#meteor flash michigan

[dfroza]

A Windy Thursday at the freshwater shoreline

december 16 of 2021

imagine writing in a red Lighthouse through years upon years of passing time and watching out for a kind reply (?)

A frozen scene in 1918

Conditions at front light in January 1918

Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

A lighthouse keeper at Grand Haven gave the following description of a meteor that fell from the sky over Lake Michigan on November 26, 1919. “What looked like a ball of fire appeared to fall in the lake about fifteen miles south of me. I thought it to be a falling star. In its rush downward at terrific speed, I could clearly hear it whistle. When it seemed that it was striking the water, a flash of flame shot into the air and caused a great disturbance.” The meteorite caused a deep and prolonged rumbling that shook houses in southwest Michigan and neighboring regions of Indiana and Illinois and caused residents to flee in panic.

Pier lights in 1923

Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

will you protect the genesis from being shipwrecked?

(in its rebirth)

[spaceexp]

Michigan meteor could help researchers understand near-Earth object threats

San Francisco CA (SPX) Aug 23, 2018 The bright flashes that lit up the evening skies near Detroit, Michigan earlier this year were not the only signs of the meteor that disintegrated in the atmosphere on 17 January 2018. The meteor explosion was also captured by infrasonic microphones and seismometers, offering a rare chance to compare these data with satellite and ground camera images. In a report in Seismological Research Full article

[mitchbeck]

CANTLON: FREE AGENT FRENZY

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The free-agent frenzy has led to completing the 2022-23 Hartford Wolf Pack roster as the usual free agency carnival has come and gone. Incredibly, over 150 players changed addresses, and close to a billion dollars in compensation was doled out. Up in New York, the Rangers lost Andrew Copp, who returned home to Michigan to join the Detroit Red Wings. He will line his pockets with $5.65M per season. Kevin Rooney, the cousin of former New Haven Nighthawk Steve  Rooney, headed West to Calgary to join the Flames and will receive $1.4M per season for the next four years. The Rangers paid dearly to upgrade Hartford. Zach Jordan, whose contract has not yet been posted, comes to Hartford via the Cleveland Monsters. Turner Elson from Grand Rapids (GM Ryan Martin's old stomping grounds) at $750K-NHL/$225K-AHL for two years, a 6'0 195 center. Ty Emberson comes from Tucson (contract yet posted), making it now 12 D going into training camp in the fall. Andy Welinski comes over from Stockton (Calgary) on a one-year $400K-AHL deal. The Rangers made their qualifying offers by Mondaefore the 5 pm deadline as per the CBA, and two were very curious. Defenseman Hájek, who played a grand total of 17 games in New York and five in Hartford on a conditioning stint, was amazingly signed for another year at a cap helpful $800K and shockingly big 6'7 forward Austin Rueschoff (contract not yet posted), who signed as a collegiate free agent two years ago from Western Michigan (NCHC) who spent all last year in Hartford. His season could be broken into three parts; a physical start, showed flashes of a hot stick in the middle of the season, and like the rest of his teammates, a disappearing act in the last third of the season as they had a meteoric meltdown of 8-20-2 and out of the AHL playoffs after being in first at the AHL All-Star break. Tim Gettinger was given an offer who played well in all situations in Hartford in four years and was among the taxi squad call-ups got a one-year extension at amazingly as the lanky 6'6 forward got a one-year deal not yet posted. Not to anyone's surprise, the following were not qualified, thus allowing them to go to free agency. They included goalie Keith Kinkaid, who signed in primary for $750K. He was a main culprit in the late-season collapse with many rough performances. Also departing is goalie, Adam Huska (UCONN-HE). In three years in Hartford performed well but was not consistent enough. Tyler Wall played just 15 games in his two years, despite gaudy Hockey East numbers at UMASS-Lowell where he broke long-standing freshman winning record and career wins, but he never replicated those efforts and never gained the trust of his head coach or fellow teammates. His season ended six weeks early with knee surgery from a freak pre-game injury he suffered in Jacksonville. As of now, Zac Jones and Matt Robertson will be on defense. Robertson is a year from his RFA status. On an AHL deal comes Zach Guittari (Loomis Chaffe). That's half the defense. Hunter Skinner, Brandon Scanlin, and Nils Lundkvist are scheduled to return and could be the other half. Up front, the ever polite, pleasant, and gregarious Ty Ronning never built off his surge in performances in 2020-21 or early last season and sputtered at the end. Reports are Ronning, who lives in Vancouver in the off-season, where his father Cliff played with the Canucks and may sign there and head to nearby Abbotsford. Nick Merkley and Maxim Letunov, acquired at the trade deadline, were not re-signed. Merkley was injured in the next to last game in Bridgeport. Letunov was not a match and may be headed back home to Russia to play in the KHL with Torpedo Novgorod, who has his KHL rights. Despite an 81-point year in juniors, Jake Elmer was buried in the ECHL and never got a call-up. Anthony Greco has already left for Sweden. Mike O'Leary, who had minimal offensive output and was a late-season scratch, is gone to Iowa (AHL). Tanner Fritz, Alex Whelan, and Cristiano Di Giacinto are defensemen who all signed AHL  deals. Fritz will be in Hartford and could push the other two to Jacksonville because of the lack of lineup space. D-man Blake Hillman did well in Providence/ Toledo (ECHL) and was last year's training camp invitee is now under contract, Tim Theocaridis and goalie Parker Gahagan (Florida-ECHL/Milwaukee-AHL) have all been signed to AHL deals; four of the five will be in Hart City or likely the ECHL with the teams' affiliate there, the Jacksonville Icemen. Underperforming Justin Richards was given every chance to succeed on all four lines and special teams. However, he will find a new address, likely in the ECHL, after not being qualified. What the team does with the unhappy Lauri Pajuniemi, a year from his RFA, is yet to be determined. Will Jarred Tinordi return to reprise the mentor role or find a new address with his young family? Three part-time players are heading to separate teams in the Slovak Extra league. Abbott Girduckis (HC Presov), Liam Pecararo (HC Slovan Bratislava), and the second Hamden-born player in team history, Mike Lee (the Gunn School), as he heads to (HC Nove Zamsky). A fourth, James Sanchez, is available for other teams. Defenseman Jeff Taylor scratched more than he played in four years as an insurance policy, just 38 games in that time, signed with Adirondack (ECHL), and has new twins just born. Greg McKegg, who played one game in Hartford and 43 games and five points in New York, was cut loose and headed to Edmonton for a lucrative two-way deal of $750K-NHL/$350K-AHL. Billy Thompson, a one-game emergency from Adirondack, heads to play with defending champions Cardiff (Wales-EIHL) next year. Coming in from Europe draftees are; Karl Henriksson  Frölunda HC (Sweden-SHL), Adam Edström (Sweden-Rögle BK). Veteran Gustav Rydahl (Sweden-Farjestad BK) comes on a free agent $750K deal and goalie Olof Lindbom of Kristianstads IK (Sweden-Allsvenskan). Captain Jonny Brodzinski, with his youngest sibling, Easton, is on an AHL deal and scheduled to return. Then four junior-age players, Will Cullye (Windsor-OHL), Brennan Othmann (Flint-OHL), Matt Rempe (Seattle-WHL), and Roger Korczak (Moose Jaw-WHL), are coming to camp. Othmann has to spend a half-season in juniors after training camp with Flint (OHL) because of the CHL and NHL agreement that prohibits 19-year-olds from being in the AHL full-time unless a team's junior season has ended. He will be WJC eligible, which will be when he turns 20 NEXT January 5th. The last day of next year's WJC when it ends in Halifax and Moncton. Bobby Trivigino, signed at the end of the season from UMASS (HE), will be back. Patrick Khordorenko will be in the house in the last year of his deal. PLENTY OF MOVES The number of AHL'ers off to Europe is 42 as ex-Sound Tiger Josh Ho-Sang departs to Salavat Yulaev Ufa (Russia-KHL). Despite the Ukraine war, Russia amazingly leads the Euro race with ten signings. Sweden has nine, with Finland inking seven, Germany six and Austria four. NEWS AND NOTES The Wolf Pack 2022-23 schedule with three new opponents expected out in two weeks. The home opener is October 22nd. The Rangers lost Frank Vatrano to Anaheim. They got the backup goalie they sought in ex-Sound Tiger Jaroslav Halak from Vancouver at $1.5M. They also signed forward Vincent (Vinnie) Trochek from Carolina. To battle for the backup spot with a two-year contract, the Rangers signed Louis Domingue of Pittsburgh. He played with four teams last year (two NHL, two AHL). He hurt the Wolf Pack at the end of the year and nearly stole the Ranger series in an emergency relief situation in Pittsburgh. Instead, he got one-way money at $775K. Former CT Whale Cam Talbot was moved from Minnesota to Ottawa for goalie Filip Gustavsson. Ex-Pack Lias Andersson signs a one-year extension $750K deal with LA. Ex-Pack Malte Strömwall has decided to give North America another try and has  signed a one-year, two-way deal with Carolina/Chicago (AHL) for $750K-NHL/$150K-AHL leaving Dynamo Minsk (Belarus-KHL) Brogan Rafferty (Quinnipiac University) leaves for Anaheim-NHL/San Diego-AHL for Seattle-NHL/ Coachella Valley-AHL at $750K/$250K. --Fellow former Bobcat Chase Priskie leaves Florida-NHL/Charlotte-AHL to Buffalo-NHL/Rochester-AHL on a one-year $800K deal. Goalie Alex Lyon (Yale) from the Calder Cup champion Chicago Wolves/ Carolina (NHL) leaves to head off to Florida-NHL/Charlotte-AHL for one year at $750K. Another ex-Pack goalie, Dustin Tokarski, goes from Buffalo to Pittsburgh for a $775K package. Ex-Pack defenseman Anthony Bitetto goes from San Jose to Florida on a one-year, one-way deal at $750K. Max Pacioretty (New Canaan/Taft) was traded from Vegas to Carolina. Calle Järnkrok, the cousin of former Nighthawk Mikael Lindholm, signs a four-year deal with Toronto for $2.1M leaving Calgary. Rangers signed Adam Sýkora, 17, their first pick in last week's draft to a standard three-year ELC deal at $925K-NHL/$80K-AHL and because of his age, he will more than likely be with Medicine Hat (WHL) next year. They took him first overall in the CHL Import draft two weeks ago. SOMMER IN CALI Ex-Pack/Sound Tiger Joël Bouchard and his staff were sacked in early May. Now San Diego has hired the AHL's winningest coach, 65-year-old Roy Sommer (808 wins), ending a 24-year relationship running San Jose's minor league teams to replace Bouchard after just one year. Sommer also had two years as an assistant in San Jose and half a season as an interim head coach. He started coaching in Cali with the Roller Hockey International San Jose Rhinos (formerly Connecticut (New Haven) Coasters). As a young man, he started his minor pro playing career in the old Pacific Hockey League (PHL) with the Spokane (WA) Flyers. Sommer's hockey coaching journey started in Richmond/Roanoke in the ECHL and has taken him to Cleveland, Worcester, Kentucky, and the Bay Area for the last eight years. Cody MacLeod retires from playing in Iowa to become a skills development coach for Minnesota. The brand-new Coachella Valley (CA) Firebirds (Seattle) signed their first two players, Samuel Bucek from MHC Nitra of the Slovak Extra League, who has been in Slovakia. About six years ago, Bucek had three junior years with the Chicago Steel (USHL) twice and the Shawinigan Cataractes (QMJHL). Then to take care of the heavy lifting, they inked the capable Ian MacKinnon, who had 145 PM between Providence and Maine (ECHL) and Jacksonville (ECHL) last year, totaling 31 games and remembered for his battles with ex-Pack Mason Geersten two years ago. The team hired the first female assistant coach at the pro level, with Jessica Campbell going to the Firebirds. They got from Detroit ex-Pack goalie Magnus Hellberg ticketed initially for Grand Rapids now has been re-routed to the California desert, Jon Gillies (Salisbury Prep) goes from New Jersey to Arizona. After six years in Cleveland, Justin Scott signs with the Colorado Eagles. Andrew Sorenson of Rockford has the interim tag as head coach at Rockford taken off. Daniel Brickley, the cousin of ex-Pack Connor Brickley, after splitting the year between Chicago (AHL)/Norfolk (ECHL), signs with Västerviks IK (Sweden-Allsvenskan). -Nick Sczerbinski, a QU grad, was named as associate commissioner of the ECACHL after six years in Hamden as the associate athletic director for athletic communications since 2018. The Bobcats had another reason to celebrate as Boston hired Danielle Marmer (2017) to work in Player Development and as a Scouting assistant and became the first female bench hire in team history. HARTFORD WOLF PACK HOME Read the full article

[junker-town]

NBA mock draft 2021: Who is rising and falling after NCAA tournament?

Here’s our latest projection of the first round of the NBA draft following the conclusion of the NCAA tournament.

The 2021 men’s NCAA tournament was worth the wait. A year after March Madness was canceled because of the pandemic, 68 teams came to Indianapolis for a bubble setup and gave us a tournament that featured upsets early and the two best teams in the country squaring off in the national championship game.

Now that the confetti has been cleared and the Baylor Bears are wearing men’s college basketball’s crown, it’s time to shift focus to the NBA draft.

The tournament was a mixed bag from a draft perspective. Tennessee’s early exit limited the amount of tape on potential lottery picks Keon Johnson and Jaden Springer, while possible top-10 selections like Arkansas’ Moses Moody and Michigan’s Franz Wagner didn’t play up to their potential despite deep runs by their teams.

The top of our draft board hasn’t changed since the start of the NCAA tournament, but there are a few prospects who have risen because of strong play in March. Baylor guard Davion Mitchell was one of the final cuts in our pre-tournament mock draft, and is now getting lottery hype. A second Baylor player, Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA tournament Jared Butler, has also been projected as a first round pick in our mocks all year.

The NBA draft lottery will be on June 22, and the draft is scheduled for July 29. With the season over for the majority of the prospects, here’s a look at our first round draft projection. These picks were made based on a combination of personal preference, conversations with people around the game, and potential team fit. We’ll have insight on some of the big themes in this year’s class after the table.

Cade Cunningham is still the No. 1 pick

Cunningham entered the season as our projected top pick, and he only reinforced his status as the best prospect in the draft during his freshman year at Oklahoma State. While the Cowboys had a disappointing exit against Oregon State in the Sweet 16, Cunningham put together an All-American year that showed how easily his game is going to translate to today’s NBA.

Listed at 6’8, 220 pounds, Cunningham projects as the lead engine of an NBA offense. He has the passing vision and burst to run pick-and-roll at a high level, and can put added pressure on the defense with his own downhill scoring ability. Cunningham’s three-point shooting was a supposed question mark coming into the season, but he hit 40 percent of his 155 attempts from behind the arc on the year. Teams won’t be able to go under a screen when Cunningham has the ball, which should open up the rest of his game. He also projects as a clear plus defensively, likely checking bigger forwards and having the size and strength to wall up at the rim.

Cunningham’s ability to initiate offense playing on the ball, space the floor off the ball, and defend at a high-level makes him the easiest prospect to build around in this draft. Getting the player like him is the hard part. Once you have one, building a good team becomes so much easier.

Evan Mobley has the edge on Suggs, but it may come down to team fit

We’ve been consistent with USC center Evan Mobley as our No. 2 prospect and Gonzaga guard Jalen Suggs as our No. 3 prospect all year. That remains the case after the tournament, but we won’t fault anyone who has the two prospects flipped. For several reasons, the choice at No. 2 could ultimately come down to whichever team lands the pick.

A team like the Orlando Magic, with former top-10 picks Mohamed Bamba and Wendell Carter Jr. at center, might opt for Suggs as a backcourt complement to Markelle Fultz. The Timberwolves would also have a fascinating decision if they land at No. 2. Suggs, a Minnesota native, would be an intriguing match next to Anthony Edwards in the backcourt. Mobley would be a fascinating fit next to Karl-Anthony Towns at power forward in the short-term and potentially replace him at center long-term if he eventually leaves in free agency. The Wolves really just want to land in the top-four so they don’t have to send their pick to the Golden State Warriors as part of the D’Angelo Russell trade.

Mobley’s combination of length, mobility, and quick decision-making makes him a tremendous two-way fit in the league long-term even if he isn’t wired to be a volume scorer. A case for Suggs over Mobley starts with the relative ease of finding competent big men for cheap. Suggs has some questions when it comes to ball handling and finishing, but so long as his three-point shooting holds up, he should be a tremendous complementary guard in the league for a long time.

We prefer Mobley to Suggs because the USC center feels like he has a greater chance at a truly special NBA career. You really can’t go wrong either way, though.

Who goes No. 6?

The top five of the draft feels set in stone more than three months before the selections will be made. Cunningham, Suggs, and Mobley will be joined by G League Ignite prospects Jalen Green and Jonathan Kuminga in some order. The big question headed into draft season is who goes No. 6.

It feels like there’s six prospects who have a chance to go sixth. In no particular order, those players are:

Jalen Johnson, F, Duke

Scottie Barnes, F, Florida State

Keon Johnson, G, Tennessee

Ziaire Williams, F, Stanford

Moses Moody, F, Arkansas

Franz Wagner, F, Michigan

None of those players helped their cases much in March. Barnes finished with 18 points, six rebounds, and nine assists total across three games in Florida State’s run to the Sweet 16. Wagner ended Michigan’s run to the Elite Eight with four points on 1-of-10 shooting and completely bricked a potential game-winning three. Moody put up disappointing numbers in Arkansas’ final two tournament games despite the team’s run to the Elite Eight. Keon Johnson and Tennessee were smoked in the first round by Oregon State. Jalen Johnson left Duke in February, and Williams didn’t qualify for the tournament with Stanford.

Our personal preference is for Moody at No. 6 because of his length (7’1 wingspan), floor spacing potential, and flashes of one-on-one scoring ability. Our guess is teams might favor Keon Johnson more for explosive athleticism and the impressive year-over-year growth in his skill set. Expect the debate of No. 6 to continue throughout the entire draft process.

Davion Mitchell is March Madness’ big winner

Mitchell started popping up on first round draft boards in the middle of the season. After an incredible run throughout March Madness, the Baylor star has locked in round one status and could end up as a lottery pick.

Mitchell will be a 23-year-old rookie coming off his redshirt junior season, but perhaps that will make him more appealing to a team that wants to fight for a playoff spot. The 6’2 guard has incredible burst with the ball in his hands and can burn any slow-footed big man to the hoop — just ask Drew Timme after the national title game. His three-point shooting took a wild leap this season — from 32 percent to 45 percent. Mitchell has also showcased tremendous point of attack defense, though his size will limit the types of players he can guard.

Scouts will wonder if Mitchell’s big shooting improvement is real considering he’s also a 64 percent free throw shooter. Mitchell’s inability to consistently get to the foul line is also concerning. He only attempted 64 free throws all season in 30 games.

Mitchell was one of our last cuts in our pre-tournament mock draft. Obviously that was a mistake. He will be expected to be selected in the 10-20 range heading into the pre-draft process.

Who will be this year’s Patrick Williams?

Last year, the Florida State freshman was projected as a late lottery pick throughout most of the draft process before going No. 4 overall in a surprising selection by the Chicago Bulls (it looks like a pretty good decision so far). Which player currently projected outside the top-10 has a chance to go on a meteoric rise come draft day?

Our first pick is Kai Jones, the 6’11 Texas big man with freaky flashes of skill and athleticism. Jones only averaged 8.8 points and 4.8 rebounds this year in a bench role, but he led the Longhorns in all-in-one impact stat BPM. You only need to see the highlights of him flying down the floor for a transition finish or hitting a step-back three to see why his package of tools is so tantalizing.

Giddey is another player who started rising up boards midway through the season because of his size and production playing in the NBL. The 18-year-old Australian is a 6’8 guard who has put up better numbers than LaMelo Ball did last year in the same league and same age. Giddey is an unimpressive athlete who will likely struggle getting past the first line of defense while also facing questions defensively. Still, his size and offensive package of skills could entice a team to gamble on him earlier than expected if they think his recent stretch of hot shooting is real.

We’ll answer questions on this mock draft in the comments

Leave a comment or question below and we’ll get back to you. Draft season is officially here.

[alexander--reid]

Anyone else see the meteor tonight??

I'm in southeast Michigan and reports are coming in from all over this part of the state of a bright flash, some people heard and felt it. I think I heard something but didn't feel anything. People are posting videos in the comments on the article on the Fox 2 Detroit Facebook page.

Reports are also coming in from Ohio, Wisconsin, Windsor, and Chicago.

Super neat.

[merelygifted]

My IRL pal Keef hipped me

Flashing light, loud ‘boom’ over Michigan may have been a meteor | FOX2now.com

[dfroza]

may 11 meteor

@GRPress: ‘Brilliant’ meteor fireball seen flashing across Michigan skies. Did you see it?

5.11.19 • 7:26am • Twitter

A shooting star...

[wheaterz]

Testing Maintenance: Chapter 21

This could not have been more typical.

“You know...” Virgil began with a sigh. “I'm not sure you're familiar with Murphy's Law. Do you know Murphy's Law?”

Mel shook her head. The red-haired woman looked pretty fed up.

“Its the concept that if something can go wrong it will go wrong. I think that about sums our luck up pretty well, right?”

She agreed with him wholeheartedly.

They were stranded. Virgil and Mel were currently bumming around on top of the car, Mel laying on her back on the roof while Virgil sat on the engine hood looking out over the miles of land that they had not, and apparently would not, cover. After a miraculous three full hours of driving they had run out of gas. Some of it Virgil suspected was on fumes alone and he also suspected that the fuel they had used may not have been your average gasoline. There was no possible way they would have been able to make three hours on what they'd found alone if Aperture hadn't messed with it, but eventually their car couldn't take it anymore and slowed to a stop. Nothing else was wrong with it. The engine was fine. The tires were fine. The brakes were fine. They had just run out of gas.

The sun had fully set and it was completely dark out now. Crickets could be heard chirping on the side of the road and at one point there had been coyotes howling in the far distance, something that had made Virgil jump initially until Mel explained to him what they had been. They sounded less like animals and more like screaming banshees, in his opinion. Virgil had really thought that by now they would have found something. Anything. This mission that they had been so passionate about and really felt they were making progress in had come to a total halt and they were both downtrodden for it. This had been the worst possible scenario.

Virgil and Mel each wanted to ask the other what they would do next, but neither spoke up because they knew the other did not have a clue. They might as well have been on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. No, that would have even been better than this. Islands provided their own resources. Humans weren't birds, she couldn't just eat the seeds off of the crops for the rest of her life. Mel thought that they would have maybe seen a car. If they stayed put another vehicle could come their way, but then she thought about how this road led to a dead end. If there were humans still around other than inside Aperture they would have put up a sign saying that this highway lead absolutely nowhere. She remembered that the land Aperture was built on was private property and absolutely confidential, but three hours should have given them more than enough space between the labs and civilization. What had happened up here? Every farm house they passed looked rundown and abandoned, so they hadn't bothered stopping to see if anyone was still living inside. They all looked as hopeless as her barn had been.

So it was just the two people. A human and a robot, and a car full of limited supplies for the one half of them that couldn't just live off of sitting under the sun for a few minutes.

“This is awful.” Virgil grumbled, his arms rested on top if his knees and digging his chin into them. He didn't want to feel like the better option would have been for Mel to stay in Aperture, but the urge to was surfacing again. He would never say it out loud, and he suspected he didn't need to. Mel was an intelligent individual, despite some of her odd quirks, and she would have been going over every possible solution in her head. What a good puzzle solver, but there was no puzzle out here for her. Just wheat. The one time Virgil was able to leave the laboratories and the only thing they'd been able to see was basically just dying grass that you could make bread out of. Figures.

Mel wrote him a note and arched her arm backwards and down the window for him to grab whenever he noticed it. He was usually prepared to grab a note from her whenever he heard the pen scribbling. It was dark out but he could read perfectly well with the illumination of his own eyes and   pseudo night vision installed in his head.

I have to walk. There's no other way around this.

“Yeah... Yeah, I know.” Virgil felt something catch in his throat that made his voice raspy. Things he knew weren't there and may have just been memories. “There's no going back from here. We've driven too far. I mean, we must be half way across Michigan by now. We may not even be IN Michigan anymore. We might have just wandered into a different state entirely and what is humanity's obsession with wheat?!”

This is nothing. You should see Kansas.

“I feel like I already have. There's no way this is normal. I've seen pictures of Michigan. Isn't there a lake or something around here we should have hit? Aren't there cities we should have been passing? Mountains? At the very least we should have seen something else growing. Where is everyone?!”

Maybe some of it is barley and oats too.

“Yeah, very funny...” Virgil ran his hands through his hair, knocking his goggles askew. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against his knees, trying to calm down. He felt Mel give him a pat on the shoulder from above, but with how quick it had she clearly wanted his attention. When Virgil looked over at her the human pointed upwards. He followed her finger to the sky and his eyes hung on the millions of little twinkling lights above them. The moon was only on the horizon and was a dim orange, meaning that it left the center of the sky as dark as it could be with the milky way at its brightest potential. Virgil had seen pictures of space. There were the planets in Nigel's testing track, and he was aware of those. He was aware of how they were giant compared to Earth, but he was once again taken by the sheer scale he found himself under. Its one thing to look at photos, it was another to see a star that he clearly new to be Jupiter and to see how small it was from the distance that was between them. He could see Venus, as well, and she was the second brightest thing in the night sky next to the moon.

Mel lay back against the car roof with her hands folded on her stomach. She let out a long, calming breath of air and was smiling. Despite the reality of survival slipping away from the human's grasp, she was being mellow and it really was something Virgil still could not get a clear concept of. He followed her lead, though, and he lay back to look up at the sky. Hopefully he wasn't heavy enough to break the car window, but it seemed to hold him up okay. A meteor flashed across the sky and burnt away in the atmosphere within a second and Virgil's eyes widened. “Oh... that's pretty neat. It does this every night?”

Mel nodded.

“I can see why you wanted to get back up here so badly. I'm just sorry this hasn't been working out.”

I'm not giving up. We can try again tomorrow.

“Right...” Virgil tried to imagine it, but to him it was all very illogical. Nearly impossible. No, just impossible. She was recovering from surgery. This was something that should absolutely, under no circumstances, be happening. All of that work up until now and the pay off seemed to be that Mel was going to just perish on the side of the road somewhere. If that happened, in an odd, slanted reality Aperture had won. The facility kept Mel under lock and key and released her into a post-apocalyptic world. What a sick joke. She seemed to be steadfast and fearless through it all, so he had to wonder.

“Are you scared?”

He didn't have to wait long for Mel to reply.

I've been scared since you woke me up.

“You sure hide it well.” Virgil wished he had that same kind of restraint. “I have to admit, though. I know that situation right now is a little tense, but its kind of nice not having to worry about constant danger. I mean even when it was just me alone in my repair room there was a threat of the area shifting or that I'd fall off my rail again. Here we're just... is there a word for what we're doing right now?”

Stargazing.

He laughed, feeling stupid for asking. “Oh, right. That makes sense, doesn't it? But look at what I mean. I'm about to do something that is absolutely insane.” Virgil sat forward, cupped his hands around his mouth, and at the top of his voice byte he shouted into the night air. “GLADOS! IS! AN! INGRATE!”

There wasn't even an echo to answer him back with how flat the land was and he turned around to grin triumphantly at Mel. “Eh? See that? Couldn't get away with that inside Aperture's walls, could you? She can't hear us. She can't see us. She can't touch us. Same with the Mainframe now, I suppose.” He still hadn't decided if they were one and the same.

Mel had started applauding from where she lay for his performance. The woman stared back up at the stars, taking a breath of the cold night air but coughed a little at how dry it had been and it hurt her lungs. She'd gotten too used to Aperture's musty, recycled air already. She shivered at how chilly it had gotten, rubbing her hands against her arm to tame the goose bumps she'd gained. Still, she could have fallen asleep there staring up at the sky. On many nights in her barn she had done just that. Then she remembered the night that she was pulled into Aperture by Atlas and P-body. She had been stargazing over a rising moon just like this, though it had been a few days and it was no longer full. A sad thought struck her when she gazed at the moon, now growing paler in color the higher it reached for the sky. She handed her thoughts down to Virgil.

I wanted to see humans make it to space, but I missed it.

Virgil scratched at the hair on the back of his neck as he read the note. That was truly something to feel down about missing. “Yeah, by only a few years. NASA launched a rocket to go to the moon in... in...” He thought about it a moment and searched his files. There used to be a way that he could pull it up, but the data was no longer in there and he frowned. “Uh, sorry. I guess I don't have that information. In any case, you guys made it up there.”

The clouds from earlier that had dotted the sky were piling on heavier the more time passed, the wind picking up and sending some to block the sky out. The moon on the horizon was the first to disappear, now only a faint halo of light behind the thick clumps of water. It was a minor detail, but it bothered Virgil that he didn't have all of his files on hand and it felt like a chunk of his brain had been stored away somewhere completely different from his head. It was not at all a comfortable feeling and he shivered at how empty it felt. Where there was supposed to be a year on the moon landing was just a blank slate.

Mel lightly tapped the Maintenance Core and handed him one last note for the evening.

I'm going to get some sleep. Good night, Virgil.

“Oh, okay.” Virgil blinked, being pulled out of his thoughts and grinning at her as she sat up and slid off the roof of the car and to the ground. “Night, Mel.”

He had no need for sleep, so it was going to be a very long night. Virgil watched the human crawl back into the car and attempt to make herself a comfortable sleeping space between the two chairs, but the inside of the car was rather cramped and wasn't suited for lounging. Mel took her boots off and placed them in the back where the food was and tried to stretch her legs from the passenger seat to the driver's side.

Humans needed a warm and comfortable space in order to get rest, right? Virgil checked the temperature. Approximately 6 degrees Celsius and on the other side of the scale 42 degrees Fahrenheit. That was cold, right? Virgil sat up and turned around to look in through the window at her. He deftly tapped the glass. “Hey, Mel? I can't tell, but is it cold in there? Do you want my jacket?”

She looked up at him and nodded, mouthing a 'thank you' in response. Virgil started to slip his jacket off, the vest underneath covered fully in tropical floral patterns with long, white sleeves with a few holes in them. Virgil frowned at how out of shape they looked when compared to his jacket and just decided to roll them up to his elbows so they wouldn't get caught on anything. As he was moving his jacket off, one of the pink sticky notes from the pocket fell out. He was quick to react and grabbed it out of the air. Realizing he should probably grab the other one, he stuffed the first of the notes into the pocket of his pants and searched his jacket for the other.

He read the second note off before putting it away and rolled his eyes. Oh, right. This one was the 'dumb' note. He wondered why he even hung onto this one other than he was being passive aggressive towards Mel at the time. However, as he looked at the pink sticky note a thought struck him, one that should have been clear to him much sooner than now. Virgil got off the hood of the car and went around to the passenger window where Mel was trying to get comfortable and handed her his jacket. “Here you go. Sorry about any oil stains on it.”

She didn't mind and was just happy to have something to wrap around her shoulders and arms as she drifted off. Virgil walked away and paced around the road for a bit while she fell asleep. His thoughts ran away from him and went in all kinds of crazy directions. He thought about things along the lines of 'this is ludicrous' and 'I'm out of my processor'. It was funny that when he did not have company he could talk to himself for hours, but now that he had someone else with him and she was sleeping he knew very well to keep his big trap shut. So many things had gone wrong that he was only asking for disaster at this point. While Virgil was stressing, Mel had fallen asleep, unaware of her friend's inner turmoil just beyond the car. When he'd done a good ten minutes of pacing, Virgil walked back to the window to see if Mel was still awake. She was not, so it was now or never.

Virgil planted the sticky note on the car wheel with Mel's hand writing. The stunt he was about to pull would make him an enormous hypocrite, but he was at least getting a better understanding of Mel's thought process when she'd initially made the note. He stood in front of the car, the long run of black tar stretching through bare fields into the sky. Fields that had crickets, crows, coyotes and possibly other things starting with C that they had not yet seen that could have been hiding from them. Crocodiles? No, those needed water, didn't they? He was pretty sure they were on the wrong part of the map for those, anyway, but he couldn't find that file either. This was beginning to get mildly annoying.

“Oh boy...” He attempted to psyche himself up for the long walk he was about to take. “Okay, here we go. Just going to put one foot in front of the other and not look back. See if there's something over that rise. That's not too far, right? Mel, she just keeps going and going. She doesn't stop and she's got muscles. Those get tired. I don't have muscles and I don't get tired so it should all just be...fine. It'll all be fine.”

So much for trying not to talk to one's self so the human didn't wake up. Thankfully, Mel had been sleeping like a stone and it gave Virgil the perfect gate to start heading off without a single word out of her in protest. Because she would have been against this, and for probably a very good reasons. He just didn't want to think about what those reasons were.

Virgil shook himself out, squared himself up, stiffened his chin, and walked.

At first, being alone on the road wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. It was not much different from his management rail. Back in Aperture he could go for very long periods of time without speaking to anyone and did nothing but ride along his rail, following it wherever it decided he should go while he searched for parts for his workshop. The basic concept was there. He was alone, walking a straight line to a location, it was dark, and he was searching for something. Even though there was a clock that told him the time at all hours, and was 100% accurate to his region, Virgil had no real concept of how it passed. That was how it used to be, anyway. He had grown so used to having Mel to talk to over the past few days that a task he was usually able to do without a hindrance now seemed to be taking ages. He could have started talking to himself again, but he didn't feel like it.

The coyotes started howling again, but they no longer bothered him and he realized that even if they wanted to attack him his assist droid body was made of metal and wouldn't have been fun for them to digest. If Virgil was able to look up anything on them at all he would have known that they did not normally attack people and were hardly bigger than a small house dog, but in his current state of mind he could not pull the information up. He wondered if he was losing his mind, and realized that may as well have been it. Some of what made him so intelligent was that he had access to all kinds of information fed to him and the other cores throughout Aperture whenever they needed it, and he was one of the few that new how to utilize it correctly, or even cared to. He had to ask himself if what was happening was dangerous, and decided that it wasn't. It was just embarrassing. He'd be more scatterbrained than usual.

Hours had passed and the crickets chirping began to die. The clouds had fully rolled in and completely covered the sky, turning from black to a blue-gray the closer the morning came. Virgil would stop every now and then to do a 360 turn around, making sure that he wasn't being followed or if he'd missed catching any other forms of life. He'd been startled by a flock of black birds that flew out of the field from right beside him and he jumped away with a shout, taking the hint to keep walking. The wind had picked up and was knocking his hair around, sweeping it to the side and managing to get a shiver out of Virgil by how strange it felt, rather than the temperature. It would not be the strangest sensation, however. When the morning had lightened up and turned the world around him silver with low clouds, a light spray of water showered down.

Virgil stopped dead in his tracks, raising his arms over his head and shielding himself from the light drizzle that was coming down and protesting loudly. “Oh come ON!”

He was waterproof, as long as he wasn't absolutely submerged, but having soggy clothes was still terrible. The android had been walking for hours and was fed up with this new mishap, kicking a stone clear off the road and upsetting some birds in the field to go flying away. He raised his head to the sky and yelled at it. He'd gotten into the habit of yelling at astronomical, mighty forces of power recently and it was one he didn't seem ready to break out of any time soon.

“There anything else you want to throw at me?! I can stand it! Try me! Just try it! You want to fight me, nature? I'll win! There's nothing you could give that I can't take! I have a human stuck in a car in the middle of nowhere with waning rations but SURE! Lets make water fall from the sky on ol' Virgil and make it even harder on him to find help! Right! It’s not like I was keeping an eye out for air crafts or anything useful like that!”

He grit his teeth, then flinched when he got a droplet in his eye. He grumbled something nasty under his breath and grabbed a hold of his goggles, pulling them down over his eyes so that he wasn't getting at least part of his face rained on. He was just about ready to continue his walk, but the sensation of the water had been tingly and he stayed in one place to focus on it. In his anger he had failed to realize that this was water that was falling out of the sky at him without any other resource. The sky didn't just spring a leak from a pipe or anything structural like that. It was simply just coming out of the clouds. Virgil blinked a few times as he slowly calmed down and continued to stare at it.

“Huh.”

There was a flash somewhere in the distance and he looked up. Far away over the flat fields where the mist obscured the horizon and you could see the dark underbellies of storm clouds, bright light pulsed and flickered for a fleeting moment and disappeared. Virgil stood by to see if it would happen again, but the follow up was a low, faint rumble. As fascinating as he considered his first real experience with thunder and lightning, Virgil decided that this was not the place to be stopping. “Oop. Time to go.”

He quickened his pace. Actually, come to think of it, what exactly was stopping him from just running? Absolutely nothing, he'd try that.

-----

Mel would have slept longer if she had been somewhere comfortable. Unfortunately, the combination of light coming in through the windows and the thinly cushioned seats of the mobile sardine can didn't beg for a five star rating in luxury. The woman had been very stiff sitting up and the first thing she did was stretch the soreness away. Mel was all for having herself a good breakfast, bag up the food into an old backpack she'd found in the car, and then get straight to their hike away from the broken down vehicle. She patted her hands against the jacket she had used for a blanket and smiled, ready to give it back to its owner. Mel was about to get out of the car when she realized it had been lightly drizzling since at least the early morning hours and had to wonder why it was Virgil had not retreated inside. In fact, it was a miracle he hadn't woken her up about it, especially since she could hear a trace of thunder in the distance.

Using the jacket over her head as a shield from the rain, Mel opened the car door and went out to see if he was walking around outside to check on the weather, but after doing a full circle around the car there was no trace of him. Feeling panic raise a knot in her injured stomach, Mel looked around the inside of the car again to see if he'd somehow managed to squeeze into the back, but she had no luck finding him there either. It wasn't until she'd done looked back into the car that she caught a glance at the pink piece of paper pasted to the steering wheel. It had been one of her's, and obviously worn from being folded and stuffed somewhere. She read the text in her handwriting and remembered Virgil had pocketed it. She assumed it was because she had said something that amused him, but this was far from funny anymore.

'I'll go. You stay.'

Mel dropped the note on the damp ground and threw the jacket back into the car through the open window. She circled around a few more times, looking for any sign of Virgil in the fields or if he'd made some kind of imprint in the wheat. When she didn't see him on the road Mel climbed onto the car and stood up on the roof, scanning the horizon for however further of a scope that little extra height had given her. She didn't see him on the highway anywhere. He was just gone.

A hand went to Mel's stomach, a sharp pain causing her to grip the fabric of her jumpsuit. Her knuckles turned white at how tightly she held the suit between her fingers and she doubled over. Despite the deep belief that it would not work, Mel opened her mouth and attempted to call him. She forced air from her lungs and through her throat, moving her lips to form Virgil's name but the only sound out of her were some gasps and a choked up, strain of a whimper. She eventually stopped when she'd tried calling so hard that she'd gagged, folding into herself and sinking to sit on top of the roof. She hugged her arms around her waist.

Any number of things could happen, and every one of them occurred to her in that moment. They raced through her head in flashes of horrible imagery from the android finding himself hopelessly lost to fully breaking down and not being able to function. She thought about how she had gone to sleep the night before in the company of one of the few things she still had as a constant and how he'd walked away. Had things been different between them, she would have suspected he went back the other way towards Aperture. She knew this wasn't true, even though she hoped that had been the case. She felt he might have had a better chance if he just retraced his steps and found his way back. She knew, though, that he'd gone forward and was looking for help on her behalf.

What could she do? He could have taken off the moment she was asleep, giving him hours of an advantage ahead of her and he did not grow tired. And he'd asked her to stay there. What if he found help and she wandered off where he couldn't find her? Either way she thought about it, his condition would remain unknown to her unless they got really lucky. Mel felt the cold spray against her back, but she stayed huddled on the roof of the car until she'd started to shake violently. She wiped the moister from her brow, droplets collecting on her eyelashes. She wasn't helping anything to stay out there and catch a cold, so she reluctantly slid back off the roof and into the passenger's seat of the car. Mel rolled the windows up and curled folded under the warmth of the jacket that had been left behind. She'd have some food and she would look out at the rain, but all she could do for now was wait and hope that everything was going to be okay.

Time passed, and so did the storm. Mel was relieved that it had never rained too hard or that the lightning had gotten too close. She didn't know how Virgil would have fared walking around in full downpour. She wondered if he could act as a lightning rod, and she added the possibility to her list of worries. The day went by without a glimpse of the android, hours passing over her with the sun until the sky could be seen through the clouds again. The sky turned pink with the setting sun and the darkness of night returned, only Mel did not feel like going out and watching the stars like the night before. She felt like she may not enjoy it the same way that she used to ever again after having one night to show it to someone that had never seen the sky before. She had been isolated before, and as much as it had bothered her then, she knew that anyone she cared about was already long gone. The situation had shifted so that she had something to actually lose this time.

Mel had her dinner and threw the can of tuna out of the car window and onto the pavement, hearing it clatter and startle an animal in the field close by. She sat up to see over the rim of the window, watching two glowing, green eyes catch the moonlight and disappear. She guessed it to be a fox out hunting field mice. She starting to get sleepy again, realizing it was most likely drawing close to the same time that she'd gone to bed the night before. She didn't want to sleep. It didn't feel right to, but she had nothing else to do but sit there and feel horrible.  Eventually, whether Mel had wanted to or not, she drifted off in the tiny, car sized haven in the center of the wilderness full of food and warmth, if not the most comfortable seats. Time had passed by so slowly that day and she felt ill. As much as she had not wanted to fall asleep, her body was relieved for all of the extra rest it was finally being rewarded with after so much physical turmoil and she slipped into it deep.

Another day went by without a word from Virgil, and the day after had been just as uneventful. Mel had nothing to occupy her time with other than getting out to walk around and stretch when the Gremlin became too cramped for her to sit in any longer. She had to restrain herself from eating too much of the canned food and had limited herself to two per day. One in the morning and one in the evening. At one point Mel tried walking a distance until she got a raised view in the surrounding land, but it made no difference. There wasn't anything to see. When she'd returned to the car she passed some more of her time by plucking a few stocks of wheat and took the seeds out to throw on the road for a couple of mourning doves that had dropped in for a rest. When they'd lost interest in being fed any longer, Mel slid back into the car once again and started drawing on her sticky notes, pasting her doodles up along the inside of the car as decoration. Drawings of things she'd remembered from her childhood, such as animals at the zoo or more current characters like the robots she had seen going through Aperture. She drew the singing turrets, adding little music notes up beside them. When she decided that was enough wasted paper for one afternoon Mel did a whole great amount of nothing at all.

She almost preferred being harassed by mordant, murderous machines over this.

Again, night fell for the third time since they had escaped without much of anything happening. The cans of food she'd brought were already half gone and she began to wonder if she had made the right decision by leaving a few back in Aperture. It seemed to be more of an emotional decision rather than actually using her brain. Her head probably would have told her that this scenario was a possibility and to take everything you can. All the cans that you can. Like background noise that one may only pay attention to selectively, the worry she held for Virgil came back and disrupted any peace she may have formed for herself over the past few hours. The woman lay back and folded her arm over her eyes, evening out her breathing and calming her nerves, but with shallow success.

“We've got this.”

She repeated those words to herself a few times, spinning them through her head and making the effort to believe them. They got this. Against all odds, this was only just another bump in the road for two very stubborn people. Mel had no other choice but to eventually fall asleep, again with the fear of isolation to disturb her dreams. Through the darkness she could feel the draft whistling through Aperture's greatly spacious areas like the testing droid repair station that hung over a pit into the center of the earth and the loud hum of factory machines building cubes, turrets, and whatever else the facility called for. She saw the burning red glow of the robots that had been shut down by the mainframe and how the darkness was thick enough to suffocate.

Mel opened her eyes. The dim light of dawn was the first thing to welcome and comfort her, and the woman relaxed, tightening the jacket over her shoulders from the freezing, crisp air coming in through cracks in the car's sides. When Mel closed her eyes to try and fall back asleep for a couple more hours, she realized that the hum of Aperture that had been in her dreams was something she was currently hearing while she was awake as well. There was the distinct, grated churning of an engine and Mel sat up to look out over the road from the window shield. Coming down the highway towards her car was a faded blue pickup truck with chipped paint and rust along the edges. It looked to be in no better shape than Mel's car, but it was running and coming right towards her.

The red-head flung the car door open and stepped out onto the road, waving her arms into the air to flag the truck down. From where she stood she began to make out a shape past the window of the vehicle. The driver was a woman, but she seemed to be the only visible passenger. However, once they were close enough, a figure leaned over the side from the back of the truck, his spikey head of brown hair whipping around in the breeze as he waved at her excitedly. Virgil cupped a hand to the side of his mouth and hollered at Mel as they came down the road. He looked so very proud of himself. “Hey, Mel! Look what I found!”

Mel was overjoyed. She stood by, only just barely managing to wait for the truck to slow down and come to a stop. The driver remained in her truck once it was parked, but Virgil jumped out of the back to meet Mel on the road the second they had stopped and the whole car rocked under his weight as he bounced off of it. Mel, barefoot on a road that was damp and chilled from the morning condensation, ran straight for Virgil and flung her arms around him in the tightest hug she could physically give him. Virgil had nearly been knocked over at the velocity she'd taken in just that small distance, but he straightened himself out and returned the gesture. “I know I said I was going to stop scaring you. Sorry about this.”

He was going to be sorry. Mel quickly let go of him, frowning furiously at the robot, and despite having hands too soft and frail to really do anything to his plated robot body, she began to whale on him. Virgil shrank away from her, surprised by the sudden switch in attitude and brought his arm up to protect himself. “Ow! OW! I can feel that you know—OW! Okay, okay! I said I'm sorry! Look, I got a truck and everything so it worked, didn't it? Ouch! Quit hitting me!”

The woman in the truck watched them curiously, leaning silently against the front wheel to observe them from the car window, but did not bother to get out of the truck to interrupt their moment.

Mel stopped, if only because her hands were starting to get sore, but her eyes were red with stress and water was collecting along the bottom lids. She'd been trying to stay mad at him with a stiff lip, but it quivered and broke the illusion that she was as angry as she wanted to let on. It was exactly like when he'd dropped off his rail to get away from Atlas and P-body, only that time he had been a pathetic, beaten up ball of metal and it felt wrong giving him a good smack. Here he was alive, happy, and perfectly stable. She could be as mad at him as she wanted to be and not feel bad about it. The woman took up a note.

That was stupid of you!

“I'm not going to even try arguing that.” Virgil's mouth pulled into a wry, lopsided frown. “It was completely stupid. I even got rained on. And boring. It was tremendously boring. But look!” He held an arm out in the direction of the truck, the woman in the driver's seat waving at them when she realized she was being addressed. “I found a town not too far from here! Its not much, but its a town. Everything's a little worn out and I might have tried, um... I might have tried stealing this truck.”

Mel raised perplexed brow at him and pointed to the running vehicle.

“Yeah. That one. I tried to hijack it to bring it out here, but then got caught by the owner—that nice lady over there in the front seat, yes. Her. She was ready to toss me up and down the place until I explained our situation and she was surprisingly nonchalant about the whole thing, considering how insane it must sound from an outsider's point of view. She offered to drive me out here to get you, on the condition that I ride in the back, and even got some extra gas packed for our car.”

Why didn't you just ask someone to begin with?

“Um...” Virgil looked behind him at the truck, the lady in the driver's seat still very patiently waiting for them while they spoke. “I got a little nervous. I mean, look at me. I have visible joints, a broken eye, and what looks to be a headlight in the cavity of my chest from a human's perspective. I'm clearly suspicious.”

Mel shrugged, but nodded. She could agree with that. He was deceptively human in many ways, but not enough to warrant immediate trust.

“Hey, why don't you two get acquainted while I fill the Gremlin up. You still have my jacket, right?” Virgil thumbed over his shoulder at the human in the truck and jogged up behind the running vehicle to climb into the back and grab for the canisters of gas they had brought. He was going to have to make a couple of trips, but once they were beside the car, Virgil leaned into the passenger window and grabbed his jacket out of the seat to slip back on. He felt weird walking around without it. It was nice to have pockets to stuff his hands into when he wasn't doing anything with them, and it had driven him crazy the whole walk.

Mel watched Virgil make himself busy, and while he was filling the Gremlin up she glanced at the woman at the front of the truck. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she wore a denim jacket over a black shirt. Mel walked up to the window of the passenger door to look in at her, not yet bold enough to approach the driver's side. She observed the other woman like she'd been a whole other species and Mel subconsciously checked for glowing eyes or the same seams that Virgil had around the neck and his wrists. She hadn't meant to be cautious, but the woman didn't seem to take any offense to it. They looked to be about the same age, or physically, at least. Mel believed herself to be a perfectly aged bottle of wine by now.

The driver then spoke up, her tone even and diligent. The woman had a stern, steeliness about her eyes that commanded attention, partnered in contrast with the warm understanding in her voice. “Can you talk?”

Mel was a little startled by the question. She shook her head.

“But you used to be able to, right?”

Mel nodded.

“Its fine, then. We'll get you fixed up once we're back. Are you injured anywhere else?”

The red-head's hand went to her stomach where the bullet had been. Though it had been removed and the wound had healed up for the most part, she still had a stabbing pain from her core if she moved around too much, so she nodded. She'd also noticed that she'd earned herself a slight limp when she walked, but she hoped that it was only temporary.

The woman in the truck kept her hands to the wheel, her slate gray eyes shifting from Mel to the window in front of her and she nodded out over the road at Virgil. “It's done filling the car.”

Mel was a little thrown off by the pronoun used for the android, at first, but when she realized she had been talking about Virgil she looked over to see that he had finished emptying the last of the gas into the Gremlin. Now that her head had cleared and she could think straight, Mel found it strange that they needed to fill the gas tank at all. It would have been more efficient to simply ride in the truck with the other human and abandon the other car altogether rather than riding along behind her. Mel studied her friend, her fingers curling into an anxious fist and relaxed again when she decided to approach him. As she walked she took a note from the thinning cube in her pocket.

Virgil closed off the clasp over the gas tank and smiled up at Mel as if nothing in the world was wrong. However, his enthusiasm thinned when he saw that she was not sharing the same energetic high that he was. “Is... something wrong? I know that other human seems a little cold, but...”

Are you leaving?

Virgil had been avoiding the subject so that they could share this victory. They had finally triumphed and it should be cause for celebration. It wasn't meant to last, though, and he knew he'd be the cause of it. She stood before him, her eyes demanding a straight answer out of the core. He wouldn't side step her. He was once able to beat around negative details when she had been in Aperture her first time through, but it seemed that it was no longer part of is nature. At least not with her.

“I had a lot of time to think while I was walking. As amazing as this place is and as happy for you as I am that you finally made it here, its not for me. I've lost a chunk of myself leaving Aperture behind. I have files that I can no longer access, just as an example. That's not even an important detail, but it made me realize how out of place I am. I'm just not... I'm not supposed to be out here, Mel. I need to be back there where I can do what I was made for. I don't expect you to understand why, because I don't fully get it either.”

Mel looked as if she would melt where she stood. Every feature of her sunk and her bright blue eyes shaded over. She reached out and grabbed for his hand hurriedly and tugged at it in the direction of the truck desperately. When he didn't budge she pulled another note out on him. He didn't stop her like he had before and let her get it out the best way she could.

I can help you live here. We can work through it.

“Mel...”

He fell silent again since the woman was already on to her next note.

You don't have to go back there.

“Mel.”

We worked so hard.

You can find purpose out here.

You deserve this just as much as I do.

I can't lose anyone else. Please, don't do this.

“Melanie.”

She had already been half way through her next protest, but the mention of her full name caused her to freeze up. Mel's hands quaked and they dropped the pen and paper. Virgil reached out for her and drew her in, wrapping his arms around the human and keeping her close. She slowly raised her hands and returned the embrace, feeling as though she had been tricked into thinking that her heart could not break anymore, but this had hurt too much. She wanted to ask him to stay with her own words and question his reasoning, but if all she could offer were small pieces of paper with writing than she could barely get an argument out. She wasn't sure that if she could speak he'd be any easier to convince. The only thing she could do to keep him longer was to stay like that.

“I'm sorry...” The ghost sensation had returned. That pressure that built up in his chest and to his forehead that he could not relieve. On pure reflex he ran a thumb under his cheek from where his head was bowed over Mel's shoulder, and in doing so he realized what it was that was bothering him. However, his cheek had been dry when he'd checked. “I have no excuses, but I am sorry. I'm going to be fine but you're going to be great. You get to leave and conquer. You... heheh. You're getting me worked up. I didn't even think that was possible.”

He pulled back, wiping his hands under his eyes again but they remained dry. He laughed at how ridiculous he must have looked. “We're a pretty good team, right? We shut down AEGIS and faced off against GLADOS head on. We beat the Mainframe, which is basically like fighting Aperture itself. Not bad for a simple Maintenance Core.”

She shook her head. He'd gotten her to smile again, if only briefly. As Mel had smiled, though, his own disappeared. This could very well be the last time they ever saw each other and he didn't want her to leave with just a few frail pieces of paper and a pen. Virgil patted himself down, searching for something he could offer her. He remembered waking up to seeing his friend had taken his goggles off in order to put them on herself and he reached for his head for them. “Uh, here. You can have these. They look better on you, anyway. Just something of me to... to keep with you. Its not all of me but its something.”

Mel accepted the goggles, running her thumb over the lens fondly. She fixed them over her bun so that they rested on top of her head in the same way Virgil wore them when they weren't being utilized. Mel mouthed to him 'thank you' and leaned forward to plant a kiss on his cheek before pulling him in for one last hug. Virgil was a little dazed by the kiss he'd gotten. It had been a new sensation, but not at all a bad one. It didn't stop him from returning the hug.

“Take care of yourself, Mel.”

Neither of them wanted to let go, but Mel was still aware there was a very kind person waiting on them to bring her back to the town. When she separated herself from Virgil, Mel held onto his hands and bobbed them up and down, giving him one last, misty smile. There were so many things she wanted to say to him. There was so much she'd wanted to share and talk about, but they had never been given the opportunity to talk like normal people. Mel couldn't, at the very least, and it had made the short time they'd spent together even briefer. When she'd collapsed and Virgil had found her food, Mel had been perfectly content with just getting to talk with him. No danger, or any good reason to run from it up until GLaDOS intervened. They just spoke for the longest time in the isolation of that ruined lobby deep in the depths of the earth. She picked up her pen from the floor, and instead of writing on the paper she used the palm of her left hand, holding it up to him with the blue ink smudging slightly, but the message was clear.

See you later, Virgil.

“Heheh... Yeah, see ya.”

She felt good about being able to return the goodbye this time, whether she could speak or not. Virgil waved to her as the human turned around to head for the truck. She opened the passenger door and situated herself into the front seat, the woman beside her reminding her to fasten her seat belt. The android stood on the road, waving until the truck had backed up and turned around, his last glimpse of Mel seen through the rear view mirror on the side and she was still waving back to him until he was too small for her to make out his face. He watched them go for a long time. The sun had finally come up over the horizon, drastically changing the sky from pink to orange and setting the fields on fire with color.

“She's out.” Virgil mumbled to himself. “She is out...Good job, Mel. Hopefully, you'll get to enjoy it this time around.” He'd never felt so conflicted, a mass of remorse and relief at odds with one another, but above it all was fulfillment. He was allowed to feel good about it, as well as sorry. Perhaps, bittersweet was the word he'd been searching for. He'd really been out of his own head, recently. It was time to head back home now that their Champion had been escorted out of the stadium.

This was a triumph.

[viralnews-blogger-blog]

Flash of light and loud bang in Michigan was meteor, experts say

Hundreds of people in Michigan and surrounding states said they find fireball light up the sky on Tuesday night

Michigan Flash of illumination and loud bang in Michigan was meteor, experts say

Hundreds of people said they say fireball light up the sky

US Geological Service says it registered as 2.0 magnitude earthquake

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[scottbcrowley2]

Science Says: That Michigan meteor could have been meatier - Wed, 17 Jan 2018 PST

The fireball that streaked through the Michigan sky put on quite a show but as far as potentially killer space rocks, it was merely a flash in the pan. Science Says: That Michigan meteor could have been meatier - Wed, 17 Jan 2018 PST

[premayogan]

The Most Watched Space Videos of 2018!

We've got the solar system under surveillance, and it sure does pay off. Cameras deployed on Earth and in space captured some crazy amazing video, ranging from meteors exploding in the atmosphere, to a Tesla car making its way out to Mars, to extraterrestrial weather events in gas giant planets.

1) Super Blue Blood Moon Eclipse of 2018

This year saw an extra-special lunar eclipse that coincided with a Blue Moon– the second full moon in a single month. Combined with a close approach between the Earth and the moon, this meant the lunar eclipse of Jan. 31 was a spectacular sight for millions of observers in North America. While many U.S. viewers were clouded out, you can see in the video here that a lot of folks still got to check out the amazing celestial view. The next total lunar eclipse in North America will happen on Jan. 21, 2019.    

2) SpaceX's Starman in space

No words can describe the awesomeness of the first Falcon Heavy rocket launch by SpaceX, which on Feb. 6 hefted a Tesla Roadster (complete with a dummy nicknamed "Starman") into low Earth orbit. Within short order, the driving astronaut suited mannequin was on its way to Mars orbit – producing a sequence of stunning shots that you can see in a short video.     The Falcon Heavy launch met most major objectives, with the two booster rockets touching down safely for future launches; the main core stage unfortunately didn't stick the landing.

3) Soyuz launch fails

An American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut had a surprising roller-coaster ride to space on Oct. 11, when a deformed sensor on their Soyuz rocket failed en route to space, as you can see in this launch video. Within minutes, a routine flight turned into an abort – but the Soyuz spacecraft (the spacecraft has the same name as the rocket) performed flawlessly and parachuted the two crew members of Expedition 57 back to Earth. A few weeks later, Russian space officials released a rocket booster view showing what happened during flight. Engineers addressed the issue and Expedition 58 made a flawless launch from Kazakhstan Dec. 3.

4) Chinese Space Station Falls to Earth

China's Tiangong-1 space laboratory safely burned up in the atmosphere April 1 over the Pacific Ocean, generating interest from satellite watchers around the world. Today's high-tech radar systems can track incoming space objects with high precision, allowing planners to better predict where the re-entering space station was going to fall. Forecasting is a challenge, however, because where an object falls depends on the nature of the Earth's atmosphere, how the object is tumbling, and what the object is made of.  

5) 4 Supernovas In One Blow!

In several star-shattering kablooms, you can see stars of several types meeting their ultimate demise in this cool NASA video. The data, based on NASA's Kepler space telescope (which ran out of fuel late this year), also showed a new type of star explosion different from any other supernova ever charted. The venerable telescope spotted the energy wave from a star smashing into a nearby dust and gas shell, converting most of the kinetic energy into a brilliant flash of light.

6) Cyclones on Jupiter

While Jupiter's radiation environment would make it a tough destination for astronauts, the specially shielded Juno spacecraft provided an awesome view that let us "fly" over the massive planet's poles. Swirling below are huge polar cyclones, ranging in diameter from 2,500 miles to 2,900 miles (4,000 to 4,600 kilometers) – nearly twice the equivalent length of the United States. Making the view all the cooler, before Juno we barely knew what was happening at Jupiter's poles. This makes Juno a valuable asset to better predict the gas giant's weather patterns.

7) Asteroids and Fireballs!

It's been a spectacular year for sky shows, with many asteroid flybys and exploding meteors captured in the camera viewfinder. (A meteor is an object entering the Earth's atmosphere, while an asteroid is a space rock.) In April, a newly discovered space rock slipped between the Earth and the moon; while the flyby was harmless, astronomers reminded us it was similar in size to the object that exploded over Tunguska, Russia more than 100 years ago, flattening the forest. Also in 2018, two fireballs from separate meteors exploded over Michigan and Australia; while they were small and caused no damage, the events sparked intense interest in astronomy and potential meteorites in those areas.

8) Moons of Mars Seen From Orbit

A cute video returned from Mars in February appeared to show the moons Phobos and Deimos dancing in the dark, but the real story is more clever illusion. NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft took several images during a 17-second time span, and the visible motion is due to changes in the viewpoint of Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera. While we were wowed by the images, THEMIS took pictures in the thermal-infrared wavelength – a common band of light used to better learn the nature of an object's composition.

9) Auroras on Saturn!

There's no longer a spacecraft at Saturn since Cassini died in 2017, but the Hubble Space Telescope made some amazing observations from its perch in Earth orbit. The venerable observatory captured ultraviolet auroras circling the north pole during and after the summer solstice in that region. The ultimate goal is to better understand how these auroras change during time. Earth gets auroras as well, when the sun's particles interact with oxygen and nitrogen far up in our atmosphere, but at Saturn its gas molecules are mostly made up of hydrogen.

10) Rovers on an Asteroid!

In scenes that feel like a futuristic video game, the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft deployed hopping rovers on asteroid Ryugu in September. The little world's weak gravity allowed them to bounce and move about quite easily, providing a valuable close-up view of the asteroid's pebbles and regolith composition. In 2019, Hayabusa2 should start touchdowns of its own to pick up valuable asteroid dust; next will be a daring return back to Earth, where scientists will analyze its precious load.   Read the full article

[lopezdorothy70-blog]

UFOs Spotted Off The Irish Coast By Airline Pilots – Here Are The Details

A pilot flying from Montreal, Canada to Heathrow airport in the UK spotted “a very bright light” that had come up along the left side of their aircraft before it “rapidly veered to the north.” This is a common characteristic of UFOs that have been spotted by both airline and military pilots since the dawn of human aviation. The older our civilization gets, the more time we spend in the air and the higher we climb, the more reports of strange objects seem to arise.

She wondered what it could be, but said it did not seem to be heading for a collision. When I read this, I thought of Ex-Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer's comments stating that these objects often performed evasive maneuvers when in the vicinity of our aircraft.  Unfortunately, he stated that as the jets scrambled to look closer at the UFOs, they were ordered to “shoot first, and ask questions later.” Add that to Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell's statement that, “yes, there has been crashed craft, and bodies recovered,” and we can deduce that the protocol, in the military at least, is to try and shoot these things down. That doesn't seem like a very intelligent approach.

This topic goes far beyond witness testimony from some very credible people; there is electrooptical data and physical evidence that has been associated with this phenomenon as well. These objects are not only seen by pilots, they're also tracked on radar.

Glowing Orbs Over Ireland

At least three pilots were involved in witnessing glowing orbs that were spotted near Shannon, Ireland at “astronomical” speeds,  according to the Guardian:

Other aircraft flying in the area reported the same thing. A pilot, flying a Virgin Airlines plane from Orlando to Manchester described the sight as a “meteor or another object making some kind of re-entry,” adding it seemed to be “multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory – very bright from where we were.” Another pilot also weighed in, saying: “Glad I'm not the only one.” A spokesman for the Irish Aviation Authority told the Irish Times it was investigating the incident and would file a report. “This report will be investigated under the normal confidential occurrence investigation process.”

There were multiple objects reports here, and meteors do not veer off at astronomical speeds. The pilots reported seeing one object become multiple objects, which is common in UFO lore. I've been studying the subject for more than a decade, so it didn't surprise me. Identifying this as a 'meteor' may comfort some people reading about this incident in the mainstream, because it fits within their current perception. But more and more people are having to face the fact that these incidents clearly do not fit within the mainstream paradigm of reality, and we really need to go through the discomfort of breaking this paradigm in our own minds if we hope to arrive at the truth of what is going on.

Other Incidents

There are many corroborating incidents out there of even more 'jaw-dropping' proportions, from the perspective of the pilots involved. With regards to commercial aviation, perhaps the most well-documented incident is the one that took place at O'Hare international airport. It caused a shutdown of the entire airport, similar to an incident that took place in China a few years ago.

Here's a quote from December 16th, 1978, issued by the Chilean Air Force with regards to a UFO encounter, similar to what the Pentagon released. Again, keep in mind, this is something that's happened thousands of times over the past few decades, and perhaps thousands of times every single year:

“Two pilots on a training mission, each flying an F5 fighter aircraft, tracked the object on their airborne radar. It gave a return equal to ten or more aircraft carriers-except this object was in the air, not floating on the water. Each pilot assumed his radar equipment was faulty until he learned that the other pilot was also getting the same return. Not only this, but ground radar from a nearby airport also picked up the object and confirmed its huge size. The pilots also saw the object with their own eyes. One pilot later said that at a distance of twenty miles, it looked “like a plantain banana swathed in smoke.” The pilots were frightened, having no missiles or weapons. As they approached the massive object, which had been motionless all this while, it took off at an unimaginable speed. All at once, it vanished from the three radar screens.”(1)(2)

This document from the CIA, relays several pieces of information, with the part about these UFOs highlighted in brackets, which suggests special attention was being paid to it. It goes to show just how interested they were in it, and how important this topic is within the intelligence community:

“ANTARCTIC FLYING SAUCERS” – A group of red, green, and yellow flying saucers has been seen flying over Deception Island for two hours by Argentine, Chilean and British bases (military) in Antarctica. The flying saucers were also seen flying in formation over the South Orkney islands in quick circles.”

We've written a number of articles about numerous UFO sightings. The point is, it's happening, but for decades we've been brushing a lot of these sightings off as natural phenomena, if we even hear about them. There are millions of pages of documents and thousands of examples like the ones above. They've been studying it for years under the guise of “national security,” a term now used to classify everything, but more and more we are learning that this is done to protect the interests of the global elite as well as allow them to basically do whatever they please, with justification.

The “Anchorage” Incident is a well known UFO event involving a veteran Japanese airline pilot who saw three UFOs following his 747 aircraft carrier for over 400 miles. One of the objects was much larger than the 747, while the other two were smaller. The crewmen of JAL Flight 1628 reported seeing flashing lights trailing their jet to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). FAA officials confirmed the conclusions drawn from the controller who handled Flight 1628 on his radar. His conclusion was that the aircraft were unidentified. Air Force officials at the Alaska Air Command also said their radar picked up something near the JAL plane. The United States Air Force scrambled a jet to get a closer look at the object. This incident occurred in 1986.

Below is an interview with retired FA Senior Division Chief, John Callahan. Check out his testimony below given to Dr. Steven Greer. He was directly involved with this incident, it is amazing to hear his story and the events that transpired because of it.

The Takeaway

The disclosure of the existence of UFOs has been confirmed around the world by multiple nations. Secrecy dominates our world, and important information about the nature of our reality is being kept from us. Not only that, but our own money is being taken from us to finance this continued secrecy. I recently wrote an article about a Michigan State University economist who headed up a group that found trillions of unaccounted-for dollars missing from housing & D.O.D. that were funnelled into black budget projects. You can read that here.

The implications of these revelations are huge and would result in huge changes in all areas of humanity. But one reason why secrecy has been so rampant is that powerful controlling forces don't want us to look closer and think critically about the nature of our reality, and about who we really are. The extraterrestrial hypothesis provides a valid explanation for some of the questions we are now asking, and it's getting more difficult to ignore the evidence for intelligent visitation like we used to. The sooner we are able to handle and process the evidence coming before us and its implications, the sooner we will live from a deeper understanding of ourselves and the nature of our universe.

Sources not linked within the article:

(1) Huneeus, J, Antonio, “A Chilean Overview,” MUFON UFO Journal, 6/86; Huneeus, J. Antonio, “A Historical Survey of UFO Cases in Chilie,” MUFON 1987 International Symposium Proceedings (MUFON, 1987.)

(2) Department of Defense JCS Message Center, Subject: B6/BAF Has a Close Encounter of the First Kind. Date: 20 May 86. Subject: Numerous Unidentified Objects Were Cited in the Skies over Brazil. But BAF Fighters Were Unable to Intercept Them. Berliner, Don, The UFO Briefing Document, p. 121-127. Huneeus, J. Antonio, “UFO Alert in Brazil,” MUFON UFO Journal, 11/86. Andrus, Walt, “UFOs Over Brazil,” MUFON UFO Journal, 9/86. Smith, Dr Willy, “The Brazillian Incident,” International UFO Reporter, 7-8/86. Smith, Dr. Willy, “More on Brazilian OVNIs,” MUFON UFO Journal, 9/86.

[battybat-boss]

Hundreds of People Shaken After Another Mysterious 'Boom' Sound Rocks Pennsylvania

Mysterious sounds heard all over the world have researchers completely stumped. They've been happening for quite some time, with the latest example coming from Pennsylvania, with multiple townships being affected by these mysterious sounds, feeling their vibration and waking them up in the middle of the night. It wasn't long ago when residents in Alabama were left baffled when a loud boom resounded across much of the state.

Speaking to ABC 3340, Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, said that the Alabama boom could have been caused by a supersonic aircraft, a ground explosion, or a bolide – a large meteor that explodes in the atmosphere. The noise was picked up by the US Geological Survey, where data suggests that the boom wasn't the result of an earthquake. The boom may have been caused by a military flight of a supersonic jet, although the US Air Force did not confirm it.

The day after the boom in Alabama, a similar noise was heard in Idaho.This year alone, similar noises have been reported 64 times this year, in locations including Michigan, Lapland, St Ives, Swansea and Yorkshire.

When the one in Alabama happened last year, the Birmingham National Weather Service tweeted,

On November 17, 2017 a boom in Lapland was caused by a fireball from a falling meteor. Footage showed a bright light in the sky over Inari in Finland – but the flash was so intense it was also seen in Russia's Kola Peninsula and in northern Norway. Stargazers reported seeing the sky 'light up like day' for a few seconds alongside a loud noise as the space rock plummeted towards Earth.

These are just a few of multiple examples. To see a list of mysterious booms that happened in 2017, you can click here and scroll towards the end of the article. They've happened on many occasions and nobody really knows what they are.

Below is some mainstream media coverage of the most recent episode in Pennsylvania from secureteam10, a youtube channel that covers this type of strange phenomena.

[nehansnet-blog]

Flash of light in Michigan is likely a meteor, says National Weather Service

Flash of light in Michigan is likely a meteor, says National Weather Service https://www.nehans.net/flash-of-light-in-michigan-is-likely-a-meteor-says-national-weather-service/

[greymatterlab]

via Twitter https://twitter.com/GreyMatter_Lab

[proviralmedia-blog]

Fireball Cuts Through the Sky Over Michigan as Meteor Falls

Video Meteor Flashes Across Michigan A meteor passed over Michigan and Illinois on Tuesday, Jan. 16. By MIKE AUSTIN VIA STORYFUL on Publish Date January 17, 2018. Photo by Mike Austin, via Reuters. A fireball from a descending meteor lit up the sky north of Detroit on Tuesday night, creating a brief spectacle that people across the northern United States and parts of Canada reported seeing. The…