via Niantic Project​

via Niantic Project​

The First Flash Shard Anomalies are now behind us, and as had been predicted, the XM Shards of some of the missing Niantic Researchers are entangled within them.

It seems, in the wake of today's events, +Hank Johnson experienced a sharp moment of clarity and one-ness with +Yuri Alaric Nagassa. 

I wonder if anyone felt +Misty Hannah's presence.

x

Originally shared by Hank Johnson

If you didn't know, Yuri's dad was a (he would never admit it in these words) spy for the USSR. He operated an 'observatory' high in the Andes that just happened to be performing 'critical astronomical research' in the Americas during the cold war.

An isolated existence. I don't know what happened to Yuri's mother, he never much talked about her, and what time he did spend with his dad was focused more on working with the equipment in the observatory and helping out with the 'research.'

Yuri Alaric Nagassa and I go way back. Before Niantic was officially even a thing, he and I shared a frequency.

Power Spots.

He understood immediately. Both within himself, as a sensitive who had felt their presence, and as someone privileged enough to have learned a way to experience the world without the crutch of technology (I'm being harsh, I love technology, but I recognize that it dulls certain senses).

The first time I met Yuri, there was an immediate sense of clarity. 

He was witty, intimidatingly intelligent, and his background in the world of the spooky (both kinds) yielded us some pretty strong common ground.

He laid on some corny jokes in a thick Russian accent, I laughed politely, then we started talking about one of my ideas. Something I was looking for that he could help me find. He leaned in. The accent vanished. It was all a front. He could don that personality, the bumbling son of a Russian spy, and drop it in a millisecond to become the brilliant stargazer, or the mystic native more in tune with the incessant hum of the forest than the rapid-fire world of modern science.

I felt him again, today. Like a lens tuning. For a second, there was that same, sharp clarity that I had felt the first time I met him.

It was a powerful sensation.

And I know the question that many of you want me to answer. Did I feel a connection break with Misty Hannah just as I felt one form with Yuri? It's an unfair question. I don't have the same history with Misty that I do with Nagassa. 

Perhaps another felt her presence. I'll leave it to them to share that experience.