The room was a little more tense as Brent pulled up an image of the Pacific Ocean, complete with still image of the massive multiple thousand mile across storm.
"Current hurricane hunter planes have a range of roughly three thousand miles. Normally that means about half that out and then the same in return, but with everything considered the military was willing to throw away a UAV hunter to try to get into the eye of the storm to get some data."
The image changed, adding a plane marker in Hawaii. "Launched from an airbase in Hawaii, the hunter flew directly to what satellite imagery showed was the massive eye of the storm. Additionally, a naval carrier was just inside the storm for surface imaging." A ship icon appeared, somewhat inside of the storm, maybe a hundred miles judging by the scale.
"The ship was registering winds of thirty five miles an hour and was holding at this point along the hunter's path. Higher winds and storm surge would likely have caused damage to the ship. At three hours into the flight, the hunter passed within visible range of the carrier and automated handshakes were passed from the hunter with confirmation of position, heading, and speed. UAVs are generally GPS driven, but use local known sites to add additional confirmation."
The plane icon moved, following the path, with GPS coordinates and speed. "The hunter continued on, and about sixty-five miles close to the eye...Well, this happened. This is via GPS tracking."
The icon continued on past the ship, then suddenly slowed to nearly a crawl, the reported speed dropping to barely thirty knots and then vanished completely.
"Did the plane vanish?" I asked before Brent continued on.
"Hold on, I'm getting there. Since the alien's grounding of all manned flight, all military autopilot systems now have panic logic to attempt to backtrack using local systems along its previous path back to its origination point if GPS is lost or doesn't match with local systems for more than ten minutes. After another forty minutes or so, the plane reappeared back on navigation."
The icon reappeared and moved back towards the ship. "Once within range of the carrier, they got a full dump of the data. The hunter's local system overrides showed zero change in speed and a decision was made to follow the same path by the carrier."
"The carrier duplicated the same effect?" Danny asked.
"Differently, but yes." Brent nodded, as the plane icon continued back to Hawaii while the ship moved forward. "GPS reported nearly no movement of the ship before being unable to track the ship. The ship then turned and came back across whatever line was the problem." The ship icon reappeared, pretty much in the same spot. "Only problem is they went off in a pretty large half-circle eastward. They should have shown back up on GPS nearly two hundred miles further east."
"Wait, did they teleport or something? What the hell? That ain't the Bermuda Triangle." Danny voiced my thought.
"We're still not certain, but all American ships and planes have been directed to not get near the storm. And this information is being provided to all maritime partners."
"So what does that have to do with us? Or the recent breakthrough?" Ash asked, looking at the flight skips still.
"I contacted NGA." Brent answered. "For all that the issues with the first planet breakthrough caused the fault lines to bring up tons of lava, boil oceans, and literally split a good sized chunk of California away into new land..." Brent trailed off. "GPS and geospatial mapping are tracking maybe twenty to thirty yards of offset where the fault lines split, adding up to maybe half a mile between the different faults. When we know based on first hand accounts that the total distance has been physically traveled to nearly ten miles across, with an even larger diagonal."
"Please don't say this happens there too." Danny waved his hand at the storm projection.
Brent nodded. "To a smaller degree, it appears so. We had a few volunteers go through certain area faults and mapped a total of eighteen shifts similar to that one, at roughly even points of just over half a mile a shift. GPS monitoring alters to faster or slower speeds and then vanishes. Tight monitoring of people's GPS shows straight line crossing comes out as expected, but deviations end up coming out in all sorts of random patterns." Brent stopped and sighed deeply. "It's not like we can stop people crossing the fault lines because it is a literal cut across California and it hasn't hurt anyone yet. And because there's not enough manpower to fence off hundreds if not thousands of miles of fault lines."
"And now you're worried that the woods nearby just massively jumped in size, or became some sort of weird teleporting thing?" I asked. I drummed my fingers on the table. A silent nod answered me. "Great, so we could be a thousand miles from Rolla, or anywhere else. How do we figure that out?"
"The base still has power, so it's not like it affected here directly." Brent answered. "We'll alert the base commander to what the likely problem is, and he can put people on the roads to local cities and we'll find out if there's any local problems. I'll send it up my chain as well and it can be validated in the rest of the US as well."
Brent clicked off the projector. "Much as I was going to say when it was only about the storm, there is nothing we can do to change the issue. I just wanted you all aware of what's going on. Let's not go running off like crazy people without a plan or even a place to check." He looked around at everyone, before stopping at me specifically.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I shrugged at the look. "As long as my parents are safe and we can still do our stuff, I guess sure."
Brent waited until there were nods from everyone else. "Alright, I do have good news though." Brent pulled out a handful of the energy filled geodes we'd all probably sensed and rolled them onto the table. "We've had a breakthrough here, we can get around half of the energy from these, no issues."
Melissa snatched one up. "Seriously? Cool! So... what was the trick?" Karen grabbed one too while the rest of us looked at Brent.
"As everything about this seems to come down to, breathing." Brent chuckled. "It's an active energy usage. Hold the stone up to your mouth, cycle energy out of your body through your mouth to around the stone, break the stone, and breath in your own energy, the energy in the stone, and the geode dust inside."
"Wait, we have to breath in dust? Wouldn't that be bad for you?" Karen paused before completely following Brent's directions.
Thankfully, no one else had started either. "Please let the man finish talking." I verbally poked at her.
Brent nodded to me. "We had the same worry and did extensive chest x-rays and other tests on the first person that did this. Whatever the dust is while it's holding energy, it's gone after you breath it in. If you just crack the geode without it working though, the crystal dust inside sticks around but doesn't appear useful for anything. But if you're not breathing in the dust, energy intake is like it was during initial testing. Nearly nothing."
"Anything useful from it then? How much is half the energy?" Melissa asked.
"Our I-0 tester immediately had to go through first breakthrough, the energy was too much for him. He then took three more and had a second breakthrough from I-1 to I-2." Brent rolled his eyes. "We weren't expecting someone to do that, the mess to clean up was horrendous."
"Why didn't you bring this up earlier then when we were talking higher breakthroughs and time necessary? If you can just devour a bunch of these and make it through breakthroughs?" I frowned. "I mean, even if it's an increasing number of geodes needed, it's still a way to get up quickly."
"Partially because of a limited number of geodes available, but mostly because any of our testers that did get a breakthrough using these had issues. Weak output compared to similar breakthrough level people, stamina issues, and a few other things." Brent explained. "That I-0 tester that did two breakthroughs, for example? Reported that both breakthroughs felt like they should have been larger, and he still couldn't cycle enough energy to fill them up normally. If we're lucky, he can spend a few weeks building himself back up to average."
I picked the closest geode up myself and looked at it. Felt the static energy held in the stone. "So good for a quick breakthrough, but has downsides."
I thought back to the few people on the forums who'd blocked themselves. To the double blocked guy from my own class. "Can we fix people who are blocked? How about how far you think you could push someone with these? All the way up to my level? If we got thousands of them, to the alien?"
"All good questions. I've had two days of results with these, so I don't have answers for you. But I seriously doubt we're going to get someone up to your level with this, much less the alien, even if we had the numbers of them necessary. Otherwise Barry would have been at your level or beyond."
Well, that was oddly both a relief and a disappointment. No easy way to beat the alien then. "Wanna show us? You've already tried one of these, I assume? And were any of your testers internal energy?"
"Yes and yes. I've done this once this morning to make sure I could show you all, and we did have one of the internal energy users as a tester with no ill effects."
Brent took a stone and held it up, then put it close to his mouth before pausing and looking down at himself before looking back up. "I probably should have worn something worth losing, I'm already close to full on energy from testing this morning and it's been nearly two weeks since my last breakthrough." He smiled at me and looked around the room. "At least I'm not trying to surpass the planet's energy level now, right?"
"I'll go get some towels and water." Melissa quickly got up and left the room.
He centered himself and then energy flowed from the breakthrough in his chest upwards to his throat. He breathed outward, the energy collecting around the stone and his fingers.
A squeeze and the geode shattered into pieces. The energy tried to go in all directions but snagged passing through Brent's energy and fingers, then he breathed in. The was almost a visible shift in the air as the energy seemed to be caught in the inhale before it broke into pieces as well, pulled into Brent's lungs. Brent's energy didn't seem to return to him, but I saw the geode energy flush through him, filling his dantian before rushing outwards.
Brent shut his eyes and groaned as the energy swelled and vanished into his neck and after a long moment black goop oozed from the man. But not nearly as much as I'd seen from others.
After a moment, he opened his eyes. "For the record, it's no better the second time. Yuck. And yeah, the breakthrough feels like there's still pieces of blockage hanging around in it. But I still feel like I have a deeper energy to tap even if I need to figure out how to fully clear that block still." He looked around. "Did Melissa have to go to another building for towels?"
Spoiler: New Wiki Entries
I'm going to start tracking major changes to the Seeker Wiki at the end of chapters where they happen, though one of the entries here is from Chapter 47.
Spoiler: Techniques
Imbue the Flame
Creator: Lucas Bonel
Has been taught to others: Yes (Ash Carson)
Energy Type: Active
Energy Use: Less than a single breakthrough but variable, continuous feed. See Description for additional details
Description: Imbues a forging coal flame with your own energy converted to flame. Allows precise control over temperature and flame, but uses fuel at a higher rate dependent on multiple factors. May be used on other types of flames, but energy use cost goes up the further from a forge flame you get.
Energy Draw
Creator: Multiple
Has been taught to others: Yes
Energy Type: Active
Energy Use: Minimal
Description: Draw energy stored in a geode stone into your own dantian. Warning: energy excess can force breakthroughs at low levels. Testing ongoing for drawing energy from other objects with energy other than geodes.