| Day 447 is the last day, but you're ready for it. Scattering across Norfinbury, those of you who are the strongest, the bravest, or just the most willing to do the task approach the anomalies. Some are killed--with the nanomachines under your control and your abilities at your side, they are not as much a threat as they once were. Some--those who wish it--are left alone to remain in Norfinbury, whatever that may mean. Those more technologically inclined, led by Aigis, make for the cultist computer and put together the program that will put an end to the administrator. The process is a complex one, but many of you know your way around a computer, and some of you even have superhuman abilities to back up that skill. The program comes together piece by piece. Somehow, it doesn't feel as complicated as it should. The timer is connected, and the countdown begins. While all this is happening, and after, once those who left return to the town hall, Gregory House and Stephen Strange work nonstop at the NIMA machine, removing the nanomachines that flood your bodies and finally, completely, freeing you of them. You can no longer travel about the town at breakneck speeds, but you wouldn't want to, anyway, given that the radiation soaked into the town would now kill you. It becomes obvious there's no radiation beneath the town hall, if nothing else: you're safe here for what time remains. It's not much, of course. There's no time left for anything except goodbyes and stepping through the portal. Go in ones and twos, go in groups--you can go anywhere, but you can't stay here, not if you want to live. Bring whatever you want to keep, because there's no going back. The town empties out. The administrator, silently, adjusts its population count. Finally, the last of you steps through the portal. Norfinbury is silent. Then the program's timer reaches zero. Nobody sees what happens except the robotic spiders, which shut down milliseconds after the electricity crackles in overdrive through the quantum computer's circuits. A cooling pipe bursts, and ice cold water begins flooding the town hall's underground areas. Servers thousands of years old go dark. Robots made and remade stop moving. The administrator shuts off for good. The cycles end. Norfinbury is left to the snow. Over the years, with nothing to tend to it, the town is buried, just like every other town in this Alaska. The anomalies remaining can survive only as long as that--without the snow walls to shield them, the exposure kills them--eventually. That's years from now. Right now, in the present, you've escaped. You were always, always alone here--and yet you found one another. You made friends and enemies and relationships you don't know how to describe. You went home, or you made somewhere else your home, or you made somebody else your home. You have a story that will be impossible to tell. Maybe you'll try anyway. Maybe you'll keep it to yourself. Maybe you'll just go to the warmest place you can reach and stay there for a while. You triumphed over near-impossible odds, and you did it together. Thank you for playing. |
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