The Snap

An account for the runners' halls, compiled at Saltreach by Orla Benn, hall clerk, in 30 AS, and revised in 38 AS. Where the sources disagree, both versions are given, with the one the halls keep.

The morning

On the morning of the Snap the elevator above Port Anselm was having an ordinary day. The weather over the port was clear. Far above them, at the top of the ribbon, the station was carrying four hundred crew.

At 06:12 local time a micrometeoroid swarm crossed the ribbon about forty kilometres above the plaza and cut it.

No source disputes the cause. Nearly every source disputes something else.

The ribbon did not fall all at once. It came down from east to west, like a rope paid out from the stern of a moving ship. Survivors along the route describe the same three things: a dark line lowering across the sky over hours, a sound like wind in a sail that never stopped, and then the impact. It took forty-one hours for thirty thousand kilometres of carbon ribbon to finish coming down, a third of the way around the world.

The forty-one hours

Hour	Local time	What happened	Main source
0	06:12, first day	The swarm cuts the ribbon about 40 km up. Port Anselm control loses every tension reading above the cut.	Port Anselm control log
0	06:14	The radio room hears from the station. It has felt the jolt and reports that it is "climbing".	Radio room log, Benedek Orr
1	about 07:00	The lower ribbon slumps across the western terraces of Port Anselm. The bottom two kilometres, braced inside the plaza tower, stay standing. This is the Stump.	Port Anselm testimonies
5	about 11:00	Ribbon comes down across the coast road and the construction depot at what is now Gantry.	Gantry testimonies
9 to 15	afternoon and evening	Ribbon lands across Dunmarrow. Herders' camps are hit in the dark. Nobody counts them.	Halls' testimonies, incomplete
19	about 01:00, second day	Ribbon lands on the Glass Sea. Salt-pan workers at what is now Saltreach watch it come down by moonlight.	Saltreach testimonies
23	about 05:00	Ribbon falls into the Long Shallows and sinks to the bottom in places.	Tarry testimonies
27 to 30	morning, second day	At about kilometre 9,000 the falling ribbon piles onto itself in great loops. This is the coil.	Coiltown testimonies
41	23:12, second day	The last of the ribbon lands at the far western end, the Tail. Herders report that the ground "stopped shaking".	Halls' count

The dead

Roughly twelve thousand people died under the ribbon. Most died in the first hours, in the western terraces of Port Anselm and along the coast road.

There are two counts. The Line Authority's Register of the Fallen, published in 9 AS, gives 11,806 names. The halls' count, from town lists, comes to about 12,400. Most of the difference is Dunmarrow, where the herding camps kept no lists and the survivors moved on. The halls say "roughly twelve thousand", and so does this account.

The station

Above the cut, the station and its counterweight, no longer held down, were flung outward into a higher orbit. Four hundred crew were aboard.

Benedek Orr was on duty in the Port Anselm radio room that morning. His log records voice contact with the station for the first nineteen hours: tension figures, orbit figures, and repeated requests for the names of the dead in the port, which he could not give. After the nineteenth hour the log records a signal, "on and off", over the following months, which Orr never once describes as a voice. The last entry for it falls in the dry season of 1 AS.

In 9 AS the founding charter of the Line Authority declared the station lost with all four hundred crew. Its technical annex describes the later signals as "an automatic beacon, failing".

Orr, interviewed for this account in 29 AS, did not agree. "A beacon is steady," he said. "This had gaps in it. It was like somebody holding the key down and letting go." Asked what he thought it meant, he said he was a radio operator, not a priest, and asked for his log back.

This account does not choose between them. It records that the Saltreach hall asked the Authority for its copy of the station's last transmissions in 31 AS, and was told that no copy exists.

Where the sources disagree

The time. The control log says 06:12, and the halls keep 06:12. Fishers in Port Anselm harbour, and the harbour bell-keeper, put the first sound at 06:09 or 06:10. The likeliest explanation is that the swarm struck over several minutes, and 06:12 was the moment the ribbon finally parted.
The length of the fall. The halls count forty-one hours, from the cut to the last landfall reported by herders at the Tail. The Authority's survey of 12 AS put the last landfall nearer hour 39. The halls keep forty-one, partly because it is carved on every memorial on the Line.
The warning. A story persists that the station saw the swarm coming and sent a warning at 06:05. Neither the control log nor Orr's log shows anything before 06:12. No record supports the story. Orr called it "the kind of thing people need to be true".
The far end. Herders at the Tail say it fell further than the survey shows, and that its last few kilometres lie under the dunes. Nobody has dug to find out.

Snap Morning

Every year on the anniversary, at 06:12, every runners' hall on the Line goes silent for one minute. Runners out on the ribbon clamp down where they are. Many of them lay a palm flat on the ribbon for the length of the silence.

Ask an old runner why, and you will be told it is to feel whether it has finished falling.