Warped 2

'Anomalous', failed to properly describe whatever process was occurring at the moment. The implication of an 'Anomaly' being a deviation from the standard or expected, but not completely without an explanation. Anomalies can and often do occur in pretty much every field one can imagine, and usually are caused by some unforeseen variable or outside intervention.

The reaction that this lump of metal was undergoing could only be called impossible, something that only became more clear to ARC as it collected more detailed and accurate reports from the scanning equipment. But the most shocking revelation was yet to come.

To Don's eyes, the process of separation appeared to be visually comparable to how cells undergo mitosis, the 'blobs' of heat slowly separating from each other. The outer shell of the asteroid, now more accurately referred to as space dust, seemed to part to allow this small chunk to depart.

The readings spiked in accordance with the lack of interfering metals, revealing the rock to be under a colossal amount of . . . something.

Don was tempted to refer to it as 'stress', but he cold really only 'see' the rock in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums. There was a little visible spectrum light being released, sure, but it didn't even shine as bright as the (what would normally be) star covered stellar background.

"It appears to be deforming." ARC tried explaining what it could see to the less sensorally gifted pilot. "The points I have highlighted have closer to each other by about ten centimeters since it left the cloud. There also seems to be some twisting occurring, but the axis is not consistent."

They continued to watch on in silence for a few more minutes, utterly baffled at the unfolding chaos.

"I believe I understand how the atomization is coming to be. Would you like an explanation?"

Don simply nodded, fist on his chin.

"After analyzing a section of the asteroid's surface, I took not of how particles would occasionally jump from the bindings of the asteroid, increasing in frequency when the torsion axis roughly aligns with their position. I have taken this to mean that the forces acting during the period of time it is in that region are strong enough to cause the particles to physically detach in order to disperse the surface forces."

"What unholy magnitude of force would be required to do that to tungsten?"

"Uncertain, but not something I would suggest subjecting the Noah to."

"No shit. Increase the capacity buffer for the split shield, I don't care if it bites into mobility."

"Even at risk of other threats?"

"Mobility has proved itself to not be our primary method of defense. I would rather not take the risk of disintegration should we stumble into some hyper-anomaly, unless you can guarantee you could identify such an event before we are inside of it?" His tone wasn't hostile, though it was not friendly.

Don could not shake the feeling of danger, fear of something other than this occurrence, slowly seeping into his psyche. Alone and isolated from any support, he would have to deal with emergent threats by himself.

But he had to figure out what exactly the threat was before he could work around defeating it.

The summation of his capability to defend against Split was that the Split Shield repelled it in exchange for drawing on power. Even this card in his hand was still largely an unknown. Does the energy draw to repulsion efficacy scale linearly? Does it have acclimating or diminishing returns? Is there an upper limit to a concentration that can be dealt with? He didn't have the statistics on these.

Not that he could have expected them to collect it. They couldn't exactly risk losing an extremely expensive piece of equipment in order to test its practical limits, especially when they couldn't guarantee anything of that magnitude would ever be encountered.

Considering the fact that this project had to be kept under wraps, there was more incentive to not perform such a flashy test.

Twenty minutes into the observation, both chunks had visibly warped from their initial geometries. A visible pulsation of the vaguely spherical masses could be seen.

Where before atoms would be ejected from the main body individually, they now appeared to shed in layers.

In cycles of thirty seconds, the outside layer of atoms would slowly expand the radius by a few centimeters before simultaneously detaching themselves from each other. ARC determined that the nuclei of the atoms were expanding, causing the attached electrons to go nuts, before suddenly reaching some sort of critical volume and instantly shrinking back to their normal size.

This was the process which permitted the atoms to detach themselves from other atoms.

"I think it is about time we returned to our initial objective, ARC. This is interesting, don't get me wrong, but I can see no benefit to a continued observation. The longer we are out here, the higher our chance of falling into danger."

"I must reluctantly agree. The process appears to have reached a state of balance, and watching it through to completion would take two days at the current rate. Most certainly an unacceptable length of time."

A vector popped up on screen in the direction of where they were last stopped, they had to backtrack to where they began in order to guarantee that the vector ARC had calculated was correctly calibrated.

Mercedes, now properly awake, lay on the bed with her head between her paws. She was intently watching Donovan as he worked. By now she was aware that he was not to be distracted while in that seat, but that didn't mean that she didn't want to. Her current priority was coaxing him into feeding her.