The Electric State - Into the Dust

Started: 2026-05

May. Somewhere east of San Francisco, and moving whenever the car lets us.

Five of us left the city in a Buick, headed for the Blackwelt Exclusion Zone with a drive full of research I'm supposed to keep breathing. Six, counting Rock, which took me a while. A sixth joined at a roadblock — masked, ex-military, came in reading the situation wrong. I trusted him faster than I should have. I've been turning that over since.

We're behind schedule. A blown tire and a dead battery put us down in a town called Littleville, the kind of place that's stopped reacting to the things it should. There's a church there running its sermons through a neurocaster, and something in the signal that the man who built it swears he didn't build. A woman who works the diner wants out. The ground moves at night and nobody looks up.

We got the car running again. Getting clear of that town cost more than a battery. Still headed east. Still being followed.

• The Road Did That

  2026-09-09

  A giant robot's footsteps and Jimmy Shute's glare shatter the party's plan to hit the Church of the Angels; the Buick runs for it under gunfire out of Littleville. Jimmy's truck flips on gravel, killing his crew. Lennie, shot in the shoulder and leaving Daisy behind, wonders whether smashing a server could ever stop the angel.

• Cut the Head of the Snake

  2026-07-15

  A golden angel that programmer George Lopez swears he never built now haunts Father Marcos's neuroscape sermons at the Church of the Angels, and Daisy no longer trusts it. At her house on Ellis Street the party settles on a plan to destroy the server — then steals a battery from a family with kids, a theft that leaves Lennie doubting Dustin.

• The Angel

  2026-06-24

  At 1am in Littleville, the floor trembles and a red glow rises in the west — something large passed through, and its tracks run past the Church of the Angels. By midday the party knows the town isn't abandoned; it's organized around that church. Ramona, the diner owner, wants out and is afraid to say so out loud.

• Dead Battery

  2026-06-10

  Static arrives at the roadblock mid-fight, misreads it, and joins the group anyway. The Buick dies in Littleville — dead battery, possible EMP — and the party shelters in an abandoned house where a neurocaster addict simply never got up. Sergei tries the headset and comes back shaken. The Electric State, seen close, is quieter and uglier.

• The Road Out

  2026-05-27

  Somewhere south of Concord, a Centre van materializes out of ordinary roadside noise and Lennie keeps his voice flat and drives past. Two hours out, a neurocaster roadblock produces worse results: one worker seized on the road, one shoved in a ditch, and a utility man back on his feet and swinging as the afternoon goes out of control.