Chapter Text
Somewhere nearby the Kansas-Missouri state line, a battered Storm Chasers van sits just off the highway. There's a smashed fruit stand made of wood painted bright blue, though it doesn't seem to have been smashed by the van. The mass of fruit was probably really good once, but now it's mostly food for the swarms of insects. That's alright, Cecil figures. If they're busy with the fruit mush, they're not going to bother him.
Cecil's overworked computer whirrs in the unnatural heat. Vaporwave plays from the speakers, which vibrate when the bass kicks in. On the tiny pull-down desk, the sound makes his Gatorade vibrate in the plastic bottle. UNDOING ONLINE is pulled up on his computer, but he hasn't tried to connect to a server or open the lackluster signleplayer mode, and is in fact absently watching NBC live despite the low-quality video reception out in the middle of nowhere. There are sticky notes on the walls with (not very good) drawings of mutated animals. He's named them— the ex-chickens are Scratchy Squawkers, the cow-people are Moo-Men, the aligators that nearly took Erik's hand off are Bitey-Snaps, the wasps are Fuck-This-Shits, and the crows ominously circling his van waiting for him to come out so they can attack him are the Screechy-Flappers. Nobody ever said he's named them well.
Outside, the Screechy-Flappers settle ominously on the power lines. They're still powered, because people are still alive to work in the power plants, but Cecil supposes that one day there won't be power anymore. He does not look forward to that. But the Screechy-Flappers don't care one way or another. Cecil does, because he'd rather not be pecked to death.
Cecil leans over the milk crate he uses as a chair to switch to the exterior camera feed. He pushes a hotkey on the keyboard and shoots a pellet at the birds. Some of them scatter, only to recongregate after flapping around for a second and a half. Cecil scowls. Stupid Screechy-Flappers.
He sits on the milk crate and clicks back to the newscast. Hank Rosengast, the one with the impossible hair and uncannily smooth Barbie-doll features, shuffles papers and talks about how the Republicans are blaming the influx of immigrants for the crack in the sky, and one particular branch of it are particularly insistent about standing on the steps of hospitals and screaming that the wave of death that spanned the world is God taking His faithful to Heaven, and the sinners need to repent so they won't spend their afterlives in purgatory. Cecil is no longer surprised that chaos happens where the faithful and the fearful intersect.
"And in other news," Rosengast says, flipping with his controller to a new story. "In a strange turn of events, the scientists at NASA are not recieving any unusual data whatsoever from the weather balloons they sent into the crack. But whatever is on the other side appears to be sunny with a light southwest breeze, and a temperature of eighty-two degrees. They've sent twelve up already and plan to send more. For more information, the NBC Twitter, at-NBCOfficial, has reporters tweeting live details about the story, moving on—"
Weather balloons. Cecil jots that down in his battered notebook. He's not sure why, but it feels important. Maybe he'll find out. The rest of the broadcast isn't as relevant to him— it's talking about the same things that have been on everyone's mind for the past day and a half, and it's mostly "what the fuck is going on."
He switches tabs to an archive of loosely-connected conspiracy theories from the past twenty-some years. Most of it is boring— dull things pulled from social media and the news of the time that Cecil doesn't waste his time with. But one catches his eye: "MYSTERIOUS BALLOONS APPEARING IN THE SKY OVER HOUSTON: FALLOUT FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS?"
Well, damn. He's not usually proven right so quickly. The post before the readmore reads "In the summer of 2010, hundreds if not more mysterious weather balloons with hi-tech equipment and NASA labels appeared in the sky over Houston, out of what seemed to be a clear, sunny day. But what was really going on on that summer afternoon, since Nasa denied all involvement? Could it be Trump's inability to keep his mouth shut about classified information that caused aliens to hijack our technology and send their drones after him? More below."
There's a video. Cecil, pushing his glasses up on his nose, hits play. It's vertical, filmed on somebody's old smartphone. A square-looking man in a backwards baseball cap and a polo shirt is standing on a porch. He's holding his phone out like he's about to video a selfie with the balloons. "Hey, Rebecca, is it straight? Do I look alright?" he's saying. He adjusts the collar of his polo shirt.
"Charlie, turn around," a woman, probably Rebecca, says. "Charlie, look!" And she runs to the railing, and points to the sky. She's an Indian woman with long, dark hair and violet fingernails, and a red jacket with the sleeves pushed up.
Charlie turns. He nearly drops the phone. "Holy shit!" he says. "Where'd those come from?"
His friend shrugs. She turns— Cecil has to do a double-take because it's uncanny how much she looks like CJ in profile, except Rebecca has glasses, and CJ has blue eyes, not brown. "They just appeared?" Rebecca says, in the video, which is now getting a close view of Charlie's khaki shorts. "Behind you? I don't know, I— I don't remember seeing them there a minute ago?"
"Oh man, that's wild," Charlie says. He lifts the phone again. "Hey, I'm gonna get a selfie with the balloons and see if they feature it on the news— you think they would? Hey, Rebecca, where—"
The video ends there. "Above: One Charlie Justice and his wife Rebecca submitted this video to NASA asking about the weather balloons— and recieved no answer. Where do the lies stop, government?"
Cecil figures it's just a coincidence— even if they are related, what would CJ and Ethan do with that information? Doppelgangers exist. The couple in the video may well be dead, and anyway, it's not Cecil's business. But he saves the video and bookmarks the link, just in case.
The post continues, "Just where did these mysterious balloons come from? Relating to one of my earlier posts on how Donald Trump's blabbermouth and general failiure as a politician is actually a ploy by our secret alien overlords to ensure that nobody believes the secrets in Area 51 and other restricted spaces on U.S. soil, I propose that the weather balloons are an attempt at a diversion from—"
And the rest is boring and irrelevant, like most of the vintage conspiracy theory blogs he follows. But he keeps the bookmark anyway— CJ and Ethan, related to these people or not, are going to be interested in an apparent doppelganger. He closes the laptop, climbs into the driver's seat of his van, and starts eastward through seemingly infinite cornfields.