift at the Senate Office Building in Capitol City for twice what I was making cleaning a random cube farm." "Really?" she raised another eye at him, "He arranged all that?" "Sure as snot," a nod, "with a possible path up the management ladder, maybe even get my own cube some day." His head drifted back once again to the steel hull, his eyes returning to the ghosts on the ceiling, "and then, I blew it all." She leaned in, "wait, how?" Cal let out a long, mournful sigh before he spoke, "they, um... caught me on security camera, pilfering documents from some bigshot senator's desk one night." "What?!?" she shot back, "why on Kerbin would you go and do a stupid thing like that for?" "I dunno." "Really? 'I dunno?' That's the best response you have?" "No, really, I mean, I don't know. I don't know why I did that. I don't even remember doing that, or... being at work that night at all. When I think back now, all my nights working that building seem... fuzzy. Like... trying to remember a dream in a dream. Or maybe a nightmare." She peered at him, "you really... can't remember?" A quick head shake, "thought it was some kind of joke, for a minute. Some new-guy initiation, maybe. But sure enough, there I was on the screen, rifling through a desk and shoving something into my pocket before skulking off. They... said they had enough right there to charge me with espionage, send me to prison for the rest of my life, but decided I just wasn't worth the effort, and fired me on the spot instead." "That's awful," Lolli laid a hesitant but, she hoped, comforting hand on Cal's arm. He recoiled as if struck. She frowned, but pressed on, "you saw yourself, but you really can't remember anything? No, um, you know..." she made a little motion with her thumb and little finger, "before work, maybe?" He scowled back, "no, never touched the stuff again after that night in his office. Left me with a splitting headache the next morning and first time I'd ever blacked out ever. But, it's like... when I try to remember that night... any of those nights... try to think about it at all, I feel..." "Feel what?" she leaned in. "Cold," his eyes fixed on the dwindling glow before them, "afraid... like, there is something there, something I should be able to remember, and I can almost see, but it's shrouded in shadow, and... there's this voice in the back of my mind warning me, pleading with me to just turn away, 'cuz like, if I look hard enough, gaze into that dark abyss long enough, I will see what's really there, see it, and then I’ll go--" He shivered, then shook, edging on convulsions, wrapping his arms around his own shoulders and seeming to collapse in on himself. “Cal..?” Lolli inched towards him. His eyes glazed over, then grew hazy. It... was probably just a trick of the ruddy, flickering light, but his eyes seemed to darken, passing through black as if nothing... She reached a hesitant hand towards his shoulder, still shivering and twitching. Just as her fingers brushed against cloth, the shivering intensified, swelled up until the entire structure was rattling and shaking and dull, ear-splitting roar threatened to drive all sense away. “What the hells?” Cal jumped up, his voice mostly lost beneath the overwhelming din. But as quickly as it rose, it faded again, dropping the space into thick silence. He looked back at her, his eyes muddy and confused but not... as they were. Before she could even think to speak, the roar returned, not as grand as before but still shaking the place until her stomach rolled over in her belly. “Was... was that a..?” “Yeah,” Cal’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling once more, “I think so. But why...” he shook his head, “stay there.” He retrieved his rifle from where it had been propped in the corner, made something go click and then thunk. With barely a stretch he unpinned a metal ladder from above and swung it down before climbing up and fiddling with a hatch. Lolli grunted and threw up a hand against the burst of dazzling light that suddenly appeared, but by the time she could look again, Cal had vanished. She frowned after him, looked down at her bandaged hand, and had just started wondering if she could climb with it when something slammed against the metal wall. She recoiled back from it, and it returned with a ringing staccato toll of steel against steel. Her good hand closed around something solid just as more blinding light met her eyes. “C’mon, it’s all clear,” Cal said from a new hole at the far end of the room, “and don’t you go throwing my dog food around, that was hard to come by.” Lolli glanced down at the can in her hand. She gave a little grunt and set it down, shuffling toward the open hatch. “This one only opens from the outside, and with a nice big hammer,” he offered as she emerged, blinking, into the outside, “careful here, it’s a fair drop down.” Offering another grunt, Lolli positioned herself on the ladder, her limbs feeling like gelatin after sitting for so long. Just as her feet touched the ground, she noticed the painted words before her face. “CAUTION: KEEP BACK 100M,” she read, “contains political promises.” Her eyes drifted higher, “Enlie’s Plumbing and—“ She spun around on Cal, “you camped us out inside a septic truck?!?” He proffered a filthy rag, “I wiped it down first!” “Ugh! Gah!” her knees somehow felt even weaker than a moment ago, “I think I really am gonna be sick!” Yet it was Cal who doubled over... laughing, “hahah, relax! It’s brand new, never been used. The dealership’s right over there,” he pointed, “or... was.” A blackened skeleton of a building stood a short way off. “Oh,” she said softly, “fire sale?” “Everything must go,” he nodded back. Their heads both shot up as the horrendous noise returned, louder than ever with nothing to shield it. From above the treeline off to one side, a trident of VTOLS passed overhead, barely high enough to clear the top branches, and disappeared off into the distance. “Airplanes? I haven’t seen airplanes in weeks,” Lolli mumbled as she looked off after them. She glanced back to Cal, whose face was drawn with confusion. Before she could ask, the sound once more returned, only far louder and bigger than ever. An ear-splitting mash of roaring and whining and droning that forced her hands to her ears, yet even so burrowed into her skull until it was somehow spinning in circles inside her mind. All of that was brushed away in an instant by what now passed over the trees. Sheer awe drove away any thought of pain, or any thought at all, at the sight of something that at first appeared to be little more than an enormous, bulbous wing. Details emerged as she stared, an equally huge fuselage was slung below the wing, barely longer than the wing was wide, sprouting a pair of rudders almost as an afterthought at the rear and lined all along its belly not with wheels but massive tank treads. She turned to watch it go, slack-jawed, its overwhelming sound soon following. “Was that—“ Lolli felt her mouth suddenly dry, “was that... the Air Force? I... I thought they all fled to Omork after... after things got...” “Not ours,” Cal frowned off to the southwest, “that was a Nefcarkalandern airship.” “Nefcarkaland? W—?” He pressed a finger to his lips, whispering, “keep your head down, there’s an overlook beyond these trees.” Rifle pressed to his shoulder, he slunk off toward the thicket in a crouch, and she followed as best she could. They passed more trucks, some with glinting paint and still clad in their protective wrappings, others burned to unrecognizable hulks. Off across a street jammed with cars yet eerily silent, more skeletal buildings and boarded-up storefronts leered at them. Soon they reached the trees, and Lolli saw it was not a thicket but a once-manicured greenbelt, the overgrown brush already dead and brown. She hugged herself tighter against an icy breeze rising around them. The far edge of the trees followed quickly, and she nearly gasped as they huddled against one. From this cliff overlooking the sea, she could see for leagues and leagues off across the slate-grey waters. Waters which were... far from empty. Dozens of ships large and small sat at anchor, and as she watched, another trio of VTOLs rose from a particularly large one and headed towards them. She hunched down and pressed hands to her ears against the racket until they had passed. “Maybe...” one hand shifted to rub her temple, “maybe it’s a rescue force?” “That’s no rescue,” Cal scowled down at the sea, “it’s an invasion.”

We shortly interrupt this apocalypse to bring you... the apocalypse, already in progress...

It just went poof and crumpled. It was weird, it was the section below the frosted-up tank that buckled, and the rest came down.

Wait, would it actually glow, tho? “...From the makers of Happy Fun Ball!™️“

Interesting... those snippets look like the system is meant to be operated by someone with very little training. Like, say, a tourist...