By midday the Ellezelin paramilitary capsules streaking across Colwyn City had all taken to using their sirens, producing a constant Doppler-mangled cacophony as they rushed between burgeoning trouble spots.  Scarlet and azure laser fans swept through the open balcony doors of Araminta's apartment as another one flew across the park outside, accompanying the discordant sound.  Araminta scowled as the dazzling light flared across the kitchen area of the living room once more.  She'd been making herself a cup of tea from a kettle while the old culinary unit strove to fabricate the components of a simple chicken sandwich.  She cursed and kicked the base of the stupid unit as another set of thermal error symbols flashed on its screen.  Perhaps the laser light was disturbing its internal systems.

She sighed and shook her head, annoyed with herself for thinking something so silly.  The worst thing was just sitting around doing nothing.  Actually, no; it not knowing what to do.

Another capsule screeched overhead.  Araminta slammed down the kettle and stomped over to the open balcony doorway.  The capsule had vanished behind the apartment building by the time she got there, presumably harassing the people in the park, which seemed to have developed into a center for disobedience to the invaders.  She would have liked to slam the doorway shut as well, but the glass wall sheet was formflow, so she had to settle for the glass slowly curtaining together.  At least when it had become a single sheet again the sound of the sirens was reduced considerably, as it should have been with the expensive sound-deadening layer she'd added.  The doorway had been open all day to give her some sense of connection to the city.  It was kind of stupid yet comforting at the same time.  In fact, all she'd been doing was avoiding thinking about the real events.  She certainly had not done any work on the apartment.

Her u-shadow had pulled a steady stream of news out of the unisphere, all relating to the Void expansion.  There were very few hard facts and far too much speculation and accusation.  But her u-shadow was running an adequate filter, supplying her with the basics.  Nothing much had changed; the observation team had evacuated Centurion Station.  All the shows were playing the images of the base itself collapsing.  Of more interest were the enigmatic DF spheres flying into orbit around the star.  Commentators in the news studios were busy speculating about exactly what they were capable of; apparently, they'd been copied by the Anomine, who had used them to imprison the Dyson Pair.  Now everyone was hoping that they had more aggressive functions than simple force fields, regardless of the gigantic scale.

Despite the loss of Centurion Station, a large number of sensor systems out amid the Wall stars were still operational and were feeding their data back to the Commonwealth via the tenuous navy relay.  The Void boundary continued to expand, its surface rippling and distending to engulf the star clusters already falling in toward it.  That voraciousness was cited by many as having a purpose, which came back squarely to the Second Dreamer and the Skylord.

After the balcony doors clicked shut, she sank to her knees on the bare concrete floor.  The tears she'd managed to contain all morning threatened to finally emerge.  Its too much.  No one person can expect to deal with all of this.  I can't have put the entire galaxy in peril.  I can't.

Her u-shadow reported a new file shotgunning into the unisphere, passed among all the nodes without restriction by the management routines and given unlimited access to everybody's interface address.  It was a live feed to an address code she didn't recognize, but it had Earth as its node host.

"Only ANA can achieve this level of coverage," the u-shadow told her.