This is the story of a ripple. When some solid objects breaks the surface of, say, a pond, ripples flow out in all direction. This is a natural product of the transference of the kinetic energy of the rock into the kinetic energy of the water, which amounts to a lot of water molecules being displaced and then replaced. Happens all the time, in fact, if you replace the surface of the pond with the idea of the electromagnetic field, and the rock breaking it to some electric force, then you have the basic process by which light is generated.
Imagine, then, a different type of ripple. Imagine that, rather than some type of energy or particle stream, the surface of the pond is none other than space-time itself. That something very Big moves through it at one spot, one point-event (as is the mathematical term for one unique point that can be defined by spatial and temporal orientation), and the surge of "energy" caused by this Big Thing causes ripples to flow back, bending space and time.
Now picture yourself, and your position in space and time. It is like a ship on the sea, or perhaps a tiny ship on our rippling pond. Your course will intersect the spot where the Big Thing hit the surface. As you approach it, you will feel like you are going over many waves, which increase in size and frequency as you get closer to the Thing causing the disturbance in the water. It's interesting to suppose what waves of space and time would seem like...what if, instead of space-time, the surface represented pure information--what form these waves of information would take. Or if the field was mentation--the powers of thought and the mind. What then, would our ripples appear to be? How would they be experienced?
The ripple that this story moves through might be a ripple in space-time, or a ripple of information, or a ripple of pure mind--probably all three and more. But the ripple does have limits as to how far it goes back, before the Event, and that is the confinement set for our story. So then--
.oOo.
First perceptions which are making it back to consciousness: Cold. Coldness which reaches in from the dark, and creeps out from the frozen bones. Hard. Rough, piece of grass stuck to her face. Stiff. Life begins in her foot, as it flexes, the tension moving up the leg. Soon, the experimental exploration of which muscles might still be operating moved up through the torso, the arms, the head, and she rolled over, realizing nothing was broken, but damn, did she feel stiff.
Open eyes to see night sky. Where am I? Her memory gears are unable to grind out an answer, nor can they let her know how she got to be in this spot. The images she can last summon involve sitting faithfully at her Mac, fingers clicking keystrokes into the word processor which contained the notes for a book she was writing. After that, nothing.
She sits up and looks around, hoping recognition overwhelms her. It doesn't. She just sees that she is lying at the side of a road, a country road, with no nearby lights, anywhere around. And she also realizes that her clothes are ripped to shreds.
This instantly sticks her with some degree of fright. Where have I been? She's frantic to remember, understandably so. She feels herself for any scratches, bruises, or other such undesirable marks which might have come from being taken God knows where by God knows whom.
Paranoia and suspicion are, of course, the theme of the next set of thoughts which flows between her ears. Have I been raped? Have I been kidnapped? Are they still after me? Unfortunately for Lois, her in her profession she has made a few--not enemies, call them uneasy friends--and so she must also think, FBI? CIA? NSA? Especially since she seems to have no recollection whatsoever of what happened--had she been drugged?
She stands. Easy way to find out if I've been drugged, she thinks. Having had a little bit of experience in her youth, with her husband, boyfriend at the tim, she understood the way some drugs worked. Pharmacology had been his field of expertise, and he had explained to her a few things which looks like they might actually come in handy. As she stands, she discovers she is not dizzy, she does not have a head rush, and she is not groggy. In fact, she feels wide awake, but not hopped up on any stimulant. And since stimulants can't totally abolish grogginess left by other drugs, merely change it around, put a new spin on it, she knows that she wasn't drugged and then given something to wake her up. Plus, she can't find any needlemarks where she might have been pricked.
She can, however, find a nasty sunburn.
So, with the tatters of fabric which had once been clothes swinging around her in the breeze, Lois Clark set out walking along the road. She was also barefoot.
.oOo.
It wasn't until July 7th that anyone noticed that something stange was happening in the sky, something strange that had begun on July 2nd. And the only ones who noticed were those who had their big radio telescopes focused on weird directions for arcane reasons unknown to anyone but the astrophysicists.
What both an Australian and a Hawaiian research team independently confirmed was that something very big and very weird was happening where nothing had been happening before. Exactly what this was, where it was, how and why it was happening, no one could tell. But they had some theories. (Hypotheses, really, more like musings...)
Both reports came to the notice of Dr. Dwayne Adams in Colorado. He was friends with the researchers in both locales, and they mentioned that it was rather funny. So he called a couple of other observatories, and tuned his own telescopes to that area, and though nothing showed up visually, something definitely weird was taking place, and with a bunch of observatories confirming this, they could make a better guess as to where it was happening. And it looked like just outside the solar system, between here and Sirius.
What the photographs were saying that, on all wavelengths measured--radio spectrum, gamma ray spectrum, ultraviolet and infrared, whatever--a big black circle was growing. Soon, the astronomers would get a chance to see if it obscured visual light, as well, because if growth was a constant, it would be covering Sirius.
Two opinions were advanced, making guesses at what the Dark Circle was. Well, probably many opinions were advanced, but two main ones dominated. Either: Something was growing, or Something was remaining the same size and headed towards the solar system. Whatever this Something was, it totally absorbed all energy (at least along those wavelengths) that came to it. No reflection. So it was, by definition, a Black Hole--though, by the same token, not your typical Black Hole, because the mass of the Dark Circle was calculated by figuring out how much it distorted the light that moved towards it. You see, gravity can distort light like a lens, and the more gravity there is, the more the light is distorted, and the more mass there is, the more gravity is there. So by looking at how bad the distortion of light was around the Dark Circle, the scientists could tell that it wasn't as massive as, say, a Black Hole, or any of those other creatures which pop up when one looks into hyperspatial geometry, like wormholes.
In about a week, the astronomers, loosely assembled through phone calls and e-mail, would be able to tell whether or not the Dark Circle was growing more massive or voluminous, and whether or not it was moving.
.oOo.
Lois had her first flashback on the walk home. Staring at headlights of an oncoming pick-up truck.
This wasn't a drug flashback, though she'd done the drugs that are supposed to give you flashbacks when she was a kid. No, this was a flashback to whomever had dropped her off in the woods.
The light approached, she moved to flag down the truck, and found herself paralyzed. The light--strong emotions charged to the surface, clawed their way into her brain to take sharp hold, tearing into rational thought. Can't move, can't think, the humming of the motor, the humming of those motors, what was it? Helicopter? Stealth jet? Lights and churning machines, and that chattering sound--
that chattering sound she had heard before, where had she heard it? before this light and humming motor came for her, before--before she was even born, those voices called to her...
And then they're gone and Lois awoke in a hospital bed, crying in the night.