STATE COLLEGE, Jan 7 -- The Physics Department of Penn State, in conjunction with scientists from Rising Sun, the TL7 USSR, the Hive, Technomage refugees from the Technosphere Star Ship Daedalus, and others, released a series of connected papers today describing the Red Zone as "a paradoxical place where multiple histories are all true at once." According to the scientists in question, different parts of the Red Zone may experience different physical constraints or even different histories at a given time.
"Depending on when you interact with it, the Zone could a verdant garden of poisonous vegetation filled with primitive tribes or a dustbowl with tiny, hard-scrabble communities living on scavanged supplies," said Dr. Haslan Abu Hassan of Penn State Department of High-Energy Physics, formerly a member of the Universiti Sains Malaysia. "The disturbing thing is the inhabitants will remember and have evidence of years of completely contradictary histories."
Reports paint the Red Zone as, among other things, a fertile jungle filled with dinosaurs, a radioactive waste filled with pig-like mutants, or a place not unlike any other part of the Midwest. While readings generally give the thread a Tech Level of 6 on the Penn State Tech Level Scale, show a high Kellner ("magic") rating and display a high level of compatibility with Hypertech devices, some readings vary widely from those for extended periods of time, including one set of observations which consistently reported the Thread as TL5 with a Kellner rating of 1.2 for an entire month, during which time the observation team was "attacked constantly by giant ants."
