Lightning splits the sky, making contact with the lightning rod on the Capital building. Only, instead of disappearing, the bolt remains, freeze-framed between cloud and building.
Another bolt, and another freeze-frame. Over the course of the next ten minutes, dozens of lightning bolts shoot out of the sky, making contact with various points on the ground. And not a one of them disappears after.
A day goes by, the sky clears, the sun comes out, and still the lightning bolts persist. There is no active electricity in them. That much seems to have dissipated immediately. But the light from the bolts sears the sky like indelible ink. The sky looks like a photograph of a storm, only it isn’t.
Scientists are trying to describe the phenomenon, trying to explain it. The closest they can get is that the lightning somehow burned the sky, imprinting on the atmosphere, scorching the air itself. How, they can’t explain. There’s never been another case like this. There’s simply no precedent for this.
It is pretty to look at, if a bit unnerving. Lightning isn’t supposed to persist like that. We have no way of knowing if it will happen again, or what it will mean if it does. We’re just going to have to wait for another storm to see what happens. The scientists agree. They need more data points, as they’ve received precious little data from this one incident. We can only hope it’s not a sign of worse things to come.
