May 3rd

The massive storm had condensed somewhat overnight, now measuring only a mere 2,000 miles in diameter or so according to radar, but now showed no signs of getting any smaller. Or moving. It threw off weather of its own instead, affecting the high- and low-pressure systems around it instead of being pushed around itself. Estimates put the center of the storm at nearly 810 millibar, lower than any other sea level pressure ever recorded.

French Polynesia, American Samoa, and any number of other little islands that had grown larger due to the water pulling away were now getting pounded. I vaguely wondered if they would end up eroded back into the water completely.

I also wondered how standard hurricane convection even worked with a storm this large and in this section of the ocean. Between the southern part hanging out not too far from Antarctica and it not moving, the heat energy of the ocean should be dropping like mad, which would cause this thing to eventually, maybe, move.

News stations all over the world were covering the newest insanity. Meteorologists were on air, describing ramifications of the storm to weather patterns, likely locations the storm could move to, and any number of other facts. Given just as much credence was the fact that between the alien and whatever this second block that was cleared was, we just didn’t know.

We had all gathered in the conference room that morning just to try to get a handle on it, somehow.

“So… Do we just hope this thing is going to do like the lava did and stop being insane in a few days?” Danny asked. “Maybe it’ll just drop all the extra water back into the ocean there and then just fall apart?”

“Or it just continues to drop pressure, pulling in additional moisture as a low pressure sink across the entire world, and even more places become deserts,” I shrugged my response. “I honestly don’t know. We’ve got barely any knowledge of the lava rifts, and now there’s a storm that even if we could fly, I don’t think any hurricane hunter would want to go into.”

“Anything you can poke off the alien?” Karen asked.

I shook my head. “I’m not getting anything more from him than words. Anyone else?”

“I only wish.” Danny looked at the superstorm again. “How the hell is that thing any kind of balance?”

“At least it didn’t continue raining for just a few more days,” Melissa answered after a moment. “Then we’d have people claiming forty days and forty nights of rain.”

“Oh god,” Danny groaned.

“Exactly!” Melissa laughed.

I shook my head at her. “So we just wait and hope for nothing to happen with this thing?”

“Only thing we can do,” Brent responded.

~~~

After the meeting, I grabbed my tablet and went up the fire ladder again to the roof, determined to enjoy the sunny day after the month of bad weather.

The blackberry bush was doing fine, now underneath real glass. Clippings from the bush had been replanted and they weren’t growing with the same maddening speed the original bush was, but still out of season growth was impressive. The new clippings didn’t give off additional wood energy either.

The researchers from the college were running two tests on the overly fruiting bush. The first was a test of how many times it would refruit before it stopped, another was to see what would happen if a few berries weren’t picked and what would happen over a longer timeframe. Three cane vines each had a single blackberry that had been carefully noted on the trellis to not be picked.

Each of those berries were almost two weeks old, super dark, and plump as hell. The most interesting thing was two of them were giving off as much wood energy as the root of the plant was. I was half tempted to ask if eating them was on the test charts, but figured maybe they’d replant and grow more of the fast growing bushes too.

It was something to check into, though, what the extra energy would do to someone who ate it. Actually… I logged into the forum and posted the question, asking if anyone had had food that maintained that energy through cooking, and if so, had it been any different? I tagged the couple of people that had posted about finding flora or fauna with energy and had collected it for whatever reason.

I flipped tabs over to satellite view once more, just to watch the storm for a minute. Had it moved? No. Had it changed? Not really, just an unnaturally immobile, but still spinning, hurricane shaped storm throwing off estimated two hundred plus mile per hour winds.

Back to the forum, I actually did have a reply from IrishDantians, finally. With the planet’s latest block cleared, he was scrapping his previous plans and was now working on a different idea. The mention of his previous idea of using someone else to basically beat his dantian in until it collapsed was a bad idea anyways, so I replied with encouragement for less abusive attempts.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

I fooled around on the forum for a bit, not a lot of activity going on that I hadn’t already seen. A lot of questions about the storm that Danny raised had already been made on an announcement that we didn’t have any further idea than anyone else did.

I extended my internet ranging a little bit, hitting the wider internet now that the cloud cover was gone and we basically had full strength access once more, minus the undersea cables.

A lot of the overseas news was about the rains and what had happened, a lot of homes flooded after receiving half a years’ worth of rain or more in a month. Contacts for shelters, a few stories about uptick in crime due to criminals with dantians. More stories of other criminals not being as strong as the people they were attacking and getting their just deserts.

American news was worse, just as polarized if not more so than before the alien. Articles screaming about a coup as the military was used to ensure food supplies more or less continued on; while other articles praised the semi-rapid action as the only thing that had kept the country fed.

I’d gotten a few messages from Mike on that, his national guard unit having trained everyone to their first breakthrough then had been assigned to basically be convoy guards and supplementary bodies for road construction work with the Corps of Engineers and Seabees.

I frowned at an article that came up more locally, complaining about people that were egging the alien on to higher acts of destruction. Published this morning and it didn’t even bother insinuating anything, just flat out claimed that playing the alien’s game was only going to make things worse for everyone and that the storm was going to be used against us all.

I rolled my eyes at that, then looked at the article author. Newsmax, Gary Bisley. Oh Lord. That idiot had another pulpit to spew stupidity.

I nearly checked the satellite view again before stopping myself and sighing. Checking it every hour or two wasn’t going to change anything. Given how fast it had built up and how big it was, I would probably learn about it moving when it showed up rather than from getting lucky on watching radar.

“Hey!” a voice called and I turned in time to see Melissa pull herself over the fire ladder onto the roof with me. “How goes it?”

I waved back to her, setting the tablet down. “Quietly, actually. What’s up?”

She laid out on the edge of the roof, stretching for a moment. I watched, bemused, as I realized how neither of us really had a fear of falling anymore. At this height, we’d have to work at it to get hurt in a fall.

“I missed the sun…” she said quietly, just soaking in the reasonable heat of the day.

I chuckled. “I won’t miss having to get the sunscreen back out. Did you happen to catch what the index was?”

“Four. It’s been lower since the Gasp, and even with a fully sunny day, it’s not any higher,” Melissa said, eyes still closed. “As much as I’m worried about the storm, I can at least enjoy this.”

Huh. It has been lower since then. I wondered about the ozone layer then, if the Gasp or something else the alien had done had fixed it. More to question.

“So, what’s the plan, boss lady? Where do we go from here?” Melissa asked.

I looked out over the parking lot, beyond it and the ditches, past the highway. There was still some traffic on the roads. People still living their lives as best they could as everyone tried to hold things together.

“How’s that technique of yours?” I asked, not directly answering her question.

Melissa shifted slightly, opening her eyes to look at me. “Maybe nearly there?”

I nodded to that. “Once you finish with it, I want to see how teachable it really is. And then maybe get you and Danny poking at that elemental energy thing and see if it’s actually something you can do anything with. You saw my project with Robert, right?”

Melissa sat up and swung her legs over the edge. “The kid cycling water energy? Yeah. I know I picked up your art thing before, but I’m kinda leery on what cycling it will do to me. I haven’t really found any lightning in it.”

“Maybe something for Danny then, there’s plenty of fire.” I paused. “The alien’s affecting the entire globe, and all the weird stuff happening with the Earth’s blocks too. We’ve been stuck pretty much with just body stuff except my art of awakening. I’d like to figure out something else we can do. Keep us occupied from things we can’t change.”

I looked southwest again, seeing only a few puffy white clouds.