The investigators return to the motel. Based on their observations of Stan Arnold, the mad dog, and the irate bar patrons, Rupert posits that perhaps there is something in the water. He and Scot decide to avoid drinking tap water for the time being. Zach puts no credence in this theory, and so Rupert suggests that he drink large quantities of tap water over a period of several hours. Zach drinks a glass of tap water every fifteen minutes for the next two hours, while they sit watching a Magic: The Gathering tournament on ESPN2. After several trips to the bathroom Zach feels no different than before, and they turn in for the night.
The next morning they decide to visit the NSCA and head there in Zach’s car. Scot, slightly cotton-mouthed and perhaps a little paranoid, decides to ride in the trunk with the surveillance equipment. They travel 4 miles down the highway and see the turnoff for the CalTech NSCA observatory to the east, but opt to continue down the highway to the abandoned town of North Shore.
North Shore was a popular tourist destination several decades ago, but rising salinity in the Salton Sea killed most of the fish and agricultural runoff made the water murky and unpleasant. Driving around the empty streets, they keep their eyes peeled for any human activity. They finally spot a Volkswagen Bus parked in front of the once elegant North Shore Yacht Club, and decide that it probably belongs to a bunch of hippies camped out inside. Rupert notices that in addition to the usual seagulls, there also seems to be a lot of crows and blackbirds about.
They turn around and head to the NSCA, arriving at about 8:30am. On the way there, they pass through fields of cultivated alfalfa, and can see large radar dishes on their right before they actually reach any buildings. They spot a low, cinder-block building with some cars parked in front, and behind this they can see a tower with a large dish mounted on top, at the intersection of two sets of rails on which mobile dishes can be positioned. They drive towards the tower and pull over beside what appear to be staff living quarters, and see a man in a battered jeep crossing the rails to a metal Quonset hut. He gets out of the jeep and produces keys from his pocket. Rupert attempts to observe the man through the telescopic lens of Zach’s camera, but the man sees him and comes over to talk with them.
The man introduces himself as Carl Wilson, and tells them that in addition to being the facilities manager, he is also the head of security, and that they are not allowed to take pictures at this site. He directs them to the lobby.
In the lobby, they meet the receptionist, the 40-something Nora Kelly, and introduce themselves as friends of Stan Arnold. They have no appointment, but she calls Dr Neal and then Dr Guest to see if either of them are available. Dr Neal is not, but Dr Guest arrives and takes them first to his office and then to Stan’s workplace. They see a spiral notebook and ask if they can look through it. Dr Guest is hesitant, but allows for it as long as he can keep an eye on them. They flip through pages of software architecture notes and other scribbling, but when they turn to a page titled “NEMESIS” Dr Guest snaps the book shut and tells them that they are getting into sensitive material and can look no further. The men ask if they can wait for Dr Neal to be available, and he directs them to wait in the front lobby with Ms Kelly.
After a half an hour, Dr Neal returns from his meeting and greets the investigators. He is distracted and short with them. Rupert asks if perhaps Stan had any rivals at work, specifically if he had any “nemesis who meant him harm.” Dr Neal balks for a moment at the mention of the word, but assures them that he did not.
As they leave, Rupert decides that it might have been better if they had located the observatory on Google Earth and snuck in at night. On the way out, Scot looks at one of the telescopes through the camera’s zoom lens and spots some numbers on a readout on the side.
They return to the Sheriff’s station to speak with Stan again. The deputy asks them if they know anything about the break-in at Stan’s house last night, but they say they do not. The deputy tells them that the computer was left on, but he couldn’t find anything missing. He takes them to Stan, whose shoelaces have been taken from him as part of his suicide watch. He is still extremely depressed. They ask him about NEMESIS, and he explains that that there was a theory proposed in the 80s that Earth’s Sun was part of a binary system that included another distant star, called the Nemesis star. According to the hypothesis, Nemesis periodically (roughly every 26 million years), passes through a denser region of the Oort cloud, disrupting the orbits of comets, and sends millions of comets into the inner solar system and potential collision with the Earth, which it suggests is the cause for the seemingly cyclic period of mass extinctions on this planet. Researchers at the NSCA believe that they have located this star via its radio emissions, and that it is near the lower part of the constellation Bootes. He implores them to not speak of this to anyone, as the findings have not been published yet.
They return to the hotel, this time to look up this theory on their own, and to analyze Zach’s flash drive copy of Stan and Carrie’s email. Among the scores of emails they find one sent to Stan’s home address from his work address. There is no subject or body text, but just an attachment of a file called “nemesis.mp3”, a 10 second long audio file. It sounds like a strange, discordant whale song. Using Zach’s equipment they speed it up, slow it down, play it backwards, analyze the data in a hex editor, loop it, and so on for several hours. Scot becomes increasingly anxious, and believes that the police will be back to get them. He closes the blinds and stands at the door, peering through the peep hole.
After stopping by the Sunset Café, where they dine on chicken fried steak, pig-in-a-blanket and blueberry pie, they return to the hotel to wait until dark. Around 9:00pm they step out into the dusk, and Rupert says “look, there are those black birds from North Shore.” Scot, who was in the trunk at the time, says “we were in North Shore?” and then tells them that blackbirds and crows are natural enemies. As he says this, hundreds of the birds converge on a man crossing the street, pecking at him in a flurry of beaks and feathers. They all make a break for the car, but Zach and Scot arrive first, and Scot locks the door with Rupert still outside. The birds swarm him, pecking him until he successfully flees to his own car nearby. As quickly as they came, the birds disappear, and the investigators regroup in Zach’s car.
They head to the turnoff for the NSCA but go a few hundred yards farther and park on a disused dirt road. Scot’s paranoia now prevents him from leaving the car, but Rupert takes the keys. Zach and Rupert head through the alfalfa fields to the observatory, when they notice a large, winged creature flitting overhead in the moonlight. It flies clumsily, whatever it is, and emits a buzzing sound like an insect. Rupert takes the telescopic lens and looks through it to the west, where the outermost radar dish sits about a half mile away. As he is examining the dish, it explodes in a flash of purple flame. He quickly starts snapping pictures. The two investigators panic and run back to the car, and return to the motel.
They examine the pictures that Rupert took just minutes before. In one of them, in the flash of the explosion, they can see a creature at the top of the frame. It doesn’t look like any bird they have ever seen before, but the details are obscured so it’s hard to tell. Afraid to fall asleep, they try to stay awake all night, with Scot at his position by the door. After several hours, however, they drop off to sleep, and then Scot and Zach are visited by the same, strange dream.
When the dream begins, they are in the motel, and they hear the sound of glass breaking outside. They rush outside and realize that there has been an earthquake, and looking to the sky, see dark clouds part overhead. A huge, red planetoid looms above them, with lightning crackling across its surface. Suddenly two molten seas split across its face, like a pair of demonic eyes. It emits a low, rumbling sound of weirdly-layered low- and mid-frequencies. There is a deafening clap of thunder and then the dream is over.
The two men wake up, and relate their common dream to each other. They are both quite shaken by it.
The next morning, they plan to head back to the NSCA early and step out of the room at around 6:00am. On the ground in front of their door is a strange metallic object. It is cylindrical, about a foot and a half long and comprised of many half-inch discs that rotate around a central shaft. There are strange mathematical symbols along its sides. Rupert, who has some background in cryptography, correctly recognizes that it is some sort of message. Zach enters the symbols into an spreadsheet and writes a macro to sort them in various ways, and within an hour has decoded the message.
The message speaks in cryptic terms about some entity, called Ghroth, who is also called the Harbinger, who visits worlds to set them right, to raise the sleeping things from their sunken tombs and to raise the tombs themselves, and to reward those who would presume to serve as stewards to this being. Rupert hides this device in the trunk of his car, in the compartment where his spare tire is kept.
When they arrive at the NSCA, the Sheriff, his deputies, and other law enforcement are on the scene and staging an investigation. There are also local news reporters from Palm Springs and Los Angeles. They try to glean some information from anyone, but the Sheriff tells them that the investigation is ongoing, and that he will hold a press conference at 9:00am. They overhear him tell a reporter that the explosion could have been a malfunction, but they are not ruling out sabotage.
With several hours to wait, they decide to return to the abandoned town of North Shore, to see if there is any sign of the hippies, who could perhaps be affiliated with an eco-terrorist organization. They arrive at the Yacht Club and see the bus still parked out front. As they walk around it, they see a man’s body splayed out face down on the opposite side. He looks like a hippie, but a hippie whose head is mostly caved in from the back. Rupert suggests he might be dead, and pokes his bloodied head with a stick. The stick pokes most of the way through, confirming that he is indeed deceased. They search the van, finding fast food wrappers, clothes, and a bag of marijuana in the glove compartment. Scot takes this for himself. They look at the open entrance to the Yacht Club, and contemplate entering…
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