Tracking the Glacial Buzz

Three years ago in our special issue, Holding out for a Hero, the editors of this magazine noted that even twenty-five years after the first government recognition of the Great Awakening, scientists still had no concrete theories on the nature of the link between the Glowstone Quarry in the Andes and the sudden emergence of superhuman abilities in previously unremarkable individuals.

According to Dr. Fairboe at the University of Oslo, that may be because we have all been looking in the wrong place.

Fairboe spent much of this past summer in Antarctica, where he and two colleagues, as well as a class of advanced students, examined a site that, in Fairboe’s words, “May be glowstone ground zero.”

It all started when Dr. Sørenson, also of the University of Oslo, developed a camera lens that responded to the high levels of “buzz” in glowstones. Buzz, which many in the scientific community prefer to call USR (Unexplained Sensitive Response), is an unquantifiable but widely accepted human reaction to glowstones. Buzz has variously been described as “an energy signature,” “a feeling of endless potential” and “brain drain” by those sensitive to it.

Sørenson’s lens relied on the fact that glowstones release very weak levels of both radio waves and ultraviolet light. “On both sides of the spectrum their energy signatures are weaker than many other items in our ambient environment,” he said, “but the fact that they release both at once is unique, and something we could look for.”

After a few upsets and trials last year, Sørenson’s lens was sent up to the international space station back in January to conduct wide-scale a study of Earth.

Before this study, the only way to detect buzz was to send a sensitive into an area and rely on his or her impressions and feedback. Sensitives are usually—though not always—supers, though by a slim majority most supers are not sensitives. (The reason for the correlation is still unknown, though nearly ever non-super sensitive on record does have family members with powers.)

For the first time, Sørenson was able to systematically examine the entire world’s glowstone supply. Some of what he saw was as he expected. “Spots all along the Andes were glowing bright, and of course London was a big blip, thanks to the exhibit at the British Museum. There were a few dozen places where I was surprised to see the concentration of glowstone that I did, but I’ve been informed by more than one government that many of those locations are privileged information. There were also a few false positives, but what fascinated us all was Antarctica.”

Specifically, the Antarctic ice shelf. The levels there were lower than in the Andes or Siberia, but they were spread out over miles of land. None of the other natural major concentrations on record spanned more than a couple hundred feet.

“We all knew that this was something different, something exciting,” Fairboe said. He and Sørenson immediately started planning an expedition, scheduled to take place during the coldest season of the Southern Hemisphere because of recent reports of the ice shelf shifting dangerously during the summer months.

In Antarctica they found barren expanses of ice that went on for miles. The land seemed featureless to all of the participants except Jarrod Rollag, a graduate student who was also a known sensitive.

To Rollag, the whole place was humming. “My friends say that I acted like I was punch-drunk most of the time. But everything—the land, the colors—was just so vivid.” Rollag reports that the experience was pleasant at first, but that as time went on he started suffering frequent migraines and—once again according to his colleagues—a sense of paranoia.

Still, Rollag’s presence was invaluable as the group worked to explore the boundaries of the glowstone field. His sense could determine, more quickly and easily than their bulky expensive equipment, how far out the glowstone concentration went.

Meanwhile, Sørenson was making a geological survey of glowstone intensity. Using the same drills that environment scientists have used for years, he and his crew began extracting cylinders of ice roughly a foot across and fifty feet deep from the glacial ice.

The ice was riddled with glowstones. Interestingly, they seemed to increase in concentration deeper in the ice. Each individual sample gave off a much weaker resonance than any pieces of equal size from Chile or Russia. However, because of the sheer volume of stones present at the site, the intensity rating was practically off the charts. “This is a major find,” Fairboe said.

Even before they cut into the ice, they found glowstones scattered liberally along the surface. “It took us a while to notice them, since they were smooth and milky white, just like the ice,” Rollag said. “Once we figured out what they were though—we got a few boxes full of the things before we realized there was no point in trying to collect all of them.”

The expedition was cut short by an approaching storm or equipment malfunction (accounts differ), but the trip leaders are confident that the information and materials they collected on their abbreviated mission still constitute a major find. Fairboe said, “With this new discovery, we’re one step closer to figuring out where glowstones come from and what they have to do with the extraordinary abilities that have surfaced in the past generation. This is all very exciting.”


(Continue reading as the plot thickens....)