//------------------------------//
// Distant Rumble 
// Story: The Coming Storm 
// by Jay911 
//------------------------------//

JULY 28

"'One: We will meet with only one of you. No more.'"
"'Two: That one of you will not bear wings nor a horn.'"
"'Three: No weapons.'"
"'Four: All others from your group shall remain in a location of our choosing, clearly marked, and plainly visible from the meeting site.'"
"'Five: Communications between your group and your nominee/designate will be permitted, but through only our devices, to be installed before the meeting. You have our assurances that we will not be recording, though we will be listening.'"
"'Six: Any violation of the above, no matter the severity or intent, will result in immediate cancellation of the meeting and our departure. Gross or continued violations beyond that instance will result in hostile action in order to protect ourselves.'"
Swift tossed the page at the table. After it left her magic's influence, it fluttered lazily and drifted down to land on the floor, where Jeff picked it up.
"'Have your answer ready by zero eight hundred,'" Swift quoted the last line from the paper, an acidic tone in her voice. "This is bullshit."
It was rare to hear her curse, but she had the right sentiment in my opinion. "We have fifteen minutes to decide," I said. As promised in the radio communication late the night before, the page had come overnight on the back of the robot rover, accompanying another pallet full of supplies - but this time, things useful to humans were left out and certain things clearly intended for hooved mammals were on the skid.
"If we say 'screw you, we're not playin' your game', then stuff like this comes to an end?" Serge asked, indicating the pile of supplies.
"Most likely," Jeff nodded. "And so far, other than point six in the message, their actions haven't been at all threatening towards us. I say they're a group we should keep good ties with."
"How can you trust that?" Swift said, pointing at the note. "They want to split us up, and decide which one of us they abduct-"
"Swift," I tried to interrupt.
"-and threaten the rest of us with deadly force if we so much as blink at them wrong?"
"There's so much we don't know," Rich contributed. "On both sides."
"They said they needed answers," I piped up. "They made recent contact with another group of survivors and understand more than before, but wanted our story to compare. They said things had changed."
"Yeah, they decided we're expendable if we don't go along with-"
"Swift, please, stop," Jeff cut in. "Everypony here understands your anger. We all agree. But it's a new world out there. We're not the citizens waiting for the town leaders to decide what we need in order to keep going." He looked around at the group. "We are the town leaders now. And we might have to make deals with potentially shady characters in order to keep our bellies full. Am I right?"
Serge slowly nodded, and Rich added an "mm-hmm". Karin, like she'd been since we gathered after waking up, lay there staring at the ground in front of her hooves.
Swift's ears folded back. "What if we're laying down with the wolves?" she began.
"Then we need to keep a close eye on each other's necks," Serge rumbled, and I nodded.
"Swift, we know how dangerous this is. But if there are really only 7000 people left in the world like the math suggests, we can't afford to make enemies with anyone," I pointed out.
"Speaking of 'people'," Swift said, magically wresting an item free from the skid of supplies. It was a bottle of blue powder. "This is for hoof disease prevention. This 'care package' dropped the work gloves, eye and ear protection, hard hats, work boots, and other stuff from the first one, all in favor of equine care products."
"That's a good thing," Jeff tried to interject, but Swift talked over him.
"Do you not realize what that means? They didn't know we were ponies before. They thought we were human. Which most likely means they are human."
That had occurred to me, but only briefly and in the back of my mind. Clearly to some, it wasn't on their radar at all; Rich reacted with surprise.
"Does that mean this isn't as widespread as we thought?" Jeff wondered aloud. "Maybe there are people still surviving elsewhere?"
"Guys, I hate to do this, but it's three minutes to eight," I said. "We need to get ready."
Swift made a heavy, almost dramatic sigh. "What are we going to tell them?"
Jeff raised a hoof. "I think the right thing to do is trust them. But cautiously."
Rich put his own hoof up slowly, nodding to Jeff.
"We can give it back to them just as tough as they gave it to us," Serge said. "Tell them in no uncertain terms that we won't stand for any bullshit." He lifted a hoof.
I nodded again and put my hoof up. "Full disclosure required," I agreed.
Swift looked miffed. She looked across the circle to the other mare. "Karin," she called out.
"Oh!" Karin said, looking up sharply, eyes darting around to see us all holding up a hoof each. "I... erm..."
Jeff was the first one to figure it out. "Karin, you don't need to worry. You're not the earth pony that we're going to send."
She wore a brief look of relief, but then worry for Jeff crossed her face. "Are-are you sure?"
"Between you and me? Absolutely. Now, if they would let a pegasus or unicorn go, I might make a different choice. But I'm not going to let you be subjected to them sight unseen. I've had experience with th- I mean, near them before. It's not a perfect solution, but it's what we've got to go with."
I stood up. "Swift?" I asked. "I know you're not OK with this, but will it do for now?"
She frowned and stood up. "They'd better give us every answer we ask for," she muttered.

"Ponytown. Ponytown. Ponytown. This is Explorer Base," came the flat, even, possibly-synthesized voice at precisely 08:00:02.
"Explorer Base," I answered, everyone else crowded around behind me. "Ponytown is here."
"Do you have a response?" was the terse query.
I took a breath, then keyed the mic. "Affirmative," I said. "The response is affirmative. With conditions."
"There are no conditions," Explorer Base responded immediately, as if they'd been expecting it. "The agreement shall be by the letter or not at all."
"'The letter' is pretty heavy-handed," I protested. "Forgive us, but we have misgivings as to your motives."
There was a pause. "Our motives are the same as yours, Ponytown. Survival."
"Says the group threatening to shoot us!" Swift shot back as I opened the mic. I turned and shushed her.
"Explorer Base, Ponytown," I said, starting over. "Surely you can understand our wariness."
Another pause ensued. "The conditions specified in the letter are for our mutual protection. Ours and yours. More will be explained in person." There was another slight pause. "I can assure you, no one wants to shoot anyone ... or anything. There's too much at stake to lose any more of us."
"You say that like you have an idea what's gone on," I answered, trying to pry some details out of the other end.
"More will be explained in person," the voice repeated. "We will send the RVR with coordinates and a timeline before noon."
"We're not happy," I told him. "But we agree that we need to work together to make the world go on. We'll be waiting."
"We'll talk again at the coordinates," came the response. "Good luck, Ponytown. Explorer Base out."

The wheeled robot came as promised in the mid-morning. (We were alerted to its presence by the data noise from the radio, which I'd neglected to turn back down after talking to 'the voice' earlier - so everybody's eardrums nearly ruptured from the screeching sound. I owe everyone cupcakes as an apology.) Unlike other times the device visited, we were present, and dared to meet it outside.
"I see it," Serge called out from the bed of the pickup, where he was perched with the binoculars. Like me, he had better long-distance eyesight than anyone else - and with the binoculars, could see things a significant distance away. "On the highway."
"Same as before," Swift pointed out, and Jeff and I nodded.
"There should be no anti-magic field from this thing," I commented, mainly for Serge, Rich, and Karin's benefit. "Nothing to worry about."
The six of us watched in silence as the buggy closed the distance, hopping the curb and the sidewalk again and driving down the embankment towards the store. Idly, I wondered if it was following a preprogrammed track, or if someone was actually piloting it.
Across the parking lot it came, a black square held in its clawed arm. As it neared, it became apparent that the object was a plastic-wrapped binder.
Jeff elected to be the one to receive the documents, since he would be our emissary. As the buggy stopped a dozen feet from us, we slowly gathered around its front. The pole-mounted camera was sweeping left and right, taking us in. I actually had to pull Swift back, who went lens-to-snout with the device, either to intentionally give the operator (and whoever else was watching) a very close-up view, or for her own purposes of inspecting the camera at close range.
Jeff hefted the binder in a hoof after retrieving it from the claw. "All this work for a few pages that could've been shared over the radio," he mused.
"They probably didn't want anyone who was eavesdropping on us - if there is anybody doing that - to know our rendezvous point," I said.
"Whatever." He lifted it up again and waved it in front of the camera, then looked into it. "Okay, we've got the book," he said, shouting, as if that would make his voice heard on the other end. "We'll be there."
The operator - there had to be one, I figured, for this little trick to have been possible - made the camera tilt up and down in a sort of a nod, and then the rover backed off.

"Interesting choice," Swift mused, looking at the open booklet on our new kitchen table.
"They obviously want to see us coming from a long way off," Serge said.
"Or vice versa," I nodded. The coordinates were accompanied by a map, pointing to the nearby municipal airport. Far from an international hub, but large enough for there to be plenty of open space.
"Is there a time specified?" Rich wanted to know.
"Two o'clock this afternoon," Swift said. "Nice of them to leave us room for lunch."
"In that case," Karin spoke up, "anybody mind if I go for a run? I promise I'll be back before it's time to go."
"Go ahead," Jeff smiled. "Have a good time, but be careful."
Karin smiled brightly and headed to the common area. "C'mon, Buddy!" she called, and momentarily was accompanied by the Dalmatian who was happy to follow her outside.
"They're hitting it off well," I observed.
"I'm amazed she can keep up with him," Serge said. "I don't know who has more fun."
"Anyway," Swift said, calling for attention back to the documents. "Here's how I see it. Tell me if anypony has problems with this." She was pointing to the map with a magicked-up spoon. "They want us here, and Jeff here. Coming in from this direction only. That means we can all come together up to this point, where we have to separate. Should we take one car or more?"
"Take them all," Serge suggested. "There's no harm in having options available. Plus they might want him to go with them."
Swift shivered at the idea. "I hope not, but okay. Now they say they're going to have the area 'prepared' for us by the time we get there. There's going to be a green-painted square we can all stand in. We all have to stand in. If we venture outside it, they will call it all off. Something here-" she gestured to a wider radius circle, but not by much "-they're calling a 'point of no return line'. Ominous much? And then this little red frickin' dot, over here, for Jeff."
"Looks to be about twenty feet across, if this is to scale," he said. "I can live with that."
"What's the legend beside it say?" Rich asked, leaning over and peering.
"'Communications and shielding'," Serge and I stereoed. I picked up the conversation: "The one has to be their comms line they promised. Shielding, I don't know. Sounds obvious, but why do you need shielding? Maybe from their scare-ray?"
Jeff shrugged. "I guess I'll find out at two."
Swift sighed. "I still don't like it, but I guess we're doing this." She looked around at the rest of us. "Anything else?"
"This will be the closest we've ever been to them, presuming they don't use robots," I said, mainly speaking to Swift and Rich. "We have to agree now that we're going to steel ourselves against the feelings we feel when they're near, and stay put as promised, regardless of what happens. If for no other reason than to keep Jeff safe." I looked at my companions.
"Agreed," Swift said, and the others nodded. She put on an air of confidence and conviction that defied her nervousness, though.
"Okay. We should make sure the cars are ready, and get some lunch into us. I guess the best arrangement is Jeff in the truck, and Swift and Rich in the Prius, and you and Karin split up between me in the S and Swift in the Prius?" I said, turning to Serge.
"I'll come with you," he said. "Karin can decide when she gets back."
"Okay," I replied, and everyone nodded. "See you at lunch."

Jeff came to me a few minutes later, as I was programming the GPS in the Model S for the trip to the airport.
"Hey," he said softly.
"Hi," I said, looking up briefly from my efforts, then focusing back on the screen. Working a touch-screen with hooves was surprisingly successful, but required a significant amount of concentration to hit the right human-finger-sized buttons. "Hang on a sec."
"It's okay, take your time," he said. "Just wanted to ask a few questions."
"'Kay," I murmured, finishing the programming. Shortly thereafter, I turned to him. "What's up?"
"Just wondering if there's anything in particular you think I should talk to them about," he said. "You being our leader and all."
I blushed. "I am not our leader," I huffed. "Don't put that in peoples' heads."
"Well, you're a take-charge kind of pony," he countered. "You and Swift both."
I tried to make a dismissive noise and change the subject. "Be honest with them. We've got nothing to hide. No reason to not tell them anything they want to know."
"What if they want to take me away, like Serge said?"
I frowned. "We'd need a really compelling reason to let you go, and assurances you wouldn't be harmed. The only thing that filled my head when he said that was some kind of alien-dissection thing in reverse. ...Sorry."
"No problem. You weren't the only one."
"You nervous?"
"Does the Pope shit in the woods?" he smirked.
I laughed. "I don't know. I'll have to find a Catholic bear and ask him."
"I'm sure we'll get through this," Jeff said, reassuring himself as well as me. "If they wanted to do us in, they have so many other ways to accomplish it. This'll just be a very interesting meeting, and that's all."
"I hope you're right," I said. "I'd say we'll have your back, but ...you know what their documents say about us straying from our 'viewpoint'."
"It's all right. Just knowing my friends will be nearby is good enough."
I felt a little warmth from that statement. "Gotcha," I smiled.

A couple of hours later, Serge and Karin were in the car with me, with Jeff ahead of us in the pickup truck, and Swift and Rich behind us in the Prius. We set off heading east for the half-hour drive to Oshawa Municipal Airport. Well, half-hour with traffic; probably 15-20 minutes for us, because none of us cared for speed limits any more.
"This is a nice car," Karin said from the back seat.
"Thanks," I smiled. "It was always my dream car, so finding one was a big plus."
"I thought that was the benefit of living in Switzerland," Serge said.
We both "huh?"ed at him.
He cracked a smile, one of the first I'd seen from him. "Their flag. It's a big plus."
The car was filled with laughter as we headed up Brock Road. "Oh, that was good," I said, smirking.
"Figured we needed to lighten our mood," he responded.
"You should do that more of the time," Karin suggested. "I'm sure these ponies wouldn't believe me if I said you're not always gruff and grumpy."
I remained silent while the two friends went back and forth. Serge said, "First of all, don't you start with the 'ponies' thing too. Second-"
"Well, that's what we are, isn't it?" Karin said innocently. "What we've become. I thought you were over the whole losing yourself thing. George Coutts is still with us."
I raised an eyebrow at the name. Serge must have noticed it, for he asided to me, "That's my real name. Serge is just a nickname. I'll explain later." To Karin, he added, "Whatever. Second, I've got a lot to be grumpy about, kid. I would've thought a teenager would be at least as upset about all her friends vanishing."
"Hey, hey, hey," I said, waving a hoof in the air. "This sounds like dark territory to be wandering into. Let's keep it civil."
"It's okay," Karin said, a little flatly. "I kinda deserved that. Sorry, Serge. I keep forgetting."
"It's all right," he said. "Just... stop try'n'a get me to toss it all aside and embrace 'pony life'."
"Understood," she said.
I turned off Brock onto Taunton Road, and decided to let silence reign for a little bit. The ham radio shattered it a few minutes later, with a call from Swift.
"So, I guess we'll all park in the parking lot, then walk to the green zone, right? Then Jeff goes on from there?"
"Sounds fair to me," I responded. "So long as Jeff is okay with it."
"I'm fine," he answered. "And don't worry about me once we split up. Don't forget I walked a couple hundred miles on my own. I can take care of myself."
"Don't underestimate these guys," Swift warned. "We still don't know what their goal is, besides 'to survive, just like us'."
"I'll be careful, Swift. Trust me."
"As much as I hate to jinx us by talking about it," I cut in, "we should have an action plan. In case something goes down."
"Okay, what?" Swift asked.
"If they turn hostile, we take appropriate cover and try to get back to the cars. If Jeff needs rescuing, it'll be Karin and Swift to do it. Karin because she moves so fast and can carry him unaided, Swift in case they need magical assistance. The rest of us will each grab one vehicle and make ready for an escape. Who can drive stick?"
"I can," Serge said to me.
"Serge said he'll do it," I told the others, "so if it comes to that, he'll take the truck. But hopefully, nothing happens and we just have a really interesting conversation. Right?"
"And whatever you do, resist the urge to run," Jeff added. "I know it'll be overwhelming, but be strong." As if on cue, the dull ache in my belly started to make itself known, and judging by the uncomfortable fidgeting of my passengers, it'd hit them too.
"Agreed," I said. "And help each other out. We need to rely on one another to get through this."
"Coming up on the turn now," Jeff said.
"Okay, let's stay off the radio now. Talk to you all in person." In pony, my mind corrected me.
We turned in off Taunton onto Airport Road, past a golf course, and into the parking lot of the municipal airport. There were a number of black vehicles, both aerial and ground based, on the tarmac behind the terminal.
"That thing's the size of a C-17," Serge said, pressing his face against the window, looking at the largest aircraft. "How'd they even get it on the ground here?"
Resisting the urge to vomit, I pulled up beside the truck, then parked and shut off the car, stepping out. Swift parked beside me, and all six of us were reunited once more.
"I figured we'd hear jet engines running or generators or something," Swift said. The three who hadn't personally witnessed these guys before were busy staring wide-eyed at the crafts and clearly being uneasy at how their own skin was crawling.
"Just a low-level hum," I observed.
"Well, I guess this is it," Jeff said. "Wish me luck."
"Don't you get dead," I warned him.
"Trust me, that is very high on my list of things to not do."
"Are we all good?" Swift asked the others, getting hesitant nods, but nods nonetheless.
Jeff turned and started walking across the parking lot, past the terminal building, toward the tarmac. We had a crudely painted green line that we were to follow, leading to a set of scaffolding erected on the side of the two-story terminal building itself.
"Everypony doing okay?" Swift said with a wavering voice as she set her first hoof on the scaffold's steps.
"Oh, just peachy," Serge called up from the back of the single-file line. "I feel like I'm gonna puke."
"I presume we all feel like that," Rich said.
"Yup," I confirmed. "Karin, you okay?"
"As okay as I'm going to be," she said with a worried tone.
"We'll get through this," Swift said. "Let's just get up top to our 'safe zone'."
The five of us climbed the stairs to the top of the scaffold, where we found the entire roof of the terminal building was painted green. One corner of the side facing the tarmac had a post with a speaker and microphone hung from it, but it was what was on the tarmac that was drawing our attention.
More than half-a-dozen machines - it felt wrong to call them vehicles, because none of them had any windows, and few any visible doors - sat on the intersection between the two runways, about fifteen hundred feet removed from the terminal. Large cables or conduits connected the units together, and every last bit of it was painted flat black, except for the sides of the aircraft. The large one and two smaller machines that looked to be like the one that had pursued Swift and me earlier were adorned with crisp, white logos involving a series of circles, and the plain letters HPI. No other markings, lights, or hatches were visible.
"Spectators in position," we heard from the speaker box nearby. I walked over and examined it. It was a simple stage microphone and a personal monitor - nothing fancy. Cables ran from it down the side of the building and across to the tarmac, ultimately to the red dot Jeff was approaching, about a thousand feet from us, where something similar seemed to rest upon a table, with a large bulkhead abutting it. From there, the cables continued to one of the wheeled machines.
The others had gathered around me by then. Swift was leaning against my side, and I gave her the same in return. "Be safe, Jeff," she muttered, ears folded back.
As we watched Jeff carefully step towards his assigned position, I heard a buzzing fade in and out above us, occasionally audible above the hum of the equipment on the tarmac. Looking up, I saw a third ... shall we call a spade a spade, or at least a gunship a gunship? ... orbiting at about two thousand feet over the airport.
"Delegate in position," the processed-sounding voice came from the speaker as Jeff entered the red circle. He obviously heard it too, from the speaker situated near him, as he startled, then walked over to it and the table it was on. He looked at something on the table, then said aloud, "Can you guys hear me?"
"We got you," I answered.
"Spectators and delegate," another voice cut in - this one sounding human, though muffled as if inside a mask. "Communications are working well. To the spectators - you currently have the ability to be heard by your friend. Please stay where you are, observe the rules we agreed upon, and do not interject, or your link will be switched to listen-only."
"Fine," I answered. "We're staying put."
"Delegate," the voice went on. "Please maintain the shield panel between you and us at all times. Deviation will result in this meeting ending abruptly."
"Understood," Jeff answered. "And 'the delegate's' name is Jeff."
"...Interesting," the voice said after a moment. "In that case, Jeff, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Dr. Greg Baker. I will make myself known shortly."
I wanted to ask what that meant, but we found out in short order. The side of one of the larger wheeled machines opened, and a figure emerged, in what could have been a black or dark grey armored space suit.
That wasn't what made us all gasp, nor my (and Serge's, I failed to notice) wings splay out.
What gave us all surprise was that the figure was human.
The figure was attached to the machine by a thick umbilical cord, which snaked along behind him as he walked. It was too smooth, too real to be a robotic construct - this was an actual, real, live human being we were watching.
He walked slowly, bulkily, towards a chair and table that was sitting in the middle of the tarmac. Sitting down, it looked comical - they clearly wanted to behave as if he and Jeff were at opposite sides of the same table, if you ignored the 1500 feet of empty space between them.
"Mr. X, I presume," I murmured.
Evidently the mike was a lot more sensitive than I thought. "Forgive me for that," Dr. Baker said with a polite laugh. "My bosses did not want names used in prior communications." He switched gears back to professional mode: "Would you like a chair, Jeff?"
"I'm fine," Jeff said. "But seeing you, I have some questions of my own now."
"I'm sure you do," Dr. Baker said. If he nodded, we couldn't tell; the suit of armor he wore masked all but the most gross, dramatic motions. It was like a high-tech version of the Iron Man Mk1. "As a show of good faith, since you all came and are sticking to the terms, I'll let you begin."
"Are you really human inside that?" Jeff asked.
"Very much so," Dr. Baker answered. "Now, my turn. Let me put it how you just did. Were you really human? Before the Collapse?"
"I was," Jeff nodded. "We all were. Very much so," he added as a quip. "What happened? Was this localized? How did you stay human?"
"Too much at once," Baker said, his hands raised in a placating gesture. "This was, unfortunately, global. Beyond, really. Universal. How we stayed human, I suppose has to do with the shielding and our bunkers. To be honest, we only confirmed that you animals were all former humans just the other day, in conversation with another group of survivors. We had no idea that you were sentient beings. Most of our encounters prior to recently have ended poorly."
"Okay, explain the shielding. I'm standing here, breathing the air fine. I haven't turned into a glowing puddle of goo in the past two months and change. So why is it necessary?"
"It's twofold. Kudos to you for realizing it was for radiation, but not the kinds of radiation you'd be familiar with. To put it simply, some time in the early morning of May 23, Earth was bombarded with thaumic radiation." Serge stiffened beside me but I didn't detect it. "This coincided with the disappearance of nearly all the world's population, and the transmutation of the rest into what you find yourself as now."
"Except you," Jeff pointed out.
"Except us," Baker acknowledged. "Our shielding and our bunkers kept us alive. What happened to you - and the other survivors we've made contact with - was an unforeseen turn of events, at least to us. Had we known..." He trailed off, then began again. "Second reason for the shielding is to protect us from you."
"From me?" Jeff said. "I'm hardly going to-"
"Not any overt actions on your part," Baker interrupted. "You, your friends, other 'pony' survivors, all emit great amounts of thaumic radiation, far greater than the 'background' levels the Earth now resides in."
"I'm radioactive?" Jeff said, unable to resist looking down at his forelegs. "But I feel-"
"Whatever it is that made you this way appears to have protected you as well, despite the laws of physics saying it shouldn't happen. It could be said that you evolved to be one of the few organisms that can survive on this new Earth."
We all mulled that over for a couple of moments. Despite the laws of physics, I mused, thinking on the last person... creature?... to use that term with me.
"Okay," Jeff said. "So we can survive out here and you can't. How many of 'you' are there? Why do you keep following us? Do you not know that that hurts us?" He thumped his chest with a hoof.
"We've seen what our presence in close proximity to ...your kind... does," Baker responded with hesitance. "Which is why we're going to keep this meeting short. It's in our mutual interest to stay in touch and work together, instead of against one another. Our... incompatibilities may make that difficult, but with the RVR, we hope to overcome as much of that as we can. I'm going to be brief, and I most likely can't answer any more of your questions, but we'll prepare a brief that we'll send with you, letting you know what we know. Suffice it to say that you and your friends, and the other survivors like you, are probably the best hope humankind has at survival."

We conversed about the whole encounter on our way home; they essentially shooed us out of the area not long after that bombshell, saying that they needed to shut down their gear and get moving, and our presence was preventing that. To be honest, I don't think any of us had any strong desires to hang around, anyway.
"What was that that they gave you?" Swift asked on the radio.
"It's a tablet computer," Jeff answered. He was looking over the thing while Serge was driving the truck; he said he was okay, but we'd convinced him to let someone else drive, what with him having been so much closer to their shielding and all. "Not a brand I've ever seen before, though. And it's... wow, it's got a signal."
"Like a cellular connection?" I asked.
"They're probably tracking us with it," Swift grumbled.
"They said it would be easier to communicate with us through it, rather than over 'insecure radio' - I guess they mean this," Jeff responded, referring to the ham radio he was talking on.
"We need to go over this 'brief' they said they put on there," Swift said. "When we get home."
"I was going to say after supper," Jeff joked, "but I don't feel much like eating right now."
"We'll have to eat eventually," Karin said. "But I'm with them, I'm not hungry."
"Same here," I said over the radio. "I guess it's Story Time with Uncle Jeff when we get back."

After we'd read what the HPI had to share with us, we didn't feel very hungry then, either.
"This is crazy," Rich said, looking over what Jeff had just read aloud to us.
"You're telling me," Swift frowned. "I can't believe they knew and didn't do anything!"
"They did," Jeff pointed out. "Logistically speaking they did what they could. I'm not any happier about it than the rest of you, but they say that what they did was the limit of their ability. Think about it - protecting humanity from a new kind of radiation? I'm amazed they got it done in three years for as few as they managed to save."
"It still doesn't make it any better," Karin said. "Think of all the ones they didn't save."
"I don't know if 'they' didn't save them," I suggested. "They didn't save us, either, and we turned out okay. For a demonstrably different definition of okay."
"This is way too much to take in in one sitting," Jeff declared. "Let's set it aside and have some supper, then pack it in. We can start fresh tomorrow."
Everyone agreed. Serge was still sitting there looking introspective after the rest of us had gotten up and started to walk away, so I went over to him.
"You okay, big guy?" I asked. "We're going to partake in your beautiful new kitchen. Come show it off."
"Hm? Oh. Yeah," he said, getting to his hooves. "Sorry. Let's go."
The six of us headed off for our meal, each evidently musing about their own reactions to what was seen, heard, and said over the course of the day. One of the last things Baker said to us before he wrapped up lingered in my mind.
"This is a game-changer. Things will be very different come tomorrow, for the better, because of us."