Dear Sunset,
It was so great seeing you last night. I had a lot of fun.
Would you like to meet up again? Maybe this Friday? We could have dinner or watch a movie.
Twilight
***
“I can’t believe it,” Twilight Sparkle muttered to herself as she went through the logs of the night before. It was right there on the printout—another energy spike, not as big as the huge one a few days back, but still very noticeable, literally just moments after she had left that statue in front of the school that seemed to be the source of those readings. She probably just would have had to turn around to see the strange phenomenon with her own eyes.
As far as she could tell from the crude readouts of her former weather antenna, this occurrence the night before had been the exact same amplitude as the smaller ones she had picked up before—one right after the first big bang, and two more not too long after the second big one. Interestingly enough there had not been a huge excursion before the smaller one this time.
“If there’s a pattern, I don’t see it. What does it all mean, Spike?” Spike just looked up to her and wagged his tail. “Maybe I missed some of the smaller occurrences that happened earlier?
“I guess there’s no other way. I need to improve the main antenna.” She scanned the dimly lit lab. There was an abundance of instruments and machinery stacked on the work table at the opposite wall. She was sure she could get parts for most of the required wavelengths from the derelict items she had here. She only needed to make sure that none of the more sensitive circuits overloaded, but that should be doable.
In her mind a list of parts began to take shape, and without looking she grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil and started taking notes.
***
Dear Twilight,
I’d love to go out with you again. Friday is perfect. At eight at the portal? I’ll find us a nice place to have dinner, and we can just see what we do afterwards.
Sunset
***
Twilight removed the goggles and put down the welding apparatus. It was done; a new post-processing unit including a three-stage amplifier was now connected to the antenna. With the improved insulation and grounding her antenna would now pick up frequencies of one-tenth the wavelength of before. So much more data!
Her only grievance was that she couldn’t really test the antenna on her own; she needed whatever it was that was causing those energy bursts to happen again so that she could pick up a reading. There hadn’t been any during the last two days, and quite frankly, she was getting impatient.
She took a deep breath and slowly extended her right in front of her.
Only two days.
After all, after the last big reading more than a hundred hours had passed between the next weaker readings. And there hadn’t even been a big one; who knew what the pattern would be for those weaker ones?
But it probably wouldn’t hurt to take the small spectrometer for a spin, to see if she’d pick up anything from that statue that somehow seemed to be involved in everything. Maybe on Friday night, after dinner, when she was anyway going to go on a long walk with Spike.
Patience is the key.
***
Dear Sunset,
Friday at eight it is. See you then!
Twilight