Hour Zero 5

Link to article: Hour Zero 5.

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**[[size larger]][[[three-portlands-hub|Prometheus Plaza, Three Portlands]]][[/size]]**
**T-Plus One Year**
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+ 2021: The Year It All Went Down
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To say that 2021 was a satisfying year would be a vast understatement.

By then, I had already had a very rough understanding of what was really going on. While the Alice that lived in the 2010s might have still been a skeptic even when presented with all of this evidence (and, to be fair, given the nature of Parawatch I do not think I could even blame her), the first two years of the new decade proved to be my first true reality checks -- both as a then-moderator of the whole forum and as a still-hesitant believer in the paranormal.

To the average internet surfer, Parawatch was nothing but the foremost argument against the existence of the paranormal. To ever say that the things these people talked about were real was nothing but absurd. But forum moderator Sharpie wasn't average. Though most of the things she had to look through were, regrettably, nonsensical conspiracy gibberish, between those lines of stoned confessions, bad creepypasta, and corny ARG attempts, I learned to see the true shape of reality. And I loved it, like nothing else in my whole life.

It was between those threads about someone's grandfather working in a Factory or [[[the-furmen|some borderline nonsensical Pole shouting about his town being haunted]]] that it all somehow started to come together. Between those real, genuine stories of people that didn't trust the Earth they lived on anymore, not after everything they had witnessed. People like me. People that, one sleepless night after another, hoped that one day the whole view of the true, unfiltered reality would come together before their eyes.

And on the night of the 25th of November, come together it did.

To this day, the memory of that TV report they played on every station lives inside my head rent-free. I don't think I could ever forget the grim realization of what it truly meant mixed with the smug satisfaction of knowing that I, Alice Sharp, had always been right. I don't think I'm overstating it when I say that might have been the moment I felt the most alive in my entire life.

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And since then, so many things have changed.
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So many things have changed indeed.

Alice Sharp sighed and rubbed her eyes, already feeling the late hour weigh down upon her body. If it wasn't for the fact she technically had to have this whole report done by tomorrow, she would have already long been sleeping. She was no longer the Alice that could spend whole nights jamming away at her keyboard, hoping to bring the people the truth about their world.

Not that she didn't want to, of course -- deep down, her mind and resolve remained unchanged. Her body, though, could really use a replacement model these days.

She stood up from her computer, closing the word processor tab on her laptop. With very careful movements (she did not want to wake her husband up, after all) she made her way towards the balcony attached to their living room, lighting up a cigarette halfway through the motion. Only when the smoke's end went up in brilliant blue flames did she step through the room's threshold and embraced the cold spring night of Three Portlands.

The Free Port that now lay before her was just as incredible as it had always been. Even after so many years spent at this apartment, the city's many paratech wonders never ceased to amaze her. She liked to think that deep down, the sight of a cyborg mage or an Anderson product wandering the streets fed the Alice that had once been, making the twenty-something woman that hadn't yet experienced Veilfall the happiest girl in the whole world.

Looking at the beautiful sky above the city, she faintly smiled, and took her first drag. The glamour of the night view has always evoked good memories of her first ever report as an unVeiled journalist -- the one describing the [http://scp-pl.wikidot.com/propozycja-projektu-2022-001 thaumic aurora that announced to the world the dawn of a new era].

The second drag was never as pleasant as the first, she remarked to herself as she once again realized this dissatisfaction. She wasn't even sure why, really. Be it some quirk of her brain or the work of the little ritual circles they would now engrave deep down within cigarettes (they made sure the product wasn't too harmful to the user, whilst doubling its addictivity; Dark Fires somehow had to keep its business up and running), she never could quite make it feel like the first rush of smoke-ridden air into her lungs.

But then again, it might have been just her.

Alice didn't feel like working today, not anymore. She knew her boss would be all up her ass because of it, but she didn't particularly care. It wouldn't kill ver to wait one more day for her report -- not when the person that kept ver waiting was someone like Alice Sharp. Someone whose name, all humility aside, almost guaranteed clicks these days.

The people liked their hero relatable. Most citizens of this hesitantly real world weren't in on the secret, the day the Veil fell; most of them were just like Alice, hopelessly lost between working 8-5 and trying to make sense of the idiocy that surrounded them. So to see someone like Alice -- a person from outside the conspiracy, someone that got to where she was through hard research and sleepless nights -- it made them like her. And for unVeiled, the publicity her signature gave them was everything.

There were days -- days like this, she suddenly realized -- when she liked to think it was that quality that put her where she was. Not to take away credit where credit is due, of course -- the (as she had to humbly admit) undeniably genius breakdowns of [[[scp-6483|Vanguard's Santa iniatiative]]], [http://scp-pl.wikidot.com/iluminaci-krytykuja-vanguard the Coalition's opposition against change], and [[[god-meat-s-back-on-the-menu|the Klavigar's emergence in this new reality]]] did almost just as much for her as her public image.

She took another drag, letting her thoughts wander into the uncertain future. For most people that walked this now-magical Earth, to think of tomorrow was to think of fear; in a world where nothing was certain anymore, to do as much as plan //anything// for next year was bordering on unfathomable. After all, who was there really to say what thaumic cataclysms 2025 had in store? It wasn't like politics became any more peaceful, too. Magic and lies are a dangerous mix, she thought. For some -- like the Middle East or New Zealand -- perhaps a little too dangerous.

To Alice, though, to think of tomorrow was to do the same thing she'd always done: to scheme and observe.

Seeing another Maxwellist couple walk the street before her apartment, she opened her mental calendar and noted what she still had to do that year. She liked her job well enough -- she couldn't deny that -- but some of the reports she was still pending would often prove quite the pain in the ass. Ones of political nature were high up that list, of course, so it came as no surprise to herself when she realized she really, //really// did not have the energy to write neither the interview with Esterberg's Council of Three about the recent rise of Fae independence, nor that stupid briefing about the Bavarian Illuminati's reactionary gibberish. She--

She sighed.

Taking the fourth -- and final -- drag, a thought occurred to Alice. She didn't want to think about work today. She blinked twice, looking up to the sky, and allowed herself not to worry about this nonsense. Not tonight, at the very least.

And as she truly beheld the cosmos above her, all of its brilliant stars pulsing in their infinite incomprehensibility just right beyond the first scaffoldings of Carter's [[[nexus-hyperline|HyperLine Station]]], she smiled. Noticing a meteor run past the Earth in a flash of brief familiarity, she closed her eyes, and, as if she were still the Alice that worked as an IT technician, uttered a single, silly wish right into the infinity of the universe that stood unraveled before her.

When she opened her eyes again, for just a single moment, she allowed herself to think that the future might have even looked bright.

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Hour Zero 5

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