Splinter View: Chapter 1 — October 31, 2025
CHAPTER 1 — “Gravel Crunch”
The gravel driveway pops and crackles beneath my tires like corn in hot oil. I set the hand-brake, kill the engine, and let the silence settle. Cedar shingles the color of old coffee grounds squat among the pines, windows dulled by dust. Perfect: no neighbors, no stray Wi-Fi, nothing to contaminate a week of clean data.
Mika launches the moment I crack the door—black-and-white blur turned snuffling scout. Her tail windmills once, then stiffens; ears knife forward. She locks on the porch railing where a wide gap frames an old oak stump sunk below deck level, as if the boards were laid around a missing limb.
“Easy, detective.” I ruffle the fur between her shoulders. She’s a border-collie rescue—too smart for either of our good. “We’re here to measure polycyclic aromatic particulates, not hunt squirrels.”
I thumb the hatch. Cuvette cases clink against my one pride-and-joy: a UV-vis spectrometer cannibalized into a shoebox, tape-stitched and blessed with my student-loan blood. One week alone in the woods, one pristine data set—clear path to graduation.
The handle sweats in my grip, slides an inch. “Whoops—” The word blurts louder than planned. I steady myself, pulse jumping. Recording now feels smart. “Site ninety-one,” I dictate, voice wobbling before smoothing out, “arrival fourteen-oh-seven hours, ambient temp nineteen Celsius, humidity fifty-two percent, no visible mill smoke.” Numbers march in; nerves retreat.
Last summer’s readings had behaved, every anomaly tracing back to faulty calibration. The world stayed explainable, so far as the math allowed it.
Dr. Halvorsen’s code still unlocks the cabin. I tell myself that’s administrative oversight, not permission. Out here, no one can confuse a research retreat with an escape.
Mika trots up the porch steps, nose twitching. A faint, metallic-sap smell—like pennies warmed in sunlight—threads the air. Overhead, a set of brass wind chimes CLACK three hard times, sharp as a hammer on steel. The surrounding trees stand motionless. No breeze. Yet the chime stills itself as though embarrassed.
“Thermal… expansion,” I murmur, but the science feels flimsy even in my own mouth. Mika utters a low woof, hackles rippling.
The smart lock accepts Halvorsen’s code, and the door eases open. A small pang follows the click—permission by proxy. If the university still thinks I’m her assistant, I’ll take the oversight. Better that than another email chain with HR.
Stale wood-smoke exhales from the dark interior wrapped in that same metallic-sap tang. Mika slips inside first, claws ticking on pine boards. I shoulder the gear through and nudge the door shut.
It thuds heavier than its mass should allow, vibration dragging across my ribs. Static prickles along my scalp. Nothing more than a physiological flinch—that’s the explanation, repeat it until it sticks. Feelings are anecdotal; data is king.
I breathe deep, tasting the pennies-and-pine mixture, and square my shoulders. “Okay, girl,” I call to Mika somewhere in the shadows. “Let’s set up the lab.” Behind me, the wind chime answers with a single soft tap.
Field Note:
Lake Abitibi (Lac Abitibi; Ojibwe: Aabitibiiwi-zaaga’igan) straddles the Ontario–Quebec border within the Clay Belt. Nearby Apitipik at the mouth of the Duparquet River was a summer gathering place for the Abitibiwinnik and a long-running trading-post site (1686–1922). The name Abitibi derives from Algonquin abitah (“middle”) + nipi (“water”) — “where waters divide,” a fitting threshold for this transmission.
░░ TRANSMISSION SEALED ░░
Next Uplink ↳ Chapter 2 — November 4, 2025