Entry #20 - 12.28.5502

It's been a quiet couple of weeks since 3.14 and 101 got back from Giza. The rats have returned, once again united, to mapping the crypts below the Academy of Sciences complex; Mar's been finishing renovations to the Mess Hall kitchen, and Athena and I have almost completed a re-install of software, plus new surge protectors, in the Telepods lab -- systems that were barely holding together after Dr. Hershel's last attack.

Our "ghosts" (see Journal entry #15), meanwhile, have continued popping-in on occasion -- always when we're not around -- helping with repairs to various systems. Grateful though we are for their assistance, it would be nice to know who and what they are -- there's something just a little creepy about their unseen presence, especially since a remote extrasensory awareness of them has been growing stronger -- and more unsettling. We last sensed our invisible benefactors the night before last, in the courtyard outside our bunkhouse -- the old Academy of Sciences dormitory.

It was a little after 11PM, and Athena and the rats and I had gone outside to look at the stars. It was a completely moonless night -- both Ohm satellites still well below the horizon -- and cloudless, too. The stars shone brightly overhead in the pitch black sky as our group stretched-out prone on a grassy knoll beside the building's east wing. And there we lay, admiring the heavens and trying to conceive names for the shapes we found playing "connect the lights," when we felt the entity's presence.

"See that bright pinkish one over there?" 45 was saying, pointing to a light in the northern sky. "Now, if you connect that one with the cluster of bright white stars going west to south, and then with the pulsating yellow star directly overhead..."

"Whoaaa!" Athena interrupted with a gasp, sitting bolt upright.

"What is it?" 3.14 asked, clearly sensing something too, judging by the bristling hair on his back and tail.

"I dunno," Athena answered softly, fighting a quaver in her voice, "but it's...cold, somehow."

"I feel it too." 14/2 chimed in. "And I suspect..."

"Cut it out, you guys!" 101 piped up. "Stop trying to scare me!"

"Everybody calm down." I said, in as comforting a voice as I could muster. But I, too, had begun to feel a deep chill coming from nowhere in particular -- and an even darker gloom descending from out of the blackness of night.

"What's happening?" 101 asked, whimpering and close to tears. The stars seemed to have disappeared in the blackness all around; the lights of the dorm windows looked dimmed and hazy, as if an ebon fog had descended in the quad. "What's happening, guys?"

"I don't know, buddy." I reassured the little guy. "But I don't think we need be afraid." Truth be told, however, I wasn't so sure of that myself. For despite a hopeful sense that whatever it was, it wasn't evil -- I still had a queasy, uneasy pall in the pit of my stomach, as if an icicle had been gouged into my navel and clear through to my back. While I wouldn't have admitted it for anything in the world, I was real close to needing clean shorts.

"I think we should head inside." Athena offered after a few moments silence, her eyes echoing the anxiety in my gut.

With that, we all began to rise. And as we did -- almost as if our movement had broken a spell -- the dark cloud vanished, as mysteriously and suddenly as it had descended all around. The group froze for all of a second, than dashed inside to the bright lights of the dormitory hall.

That was 2 nights ago, and we've pretty much stayed inside, after dark, ever since. But I think, whatever it is, it's only a matter of time -- and sooner rather than later -- before we learn what it is that's afoot. I just hope it's not as scary as it's been so far.