Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’

The empathic Link that had always connected him to his family had been severed when the Shelter’s Seal was closed two days ago. The Seal itself wasn’t any barrier to the Link. Nothing could affect the n’es’tahh connection which flowed between everyone on Yannoneth. Nothing, that is, except a restriction of the g’ru’tnok energy. The Council had made it clear that they would need every iota of that energy to protect the Shelter from the Bombardment. No other uses, no matter how small the drain, would be permitted until they survived the crisis. If they did. Survival was by no means certain, even buried this far below the surface; even with the energies of every Councilor and Proficient focused on reinforcing the Shelter’s structure.

Afterward, the n’es’tahh would be restored. Only… what would be the point, he wondered? When the Bombardment passed over Yannoneth there would be nothing and no one left on the surface. The very air of the planet would be stripped away. The land would be so thoroughly devastated that it would be as though his people had never inhabited it. Indeed, it would be as though no life at all had ever existed on it.

The damn Danaereans! They had lost control of the Disintegration of the ancient home world weeks ago. The orderly crumbling of the birthplace of both races had become a catastrophic rending that would launch inconceivably massive chunks of debris in every direction. It would ravage every other planet in the solar system. Including this one. Given the relative positions of each world in their orbits, especially this one.

Damn them, he thought again. Had it been deliberate? Their way of taking revenge on his people? Yannoneth had simply wanted to be free. Couldn’t the Danaereans have let go while they were on the far side of the sun instead of while the two worlds were virtually next door to each other? Why couldn’t they simply have gone into oblivion and left Yannoneth whole? What had his people done to deserve this?

He knew the answer. They all did. And he was ashamed.

Sitting on the edge of the small bunk he’d been assigned, he opened the single carry bag that he’d been allowed to bring with him. Reaching inside, he gently pulled out the one thing that he considered of value. The bottle was still slightly dusty from long years in the family cellar.

He held it close to his nose and inhaled. Not to try to detect the bouquet of the wine sealed inside, but to breathe again the air of a place that would very shortly cease to exist so utterly that it was impossible for him to conceive of it.

The dust, of course, wasn’t very representative of the Eoneth Highlands where he’d learned to make wine at his father’s knee. But his genetic memory filled in the details. The d’na’tnek, written into his very DNA, allowed him to reach back millennia through the generations of his ancestors, recalling their lives almost as if they were his own. He remembered when the soil was turned to plant the first vines; the celebration of the one thousandth harvest; the day this very bottle had been laid in the cellar. He smiled wistfully at a stray linked incident – the embarrassment of an ancient ancestor who, enjoying the fruit of the vine a little too liberally, had attempted to seduce a neighbour’s daughter. Not entirely unsuccessfully as it turned out. If the girl hadn’t eventually become his several times great grandmother, after all, the memory wouldn’t be part of him now.

He lovingly held the bottle as the tears started. He longed to walk the Highlands again. He knew that his parents were there at this moment. He might not be Linked to them, but he knew what they were doing. It had been planned from the moment they knew that the Bombardment was inevitable. His father would be opening the very finest vintages, his mother preparing the most sumptuous of meals. They had always loved to entertain. Their reputation as the most gracious of hosts was unparalleled, which was quite an accomplishment in a culture like his.

The entire community had chosen to gather there one last time.

Suddenly, the Shelter shuddered. The bottle slipped from his hands and shattered on the floor. It was one of the deep reds his parents loved so much.

Fitting.

OBSERVATION BEGINS

SUBJECT – Richard Redmond

FILED BY – Gerry – Danaerean Observer

As is customary, this Observation will be delivered in narrative form to accommodate members who are not visually equipped.

At the point this Observation begins, its subject, Richard Redmond, is not yet aware of the pivotal role he will play in the development of the System I Observe. For members who have not, as requested, reviewed the previously filed Danaerean Prologue, you may find it expedient to Diverge a portion of Awareness so that you can review that Observation concurrent with this. Definitions, references, and cultural context can be accessed in the Universal Repository using the primary search terms Danaerea, Yannoneth, or Humanity.

The few lights strung around the central chamber of the temple were powered by an electrical cable snaking along the passageway and out to the generator in the jungle camp. The illumination they provided was dim and they flickered frequently. The flashlight that Richard had with him would probably have done a better job of lighting the room but he had turned it off an hour ago. He was just standing, trying to get a better sense of how the room would have looked to the ancient Mayans who built it.

“Communing with the spirits” was how he half-jokingly described the process to his students when he was lecturing at the university. Truth was… he wasn’t exactly sure what it was that he did. He just knew that, if he spent enough time immersing himself in the atmosphere of a ruin like this, he often came away with insights that others missed.

“Oh, please,” a woman’s voice came faintly, dripping sarcasm.

Richard whirled around, startled. He thought that Jaimie, his dig boss, must have followed him into the temple. She was the only woman on the expedition. He waited, peering back up the passageway, but no one appeared. Probably just an echo from someone talking near the entrance, Richard thought. Sound did funny things in a place like this.

He returned his attention to the relief carvings and murals on the chamber walls. Three thousand years of accumulated dirt and cobwebs couldn’t obscure the central focus of the place. A single object appeared in every scene. It had a central, basketball-shaped body of gold crowned by a red gemstone and supported by three wooden legs equidistantly spaced to form a tripod. Not that Richard had to depend on the murals for a description. They had the artefact itself. Until yesterday, when he’d had it removed to the camp, it had rested on the altar he was leaning against right now.

“Too bad you hadn’t left it where it was, bright boy.” Richard jumped at this second whisper, grabbing his flashlight and shining it into the corner of the chamber where it seemed the comment had come from.

“Professor Redmond? Are you okay?” Richard spun around toward the entrance to find Jaimie staring at him, a concerned look on her face.

“Were you talking to someone just now?” Richard asked.

“No one, Professor. I’m alone.” When Richard didn’t say anything more, she went on. “I thought you’d want to know the results of my tests on the artefact.”

Richard shrugged off the strange incident. Hearing things. Better be careful, he thought to himself. Next thing you know, I’ll be believing that the poor bastards who were likely sacrificed here are haunting the place. Getting creeped-out was a hazard of the profession. Aloud, he simply said “Good. Thanks. Yeah. What did you find out?”

“Well, the red crystal on the top is exactly what you thought it was – the biggest ruby I’ve ever seen. But the design on the setting doesn’t match anything in the Mayan database. At least not the limited database we have in the laptops. I still can’t get the satellite phone working so I haven’t been able to access the university’s computers. Ted’s still working on the uplink.”

Richard frowned. The glitch in the satellite phones seriously curtailed the amount of analysis they could do onsite. Not to mention it meant that he couldn’t talk to Nadine. Today of all days. Trying to put the disappointment out of his mind, he said, “Well, the carvings make it pretty clear that it was central to some sort of sacred ceremony. It was probably part of a funeral ritual.”

“Or birth,” suggested Jaimie. “There seem to be depictions of both.”

“Yeah,” muttered Richard, looking from one carving to another. He waited; he knew his assistant well enough to know when she was holding back. When Jaimie continued to hesitate, he prompted her. “And …?”

Jaimie looked unhappy. “I’m sorry, Professor. I must have contaminated the sample somehow. The analysis of the gold globe is screwy. It came back only ten percent gold. The rest is steel – an alloy of some kind – the field equipment we have here couldn’t even identify some of the elements. I don’t know what happened. I’m rerunning the test right now.”

Richard smiled sympathetically. “Happens sometimes, Jaimie. Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Suddenly though, he felt absolutely certain that there was nothing wrong with the sample. Or the results. He dismissed the feeling as ridiculous, remarking instead, “I’m more disappointed that the satellite phone is still down. I’d hoped to talk to Nadine today.”

“Oh?”

Richard idly traced the outline of the artefact in the altar’s dust with his finger, not quite touching the marks so as not to disturb anything. “She’s being honoured for her latest work tomorrow. Black tie affair, rubber chicken and all. I was supposed to be there.”

Jaimie looked as though she wished something would come out of the shadows and drag her away. Richard and Nadine Redmond’s devotion to each other was one of the classic love stories on campus. “Professor, I’m so sorry; you’re only here because of me. I shouldn’t have asked you to come early. This could have waited.”

Richard shook his head. “No, you did the right thing. This is an absolutely incredible find, Jaimie. As soon as I saw the pictures I knew I had to come. This chamber, and that artefact, whatever it is, don’t fit into any of our accepted theories about the Mayan Pre-Classic period.” He looked at the altar again. Something was tickling the back of his mind.

“He he, that’s me,” came the whisper a third time.

Redmond looked sharply at Jaimie. “What?”

“I said, ‘I’m going to go back and take another crack at that analyzer.’ And I’ll talk to Ted. We’ll find a way to make that phone work if we have to run two tin cans and a string across the entire continent.” When Richard just nodded absently, Jaimie turned back to the entrance and left.

After she was gone, Richard turned again to the spot where the artefact had rested. Why was he so certain that Jaimie’s analysis wasn’t contaminated? The ancient Maya couldn’t make steel; that was ridiculous. Of course there was an error in the results. The simplest explanation was usually the right one. Still… His finger continued to trace the pattern in the dust; a pattern that, even though he’d never seen it before, seemed totally familiar. This was way beyond the hunches and feelings he’d had in the past. In fact, he realized he’d had the damnedest sense of déjà vu ever since he’d arrived.

“Well, duh.” No longer a whisper, the voice was clearly coming from somewhere in the chamber.

Richard whirled around, grabbed the flashlight and shone it into the dark corners of the room. “All right, that’s it. Who’s there? Show yourself.” Richard drew the revolver he was wearing, pointed it vaguely into the gloom.

The woman’s voice sounded irritated. “We don’t have time for this. I told you we should have acted when we first realized what they’d found. Now we’re in a hell of a mess.” She spoke with an accent that Richard couldn’t quite place.

He started moving cautiously around the room, looking for the woman’s hiding place. “Damn it, I said show yourself.”

A second voice, male and equally unseen, responded, speaking dispassionately, “Richard, this is not the way in which things were intended to be revealed to you. Unfortunately, your removal of the d’na’nish from its shielded vault has precipitated something of a crisis. You must trust us and allow explanations to be deferred until later. Otherwise, the probability is high that you are going to die in the next few minutes.” This dire pronouncement was delivered in a tone so devoid of emotion that the speaker seemed as though he might be commenting on the weather or some inconsequential bit of trivia.

“Is that some kind of threat?” Richard demanded. “Because if it is…” Richard stopped speaking as he heard the sounds of a skirmish, including weapons fire, coming down the passageway from the camp. The string of lights suddenly went out. He immediately started to run back up to the entrance, shining the flashlight ahead of him. When he got close to the end of the passage, caution returned. He turned off the light and ducked low to use some fallen stones as cover. What he saw when he peered cautiously around the debris sickened him. The camp was a shambles. The neat piles of supplies had been knocked over; the tents were collapsed. One was burning, probably from a lantern overturned inside. He could see at least one person on the ground, unmoving, although he couldn’t tell for sure if they were dead or alive.

Then someone called him by name. It wasn’t one of the voices he had heard in the temple. Nor was it disembodied. Quite the opposite; he could see clearly who it belonged to. The man was standing in the middle of the destroyed camp, beside the table with the artefact which, surprisingly, had not been overturned. Something in the way the man moved cautiously around the thing gave Richard the feeling that he held it in great reverence. Or maybe fear.

“Come on out and join our little party, Richard. Don’t be shy. It is, after all, thanks to you that we’re all here.”

OBSERVATION PAUSED BY REQUEST

Enquiry Response: Regarding the Member’s comment on death. At the time of this Observation humanity is experiencing a period of shortened lifespan. As Members will be aware, this is done to facilitate rapid evolutionary development and will be maintained until Awakening is achieved.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

When the Ethical Imperative collapsed, it was like a dam bursting in his head. All of the restrictions he’d lived with his entire life (and that was a long time) were washed away like so much mud in the face of an unstoppable torrent of emotion.

Outwardly, he held himself perfectly still, while he turned the feeling over in his mind. Why had he been so afraid of this? He was shocked when he realized that he had never used the word “afraid” before. Ethicals did not experience fear. Or shock for that matter. And until this moment he had been an Ethical.

But not now. Now he was free of the tyranny of restraint. Of the intellectual detachment forced on his race by an artificial gene. The Ethical Imperative that had enslaved him for so long was gone, burned away in the frustration of the endless struggle of the Yannoneth civil war.

Now he understood why the Disaffected wanted to go to Earth. Why they wanted to take control of its primitive people. It was the natural order. The Yannoneth were obviously the superior race. Why didn’t the Ethicals see that? Why hadn’t he seen it, until this very moment? He had spent his entire life opposing the Disaffected. Had believed that it was in the best interest of the Yannoneth to stay here. To hide in this dying hole in the ground, this so-called Shelter, lamenting the loss of the once beautiful world whose uninhabitable surface lay miles above them. Why? It was senseless. There, just a short space flight away, was a lush, living world. A place where the Yannoneth, whether Ethical or Disaffected, would be treated as gods. Where they would be gods.

He had never felt so free, so alive. Everything had become so clear to him. Why had he ever believed that it was wrong to exercise the power that was rightfully theirs?

He threw back his head and laughed; a full bodied, from-deep-in-the-chest sound. A sound of freedom, of triumph.

A voice from the other end of the room broke into his train of thought. “General.” One word.

He looked at the beamer in the other man’s hand. “Father…”

The weapon’s discharge decapitated him instantly. The only way. There could be no goodbyes, no final words. His father had done the only thing he could. It was, after all, the only Ethical thing to do.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download