(Y7, March 23rd/Day 3462)

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First Gater Kaznikal stumbled into the deep control room of the Pyramid and stopped. She’d been warned “it happened again”, and there it was.

For some reason, the black indicators on the map had now vanished.

It started yesterday. People were doing all sorts of measurements, trying to translate the map more accurately into the known maps of Second Home. She was still waiting for news from Home, where she’d sent multiple messages to the four runners through the guilds. But given that everyone had been relatively fresh from Respawn, she did not expect to hear anything until they had enough time to establish first contact. For glory, for the lulz, for any reason whatsoever, but they’d been obviously gearing for that.

Hopefully, they wouldn’t do too much damage to the People’s reputation. She’d peered for hours into the naked upright image of the black-coded species. The monochrome hologram offered little, save the obvious maleness – with a relatively impressive part. If it wasn’t depicted in the mating state. Little tufts of vestigial fur, like some exotic mammals back Home or the weirdest critters of Second Home. A flat face, yet oddly expressive. At least, the four rogues had aimed for aliens that were not too odd.

And then, without any warning, the blue cover on the globe had vanished. Entirely, leaving not a single area highlighted. Cries of surprise had arisen, and everyone tensed, expecting some Pyramid device to have been triggered. But, outside of the vanishing, nothing had changed, and the Aetherist in charge reported no variation from the massive storage under the globe map.

Despite the disappearance of the territory extent, the hologram of the blue species, the six-fingered slender furless humanoids, had not changed in the slightest. And as they slowly relaxed, confident that the Pyramid did not intend to murder them again, hypotheses started to fly around, from somber – “they all got sent back to their world?” – to weirder – “maybe they lost their Gates?”.

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Everyone was confident the color blob indicated the territory covered by each species. The green blob matched almost perfectly the known extent of the range of people on Second Home, down to the coastline. So it was logical to assume the others were the same, from the twin white blobs extending toward the south polar region to the small scattering of red that were unaffected by the vanishing of the two large blue that had been next to them.

And now, black had vanished as well. The three large areas and the smaller fourth were no longer on the map. Kaznikal threw a quick glance at the holograms surrounding the map, but the black figure was still there, unchanged from before, like its blue counterpart.

“It happened half an hour ago,” Therominn announced to her.

She sighed, ears twitching.

“Well, we came looking for the unknown. We should not be surprised by, well, surprises. If it wasn’t for the blue yesterday, I’d think it was our runners that did it, but even if they’re probably reaching their destination right now if they haven’t already, it can’t be them doing anything to cause both blue and black switching off. Anything else?”

“No. Everything is quiescent. If that is a monitoring station, it – whatever ‘it’ is – probably fits within its parameters.”

“You know, that does not even fill me with confidence.”

Therominn’s snout twisted.

“Now what? We wait to see which one goes dark next?”

“No. We need to prep an expedition and find out what changed for them. I can’t rely on those fools to report Home, even if they have to Recess at some point. Does anyone have a map of the black zones?” she asked.

One of the artists handed her a paper with one of the basic sketches.

“Not one of the big blobs. The small one, there in the middle of the way between the two largest. If I’m right, it’s probably a relatively recent addition to their Spawn area compared to the rest, so we’re looking at relatively low levels. If things are horribly wrong, we’re not going to be too vulnerable.”

“If.”

“Yes. And that’s a risk I’m willing to take. We’re heading toward that central zone. Time to get Peloton stretched to the limit,” she looked at Therominn.

“I knew I needed to level it higher. Well, there go my hundred spare levels…”