Professor Badass Intermission: Eyes On

Professor Badass Intermission: Eyes On
by
Laguna

*SECURE COMMUNICATION*
Recipient: Codename: Sightline
Nature: Imperative
Classification: Eyes Only+
Priority: Overridding
Verification Code: Ripple4832b

Sightline,

I realize that your status and record within the Intelligence community has earned you the privilege of choosing your assignments by your own prerogative, but this needs to be an exception to that rule.
I've just had intel pour in from three separate sources telling me of an impending event of unknown significance at -15.411 by 124.967, and we need eyes on. NASA was the first to notice the anomaly when the sky-watchers picked up an unexpected object heading for earth, nearest estimate of landing point: -15 by 124. They cataloged it as an irrelevant meteor until they got their regular charts from the National Weather Service and noticed a bulletin about an inexplicable clearance of cloud cover over Australia centered at -15 by 124. the cloud dispersal is contrary to all meteorological forecasts and just physics in general, and is far too early to be caused by the incoming object.

The last source of intel you aren't gonna like. As I'm being handed this information and wondering if its even within our purview, one of the neckbeards from god damned paranormal drags himself out of his cave and into my office. I couldn't tell you what his methodology for getting his information was, but he was adamant that something important was about to happen at -15.411 by 124.967, just off the coast of the mainland near St. Andrew Island. if it turns out he contaminated his conclusions by finding the nasa and weather service reports, I swear to god I'll skin him. Not even paranormal can get away with causing a circle jerk.

So against my better judgment, I'm sending you to Australia to watch and see if anything happens. You have until 1100 on Sunday the 8th to get in your position and get set up. We'll have elements in position to take up observation in Ottoman territory and relieve you in 5 hours.

Good luck and Godspeed,
God


Sightline didn't resent the orders. He had earned his ability to act on his own prerogative, but wasn't above taking a tip from HQ every now and again. Although God got one thing right, he didn't like that some of this hinged on the Paranormal department. The job seemed simple: be present at a zero security section of Australia at a given time and watch, like always.

He was a little disappointed to have to abandon his current stakeout, he was out on a limb a bit in terms of his predictive ability in thinking that the Ottoman defense minister was going to die of a sudden heart attack, and was eager to see if he was calling it right.

Decades working geopolitics for the State Department had granted Sightline an almost supernatural ability to piece together tiny, disparate events and details into a predicted outcome, and years in the Intelligence Services had honed his ability to infiltrate and survey these important events as they happened. He was the best man for this kind of job.

Arriving In Australia two days before the event, Sightline took his time renting his car and meandering to the specified location (naturally disabling the rental company's GPS tracker beforehand). He left the car about a mile from the target location in some underbrush. Once there he took up a position a little ways away from the beach and set up his lawn chair and sun umbrella.

Lounging back and adjusting his sunglasses, Sightline activated the zoom function and began to scan the horizon for witnesses. Satisfied that he was unobserved, he flicked a switch on his sun umbrella and the outward prongs telescoped into the ground around him, as the fabric stretched more slowly behind them, expanding the umbrella into a dome around him that reached all the way to the ground.

For a finishing touch, the outward surface of the umbrella dome altered its shape and color to match the rocks of the surrounding topography, became transparent from the inside, and the sweet, sweet internal air conditioning unit activated. How Sightline hated to sweat.

Now disguised as a rock, Sightline began his stakeout with 6 hours remaining until this mysterious “event”. As the foretold hour approached, Sightline turned his eyes skyward and set his Sunglasses to detect any movement that his eye might miss. With 5 minutes left, the glasses picked up an unidentified object. Setting the glasses to maximum zoom and activating the tracking display to remove disruption from his head movements, he tracked what looked like a meteor in atmospheric entry.

Beginning as a tiny bright speck even at maximum zoom, the object drew closer but still was obscured by the flames that engulfed it. Some hint of its shape was given by the fact that the flames seem to be cast off in three flat planes, so the front was perhaps a triangle. But wait, something was off. Tapping on a key pad hidden in his “lawn chair”, Sightline called up the an overlay of the exact event location to his glasses. As he remembered, it was off the coast.

Now, turning back to the falling object, he set his glasses to project the trajectory, and sure enough, it wasn't headed for the event site. The object would streak towards a nearby hillside, which he had luckily NOT selected as his spot to set up. Had the paranormal department been off? When they were wrong about something, they were usually dead wrong, he had never heard of them making such a specific prediction that was only off a little.

Deciding, as usual, to adopt a “wait and see” approach, Sightline watched the object until there was 30 seconds to impact, 45 seconds earlier than predicted, then a queer thing happened. The flames surrounding the object disappeared and it began to slow. Now with a direct line of sight on the object, Sightline set his glasses to scan and record in every way the glasses could. And as the glasses zoomed in again, Sightline gasped in shock for the first time in fifteen years.

The falling object was a humanoid figure which looked like a woman; looked like THE woman. A “woman” with some kind of black cube where her head should be; with the cube and the woman's dress resembling a pitch black sky full of stars. His mind reeled, swimming with the memories of that perplexing and horrifying night fifteen years ago.

She slowed to a stop on the hillside where the computer had projected her landing. Though it pained him to do so with an object of such mystery, he was working, and turned his attention back to the event site, but removed a secondary camera from his jacket which he kept pointed at her and recording. Less than fifteen seconds after she stopped on the hillside, the anticipated even occurred, and it wasn't even much to look at.

A bright flash was accompanied by the distant sound “AAAAAAaaaaaa” and a splash. It seems that a man had materialized and fell into the water. As the man began to swim to the shore, Sightline spared a glance back in the direction of the mysterious cube-woman, but she had already vanished. Checking the recording from the secondary camera, he wasn't surprised in the slightest that only static had been recorded.

With a sigh of resignation, he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. The Swimmer had reached the shore. Walking up on the beach, the man was revealed to be tall and of African descent, with a hairless head and a sizable beard. He wore a fashionable (and sopping wet) vest suit, and upon reaching the shore, removed what looked like a large handgun from his vest, and after inspecting it, swore loudly.

Sightline had been hoping this would be a simple event observation, but events necessitated a follow-up mission of tracking this man and ascertaining his intentions and identity. It seemed he would be getting sweaty.

Sightline departed in pursuit of the man in the vest suit, but taking a moment to check his news feeds, he was almost gratified to see a bulletin that the Ottoman defense minister had died of a sudden heart attack, just as predicted.

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