Freeflow Incident: Part One – Sea of Blood Day Three: August 17, 2110 I still don’t know what to make of this nightmare. As I mentioned when it first arrived, it came in small clumps of red and brown material, rolling and bouncing seemingly at random, viciously attacking any moving life form, finding easy pickings from the survivors of the impact as they tried to flee from Ground Zero. But then it kept coming, in increasingly larger waves, growing larger with each kill, and being reinforced. As I look back on it, I’m beginning to think that whatever this thing proves to be, that it has at least a marginal intelligence… as the more I pick my memory, the more I realize how it initially chose the plumpest and largest of victims first, and not moving onto pets or other animals until after all of the larger creatures had been consumed. Now, it looks like an ocean of partially congealed blood underneath me, seemingly inert, pulsating as it continues to flow off onto the horizon. I can only wonder how long it will be before my presence is found. Perhaps being consumed by whatever this thing is would be the preferable way to meet my end. The water I stashed is almost gone, and I can’t get more since the janitor closed the water main two days ago to prevent this red flood from coming up through the pipes. My food is gone and the campus commons is in another building, cut off from me by at least two hundred meters of the grotesque slime that now covers the ground almost as far as I can see. As a matter of fact, I haven’t eaten since yesterday. I know some might say that’s nothing, and I suppose they’d be right… but for a man who had never been fifteen minutes from sustenance all his life, to go nearly eighteen hours without it is a bit of a shock. But it’s not the lack of necessities that has kept me awake with cold sweats. The quiet is what is scaring me the most. At least during the first three days, I could hear the occasional screams as the red mass found another straggler. It makes me realize how terribly wrong I was whenever I thought of silence. Gone are the days of the peaceful courtyard in the center of the campus as what I thought to be peace and quiet. There was so much sound there that I never even bothered to know. Birds chirping, maybe a squirrel clambering up a tree; white noise that our brain naturally blocks out in order for us to function with any degree of an attention span. But this dead… empty… nothingness… it gnaws at my sanity, but without the swiftness of the red/brown tide outside this building. At times, I found myself tapping the keys of my portable, even as I waited for the battery to recharge, just for the benefit of the sound it made. I didn’t dare do anything louder out of fear that perhaps the all-devouring mass might have hearing to go along with its wholly voracious appetite. The only reason I haven’t hurled myself to my death is because of my desire for people to know what I have seen here… but even that desire is running out as I can tell the generators of the building are finally starting to die. They were only meant to operate for 28 hours, as I believe the janitor told me, and even with running on minimal drain, I’m amazed they’ve lasted this long. In truth, I expected to have been rescued by now. I wonder now how many rescue attempts have been thwarted by this faceless foe… but at the same time, I also wonder how that’s possible. We supposedly were the most sophisticated and intelligent creatures on this planet, and perhaps in the galaxy. Surely this… flood… couldn’t be stymieing all our efforts. What could possibly be going on? I just got the low battery warning. I suppose I should pray that the generators have enough juice for another charge or two… but I’m beginning to ponder what the point of that would be. Evan closed the datapad warily, and leaned back against the side wall of the desk behind him.… he suspected this latest posting, like the last thirty-four, hadn’t made it past his pad. The posts he had placed in the first few hours of the attack had generated swarms of replies, queries, and well- wishes… since then, nothing. It could mean anything. The government could have placed all communications on blackout so that the channels would be clear for their efforts. This… stuff… could have somehow shut down the communications systems as well, for all he knew. Hell, as far as he could prove, he could even be the last damn person alive on Earth. He reached for the water bottle on the desk, and was rather dismayed to see how little was left, barely enough for one swallow. He had tried to ration the water available since the flood had taken over the lower floors, and had started to infect the water supply, prompting the janitor to in essence commit suicide in order to cut off the water main. And so, he was alone. Well, he supposed that wasn’t entirely true; but he might as well be. His eyes quickly scanned the depressing empty classroom, the desks still neatly in order as if nothing was at all out of place… like potentially the end of the world going on outside. Flipping open his datapad once more, and activating the wireless voice transmission software, he quickly made certain his voice was properly being picked up, then confirmed that the destination of the transmission was still receiving. Wireless peer to peer transmissions were still working, as they didn’t require any long range satellite, but that was hardly an effective means to communicate with the outside world. “Hey… Stacie… you there?” A three second pause precluded a terse, annoyed, woman’s voice. “Don’t waste power, Evan. I’m trying to work here; unlike certain others.” “It’s not my fault I’ve been blacked out!” He said defensively… then with a worried lilt asked, “What’s the flood level at?” There was a moment’s silence again. “It’s five feet above my floor level. The seals in the lab are still holding, and at least the flood level does not seem to be growing at the rate it was earlier. I do believe it’s finally outstripped its sustenance.” “That’s good… right?” “It’s not receding, either.” Stacie corrected. “It’s in equilibrium, and there’s no telling how long it will be able to maintain that balance. I don’t know if I’ll… be able to wait it out. My water is nearly gone… and my food rations were used up yesterday.” Evan took another glance at his nearly empty water bottle, and the completely empty pack at his side. “Yeah… same here. Guess these emergency routines weren’t up to snuff after all.” “They rarely are.” Stacie replied, “Now… shut down and conserve power. There’s no telling how much longer it’ll hold, and I need all I can get.” With that, the communication cut off, and a second later, Evan again clapped the panels of his datapad closed. Even if doing nothing bored the living hell out of him, he knew that the work Stacie was doing served a far greater purpose than mindlessly taking notes no one would see. Though he wasn’t sure how anyone was going to see her work in the end, at least if by chance someone did come across her analysis of the sickly blood-like flood through the city, it would help a lot more than “no food, no water, I’m going to die here.” Five minutes of counting the perforations on the ceiling tiles later, Evan had what amounted to a minor epiphany. He wasn’t sure what was worse, that it took him five minutes to make that realization, or that something so simple could be considered an epiphany. It was rather depressing that he had become so used to having electronic devices at his beck and call that something so basic and tradition would be overlooked for any period of time. Then again, perhaps he wasn’t the only one to have such dismissal of the simpler things in life, as the desk in the classroom he had appropriated didn’t have even a single sheet of paper in any of its drawers. He had to cross the room towards the supply closet to find something that did the trick, a pad of blank progress reports. Fortunately, the far side was unprinted, and gave him something to work with. Which brought up dilemma number two; finding something to write with… Evan needed to cross the hall in order to locate such a utensil, a pen in the lecture hall at the center of the floor, wedged into the top groove of the professor’s podium… barely used, overlooked and forgotten about by numerous educators and even janitors judging by the thin layer of dust upon it. On his way back to the classroom he had appropriated, his eyes locked on the stairwell leading to the lower floor. Warily, he approached the staircase, shadows cast from the railing and overhand due to the failure of the lighting on the floor below.