Teasers from beyond the blastwave and two different time zones.

This has been one of the biggest hassles ever.. well I mean other than getting out of the ashlands in the first place. Some crazy ecologist wanted to go into them, specifically the source, Yellowstone of all places. Initially I refused, but god damn we he persistant. He said he didn't trust the others who were willing to guide him in, something about lack of experience of having not survived. (apparently those of us that made it out are kind of a big deal to the folks living on the edge and away from the ashlands, I don't get it. All we did was do our best to survive a hostile environement while trying to make sense of what the fuck was going on while thinking we were dying from radiation and not just acclimatizing to what some are calling magic's resurgence. Eh I dunno, shit's weird and I can light stuff on fire with my mind, dunno what to call it. Magic works for now I guess.)

The pay is insanely good though, dunno where he found it but sealed and unexpired food that isn't irradiated is also kind of a big deal, and the guy hasn't done anything too stupid... well Eivan really hasn't given him much of a chance to do anything too stupid like trying to hug a bear or something. Anyway, the GPS stopped giving us a satellite reading five days ago so we used a map from a park service truck we found half buried in a bank of ash west of the park along highway 287. A bit of guesswork later, since everything topographically has gone to hell out here. If we did everything right we're at the old faithful geyser, or near there.

This is where the ecologist kinda went bonkers starting writing notes and looking around for signs of life. Eivan and I have had to fish him out of a hole twice now and keep him away from the lava about seven times.

A bunch of basalt formations were pushed up when the volcano erupted and pushed, kinda reminds me of the devil's post pile a little, only with more lava. Speaking of which the lava in the central ring of basalt bubbles constantly, and occasionally "belches" up a stream of it, so we haven't been able to get too close. Honestly I don't want to stay here too long anyway. There's some distinct radioactivity that's not natural, which implies what the air force guys in colorado said about their radar tracking several warheads into the national park boundaries. So.. basically it seems someone nuked yellowstone as part of a mutually assured destruction plan. Go humanity I guess.

Anyway, we did find a boiling lake near the geyser, and there's some kind of algae growing in it, it took a few tries but the ecologist got a couple samples, but it looks like it died outside the heated water. We haven't seen anything bigger than a mouse though, and most of the soil's been covered with ash and other volcanic byproducts.

A sketch I did so people can kinda visualize it.

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Still in Canada, found the robots. They want me to investigate Le Grande Hotel to find out what happened to the last set of drones that went inside before they consider sending a representative south to consider trade negotiations. For entities that were basic chatbot intelligence before everything went tits up they're pretty sophisticated and came to a consensus that trade with humans may be beneficial for us all, though we have to pay it foreward first. Anyway I'm not too far inside the hotel yet, just at the managers office. The desktop still works, though it took some tinkering by myself and ID-9 (Institute drone 9789) to get it working so I could access it. It's also been complaining of a lack of wifi connectivity, which explains why the other ones that came here couldn't have called for help.

Some interesting logs. The manager seems to have gone mad after some point and attempted to draw in customers despite the apcolypse, one of the vending machines was somehow spitting out an infinite number of sodas, possibly from the rampant magic that the eruption of yellowstone unleashed, or other unknown factors. either way he put up a billboard that read "free cola with visitation", also something about the lights on the fourth floor having gone into rebellion and declaring the entire floor a perpetual discotheque.... considering from the outside I thought someone was inhabiting the hotel at first and someone was welding up there there may be a kernel of truth to it.  Eh, ID-9 has declared I'd had enough resting time, so I may as well resume poking around here and try and find the missing Ai rigs.