The sound of two men arguing did little to distract Faye from catching a Pokemon. With a flick of her finger, a pokeball flew across her phone’s screen and entrapped an innocent Bulbasaur. It struggled, but eventually the victory fanfare played and she added it to her stable of just over three hundred.

“Faye, are you even paying attention?” she suddenly heard. She turned over to see Owen’s exasperated expression. Her Producer was high strung at the best of times.

Faye rolled her eyes. “Yes, Dillon lost the--” she began.

“Found it!” came a voice from behind the Ford Transit emblazoned with the TTV logo. Dillon, her cameraman, emerged with a connector cable and walked up to the camera, which was already set up nearby.

Faye smirked. The two were good friends even outside of work, but they were each other’s foil. A perfect odd couple. Owen with his meticulous organization and Dillon with his near-perfect ability to find solace in utter chaos.

“Okay,” Owen said. “I’ll run in and get Mr. Bishop. Are we ready to go?”

“By the time you get back out here we’ll be good,” Dillon said.

Owen looked to Faye. “We good?”

She gave him a thumbs up. “All aces, boss.”

Owen nodded then began a slow jog into the building. Faye took a moment to look up at it. It was nothing special to look at. A converted warehouse like dozens more on Annacis Island. The little river island just southeast of Vancouver was covered in nothing but machine shops, manufacturing plants, warehouses and the government water treatment plant she’d gotten a whiff of on the way onto the island. Rising above behind the building, she could see the spires and struts of the Alex Fraser bridge, which spanned the river to the south toward Delta.

She turned to Dillon, who was still fiddling with the camera. “Hey this would be some good B-roll,” she suggested, gesturing to the bridge in the distance.

Dillon looked over to her. “Yeah, I was thinking of getting a shot from on top of the van, actually.”

“Is that work-safe?” she asked.

Dillon shrugged, then went back to setting up the camera.

Faye always knew she wanted to be a reporter. She knew it when she was little, watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with her brother. She wanted to be April O’Neil. Her parents had encouraged her dream and Faye worked at it until she eventually got her degree and an internship for a Golden Triangle News in Toronto as a Production Assistant.

But then she’d gotten the offer from Vancouver-based Terra TV News to be a field reporter after years of auditions and one-offs for Golden Triangle. Her dream was finally coming to fruition.

But even so, the excitement and adventure she had envisioned as a child didn’t manifest as she’d hoped. Instead of breaking the news, she was interviewing octogeneration lottery winners, speaking with people who’d been stung by murder hornets and covering Vancouver’s fattest pets. The most exciting thing she’d done was get into a confrontation with an anti-masker while interviewing a psychologist on the last leg of his book tour. At least the brewery story was a welcome change from the usual, but it left a wide berth for any sort of excitement.

She sighed again. She wanted to be on the ground during protests, covering riots and murders. Getting into it with corrupt politicians and being manhandled by police, but this was the best she had.

After a short time, Owen emerged from the building with a middle-aged man and a teenage girl in tow. He was talking to someone on his bluetooth, obviously speaking to the production crew back at the office.

“Mr. Bishop,” Faye said as the trio walked up to her, wearing her best reporter smile. “Faye Fong, Terra TV News.”

“Oh I know who you are, Ms. Fong. Please, call me Dane,” he said, reaching out to shake her hand. “This is my daughter, Emma. I hope you don’t mind but I’d like her with me for the interview.”

“Of course,” Faye responded. “Emma.” She shook the girl’s hand. She looked to be about eighteen, with full cheeks and long blonde hair and blue eyes. She was conventionally pretty. The sort of girl who could get by without make-up, but put it on anyway.

“Emma here is officially entering the family business,” Dane explained. “She’ll be taking over when I retire. Some day she’s going to be the face of Bishop & Rook.”

“All right,” Owen said. “So we’re going to get you up against the backdrop of the brewery. The whole process shouldn’t take more than five minutes. Are we ready, Dillon?”

“Ready,” Dillon said.

“Mr. Bishop, if you could stand here,” Owen said. He fussed around a bit making sure everyone was placed correctly while Faye smoothed out her blouse and skirt. Dillon eventually gave a thumbs up signalling that all was good.

“Okay, we’ll be going live in five… four… three…” He continued the countdown on his fingers and then pointed to Faye.

“Thanks Alice,” Faye said, wearing her reporter smile and speaking into her microphone. “I’m here at Bishop & Rook Breweries on Annacis Island where they are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary of serving their award-winning cold refreshing brews to the Vancouver region and all across Canada.” She turned to her two guests. “This is Owner Dane Bishop and his daughter Emma. Hello Mr. Bishop.”

“Hello Ms. Fong,” Dane said. “My father and his friend Emmanuel Rook founded Bishop & Rook with the idea in mind that-- that--” he trailed off, focusing on something in the distance, then suddenly looked back to the camera and then to Faye. “I’m… I’m sorry Ms. Fong, but can you see that?” he asked, pointing toward the street.

At first, Faye didn’t know how to react. She spun her head around, trying to see what he was referring to. People were pulling the vehicles over on the side of the road, and at least two of them got out. They were looking up, toward… toward something that floated about thirty feet above the road.

It was… a light? A floating orb? Not, not an orb. It was a shifting polygon, hovering above the street, like something out of a video game.

“Dillon, get this,” Faye said. Dillon looked back, then swiveled the camera around on the tripod to look at it. He whistled once he spotted it, then released the latch so he could put the camera on his shoulder. It was still connected to the device on his belt, but now mobile.

“Shit,” Owen said. “Alice wants to know what’s going on.”

“I’m… I’m sorry Alice,” Faye said. “I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking at. It appears to be some sort of… light. Almost like a crystal. It’s hovering about thirty feet above the road.” Her mind reeled trying to make sense of what she was seeing. A weather event? Electromagnetic anomaly? Was it a UFO?

A few more moments passed and the strange crystal began to behave differently. Its hard features began to flatten out, but it continued to hover. Eventually, it hung in the air, absolutely still.

Then a resounding boom erupted from the object. It was so loud and substantial that Faye could feel a shockwave coming from it that caused her to step back to maintain her balance. She instinctively clapped her hands over her ears and ducked down. She suddenly noted that little pieces of dirt and asphalt were strewn into the air. She instinctively kicked off her high heels and stood barefoot on the asphalt parking lot, ready to run at a moment’s notice. When the shockwave passed, she looked back to the light. It was absent, but the asphalt beneath it was cracked and folded over on itself, like it had been hit by a meteorite. A nearby car had been pushed over onto its side.

“Jesus Christ what was that?” Dane Bishop asked.

“Something came out of it,” Dillon said. “Shot into the ground, I think that was a sonic boom. I only barely saw it through the viewfinder.”

“Did you see what it was?” Faye asked, covering up her mic.

Dillon shot her a look that told her the answer should have been obvious. Faye pulled her microphone back up to her face as she watched people on the street stand back up and start to approach the small crater. Dillon kept the camera trained on them.

“Alice,” Faye said. “We’re still not exactly certain what happened, but it appears as though something…” she paused. Was she really about to say this? If Dillon was wrong about what he saw, it would mean the end of her career. “...something came out of the light and shot into the ground. There are people--”

She paused again, taking note of a low rumble she could feel through the soles of her feet. Her heart sank. Whatever was happening wasn’t over.

“Dad I think we should move back,” Emma said. Faye looked over at her. She was right. She looked to Owen, who nodded.

“Alice we’re going to move back for our safety, the ground is shaking,” Faye said. Was it an earthquake? Faye had been through earthquakes before, but she’d never noticed them while they were happening. Had whatever came out of the light caused one to begin?

The five of them started to move closer to the entrance of the brewery while Dillon kept his camera trained on the spot the crater had formed. The people who had initially stepped up to it in curiosity began to go back to their vehicles. The poles along the road began to shake back-and-forth, causing the powerlines to sway in a circular motion. 

Faye then noticed the crater was beginning to… expand? No. No, whatever had penetrated the ground was pushing the dirt back up. A mound was beginning to appear from the creator. The four of them made it to the entrance of the brewery, while people inside began to come out to see what had happened.

Suddenly, something emerged from the growing mound. Faye was ready to expect anything from alien tripods to Godzilla at that point. But the last thing she expected to see was… a sprout?

“Is that… a beanstalk?” Faye wondered aloud. She watched in awe as the thick green sprout emerged from the ground, unfurling itself as it grew. A magic beanstalk? No. As it unfurled it straightened out, lost its green shade and formed branches. It wasn’t a beanstalk. It was a tree.

A tree growing at a billion times the rate of what one might have expected, but a tree nonetheless. Within seconds it was three feet tall. Then it was ten. It grew so quickly it bunched the asphalt it pushed away in a second concentric mound that began to approach the curb. A power pole started to lean over, taking the power lines with it. She could hear an electric snap and watched as the line broke and sparks began to fall around. The people on the road ran back toward the opposite side of the street.

The tree continued to grow. Not just taller, but wider.

Twenty feet. Thirty.

A crowd started to appear around her as the workers at the brewery all came out.

“Faye, keep talking,” Owen said.

“I… I’m sorry, Alice. I've never seen anything like this. I’m awestruck. A... a tree is growing out of the asphalt on Cliveden Avenue. It’s… it’s growing impossibly fast.”

Fifty feet. The base of the tree was nearly as wide as the road now, and it wasn’t slowing down. Sixty feet. Faye began to wonder if it was going to slow down. She was torn between retreating into the building or trying to move further out of the area.

By the time it had reached ninety feet in height, it started to slow. It was a gradual slowdown of the growth, but it still grew. At a hundred feet, Faye noticed something peculiar happening at the base of the trunk. A depression appeared on the side of the tree, as though the fibers inside the tree were being pulled up inside the tree to facilitate further growth. The depression was subtle at first, but soon began to spread out on the face of the trunk. The tree itself started to convulse and change shape.

The growth eventually came to a halt at what she estimated was about a hundred-fifty feet. It’s crown stood out ever higher than the trees that grew on the opposite side of the road. It had pushed back all the debris. It had taken out the sidewalk on both sides of the street and pushed at least two other cars onto their side. And then it just… sat there. The rumbling had ceased, and all was quiet.

“That was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Dillon said to the silence.

“I don’t think it’s over,” Emma said. Faye looked over to her for a brief moment. She was correct.

The moment she lookedback, the tree trunk again started to shift-- but it wasn’t shifting shape anymore. It was… color? It began to bear the same look as the light which had brought the tree. It shimmered the same way, but was centered in the tree instead of hovering above the road. And it was bigger. Far bigger than the original light. It enveloped the entire length of the depression. Faye estimated it was thirty feet across as the widest point. But it was round and… and it shimmered.

She watched as people once again got out of their cars and walked toward it to get a closer look.

The whole thing screamed danger. After all this, she knew it wasn’t over. She wanted to yell at everyone to get back. The whole process had taken no more than a couple of minutes, and every unexpected thing had been followed by another. She watched as the people moved toward the tree in cautious curiosity.

And then something came out of it.