[hard copy log, printed November 4, 2019 02:04:19 EST]
........###CONNECTION ESTABLISHED 300
B_Nelson: Holy shit, it's working. Jesus, look at the letters crawl.
V_Ostrander: I told you having a plan H would be worth it. You owe me a Tesla.
B_Nelson: Yeah, I'll get right on that. Let's not piss this away - what do we have?
V_Ostrander: First epidemiology - It's definitely spreading, and shows no sign of an inverse power law. If anything, it's getting faster. Half the northeast is crumbling, and at this rate it'll hit the West coast by Tuesday morning at the latest.
V_Ostrander: I wish I could show you the graphics - there are patterns in the spread - it's affected by wind speed and direction, but inconsistently, so it's airborne but may have other vectors. But natural boundaries don't seem to be limiting it, rivers, mountains - it just sails right past.
B_Nelson: So there's no blocking it. Our materials studies keep coming up blank. All the samples we get, it's mostly shear forces doing the damage, but the initial insult is random. It's like iron oxidizing, but it seems to affect a broad swath of materials, concrete, wood sometimes, some synthetics.
V_Ostrander: You have seen the process as it occurs?
B_Nelson: No, the samples we get, it's apparently stopped or moved on or whatever by the time we see them. Honestly, that's probably a good thing, or the lab would be toast already, but still - fuck! How can we fight this thing if we can't even see it?
G_Adrajian CONNECTED.
G_Adrajian: Damn. Old skool.
V_Ostrander: Yea yea, we're like at the fuckin Ren faire. Has anything worked?
G_Adrajian: No, we're fucked. My team was pulling every bullshit idea out of their ass they could, but we can't stop it once it's hit a building. And we can't tell if we're delaying it otherwise, because the shit is so *random*, you know? It hits three buildings in a row, then skips two, then hits two more, then one of the skipped ones falls. Plus the place is starting to get packed with Z, we lost Paul and Kaitlyn.
B_Nelson: Shit. So what now?
V_Ostrander: Dunno. There's clearly a size factor involved - stuff doesn't collapse past a certain length, or maybe a combination of density and length. I'm having my guys throw together a bunch of different beams into franken-prefabs, we're going to toss them into a collapsing area and see which of em get nailed.
G_Adrajian: Good call, we can try that too. And make sure at least half the team is watching for fucking Z, yeah?
V_Ostrander: NSS, but yeah, thanks.
B_Nelson: I'll keep trying chemical agents, but I've got nothing. This whole thing, it's like - we're just being flushed down the toilet of time.
G_Adrajian: Deep, man. </sarcasm> Later. Keep safe.
G_Adrajian DISCONNECTED.
B_Nelson: Vi - do you wish we'd ever hooked up?
V_Ostrander: Seriously? Now, you ask this? Look, figure out how to beat this thing and I'll be your lap toy for keepsies, K?
B_Nelson: Heh. I'll hold you to that.
V_Ostrander: Yeah, you'll hold something. Enough emo EOTW twaddle, let's get on it.
B_Nelson: That's what she said.
V_Ostrander: *sigh*
#&@@&!!...CONNECTION LOST