NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 5369328" data-attributes="member: 3285">Music of the Spheres: Part 7 – CracksDonny had the radio on too, his mute passenger staring silently into space behind him.  It creeped him out. “…a cell phone tower in the area recently exploded in a mysterious incident that gave a lot of listeners quite a headache.  Maybe those UFOs everyone keeps reporting are responsible! Speaking of foreign objects in the skies, we’re continuing our interview with Dr. Neal, exclusive on KRVN FM, the River.  Dr. Neal, can you tell us more about what you’ve been up to at the Great Plains Cruciform Array?”Donny checked his cell phone.  No service.  Hmm.“Yes, thank you. I wanted to give you the exclusive here, live, on the radio. You see, we believe we’ve found SH-01, the Nemesis Star. That recent quake seems to have calibrated our signal that we've been lacking all this time.”"Quake?  You mean the recent 2.0 tremor?""Yes.  That tremor was the fortuitous accident we needed to calibrate our array.  That's how we found Nemesis."Donny had read about the quake.  Something about a deep-sea explosion. “And what’s so important about this star?”“Nemesis is a hypothetical red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU, somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. The existence of this star has been postulated in an attempt to explain an inferred periodicity in the rate of biological extinction in the geological record.”“In English please.”“We believe that SH-01 is the star that killed the dinosaurs. The star’s passage through the Oort comet cloud creates devastating comet storms that plague our solar system.  The comets striking the Earth throw up dense clouds of debris, shutting out the sun’s light, and killing off all life.”“And you think you’ve found Nemesis? Sounds sinister.”“Yes.  In fact, I have proof. What you’re about to hear is the frequency of SH-01.”“And this is what the star sounds like? We can just put our ears to the sky—“ “Oh, heavens no!  Time on this recording has been compressed, so that 73 seconds corresponds to 27 minutes. Since the frequencies of these emissions are well above the audio frequency range, we have shifted them downward by a factor of 44. It’s quite beautiful, actually.”“And here it is, the soothing sounds of the Nemesis Star.”Music started playing, but it wasn't classical music, or space beeping, or any noise Donny associated with stars.  It was a song, sung by people.  But it wasn't coming from the radio."You've got to get it together! Stop shooting at me! You're just a teenage industry. Why are the C.I.A. having fun? They think you're clever cause you've blown up your lungs…"Donny looked around.  The music seemed to be…coming from his head?He looked over his shoulder at Stan.  "Can you hear that?"Stan's eyes were heavily lidded, as if he were falling asleep.  A thin stream of drool slid out of the corner of his mouth. "Guess not." He could somehow hear the song as well as static on the radio at the same time. Donny turned the radio off.The music kept playing.  It was stuck in his head. "But I love to hear that crazy beat. Gets the people dancing on their feet and I love to live in paradise. I love my brothers on a Saturday night yeah."Just then Donny hit a rough patch in the road.  But it wasn't a rough patch, as Donny realized that the entire landscape was shaking violently.  All around them, the telephone poles wobbled on their bases."Son of a—" Donny hit the gas.One by one, the poles began collapsing.  Each pole tugged another down with it, like a series of dominos, sparking electrical cables and bursting transformers.  They began pacing the cruiser, collapsing faster than Donny could drive…Donny revved the engine, hoping the cruiser was up to the task. It roared ahead as one of the poles spun sideways, sweeping downwards and nearly taking off the cruiser's lights.  "Yeah!" shouted Donny as the collapsing poles fell behind the cruiser.  He was so caught up in the adrenaline rush of avoiding the poles that he barely registered the yawning crack in the pavement ahead of him.Donny slammed on the brakes.  The cruiser swerved and then they were airborne.The cruiser floated around him.  Donny caught sight of the air freshner that normally hung from the mirror bouncing off the ceiling.  Then the car landed again on its wheels.  Tires burst, axles snapped. Donny felt as if he had been punched in the spine.  He unbuckled the seat belt, which felt like a knife across his chest, and slipped out the door onto the cracked pavement. The wheels were still spinning.  Donny could make out a yawning gap from the beam of one cracked headlight.  The cruiser was teetering on it."Stan!" Donny got to his feet, yanked the door open—Stan lurched forward and snapped at Donny's arm with his teeth.  Donny screamed, jerking backwards and involuntarily shoved Stan back into the back seat of the cruiser.That was all the momentum the precariously balanced car needed.  It flipped forward, bouncing a few times into the abyss.  Donny caught a glimpse of one of the headlights spinning crazily as the car went down, illuminating the night sky.  It was extinguished by a cacophony of crunching metal. Donny wiped the dust from his face and looked around.  It was pitch black.  He wondered how far a walk he would have to Hayden.But at least the damn music had stopped.</blockquote>

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