[i][b]—— Earth-F67X: The Mainline Defensive Array[/b][/i]

[i]“Sirs, we have another!”[/i] gasped a low-rank academic draftee who busted into the subterranean SITCOM of the Mainline Defensive Array. He was a mutt, short, slight freshmen just finished with the first quarter of his four year enlistment. In his hand swayed an air-gapped chaos-encrypted tablet accented by non-regulation glitter-tinged Rainbow Dash stickers and a hyper-masculine werewolf anthro pin-up his colleagues assumed was his fursona — probably unnecessary in the massive faraday-caged and liquid xenon-shielded plastisteel labyrinth he occupied, but humanity specialized in paranoia. His display boasted a few graphs and a lot of dense technical jargon, [i]“should have eyes on it soon.”[/i]

Poor guy almost fell over, then pushed back his pearl gray glasses, remembered himself, and saluted.

A soldier, all uniform, no face, took it from him, placed it on a cart, and hit a button. The draftee could’ve sworn he heard whispered [i]all gas, no breaks, yiffy boy[/i] during the blink-long handoff. Light streamed from a port in the side of the tablet and repainted the display onto an old-fashioned RAM-cloth projector screen. He flushed, aroused, not that he was blessed enough for it to be noticed, as he recalled events not suitable for the workplace.

Given the unexpected arrival of the distressed Lakretian vessel, Earth’s military was on high alert. Claimed they were refugees, the aliens did, but their ship was fit for battle. Or was, prior to its last sortie. At present, it orbited Hygiea and appeared more wreckage than warship. 

On the SITCOM main screen, rival artificial intelligence programs executed theoretical war games, summaries of which were filtered, collated, and reviewed by a team of analysts in the unlikely event Commander Efrit was followed by belligerents. Soon, attention was drawn away by the projector screen, which remembered the display content even after the tablet light cut out.

[i]“Short and to the point, Corporal,”[/i] a man dressed idiosyncratically civilian, albeit well-dressed, commanded.

Where had he heard that voice? Not the civ-in-command, but the masked soldier. That dare club, [i]all gas, no breaks[/i]; wild peccadilloes transpired there, often of sordid natures. Last night the theme was [i]litterbox mosh pit[/i], and he left soaked to the bone. Going with a friend the week before was a huge mistake, that place was an absolute relationship ender. That night, [i]glowing blood blackout[/i] was the theme, clothes optional, and all he saw was injectable fluid that shined through skin as it circulated through everyone’s vascular systems. Wild, hypnotic, probably not FDA approved. He felt his therian self deep when his friend was dared to spank him, enjoyed it too much, and bent over a lap with a mewl and an abrupt splat was the end of that relationship.

[i]I should call zir.[/i]

Autonomous systems scattered throughout Sol’s asteroid belt detected a secondary gravitational wave of low amplitude, high frequency, and tight curvature, which indicated the manifestation, collapse, and directionality of a subsequent warp bubble. Of course, those waves were limited to light speed and took hours to verify; an inadequate response frame for a paranoid militaristic totalitarian planet, but heavily compensated for by the predictive analyses of quantum topological fluctuations — near-immediate feedback. Multiple short-range telescopes and intra-system weapon batteries trained on that point in space and watched, but they wouldn’t lock on to anything, best case scenario, for several more minutes.

[i]“Wake up, Corporal!”[/i] another voice shouted in his ear, and he jumped.

The mutt grabbed his tablet off the cart, clutched it pitifully, and began,

[i]“Sir, yes! Sorry, sir! Near where the Lakratian vessel manifested, just past Neptune, we’ve detected another spatial anomaly that fits a warp bubble collapse signature, albeit very subtle. We have reason to believe it is another alien incursion; a spacecraft,”[/i] the awkward Corporal recited loudly, nervously, and gesticulated vaguely toward his one-slide presentation, [i]“Shortly thereafter, Earth’s planetary atmosphere experienced local luminosity patternized fluctuations, similar to a pulsar, uh, flashes of light, but higher energy and less regular. In North Capital City. The data analytics team is working to make sense of the pattern. We don’t have more specifics on where, precisely, in the city it was directed. Incomplete. Caught the tail end, very strange.”[/i]

[i]“Anything else that’s not just details, Corporal?”[/i]

He considered the irregular light signal and the ridiculous amount of energy it necessitated to accomplish anything worthwhile from such a distance; a fact already obvious to the great minds in this chamber.

[i]“No, Sir.”[/i]

[i]“Dismissed.”[/i]

He almost ran out, but composed himself. Went down the hall to the toilet. It seemed empty, just a long wall of unoccupied urinals. More of an extended stainless steel trough, really. He stood in the middle, half-wished his kink wasn’t humiliation, then felt a tap on the shoulder. That strangely familiar deep parched voice, like it suffered from too much testosterone, whispered, [i]“Trimble Place exit, zero-five-hundred hours, grays,”[/i] and just like that he was alone with a wet spot on the front of his pants.

Just like that, he really actually needed to pee.

[center][b]… Ϟ[/b][/center]
[i][b]—— Earth-F67X: North Capital City Police Department[/b][/i]

[i]“We’ve got CCTV and drone footage showing blood trailing out of a men’s bathroom,”[/i] a detective yawned, firmly seated on the corner of his partner’s desk, [i]“fatso goes in, eating food mind you, never comes out. Hours pass. Nobody saw him leave, but the stall is a mess. A bloodbath. Security guard of a local campus was alerted by the janitorial staff, decided to take a look-see. Now it is our problem. Thing is, though,”[/i] he continued, but yawned again, this time into an empty manila folio, which was better than the triple-decker cheeseburger that dripped grease through the knuckles of his other hand, [i]“there’s something off about that footage. Like those AI edits, but better. So I go and ask around, and what do you know — gal says she was looking off her balcony and saw a pile of poo roll around on a phone and then grow into a full-grown woman. Of course, she was on something. Didn’t need a test to confirm that. Phone was still there, though,”[/i] he grinned, held up a plastic baggie, and plopped it down on the desk, [i]“got any guesses what forensics will say about this? Me either. They’re backlogged, but this is a possible murder, so who knows. That said — what do you say we keep to easy street and shoot a lifeline — or laughline, depending on who you ask — to Oakes, death and taxes knows he could use another impossible missing person case to solve.”[/i]