Analogue Sheep : Vol 4 : Sacrifice

The storms came first. 

At first, they were dismissed as anomalies. An unusually strong typhoon season. Flash flooding in deserts that hadn’t seen rain in decades. Sudden freezes in tropical climates.

Unprecedented, but not impossible.

Then came the things that were impossible.

The tides no longer obeyed the moon. Entire harvests rotted overnight, despite perfect soil conditions. A mountain in the Andes split down the middle, exposing ruins no civilization had ever recorded.

The world was wrong.

The brightest minds were called in. Think tanks, research labs, global task forces. Billions were poured into experimental geoengineering projects. Massive climate stabilization towers were built, reaching into the sky to balance atmospheric composition. Oceanic regulators were deployed to control rising temperatures. The first interplanetary shipments of synthetic food began arriving from Mars-3.

And for a time, it seemed to be working.

But no one understood why.

The numbers didn’t align with expectations. Some changes happened faster than science could account for. Others, bafflingly, corrected themselves before human intervention even took effect.

As if something unseen was already at work.

Nathaniel Calloway was drinking warm beer in a half-collapsed bar on the outskirts of Manaus when the news came through.

He hadn’t planned to be here. He had planned to be in - deep in the forest, days from civilization, off the maps and beyond the reach of satellites. But he’d needed supplies, and if you wanted to find someone who could get you what you needed, you came here.

The city was a swollen mess of half-built skyscrapers and crumbling colonial ruins, its air thick with the stink of damp and gasoline. He had spent the morning haggling for preserved rations, trading for solar batteries, and repairing his sat-phone, all the while itching to get back inside.

And then, over the bar’s ancient television, he heard the broadcast.

“-scientists baffled as extreme weather events stabilise worldwide. Climate towers and oceanic regulators credited with restoring planetary balance ahead of schedule-”

Nate nearly choked on his beer.

No. That wasn’t possible.

The towers weren’t enough.

He had seen the data before heading out on his last expedition. The stabilisation efforts were failing. Nothing humanity had built was actually working - not the regulators, not the filtration domes, not the artificial carbon sinks.

The planet was beyond repair.

And yet -

The world had corrected itself.

For the first time in years, the storms had ceased.

The heat waves had broken.

The world had healed.

And something in his gut twisted.

Because he knew, deep down, that the answer wasn’t in the climate towers.

It was in the jungle.

Nate had spent his life tracking the remnants of lost civilizations. Not the ones found in textbooks or museums, but the ones still breathing, still walking, still singing their prayers under ancient canopies where no satellite had ever gazed.

The tribes who had survived beyond the reach of empire, of industry, of progress.

But progress was relentless.

One by one, the old ways had disappeared.

Governments sent in conservation teams with offers of protection and education. Logging companies sent in mercenaries. Missionaries arrived with medicine and Bibles.

And everywhere Nate went, he saw the same pattern.

A village forgotten by time, holding on against the current.

Then, a moment of contact.

And then -

Nothing.

The people gone. Their homes razed. Their gods forgotten.

And now, as he listened to the news, as the climate towers were praised for their miraculous success, he thought of the last tribe he had visited.

Deep in the rainforest. Hidden from the world.

Their rituals had been bloody, their gods merciless, their customs so ancient they had no word for anything beyond their land.

He had sat with them. Watched their ceremonies. Watched the way the elders spoke in hushed tones before choosing -

He hadn’t understood.

Not then.

Now, he felt something cold crawl up his spine.

He dug through his pack, pulling out his journal, flipping through pages of notes taken by firelight, sweat staining the ink.

He checked the dates. Matched them to the data.

It lined up.

Every time the world had lurched toward collapse, every time the weather had spiralled beyond control -

A tribe had been lost.

And every time disaster had been averted -

A sacrifice had been made.

Not metaphorically.

Not symbolically.

Real blood. Real offerings.

Nate wiped his hands over his face.

For centuries, science had mapped the forces that governed the universe. The tides obeyed gravity. The weather followed pressure systems. The planet spun in predictable rotation.

And yet -

The last blood sacrifice had been performed three nights ago.

The same night the world had healed itself.

He left the bar without finishing his drink. 

The street was humid and pulsing with life, vendors shouting over the drone of electric bikes, neon lights flashing above dense crowds. The world moved on, oblivious.

They thought the problem was solved.

They thought technology had saved them.

But it had been luck. Blind, accidental, luck - coinciding with something older, something unseen.

And the next time disaster struck - when the last tribe was gone -

There would be nothing left to stop it.

They were already looking.

He knew how this worked. Some bureaucrat, some agency, some government task force had already picked up the same anomalies he had.

They wouldn’t know what they were looking for, but they would find them anyway.

Satellite tracking. Conservation efforts. Integration programs.

They would offer medicine, education, a path to modern life - never realizing they were killing the last thin thread that held the world together.

Nate shut the journal, his pulse hammering.

He had spent his life documenting these cultures. Protecting them.

Now, he would have to hide one.

Because if the world ever found them…

The gods would stop waiting.