Cubey Terra contacted me a few days ago regarding the storms that have been inundating the forest for the past month and a half. It seems that, in addition to the rain, the storms have been generating an immense amount of electrical particles that have been interfering with operations at the Abbotts Aerodrome. I told him I would look into it and try to figure out what was going on.

Awhile back, just before the Grid was attacked by a wave of self-replicators, Kyyp Fredrickson and I had been discussing the circle of tall stone pillars that stand high on the bluff in the northeast part of Rodeo. I told him that, in the recent past, those pillars seemed to attract a lot of stray objects and vehicles. I was finding items either close to or inside that circle on a regular basis, before I had turned on the Grid’s auto-return in that region. It was strange that they all seemed to end up so close to that circle. Huns Valen had lost an aircraft he had been testing in the nearby vehicle regions one time and had been ejected from it while crossing one of the Grid borders near the forest. I had found his aircraft, still running, wedged between two of the pillars.

Kyyp wondered if the pillars were having some sort of effect on objects and, towards the end of September, decided to construct metal replicas of the stone pillars and place them throughout the forest as an experiment. Not too long after that the thunderstorms began. The rains have been constant in the month and a half since he placed those structures. Some areas in the forest, most notably the steep hillsides near the central landing stones, have become quite water-logged and unstable. The increased precipitation seems to be directly related to the metal structures and, after Cubey’s message, I decided to test that theory.

The closest metal replica to the Aerodrome was located in the southwest part of Stinson. Here is a photo of that area taken in mid-October by Funaria Moose of the Metaverse Messenger (Stinson was the Sim of the Week in the October 24th edition.). You can see Kyyp’s structure in the center of the photo:

A very strange thing occurred when I returned Kyyp’s replica–the urtahra directly beneath his structure spontaneously collapsed a bit, like someone was terraforming it. There was no one nearby and I don’t have an explanation for the phenomenon. But, the rain in that section of the forest, near the border with Abbotts, ceased immediately. I let Cubey know and then went back to the lighthouse to ponder what I’d seen.

A few days later I was discussing the metal pillars with Desdemona Enfield, an experienced scriptor, who spends much of her time working near the forest on the beach in Rodeo. She cautioned that Kyyp’s experiments might be producing unanticipated effects and could even cause harm if left to continue. She went on to explain more and I took a lot of notes. Much of what she was discussing was a bit out of my knowledge realm, but seemed sound. I told Desdemona I’d relay her thoughts to Grandma Thetan and see what she had to say.

Grandma was very concerned about the depression, left when I returned Kyyp’s replica from the Stinson region, and seemed to understand very well the points that Desdemona had brought up. She decided to do some investigation herself.

Today, she and I went to the location where one of Kyyp’s replicas had been. The rain has not returned and, other than the pit that appeared, the area looks just as it did before Kyyp set up his structure there.

Grandma’s initial thought was that the rain may have undermined the metal structure and formed a shallow sinkhole. But something seemed to nag at her and she wants to take some more in-depth scans of the area. She cautioned me to not do anything with the remaining replicas until she has determined what exactly is going on.