"Over the last 3 weeks, we have identified a number of unexplainable signal interference events," John, head of Intelligence, announced to the rest of the council.
John Smith was a tall, well built man easily into his 50's. His dark brown, almost black hair had started to turn gray giving him the classic salt and pepper look. His eyes were a slate gray that when they looked at you, it felt like they revealed all the secrets you tried to hide. There was a reason he was selected to be the head of Intelligence.
The meeting room fell into hushed conversation after hearing his proclamation then quickly quieted down again. A different man stood up and cleared his throat to speak. His voice came out gravely after a moment, "Why do these events matter? We lose signal to bases daily due to storms, power outage or any of a multitude of other reasons. I don't want to discount your worry, but many of us do not see the issue that made you call us all here."
The gravely spoken man's name was Thomas Turner. He was the head of Agriculture. He wore a slightly different outfit than most. He wore an extra overcoat with a red and black flannel pattern. The coat was worn by all members of the agricultural sector to help insulate and protect them while working the fields.
Modern agricultural equipment was extremely harmful to the environment, meaning unless absolutely necessary, they were kept in reserve. The majority of work was done by hand or with medieval style tools and equipment.
Thomas was of average height with a strong build. He had dirty blonde hair and brown eyes that held a slight impatience within. He and his convoy was due to depart this morning for a sub-base held down the mountains that handled some modified wheat fields that were showing strange symptoms of smog poisoning. Just as he was about to give the order to depart, his assistant informed him of the summons, interrupting his plans.
A scrawny woman with red hair spoke up after, "We are too busy to handle problems as small as signal loss. Just send some of your people out and send the report over holo. I do not have time for this!"
The woman with fiery hair and a fiery personality was known as Kelly Sherman, and she was the head of Logistics. She was short and thin with fiery red eyes to match the rest of her. She was the youngest councilor besides Gabe even though she was still in her early 40's. She meant well, but logistics was the busiest sector of operations, and she couldn't afford to dawdle for useless meetings.
She moved to get up when a loud bang sounded in the room.
Everyone looked up towards the Speaker as she put down her gavel.
"I know we are all busy with our own tasks, but I believe you should all respect John enough to know that he wouldn't have brought us to this meeting if he didn't think the situation warranted it," the Speaker spoke calmly.
"Thank you ma'am," John said while nodding towards Speaker Diane. "The first recorded occurrence we have of this type of interference event is from 3 weeks ago. It happened during a routine field scan of some modified potatoes growing in the Appalachian region to the east. The drone recorded a signal loss event and followed its predefined behavior to drop to the ground and wait for a signal response before resuming. The issue is that the signal was restored before the drone made it to the ground. There is also no record of any crews sent to restore lost signal in the area at the time nor storms recorded. Whatever blocked that signal did so for only a few seconds."
John paused for a moment to let that sink in to the rest of the council members.
"Since the first recorded event, we have recorded over 300 similar events happening throughout the Western Nation."
The room quieted once again as everyone digested the large amount of information they were presented with. After a moment, the scrawny, red headed woman once again spoke up.
"It's certainly unusual, I'll give you that, but can you please tell us the important piece. I still have things to do, you know."
"You are certainly impatient Kelly, " John said exasperated. "Fine, I'll stop the suspense here. After receiving similar telemetry data from several drones, we had logistics personnel report any signal losses in the areas which we marked as suspicious. Kelly, I assume you remember the request we sent to your department 10 days ago?"
"Hmm, I think I remember approving it. So? Did my men's reports give you what you were looking for or did you waste more of my time?"
"Yes. After compiling hundreds of reports we noticed a pattern of the interference events. The pattern was that the time between events is accelerating. We approximate that 3 weeks ago, an event would occur about every 5 days. Now, about every few hours. We predict that a continuous event will occur by 0900 hours tomorrow morning. However, that's not even the bad news. Our analysts hypothesized that these are not isolated events. The events in the same location are actually all the same event just repeating more quickly each time. Last night, we sent a drone with specialized programming to what we triangulated to be the center of one such event and this video is what it recorded. Please watch before I continue."
In the center of the room, a 3D hologram projector fizzed to life. It pictured a modified wheat field, maybe a few weeks away from fully maturing. The drone hovered about 50 feet off the ground leaving the field undisturbed.
Suddenly, a dim blue light glowed in the center of the field. The smog swirled around what looked like a tiny black hole. The wheat stalks were pressed firmly against the ground. Small bolts of electricity arced between floating clumps of soil that rose into the air around the epicenter of the event. Then just as quickly as it started, it stopped.
"That is the footage the drone recorded and transmitted after the signal interference event concluded. Please take a moment to think about what you all just saw."
The room fell deafly silent as all in the room question the clear violation of basic physics they just saw.
"So that is the cause of the damages to the fields," Thomas spoke after a minute. "My planned expedition this morning was to try and identify the cause. We had thought it was a different symptom of smog poisoning, but this makes much more sense. Not that this really makes any sense at all."
A mature woman with long black hair in a simple ponytail and wearing a lab coat cleared her throat. "We must send R&D teams to any identified locations and determine the cause. There must be a scientific reason why…" she trailed off at the end.
The woman was the head of R&D. Her name was Elenor Albright and was highly respected by every scientist in the city. Elenor was probably the most intelligent person in the entire Western Nation. She was a tall woman with long legs who wore an effortlessly mature but also hyperfocused aura. If beauty mattered, then she would likely sit among the top.
John replied to the woman's statement. "We hazard against sending any untrained personnel. While this is the first visually recorded event, we have reason to believe that the events are getting stronger and more violent."
Kelly spoke up after. "How the hell has not a single person seen these? Do nonscientific phenomena suddenly know how to avoid human detection? I have thousands of logistics personnel running all over the smog, yet I haven't received a single report from any of them about this."
No one said anything to that. How could at least a few hundred events not be seen by a single person? How could this many countless other events occurring world wide go unnoticed?
A well groomed man with a clean shaven face asked a question. "Have either of the other two nations managed to notice these events? The Eastern Nation has the highest population. Surely someone over there has seen an event?"
The well groomed man was Robert Stone. He had brown hair and blue eyes and could've easily been president of the USA 60 years ago. He was the head of Extraterrestrial Affairs.
The sector of Extraterrestrial Affairs, or the EA sector, was responsible for any negations with any people that were not citizens of the Western Nation. EA was the smallest sector out of the 12 since the 3 nations were actually all on friendly terms. The only reason they were split was due to geographical limitations.
The Western Nation sat where North and South America historically were. They were separated by oceans on both sides to the other nations. The Central Nation claims the historical continents of Europe and Africa. The Eastern Nation lays in Asia and Australia. The Central and Eastern Nations are separated by an over 100 mile wide swath of radiation from nuclear bombs that were dropped in World War 3.
Each nation has its own problems. The Eastern Nation has the most severe pollution and a huge population. They struggle to feed their people.
The Central Nation has a technological and logistics issue. The African cities were technologically underdeveloped prior to the collapse, and now that an industrialization is practically impossible, the European cities are having problems supporting the African cities. The southern African lands also need to ship much of their food north since there is little arable land left above water in Europe.
The Western Nation has issues with raw resources. Past America used every last resource they could get their hands on and left nothing for the future. This forces the Western Nation to gather resources down in the Antarctic Archipelago which is a huge logistical nightmare.
"Unfortunately, we have heard nothing from them about this. After this meeting, I request you reach out and ask them about this information. Find out if this is a worldwide event or a local one."
"Matthew, send inquiry to the Central and Eastern nation immediately," Robert ordered his assistant. "I will inform you all the moment I receive a response," he informed the council.
At this time, the Speaker spoke up. "It is clear that we need a plan of action to study these phenomena. Does anyone have any suggestions?"
"I do," John replied. "I propose a joint operation between the military and Intelligence."