For three days after the Science Sermon, a profound stillness descended on Riverside. The [SOCIAL COHESION] reading held steady at a healthy 80%, and the [KNOWLEDGE MULTIPLIER] hummed with greater efficiency. The village healed, learned, grew. Reuben allowed himself a thin slice of pride, a feeling as foreign as it was fleeting. He was doing well, here, in this one small corner of the world.
The proportion illusion was shattered at 3:17 AM.
Reuben was awakened not by sound, but by a searing, electric pain at the rear of his eyeballs. The Outbreak System's standard, lean console stuttered, flickered, and fractured into a maelstrom of static. Strange flows of information—topographic reports, heat maps of population densities, hydrology graphs—crossed and merged in a whirlpool maelstrom. Hi
