Chapter 5 – Quiet Data

  The fan rotated above the amphitheater, pushing warm air through the room.

  Not suffocating. Comfortable. The kind of warmth that made it easier to focus.

  Mr. Xi, a long-time lecturer, stood on the podium, his gaze moving across the students as they worked through the exercise he had assigned. Rows of open laptops reflected pale light onto tired faces. Some students typed with confidence. Others hesitated, brows tight with stress.

  He let out a small sigh as his eyes swept the room.

  Then he noticed one student.

  Mr. Xi didn’t know most of his students very well. The bold ones, the diligent ones—those tended to stand out. This young man was neither.

  He looked to be in his early twenties, sitting near the back, wearing sunglasses indoors. In an amphitheater classroom, it made him impossible to miss.

  The student’s gaze stayed fixed on his screen. Sometimes he typed rapidly. Other times, his hand guided the cursor with smooth, deliberate movements.

  The rhythm, the posture, the lack of hesitation—it didn’t look like coursework.

  It looked like a video game.

  Mr. Xi exhaled through his nose but didn’t react immediately.

  There were always a few bad apples. He could deal with that later.

  For now, the class came first.

  “People often assume satellites see everything,” he said aloud. “Most of you thought the same at the start of the year, didn’t you?”

  A few students smiled awkwardly. They had.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Now you know they don’t,” Mr. Xi continued. “They interpret.”

  He clicked to the next slide.

  “Most of what you’re looking at isn’t color,” he said. “It’s translation. Numbers converted into something your brain can accept.”

  Some students typed. Others nodded, already drifting.

  “The equatorial rainforest you see here,” he went on, “is one of the hardest environments to observe remotely. Dense canopy. Constant cloud cover. High humidity. Even radar struggles.”

  At the back of the room, Bell’s fingers stopped moving.

  “Sometimes,” the professor said casually, “a satellite doesn’t fail. It simply returns data our models don’t know how to read. So the system labels it noise. Or emptiness.”

  He zoomed in.

  On the projector, a section of forest appeared wrong. Not burned. Not logged. Just… flat.

  “We assume the absence of signal means the absence of something worth studying,” Mr. Xi said.

  “And that assumption has consequences.”

  Bell leaned back slightly.

  At the start of the apocalypse, one of the first abyss zones had formed there.

  Right where the data went quiet.

  He had once tried to use satellite imagery to track early abyssal activity. It hadn’t worked. The data never lined up.

  But maybe the problem hadn’t been the abyss.

  Maybe it had been the method.

  If I already know roughly where they should be, Bell thought, then maybe I shouldn’t look for what they are—

  but for what breaks.

  System failures. Data voids. Interpretation collapse.

  A stupid quote from a childhood cartoon surfaced in his mind.

  The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

  A hand rose near the center of the room.

  “Yes?” Mr. Xi acknowledged.

  “Sir,” a young woman said, hesitant but firm, “I’m a bit confused. The purpose of the ORION-CANOPY project is to study biodiversity signals and track illegal logging and mineral extraction. If satellites struggle so much in these regions, doesn’t that make the project redundant?”

  A fair question.

  “You’re right to ask,” Mr. Xi replied calmly. “That’s exactly why satellite imagery can’t stand on its own. It serves as an early warning tool. On-site expertise remains just as important.”

  He paused.

  “ORION-CANOPY gives you access to real resources. Use that opportunity well.”

  With that, he stepped down from the podium and began walking through the rows.

  He had decided to deal with the troublemaker.

  As he passed behind students, he glanced at their screens—some ahead, some behind. Normal variance.

  Then he reached the student with sunglasses.

  There was no game on the screen.

  No half-finished assignment, no fake effort.

  Instead, Mr. Xi saw a compiled file of satellite anomalies. Coordinates logged. Patterns grouped. Data points categorized.

  Roughly structured, not professional—but detailed.

  Very detailed.

  Too detailed.

  Several of the anomalies matched ones Mr. Xi himself had discovered the night before while preparing the exercise.

  And even stranger—after finishing that task, the student had moved on to something else entirely.

  Amazonian Rainforest.

  Mr. Xi slowed his steps.

  His impression shifted.

  He’s serious, he realized. Obsessive, even.

  Most teachers softened when faced with quiet brilliance.

  I should pay closer attention to him this year, Mr. Xi thought.

  As for the sunglasses… probably a medical issue.

  Bell, aware of the professor’s presence behind him, remained completely absorbed.

  His thoughts were elsewhere.

  The abyssal interference… he thought, it’s almost identical to Dream Dust’s second-tier effect.

  The first ability expanded his perception within a fifteen-meter radius.

  The second didn’t create illusions.

  It duplicated perception.

  He could blur his own presence—make himself harder to notice. In darkness, his outline softened. His footsteps grew quieter. Even attention seemed to slide past him.

  And then, He could project that presence elsewhere, a shift, a suggestion.

  Not invisibility. Just absence, where presence should have been.