art by Seth Alan Bareiss
Final Corrections, Pittsburgh Times-Dispatch
by M. Bennardo
In several items yesterday, the Visitor was variously described as having six legs, eight legs, or "an unholy agglomeration of writhing, thrashing appendages, unable to be counted." The correct number of legs is eight.
In our cover story, it was reported that electronics in the city and some suburbs had been disabled by an "electromagnetic pulse, or EMP." In fact, there was no such burst. Instead, the Visitor itself appears to be continuously emanating the electromagnetic radiation.
The extent of the Downtown Caldera was misstated. It is bounded roughly by the Boulevard of the Allies to the south and by Grant Street to the east, extending north through the former Cultural District as far as the Allegheny River. See detailed map on A3.
We incorrectly reported that all bridges in the downtown and surrounding areas were impassable. In fact, as yesterday’s Times-Dispatch went to press, both the Birmingham Bridge and the Hot Metal Bridge were intact. However, the Visitor has since pulverized both in the irresistible clutches of its sixty-foot claws.
Moreover, those claws should not have been described as "adamantium." Adamantium is a fictional substance of impossible hardness and strength. Scientists we interviewed suggested "adamantium" as a proposed name for the so-far impenetrable armor of the Visitor, but those suggestions do not represent a scientific consensus.
One of our correspondents repeatedly and erroneously referred to the Downtown Caldera as a "yawning hellgate." In fact, it is not known whether the caldera is a gateway and, if so, whether it leads to Hell. In addition, the caldera is not surrounded by "curtains of sulfurous fog," but rather by the steam of the boiling river. Finally, descriptions of "omnipresent screams" in the area should not have attributed those screams to "the wailing souls of the dead and the damned."
Surviving city officials inform us that we misquoted the Mayor as saying, "It's the end times! It's the end times! Oh God, it's judgment day!" No alternate quotation was provided, and the Mayor himself could no longer be reached for additional comment.
