Officers of OFFICERS

Portal Sighting

Was the Atlantic ocean always as cold as LED lights? One had to wonder, staring at those pinpricks of light in the blackness of the night sky. Cold had never meant uninteresting to Bristol. Growing up in Maine ensured that. And, of course, the job he was currently saddled with had done a good deal to reinforce the sentiment.

For hundreds of years, the sky had been a guiding map for sailors, a place of stories and prophecies, an upstanding light when all else had fallen dim. GPS and tracking technology may reduce the need for the night sky at a purely business level, but the human desire to see something bigger than themselves, Bristol thought, would always make the night sky needed. Of course, the sky was also a good place to dump someone out of a portal when that someone needs dumping.

Bristol leaned over to a monitor covering an area just south of Greenland and east of the Labrador Sea. Zooming in to one of the many invisible cameras that hovered throughout the sky, he observed a yellow glow leaking out from between the stars. He'd seen many portals open, and it was easy to identify them-- like breathing.

He'd put the call through, report it. It would be routine. Until it wasn't.

A human form tumbled out from the yellow glow and plummeted towards the earth, ripping through the darkness like a cat scratch. Surrounded by light green energy, it sped towards the earth-- or rather, the ocean-- until it became a pinprick once more.

All his months of observation duty, and only a few creatures had been spotted. Most of the time, it was interesting gadgets and pieces of other-worldly technology. It was even rarer for a humanoid to come hurtling out of the different portals. Both were equally important, but a falling human seemed to always be greeted by greater excitement. Perhaps it was all the human rights that had to be respected, protocols specifically designed for sentient beings. Bristol had tried to decide to not think about it, but whenever a humanoid creature fell from a portal in the sky, he still found his thoughts dwelling it.

Fishing out the needed documents and an old pen, he began filling out the necessary forms in blue ink, stretching his hand in memory of many nights of doing so. With all that technology, you'd think that they'd be filling out online forms, but, Bristol assumed, it was just part of a rookie's role.