The Gravity of the Situation [Video, cross-campus]

[trustycrowbar]

[Normally Gordon's little messages to the school at large are brief. Terse, is a better way to put it. A quick flick of the switch and a message that inkling ink may be non-toxic but that doesn't mean you should paint the lab specimens with it (For example.) and a quick flick of the switch off again.]

[Not so today. The feed comes on and he stares at the camera, raking a hand through his hair and starting to mouth three silent beginnings to three different sentences before he actually finds one with a voice. There's something he wants to say, but no permutation of words will make it easier to hear.]

I've, uh... Students, faculty. No doubt you've noticed that the moon hasn't gone out of full for the past week or so, and in fact looks even bigger now. I've been taking some readings. The shift in the center of gravity of the moon-planet binary and parallax measurements tell me that it's... not just an optical illusion.

The moon has, somehow, left its orbit.

I only mentioned this to the security chief before now, because I wanted to be absolutely certain of my suspicions and of where the moon was actually headed. I would like to say that it'll just harmlessly slingshot around us and into the sun. I really, really wish I could say that, in fact I spent several nights trying to make the numbers work so I COULD say that... but I can't. There's no other way to plot the trajectory, other than directly at us.

[He picks up some papers, eyeballing them on the camera, making sure he this part straight.] Now... Apparently this has happened before. A world by the name of Termina actually survived the event, but they had four guardian giants that awoke and... [A mistrustful squint at the paper.] physically shoved the moon back into orbit. [He puts the paper down.]

Obviously we're a little light on sleeping giants. As a matter of fact, I have no damn clue how to fix this, or even if we can. The four masks are involved--and there ARE four--but it's anyone's guess as to how they are. What I do know is, if we don't do something, the moon will strike the earth, and every single living creature on this planet down to the last microbe might be eradicated.

If anyone knows anything about this or has ideas, now's the time to step up. You might just save more than just the school. Also... in the event that we CAN'T stop it, I advise everyone to start making plans for quick evacuation back to your homeworlds. If you know someone who doesn't have a homeworld or can't reach it, then consider taking them with you. They may have to start all over but trust me, if that moon hits, then any place will be better than here.

[Private, to Skull Kid]

Kid... I know you were there. Your student file is hazy on the details, but I know you were there in Termina when this happened the last time. I didn't mention your name earlier and I don't intend to, because when people are panicked they can do some awful things when names are dropped. But, we still need to know everything you know if we're going to keep this planet in one piece.

So what exactly happened there?

Comments

[trustycrowbar]

[Aw hell.]

How many people can't?

[It's an obtuse question, but this line of thought catches him off-guard. He himself literally can't go home, but he can at least take a portal offworld somewhere.]

[lovesthepain]

I don't know that for certain, only that in some cases people are unable to leave whatever rift this place exists in. Even one is enough, though, that we need to consider options other than evacuation, even if it seems like the only reasonable option.

[trustycrowbar]

Good point. Maybe we can find a way to house them away from the planet...?

[Although personally, he isn't sure how far he'd get into building a free-floating sustainable bernoulli space station that might have to hold the population of a small city, over the space of a couple of weeks. Obviously this was going to be a collaborative effort.]

You said humans ultimately survived in your world. How did they do it?

[lovesthepain]

You might get better details from Zero; the Eurasia Incident was before my time. Humanity, I understand, survived by relocating underground. The planet itself has been primarily wasteland even centuries after the fact, though. Nature capable of sustaining human colonies was still unheard of during my lifespan.

[trustycrowbar]

I don't think we can even escape underground for this one. The structure would have to be completely heat-resistant. and if it's made out of anything denser than iron they might find themselves at the very center of the brand-new rocky planet that results.

[Sometimes knowing all this stuff kind of sucks.]

There's GOT to be a... quickfab space station plan or something in some high-technology world out there that we can use. The problem is, we sure as hell don't have the resources to make something like that.

The only one that might even have those resources would be--

[...Eggman.]

--You know, forget I said anything. We'll make it work, somehow.

[lovesthepain]

If it's possible, then it's worth pursuing.

Whether to evacuate or try to destroy the moon, getting up into space would be necessary; even if we can't assemble something big enough in time to make escape feasible, we could probably use something smaller to attempt breaking the moon up.

[trustycrowbar]

[That makes more sense than launching Knuckles at it, at least. Although he's still keeping the monotreme-based assault tactic in his pocket; that one neatly falls into the "batshit-enough-to-work" ballpit that he seems to be playing in more and more nowadays.]

So Zero might have an idea. Maybe I can find some useful ideas from the data on Samus and Falcon's worlds, too. Can you think of anyone else from a spacefaring world?

[lovesthepain]

I don't think I can help you with that, but if you're investigating our world's technology, it may be worthwhile to consider teleports, too. That technology has existed since Rock's time where I come from.

I doubt we'd have the time or resources to set up a proper relay, but at this stage, we can't afford to be selective about our options.

[trustycrowbar]

Actually, I have a portal beam array in my underground lab. I'd, uh... been trying to use it to get home ever since I came here.

It might need some repair after that mountain of bull sat on it, but it might work to send to another teleporter in this dimension.