Lucas Stirling - Awakening

[Anthr4xus]

Marty nodded enthusiastically at Lucas' first question and said, "Yes, although I've only seen that particular effect one other time. I can give you copies of everything, of course. Do you want to see the other like that, or something else?"

[Gremlin]

"Copies of everythin' you've caught on camera would be good." Lucas replied to his client. He intended to review the footage to look for anything in common, other than the events themselves. "Ideally, I'd like to see all events you've managed to film. But if there's loads I'll do it at the office rather than takin' up your time here." What he didn't mention was his intent to have the footage analysed for CGI or other trickery.

[Anthr4xus]

"There are seven or eight. One I'm not really sure if it's part of the weirding or not. I'm happy to go through them with you, but if you have extra stuff to analyze them or whatever, I can just drop them on a thumb drive. Will that work?" Even before Lucas can respond he is leaning forward and opening a draw in the coffee table, revealing a collection of cables and batteries, remotes and thumb drives. He grabs the first thumb drive and inserts it into the laptop.

[Gremlin]

"That'd be perfect." Lucas told his client. When Marty showed him the footage from his phone, he asked "Where were these filmed?" After a short pause, Lucas asked "And when, dates and times if you can?" He kicked himself mentally for the oversight of not bringing his own thumb drive, now he would have to check for malware before doing any work with the videos.

[Anthr4xus]

Lucas watched as Marty dropped a collection of files with fairly descriptive names onto the thumb drive. He said, "This index spreadsheet is a copy of my log. That will give you the date and time and which camera generated each file. Everything should be as cleaned up as I could get them. I have the originals on my main storage if you need those too." Without waiting for confirmation, Marty opened up a mapped drive and grabbed files from a directory marked 'vid_dump'. Numerous timestamped named files filled the window. From memory, Marty grabbed 8 files and also dropped them on the thumb drive.

Lucas caught a glance at the files and noticed that all of their timestamps were from within the last two weeks, but no clear pattern in date or timestamp jumps out.

[Gremlin]

"The spreadsheet log's a good start". Lucas told his client. When the file transfer was complete, he took the USB from Marty and placed it into a pocket. Realising that he'd gotten a little too wrapped up in things thanks to witnessing his own little piece of strangeness, Lucas remembered he hadn't asked a particularly important question of Marty. "Assuming I can find the source of all this." He began, being careful to make no promise of success. "What outcome are you lookin' for?"

[Anthr4xus]

Marty froze when Lucas asked that, a look of sheepish embarrassment crawling across his face. "Well," he said, "Really the first thing is that these are real things going on. That I'm not crazy or hallucinating or whatever. Past that," he shrugged, "I'm not really sure. I guess, take the proof to the press or the government or something. If it's real, someone should be looking into this properly, you know?"

There was another sudden thump against the window causing both of you to jump slightly. Marty gives Lucas a tiny smile as he adjusted his glasses. "Man, that gets me everytime."

[Gremlin]

"The Press." Lucas thought to himself with a barely suppressed shudder. Even if he could convince a journalist the pair of them hadn't blown a gasket, he would have to demonstrate the weirdness in person. Not to mention the challenge of actually convincing them to go along with it in the first place. Ditto for anyone acting in an official capacity. "One step at at a time, eh Marty."

 

At the noise of the thump, he swore "Bloody hell!" After recovering from the involuntary twitch at the impact against the window, Lucas shot to his feet and rushed towards the noise. He pulled the curtain to one side, hoping to get a look at whatever had caused the noise.

[Anthr4xus]

Whipping the curtains away floods the room with bright sunlight from outside. Other than more smearing along the bottom of the window there was no sign of whatever critter kept slamming against the window. Lucas also noted that the guy he had noticed before was also gone. Marty stood on tiptoe to look over Lucas' shoulder. He started to say, "Did you see.." when the air just beyond the porch seemed to somehow shift and crack, fractures of light crackling through reality almost quicker than the eye could register. Along the edge of each crack various angles and views of not only this street, but backyards, side yards, alleys and some other street. The cracks began to widen and twist. It was like the effect they had just watched on video but larger and live. As reality began to crack and ripple in front of them, Lucas felt a sudden jolt of pain directly behind both eyes, a sudden knife of a headache exploding to life. Marty gasped a soft moan and Lucas could feel him move back.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, reality zipped itself back together, the cracks and tears undoing themselves even quicker than they had made themselves and the reflections of other places winking away. Lucas could not trust his eyes, but would have sworn that at the very last second, just before the effect vanished completely that he saw something that could not be a real place. In the center of the healing rift there was a great tower of gold, silver and glass with smaller machines of ineffable design and purpose but made of similar gold, silver, crystal and glass gears and mechanisms. An endless maelstrom churned around it. Atop this beautiful construct of rigor, control and cooperative relations sat a great golden eye that looked directly into Lucas's soul. The massive golden doors of the tower cracked open with silver light and the sounds of a great and impossibly complex orchestra of music and industry seemed to play as much to Lucas's soul as his ears. In a moment that seemed to last a lifetime Lucas saw an impossible level of detail, his focus simultaneously everywhere around the tower and himself. Within those great, godly gears Lucas knew there lay many many signatures of those who have contributed to great work and that there was a space there for his name as well, if only he dared to reach out and sign it.

Lucas blinked and the rend in reality was gone, as if it never was. A car slowly rolled down the street, and a fire engine siren could be heard in the distance, wailing like an upset child. Lucas realized that a cold sweat had broken out on his forehead and that there were wet spots under his arm and along his spine, already soaking through his shirt. Almost mindlessly the curtain slipped from his hand, dropping the room back into relative darkness, all the more darker for having seen the pure silver light of the great tower.

Marty stood there, trembling. His small eyes were wide and his breathing fast. "Oh God!" he moaned, "Oh god. That was by far the most dramatic thing yet. Wow. Wow." He blinked and spun on his heel, heading for the kitchen. Standing at the sink he fills a glass with the strangely smelling water and chugs it.

[Gremlin]

As his eye readjusted to the relative gloom of Marty's room, Lucas couldn't help wondering what might have happened had he been in a position to sign his name in the space that was seemingly set aside for him. He felt a sense of disappointment as he blinked some more and wiped the sweat from his forehead, even though the headache was still in full swing. "Dramatic, yeah. That's one way to describe it."

Forgetting himself for a few seconds, Lucas helped himself to a refill of his own water from the sink. After taking a large gulp, buying himself some time to allow his heart rate to start coming down and to think, he thought "Well, he's not crazy or hallucinating...unless we both are." Which led Lucas to his next question.

"Before time messes with your memory, can you tell me exactly what you just saw?"

[Anthr4xus]

Marty said, "It was like the air shattered and in the broken fragments I could see other places around the neighborhood. Then it undid itself somehow, everything falling into a terrible blackness before it was gone. I'm dizzy and have a headache and feel kind of nauseous. How 'bout you? Sh*t, I didn't record it!"

[Gremlin]

"Somethin' similar, complete with headache." Lucas massaged the top of his nose between his eyes as he replied, then got back to making notes. He included his own experience as well as Marty's before time could dilute the memory. Comparing the two, Luas noticed no mention of a tower of any sort in Marty's version of events, and no 'terrible blackness' in his own.

"Don't worry about not recording it. You sure that's all you remember?"

[Anthr4xus]

Marty nodded vigorously. "That's it." He licked his lips. "Some of the things that were reflected in the cracks were really disturbing, although they came and went so fast I'm not sure if I caught real details."

[Gremlin]

"There it is again." Lucas thought at Marty's mention of having seen something disturbing. Although they had definitely experienced something at the same time, his had been borderline wondrous. Lucas could barely think how best to describe the tower. There was however, one last thing he needed to know. "You had this place checked for gas leaks before contacting me, didn't you?"

[Anthr4xus]

Marty looked at him quizzically, "Oh, well no, it's all electric."