The Barrens (NaNoWriMo Day 3)

sofer (53)in #writing • 7 years ago

Shalom, Steemians! Here's my third day of NaNoWriMo. I went way under today...it's Friday, gotta go have some fun =).

You can find previous days here:
Day 1
Day 2

Day 3 Word Count: 750
Total Word Count: 4029
Goal: 50,000
Remaining: 45,971

Leah’s thoughts drifted back to the foundry worker. She thought about the laity and clerics at St. Pius who would be continuing her investigation. Whenever she performed an analysis, her work was always just the first step. She never got to experience the rest of the journey. She felt like a conduit, a connection between interesting stories and places, existing only to pass information on. A checkbox, a bureaucratic step in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Leah knew that she could do more, if she was ever given the chance. She was more capable than they gave her credit for.

What is pride? Pride is vanity, preoccupation, and dissatisfaction.

Her training was imprinted deeply on her mind, and there always seemed to be a relevant question and answer for whatever she was experiencing. She was dissatisfied, but not for her own ambition. It just felt like she could be more useful. Ecclesia Vera was the salvation of humanity, and she wanted to be an instrumental part in that salvation, whether spiritual, mental, or physical. It wasn’t enough to initiate something and then watch passively as others carried it out.

Leah switched on her workstation monitor and opened the foundry worker’s file. Serving in Ecclesia Vera gave her access to information those outside the administration could never have. She could run reports, read databases, and pull statistics relevant to church activities. That almost made it worse, sitting as an observer to the real work of the church.

It didn’t help that this was an especially strange case. She ran over the details in her mind. A grunt from the Forges experiences a mild seizure. This happens within minutes of the church’s reception of a powerful signal from the direction of the destroyed Elysium colony. Early scans in the hospital indicate that his brain was particularly receptive to that signal. Her work all but confirms it.

For a few weeks now, there had been whispers in the administration that the Elysium colony had been activated, but the signals were weak enough that it was difficult to draw any conclusions. Certainly, there couldn’t be any survivors from before the war. Aether killed slowly, but it had been generations since the peace accords.

It was possible that some colonists from Elysium had survived the crash. That was only a few decades ago, and nobody had a clear picture of the extent of the damage done to the colony. But if that was the case, why had it been silent until just recently?

The third possibility was that a group of exiles had made it to Elysium, but surely they would have starved before that could have happened. Nothing good could come from any of it if disgruntled outcasts from Avalon had somehow traversed the Barrens to the ruins of the colony. The church was right to be concerned.

And how did the foundry worker fit into it all? The doctors at St. Pius would bring the subject in and question him again, keeping him still long enough to get a good reading from their neurographs. Then what would happen to him? If there really was something going on in Elysium, and he was connected to it, the church certainly wouldn't let him live.

Regardless, Leah was more interested in what the signal did to his brain. She had read a little about early Avalonian scientists who had researched the effects of external frequencies on human brains. The idea was that a person could be manipulated from the outside, compelled to act in certain ways. Most of the documentation was redacted, and as far as Leah knew, the research had been shut down years ago.

Her curiosity was getting the best of her. It wouldn't be realistic to try to intervene in the investigation in any way, but maybe she could do more to be prepared in case anybody else was affected by any other signals. She would still be stuck with her basic tasks, but if she could learn more about the interaction between external frequencies and the human brain, she might be able to identify symptoms even with her limited instruments. Word might spread that she was an authority on these seizure cases, if any more occurred, and then she might be entrusted with more responsibility.

What is ambition? Ambition is the notion that human desires are superior to providence.

Leah stood up and left her office. The library was the place to start. Her day was open, and there was research to be done.

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