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smokinsid · 1 year ago

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Late Night People

Summer. 2:15 AM. College of Synergetics, Level 3 – REAPER Lab, Rata Sum.

Enid looked wearily at a crumpled pack of cigarettes, then back at her holo-screen. On her desk, a little girl in a big red hat grinned up at her tired face, looking as bright and proud as the midday sun.

For a few weeks now, her research had been chasing its tail. Relative Extraplanar studies- thrill that they were, giving a scientist cause to go sliding orthogonal to the three-dimensional Tyria into realms unknown- were still a headache, at their core. Was a mortal body meant to move that way, or see those things?

“Yes!” Came a low, sonorous showman’s voice from across the room. The attuned crystal in her radio blinked and pulsed in time with every syllable. “And I’ll tell you what else, my friends- if Balthazar can bite the dust, if Kralkatorrik can kick it- then what is there out there for us to worry about? The Arcane Council keeping secrets, hiding things from us? Well, we know why they do that- the slow dissemination of what they really know is what’s keeping them in their seats, after all.”

Smoke Signals with Sidney Figleaf. Venlin Vale Radio, 103.3 K-R-U-E.

The call letters came to her mind automatically. And that voice- “Smokin’ Sid,” on the radio- was her brother.

They hadn’t talked in a while. Maybe she should call him. It had been a long time since the big blowup, after all- and Rucks had turned out alright so far. Still young enough to come back to college.

“Coming up in the next half-hour, we’ll have open lines here on Smoke Signals. Tune your crystals to 1.333.1033- again that’s 1.333.1033, for the Smoke Signals hotline. Call now and get queued up- the subject tonight? Strange lights in the sky! Stranger than usual, anyway. Have you seen them? Tell us all about it. --And now, a word from our sponsors.”

As a jingle played for Royal Kournan cigars, followed by an ad for Oozeley’s Sure-Fire Detergent, she drummed her fingers on the desk and frowned at the blue-gray little crystal in front of her, mounted in a ring of brass.

“Oozeley’s, Sure-Fire,

Made from the goo you trust,

Oozeley’s, Sure-Fire,

For stains, it is a must!”

It was now or never. She grabbed the little brass ring and rotated the pointed crystal within, spinning it like a dial toward the numbers etched into the metal edge. In seconds she was connected, and a pleasant, modulated golem’s voice greeted her.

“You’ve reached the 103.3, K-R-U-E, call-in hotline! Your queue position is currently... SIX. Please hold. Your call will be on the air shortly. Remember to shut down your radio receiver before speaking, to eliminate static and echo. Thank you for calling Venlin Vale Radio.”

Soft jazz rose from the vibrating surface of the crystal, tickling her ear. She set it down on the table and huffed.

She had plenty of time to hang up if she wanted.

“Subject is mysterious lights in the sky- mysteriouser than usual, I should say. Caller number two, you’re on the air.”

Oh, Alchemy. He’s just picking lines at random.

“Am I on the air with Smokin’ Sid?”

“Yes, that’s me. Please turn off your radio, sir, for the feedback. Now, what’s your name, and what do you have to report?”

“Uh, name’s Putt. Work outta Statics.”

“Ah, a fellow Statics, ahem, alum. Wonderful. And what did you see?”

“Well, this was a couple weeks ago, late one night in Brisban- we were listening to the show while we were on stakeout, watching the bandit gangs drift here and there.”

“Ah, sounds like you’re working a security detail. I’d ask you how things are going with the gangs, but let’s focus on the scene overhead.”

“Right, well- me and the fellas like to shoot skeet to kill time,”

“Careful friend, this is radio,”

“Y’know, like clay pigeons, we got some with glow-in-the-dark paint.”

“Ah.”

“And so I was up top of the watchtower, throwing ‘em here and there when I heard the word ‘pull,’ that kind of thing.”

“Putting some lights in the sky yourself, as it were.”

“Mm- so we’ve done a few rounds of this, and I throw another one, and Creidon- big fella, Lionguard, down at ground level, he puts a crossbow bolt through it, sure as sunrise.”

“But...?”

“It got stuck, Sid.”

“In the... clay pigeon?”

“No- well, not as such. It’s like, it punched through the pigeon and hit something else. Something round. Like... shoot, I’m gonna sound crazy.”

“Not on my show, friend.”

“Like a bubble, in the sky. Like someone got a straw under the sky and blew real hard and just... warped it out. The stars looked all stretched and distorted close to the pigeon, got more normal the further out you went.”

“As if the sky itself was... closer, there?”

“Yeah! Damnedest thing I ever saw! Bowed in like the ceiling on a first-floor dorm when the toilet upstairs overflows.”

“Remarkable.”

“The pigeon- and the bolt- just clung to it. And then it sorta... deflated? Just slowly receding until the sky looked normal again. It took both with it! We never got ‘em back.”

“Wow. Not quite what I expected to hear when it comes to lights in the sky, but that certainly is mysterious. Thank you, Putt- the Smoke Signals Research Team will put some time into this one, I’m sure.”

Enid had already taken a few steps away from the crystal, drawing up astronomical charts of the sky over Brisban and running numerous calculations and simulations. A ‘bubble’ in the sky could be any number of things- in her mind, it was some burdensome patch of mist, pushing on the fabric of Tyria. A mistquake? A mist… sinkhole?

“Caller number… six! You’re live on Smoke Signals. Go ahead and turn off your radio, feedback and all that. I need a name, and- what did you see in the sky, lately?”

“…Could’ve been the movement of a human god, they make quite a dent- haven’t heard from Melandru in a minute, have they?”

“Caller number six? Are you there? –Do turn off your radio, please and thank you, for the feedback, then start with a name.”

“Of course, if it isn’t the movement of a god… can we rule out dragons now? Are they done?” She poked at the holo-screen and flipped through archive files.

“…Enid?”

Enid let out a horrible gasp and slapped her radio, then spun away from the screen and rounded on the crystal.

“—Am I on the air? Shoot, I missed it!”

“No, no, you didn’t miss it. Bit of a rocky start, but I’m feeling generous tonight. Now, ah… name, as I said, and, what exactly did you see?”

“Oh, I’m… Enid. I work here on the third level of Synergetics, and…”

“Enid! I knew it was you! Distinguished listeners, we’re hearing live, the voice of my dear sister. It’s been ages. I’m surprised to hear you saw something ‘weird,’ Nid- you always had a pretty high bar.”

In his smoky studio, Sid was secretly reeling. He leaned away from the microphone and pat a box of Shadhavar Wides against his palm to pack them, then fumbled for a little silver lighter. The etching of a bikini-clad human winked up at him as he struck the wheel and took a long, steadying drag.

“Well… hm. What your first caller said caught my attention, so I was in the middle of researching that.

“The- the Brisban case, with Putt? You jumped on it that quick?”

“While I was on hold.”

“Wow. But, ah… do you have your own sighting to report? Something for the audience to chew on?”

Enid tapped her bottom lip and huffed.

“Well, I don’t want anyone to think too much of this, but I have seen something. About three weeks ago. I was up north- in Grothmar, the Charr territory?”

“Beautiful weather up there. Even the storms are nice.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I was studying post-Kralkatorrik brand radiation- the corruption is persistent, you see, and when you have a steady source like a dragon, that’s to be expected. Without it, the flow should ebb and the radiation should begin to decay. But I think that due to the crystalline structure of the corrupted materials, the magic is finding these facets to bounce around on, conserving angular momentum and-“

“Nid, I love ya, but this is dead air. Lights? Sky? We getting there?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. Right. Sid and Sid’s audience. Lowest common denominator.

“It was a symmetrical cymatic response- that is to say, we used our instruments to mess with the cluster of corrupted material on the ground, and were able to have a second team in the mists check their location with identical instruments. We’d make a tone, they’d detect a tone.”

“More of a sound in the sky, but I’m with ya so far. So this krewe, on the other side of the veil, so to speak, they could hear the sound you were making, and… what?”

“Well, that’s the revolutionary thing, Sid. It’s the first time we’ve been able to accurately, linearly map the coordinates of a location in the mists, as it relates to a location in Tyria! By measuring the offset between the two, we were able to calculate that the mists themselves are at an orthogonal angle to standard Tyria- our North is their West!”

“…Fascinating. And the implications are… staggering, I’m sure.”

Her expression flattened and she ran a hand across her face. Lights. In the sky. Right. Let’s get to that before he moves on.

“So this relates to Putt’s bubble, you see. The fact that it welled up at all, how it moved, where it came from- to your listeners’ great satisfaction, we did see lights in the sky that we couldn’t explain. Not a bubble, no- but I theorize we saw the shear between Tyria and the mists. Sending such a direct signal from one to the other had an effect on the boundary between realms… and somebody, we speculate, didn’t appreciate that.”

“Oh. Oh! Hey, that’s juicy, you should have started with that! No flair for the dramatic, this one. So let’s get into that, specifically- what did you see, that gave ya cause to speculate that?”

“At first we thought that we’d kicked up a storm. Cloud-to-cloud lightning, and lots of it. But… I hate to hand it to the humans, especially after the Balthazar thing, but they might be onto something with some of their gods.”

“You saw one?”

“We saw a hand. Specifically, the underside of one. Curling fingers, drawing across the realm-shear, constructed out of lightning. It was vague at first, but as the digits moved, there was no mistaking it.”

“Wild stuff, sis. I wanna take a shot in the dark here, because I know you- I know there’s more at play here than just you seeing something. Did your krewe in the mists see something too?”

“That’s the kicker. They saw the other side of the hand. They thought they were having tech issues, an overloaded crystal somewhere, until screens started blowing out and lightning started leaping everywhere. Had to evacuate their work camp while huge knuckles made of static discharge just sort of… raked through their whole shop, destroying anything they couldn’t carry out. Made a circular motion, seemed to… stir up the mists? Maybe… froth them back up, after we’d thinned them out?”

“Holy crap. Now that’s the kind of mystery I’m talkin’ about! The nature of the human gods, or whatever they are! Why would it do that? Does this mean that gods are making other lights in the sky? Did a god blow Putt’s bubble? We gotta get some humans on the line- they got experts, right? Like, uh… religious… scholars?”

“Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?”

“Nid, be nice. We take all kinds here on Smoke Signals. –Speaking of which, our next caller’s been on the line quite some time, waiting for their chance. Boy, but this was a doozy. I’m gonna run a golem down to your lab with my personal number. Maybe the Smoke Signals research team can lend a hand with this, huh? –‘Til next time, though, goodnight!”

“…Yeah, see ya around, Sid.”

“Thank you for calling 103.3, K-R-U-E, Venlin Vale Radio!” A familiar automated voice chimed. “You have been disconnected! Please wait five minutes before placing another call!”

And then the line went quiet, the crystal dark.

She turned on her radio and returned to the holo-screen.

“—aller number one, you’ve been awfully patient, you must have something reeeeeeally important to share! Turn off your radio and give us your name, if you please.”

As the next caller regaled Sid with tales of a “boat” they saw in the sky as they were hiking in Dzalana, Enid immediately tuned out.

Sid… she really didn’t have any reason to want his respect. In fact, he should be treating a professor of her caliber with a little more deference, when you really looked at the situation from the outside in. But here he was, regionally-famous radio host, urging her to get to the ‘good parts’ of her research and shooing her off the air when he thought she’d said enough.

Why did that cut so deep? As nice as it was to talk, it was painfully one-sided.

She knew he had a good mind. An inquisitive and dutiful mind. He’d volunteered to serve in Orr, after all, and was instrumental in reporting troop movements back to Claw Island over secured channels and providing music to those same troops over unsecured channels, using just deft hands and a junky set of equipment he’d cobbled together.

She was finishing her first doctorate at the time, too young for the Priory to deploy her- and too young for the College of Synergetics to let go of her, besides. When the news came back, she really thought of her older brother as a hero. Silly old Sid, a war reporter.

But maybe he was just a nicotine-stained, slimy, self-serving, cabbage-fucking-

She took a deep breath and shook her head. He had given her a lot of airtime to tell a complicated story, and he was sending along a means to talk privately, finally!

But it was the ‘he had given’ part she took painful umbrage with. How is it that he’s always in charge of these things? Effortlessly, as if it’s his right? There was a real mystery. Lights in the sky are easy to explain compared to that.

She continued to grumble as she prodded at the screen. As the pink holographic text started to blur, she looked away and found herself staring at the framed photo of her daughter, grinning up at her with gap teeth and bright eyes.

“He’s repulsive. Rucks, how did he ever get in your head? If you had focused on your studies, you’d be here in the city with me, instead of…”

She couldn’t remember the name. Some backward human fishing village across the sea.

Enid pulled open a drawer and retrieved a bag of hard candy. It was right next to her cigarettes- Skrittmann’s Menthol Silver Slim 120s. She frowned at the half-full softpack and shut the drawer, then popped a thumb-sized cylinder of blue raspberry into her cheek.

The clock struck 3:00 am, and there was a knock at the door.

“It’s open,” she called out. The interlocking hatch doors slid apart, and a golem stumped into the room, carrying a teal holopad in one hand and a book in the other. She met it halfway and it held its hands up in an oddly childlike fashion, offering both at once.

“This must be the private number, and… what’s this, now?”

She took the book and frowned at the cover, reading aloud in a flat, irritated voice:

“Up In Smoke – One Asura’s Journey from Lowlife to High Life, and How You Can Too.”

Alchemy fucking preserve me, it’s signed.

She scowled at the silver paint-pen signature across the dustcover, and flipped to the first page.

To Spokes- it takes balls the size of honeydews to ride a ten-speed through Malchor’s Leap, and you did it every day. I might have quit radio altogether if you hadn’t brought me those letters from Camp Narthex.

“DEDICATION

To the 113th Ground Artillery Regiment- you guys were a real peach to bivouac with. Sorry about the latrine. You’re welcome for the case of Gorepelt Supreme I found- didn’t take us long to get through those bottles, did it?

To Professor Qlatt, Statics Earthworks Division- sorry I kept putting stuff in my nose, man. I got an attention span you could fit in a teaspoon with room to spare, and you sure were patient. I ain’t coming back, but if you want that homework I owe ya, I eventually filled it out.

To Ma & Pa- I just hope you’re glad I figured out something to do.

And to my sister, Enid. You don’t just make them proud, you make me proud, too. It’s a big ask, but keep achieving for the both of us. When I say you’re Council material, it’s the only time in my life I’ve ever not meant it as an insult.”

Enid swallowed, frowned, and pat the golem on the head, sending it clunking off back into the hall.

“Guess I’ll call him,” she exhaled through her teeth.

“Just… maybe tomorrow.”

She set the book face-down on her workbench and took another deep breath, then turned her eyes back up to the screen.

She’d never admit it, but they both wanted the answer to the same question.

Just what is going on up there, anyway?

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #smokin' sid #synchroneer enid #rata sum #kralkatorrik

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