Megaphiladelphia - 6 June 2065
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Margot Jasper’s day started just like any other on the job. Wake up at six, don the beige uniform, and power on the standard-issue “Stele,” a device capable of establishing connections with Nodes directly, with access to the National Nodal Array Administration’s Node Index. As one of the United New States of America’s half million registered Paranodal Investigators, it was Margot’s job to look into unusual nodal activity on behalf of the NNAA. Based out of the Megaphiladelphia Paranodal Investigation Network Bureau, Margot was the top PI in the megalopolitan area. They had personally registered over 100 unarrayed nodes in, around, and under the city.
There were regularly reports to the PIN Bureau of radio, internet, or electrical interference presumably caused by these unarrayed nodes, and PIs such as Margot would go locate the unruly node and log it in the Stele before pacifying it with a neutralizing sequence from a photon gun. Megaphiladelphia was built directly on top of the buried ruins of the old city, and many of the unarrayed nodes were located in parts of the old city still accessible through maintenance tunnel networks. Margot’s first investigation of the day would take them to the Penn Hotel and Function Hall, a small, self-explanatory building deep in the tunnels. Margot had registered three unarrayed nodes in the Penn Hotel over the course of the past two years, and they knew the labyrinthine route well after several return trips to neutralize them.
Margot had always been fascinated by the behavior of the unarrayed nodes, especially the ones in the old city tunnels. They were like ghosts, gathering around the fault lines of an almost forgotten past. Sometimes Margot would watch them pulse and vibrate for a long while before neutralizing them with the photon gun. Scientists seemed to have figured out pretty much everything there was to know about the Nodes not long after they first appeared forty years ago, but the existence of unarrayed individuals always made Margot think humans barely knew anything about the nodes at all.
After taking the monorail across the river from their home station near City Hall, Margot entered a code on the Stele to stop the train at a dark station. A handful of these stations exist throughout the city, accessible only to PIs and some city workers, offering access to the old city tunnels. After Margot disembarked, the train doors closed swiftly behind them and the monorail whipped away down the tunnel toward the next public station. The dark stations were rather plain, just a small platform only as long as a single rail car and only a few feet deep before a concrete wall. A single arched doorway in the middle of the wall was lit by a red bulb. In the war, bulbs like these had been used to interrupt Nodal Fields, but with technological improvements since then, they were refined to just interrupt the fields of unarrayed nodes, to prevent them from causing too much interference with the Array. The bulbs weren’t one hundred percent effective, but without them Margot’s job would undoubtedly be much more tedious.
Beyond the dark platform, a short stairway led down to access one of the old city subway tunnels. The whole old city subway network was lit by the dim red glow of the field bulbs, and not much else. Access points such as these had rail cycles for PIs and city workers to use to traverse the tunnels quickly. Margot keyed in their code to unlock one of the cycles and placed it on the old subway rail before swinging a leg over and taking off into the deep. After a few minutes they arrived at an old subway platform that connected to one of the maintenance tunnels built to connect the undemolished old city buildings. The floor of these tunnels was actually the pavement of the old city streets, and even after two years of doing this job, Margot still got a ghostly feeling every time they walked through them. The Penn Hotel was only a short walk from the subway platform, another arched concrete doorway leading directly into the once-elegant lobby.
Once inside, Margot set about the methodical process of going through every room and hall in the building, checking the previously registered nodes as they went, to see if they were the source of the unusual activity. First was a Metatron-class node in one of the hotel’s smaller banquet halls. It was a bright green convex disk shape, like a giant contact lens, hovering about six feet off the ground. It gave off a very subtle, deep humming sound, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary and after watching it for a minute, Margot confirmed its status on the Stele and moved on. The next node was extremely close by, which had concerned Margot when they first registered it, but ever since the first photon blast it had never needed pacification again. It was a Jophiel-class node in the kitchen immediately adjacent to the Metatron’s banquet hall. It was a pink “inverted-teardrop” shape, which basically looked like a balloon. This one was Margot’s favorite, as it hovered low to the ground and had a somehow joyful energy to it. Checking the Stele, the Jophiel was also not responsible for the anomalous activity, and Margot continued on. Several empty floors and halls later, Margot arrived at the pool on the ground level. In here was a Ramiel-class node. This one was a blue octahedron, and it hovered about eight feet above the floor level, but being over the center of the long-empty pool it was actually about 13 feet off the ground. This one didn’t give off any audible sound like the other two nodes, but the longer Margot stayed in the pool room, the more a pressure like a bad thunderstorm built up against their eardrums. Though this node was especially beautiful to them, Margot quickly checked the Stele and went back out through the glass doors into the hall, rubbing their fists against their ears as they did to relieve the pressure.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Having checked all of the previously registered nodes as well as the majority of the hotel in the process, Margot knew the anomalous readings must be coming from a node that wasn’t yet registered. The only section of the hotel that Margot didn’t pass through when checking the other nodes was a small hallway behind the front desk. Margot had been through here on their first time in the hotel; there were a couple of offices, some kind of staff or company suites, and at the end of the hall, an archive room full of guest records and rental files for the banquet hall. Margot poked their head in each of the offices and then went into each of the suites, checking the bathrooms and closets as well, and finding all of them empty knew the node must be in the archive room. Margot found the room a little disconcerting so the certainty that the node was there did not make them feel good. The archive was a room far larger than what one would expect a hotel’s records to require, and it was full of tall filing cabinets spaced out evenly through the room in row after row like monuments to the memory of all the guests whose files were contained within. Margot walked slowly to the end of the hall and realized there was a vibrant pink glow leaking through the cracks of the vault-style door. As they turned the handle and opened it, the pink light washed over them, almost blinding them for a moment as they stepped into the archive.
When Margot’s eyes adjusted to the light, their jaw dropped in shock at the sight of the Node in front of them. Nodes didn’t move or change beyond gentle pulsation, at least not that Margot had ever seen or heard of, and as a PI, they were generally kept up to date on Node science. The node hovering before them in the center of the archive room did not abide this rule. It was a magenta pyramid type, which Margot would have classified as a Zadkiel-class node if it weren’t for the fact that it was rotating rather quickly on its central axis. Not only that, but as Margot stepped forward tentatively, the Node seemed to move closer to them in turn. As Margot looked on in total awe, a red shape began to form above the node. As it continued turning, the shape also turned, and grew larger. Margot could now see it was a large, perfectly triangular, very thin layer of blood-red crystalline material. It continued growing as the node continued turning until very suddenly it froze, and the node changed shape.
The node suddenly shifted from the shape of a perfect pyramid into a perfect sphere, and the moment its new form was fully realized, the crystal became liquid and splashed down over it. Despite everything about the situation shattering Margot’s entire perception of nodes and perhaps even the world, they took particular notice of the fact that the liquid crashed over the node as though it was solid before splattering on the floor. The red liquid splashed across the filing cabinets and onto Margot’s boots and pant legs, and as it did the metallic smell of blood filled the air. Margot wanted to vomit, or to cry, but all they could do was look on with tears welling in their eyes as the node collapsed in on itself, its glow becoming a raging flame as rays of powerful light beamed off of it like a cross for a moment before it disappeared altogether.
Margot stood there for a long while, perfectly still, mouth still hanging open, as the presumptive blood dripped slowly off the filing cabinets and rippled in the larger pool on the floor. Eventually, they slowly lifted their Stele from where it was hanging at their hip, and wiping some of the red liquid from the screen with their sleeve, confirmed that the anomalous activity had ceased, and there was no nodal presence in front of them any longer.
Margot tried not to think too much about the squeaking of their wet boots as they turned and left the archive room, slowly making their way back out of the Penn Hotel and the old city tunnels. They hailed a monorail from the dark station and then made their way to the PIN Bureau offices in City Hall. As they went in to report what happened to the Bureau Chancellor, they worried that he wouldn’t believe them, and at first he didn’t, but the nodal activity readings, the photon gun firing log, and the bloodstains on Margot’s boots and pants spoke for themselves. A terrifying new age was dawning, and Margot Jasper had had either the privilege or the grave misfortune of glimpsing its first creeping rays.
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