by Spleen » Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:21 am
Chon-Marshak gave Skye a long look with both eyes, blinking slowly. "Please make yourself comfortable, and we will explain." The left eye scanned the room again before Chon-Marshak stood up and crossed to a corner behind the desk, where they dialed a few commands into a cabinet-sized autodispenser* built into the wall. "We have requisitioned a large pitcher of iced spring water and disposable cups; we are in agreement that it will be sufficient for your comfort, but please correct us if we are wrong. We understand that our environmental needs are not yours, and regret that our office must be kept disagreeable to you. We will keep this meeting as brief as possible, both for your comfort and because of the state of emergency we are in." The autodispenser chimed and Chon-Marshak withdrew a plastic tray holding the aforementioned pitcher of water and plastic cups, which they put on the desk. "Please, help yourselves," they said, sitting back down behind the desk.
A human might have, at this point, steepled his or her hands, gotten up and walked around, or shown any number of other tics, but Chon-Marshak remained seated with their hands at their sides, speaking as though having rehearsed. "The Precinct, as you know, monitors many different worlds in many different universes. Official policy considers iterations of Earth a priority over other worlds, and the Precinct as a whole is largely composed of beings from iterations of Earth, all those present included. Iterations of Earth with a unified worldwide religion are not unknown, though research indicates that this state of affairs is a precarious one, easily destabilized both by external events such as natural disasters and by forces acting on the system from within - social change, technological advancement, et cetera. Certainly, the establishment, from the ground up, of a worldwide religion would require a buildup of certain factors over a long period of time; if any Precinct-monitored Earth were about to experience this change, it would be well within the organization's abilities to predict it long in advance."
The Section Chief did move, then, to open a desk drawer and retrieve a remote. At the push of a button, the empty wall behind Chon-Marshak faded to black before displaying an image of a light blue wireframe sphere rotating slowly on its vertical axis. The lizardman turned slightly so one eye could check the screen before continuing. "Marshak recommends that you show discretion before sharing to others in the organization the possibly panic-inspiring news we are about to relate and the specifics of the mission you are about to be assigned; Chon notes that as you are all agents of the Precinct, such a recommendation is unnecessary, but has agreed to allow it to be pronounced without argument for the sake of Marshak's peace of mind."
Chon-Marshak cleared their throat in a particularly human-sounding way. "Sixteen hours ago, a monitoring center received an unencrypted audio message from a communications array on a Type 4A world**. The message came from an unauthorized user of Precinct equipment; in other words, a native, one who should not have been able to find nor operate the communications array yet was able to find his way past the security lock on the console to send this message. It is badly garbled for no easily apparently reason, despite all attempts to decode it. I will play it for you." They pressed a button and a burst of static could be heard from the speakers built into the walls, followed by a male-sounding human voice, garbled as promised.
"..........we have...........our god.....proof positive..............when......lights.........seen......power......defini......no more..uncertainty.....rejoicing........the gray lights.....heaven..........away.........."
The recording stopped there, and Chon-Marshak continued. "The monitoring center originally attributed this to the work of an individual not in control of a new technopathic power - the world in question has a high rate of human potentiality phenomena. The monitoring equipment on the world could not be reached afterwards; again, consistent with the work of a powerful technopath, either one mentally unhinged or not in control of his powers. More disturbingly, neither of the two permanent gate portals on the world could be accessed at all. However, events like this have transpired previously and been corrected - there are other ways onto a world than gate portals, certainly - so had that been the end of it, the solution would have been quite routine.
"A similar situation occurred in twenty-four non-proximate realities between ten and two hours ago. The worlds were blacked out completely - no transmissions of data or personnel proved possible to or from any of them. The only clue came in a report given by a field agent stationed on one of these worlds a scant two hours before the array she transmitted it from went offline. Unlike the original message, this one was complete, if terse. The agent simply transmitted a short message stating that she was terminating her employment with the Precinct to live full-time on that world as a follower of the Holy Church of the Shining Gray. No mention of any organization by that name, religious or otherwise, existed on that world prior to two hours before that transmission, after which time the intercepted radio and television signals from that world became increasingly saturated with mention of the Church until the communications array ceased to function."
Chon-Marshak turned to the screen, then, pressing a button on the remote which caused small points of light to appear within the slowly spinning globe - an isolated blue clump in the center with about twenty-five or so red ones strewn around randomly, none approaching particularly near the blue. "This is a calibrated, simplified view of the possibility space for iterations of planet Earth. It is a common visualization tool. This view is calibrated such that the further into the sphere an undisturbed universe falls, the more factors on the world - cultural, historical, et cetera - exist to push it towards religious singularity. The blue is the area in which Earths sporting relatively stable religious singularity exist at 99.5% saturation or higher. The red dots represent the universes affected by the mysterious phenomenon of which I have just spoken. As the model clearly indicates, these worlds are largely poor candidates for worldwide religions to spawn. We are forced to conclude, then, that there is something else happening here. Something that is spreading between worlds, quickly.
"The jumps being made between these worlds correspond exactly to a certain quantum of energy into the gate portal system - the same leap distance, one could say. The order in which the worlds became unresponsive and the order in which the leaps would have occurred at this level of power match exactly. The speed of the leaps was erratic - three happened within an hour and a half of each other, yet none have happened in the past two hours, so the exact timing cannot be predicted, but all of the computer models agree:
"The force that is making leaps between these worlds needs only to make nineteen more to reach Planet Zero, and it is thus far on track to make the journey between its point of origin and Planet Zero in the fewest number of leaps possible. Whatever is doing this could use the gate portals to go anywhere in the multiverse, but it has chosen instead to forge a more-or-less straight-line path directly to Precinct Command."
*All employees of the Precinct have the authority to make requisitions using the autodispenser network set up across Planet Zero. It's a subset of the main teleporter system that is used to get around the planet (itself piggybacked on the multidimensional gate portal system), except it is linked to a fully-automated system of pocket storage dimensions and used to requisition items ranging from weapons to office furniture to medical supplies (Michael is extremely familiar with the system's use, and is accustomed to using much larger autodispensers capable of requisitions of large medical equipment). Each user's requisitions are recorded and monitored (and the items tracked), and the artificial intelligences operating the system will refuse requests it deems inappropriate - for instance a Medical City nurse requesting a firearm or a personal trainer requesting a circular saw. Field agents are rarely ever refused autodispenser requisitions - if they couldn't be trusted with something in the system, they wouldn't be field agents - except that the system stubbornly refuses to provide Rick (or, really, most everyone) with alcohol. The autodispenser system is two-way, and is also used for waste disposal.
**A Type 4A world is a world which the Precinct has deemed stable, on which the existence of the Precinct is not public knowledge, and which the Precinct monitors and occasionally subtly corrects through the use of their agents to ensure continued stability. See my newest post in the Precinct thread in the OOC Forum.