Light's Hero - 3.4

Part 4 of A Light on the Seam (Story #4) | Day 20 - The Cycle Continues...

Hey, everyone! It’s bedtime. Bedtime with Cooper. Episode forty-seven.

Can you hear me through the headphones? Is the mic on? Hello? Are you all out there? Show me a thumbs up if you can hear my voice.

Can you believe its the fouurty-seventh episode, and I still haven’t figured out the microphone to my computer? It’s so harddd. Anyways, I’m hear with Coopy. Say hel—looooooooooooo! You’re such a goood boy! Ohhhhh gooooood boyyyyyy. Best boyyyyyyy in da wooourrlllldddddd. Ohhhhhh I love him SOOO!!!

Woo!!! Anyways — an audible blowing and brushing off of volumes of white fur can be heard and seen — it’s not becoming.

Last week, in case you missed it, was chapter one of The Heron and the Frog. Bobby the Frog is sitting on his lily pad, and a heron comes down, right? Big legs. Big beak. Beak the size of Bobby’s whole everything. And Bobby is terrified, Coopy. He is doing the frog version of what you do when the vacuum comes out. Just — locked. Just little frog-feet welded to that lily pad. Heron’s gonna eat him. Heron’s definitely gonna eat him. Which brings us to chapter two! It’s time to find out what happens to poor Booby the Frog!

Chapter 2.

It was then that Bobby the Frog looked up at the mighty heron and realized that he was part of a much bigger univers—

[A long rising tone. An emergency broadcast signal. Then a second. Then a third. The bedtime audio cuts out.]

[A new voice. Bureaucratic. Calm.]

THIS IS NOT A TEST. THIS IS A NATIONAL EMERGENCY ALERT FROM THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION. PLEASE LISTEN. THIS MESSAGE WILL REPEAT.

Dr. Halima Ndiaye and her team at the Instituto Antártico Chileno in Punta Arenas have confirmed isolation of an airborne fungal pathogen, designated Lignifera dendromyces. The source: the Beardmore Glacier retreat, Transantarctic Mountains. The pathogen converts mammalian tissue to ligneous plant tissue. Irreversible.

Airborne exposure through weather front occurs five months and twenty-six days from this broadcast. Atmospheric modeling indicates universal exposure.

Archaeological evidence at the Beardmore site indicates the same fungus caused mass extinction of a previously unknown species—the dominant terrestrial intelligence prior to Homo sapiens. No biological remains exist.

Citizens are advised to remain at home with their loved ones until notified otherwise.

This message will repeat. This is not a test.

[The tones. Static. Long silence.]

[Vonnie’s voice returns. Panicked.]

Coop? Buddy? Cooper!? COOPER!? WHERE DID YOU GO!? COOPERRR!!!???

[The voice catches. Static. A pop. The audio shifts. The voice that comes through is not Vonnie’s. Multiple, layered, harmonizing, polysymphonic.]

Stop.
Calm. 
Listen. 
I am the Held Note. 
And I need your help.

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