2175 C.E.

IV: Comes the Hurricane

Cynthia Mattingly, though clearly a very important figure in the war, was a person difficult to reconstruct through data and period records alone. Unlike many of the figures here examined, she kept very few records of her own, particularly in between her arrival in Congo and her activism during the African Resistance. Of key importance was an event that was covered by local news and figures such as Theresa Mwangi but was never described in detail at the time for security purposes. Fortunately, she has since opened up about the event and has here worked together with IHC representatives to reconstruct the sequence of events in full from memory, and Mwangi, Kumar and others present have confirmed its historical veracity. Our thanks to all of them for assistance in this reconstruction and to Rhemarizh for compiling it for us.

Jon Brain, Chief Archivist of the Interstellar Historical Commission

On the morning of the August 12, 2175, Cynthia woke with an uncharacteristic unease. Although she had been far from comfortable ever since coming to Africa, she describes this morning as different from the rest.

"For two days or so up until then, I'd been lonely and worried about my sister. And, you know, I was in a strange place where I didn't really know anyone, so I guess that's understandable. But on the second, I remember being genuinely uneasy. I felt like I was being watched by somebody. I mean, I doubted that anybody was really watching me or something, but I still felt queasy about it, you know? Like, I'd go around corners expecting to find someone on the other side waiting for me."

That morning, the news from Kinshasa's doctors hadn't been good. Olivia Mattingly's condition had worsened again since the morning. Before then, she had slowly started to regain bodily function; doctors had been working around the clock to rehydrate and feed her intravenously as well as giving her antibiotics and antivirals to give her the absolute best chance of recovery. However, she still hadn't recovered from the coma-like sleep that she had been in since she had been found in the black ship. On the morning of the second, though, she started to seem restless once again. When she had been brought in to the hospital, doctors had noted that she muttered in a strange language and tossed and turned in the night. Over the past forty-eight hours, this activity had slowed and in fact ceased, but this morning it began again. Cynthia describes the moment.

"It was like...something was...galvanizing her into motion. Like, I don't think that she was the one moving; some of the ways she was moving didn't make me think she was just restless, you know? Like, she'd be lying there, and then a leg would lift up like she was trying to walk or something. And then of course there was the way she murmured all the time but none of us understood; we tried to translate with three, like, different devices, but it just didn't work."

The doctors agreed that the signs weren't good, but they had never seen a phenomenon like this. All they could do was to keep her body alive and hope that whatever was ailing her could be healed by conventional methods.

Billy Aucaman had left the hospital not long into the morning. He had asked permission of the Congolese policemen supervising their stay to seek out military offices in hopes that he could enlist in some capacity. In his journal, he describes how much he hates to feel useless, and since he might have been the last of his family, he hoped to do some good for the resistance movement that might have been growing at the time. Cynthia had elected to stay with her sister in hopes that a familial connection might help her recovery. However, as time went on, she began to feel an odd pull to leave the hospital.

"When I was at home, and Billy told me about the animal tracks in the woods, it was the same kind of feeling. I really don't know how describe what it felt like, but I just knew that I had to be out in the woods that night. This was the same sort of thing; even though everything in my mind was telling me that I had to stay with Olivia, I just had this urge to go out somewhere. I wasn't even sure exactly where I wanted to go; there was just this pull to go there."