"I was using the telescope mostly. I set the telescope to track a small patch of sky and do a long exposure and the image it recorded had dozens of galaxies in it. The universe must have thousands of times more galaxies than we previously thought."

"That sounds like good news for your astronomers."

Or is that just Hornfels? Marin wonders how precisely things work around here with so few people.

"How many were you aware of previously? Is that something that interests you, how many galaxies there are?"

"Before we only saw the big ones, obviously we could see the one we're in and...."

Another person comes dashing into the museum. "Hornfels! the station in orbit of Giants Deep activated. It seemed to shoot something, I couldn't see where and then it broke apart."

"It what? I have to reorient the telescope right away. I expect you'll want to launch codes to go take a look. They're upstairs." They start walking quickly towards the ramp to the upper level of the observatory and Syl follows close on their heels.

That doesn't sound good. Marin doesn't have anything she could do to help with a telescope, and she suspects that if she went along, she'd only be seen as a liability or a distraction. She can wait here until Hornfels returns or calls for help. She looks at some of the exhibits she hadn't spent as much time with yesterday.

The statue Gabbro brought is new when she goes to look at it the statue turns toward her on its own. The eyes open and begin glowing purple and more purple rays that look a bit like nomai writing seem to be streaming in toward the statue and then her memories of the past five or so minutes begin to flash before her eyes.

-Marin tries to move her staff, because if there was any situation that constituted an emergency, it would be this one.

It seems that she is unable to move until the statue is done. Its eyes stop glowing but they stay open.

Marin tries to look away.

With the statue quiescent again she's able to do that like normal.

Well. Not worth burning her magic on a bridge now. Probably.

If it's too late for her, it's too late for a bridge to help.

Marin goes looking for someone- anyone- but preferably Hornfels.

Syl rushes past, potentially she could call out and get them to stop. Hornfels is presumably still upstairs.

Marin will go upstairs to find Hornfels. Syl likely has more urgent priorities than dealing with her.

Hornfels has the entire telescope folded inside the observatory chamber and is slowly pushing it to a different position. They don't notice when Marin comes up the ramp.

"Hornfels, is everything alright? You seemed worried, earlier."

"I'm excited but also worried. The station Syl mentioned has been around since before I was born and it has never done anything in that time. Suddenly it activated today and we don't know why. Syl is going to try to investigate it and I'm orienting my telescope to try and see if any of the larger structures the Nomai left have also come online."

"What do you know about the statue that was just brought in? When I was alone with it moments after you left, it radiated purple light directly at me from its eyes. I have to admit, I'm concerned about what that could mean."

"Gabbro found it on an island on Giants Deep, apparently they had to get there by going underwater which is why we hadn't discovered it before. There were two on the island but they only brought one back. Otherwise, we had no reason to suspect it was anything but decorative."

"It seems to have some functionality beyond just that. Neither of them glowed in situ?"

"No, but this is now the second instance of Nomai technology suddenly activating today. I doubt that it's a coincidence."

"When the light hit me, I couldn't move, and there was something else too. I saw flashes of the previous five minutes, like I was relieving them."

"That sounds distressing. I don't think we've ever seen any Nomai tech do that before. But really we don't have many examples of active Nomai tech. Before today we just had some tech that manipulates gravity, the warp cores and the way their written documents show more when you look directly at them."

Potentially interesting. The behavior of these documents sounds similar to how the statue reacted.

"That sounds disconcerting. What do you mean, they show more when you look at them?"

"The Nomai write in a series of spirals, initially only the first is visible but when you look closely at a spiral sometimes more appear branching off of it. Hal and Syl say that it's like replaying a conversation. Eventually any given text resets."