377. Music of Earth, 3

(Rose)

Even though they knew our plans would come to fruition sooner or later, our friends were still impressed and a little stunned by the actual result.

The flying ship appeared above the forest in the distance and quietly slowed down as it arrived over the parking lot of the place. Then we dropped the leash and anchor, before a rope ladder followed.

Mushio applauded with a genuine smile.

M - This could very well be the first technology based on T.I. ever built. And a flying machine no less! I'm really impressed.

The proud grins done, and sweat wiped, we moved inside the buildings where our friend had built his own amazing experiments.

B - What about the window in the big wall?

M - Halas, I would need something much more radioactive to make that experiment work. I'll find some eventually somewhere. Meanwhile, let me show you what I managed to repair.

We understand it's something that is very likely to leave us speechless as well, whatever it is.

What he shows us is a set of computers and screens showing pictures of the Earth as seen from space.

I never get tired of such amazing sights.

Because I'm gazing intensely at them, I notice the unusual thing first.

I'm shivering. It's not a picture. And I have goose bumps because I understand it's not an old movie either.

There would be no point in showing us an old movie... I'm agape.

R - This is... real? It's current?

M - Yes. I managed to re-establish a contact with a geostationary satellite. This is how the world looks like right now, about 36000 km above us.

That's insane.

That's amazing!

A jewel of science was still working almost as if nothing happened over the last decade, so far out there above us.

And this satellite managed to avoid falling away or falling back. All this time, on its own. It's amazing. There's no other word.

This satellite was used for meteorology and somehow even seismography, before the end. Through another technologic miracle, that flying computer analysed the movements of the earth very carefully.

That day, I learnt that the continents were moving, and that it was the cause of earthquakes.

I couldn't believe it.

And we were showed old maps, older than humanity but reconstructed through the magic of mathematics. Maps showing how the continents were in the past. How the world itself changed. Far more than I could imagine.

And we could notice some minute changes over the world map between the 20th century we easily can find references for, and today.

The Atlantic coastlines were almost exactly the same from before. Most Mediterranean coastlines had slightly changed however. Mushio zoomed in on our position above the black sea. It's incredible of power. There's a telescope far up there that is looking closer toward us, and we see what it sees.

Not so far down that we could see the buildings where we're in very clearly, but we could guess them a little.

Returning to a broader view of the Earth, our friend made a screen show the records of every earthquake analysed by the satellite appear over a simplified map.

Over thirty five years, that satellite recorded everything significant happening in the crust of the globe. Now it was listing its results, and as it drew that, this machine was telling us a geologic tale of what the world went through.

An odd story of the globe, about what happened for all these years below the ground, despite being studied by a sky high invisible eye.

Dear father in heavens...

The unfolding story was following spots and older patterns recorded, at first.

The tectonic movements of these continental plates were drawn, and their boundaries were more hectic than I would have thought. It was already a fascinating story, and a field of studies I barely knew existed.

And then, came the white day.

~

Ten years and four months ago. In a morning of January, centuries after our original time to Bleue and I, that thing occurred. We saw it.

Surging from Antarctica, lines of tenuous earthquakes went spiralling around the entire globe, spreading northward until their wave reached the north of the globe.

What we just saw froze us for a while.

I felt colder shivers running along my shoulders and my back, as we saw how the world we knew had ended, from a very distant perspective.

A shockwave, a ripple, gradually covering the world at the speed of earth tremors, like a bowl suddenly vibrating because of a shock, until the sound fades.

Mushio stopped the recording of that testimony, and played it back a few times to study it along with us.

With each viewing we noticed more uncanny details, but the main pattern was obvious.

Something otherworldly landed abruptly in Antarctica, sending a shockwave affecting the entire world. And the storm spreading in this wake was like a planetary cyclone that briefly covered the entire world. The climate had also been shocked from this seismic wave, and echoes continued to linger although they were gradually fading.

Was it a meteor? Mushio seemed very tensed, and kept a worryingly expressionless face for the rest of the day.

I think he wasn't able to figure out what was the source of these effects. Which meant it wasn't anything normal or understandable easily even to someone like him with all the knowledge of the world behind. How could I ever figure out what it was if even he couldn't?

He would have made an hypothesis rapidly if there was a lead or a reasonable clue, but he kept his thoughts for himself. I think he had been shocked by the pictures just as much as me.

I ended up noticing another pattern in the fading sea of climatic echoes, over the months following the big event.

Another spiralling pattern, much smaller, and of convergence this time. Some earthquakes and atmospheric disturbances headed north over Africa, then Europe, then around eastern Scandinavia or western Russia.

It looked like a needle moving through a puddle of inks. A faint and soft pattern, weaker than the average waves and tumultuous times then, but noticeable.

A basin around which the lines were curved and slightly attracted was in the end located somewhere out there.

It was an area not too far from Petrograd, as seen from space at least.

B - Uh... Isn't that...

A nightmarish thought returns to me.

The spooky face of the witch who claimed to have planned a Ragnarök.

That's the area of the world where Daiûa is supposed to have come from. Finland.

I don't want to think back about the things she said and claimed...

It makes me feel awful.

But something odd probably occurred out there.

As for what happened in Antarctica before that, we have no way to know from here.

We're lost.

No one knows.

~

Mushio finally continued playing the movie of the earthquake records.

Following the surge at the end of times, everything returned roughly to the usual patterns after a few months.

Some had obviously been more deeply affected than others, but on the global scale, the world had rapidly absorbed the impact and returned to something about the same as before. At least from the perspective of this satellite.

We saw that some earthquakes in Türkiye happened regularly, like the one we witnessed.

The coastlines between the Aegean sea and the Black sea were completely redrawn over the years. The seismic activity between Europe and Orient had become and remained high.

The computer clock had glitched at some point and stated that we were in the year 1898. That made me laugh. Mushio had dismissed that and looked backward in time from the present day until he reached what had obviously been the record of the ominous day he lived through.

We continued observing the numerous meteorological records and their patterns over the last decade. From the white day until today. They followed what was globally similar and expected. On the first day and following months, there really was a storm spanning along the world. It was still mesmerizing to observe.

Now the world climates were roughly as it was I would have expected it.

That area in Karelia I believe, it wasn't different. Maybe I had imagined that pattern of something traveling there and stopping.

To the present day, we could now see the weather forecasts estimated by our friend and his computers.

Not happy to see the past and analyse it, these computers were able to predict the future.

They used knowledge of this chaos theory far beyond mine, but that cheered me up slightly nonetheless to understand that part. I like what I understand of it.

It seemed we would have a few more good days around, before a massive storm from the north of the continent would crash over here.

I had a bad feeling about it. Call it an intuition.

I asked him to zoom on the edge of that storm heading south toward us.

It was the tip of an arrow, with higher magnitude thunderstorm and clouds.

The tip of an arrow, heading south...

From the previous weeks records, that storm begun somewhere farther north in central Europe, and gradually began moving south.

Well, not exactly south. More like, straight at us.

R - Verdammt...

It's not a cloud. Clouds follow the corridors where air usually flows. That satellite shows how they usually move. What we can't see from there, it can.

It's a hunter.

A daiûa, or a being-like-her I should say. One that heard our mistake with Judge before, and is now coming to erase us from existence...

M - You can't be serious.

I've lost my meagre smile from before.

I unfortunately am.

~

I dearly hope it's not a chain reaction we're seeing, but we certainly have to deal with the consequences of our previous decisions.

Our friends begun packing the essential, taking the threat seriously.

If I'm wrong, we will all meet again here in less than a month, after the rain and thunder are gone.

They'll be able to reinstall themselves here, and we'll all laugh about it.

If I'm right, at least they will survive while they're away, and so should we.

Now I feel like I can already perceive some light tremors from the ground below my feet, but it's probably just my legs trembling slightly.

I hope we will be able to escape that fight and its uncertain aftermath.

~