"What is that?" Mitt couldn't help his curiosity.
The others were wondering the same. In the weeks that Noble had been there, she had never seen purple as a color on the map.
Dino sat silently watching, unable to answer.
"I think... I think it is trying to lock in on a location of the Gate," Wailin rubbed his eyes and looked again.
The computer had not been able to get that far ever before. Perhaps his eyes were deceiving him. Unless they were all having a hallucination, something was definitely happening.
The purple haze moved around the map of the world, coalescing in different spots before moving again. The ghostly color meant death for anything near it, and Noble held her breath each time it swept over the NQSC.
What would she do if the Gate were coming to her home again? There was no question in her mind that she would pick up her family and flee today if that were the case.
Fort would have to follow close behind as soon as he could get a transfer. Noble ran through her own evacuation plan while the deep purple marker sealed the fate of wherever it should chance to land.
Only...it didn't land. It hovered and shuddered at times, only to shift again without warning. Sometimes it looked like a dot then the next moment it spread like a cloud to cover a large area. It appeared like a flock of birds constantly migrating with no place to roost.
"I don't understand," Dino's eyes tracked the nebulous blob around the wall with his eyes. "There should be enough information there. More than enough. We are still missing something."
They had seemingly solved one problem only to encounter another.
'So close!' Noble could feel everyone's nervous energy.
It flew into her, and she tried not to internalize it too deeply.
Mitt in particular seemed to be having an emotional time. It was understandable. He had had the least exposure to their work.
Even after being here for weeks, Noble had difficulty containing her feelings about the coming disaster.
Fort took his wife's hand. They were at work, but this moment seemed bigger than either of them. She sent him a grateful smile. With him as her anchor, Noble was able to keep her feelings in check.
"Are you using Director Lance's pattern analysis?" the professor asked. Noble had already transcribed her father's work on his team's calculations.
"I am! The reverse engineering he provided has been invaluable. You can see where the old patterns match up with our current ones. Look here, here, and even here." Dino pulled up pages of information which overlaid the map.
Some of it included the statistics that Gryf provided the day before. Even with her untrained eyes, Noble could see the repeating correlation between her father's work and what had been found more recently.
"Why does it repeat like that?" Fort asked no one in particular.
Dino shook his head, frustrated. "I am not sure. But I think that is what is making it impossible for the program to settle on a single location."
The professor stared at the wall, trying to take in every piece of information she was seeing. "What if you open it up to more than one location? Let it do whatever it wants to do instead of limiting it."
"I don't think you know how this program works," Manager Wailin tried to keep the condescension out of his voice. "It is made to find a location. Not to do 'whatever it wants'..."
Noble understood where he was coming from. What good was an equation if it couldn't equate? But at the same time, math was the manipulation of data. What if they were manipulating it incorrectly?
"Will it hurt anything if the parameter is removed?" The Deputy Director asked the lead analyst.
"No, Sir. I can add it back in whenever necessary." Dino nodded, sure on this point.
"I think it is worth a try, don't you, Manager?" Fort decided to let Wailin have the final say.
The wiry project manager thought about his options for a moment. Then he shrugged. "It doesn't waste too much time, and it will get us off this rabbit trail. Do it."
The analyst adjusted the wall-sized screen back to the world map. All of the green and red dots were still present as was the traveling purple haze.
"Here goes nothing," Dino tapped at his desk to make the appropriate changes.
The purple faded.
"You see. That parameter is needed to..." Wailin's speech stopped short as a dark amethyst dot appeared on the screen.
The room and all the chatter in it went deathly silent.
"Is that what I think it is?" Everin whispered.
No one answered. Had they really succeeded?
But then.
A second blot appeared by the first. Then a third. A fourth.
The whole room watched in horror as hundreds of dots clustered together until an entire portion of the map was covered in amethyst.
The silence was suddenly broken as people began to question what they saw.
"What does this mean?"
"How can this be?"
"It's impossible!"
"It's obscene!" The last comment came from the Manager himself. His face was red with indignation. "You see what happens when you remove an integral part of the equation? The entire program goes haywire!"
"You're wrong," Dino swallowed, realizing that talking to his superior like that might get him in trouble. He continued more respectfully. "What I mean to say, Sir, is that I think that for the first time, the program is working correctly."
"You mean to tell me that you think that what is on the screen is accurate?!" Wailin looked ready to throw something. Was it the results or the fact that he was being challenged that was upsetting him?
"I would go a step further. I know it is accurate." Placing his hand on his heart, Dino's face was filled with grim resolve.
The room suddenly felt like it had been sucked of its oxygen.
"If that is true, then…I need to contact the Chancellor immediately." Fort pulled out his communicator.
"I need to have this confirmed by another group," Wailin's voice overlapped the Deputy Director. His demeanor had changed from angry to eerily calm.
The two men became lost in their respective tasks, leaving the rest of the room in a state of shock.
"We found the answer…" Everin whispered. The assistant stared at the screen, a mix of awe and horror on his face.
"Seems so," Noble could hardly believe it herself.
The relief she felt that the NQSC was not in the path of the Gate was overshadowed by the sheer number of Nightmare Gates that were going to open.
The thought of one gate opening like before was terrifying enough.
Noble had been glad she was unable to dream, for she knew flashbacks of the horrors she experienced as a child would have plagued her sleep since she began this project.
But what she saw in front of her was much, much worse.
So much purple. So much destruction. So much death.
'Another continent. It's going to be destroyed.' Noble's heart was overcome with grief.
They had indeed found a solution.
And a much bigger problem.
That problem's name was: Antarctica.