Unit 5a23 stared at the beam of light reaching up to the clouds in the distance with his glowing, atomic eyes that were ever focusing, fluctuating, and gyrating.
"Hmmm. Whatever it is, it’s emitting an abnormally large amount of photons."
Kahli couldn't help but have a bad feeling about this.
"I have a bad feeling about this," said Omar, waving his flaming arm theatrically in the air. "We should go fight that big beam of light."
"That's a terrible idea, Omar," said Unit 5a23. "We don't know if it's hostile. We don't even know *what* it is. How can we know whether it's even *possible* to fight it?"
"If we can't fight it literally, we could always fight it *figuratively,*" Omar said with a shrug. Then, he once again grew hostile. "I bet whatever it is, it's *Kahli's fault.*"
"It's not my fault! What? No!"
"No, I'm sure it probably is," said Lloyd with a smirk. "Aren't you little miss doomsday over here?"
"Well, that's really a misstatement," Kahli started with a nervous look. "Listen, um, remember that story I was talking about?"
"Story?" everyone perked up, even Unit 5a23, who robo-perked up, which was similar to normal perking up excepting for the fact that instead of just kind of jolting organically, Unit 5a23 straightened up like a previously retracted antenna. It was quite a sight to behold, and it almost made Kahli chuckle. She was really beginning to enjoy her new [skill].
"Yea, yea, you know that story about when I went to see my friend *Caubitha* in her fancy new *seaside apartment* in *Glongonskal*."
It was like a switch had been flipped and everyone was all ears. Well, almost everyone.
"Um, Kahli, what about the anomaly?" Unity 5a23 pointed to the glowing beam of light in the distance.
"We'll never work through what's going on there and how to handle it if all of you spend every waking moment convinced that I'm the cause of all this Curr business. So, *please*, listen to my story."
"Very well." The automaton shrugged stiffly.
"So there we were, going to see our friends from geology. The sea was rolling and crashing in the background. What a beautiful *backyard* that Caubitha had, I remember wishing that I could just *push her over into it* for a second."
Everyone was once again hung on her every word, and not even concerned about the tendencies she'd just displayed while telling the story. Clearly, Kahli's [Tale Teller] [skill] was really working its magic.
"But I held strong, and soon enough we were walking down the street and into town. Something interesting about the town of Ghrekenshirr, well known as the *best* and *fanciest* town in Glongonskal, was that it was, and as I understand it still *is*, a mainly military town. That is to say, that if you walk three paces in Ghrekenshirr, then you’ll most likely pass by a large group of people in uniform. It will, once again, be extreme to the point where taumen in uniform wildly outnumber taumen outside of uniform. It has... some quirks. Everything is perfectly clean, spotless even. Not a blade of grass is out of place. At first, it is shockingly beautiful, almost an idyllic experience that soothes and relaxes the mind. And with the crashing of the waves and beauty of all surroundings from ground to sky, you might just for a moment think that everything is perfect.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
"But even I could tell that all was not as it seemed when walking down that street. Sure, most of the uniformed taumen were actually quite young - almost all only had plaster, or maybe even barely any or *no* plaster on their faces... so few people with *living wood* covering their faces other than people who did not belong to 'The Org.'
"The Org, of course, was who *Caubitha* was working for. Who else would have *budget* for such strange perfection but The Org? Nobody, that's who. That's right, every inch of this fanciness was bought and paid for, and that is what is was that looked so perfect - it was a function of a financial machine.
"I have nothing against people who join or work for The Org. We all have to contribute some way, and The Org is a large, well-salaried group that many, many people can benefit from participation in. After all, how nice is it to have a veritable piece of the pie? Especially when the pie includes some strange ounce of idealized perfection. And yet, at the same time, everything has some sort of a strange slant, some sort of an angle that seemed just outside of my own view, like it was right there, and at the same time it wasn't really there at all, like some sort of fuzzy thing that I couldn't really focus on. For a second, now that I think about what you all have mentioned, it actually makes me wonder if any of this has to do with Curr and with the strange emptiness that Lloyd described coming from planets experiencing a Gloaming, but I only just thought of that and have no further details about that particular hunch, disappointing as that might be to you all. Regardless, let's focus on what happened when I finally got there to see my former geology friends, all of whom, like *Caubitha,* had stuck with their hobby and passion. Personally, I didn't think this was a prudent choice and was generally shocked that so many of them stuck with it, because I always just kind of considered geology this fun, passing whim that I would entertain for a while before focusing on something realistic. And that's exactly what I'd done, doing a hard pivot from geology and the world of geology to archaeology, two completely different disciplines." Kahli suddenly felt a little uncomfortable with the degree to which she was spinning a yarn. Geology and archaeology didn't actually seem *that* far removed from one another, unlike the *actual* subject of interest for all the *somewhat fake* people in this story, which was of course *gymnastics.* But Kahli couldn't really walk back into that, plus, she liked the plausible deniability that lying about her past gave her. If it was a lie, it was okay for her to tell the truth while also simultaneously making it more interesting to the people listening to it, and to herself to tell it, whereas if she instead had just focused on it all being true, then by Theseosus she would've most likely never even started telling it. Plus, could Kahli even use her [Tale Teller] [skill] if she wasn't lying? She wasn't sure.
Regardless, it didn't seem like anyone was caught off-guard by how, well, not terribly different geology was from archaeology. After all, wasn't it pretty similar? Kahli wasn't really sure. Maybe she was being foolish. Of course, she really knew more about gymnastics, but nobody would guess that if she continued on confidently, right? Especially with her [skill].
"So we met up with all our old friends on the outside of this nice tapas restaurant. And I mean really nice, upscale, everybody waiting on us was wearing these black tie suits, full face of makeup, high heels, bow ties, stilettos... the whole thing. Very Upper Taumanite, it was. The first thing I got was this great fried Beaveal flank, it was incredibly tender, which is crazy because Beaveal is usually so gamey."
"You're right, it is," said Omar with a nod. "Usually."
It was nice to see that her [skill] was still working so well. Kahli continued, "And so we all got drinks. I got this nice martini with a miniature radish in it, I would recommend. It left my palate feeling refreshed and tantalized for more at the same time. Really, I was starting to feel pretty good about halfway through this meal, when they brought out the char grilled oyster cults. Oh, those cults were the tastiest cults I've ever eaten to this day! But, I shouldn't bore you all with the food, should I? No, I should be telling you the nitty gritty of what happened that was so significant, not how delectable the gourmet cheese grits were. And so, that's what I'll focus on from here on out, you can count on it!
"So I was feeling buzzed, hell, we all were feeling a little buzzed at that point. The wind was blowing cool and salty, and it was beautifully relaxing, almost like the air was giving us all a wonderful little massage. Regardless, it was just great, that is, until we all got distracted by one of our geology friends.
"See, her name was Harshnah. Yeah, I know, but it was a *family name.* So *Harshnah* was just doing her thing, which was apparently to monopolize our whole conversation with her chitter chatter, which was a little frustrating because I had originally planned to shift the conversation on to the aubject of how they had all seemed to get massively successful only about a year and a half for so after I'd left, or, from my perspective, how they'd essentially become successful the *second* I stopped participating in geology.
"Regardless, she just started talking. And what she said, well, it just *arrested* me. Not literally, of course, although I mean with the number of people working for The Org, the possibility of me being arrested was of course not zero. Regardless, that thankfully wasn't what was happening, I was just caught in a bit of a trance with her words, as if I couldn't listen to anything else. See, she told us all that she had this family member - well, okay, so it was her grandfather. She was telling us all about her grandfather. I know that doesn't seem too terribly interesting, but trust me, it actually was, and that's because she wasn't talking really about her grandfather as a *person*, as a *tauman* if you will, instead she was talking about what her grandfather had *did*, and that... Well, just let me say, you'll never look at me the same when I finish telling you what she told me."
"Um, Kahli?" Omar raised his flaming arm. "I think I can easily speak for everyone here when I say that we are absolutely *dying to hear what happens next.*" His voice was completely earnest. "But I need you to look over to the beam of light for a second."
Kahli looked, and then she gasped. It looked like the beam to the sky in the distance was... Growing? Morphing? Pulsating?
Regardless, it looked like *things* were starting to come out of it. Sinister looking things, wicked looking things that indeed arrested *Kahli's* faculties so much she surely couldn't just *continue* telling her story without looking and staring at what, truly, looked like the beginning of an apocalypse.