Ripples of Dismissal

No sooner had the exit path been cleared and secured buy the deft action of a long branch point and it's extender, a snapping crack of a pop shattered the calm as it pushed the compression-relaxation sensors to the edge of their fidelity. The clipped waveform repeated at lower amplitude and spreading footprint as the familiar clatter began once again. By the second repeat of the cracking waveform, the clatter was approaching a standard rate.

There was a slight change in attention as the photon detectors were aimed in the same direction from which the high amplitude waveform came, as the clatter continued to increase in cadence as the amplitude decreased. Topping out at about double the cadence of delivery, the departure of the transport networks was incredibly hasty. Attention was re-directed toward the original direction as the clatter continued to fade into the distance.

The focus of the central network had changed in a way that I had yet to appreciate. Propulsion pulses and branch-point control commands appeared in the queue from a well used store, and in a short period of time, we had returned to familiar surroundings that had colored the outputs of the photon detectors for many many doublings of cycles. There were familiar detection patterns on the molecular detectors which were often greeted with anticipation, however, the response on this instance was decidedly dull and muted.