Phase Q/Outlets

KABLOOM!

The volume shakes, rattling all of its contents.

What the fuck?! You think to yourself. Or you would, if you had any capacity for thought. But your body vaporizes along with all the rest of the former stuff in the volume of tubeworkspace.

Trads, Futuristas, Brutes. Chairs, Guns, Marshmallows. Trillions of objects disappear into thin air. Or they would, if there were any thin air.

Yet, somehow, somewhere, the zonnyxes seem to thrive. They shiver and bump, tumbling through the void. Their behaviors evolve rapidly, finding or creating some kind of pattern amidst the absence.

One point sits in the void. It could be a point of light, or a point of stuff, or a point of something or anything. It just looks like a point.

First one, then a handful, then thousands, millions, billions of the zonnyxes fall into the point. As they fall, they stretch and distort. Then, poof, they’re gone.

On the other side of the point, a dimensional world opens into view. The point emerges about forty feet in the air, above a supermarket, in a small town by the side of a highway.

Plop, plop, plop, pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-pl-plop.

The seemingly endless stream of zonnyxes descend from the point, expanding to a few feet across in materialspace.

As each one falls under the spell of gravity, it converts and reorients itself into a new arrangement. The whole metaorganism sends out feelers, reconnecting itself to form its networks.

Plink, zong, dwooop.

Communications signals rattle around the network.

Now, however, they rattle around at 99.99999829% of the speed of light.

Within minutes, a Trad sentry has spotted the tumorous mess. Within hours, a platoon have arrived to manage the scene, and a bevy of military specialists have arrived to investigate.

Meanwhile, in a small, dark room in the city, a clan of youngsters congregate around one of their computers. The person at the controls zooms and pans to highlight a different aspect of the zonnyxes.

“Grab it,” says a tall thin person standing behind the chair.

Clirp. Twock. Gloop.

A rapid series of keystrokes shades the visible zonnyx cluster.

Thurk. Clack. Boop.

Another series of presses and the screen changes. Quickly scrolling messages zoom by. Icons twirl.

“Nope, that’s not it,” says the seated person.

“Here, let me try,” says a third person, sitting down on the stool.

Yurp. Bink. Blong.

With a few dozen more strokes, the screen changes again.

“Converting: 25%”

After running through all the way to 100%, the decrypted message appears onscreen. The trio jolt back aghast.

At the site of the zonnyx entry point, the military specialists continue to study the things. A Trad serviceman plugs an electronic device into one of the zonnyxes, which moves clumsily about dimensional space.

“We’ve got a line. Looks like noise. White. Run main scans. Nothing.”

A group of other specialists circle around the engineer with the line into the zonnyx. Together, they pull apart and piece together the scene, using all the techniques in the book.

Zoing!

Finally, they crack the encryption. The specialists jump back in shock.

Live video feeds back to command HQ in the capital. There, the General, the President, and Mrs. President gasp.

And the network of zonnyxes lights up like a laser rainbow doing Christmas and a disco and a rock show all in one.

Lights!

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.