A3S4 PowerSupply

BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP
BEEEEEEEEEP

A flatlining electronic warning tone brought him out of reverie into life - althought it felt like just another layer of dreaming at this point. Where they really in a tent... out on snow deep cliffs of a mountain chain? It made so much more sense to imagine this was a dream inspired by a a late night session of video games and caffein overstim.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

The sound wouldn't be silenced though, and he shuffled around the small space to find his PPS, personal power supply whining in protest that it had hit (his own) predetermined limit, and his electronics (including the personal heater he'd spread between AVID and himself) was going to shutdown. That warmth during the night really had felt like a lifeline. Usually the power supply just kept him online, his devices and backups constantly fed juice in case of an interrupt in local sources, many driven by intermittent flows of sun and winds.

BEEEEEeeeeeooooo.

Shut down. Save power. Not that he knew what for.

He held the caribeaner, that funny bent loop up to eye level, and gazed through. The wrought iron lensed between the world and him, between belief and surreality - and revealed a bright, shimmering gateway, a portal. Boys with as many hours and achievements in games of sci and fantasy might use any word, nexus, warpgate, fast travel rune, but they'd all believe it to be the same thing. A portal to another place.

Maybe another world.

As far remote as they were, knowing no signal would reach them, PNS turned on his power supply, the little energy they'd been saving, now for no reason at all. His systems logged his activity, but no connected.

"Any last messages for the server, Avi?" PNS said, looking at his companion, and flicking a 'mics on' sign to indicate recording.

"Picard was wrong. It's not the final frontier. Also we're fucked." Avi replied.

"Two for transport - unfuck us please Enterprise."

"That's an unfair - "

"Not the time AVID." PNS said, cut in.

"Avi - PARTYBOY, Avi".

"Sorry, Avi."

"Friends don't have to apologize, Parathban."

"Eeeshh - call me Para, there's a reason I always shorten it."

The power supply began to whine. He short-pressed the button twice, and it went silent, the small LED oscillating a dim illumination to show it was still running.

At the ANDES of the world, two friends link arms, their shoulders pressed together heads leaning to align with a small loops held up to eye level by one of them. It seems to be reflecting light, or luminescing under it's own power. The figures step forward, and the same luminescence cascades over they joined outline and they glow, a mystical fire first catching new fuel, the edges flaring up.

And then they vanish. The glow remains behind a moment, but it's just the reflecting starlight, or the death knell of nighttime as the rays of a sun not yet seen catch the peaks that rise beyond the earth's curve. The illuminated peaks are, in this moment, between night's fall and days rise, a small world unto themselves. The first place drawn in color among the inked background of a comic page.