Finishing their rounds through the Service Hallway, Onk and the Woollibees rejoined the operating cluster at the Peak to deliver the all-set status. Team leads, point persons, and emergency messengers were gathered there. Princess Soleil was among them, along with some of the other nonresident visitors.

When possible to inquire without distraction, she’d gleaned various expectations of the projects coming to a head in this obviously landmark experimental run. The Princess wanted to know what she and these other unlikely personages were all here to witness under threat. She had her reasoning, which led her here; so did Arkuda, so did Captain Harper, et. al. These different purposes led these different people here at this moment, which held them gripped.

The predominating sentiment was an educated anticipation of the unexpected. In every list of possibilities was a line of question marks, connected to the question marks in other parallel projects. This element, along with the aggression above water, lent a slight doomsday aura to the scientific team’s determination to see this through – come what may. The unexpected observer-participants, in getting here, had reached this point themselves in successfully navigating the extenuating circumstances. This was next, this was it. If this didn’t take them all out, any number of other things might.

Every direct eye view at the Peak of the Arch was open, the full set of multi-spectrum camera perspectives engaged, plus arrays of readings routed to their associated staff. There was a certainty that they were on the cusp of corroborating hypotheses they had built from their soundings. Something may exhibit contact with the altered physics of a dimension close enough for them to hear, now that they’d figured out how to listen. They may have gotten close enough in their methods for it to hear them. In learning how to do this, they had already gained knowledge of their own dimensions. It had given them gifts already, the bargaining chips that protected and endangered them now.