Location Seed: The Zaparinqui Disruption.

Zaparinqui Disruption – Google Docs

The Zaparinqui Disruption

Twenty four hours ago, every person who lived in the village of Zaparinqui, Argentina disappeared in a flash of light, for approximately forty-five minutes.  For those without Google Maps up: it’s a village in Chaco Province, population around 700 or so. It is not a particularly notorious place, Weird Worldly speaking, with no major manifestations or events or incidents involved.  At least, up until yesterday.

The inhabitants themselves reportedly didn’t notice anything, except of course for the lost time.  They were also reportedly not further affected by the Disruption. In fact, the only reason that anybody in the outside world knows that the Zaparinqui Disruption occurred is because a tourist happened to be in the village buying supplies when everybody in the store disappeared. She then spent an increasingly surreal period of time looking for everyone until they all appeared again in another flash of light; and even then this incident might not passed unnoticed, except that the tourist in question happened to be clued-in on the Weird World, and had the right numbers to call (and knew the right keywords to utter).

So… congratulations, you’re going to South America!  Flight to Buenos Aires, then another to Resistencia Airport in Chaco, then a jump to the Castelli local airport, and that’s last one’s only a few miles away.  That’s downright convenient, all things considered. The Argentinians know you’re coming, and they’ll have a minder or two along. Don’t ditch the minder this time; we’re there not exactly on sufferance, but after the Quito thing most South American countries are a bit jaundiced about what we do for them and the rest of the OAS.

And what are we doing, here?  Finding out what on Earth happened.  No expectations or theories yet, so try to take a general approach to the problem.  And, oh, yes: if it turns out that this is just a weird mental breakdown by the initial reporter, make sure you get her back promptly and without further stress.  Some of the keywords she knows are potent bureaucratic magic, indeed; as witnessed by the fact that hey, you’re going to South America.