Chapter 4 third chapter

Turk had never seen anything like this in his ten years in the New World. But, in a way, it's pretty typical.It is customary for the New World to remind people that this is not Earth.What's happening here is different.This isn't Kansas City.People always say that, like in The Wizard of Oz, after Dorothy is blown away from home by a tornado.And they probably say the same thing in a dozen languages ​​now.This is no prairie.This is not Kandahar, Afghanistan.This is not the Mombasa of Kenya. Do you think it's dangerous?Liz asked. Some customers in the restaurant clearly thought it was dangerous.They paid the bill hastily without any disguise, and walked to their cars.In less than a few minutes, there were only a few loyal customers left in the wide wooden atrium.do you want to leaveTurk asked.

Unless you want to go. I think we're as safe here as we are anywhere.Turk said, the scenery here is even more beautiful! That phenomenon is still on the surface, but seems to be getting closer.It looks like shiny rain, a cloud of shimmering, churning gray clouds, like a thunderstorm seen from a distance.Only the light did not fall like lightning, but hung beneath the undulating darkness, illuminating the clouds.Turk, who had often seen storms blowing out to sea, estimated that this one was approaching at about local wind speeds.From the light emitted, it appears to be composed of individually glowing or burning particles, perhaps as dense as snow.He couldn't say for sure, though, because this part of Equatoria doesn't snow, and the last time he saw snow was in the interior of Maine, many years ago.

His first concern was the fire.Port Magellan is a powder depot, crowded with affordable housing, countless warehouses and transportation equipment in the dock area, and oil tankers and liquefied natural gas ships in the bay, transporting fuel to an insatiable earth.A strong storm came from the east like a lit match, and he dared not imagine the consequences. He didn't say much to Liz.He thought she had come to many of the same conclusions as he had, but she hadn't suggested running away.She was smart enough to know there was nowhere to run, and she couldn't outrun the speed of this approaching mass.But she also tensed up as the mass approached the southernmost land in the bay.

It didn't stay on all the time.she says. Harley's staff dragged the table in from the atrium as if it would be protective, and advised the rest of the guests to stay indoors until someone figured out what was going on.But the waiter knew Turk well and left him alone.So he and Liz stayed outside for a while.The two watched the light of the flare (whatever that was) dance across the sea in the distance. It didn't stay on.He understood what she meant.The moving, shining curtain of light faded into the darkness before it reached the surface of the sea.Burn out, maybe.That's an encouraging sign.Liz took out her cell phone, picked up a local news station, and relayed bits and pieces to Turk.They spoke of a storm, or something that looked like a storm on radar, with edges stretching north and south for hundreds of kilometers, with a center roughly over Port Magellan.

At this moment, the light rains down on the headland and the harbor.There are several cruise ships and cargo ships anchored in the port, and the upper decks and upper hulls of the ships are all illuminated.The light rain floated up along the terrain, higher and higher, and the entire foothills were like canyon walls shrouded in gloomy light.Now the silhouettes of the freight cranes faded, the towering hotel buildings of the city dimmed in the distance, and the souks and markets disappeared.But nothing exploded or caught fire.Well, Turk thought, and then thought, but it might be poisonous.It could be anything damn it!Time to go in.He said.

Harley's head waiter was Tyrell, whom Turk had worked with briefly when he was working on the Lub El Carri pipeline.They are not best friends, but friendship is not bad.Tyrell seemed relieved when Turk and Lise finally left the atrium.Tyrell closed the glass door and said: Do you have any idea? No.Turk said. I really don't know if I should run away, or just enjoy the show?I call my wife.We live in a bungalow area, which is a residential area a few kilometers away from the sea, and the rent is very cheap.She said it happened there too.Something fell on the house, it looked like ash.

Is nothing burning? She said no. Possibly volcanic ash.Lise said.Turk had to admire the way she handled it all.She was nervous, but not visibly afraid, at least not so frightened that she dared not make inferences.It should be the crustal activity on the sea level. What's going on in the sea? Like a submarine volcano.Tyrell nodded. But if it is so close, should we feel something before the ash falls on us, such as an earthquake?tsunami? As far as I know, there are no such reports.Turk said. Dust like dust, dusty.Tyrell added. Turk asked Tyrell if there was coffee in the kitchen, and Tyrell said, Oh, that's a good idea.So go in and check.There were still a few guests in the restaurant who had no better place to go, but no one was eating or celebrating either.They were all seated at the innermost table, talking nervously to the service staff.

The coffee arrived and was nice and strong.Turk added the creamer to his glass as if it was all right.Lise's cell phone rang repeatedly, and she blocked a few calls from her friends before eventually routing them all to voicemail altogether.Turk didn't receive any calls, and his cell phone was in his shirt pocket. Now that the ashes were starting to fall into Harley's atrium, Turk and Liz went to the window to look. Dusty.Tyrell's description was all too accurate.Turk had never seen volcanic ash, but he imagined that was what it must look like.Ash spilled on the battens and planks of the atrium, and fell on the window panes.Like snow, the color of an old woolen suit.There were also scattered here and there bits and pieces of shiny things, which had faded when he saw them.

Liz pressed against his shoulder unexpectedly.He thought again of their weekend at Mount Mohind, when the weather had cut them off by the nameless lake.At that time, she was so calm and stable, ready to respond to any situation at any time.At least, he said, nothing caught fire. Yes, but you can smell it. When she mentioned it, he found that he could really smell it, a mineral smell, slightly pungent, with a hint of sulfur. Tyrell says: Do you think it's dangerous? Even if we do, we can't do anything about it. Can only stay indoors.Lise said.But Turk wondered if there were other options, because through the shining dust he could still make out the cars on the streets of Madagascar, and the pedestrians hurrying down the sidewalks with their heads covered in coats, handkerchiefs or newspapers .unless

Unless what? Unless this goes on for too long.Port Magellan does not have a roof capable of bearing too much weight.she says. And it's not just dust.Tyrell said. What? Well, look.He points out the window. This is simply ridiculous and unbelievable!Something in the shape of a starfish floated past the window.It was gray, with light spots on it, floating lightly like a balloon in the slight wind, and when it hit the wooden floor of the atrium, it immediately broke into fine powder and a few larger pieces. Turk glanced at Lise.She shrugged in disbelief. Get me a tablecloth.Turk said.

Tyrell says: What do you want a tablecloth for? And a cloth napkin. Do not soil the tablecloth.Tyrrell said management has strict rules about this. Then go ask your manager. Mr Darnell is off tonight.I guess that way, the manager would be me. Then go get a tablecloth, Tyrael.I want to check this thing out. Don't mess with my place. I will be careful. So Tyrell went and got a tablecloth.Liz said: Are you going outside? Just going there and picking up a little bit of what's dropped is enough. What if that was poisonous? Then I think we're all screwed.She flinched, and he added: But if it's poisonous, we might know it by now. Whatever it is, it's not good for the lungs. So please tie me up with a napkin and cover my face. The rest of the guests and waiters were watching curiously, but they didn't seem to want to help.Turk took the tablecloth to the nearest exit to the atrium and gestured to Tyrell to open the glass door.The smell intensified immediately, much like the smell of burning wet animal hair, and Turk hurriedly spread the tablecloth on the courtyard floor before returning to the house. What to do now?Tyrell said. Let's just let it sit for a few minutes now. He returned to Lisi's side, the two were speechless, watching the dust fall for more than a quarter of an hour.Liz asked him how he planned to get home, and he shrugged.He lives by the sea a few kilometers away from the airport, in a place where there are basically trailers.More than one centimeter of ash had accumulated on the ground, and the vehicle moved slowly like a cow. I'm just a few blocks from here, she said, in the new building next to the Territorial Office on Abbas Street.Should be fairly sturdy. This is the first time she has invited him to her home.He nodded. Still he was curious.He beckoned Tyrell to stop what he was doing, and he was delivering coffee to the still present guests.So Tyrael opened the courtyard door again.Turk grabbed the dusty tablecloth and tugged gently, trying not to touch anything fragile attached to it.Tyrell quickly closed the door.call!It stinks. Turk brushed some gray dust off his shirt and hair, knelt down to inspect the tablecloth, which was covered with remnants, and Lise came to look too.A few curious guests pulled their chairs closer, but wrinkled their noses at the smell. Turk said: Do you have a pen or pencil with you? Lise rummaged in her purse and took out a pen.Turk took it and poked his pen through the layers of dust that had accumulated on the tablecloth. what is that?Liz asked over his shoulder.On your left, looks like I don't know, like an acorn Turk hadn't seen an acorn in years, and there were no oaks in Equatoria.The object in the fallout was about the size of his thumb, saucer-shaped at one end, tapering to a blunt point at the other end, like an acorn, or a small egg wearing a small sombrero .It seemed to be made of the same thing as Falling Dust, and when he touched it with the tip of his pen, it fell apart, as if without any material component. And there.Lise said, pointing.This is another shaped object, much like the gears of an old mechanical clock, which also shatters when touched. Tyrell walked to the staff room and came back with a flashlight.When he shone the light of his torch at an oblique angle on the tablecloth, many of these objects, if they could be called objects, took shape.These look like man-made things, only remnants remain, and the structure is faintly visible.One of them was a smooth tube about one centimeter long; the other was about the same size, but had joints, like the vertebrae of some small animal, such as a mouse.A thing with six thorns; a disc with a small crushed spoke on it, like a bicycle wheel; and a crooked ring.Some of them still had a faint peripheral light. All burnt.Lise said. Either charred or disintegrated.But how can something fall from the sky with some parts intact after being burned like this?What are these things made of? There are also a few shiny dots in the dust.Turk moved a hand back and forth over them. careful.Lise said. Not hot, not even warm. Maybe I don't know, there will be radiation. possible.If so, it's another doomsday scenario.Everyone outside is inhaling the stuff, and everyone inside is soon inhaling it too.None of these buildings are airtight, none of them filter the air. Do you see anything from these?Tyrell asked. Turk stood up, clapping his hands.Yes, I have.What I do know is that I don't know as much as I thought. ☆ He accepted the invitation to live in Lisi's house temporarily.They borrowed Tyrell's extra chef's uniform from the kitchen and put it on to prevent their clothes from getting dusty.Then run as quickly as possible across the piles of gray dunes in the parking lot to Liz's car.A cloud of dust casts a black curtain on the sky, blocks the meteor shower, and dims the streetlights. Liz drove a Chinese car, smaller than Bicker's, but newer and probably much more reliable.Before sitting in the front seat, he shook off his belongings. She took the exit at the back of the parking lot onto a narrower but less crowded avenue that connected Madagascar Street to Abbas Street.She handled the car with a measured grace, carefully driving through the accumulation of dust, and Turk let her concentrate on driving.As the traffic slowed, she said: Do you think this has something to do with the meteor shower? Seems like more than just a coincidence, but who knows? It's definitely not volcanic ash. I think not. Then it might have something to do with hypothetical intelligent beings. As the time gyrations take place, people speculate endlessly about hypothetical intelligent beings who remain mysterious until now, pushing Earth billions of years into the galactic future and opening a door between the Indian Ocean and the New World.As far as Turk knows, there are still no reliable conclusions.possible.But that doesn't explain anything either. My father used to talk a lot about hypothetical intelligent beings.One of the things is that it's easy to forget how much older Earth is than it was before the time spin.It is likely that the earth has changed in some places that we do not understand.Any textbook you read says that comets and meteorites are waste that fell from the edge of the solar system, landed here, or on Earth, or anywhere in the galaxy.But it was always a local observation, and four billion years out of date.There is a theory that hypothetical intelligent beings are not living beings, and never have been He waited for her to turn a corner, the tires gripping the ground hard.Lise's father was a university professor before he disappeared. say they are self-replicating machines that live in the icy regions of the galaxy, on the fringes of planetary systems, have very slow metabolisms, eat ice, and produce information Like those replicas we sent out during the time rounds. That's right.Self-replicating machines.But they have billions of years to evolve. Do college professors talk to their daughters like this?Or was she just trying to get out of the panic by talking?So what do you mean by that? Maybe it's not just comet dust that falls into the atmosphere this time of year.maybe it is She shrugged. Dead hypothetical intelligent beings.He finished for her. Well, your explanation sounds stupid. This theory is not inferior to other theories.I don't mean to be skeptical, but we don't have evidence that the stuff that falls from the sky comes from space. Gears and pipes made of dust?Where else would they come from? Look at it another way.We humans have only been on this planet for thirty years, and we tell ourselves that we have already investigated everything here, and we understand it quite well.But all this is bullshit.It is wrong to draw conclusions lightly, any conclusions.Even if this were caused by hypothetical intelligent beings, it wouldn't really explain anything.There have been meteor showers every summer for thirty years, and nothing like this has ever happened. The wipers pile up dust on the edge of the windshield.Turk saw people on the sidewalk, some running, others hiding in doorways, and described looking out of windows anxiously.A Provisional Government police car drove past them, lights on and sirens blaring. Maybe something unusual is happening in outer space that we can't see. Maybe it's the tengu shaking off the fleas!It's too early to tell, Liz. She nodded sullenly and pulled into the parking lot of her building.The building was a tall concrete tower that looked like it had been moved from Miami-Dade, where the skyscrapers stood.In the underground parking lot, nothing happened outside could be seen at all. There were only one or two dust particles floating in the still air. Liz swiped the access control card through the elevator induction groove.We passed. So far, yes.Turk thought.