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NOTES FROM THE NAVIGATOR
ALERT... ... Intermittent databursts of sufficient strength to cause blackouts, memory loss, and even personality changes have bombarded instances throughout Cluster 569 for the past several weeks, with agency models suggesting a 85% probability of root cause due to Enhanced Telepathic activity.... ...
Reports From Near...
In round and square towers of great precision, clockmen of all ratchets worked around the clock in elliptical shifts, tuned in to the flywheel micro-second rhythm of life that cycles far too fast to synch with the outside world’s glacial pace. Not just speckgear adjusters and flystem tighteners, these triple-spectacled craftsmen are the truly gifted among gizmologists - maintenance gurus of the highest mechanical discipline, forever tuning the machineries of life and the automata they serve. For them, time is measured in moments and ticks. None can be spared, and it is inconceivable that any could be lost. Every shift-change is timed to the nanoblink, with precise allotments of doze-minutes assigned to every clocker.
It was the 37th shift of the fourth hour when the assault came. Deep within the cloistered spindles of the vast Timeworks of Bishbok, thought-bombs were going off like firecrackers in the already addled minds of the bleary-eyed clockmen about to crack from the stress of non-stop number-crunching-- long, drawn-out conundrums that slow-danced a drizzle of non-stop blather, alternated with short, staccato bursts of number strings and algebraic gobbledygoo. It was sporadic, intense, and over within moments, but confidence had been broken in the ranks. Dataflow surges ebbed and flowed wildly, requiring all ratchets-in-hand on double-triple time for at least ten additional minutes while the disoriented clockmen recovered. Economies briefly teetered on collapse as the numbers gyrated herky-jerky across the boards of time, but they successfully held the line until calmer minds prevailed and the clockworks settled back into rhythm.
And Far...
It was absurdly quiet for a Monday morning in the Geliad Phase. The usual hubbub was nowhere to be found, making the runways and flyways seem distant and foreboding, while inside the walls of every domicile in the prefect it was a chatterstorm of panicky indecision as everyone twittled about how they still hadn’t received their skeds, and it was, quite literally, driving them crazy. Something very serious had happened, thought everyone at once, because skeds were never, ever late.
In the upper chambers of the most upper of echelons, many galloping harrumphs were heard as one report after another only confirmed what everyone already knew, not what they needed to know. The datatabulists were legendary for their efficiency and punctuality and had never, ever, missed a sked drop. It was an inconceivable situation without precedent or solution. Should they ask? But how exactly did one ‘call’ a datatabulist? No one had ever needed to before.
Meanwhile, numbers were sad, the markets were grumpy, general enthusiasm was non-existent, and prognosticators everywhere were self-medicating themselves into a frenzy. People were lost without their constantly updated life-organizmos and they wanted answers, but the datatabulists remained silent, hypnotized by the sonorous ramblings of a chattering voice in their heads...