Hours later, after a marathon of "We'll figure it out tomorrow" responses to Tober's relentless questioning, bath time, homemade mac and cheese (the cleanup alone a Herculean task), and a bedtime story of Peter Rabbit (delivered in a progressively sleepier voice), Scott finally found himself alone. The easy part was over. The thing remained. Egg? No, that felt too simple. It was oval, white, and undeniably shell-like. The tapping and cracking were real.
He ventured back outside, the darkness amplifying the unsettling hole in his yard. He decided to leave the investigation of that for later. Under his phone's weak light, the object was still there: large, white, and distinctly cracked, but silent. No more tapping, no more cracks.
He took pictures â dozens of them, experimenting with settings. Each photo confirmed his initial impression: a giant, cracking egg. But what kind of egg? VSU's paleontology department came to mind. He recalled their building nestled behind biology, even further behind geology. They shared space with petroleum research; an adjunct professor even visited at night. But the tapping and cracking⦠that seemed more biological. Reddit? He shuddered. A public post with a picture would attract every crackpot within a hundred-mile radius. His location data would be a dead giveaway.
He opened his phone's photo gallery, pressed down on an image, and saw the option: "Remove location tag." Relief washed over him as he clicked it. Then, another option caught his eye: "Google Image Search." The decision was made.
'Cracked septic tank' dominated the search results, but the tapping and crackingâwitnessed in real-time didn't fit. Unless, of course, it was followed by a methane explosion. He scrolled past images of buried gator eggs, snake eggs, even Komodo dragon eggs, all far too small. Fossils, of course, were plentiful, but these were lifeless relics, not the active, cracking entity in his yard. EggHoax.com suggested a prank, but by whom? His six-year-old? His wife, who had a notoriously low tolerance for jokes? Unlikely.
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The results grew stranger: Australian ostrich nests, Nazi experiments involving golden eagles and elephants (seriously?), Japanese Godzilla egg art installations, Norwegian troll eggs, Welsh Gryphons⦠He even scrolled past countless references to dragon eggs, a testament to the absurdity of his situation. Then, a glimmer of hope. An image: a round pit in a farmer's field, containing a large, oval egg remarkably similar to the one in his backyard, once the dirt was brushed away.
He clicked the link: http://TheRealEragon.net
TheRealEragon.net was a relic, blinking text, a grey background, and a design that screamed early 1990s. A single, long page dominated the screen. At the top, a large image: the pearly white shell nestled in the farmer's field. Below, narrow columns of poorly written text, rife with "secret dragon riders egg" and an excessive, blinking use of the word "Amazing!" The site's design clashed jarringly with the fact that Eragon was published in the early 2000s. Scott scrolled past rambling paragraphs, more bizarre images (nothing like his own photos), until he spotted it: "Live Cams."
A table of tiny video feeds appeared, faint grid lines barely visible against the grey background. Four across, seventy-eight down. Each cell contained a live stream, labeled "LIVE" in the top right corner, with dimensions ("160x120") in the bottom left. Scott squinted at the first image. It resembled the farmer's field picture, but it was nighttime. The white shell was barely visible in what might have been moonlight. Many feeds showed brightly lit, obviously fake eggs, cement or perhaps papier-mâché on dining room tables, desks, even bathtubs. Some were poorly painted, revealing newspaper and ink beneath.
Then, in the bottom row, a clearer image. A backyard, brightly lit. An oval hole, eerily similar to his own. Squinting at the tiny, un-enlargeable feed, he saw a small shovel next to the hole, its handle glinting, a flash of purple in the glare. He looked up from his laptop, towards the hole in his backyard, illuminated by the outdoor lights. And there, next to the hole, lay his wife's purple-handled garden trowel.