Hazel Sinclair was drowning in quantum mechanics, and it was only Tuesday.
The twenty-year-old physics major sat in Butler Library's third-floor study room, autumn sunlight streaming through tall windows overlooking the Columbia campus. Manhattan's energy hummed beyond with traffic and voices and the constant pulse of eight million lives compressed into concrete and steel.
Her laptop displayed half-finished problem sets, textbooks sprawled across the desk, coffee cup leaving rings on notebooks as third cup of the day sat half-empty. Typical sophomore chaos during midterm season.
Hazel pushed dark hair behind her ears, squinting at equations that refused to cooperate. Average height with athletic build from regular running through Riverside Park, wearing Columbia hoodie and jeans, she was an unremarkable college student among thousands.
Except physics made sense to her in ways it didn't for others, patterns clicking, mathematics revealing universe's structure, which was why she'd chosen the major despite everyone saying engineering paid better.
Outside, students crossed campus between classes, normal October afternoon, normal college life.
Everything normal.
She gathered papers scattered across the desk, problem set due Thursday, lab report needing revision, midterm study guide Prof. Chen distributed yesterday.
Needed organization, needed systems because chaos bred mistakes.
Hazel sorted documents into neat stack with Physics 2802 Quantum Mechanics homework on top, twelve problems with eight completed, two days remaining, manageable.
Small metal paper clip held pages together, standard office supply, nothing special, just keeping papers from scattering.
She set the stack aside, reaching for textbook to reference equation troubling her.
Focused on problem, pen moving across notebook, calculating, concentrating.
Thirty seconds passing, maybe forty.
Hazel reached for homework stack again.
The paper clip was gone.
She blinked, stared at papers now loose, no longer clipped.
"Where the hell did the paper clip go?!"
Looking around desk surface found nothing, checking floor beneath chair found nothing, hands patting pockets, checking between textbook pages, lifting coffee cup, searching everywhere within reach.
Nowhere.
Physically impossible because she'd set papers down thirty seconds ago, hadn't touched them, hadn't moved, paper clip secured firmly to pages.
Now just absent.
Frustration building because midterms were stressful enough without office supplies mysteriously vanishing.
"Seriously?"
Standing, checking floor more thoroughly because maybe it fell, rolled somewhere, metal clips didn't just disappear.
Nothing, absolutely nothing.
Five minutes wasted searching, five minutes she didn't have.
Hazel grabbed another paper clip from pencil case, secured homework pages, problem solved.
"Must've dropped it somewhere," she muttered, sitting back down.
Couldn't have just vanished because that was impossible, obviously fell somewhere she couldn't see, would turn up later because these things always did.
Dismissing incident, returning to quantum mechanics because equations demanded attention, midterm Thursday, no time for mystery office supplies.
Outside, Manhattan continued with students walking, traffic flowing, October afternoon progressing normally.
In the study room, Hazel Sinclair worked through problem sets, unaware that something impossible had occurred.
Unaware that across Pacific Ocean, at that exact moment, sensors detected what shouldn't exist.
Unaware that her world, Earth with its eight billion humans, its technology, its rational explanations for everything, was not as stable as everyone believed.
Normal life continuing.
For now.
Columbia's campus stretched below library windows, Gothic architecture mixing with modern buildings, students everywhere with backpacks and laptops and phones, hurrying between classes.
New York City beyond, skyscrapers piercing autumn sky, Empire State Building visible in distance, concrete jungle housing millions as humanity's monument to civilization, to progress, to rational ordered world.
Everyone believing reality was solid, predictable, governed by laws of physics and chemistry and mathematics, everything explainable, everything understood.
Nobody noticing small impossibilities like paper clips vanishing, brief moment where reality bent.
Nobody aware that Earth's stability mentioned in ancient Sunken Archives was fragile, temporary, countdown ticking toward threshold nobody recognized.
Fate's Revenge affected both worlds, Theia suffered enslavement and corruption zones while Earth suffered mass extinctions and environmental catastrophes.
But something else was happening now, something new.
Small warping of reality, brief manifestation.
Curse stirring after long dormancy.
And across ocean, at high-altitude observatory, scientist detected exactly when it happened.
***
Dr. Evelyn Sato noticed the anomaly exactly three seconds after it occurred.
The thirty-four-year-old atmospheric physicist sat at her workstation in Mauna Kea Observatory's monitoring center, fourteen thousand feet above sea level on Hawaii's Big Island. Volcanic mountain rising above clouds, air thin and dry and impossibly clear, perfect conditions for observing not sky but atmosphere itself.
Her field was ionospheric resonance studies, electromagnetic patterns in upper atmosphere, radiation signatures, energy fluctuations most people never knew existed.
Calm and methodical with quiet fascination for anomalies, black hair pulled back practically, lab coat over casual clothes, Japanese-American features focused on triple-monitor display showing real-time atmospheric data.
Not a believer in supernatural, not a denier either, scientist first, evidence-based. If data showed something, she investigated. If investigation found nothing, she moved on.
Ten years in field, hundreds of atmospheric events analyzed, patterns recognized, baseline established.
And what her sensors just detected was not baseline.
Monitors spiking, alert chime sounding, data graphs showing sudden spike of unknown energy signature in upper atmosphere at 9:47:23 AM HST.
Evelyn's attention sharpened immediately, fingers flying across keyboard, pulling up detailed readings.
Electromagnetic burst? No, wrong pattern.
UV radiation spike? Partially, but wavelength unfamiliar.
Solar flare? No, sun quiet today with no coronal mass ejections.
Something else entirely.
Energy reading lasting approximately point-three seconds, split-second burst, then gone completely like someone flipped switch off.
She checked equipment status finding sensors functioning normally, calibration recent, no malfunction indicated.
Checked satellite data, weather stations, other observatories.
Nothing, nobody else detected anything.
But she did, instruments recorded it, data didn't lie.
"What were you?" Evelyn murmured, studying graphs.
Unfamiliar wavelength not matching any known atmospheric phenomenon, not natural radiation signature, not man-made frequency.
Unknown.
She saved data, created new file labeled Anomaly_20241015_0947_Unknown with timestamp and documentation.
Cross-referenced historical data, searching similar events in database containing ten years of atmospheric monitoring.
Nothing matching, closest comparison being high-altitude nuclear tests from 1960s, but those were different, man-made, explosive, sustained.
This was brief, precise, almost surgical.
Like universe hiccupped, reality glitched for fraction of second.
Evelyn pulled up ionospheric maps checking global atmospheric conditions, looking for triggers like solar wind, magnetic storms, atmospheric pressure systems.
Everything normal, no apparent cause, no logical explanation.
She made notes, clinical and professional, describing observations without speculation.
Unknown energy source, duration point-three seconds, wavelength unidentified, origin undetermined, recurrence requiring monitoring.
Scientist's approach: document, analyze, don't jump to conclusions.
But curiosity sparked, that quiet fascination she couldn't suppress.
Ten years studying atmosphere with thousands of phenomena observed, lightning sprites, aurora variations, meteor trails, satellite reentries, solar radiation patterns.
All explainable, all fitting known physics.
This didn't.
Evelyn leaned back considering, not alarmed because data was data, but intrigued about what natural process created such signature, what mechanism produced unfamiliar wavelength.
Or, small voice she rarely acknowledged, what unnatural process.
"Not a believer," she reminded herself. "Not a denier. Just following evidence."
And evidence said something happened at 9:47 AM, something worth investigating further.
She flagged data for continuous monitoring, set alerts for similar events.
If it happened again, she'd be ready.
Outside monitoring center, Mauna Kea's summit stretched toward impossibly blue sky, volcanic rock dark against clouds below, observatory domes housing telescopes pointed upward as her colleagues studied stars while she studied atmospheric envelope protecting planet.
Hawaii's Big Island far below with tropical forests, black sand beaches, active Kilauea volcano, paradise built on geological violence.
Ironic how most beautiful places were born from catastrophe.
Evelyn returned to monitors as routine observations continued, atmospheric pressure steady, solar wind normal, radiation levels baseline.
Everything stable.
Except for point-three seconds, something wasn't.
She didn't know that across Pacific Ocean, at exact moment sensors detected unknown energy, college student in New York lost paper clip impossibly.
Didn't know both events were connected, caused by same source.
Didn't know that Earth's long stability was illusion, that countdown was ticking, that population was approaching threshold triggering response.
Didn't know Fate's Revenge affected her world just as surely as distant planet called Theia.
She only knew something happened, something unexplainable.
And Dr. Evelyn Sato was going to figure out what.
***
Two mysteries on Earth, October 15th, 2024.
One mundane: college student in Manhattan with missing paper clip, frustrated and dismissive.
One scientific: atmospheric physicist in Hawaii with unknown energy detected, intrigued and investigating.
Different scales, different people, different coasts.
Same moment, same cause.
Something stirred in Earth's cosmic fabric, brief manifestation, reality warping infinitesimally.
Fate's Revenge, dormant for decades, flickering to life for fraction of second.
Testing, measuring, counting.
Eight billion humans, threshold approaching.
Neither woman knew, neither suspected, life continued normally.
But normal was ending.
On another world, in pocket dimension beyond Earth's universe, bearer and Overlords searched for answers.
Both worlds cursed, both worlds suffering.
Both worlds running out of time.
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