A mechanized village that used to be a small town in the Walloon region of Belgium. A test community of mostly-German settlers lives here, all under the general rule of Kaz. It is a highly technological place, self-powered by the enormous fusion reactor hidden beneath the city. Sentinel robots patrol the streets, but in the six months since they've been here the settlers have grown quite accustomed to the spider-bots and mouse-like sweepers running about. There are screens at intervals, showing weather conditions, stock market prices, and what not. It is generally a productive, peaceful place.

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Julen City
Clockwork City I

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It's an interesting sight, in its way: a few dozen of the spiders shut down at exactly the same moment, slowing and freezing in their current tasks. Meanwhile, a bright, flashy alarm is saying that something is unhappy regarding subTer.

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Some time passes. Months. But Menayen is never oblivious to Yin's movments, and has been keeping track of her since she went to Iraq. Diplomacy, his elaphantine ear. It's a little unnerving that she vanished from his scanners, but some places there are difficult to track from Europe.

She's been in there a while, though, and he's just about to send some drones to check on her when he sees it. A wide red strip coming down on his solar flare recording hardware. And another. The thing lights up like Christmas. The Serinian hops from his chair and looks outside, peering through the window.

"Menayen? What is wrong?" Sin asks, looking up from her crossword puzzle.

As Menayen looks on, everything shifts. The colors all seem to meld into something a little more rusty; green becomes brown, blue becomes violet. He nearly falls from the window, sick with vertigo. His eyes ache.

"The sun just went red. The goddamn sun just went red. The sun's not supposed to do that for a billion years. But the goddamn sun just went red."