“This is bad,” Ami Mizuno understated after recovering to find the world slowly falling going to pieces.
Lights flickered intermittently. Televisions and radios began spluttering static. Computers crashed as did other things. Cars stalled on freeways for no mechanical reason, and planes fell out of the sky.
Oh, and Astronomers were going bald from all their hair pulling.
Ami Mizuno was probably one of the few people who were in a possition to recognise what was happening at once. Even as she listened to the news and put the pieces together, she reasoned that it wouldn’t take too long for others to add two and two. Though she rather expected them to come up with three or maybe five.
She was no longer Sailor Mercury for the transformation pen had burned out. So she couldn’t summon her visor from the earings, and the mercury computer itself was a pile of burnt metal and shattered crystal, but she was still Ami Mizuno, ace cram student, whatever else she was becoming. She still had her brain; she could still analyse what was happening. It was pretty blatantly obvious from her point of view.
Technology was failing in bits and pieces. Electricity still flowed down copper wire, turbines still turned under mechanical power, but the step in between… wires moving in magnetic fields somehow stopped producing electric current with increasing irregularity. Or the other way. Batteries and solar panels continued to work, but you couldn’t trust electric current moving in magnetic field to produce mechanical force. So, light bulbs and heating elements worked, if you could power them, but electric motors started seizing up.
Gunpowder and fuels still burned violently and would likely continue to do so, but when you tried to contain that explosive energy in a small space the force… simply began to go somewhere else. Inevitably it seemed that the machinery of society would stop working entirely. There would be panic, of course, and violent upheaval, as the failure rate cascaded and people looked for other people to blame. Guns would stop firing, but clubs and knives would still work just fine.
And who were they going to blame? The flip side to failing technology was an upsurge in, well, magical abilities in a minority of the population. Ami had awakened to find that she didn’t need to transform; she could tap the mana source directly and channel it unaided. She had access to more power than before; but without the control the tiara provided. The senshi were not the only ones so impacted by the event.
There were already reports on the media between broadcasts of static. Like the senshi and Ranma, those already possessing some sort of mystic or near-mystical ability had been supercharged in quite noticeable displays. Perhaps not always quite as noticeable as the senshi, but still pretty obvious. Others too, were beginning to manifest hither to unexpected abilities, although at a more gentle pace.
The connection between one event and the other was quite obvious, and as soon as the failure rate became alarming, the conclusion that one had caused the other would be an easy leap to reach.
“This is bad,” Ami repeated as she watched static interrupt a broadcast by some teleevangelist type railing about how it was God’s punishment for believing in science more than the bible.
Ranma argued that there was another side to it.
“There’s another side to it,” Ranma argued on her bedside. “People are going to be frightened because they’re vulnerable, and they’ll have a right to be. More magic means more monsters. Not just one a week from Outside, like you’re used to but all over the place, and from right here on Earth. All the ones that have been laying low and living quietly, more or less, aren’t anymore. I guess that even the most innocent creature, like that jellyfish in Okayama, can get drunk on all this magic power.”
“It’s like they’ve been living quietly in a drought, and suddenly it’s flood season,” Ami noted. “And when that happens… Ah… oh dear, it’s breeding season?”
“Pretty much,” Ranma agreed. “I guess they’ll be swarms of baby monsters soon enough. But it’s all the newly created ones that are the biggest problem. For now, anyway.”
“So people aren’t the only things affected?” Ami asked.
“Nah,” Ranma answered. “There’ve been sightings all over of animals with magic abilities, and a few reports of people becoming monsters. And soon enough of the old ones will realise that they’ve suddenly become so much stronger while all of man’s newfangled toys are breaking… So what do we do next?” Ranma asked.
(Posted Tue, 29 May 2007 08:18)
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