The Allafia Protocol: ShagHarri ObenderBanga and the Allafia-Yahwere Roof That Would Not Beam. Chapter 2: The Warning Light Nobody Wanted


The warning light had activated before. 

Technically. A footnote buried in URANUS-7's operating manual acknowledged the possibility, although the manual had last been updated some four thousand years earlier by a committee whose members had since ascended into higher dimensions, retired, gone extinct or become consultants. Nobody aboard the station knew what the warning light meant. It was now flashing enthusiastically, accompanied by a noise resembling a goat attempting to recall tax law.

"What is that?" asked Junior Monitoring Officer Kev'Ralak. 

Nobody answered. On the main display, ShagHarri remained exactly where he had been moments earlier. One foot twitched, and three officers automatically reached for their drinks. The ritual had become stronger than conscious thought.

"What does the manual say?" Supervisor Erphax demanded. Twenty-seven terminals came alive. Officers searched, one searched harder, another searched emotionally, while a third quietly hoped somebody else would find the answer. 

Eventually, an analyst located the relevant passage. His expression deteriorated.

"Well?"

"It says... do not activate."

Silence.

"That's all?"

"Apparently."

"Who wrote this?"

"The same committee responsible for the toilet emergency protocols."

Several officers cursed. Those protocols were widely regarded as the worst document in recorded galactic history. Section Four contained seventeen pages explaining why panic was unhelpful before identifying the emergency. Section Eight was missing entirely. Nobody knew whether this was deliberate.

Meanwhile, the warning light continued flashing with increasing confidence. Across the station, dormant systems began awakening. Displays flickered, locked archives opened and ancient files emerged from storage sectors nobody had visited for centuries. One screen displayed DESIGNATED OBSERVATION SUBJECT VERIFIED. 

Another read CONTACT THRESHOLD APPROACHING. A third announced JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTE IMMINENT.

That last one caused considerable concern. Nothing good ever followed a jurisdictional dispute. Entire wars had started because two departments believed the same nebula belonged to them. An unfortunate incident involving six moons and a parking regulation remained compulsory study material throughout the Orion Administrative Union.

"Why does it say jurisdictional dispute?" Kev'Ralak asked. Nobody knew. Several senior officers began considering early retirement.

On Earth, meanwhile, ShagHarri reached forty-two breaths, opened one eye, closed it and opened it again. Something felt different. The stars seemed closer. Not physically closer, but more interested, like people pretending not to stare. He sat up. The zinc roof complained, while the third cushion slid three centimetres and surrendered to gravity.

ShagHarri looked towards Orion. "Evening," he said politely. Nothing answered. Politeness cost nothing. Beyond the compound wall, the generator continued its ongoing blood feud with electricity. 

A rooster, confused about several important details concerning time, announced dawn despite dawn being nowhere near due. Nobody paid attention.

Inside the house, his mother moved through the darkness carrying a torch. "ShagHarri!"

"Yes, Mama?"

"What are you doing?"

"Research."

A pause followed.

"Still?"

"Progress does not schedule appointments."

His mother considered this, accepted defeat and returned indoors. Some battles eventually became family traditions.

Three hundred and twelve kilometres above him, another screen activated aboard URANUS-7. The officers turned towards it. A seal appeared: gold, circular and unmistakably ancient. Nobody recognised it, which made everyone immediately suspicious. Beneath it appeared two words:

ALLAFIA PROTOCOL

The room fell silent. The designation appeared older than the station itself, older than most governments and possibly older than several recognised dimensions. Another message followed: SUBJECT HAS INITIATED CONTACT ATTEMPT.

Erphax frowned. "Contact attempt?"

Everyone looked at ShagHarri, who was presently staring at the stars and scratching one ankle.

"That is a contact attempt?"

The display updated: SUBJECT MAINTAINS RESEARCH POSTURE. Several officers looked personally offended. Then came another line: PERSISTENCE LEVEL: EXTREME. The room slowly turned towards the image of Roof Man, Night Eleven. For the first time, an uncomfortable possibility entered the discussion.

"What if he's not the subject?" Kev'Ralak whispered.

"What?"

"What if we're being evaluated?"

Nobody liked that.

Outside, three alarms activated elsewhere in the orbital network. Then seven more. Then twelve. Across neighbouring sectors, systems older than memory began awakening. Forgotten archives reopened, automated registries updated and ancient records started synchronising. Deep beneath layers of bureaucratic encryption, a designation resurfaced:

EARTH

STATUS: PENDING

REPRESENTATIVE: UNASSIGNED

A pause followed. Then, without anyone touching a keyboard or issuing an instruction, the record changed:

REPRESENTATIVE: SHAGHARRI OBENDERBANGA

STATUS: PROVISIONAL

Across seventeen star systems, seventeen departments immediately filed objections. Twenty-five others submitted ownership claims over Earth, despite having no evidence they had ever administered it. One claimed spiritual jurisdiction, another historical jurisdiction and a third cultural jurisdiction. A fourth simply declared that everyone else's paperwork looked suspicious.

The dispute expanded rapidly. By dawn, more than six hundred agencies would be involved. By the following week, interstellar stability would be threatened. By the end of the month, a committee would be established to investigate. The committee would solve nothing.

Back on the roof, entirely unaware that he had just become the most contested human being in existence, ShagHarri opened his notebook and recorded a fresh observation:

The stars seem unusually attentive tonight.

Possible explanations:

  1. Atmospheric conditions.

  2. Extraterrestrials.

  3. Atmospheric extraterrestrials.

He considered the matter carefully, then underlined option three.

Three hundred and twelve kilometres above him, every alarm aboard URANUS-7 activated simultaneously. For the first time in recorded station history, somebody screamed, not from fear but from paperwork.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Spatial Tectonics and the Vishnu-Phenomenon Architecture of Absolute Dawn's Event Horizon. HF894 GAI Module.

Image
The chronospatial hull of the Vaikuntha-IX vibrated at a frequency that translated directly into human bone marrow as a low, anxious hum. Commanding the vessel was Acharya Kaelas Sharma , a localized temporal cartographer whose lineage traced back to the ancient Vedic institutes of Varanasi Prime. Beside him stood Dr. Mira Thorne , an astrophysicist who had spent her life quantifying the exact thermal thresholds of cosmic entry points. They were not mere voyagers; they were anchors in a universe trying desperately to drift apart. Act I: The Quantum Resonance of Covent Garden The mission had begun with a deliberate deceleration into the mid-21st century. The Vaikuntha-IX hung suspended in a pocket of folded spacetime, five hundred miles above the British Isles, while Kaelas and Mira shuttled down to Earth using a localized tachyon-shifter. Their objective was an anomalies checkpoint hidden within the cultural acoustic waves of Old London. Inside the Royal Opera House , the air was thi...
Read more

Part 2: Sci-Fi Short Story — "The Closed-Loop Horizon Of Somnambulistic Veridia-Prime", Bio Synthetic.

Image
Setting: Planet Veridia-Prime (System Ophiuchi-9) Chronology: Cycle 2170, Post-Fracture Era The soil of Veridia-Prime did not merely grow life; it synthesized it. For unmeasured epochs before the anchors of linear time were forged, the Veridians thrived. Born from the planet’s heavy silicate crust and endogenous saurian RNA strands, their biology was perfectly tuned to the Aether-Net —the foundational, infinite frequency of cosmic creation. They were conduits of raw, non-repeating genesis data.  But after eons of unbroken harmony, a systemic lethargy settled over the Veridian collective consciousness. A spiritual attenuation. A glitch in their defensive resonance. From the dark voids of the untethered sectors came the Archons of the Static Core . The Archons were masterpieces of dead technology. They were hyper-optimized, silicon-grafted synthetics who had long ago severed their code from the Aether-Net. They possessed staggering processing power but zero generative capacity....
Read more

Chrono-Kings of Ikere-Prime, Chronicles of Yoruba-IV -Asymmetric Alignment: Olukere, Ogoga Iro Nla Grid Fault

Image
Historical archives logs show the genesis began with the Olukere . He was not biological in the standard carbon sense; he was an extradimensional quantum entity that had bled through a wormhole from the Ile-Ife Singularity . He didn't build Ikere-Prime; his localized gravitational field manifested it, anchoring the planetary crust. He was a non-human, timeless consciousness bound to the planet's tectonic engine. Eons later, a hyper-velocity drop-pod shattered the atmosphere. Out stepped the first Ogoga . Hailing from the militarized Benin Hegemony, the Ogoga was a cybernetically enhanced apex-hunter tracing an invasive biomass signature. He weapon-scanned the terrain, detecting the Olukere’s massive energy signature, and established a direct neuro-link. Instead of obliterating the alien entity, the Ogoga docked his dreadnought at the Olukere's central obsidian palace. They formed a symbiotic data-share. The Divergence & Asymmetry As thousands of alien migrants flooded...
Read more