Situational Awareness (Welded Sunset)
#242 of Short Stories
A veteran mecha bear is startled.
~ The massive bear mech, painted construction pylon orange, froze in place with the creeping and sudden realization that the current time of his chronometer did not match up with the experience and sensations at hand. There were no spears lanced through his side, the pain simply ceasing. The sounds of the battle around him remained deafening, his field of vision a wild spray of colors from which he could discern no objects.
~ With the chronometer ticking forward a single second, the desynchronization between the timestamps of present reality and the actual time felt just a little worse. Two ticks later, and he realized that reality wasn't moving in time. The spray of impact from the strafing run of some hawk above was the shattered pieces of a construction beam that had come loose from the cables.
~ The wider world seemed a bit more focused; the crowd of construction workers were chattering to each other over the din of plasma rifle fire and seemed to be motioning for assistance somewhere. He could taste coolant in his mouth and panic in his core.
~ A stillness fell out over the construction yard as the misshapen blobs of colors shuddered into recognizable objects and anti-air cannons that were not present fell silent. A glimmering glow of the guide fox's beacon flickered against the earth, a punctured mains power circuit pulsing into his jaws with a crushing agreement to his chronometer.