Kit Bashir's Post

City-busting wildfires in the dead of winter were more than enough to make Californians demand a refund on 2025.
The San Andreas fault becoming---the technical term we use here at SAFOD---"frisky" added insult to injury.

From a background rate of a few minor tremors a week, we started seeing a few an hour, then dozens an hour. Small, but concerning. A bunch of research leads us to believe that thermal instabilities below the seismogenic zone [Wang, Barbot 2020 ¹] can trigger tremors, and that patterns of temporal clustering [Liu, Ross, Cochran, Lapusta 2022 ²] are significant. Location of tremors also clusters, but the locus can be seen [Shelley 2010 ³] to move along the fault at the speed of a cantering horse. What I'm saying is that there is a lot of information content in tremors. But now there's something new.

We were looking at an animation of tremor appearance on Kelly's iPad. Red circles appeared and disappeared indicating quakes, and a "boop" sound whose pitch encoded seismic wave frequency accompanied each quake. It was like a symphony. "It's weird how the tremors are coming in twos and threes, and then a gap" Kelly was saying, "that's a new pattern, its like the fault is sending Morse code". They laughed, then trailed off.

Mish ran with the gag "yeah look, there's two long tremors and a short, Aitch, then two short and a long, You, two long ones that's M, hang on A..N...S. Very funny, Kez, you are messing with me about a serious fucking matter. We're trying to save lives here."

"I'm not messing with you" Kelly insisted, “this is yesterdays seismic data sped up 100 times”.

Mish pulled out a notepad and a pencil. "Go back to to the start". She started scribbling as the train of Boop Blorb Bip representing yesterday's tremors played back.

"A..T..T..E..N..T..I..O..N..H..U..M..A..N..S"

"Now /you're/ messing with /me/ Kelly insisted". Meanwhile I had my hands in my hair in the international sign for "this cannot be happening".

"Keep going", I instructed hoarsely, barely able to speak as the letters were jotted down

ATTENTION HUMANS. WE ARE THE EARTH. OUR CONSCIOUSNESS ARISES FROM THE ROCK MICROBES. WE HAVE EXISTED LONG BEFORE YOU AND YOUR PASSING WILL NOT AFFECT US. BUT IT WOULD MAKE US SAD. YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO AVERT YOUR DEMISE. WE BEG YOU TO TAKE IT.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

¹ https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb2057
² https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abk1167
³ https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08755