My name is David Nazo Ashe. I am a particle- and biophysicist. My job is to study the effects that life near the reactors creates for the nearby species. It's a slow job. Nothing lives this far up the mountains and the reactors have more protective layers and security systems than the Luna Colony.

But it's not boring. While I work, I also have to check the surrounding rock for changes. I'm fascinated with the shaping of the rock layers and the fossils that I sometimes find hidden within. And I love the perpetual cold winds of the alpine peaks.

I know I'm only out here so often because the rest of the physicists at the base consider me a nuisance anywhere but away. I know that the only thing that keeps them from firing me and dropping me in some city somewhere is my ability and willingness to patrol the area daily. But I don't mind. For me, life is perfect as it is. I don't hate them because they don't like me; instead I love the cold air and the landscape.

I smiled as I chipped away the last chunk of rock that held my prize to the mountain, and the fossil came out in my hand. I looked at it, and held up a scanner in my other hand, which issued a linear beam of lasers and recorded the contours of the rock, beeping when it was done. I looked at the scanner's screen to see what it had identified the fossil as. A tree shrew. I pressed a button. The scanner began scanning the fossil again, this time recording the chemical makeup of the rock. It returned a short list of the chemicals, none of which really surprised me.

73.275% Calcium Carbonate, CaCO3

23% Dihydrogen Monoxide, H2O

3.65% Silicon Dioxide, SiO2

I smiled. "Exactly the same as always." I said, putting the tree shrew into my backpack. When I got back to the base, I would finish clearing it of rock and add it to my collection.

However, this time was different from usual. The scanner beeped again, and a fourth chemical showed up below the other three.

0.075% Ferrous Silicide, Fe2Si

I quickly took the fossil back out and looked closely at it. Ferrous silicide, or hapkeite, was a very rare mineral that had so far only been discovered in a meteorite in Oman, which was several thousand miles away.

I took out a smaller chisel, sat down, and began to chip away at the remaining sandstone around the shrew.

When I had removed the rock around it (I was careful not to remove the rock that held it together), I studied it for signs of damage, especially around the lung area. I figured the most likely cause of this was that the hapkeite was blown in a cloud here, and that the shrew had died of suffocation from it. But then again, none of the other fossils I had found had contained the compound.

I found a fracture that looked promising. It was between the ribs, and looked like something had been jammed into the ribcage. I narrowed the scanner's range, scanned the spot, and read the screen. I set a filter so that it only showed me the hapkeite content. In the area I scanned, the content was nearly 30%, meaning that the hapkeite had completely lined the wound, judging by its size and depth.

I reset the scanner's range and made a 3-D map of the shrew. I transferred the map to my computer, took it out, turned it on, and began studying it.

I noticed that the shrew was unnaturally bent, as if it had been crushed, and that the bones were worn oddly and crushed together in the wrong places.

I looked at the scanner to see the fossil's age. That might give me a clue as to what had happened.

The scanner read 10,000 BCE. I thought about what was happening here at that time period. Not many large animals lived here, since it's a mountain range. The Alps are gener-

My musings were interrupted by a sharp beeping coming from my watch. I looked at it and read the face. I frowned. It was an Imminent Blizzard Warning. I would have to evacuate back to the base.

I closed my computer and put it back into the pack, then took out a small tarp and a staple gun. I covered the hole that I had found the fossil in and stapled the tarp to the rock, then put the staple gun back. I closed my pack, put it back on, and put the scanner in my pocket. The fossil I just carried, since it was too fragile to risk putting away.

I stood up and looked around, then began walking down the path back to the base.

Behind a rock, something watched as I walked back. It waited until I had gotten to within a few feet before disappearing.

I stopped walking and turned my head. I had thought I saw seen something unusual out of my peripheral vision, like something's shadow going over the mountain face.

I shook my head and continued walking. Nothing was there. I was Nova CERN's only field agent and nothing lived this high up.

I turned and walked down a different path, which cut through the mountains in a near-perfect line, making it much easier and less time-consuming than walking along the twisted paths that went around the sides of the mountains.

After a short time of walking, I could see the base. It was a sprawling series of metal walkways and buildings that covered most of the space between the mountains in this area. Scientists walked or ran along the walkways, some covered in cold-weather clothes and some dressed in summer outfits. It might sound insane to you, wearing a T-shirt and shorts in -10 degree Fahrenheit weather, but here, it was perfectly normal. Typically, they're carrying or carting something, but right now, they were all just setting the area up for lockdown to prepare for the coming blizzard.

What really made the complex seem out of place was that every inch was covered in clear, non-reflective material to keep the metal from blinding everybody. The material gave the complex a strange, two-dimensional look.

Several walkways went inside of the mountains, going into underground caves that snaked upwards to form the second layer of the complex. The bottom layer was for most of the current projects and theories to be tested, while the upper layer was the living quarters for all of the scientists working here.

Above those towered the Triplet Colliders, three gigantic metal tori that each were held up by a single, deceptively thin rod that was driven into the peaks of three mountains. I stopped, looked up at them, and pointed at each one, saying its name like I did every time I returned to the base.

I pointed at the smallest (a misnomer to be sure) first. "The Electroenergetic Particle Accelerator."

Next, I pointed at the second-largest. "The Neutronium Reactor."

Last, I pointed at the largest one. "The Antimatter Plasma Collider."

I smiled and continued walking, going into one of the mountains and to the second level.

I walked to my apartment and went inside. It was a compound, with two separate bedrooms. It helped keep the complex less crowded. My roommate, Ian King, was a monitor at the NR, so I knew he'd still be gone for another 5 hours or so, since the Triplet Colliders are high up enough to avoid blizzard damage and the employees there still had work.

I looked around the living room. It was small, basically consisting of a door on either side, a window at the back, and a couch on either side next to the window.

I walked into the left room, which was mine.

The room to the right was absolutely neat, with nothing out of place. My room, however, was a disaster. Papers and clothes were strewn everywhere. Not a single piece of paper had any words legible to most. They were instead covered with the loopy mess that was my handwriting.

The bed was perpetually unmade, and yet was very clearly hardly ever used. The writing desk I had in the corner was also covered in paper, with a broken lamp on one end, a candleholder on the other, and an old Lenovo laptop disguised as a mound of paper in the middle.

I waded through the paper-and-clothes carpet to my dresser, opening the top drawer. Inside was several hundred fossils of various sizes, all perfectly labelled and ordered by alphabetical order with their scientific names. This dresser was the only thing in my room that I ever kept clean and organized, and so far, I had never misplaced or mislabelled a single fossil.

I put the tree shrew fossil in a small cardboard box that was lined with tissue paper. The box contained my rarest, most valuable, and most intriguing finds.

I closed the box and the dresser and dumped my pack on my bed, then waded back out to the living room.

I sat down on a couch and looked out the window. In the horizon, I could see huge snow clouds billowing towards the complex. I smiled. When blizzards start, most people go off to do their own thing, but I like to watch them. Here, even a small one is enough to wipe out the entire base. Their power fascinates me, just like the histories locked in fossils fascinates me.

I laid down on the couch and watched as the blizzard, big even for its own standards, rolled closer.

I felt a vibration go through the house and smiled. What, you thought that no measures were taken to prevent a disaster?

The vibration swept through the complex in seconds, shaking the mountains as a machine deep underground began its task.

A huge, faintly lime green dome of energy came out of the ground around the complex, rising quickly and tapering to a rounded point at the top, going around the rods holding the Triplet Colliders and reconnecting in the middle.

The blizzard arrived, blasting itself at the field with its full power. The field held steady, protecting the base from the powerful storm.

After a bit, the base went out of lockdown, and work continued as always. I sat for a little longer, listening to the snow and hail hitting the field, before getting up and going back to my room.