It boots not to resist both wind and tide

[jla_futures]

It is known, but not understood. It rides the currents of space, slipping in and out of gravity wells according to no pattern any observer has been able to track or decipher

Comments

Davis Mountains, West Texas

[jla_futures]

It's a quiet night at McDonald Observatory. The clear Texas sky is filled with stars, and the newest UT students still find themselves stealing awed glances at the diamond-studded vault overhead ... before they push such poetic impulses aside in favor of noting that Serpens and Ophiuchus were indeed well up in the southwest at dusk, and that the crescent Moon is low in the sky, with Jupiter and Antares at its upper left.

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope's 9.2-meter mirror is being guided in its slow, stately pace, when Dr. Odewahn spies something that shouldn't be in its field. She frowns and calls a colleague. "Carl? Stephanie. I'm over on Fowlkes. We've got something. No, it's not a comet. I don't think. Hold on--"

Re: Davis Mountains, West Texas

[jla_futures]

The artifact pauses briefly between Mount Fowlkes and Mount Locke, then moves on, slightly faster than a speeding bullet.

Re: Davis Mountains, West Texas

[jla_extras]

Montana is still ranch country, and like any ranch, there are chores that must be tended to, even at the most inconvenient times. Darryl Newman is quietly cursing the horse who has put yet another hole in his stall. "If I had a nickel for every nail I've hammered this month," he mutters, glaring at the beast who is putting on a show of placidity now. He rubs a work-roughened hand over his weathered face and sighs, wondering what possessed him to come out to check in the middle of the night. He fancies the gleam in Ozzie's eye signifies that Ozzie is just waiting for him to wander out of the stable, return to the house, slip back under the covers, and fall asleep.

At which point, Ozzie will kick the stall again. Newman's sure of it.

Re: Davis Mountains, West Texas

[jla_futures]

The nighttime mutterings and rustlings of the stable's inhabitants are suddenly interrupted by four musical notes and a flash of light. Hovering now between the stalls is a multifaceted sphere.

[alt_minds2]

Another farm, another group of late night chores. This time, it's in California. "Brother" Joseph Cross, last survivor of the original five Commune founders is in his shed again, reading his scrapbooks and cleaning his medals. It's his penance more than anything.

He looks over to the stack of confiscated hero magazines and sighs. More kids - Commune kids - have been picking them up since those Titans came by. Worse is that the damn capes stole one of their own and drew her into what would be a violent life, a perpetuation of the same "might makes right" facism he rues to this day.

The object is in his shed, hovering.

[jla_futures]

As Joseph approaches it, the image in one of its facets changes

[alt_minds2]

Joseph staggers back for a moment, then launches himself at this...thing.

But it only shows another aspect.

[jla_futures]

The cities have been bombed to dust, the network grids are destroyed, and the roads are little more but asphalt slag