Chapter 989 - What could they see?

Advancing on foot into the silent zone, the group still had yet to find anything strange. As expected, the area where they were now was pretty much free from human activity, discounting narrow deserted roads cutting through the landscape here and there.

Sofia used her aura to snatch a bird out from the air, pulling it down to her hand. The confused bird chirped at first, then settled into her hand, unable to move.

“Hmm… Looks normal too. There is just nothing weird so far… Did the ECA give us false information to drive us away?”

Sofia released the bird, letting it fly away.

“... Surely not, right? Gabriela wouldn’t…”

They sent the flying windmills first. These things are super noisy… Maybe whatever lurks here reacts to noise? Or has it simply moved on to somewhere else?

But even then how does all communication get cut from one third of the country in the span of a few minutes with it all looking so normal from the outside?

The closest city isn’t that far anymore, let’s hurry.

The group accelerated a bit while continuing to travel discreetly near the surface. As they neared the city of Flatis and its surrounding villages, they were welcomed by a puzzling sight.

People, tending to the fields, traveling in their cars, going on about their day.

This only reinforced the hypothesis that the ECA might have lied. But if that was the case, Sofia had no idea how to explain what she was seeing when she checked the eye she had left on Gabriela from time to time. Because the ECA seemed to really be in a state of panic and emergency.

Meanwhile, the global human population had already fallen below 95%. Deaths seemed to be accelerating.

Letting Pareth hide in storage for now, Sofia snuck closer, and listened in on a few conversations between farmers.

They all seemed very normal.

Sofia debated returning to the ECA right then, but decided to trust Gabriela a bit more, and made her way toward the city.

Disguised as a human, she moved discreetly through alleyways, listening to the idle chatter of people on the streets.

Again the conversations were varied but all normal. Very normal. Perhaps a bit too normal.

People in the north were rightfully tense yesterday, with all the things that have been happening around them… But Gabriela said information travels almost instantly countrywide through the television and radio.

A day later here everything is still that peaceful?

Nobody even talks about what happened up north? In the same country?

Maybe they also just lost communications and that’s why… No… It would be even stranger if they went on about their normal life like this after being cut off from most of the rest of the country, wouldn’t it?

A light frown etched on her face, Sofia walked into a wall, disappearing from the alleyway.

Having entered a random housing unit, she scanned a few floors for an apartment with a television and nobody inside, then quickly made her way there through the spiritual plane.

The television was another model than the ones she had seen so far, but she more or less understood how to make it work now, and quickly turned it on. She was faced with static, which was not too surprising. Changing the channel a few times, and readjusting the antennas, however, did not fix this. After spending almost ten minutes fiddling with the machine, also enlisting the doll’s help midway through, Sofia still failed to get a single image or sound out of the television that was not black and white static.

Original: This copy: unauthorized. The author asks that you read the story on the official site.

Even the doll gave up, sitting listlessly on top of the tv.

Alright. That at least confirms that they are really cut off, I think. The television in the other city continued broadcasting throughout the entire night so I doubt it would normally stop in the middle of the day like this.

Would everyone really be acting so normal then?

That feels wrong. Once someone gets used to a constant link having it cut should feel really bad, be it information or whatever else…

Returning to the spiritual plane, where she could move freely and totally undetected among humans, Sofia started exploring like this, looking for anything out of place.

It did not take very long until she found something weird, a family in the building just adjacent to the one she had first been in, sitting together on a couch, all facing the same direction. Of course, furniture was hardly visible in the spiritual realm, where even thick walls were sometimes hard to notice, but Sofia had looked into enough homes to know that almost everyone in this world placed their television in front of the couch.

Do they have an image?

Sofia returned to the physical plane in an adjacent room, where she could peek into the living room from behind.

A husband and wife, with their young two kids, were all sitting on the couch, wide-eyed, smiles on their faces, rapturously staring at the static on the tv. Even the newborn cradled in the woman’s arms was the same.

Sofia quickly stepped back and with skeletal hands pulling her, faded back into the spiritual plane.

The soul of the husband moved just after she disappeared, its head looking back for a second in a 180° spin, before returning to normal.

The ECA was not exaggerating at all. There is something very wrong here…

Sofia reappeared in an empty apartment two floors below, and grabbed the rag doll out of her storage ring. She paused for a second, surprised by the doll’s appearance. She looked a lot less creepy than she had just a few minutes before, mostly because its messy ‘hair’ was now tied up by a pink hairclip, and its rough dress had been replaced.

“One of Pestle’s dresses?” Sofia whispered, “Did Pareth put you up to this? You’re playing with fire.”

The doll trembled.

“Whatever… There are people two floors above us, can you feel them? Anything strange? Powers like yours?”

The doll answered yes, no, and no again.

“So do you think they are really human?”

There was no response from the doll.

“... Thanks for helping anyway. And since you’re dressing up, get Pareth to fix your seams while you’re at it, you look like you’re just about ready to fall apart.”

That was mostly Sofia’s own fault for squeezing the doll too hard when capturing it before, but that needed not be said. Sending the doll back into storage, Sofia looked at the ceiling above.

Here mana senses pierced through the ceilings, landing on the strange family. They were still in the exact same positions, staring at the static.

Since nobody is talking about the tvs not working… Is everyone in this city like this?

Sofia looked outside through a window, it was the middle of the evening. Children happily ran home, carrying heavy bags, people slowly left their office jobs, the various commerces lining the street were slowly filling up with small crowds. It was different from the world Sofia knew, for sure, but for this world at least, things seemed utterly normal. And then there was that strange family.

Only relying on the very thin mana already in the air to avoid frying all the electronics, Sofia gradually expanded her senses’ range. It did not take her long to notice more groups of watchers. She had not lucked out when finding the one above her, in fact, they were everywhere. Alone or in groups, all the families who had a television, as soon as they were home, sat in front of it in silence.

The children were so full of joy and energy outside, yet the second they returned home. The school bag hit the ground, and they trudged toward the tv, sitting still, enraptured by the static.

Is there some kind of hypnosis power in the static?

It did nothing to me… Not even a trigger from my blessing or the philosopher’s. And nothing to the doll either… I am still missing something…

I took a bit longer for Sofia to notice the second kind of gathering point for the enraptured people: radios.

The smaller boxes that were like one way communicators normally used to broadcast music, which Gabriela had briefed Sofia on as a good way to stay informed if they were to lose contact, were just like televisions. People sitting around them like smiling statues.

Imagining everyone was mind-controlled by some simultaneous broadcast, it could explain why the entire region was lost all so fast. Even the television and radio coverage might not be enough to get everyone at once but…

Sofia remembered her previous experience with the small village in the north.

The emergency broadcasting system.