When The Ether-Net Goes Down

"There weren't always dragons in the Valley."

Fuck, seriously?

G'Varth checked his scrying table again. He'd rolled the dice, translated the corresponding runes, and sure enough, this is what The Ether had generated. He couldn't run with this! This was like... Cats can't talk!

There was a crash from behind the closed door of the corner office; It sounded like a coffee tankard. His manager Lorenth must have knocked something off of his own scrying table in his absolute rage about the article that Sirith had written. It too had been a generated suggestion from The Ether. It actually WAS "Why Cats Can't Speak", and Lorenth, being a Leonin and clearly able to speak, loudly, had a few things to say about it. Sirith maintained that they had just done what they always did; taken the generated article heading and followed it down the information path that The Ether sent them on. The Ether was tuned into things about space and time that mortal minds couldn't fathom. As journalists, it was their job at The Oracle to take the randomly generated headlines provided by The Ether, follow and fact check the information, and publish what The Ether presented to them. No matter what The Ether presented to them.

G'Varth looked out the window arch closest to him; there were 3 baby dragons heading for the office to come heat up and snack on the shards of whatever had broken in Lorenth's office. Must have been the cute little stoneware mug that his youngest cub had made him then; dragons really like stones. He watched them ride the breeze, thinking about how dragons somehow always end up dealing with networks and connections. They like the flow and building of things. Water, transportation, information, The Ether... And stones. The Bigger the stones, the bigger the dragon.

And as far as he knew, and according to everything in recorded history, there always HAD been dragons in The Valley. Hell, there was a legend that a giant dragon had taken a bite out of the mountain and MADE The Valley.

Fuck.

Lorenth's office door opened and Sirith walked out, their head held high but tears streaking their elven face. A lot of the others were afraid to talk to Sirith; they were quiet, very attractive, and very intense. It almost hurt to look at them, as if there was a shockwave coming off of them at all times. But when G'Varth first met them, he felt like he understood them immediately. They weren't stuck up, or cold; they were observant and cautious. Sirith had a deeper understanding of how things really are and didn't waste their breath on meaningless chit-chat. G'Varth didn't know if that made him more elvish, or made Sirith more orc. He watched his friend sit down across the scrying table from him, like setting a blooming black lily down on top of an explosive potion. He decided Sirith was more orc; there was no way he could ever be that dainty.

"What did you tell him?" G'Varth mumbled, barely looking up from his own questionable pregenerated conundrum. He'd been showing it to Sirith before they were called into Lorenth's office... Droges! An hour ago?!

"The truth. Again. As you shall have to do, no matter what choice you eventually make." Sirith was staring down at the table, hands folded in their lap. "G'Varth?" Their voice dropped to a whisper as the pair made eye contact, "what are you going to do?!"

"I'm..." G'Varth started. The answer was on the tip of his tongue, but no matter what he said was insane. So he sighed instead. He looked over at Lorenth's office again, weighing his options, the current situation, and the depths of what he was thinking. Lorenth's door was still open, and he was sitting on the edge of his scrying table, watching the dragon babies, no longer than a forearm, flapping around on the floor blasting flames at the remnants of his coffee vessel, then picking them up and crunching on them when they were glowing red hot. Maybe it was because he was part lion that he felt someone staring at him; one of his ears twitched and he looked out his office door right at G'Varth. It wasn't until their eyes were locked and he was glaring at him that G'Varth realized that Lorenth had been watching the little drakes with a small smile. G'Varth nodded at Lorenth and turned back to his friend.

"I have about 30 seconds" G'Varth said under his breath.

"I don't... you... I beg your pardon?" Sirith, for all of their observational skills, did not like being caught off guard.

"Beg later. Lorenth doesn't have any windows in his office so he has to keep his door open for the first time in fucking-ever-after so the drakes can leave when they're done with their snack."

"Yes, but I don't..."

"SHH!" Sirith blinked twice at being shooshed by someone with protruding lower tusks. Come to think of it, had they ever been shooshed at all? He must be very serious about whatever this, oh goodness he was talking again...

"...option 2 is: tell him I am going to write it, but I need his full support no matter what."

"Apologies, what was option 1?"

"Damnit Sirith! The first drake is getting ready to take off, I have to get in there!" Trying to keep their voices at a whisper was like trying to keep the lid on a boiling cauldron.

"YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS! No one goes into Lorenth's office of their own free will!"

"That is my whole point; it's a bold move and he likes bold moves. Maybe he can help me. He IS our boss, and I'm going in with ... ideas." G'Varth picked up his scrying tablet and synced his work from his table as he turned to walk towards Lorenth's office. Sirith was whispering at his back in a semi-panic behind him.

"No! G'Varth, you haven't been in there! This is a bad idea!"

It was too late, he had made up his mind and was walking the 20 meters to Lorenth's office. It felt like walking straight for the edge of a cliff. His eyes shifted up from the floor as he was walking, and locked on Lorenth's. He ran through every possible scenario and its outcome four times. That took up about 2 seconds. He was an orc, so strategy came naturally to him. As long as he had the basics of the possibilities and the challenges, he could work through to various solutions. He tried to psych himself up with this thought.

"Damnit" he thought "I AM orc! And my family are..." he thought of his dad... the stern, stay-at-home dad. Respectable, loyal, with horrible jokes and stellar bedtime stories. A good man, but not exactly fierce. His mother, the dragon carer; nurturing, sweet, patience of a druid... Gone too soon... "...well, we're fierce-looking" his brain finished lamely.

He was halfway to Lorenth's office when his eyes refocussed on his boss' and he realised what he must have looked like; zoned out and staring straight at him. The realm around him slowed to a crawl and his stomach dropped somewhere near his knees. Lorenth looked like he was experiencing it too; his eyes went from glaring, furious curiosity to panic in a split second that actually lasted for half a second. G'Varth's brow ridges moved into a crease for a small eternity and he tried to check his timepiece. Sure enough, it was like trying to move through wet plaster. In frustration, he also tried to force his step forward a little harder. As quickly as it had come on, the sensation stopped and everything and everyone was dropped back into normal time. G'Varth stumbled forward and hit himself in the face with his timepiece as a collective cry of shock went up. A few bodies sort of jolted to one side or fell over completely, while the sound of a humungous cog grinding to a stop echoed through the entire stone building. Corynthall, a red-headed halfling piped up.

"SHIT SORRY!!!" She stood up on her chair to be seen, and better heard over the groans from everyone who had fallen over and were struggling to right themselves. She was almost in tears, "Everyone I'm so sorry!! Pause Prank from a friend back at the Academy! I should have known better than to open anything from a Teifling Wizard on a Friday afternoon at 3..."

A series of groans went up from around the office, most near the floor and Corynthall was still apologizing. It was widely accepted that Wizards loved pranking The Oracle. Mostly because The Oracle was their most strenuous customer; they NEEDED the Ether-Net to work. To be fair, a few fake calls had been made to the Wizards with some... Less than real issues. But this was serious; A Pause fucked with time for only a few seconds, yes. But it also completely messed with an area's Ether-Net connection for... well there was no telling how long. Until you called the Interdimensional Technicians, you never knew. Referred to as just "I.T." for short, they were the group of Wizards that took care of smaller areas, like the ones within buildings, and dragons and grand dragons tapped into all of the Ether-Net to ensure its continued magical connection across The Realm. Someone had just knocked out the Ether-Net, specifically for The Oracle. And 3 pm on a Friday was basically already Saturday morning for the I.T. crowd.

When the Ether-Net connection was down, you could ask The Ether anything, go anywhere, you could defy the laws of reality, and you would leave no trace. Normally all activity is monitored at all times - you're connected and your activity is able to be viewed in real-time. There are ways to block what you're specifically doing, but then you're just flagged as creepy, and someone to watch even more closely ALL the time. It was widely accepted that, especially as a writer with The Oracle, you weren't entirely credible or reliable if you had to do your work, or anything else, while The Ether-Net was down. It was called The Dark Pool - yeah sure it sounds all tough and scary. Because it is! There's dodgy shit in there! It was better to be reliable, and traceable, and not have to hide what you're doing!

Anyway, the Ether-Net going down was how Geordie had gotten away with writing the article about teleportation being the "optimal transportation method" a few years ago. As if there wouldn't be a complete clusterfuck of people running into each other on a molecular level, or splicing themselves together when they tried to appear in the same location at the same time for work or school or just in general. But Geordie (who everyone swears to this day is part troll), somehow managed to produce this article saying that dragons, carts, and trains could be obsolete, and we should be looking into better teleportation training for everyone, not just magic casters, starting at school age! And his article came out after this mYsTeRiOuS Ether-Net blackout a few years back. Everyone knew it was beetle dung; the only reason the article had any legs was that the Ether-Net was down at the time he wrote it, so there was no way to go back and check his info trail; there wasn't one! But Geordie in The Dark Pool? Such a waste! The article was so poorly composed The Oracle writers all had to go through a Guild Mandated Grammar course! Lorenth had been next-level tough on everyone ever since. A few of the writers who had been around for a while, G'Varth and Sirith included, had gotten together and talked about what they would have done differently if it had been them.

G'Varth couldn't believe his luck! Change. In. Plan.

He looked up, making up the last 10 meters to Lorenth's office with his eyes and "FUCK I've locked eyes with him! He can see into my soul he knows I never learned to properly lace up my boots before my mother died when I was 5 and that's why I pretended to become a moccasin-head so I could collect slip ons without being judged..."

"G'VARTH!"

"huh? what?" the entire office was staring at him. He had no idea if he'd been talking out loud but he was pretty sure he saw a couple of them glance at his feet.

"You were coming to see me?"

"Was I?! Haha! That's silly of me! What a ridiculous thing to do! HAHA! HA! I have so much work to do!" G'Varth spun around and started to head back to his scrying table.

"G'Varth, The Pause means no one is working right now. Come on in."

"I have to..." G'Varth paused, gauging the distance to his desk and genuinely thought about just sprinting out of the building, then turned back around to droges he's in my face how does he move that quickly and quietly "VOMIT!" Lorenth had made up the last 10 metres in 2 silent, deadly strides.

"I'm...sorry?" Lorenth went from baring every last one of his teeth in a horrible grin to utterly bewildered in less than a second.

"The...Pause! Turned my stomach! Feeling..." swallowing heavily, he took half a shuffling step back, not turning away from Lorenth, whose eyes were mostly pupils at this point. Something in the back of his mind kicked up the reminder to never run or turn his back on a predator that's gone into stalking mode...

"I'm not feeling well. I'm just going to one of the basins for a moment." Why the hell was his voice cracking now?

"Of course, please take care of yourself" Lorenth's voice was a low rumble. Growl? That might actually be a growl...

G'Varth was still shuffling away backwards when Lorenth turned and started back towards his office. He closed his eyes and almost let go a sigh of relief. He chanced a sideways glance at Sirith. Did they just shake their head "no?".

"G'VARTH!" he was definitely starting to add some growl into those R's now...

"YES?!" squeaking? I'm squeaking now? He whipped his head back towards the office door that Lorenth was standing in, his back presented to them all, his maned head just glancing over his shoulder.

"You don't want to take your tablet to the basin, do you?"

G'Varth had honestly forgotten he had it in his hands. Or that he had hands. And what the hell is a tablet? Why shouldn't he take one to a basin? Wait, what's a basin? Why was he lightheaded? What was wrong with his chest? Had he forgotten how to breathe? Had he just breathed in or out? Droges! He opened his mouth to see what would happen...

"GUH..." a rush of air went out... Right, and then back in again...

He didn't know why but he decided to keep his eyes on Lorenth's door as he made his way back to the scrying table he shared with Sirith, running into everything as he went. The door was already closed, the drakes long gone (unaffected by The Pause, of course. Because; fucking dragons).

"I think I might actually be sick" he collapsed on his chair and felt pale. He wondered if that was a thing when you're usual skin colour is a greyish green.

"I tried to tell you to stay away from the office! You troll-dung!" Sirith never, in the 5 years they'd known each other, had ever said anything close to negative about anyone. Ever. Unless you counted the ONE time they observed off-handedly to G'Varth that Sarinthia was wearing two different colours of the exact same pair of shoes 3 years ago. But they quickly amended their observation to say that they actually liked the combination because it matched her multicoloured robes.

They came around the table, took G'Varth by an elbow, and picked him up into a standing position. They were strong, considering they were elvish and all... whispy. G'Varth let a hysterical giggle burst from his throat. Sirith also took G'Varth's tablet out of his hand and set it on the table before mostly carrying him away to one of the basins. G'Varth looked at his friend in confusion; how does someone still manage to look so dignified and elegant while dragging a friend to be ... oh, yeah he was definitely going to be sick. He started walking a little more under his own steam before disengaging from Sirith's death grip and running the last few paces to the basin and through the swinging door. Sirith waited outside for a respectable amount of time so the sound-proofing enchantment could do its thing. They came in to find G'varth leaning over an empty handwashing alter. They passed their hand over the alter and another enchantment filled the alter with crisp, cold water.

"Thank you" G'Varth still wasn't clear-headed about what had happened in the last few minutes or so. He watched Sirith's hand swirl in the water as he was playing everything over again, from the time Sirith came out of Lorenth's offi "GA'WHAT THE FUCK?!" G'Varth stepped back.

"Shut up! I have about 30 seconds before it looks suspicious as hell that I followed you into this basin and we just have to go with the rumour that we're fucking."

G'Varth's brain turned to rice pudding as he stood there dripping wet with his mouth open. Sirith had just splashed his entire face and front with ice-cold water. Now they were swearing at him and talking about starting the best rumour to ever happen at The Oracle. What was happening?!

"It would be the second-best rumour at The Oracle. You will find out what is happening, and what it has to do with you. But first, the things you are NOT going to do; You will NOT talk to Lorenth about the article prompt you received from The Ether. You will NOT discuss anything that's happening in this basin with ANYONE. You will NOT ask any questions. You will NOT discuss anything I tell you with ANYONE. Are we clear on what you will not do?"

G'Varth stared blankly for a second, completely unable to form any words. He actually wanted to say the word "yes" but somehow he was not physically able to do it. Sirith put their hand back in the water, somehow threateningly.

G'Varth squeaked and nodded, putting his hands up in front of himself protectively.

"It doesn't work if you don't say the word" Sirith was almost hissing through clenched teeth.

G'Varth's eyes narrowed in utter confusion "What doesn't wor GAH!! That is REALLY cold!"

"We have precisely no time here! "No questions" is part of the deal! Otherwise, you are on your own! Are the "No's" quite clear?"

"Yes! Just stop... waterboarding me!"

"Excellent. Everyone should be packing up to head home. Lorenth will have made the call to I.T., and we should have a couple of hours to pull this off. Let's go. And do your best to act bewildered and slightly ill... "

G'Varth's brain formed hundreds of questions as Sirith walked for the door; the drying enchantment on this side rippling their clothes a little as it took the water off of their hands. G'Varth followed lamely a second later and was almost blown off his feet as the enchantment dried his face, clothes, hands, and boots. Bewildered and ill was definitely not an issue. As the two of them walked back to their scrying table everyone else in the office was almost already packed up to go home, trying not to sound excited about an early weekend as they headed out of the building.

G'Varth looked over to where Corynthall sat and saw she was still upset as she half-heartedly said goodbye to her co-workers for the weekend, packing up a bit more slowly than everyone else. "Man it sucks to be her," he said to Sirith's back. "When Lorenth finally calls her into his office..." But when he turned to look, Lorenth was already gone, and his door was open.

"I really thought you were going to catch on to this much quicker G'Varth."

"Have you not told him yet?" Corynthall was heading towards them at their scrying table, the rest of the office was empty. She was... chipper. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, her fiery red hair dancing around her face as she pushed another chair over to their table.

"Told me what? Sirith, what the hell..." G'Varth started.

Sirith offered Corynthall a hand up onto the chair and answered her as if G'Varth hadn't spoken, "I got him to close the spell so we're protected. But I thought you should have the honour of explaining, as the primary phases of the plan were, after all, your genius idea."

"Awe! Sirith, you're so sweet! Alright, so the initial glitch was easy enough; Getting a couple of Other Realm headings through the fire barrier just required a bit of help from some friends over at I.T.. Making sure they landed at the right scrying table was a massive pain in the ass - you still owe Frydenze those crystals by the way."

"Yes, they're coming. It's not a matter of just walking into any apothecary you know."

"I know that. Tell that to a closeted dark mage trying to cheat his way up the ranks. At any rate, The Pause was also simple; sent to me ages ago. Just saved it for a rainy day. Thoradin was an idiot and wrote "ha ha ha" on the outside of the scroll."

"YOU SET THIS ALL UP!!" G'Varth stood up suddenly, knocking over his chair, pointing at Corynthall. "The Pause! My ridiculous headline!"

"Yes, and mine," said Sirith. "Thank you for catching up G'Varth. Sit down."

"We could have been fired! We could have been arrested! We could have been..." he didn't know what else they could have been but he was sure it wasn't good. Wheels he didn't know he'd had cleared of spider webs and clunked together, but for some reason, the rest of the scenario wouldn't play out. He picked up his chair and did sit back down "Wait... Why the cats article?"

"Of all of your fucking questions, that's what you want to focus on?" Sirith was completely thrown off track. "Not "what's next" or "who are we" or "what do we want with you"? You want to know... fine. You know what, fine." He stood up and went over to the wall, picked up the chalk and started to draw a timeline.

"Four years ago when Geordie..."

"Sirith, do we have time for this?" Corynthall cut him off. "Remember, we sort of have a time-sensitive event that we need to accomplish?"

"I feel like we're going to be hindered by a lot of unnecessary pauses for questions that will hurt the timing of our event if I don't do this now."

Corynthall sighed, crossed her arms, and hooked one leg over the other. She suddenly looked like a very annoyed barn owl. "Alright, but stick to the highlights. I think we have about 30 minutes to get everything in place and make sure we get who we want"

"Thank you. So, four years ago, when Geordie received his article heading" Sirith marked a vertical line at the far left of the original line he'd drawn and wrote "Troll" over it. "We were all there, so we know how that went down. Then in the aftermath, when we were all discussing what we would have done differently, G'Varth, you said the most amazing thing." Sirith smiled at him.

"I'm pretty sure I said he was too stupid to fall face-first into a pile of dragon shit if he was pushed from behind," G'Varth looked over at Corynthall; she was smiling at him too. He wiped his nose instinctively. What the hell were they looking at? He looked back at Sirith.

He wrote "Other Realm" on a second vertical line, close to the first.

"You said that reading that article was like pulling your brain out of your own skull and transporting it through The Ether-Net to another realm. A little dramatic, clearly. But what if you were right?"

"We can transport our brains?!"

Sirith's shoulders slumped in defeat as Corynthall's face hit her hands. "How is this saving us time, Sirith?!"

"Let's just push forward and see if he catches up. So we all discussed what we would have done differently, but our genius friend Corynthall," she nodded at the acknowledgement "had the wherewithal to get her wizard friends in I.T. completely shitfaced and start asking questions. Multiple times."

"I'd like to thank the barmaids down at the Screaming Monk; I never could have done it without them." Corynthall raised her fist in a mock, teary-eyed toast.

"Wait, so there are..."

"Shhhh! Pushing ahead, remember?" Corynthall looked at her timepiece and made a "move it along" gesture towards Sirith. G'Varth glared at her; why did she get to add smart ass commentary but he couldn't ask relevant questions?

Sirith added two more vertical lines to the timeline and wrote "Info" between them. "Over this period is where we find out that A) The Ether seems to be starting to think for itself B) dragons came through from another realm eons ago, and are now here to protect us from something that chased them from their realm and C) there are probably other realms. Somewhere in here...

"Wait, WHAT?! Slow down! Where..."

"SOMEWHERE IN HERE!!! Corynthall and I start talking in passing about the origin of Geordie's actual headline. She tells me what she's been up to, and we hatch the plan you are now seeing unfold before you. I keep my head down and come up with the article titles that will cause the most stir here at the office, and for the Ether-Net in general. The first to get Lorenth focussed on me. The second, when written by the correct writer, will cause so much uproar that what we are about to do to get the information will be completely forgotten."

Sirith wrote "Hatching" above another line on the wall, then "Plan" above another.

"Now here things get a little more condensed" He was now marking lines at the start of each sentence. "We get my article sent through to my side of our table last week and I just roll with it, making sure to keep you in the loop about everything. We then have THE article sent through to your side of the same table so if anyone goes to look at anything that happened before The Pause kicked in it looks like a massive glitch because two wonky articles in 2 weeks? What are the odds?"

Sirith drew a second line under the first and kept marking at the start of every sentence.

"That brings us to today; I make sure that, while I'm being yelled at, there is an attention-grabbing crash so that Corynthall can grab The Pause scroll out of her desk and place it as if it's just been delivered without anyone noticing. Your little bit of theatrics was not something we were counting on, honestly. The original plan was to just keep you talking until Corynthall's potion kicked in, but... Oh... hang on..."

Corynthall piped in "Yeah, before "crash", add in "drug G's coffee"... no to the left. Yeah there."

G'Varth sat there with his mouth open, just staring at Corynthall as she gesticulated casually at the wall. "Seriously? Poison a co-worker? Just pencil that in between "break shit", and "fuck with time"? What was supposed to happen after that? Roll me up in a rug and throw me off the roof?!"

"Don't be absurd," G'Varth turned to look at Sirith who hadn't even paused in the middle of writing the word "coffee" to respond. "Where would we have even gotten a rug?" G'Varth scoffed as Sirith continued. "At any rate, you DID head for Lorenth's office, which meant that you were up and moving so when The Pause AND the potion kicked in the effects were a bit stronger than they should have been. No matter, a Pause means that Lorenth has to call I.T. and put in a report of the Ether-Net going down. Corynthall knows who our tech wizard is and knows how long they will take to respond, which is why we know how long we have before we need to wrap up here. Your trip to the basin meant that you were able to expel the potion sooner and I got the "yes" out of you to seal our little pact much quicker. It also meant that everyone saw both of us head to the basin so no one would question why we'd be among the last to leave the building."

Sirith stepped back from the wall:

troll-"other realm"-info-hatching-plan-Cats-Dragons

(Today)Drug G's Coffee-Crash-Pause-Call I.T-Basin-Leave-Crash

Other than getting poisoned, G'Varth still wasn't sure how he fit into all of this or why. And it sounded like a LOT of other people had been involved up to this point; if getting everyone out of the building was important for ... secrecy or whatever, what about all of these other people that had already been involved?

Sirith stepped closer and squeezed G'Varth's shoulder "It'll all make sense, I promise. And don't worry about all of them; we've seen to it already."

G'Varth nodded before he realised that this was the third time that Sirith had read his mind since The Pause.

"Don't be ridiculous G'Varth, I've always been able to read your mind." Sirith patted him on the shoulder "Alight. Let's blow up The Oracle!"