Where is Everybody? Twenty one.

Brrrriiiiing. Click. Five Am. It is now the fourteenth of June. God. I feel very uneasy. Just yesterday, I established our host alive and well. Strike the well. Now today, I just might be forking over my very life to fix a mistake that is currently costing him. Damn. The last thing we said to each other casually was in an attempt to get on good terms with each other. I guess that's not happening now. Pity.

I came downstairs to see the others asleep. One other heard me, and looked up. Anthony. He took me into the kitchen to tell me I don't have to do this. I told him I will do what I dashed well please. He looked slightly saw at this. I can't say why. I thought he'd be awfully glad to be rid of me. He's not, I guess. I decided to retreat to the bottle again.

Somehow, I couldn't get as deep into the bottle as I usually could when I need my escape. It's not working. I came back upstairs to see Joanna wide awake at around six. Dawn was breaking, and I couldn't feel more empty about it. It's like my whole life is just some pointless play for the amusement of the entire world. Joanna's eyes were following me across the hall and into my empty room. There were no features but a sleeping bag and my notebook. As I write this, Joanna is slowly creeping in as if she can tell my mind is far from easy. I have entered the existential zone. The world and universe of apathy. When it's all said and done, nothing really matters. It all comes to the exact same end, no matter what. Perhaps I should turn off my feelings. Why shouldn't I?

There's a soft fuzzy feeling on my side. I feel like some one's nuzzling me, massaging herself on me. Joanna...

.....

It's now half past six, and Sweet Stuff has noticed Joanna's absence, as she came into my room to catch me in my notebook finishing the page. She has informed me she doesn't hold shit against me and wants to wish me the best of luck. That's real rich considering I'm about to go out there to negotiate Alex's safe return for her sake. S/he is the whole reason she hasn't broken from losing her fiance and brother. I told her the last thing we said to each other in casual conversation was in an attempt to get on 'is good side. S/he told me about his family and revealed a photograph of Mom. An attractive lady, I think. I would want Rumiko if she were still here. Yeah, when you state their man is gone, you tend to think such thoughts openly you would otherwise restrain yourself from.

I find her sweet as her name suggests. Herbert was a real lucky man to have such a sweet lady like this. The only time I can even think about her being angry was the day before yesterday when we came back without Alex. I want to see her happy. She never seemed upset except sadness. Her spirits were always high otherwise, due largely to being watched over by Torrez.

"I want to see Alex again, but I don't want to see you get hurt. You didn't know that man," she gestured to the chest, "would die. And you were only thinking of Pickering. She needs an omnivorous diet. She can't thrive on vegetables alone. She has been eating well since you brought that body back. With so few people in the world, losing anyone is a great tragedy to me."

Samantha came in, and with a dead tone, she told me the cars are ready. Everyone is going. Backup will be needed should they try something funny.

Alex.

Oh, boy. What a day. What a week. It's been only three days, yet it feels like a week. I haven't had any of my own food in well over a --half a week? No, three days is right. It feels like eternity in that place. I refuse to say it's an awful place, but I did't have the time of my life there. I'm pretty sure it would have been my death had I spent another day in there.

After they chauffeured me away to their hideout, they decided to tie me up as they thought I was going to do them harm. Easier said than done when you have been drained of all energy and are lethargic as a drunk. Me binder looks just as appealing as it ever has. I only have cliff notes on it, but I think I can trace the events (sparse as they were) that occurred in there.

I tried to get out of it, but it was to no avail. One of the two ladies I met undid the bindings and told me it was an extra precaution, no need for it. The power shield was plenty enough all its own. I didn't feel much better, but I was glad to be unrestrained. When I asked her what her name was, she told me she couldn't say anything else to me before their superior spoke to me first. Wow. They really take this serious. And why shouldn't they? I now know being in that thaumen ridden world is like walking into an oven for them all. Worse, an electric chair you don't need to be strapped into. It doesn't burn your scalp, but your skull would become an oven. Why aren't we the same way? Why aren't we twitching and so on from overexposure to it? Furthermore, Anthony and I both can feel the power and have no idea where this extra sense came from. Maybe it came with the new bodies or something.

Martinez. Somehow, it doesn't surprise me a Hispanic guy is behind it all. It took an entire day to convince him I wasn't one of these aliens he seems to hate so much. Giving my name seemed to be most of the confirmation he needed, plus citing historical events was the extra icing on the luscious cake. He explained to me that about a year ago, they put this thing together, as they had become alarmingly aware of a new energy source they knew to be harmful. I'm not sure how they knew this, or wasn't until he further explained what went on.

Five years prior to that, the earth's orbit was hosting traces of an odd, unprecedented and undiscovered energy. When several men turned up dead, they sent more up with rats. The humans began thrashing wildly without cease at once, and stopped moving after five minutes. Live footage showed the rodents to be unfazed. They acted just as normal as usual. It was when they brought back the bodies with drones and the rats too, they made an even more terrifying discovery: No sooner had they taken them out of their cages and placed them on pedestals did they note their eyes looked glazed over, their movements lethargic, their stimuli non reactive to many common cues. After several hours, they all perished. The humans they sent were all deceased, but no indication of how they died was apparent-- until they chopped open their skulls. No trace of harm was seen in their guts, their hearts, their digestive, respiratory and circulatory tracts. It was when the opened the skulls that they found out the awful truth: This thing whatever it was cooked their brains to a crisp, just like an electric chair. Oddly enough, there was still hair on their heads. Their skulls became ovens. They guessed this power would cause any animal without a sufficiently large brain to adapt to it and become reliant on it. They sent one animal after another into orbit, and none came to any harm (they did physical check ups on them all first to be sure they were all in tip top shape) while they were there, and their provisions lasted. Once they came back, they all showed the same symptoms and passed away in a matter of hours, days at the most.

They spent the next five years trying to identify the energy, and deemed it thaumic energy or thaumens after getting a message from an unknown third party. They spent one year after next finding out just what this thing did, and how they could identify it. Once that was done, they went on to find ways to build dead zones. It turns out the most viable way for the time being was to use the most non reactive metals they could find. It's one thing to do it in theory, but quite another to do it in practice. To make a long story short, this was the most viable location, underground where no storm or other surface disaster can penetrate it. For extra measure, they admit it was essential to have a way to come out into the world, which they did by getting everyone in the organization to build vehicles that repel that raw energy. It worked, but it's only good when they aren't in it, as they are magnets for it. And it all goes straight to their brains, overloading them. They managed to make a more reliable one that functions of the same principle as their retreat. They silver, aluminum and tin to make a vehicle that didn't need to repel the stuff so much as keep it out of the cab. They succeeded as I could see. They then sealed themselves off from the world a month before everything with a substantial and consequential brain biological would die.

When I asked why everybody disappeared, they couldn't give me an answer to that. They presumed if I didn't do it, I was one of them.
If I hadn't had anything to do with this mass disappearance, I must be someone who vanished and reappeared. They were right about that.

If I'm here, they could be trying to kill me. They negotiated that they want to be left alone, and that they intend to make their helicopter's electric magnetic pulse, or whatever they would call it work on the rest of their vehicles and their suit, and have the means necessary to do so.

We could give them a hand, and make no further assaults on them. And give them the boy. I said no. I asked them if they wanted to put a bullet in his head. They affirmed this. I said no again. They won't have him. I then stated they'd have him over my corpse. They were visibly pained by this blunt claim. I have been nothing short of patient with these folks. We could be the hands they need in finding all the necessary metals they will need in the foreseeable future. And even some mechanical work if it should come to that. They decided to let me out, but not before putting a cuff or shackle on me wrist. One that has no chain on it. Once they turned me loose, I immediately felt not well, but better. I could virtually see the thaumens all around me, and they came right to me, and dispersed themselves evenly around me entire body, not just to me head. They were behind me in their suits, and they were armed to the teeth. It was already clear I was free to go, but they wanted to see the others first. They're willing to gamble on my word.

Sweet Stuff and Will both turned up out of the shrubs surrounding the hills we were at. they were coming slowly as to not startle the crew. then I heard something else out of sight. And saw an aura. Anthony, Monica, Sherman, Angela, Vinnie, Pickering, Sam, Val De Lump and Joanna were all there at the main way waiting for me. I fell in love. I thought I'd not see them again. But I didn't squeak on the others, as they might panic and revoke their deal if they knew the twelve of us were all here, harboring concentrated doses of this stuff.

Will seemed to be stumbling a little. His eyes were fixed not, shifting constantly. Always unsteady. I could hear the the woman behind me give a deep sigh. She probably didn't want to face an able and sober horse who would molest her dead.

"Aw 'ight. Alright. It's fine with me if you want to take me." He drew a bottle out of his suit and took a gulp. Sweet immediately took a swipe and stuffed the offending container and stuffed it under her dress, and kept her hoof there.

"You alright, A?"

"Yes."

I immediately fell asleep on site and they evidently had to carry me back, if being at home and in bed with Sweet and Joanna is an indicator. I think I woke briefly, as I remember being carried in the arms of a bipedal, humanoid being, which could only be Samantha. My lips are starting to droop, my tongue is dry, my overall mouth is dreary and weary. I must close it properly without anything in it. Get some sleep. Fall asleep for the second time today. everyone else is asleep. Good night, everybody.