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An invitation to a party appears on various university billboards inviting people to the Kappa Alpha greek house located in the mostly finished Castle Commonwealth mall on the edge of town. The notice instructs people to follow the access road at 67 Lost Nation drive and enter through the back door and promises that signs will be posted to guide people to the party itself.
Plums in Partyland
rising_star
Alex looks distinctly unimpressed. "Anyway, did anyone keep the codes to the other parties? Do we want to try visiting the other complexes?"
time_and_teleporters
"Well yeah, I knew something weird was going on so of course I wrote all the codes down."
that_new_world_smell
Emily collects herself a bit, "It would be good to meet any other people who might be in the same situation."
rising_star
"Should we try doing that tonight or are we going to take it easy tonight and start doing serious stuff in the morning?"
out_of_print
Somehow schedules get arranged so that everyone who wants a shower can get one before the end of the night.
Dave is an early riser, at least today. He decides to watch some TV. He fiddles with it until it comes up. Turned to a news channel.
" ... and joining us now is Dr. Whitaker, visiting professor of physics at Yale University. He will interpret the latest data for us. Thank you for joining us doctor."
Without waiting for a question the professor starts talking,"As you can see from the diagram here, The Intruder is just over four billion kilometers from the sun right now. To put that into perspective, that's sixty percent of the way to pluto. And as you can see from the diagram, it's coming in almost perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Earth is actually closer to The Intruder right now than any of the outer planets." There was a large diagram of the solar system behind him, with a straight line shooting through the sun from the bottom up.
The professor continues. "The new data from NASA is giving us a much cleaner estimate of Intruder velocity compared to what we had this morning. The original estimates are confirmed. The Intruder is moving 7.7% to 7.8% of the speed of light relative to the sun. The best estimate for impact is still between 6 PM and 7 AM Eastern Standard Time tomorrow, but the new data has dropped that by about twenty minutes. Solar impact is now estimated at 6:10 AM, give or take a minute or two. That's the time impact will be observed on Earth. Actual impact will have occurred eight minutes previously."
"Is there any hope Professor?" the newswoman asks.
The man gives a beaming smile. "Yes! The new data is strongly suggesting The Intruder will miss the core areas of the sun. If this new orbit holds up, The Intruder will penetrate only the outer solar layers and not to the radiative layer and definitely not the core. It might not even touch the convective layer. We'll know more in a few hours. Best estimate now has it exiting the chromosphere twenty to thirty seconds after penetration. I think the Earth can survive that, and survive it very well."
Well fuck. He will stay a bit longer to see if there's any more information forthcoming and then go see if Alex is awake or can be woken up.
There isn't much more in the way of details, the professor explains that The Intruder is something called a neutron star and that it's only being observed because of something called gravitational lensing.
rising_star
Alex is still in his bedroom, it's early. If someone comes to the door he'll toss on some clothes and call out "Just a minute."
"Uh, I was fiddling with the TV and we are getting a news channel, and they were going on about a neutron star headed for the sun. They were saying it would be fine but it seems sort of ominous."