REGENESIS

by D. Scott Dickinson

  His thoughts are interrupted by the sudden halt of the band ahead. Suddenly, he stumbles into the base of a wide pit. Its circumference is circumscribed by layer upon layer of the massive stone blocks he viewed on the outside of the tower’s wall.

  These features are illuminated by the ghastly glow of phosphorescing, skeletal bones covering the floor of the pit. Revealing a stone staircase on the opposite wall, leading upward.

  As the travelers walk toward the steps, every bone they touch turns immediately to dust, extinguishing its light. It is as if the entire band is snuffing out candles as they make their way across the floor of the pit.

  Following closely, the man begins climbing the stony steps. It seems the open tower above is lighted by an ascending series of narrowing rings whose eerie glow seems to lead ever upward to a summit too distant to see.

  After several steps, the man reaches a rocky plateau and discovers the rings are no trick of his imagination.

  The plateau, which forms a narrow ledge completely around the wall, is itself covered by the light-emitting skeletons. This time, the band treads carefully to the next set of stone steps so as not to unduly disturb this source of precious light.

  The travelers climb countless steps and pass innumerable plateaus in their steady climb. Just as the man is beginning to despair of this seemingly endless ascent, they reach a stone ceiling with a single, narrow aperture at one end--so narrow it appears to be impassable.

  The leader does not hesitate. He climbs into the aperture and instantly disappears. The rest of the band follows, vanishing one by one, and the man is surprised when, as he nears it, the aperture perceptibly widens to let him pass.

  Surprise turns to alarm when the aperture closes completely behind him.

  Trapping them all in this crypt-like aerie!

  It is devoid of door or window or any source of light, save the thick mats of the glowing skeletal detritus they encountered at each plateaued level in their arduous climb.

  As the leader and his fellows clear an area at the center of the stony floor, the man takes in the features of their prison fastness. The floor appears solid and whole, without a trace of where the now-sealed aperture was. The walls rise several feet as the impenetrable stone blocks reach upward to a closed stone ceiling.

  It exudes all the welcome and warmth of a sarcophagus.

  The air is close, fetid and stale, and the man curses the curiosity that led them to this fell place. But as the band begins to curl up in sleep at the center of the floor, the man’s utter fatigue overtakes his dread and soon he, too, is fast asleep.

  The man dreams of fantastic, phantom figures rising from the glowing skeletal bones strewn across their prison floor.

  At first, they appear in human form, spectral images of those he has known in his own world, but they almost immediately morph into the monstrous shapes of creatures unlike any he has seen before.

  Some move flowingly on tentacled paws, like the creature that abducted him from the grotto in the narrow rift valley.

  Some creep on long, segmented legs.

  Others glide slyly on diaphanous wings.

  While still others slink and slither like long, legless, wingless serpents.

  As the man watches in horrid fascination, the creatures begin to change shape and to spin— faster, ever faster. He is trapped inside a whirlpool of rapidly rotating, pale silvery figures literally flying through their dervish motions. So fast do the creatures spin that their phantom shapes lose definition, melding into a seamless, conical silver stream.

  Then, as abruptly as it began, the motion stops. The spinning stream resolves itself into a still, seamless, silvery, spherical surface surrounding him on all sides.

  The man is transported to a strange and different place.

  He stands in a shallow alcove on the inside wall of a closed dome. As he looks out from his niche, the dome begins to glow and a deep, disembodied voice breaks the silence.

  Welcome, outlander, to the Tower of Revelation!

  The man is fearful and stunned as the voice rings out like the divination of some long-dead Old Testament prophet. Foretelling judgment on a sinful world’s transgressions.

  What wizardry is this? the man wonders as he marvels at hearing his own tongue spoken in a mysterious tower in this alien world. It is a question that will remain unanswered, as the invisible speaker continues uninterrupted.

  You hear now the voice of a forgotten race. I greet you from a dead world. A world whose memory surely has faded into the mists of an ancient past.

  Hear my testimony.

  Heed our repentance for the sins of my race.

  Your witness is welcome tidings our precious planet has renewed itself from the ravages my race wrought upon it. In that renewal may you, outlander, find the seeds of a new beginning for yours.

  I am the last survivor of the last generation of a dead race. Through my eyes shall you witness the demise of a once great civilization that abandoned its past, lost its way and forfeited its future.

  Mine is a cautionary tale of providence squandered and destiny lost.

  Mark my lesson well lest you and yours share our forlorn and final fate. Once you arrive where we have come, there is no turning back!

  In the beginning, our world conferred great benefits and blessings upon our race and we, in turn, respected and preserved the natural sources of our abundance.

  Endless forests and seas of grass produced the oxygen-rich air we breathed and the bones of the great cities we built.

  Constant flows of rich minerals from the great magma mines provided the metals for our industries.

  Inexhaustible tracts of nutritious plants fed our burgeoning population.

  The abundance from our natural world exceeded all the needs of our rising civilization.

  Look, you, upon a world that we were heir to!

  As the man watches, the dome’s circular wall and concave ceiling surround his vision with the vibrant holographic images of an idyllic Creation.

  The purity and serenity of an unspoiled world. The endless forests, brightly hued jungles, lush plains and deep and lively oceans. The clean and clear atmosphere and incomparable beauty of a virgin landscape.

  You are witnessing our world in its infancy—grand, lush and pure.

  Like the full and fragrant flowers of our mega-flora, my race bloomed and blossomed into a great civilization whose rise and prosperity were gifts bestowed upon us by a bountiful nature. Our planet was open, generous and sustaining.

  You shall shortly see how we betrayed its trust!

  Our earliest thinkers—philosophers, scientists, poets—charted a sustainable course for the growth and spread of civilization. And we prudently followed their wisdom through the golden age of our ascent to become the planet’s great and dominant race.

  We revered and preserved our natural world. We stewarded our planet home and husbanded its precious resources. We returned as much as we took and constantly replenished our planet’s vigor.

  Look, you, upon a world that once was but is no more!

  See the wondrous, beauteous world we shared with a providential nature. Thrill at the magnificence and abundance of endless flora and countless fauna that enabled and enriched our dominion.

  Celebrate the thriving, happy communities of my civilization that flourished in common purpose and mutual regard. And in their enlightened respect for nature’s gifts and needs.

  As the man scans the dome, he is enchanted by the peaceful scenes of pastoral labor, industry and commerce in a natural world. The shared joy of communities content with their prospects and sure of their place in that world.

  Hopeful images of children playing. Of neighbor helping neighbor.

  Images that dissolve as the voice returns.

  At the beginning of the end, we took for granted our prosperity would continue forever—for ourselves, for our children and for our children’s children to the end of time.

  It was at the apex of our golden age tha
t my civilization lost its way. As a race, we went to war against our planet with no knowledge we were doing it. And with scant concern for its existential consequences.

  The discovery of ‘black fire’ in the magma mines sealed our fate. Wide, deep, endless veins of the stuff lined the subterranean corridors. When we discovered its energy-producing properties, we could not seem to burn enough of it.

  Enormous industrial facilities burned night and day to generate the energy demanded by a burgeoning population.

  Our magnificent forests and rich, fertile fields were abandoned for the great cities that materialized from the felled forests, denuded grasslands and depleted earth.

  Look, you, upon a world transformed!

  See the rancid, smoke-covered barrens that crept across a sterile landscape behind the retreating forests and grasslands of a dying world.

  Hear the mob shouting down the warnings and prophecies of our scientists.

  They are the echoes of a doomed civilization.

  As the man scans the dome, he recoils at the scenes of destruction, devastation and decay.

  The spreading deserts of lifeless dust.

  The angry scars of strip mines and extensive excavations.

  The roiling super-hurricanes and tornadoes, lashed with violent lightning, and the land-devouring floods from sea, lake, river and stream.

  The thick, black smoke that spews from brooding smokestacks.

  The wispy grey pall that blots out the landscape with its toxic brew.

  See the shadow grow and spread across our world, the voice commands.

  More sinister still for what you cannot see.

  The poisonous air invading our lungs. Coursing through our bodies. Working unseen to alter the chemistry within ourselves. Weakening an already compromised immune system.

  Leaving us defenseless against the scourge to come.

  What we could not see we refused to believe. Deceiving ourselves.

  Generation after generation prevailed through the deepening pall of our world and, as we adapted to the stern new realities, it appeared we would survive our own worst transgressions.

  But we, all of us, failed to account for the planet’s ability to defend itself. To strike back for its own survival.

  Even the most cynical scientists predicted the worst consequences of our corrosive behaviors would take generations to materialize.

  But they were, all of them, mistaken!

  As our climate became more extreme and as our once-rich atmosphere became more depleted and oxygen-starved, the planet struck back—decisively and with chilling finality.

  When the end came, it was swift and sure. And it arrived in an organically indiscernible form.

  Our scientists had warned of the mutations these chemical changes were wreaking in our own and other species. Teams were hard at work in their laboratories trying to identify and chart their spread.

  But it was an undetected mutant pathogen that struck suddenly and universally and, without warning, obliterated us to the end of our race.

  Little did we suspect the altered chemistry of a ravaged planet had spawned an omega strain we could not survive.

  Little did we suspect the stone-cold species-killer hiding, lurking and gathering the strength that would kill us all.

  Little did we suspect chemical changes at a molecular level had transformed a latent microbial organism into a weaponized super-bug that would sweep swiftly across our world and cleanse it of our race.

  Little did we suspect that the omega strain was a targeted killer, ignoring all species but our own, and that it was able to anticipate and resist every defense we threw at it.

  These mutant microbes were the shock-troops released by a planet under siege. They executed their mission with ruthless finality.

  Science could not save us. But it was not science that had failed us.

  We had failed ourselves!

  Our scientists waged an epic struggle against a singular, unthinkable foe. But the prophylaxis they engineered could not be replicated outside their laboratories.

  Freezing alone worked against the pathogen. But, alas, we had over-heated our atmosphere beyond the tipping point.

  Nor was there time to flee to the frozen lands. We had abandoned the pathways of retreat in our rush to the cities. And cold was nowhere to be had in the populated regions of the world.

  Like the phantom ghosts of my dead race who bore you hither, the omega strain was an ever-changing, shape-shifting microbe. A malignancy that cleverly adopted the outward appearance and detectable properties of benign, harmless micro-organisms.

  Hiding in plain sight among them. Employing mimicry to escape detection. Unsuspected until our scientists pierced its disguise in autopsies from a mounting butcher’s bill.

  Too late!

  We watched in horror as it mutated and spread. With no way to stop it.

  We were, all of us, afflicted by an unstoppable evil spawned by my civilization’s war on our planet.

  Look, you, upon a world of agony and suffering!

  As the man scans the dome, he looks out on a hell-scape of writhing and dismay.

  The animated images embrace all the circles of hell. Like the multitudinous, hellish panoramas of a Bosch triptych, every portion of the dome displays pain, misery and suffering.

  Men and women bent and broken.

  Children dying.

  Mothers keening.

  People futilely consoling the inconsolable.

  But the most arresting images are those that portray the

  metamorphosis of the dead from flesh to bone to dust.

  The pleading, weeping faces looking out at him from this hell-scape are eerily familiar, and he wonders how it is that they so resemble those of his own world. As the man studies them more closely, he is astonished.

  Staring back at him are the unblinking faces of his past—friends, family and colleagues he has known.

  Like the language of his birth, the voice is using the man’s own memories to communicate its fateful message. But how, he asks? That is another question that will go unanswered.

  Face-to-face with reflections of his own mortality, the man is shaken out of his reverie by the booming voice.

  You view the depth of our despair through the shadow of some fallen angel. I see it in your thoughts.

  Nay, ours was the retribution of no fallen angel; it was the ineluctable, self-inflicted end of a fallen race.

  But fear you not, outlander, for the pathogen was incapable of surviving the loss of my race, who was its host.

  And know this: a hideous fate awaits the future race that again wages war against the planet!

  We few were sealed in the closed tower in a final, futile attempt to thwart the scourge from snuffing out our race. Somehow, it sneaked through the seamless skin of our sanctuary and slew us all.

  I alone am left to use the short time remaining to relate the tower's message to you who shall discover it in your time.

  You inherit a damaged world, and yours is the solemn task of restoring it to provide for you and yours—as once it did for me and mine.

  Heed this, our epitaph, and fare you well!

  As the disembodied voice fades, the dome at once resumes spinning and resolves itself into the racing stream of phantom figures that delivered the man here. Soon their rotation slows to a stop. The man finds himself once more on the floor of the tower loft, amid the glowing bones, with his furry companions slumbering in the center.

  As the man looks down, he discovers the trap-door has reappeared and is invitingly open.

  The tower’s revelation done, the company is free to leave once more.

  Chapter 8. In a Deep Place

  The leader springs from the floor at the man’s urgent touch. Soon the rest of the band is following them, retracing their steps from the haunted loft down to the base of the tower.

  As they climb out of the tunnel into the light of two suns, the man regards the wide world through different eyes and different
feelings.

  Gone are the images of death and despair.

  Life is abroad, and a new hope roams the land. The man’s heart soars as he breathes in the promise of rebirth and renewal.

  This is his world now, and he will dedicate his future efforts to upholding the sacred trust of preserving and protecting its precious resources.

  None of this is apparent to the leader and his band, who simply are seeking a new home that will meet their needs.

  But as their needs are few and their footprint on the natural landscape slight, the world need not fear their passage.

  They pass through the city of towers, quickly and directly, and emerge onto the arid plain. While the horizon is clear, without landmarks to guide them, the band strikes out on the same line away from the city that led them to it.

  As they trudge on through the seemingly endless desert, the man’s mood changes. He is overcome with an inexplicable sense of loss and despair. The voice in the tower has affected him more deeply than he knows.

  The extinction of the once dominant race knells the end of his own in this alien world, as the man reasons that its epitaph is his epitaph.

  He is the sole survivor of his species in this planetary system and, in that new reality, will be the first and the last of his race as well. He is overwhelmed by the pointless futility and loneliness of it all.

  He will never know the intimacy or companionship of his own.

  He will never pass on his genes to hopeful new generations.

  No, he will perish in this alien world, his passing unremarked and unlamented.

  As the man weeps openly, the indifference of the band confirms his conviction he is, indeed, alone without the empathy or comfort of his own kind.

  Little can he know affection and consolation are sentiments outside the experience and capacity of the furry bipeds that accompany him in his woe. And little can they comprehend the cause or import of the man’s odd and novel behavior.

  The man walks on bearing the misery of unrequited longing and unfillable emptiness.