Location:Seven Peaks — Formation Hall, Eastern Terrace
Date/Time:TC1856.04.19-20
Coop's lattice ran the models overnight.
Raven found him in the Formation Hall at dawn — same place, same posture, same burnt-copper smell from the wired-together detection arrays. He looked like he'd aged a year in twelve hours, which for an eighty-four-year-old Cognitect running substrate degradation models at full lattice capacity was roughly equivalent to a normal person pulling an all-nighter.
"Give me the numbers," she said.
"She wasn't lying. Not entirely." He pulled up the display. Two curves — one for each scenario the creature had described. "Campaign continues: substrate degradation accelerates. She's right about the mechanism. Restricting the operative energy supply forces greater draw from the ley-line substrate. The more we starve the secondary pipeline, the harder the door pulls from the primary."
"How much acceleration?"
