What Lives in the Static: Part 3— It Started with a Low Light

Part 3 of a monthly new weird serial exploring scientific hubris, collapsing realities, and the defiant beauty of queer love in the face of humanity’s reckless quest to control the uncontrollable. Sign up to follow the serial on Substack here.

Against Cass’ already barely used better judgment, she limps to the window, convinced she will throw open the blackout curtains and find the source of the noise in the parking lot below.

Empty. Dark. Half the lights in the parking lot are broken, creating little islands of cars bathed in a sickly, garish yellow glow. Streetlights are few and far between, and even the freeway, remote as it is, seems to rely on the passing headlights to do most of the heavy lifting.

It creates the illusion of a void — a vantablack gulf stretching between her little window and the cacophony of light and color in the distance, which takes a moment to draw her attention.

In the direction she knows leads to the base, a plume of color swells into the night sky like the finale of a firework show reflecting off smoky air — yet somehow still blindingly bright. The burst begins with a pure white flash, brighter than anything Cass…