“Well Ma’am told me to prepare for training you, so I did.”
“And?””
“So I had to find your thread as part of training, only we weren’t looking at your thread. Ma’am noticed it, getting irritated and telling us to stop.”
“And your point?”
“My point is, I think we were looking at Ma’am’s thread.”
“What, really?”
“Yeah.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, there was a lot going on in the moment and I didn’t really have time to focus, I apologise but ….” Ursula shifted where she sat near the fire. “But when I was setting up for our little training session before you arrived, I actually struggled to find your thread.”
Catlin looked up at Ursula over her cup of soup but didn’t say anything.
“Well, I thought you’d be easy to find, given we’d been tracking you for so many years. But then I remembered I’d never actually seen your thread. Now I’m not normally one who plays on the threads very often, usually I’m just helping my mum but still, I have no memory of ever seeing your thread.”
“And?”
“Well I think I’ve seen just about everyone’s thread, you know … sometimes at Station Eight we got bored and looked into people’s lives. It’s kinda like watching a movie.”
“Really?”
“Anyway, when I brought up the thread for your little training session I used all the regular checks that we have to find someone, came up with nothing. I figured you’d been transferred to the staff files and that was why I couldn’t find you. It’s where we keep a log of all the people who work at Destiny, so if we need to change something we can find their thread easily.”
“Anyway, that was in there.”
“What was?”
“The thread that we looked up, in the training session.”
“And you just assumed that it was me.”
“Well I certainly didn’t think it would be Ma’am.”
“Why not?”
“Because she, well, is never in there. I did a search for you and that was what came up.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“Me either … it’s strange.”
“So, still no thread of my own though?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t understand, what are you trying to say?”
“Well, I just thought it was like, weird you know. I think Ma’am was weird about it too.”
“Weird like how?”
“She scolded us when she saw what we were doing.”
“That’s not weird.”
“Actually, it is.”
“Why?”
“Two reasons actually. The look in her eye, you probably don’t know her like I do. She might act all bull and horns but that woman has a very big heart and because of it she’s really easy to understand, easy to read.”
“How?”
“When she reacts, she reacts honestly. It’s only afterwards she thinks to cover up her emotions. When she scolded us for looking at that thread, the look in her eye was one of fear. I think she was afraid of something. Afraid of us finding something.”
“Do you know what?”
“No, but that does bring me to something else that’s strange.”
“Which is?”
“Remember the kid?”
“A little bit, the hacker right?”
“Yeah. He was a part of the thread, but then he wasn’t.”
“And?”
“Well … that makes three of you.”
“Three of us what?”
“Three of you walking about … but none of you on the thread.”
“Huh?”
“The black guy and the kid … nowhere to be found on the thread ... and then there’s you, Catlin Conley.”
- -
Destiny Base Camp
{30 years ago}
“Hold on a minute, he wants us to do what?”
“Destroy it.” Alison says flatly, sitting inside the food tent, high in the mountainous bush of New South Wales. It’s dusk and the group have come together at the behest of Alison.
A month has passed since Alison and her group of natives arrived in the bush of the Blue Mountain. In that time many things have changed, primary of which was the unearthing of a strange blue light, deep under the ground.
The night of the discovery, Alison called a meeting to everyone in the camp, all but the three native’s and the man called Smith, who have to wait outside the tent patiently.
“What the hell Alison, no way!”
“That’s what he said and I have to agree with him.” Alison states.
“This could quite possibly be the single most important discovery in the history of man and he wants to destroy it? Before we’ve even had a chance to see what it is? What it’s capable of?” Samuel replies.
“I know, but he said …” Alison tries.
“What, is he your boss now, is that it?”
“Samuel,” Lucinda cut in. “Be nice, we’re all friends here.”
“Sorry Luci,” he laments. “You’re right, we are all friends here. Alison, I apologise.”
“It’s ok, I understand this must be quite difficult to comprehend.”
“Maybe you should tell us a little more about this chap, the one called Smith,” Lucinda asks politely. “We thought he was just a foreman?”
Alison took a deep breath in, “Well,” she exhales heavily. “I wasn’t exactly accurate in my description of Smith when we first came here.”
“Hmmm, I think we all know that Alison,” Marion chimes in. “Since he’s been here I think we’ve all noticed that he’s a little … odd.”
Everyone in the room agrees readily. In the month it’s taken to excavate the shaft they all met and experienced the strangeness of Smith. It wasn’t just his appearance or his mannerisms either, something else was different about him.
He never slept, never ate and nobody claimed to have seen him drink any water. He would often spend time alone at night, up by the mountain’s ledge. To what purpose they knew not but they knew he wasn’t sleeping up there.
Conversations with him were peculiar and almost always ended in arguments. All the team were scientific experts in their fields but Smith seemed to have an endless supply of knowledge, which he used to frequently contradict other members of the team.
One night he came into camp whilst Samuel was busy playing a song on the stereo, Smith had come in and asked to fix it. Samuel had asked ‘fix what’ as he saw no problem, but had indulged Smith, to which Smith began retuning the speakers, claiming they weren’t correct.
“Four – three – two … balance … work better. Energy … harmony.”
It didn’t take him long to tinker with the speakers before he handed them back, nobody noticed any difference in the speakers. None had complained though, the small things he did around camp seemed to keep him happy. The group decided that him happy was good for them all because Smith’s work ethic was nothing short of relentless.
The one thing they agreed he did do well, was interact and work with Alison’s group of Aboriginal workers. They were a relentless unit that excavated the tunnel well ahead of their planned schedule. Samuel had originally surmised a six-month excavation and now the small group had virtually completed it in under a month.
Alison held up her hands inside the tent, keen to finally inform her fellow team about Smith and the truth. “Where is Suni?”
“She’s due back tonight, I thought she’d be back by now …”
As if on cue Suni ducks her head into the tent and joins the other four members of the group, she looks up confused at everyone, as if she’s just walked into some awkward moment.
“What?” she asks.
“Take a seat.”
“Ok,” she complies, looking at the group warily. “If this is about the toilet then I promise it wasn’t …”
“It’s not that.”
“Alison has just told us that she wants to destroy it.” Samuel took the lead for the group.
“Destroy what, the tunnel?”
The look on everyone’s faces confirmed it for her. “Are you kidding me, what the hell are …”
“Just hold on a sec,” Samuel calms her. “Alison was just about to explain when you walked in.”
“Oh, ok.” She took a seat.
“Alison, please continue.” Samuel says.
“This thing we’ve unearthed, this blue light,” she continues. “It is like a vial. Within it is life, a life. And whilst it has been down there all these years its contents have poured out into this world, giving new life to others, whilst the life inside diminishes. This life force has poured its content onto the earth and have somehow mingled with man to create a virus.”
“We need to restore the contents, restore the vial and send it back to where it came from.”
A quiet settles over the small group as they ponder what Alison’s just said.
“I know this because of Smith, the man you all know as my foreman. I went into the desert to find something and I told you that I didn’t find anything. What I told you then was a lie.”
“Oh, whoa!”
“I know, I know. I wasn’t exactly honest and I apologise.”
“Hmmm, so you found something?”
“The man you know as Smith, I found him out there, in the desert.”
“Doing what?”
“He was buried.”
The group all went silent, they knew Alison had gone out there to unearth what they believed to be evidence of the great inundation, but none had conceived she would’ve unearthed a person. And certainly not one who was alive.
“We uncovered a head at first and took our care to work around it. Only as we were dusting the sand from the face the eyes opened and then … then they focused on us.”
“The man you know as Smith, he’s the one I found under the ground. Buried for god knows how long and still alive when I found him.”
“For how long?”
“Since the inundation, the flood.”
“What, that’s about twelve thousand years!”
“How is that even possible?” they all exclaim in disbelief. “Surely this is some sort of trick?”
“No tricks. Only the truth. He told me a great fire fell from the sky and was followed by a great wave. The great wave crossed the Earth, depositing him out there in the desert, burying him for a very long time.”
“Are you sure its legit?” Marion asks.
“He is a man of the earth, the man of the earth. We all know the evidence that led me out to that desert, we all thought something was out there … and he is what I found.”
Suni burst’s out laughing suddenly, unable to control herself, “Sorry,” she gargles as the others frown at her. “This is rubbish.”
“Suni!” Marion exclaims.
“Alison, I thank you for your honesty but please, let’s stick to facts here,” Suni changes her tone. “Giant comet wipes out civilization, man buried for thousands of years because of it and then wakes up after you dig him out, seriously?”
“They are the facts,” she stands up from her seat, annoyed. “That thing down the shaft, it does not belong here and it has to be removed. No questions, this is a must.”
“It doesn’t belong here. It’s caused a virus that’s now ruining Earth. It’s something that’s upset the balance of this planet and we need to be the cure. We need to cure Earth.”
“And how do you propose we do this exactly?” Samuel asks politely.
“I don’t know.”
“Well this is your show Alison, your opportunity to convince us, so convince us.”
“Smith told me that there’s also this coffin, a vessel, a ship which belonged to what came from the sky. He said it can take the fire away, back to where it came from. It was what brought the bad man here.”
“Bad man.” Suni mimics her sarcastically, with her eyes rolling into the back of her head. “Are you guys really paying attention to this rubbish?”
“Suni!” Marion scolds again, “Show some respect.”
“Right,” Suni exclaims. “So Alison, what you’re telling us is that Smith is some sort of an Earth god? And also that some blue light came out of the sky, wiped out mankind and is now some kind of a virus?” Suni grimaces, still with a touch of sarcasm in her voice. “Oh, and you want us to destroy said blue light, put it in some mythical ship and send it back into the sky?”
“I don’t have time for your crap Suni, grow up!”
“Alison,” Lucinda steps in. “Enough of that.”
Arguments flare inside the tent, the voices echoing across camp. Outside the three Aboriginals and Smith can clearly hear the insults and accusations flying wild. None pay any heed to it though, their eyes are all downcast.
“White man!” Wally, one of the natives, utters softly, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Infected.” Smith replies, standing from the fire.
The three Aboriginal men don’t look up from the fire as Smith moves away, but Wally does manage to utter softly, “Good luck boss.”
“You all want proof,” Alison continues inside the tent. “Well just take a look outside at Smith. I know you all look at him like he’s different or weird. I know you hear him talk and think he’s stupid, I know you think he has no character to him. But have you ever considered that perhaps it is us who is different?”
“Because I can tell you, we are different, to everything in this goddam world around us … but is he? Or is he someone that actually blends into his environment.”
“Huh?’ Suni looks up at her as if she’s stupid.
“He has a relationship with the land, we do not. We are consumers on this planet and he is not. You tell me which one is different to the world … you want proof look at me, look at you, look at man on this planet and tell me if we truly belong here. If we truly co-exist with this world.”
“Or are we somehow different to the animals …?”
“Alison,” Samuel contends. “We’re not talking about this right now. I think it best you just stick to the blue light.”
“There’s no reason to explore the blue light, there’s only one action here and that’s to get rid of it.”
“But Alison, I don’t even know what it’s capable of ...” Samuel tries to reason.
“I know!” she raises her finger. “Don’t be foolish and think you can control this situation. This is Smith’s quest and we can only hope to join him for the ride and help see it through to its conclusion.”
Alison gives them all a concerning look, rises and quietly leaves the room.
The remaining four people sit silently in the tent for a moment, trying to give gravity to the situation, but Suni can’t contain herself any longer. Once she realises Alison’s out of earshot she blurts out. “Well that was a bunch of crap!”
“Suni!” Lucinda shushes her.
“C’mon, you can’t be serious. Smith was dug out of a grave alive, that’s rubbish.”
“I thought it seemed a little far-fetched too Luci,” Samuel chimes in.
“Well she did seem fairly certain, is it possible?”
“I agree, I think it sounds a bit sci-fi,” Marion contributes. “But Alison’s not some dim witted, grave digger. She’s a geologist, anthropologist and an archaeologist, I don’t think she would conceive of such notions without thinking them through. Her and her father have been working on this for a very long time, I don’t think she could, or would, just start making things up suddenly.”
“I agree,” Samuel nod
s his head.
“Besides …” Marion continues. “That stuff she said about humans and the environment … it’s kinda true you know.”
“But still,” Suni continues determinedly. “Does that make it any more believable?”
Samuel takes a deep breath in and notices how dark it is outside. Exhaling he says, “I think maybe the best thing for us to do now is take a moment and let this sink in. Have a chat with Alison again, or Smith for that matter, I don’t think there’s any need for urgency here. Let’s just take some time to mull it over hey?”
“I for one am going to take a long walk, for I don’t think we should be hasty in any decision here. If there’s any merit to what Alison says, then let’s try to see it. But let’s also remember what’s at stake here, the knowledge we could be throwing away.”
“Agreed.”
“I have a lot of respect for Alison, I think we should try and afford that to her before we make any decisions.” Samuel stands up. “That Smith fella is damn odd.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Good.”
“Well I’m going to talk to Alison,” Marion gets up and leaves the tent. “I need to know more about this.”
“I’ve got supplies to put away.” Suni also rises, leaving only Samuel and Lucinda.
“Well?” she asks. “What do you really think?”
“I don’t know, this is all a bit too crazy for me.”
“I know, but that Smith fella, he is kind of weird, isn’t he?”
“I think we all know that, but is it enough to paint him in the same light that Alison does?”
“We weren’t there Samuel. We didn’t see what Alison did, we don’t know what she knows.”
“Well why did she hide it from us in the first place?”
“I’m sure she has her reasons.”
“I know,” he agrees. “Maybe he cast an evil spell on her.”
“Samuel.”
“Sorry,” he apologises. “I think I’m going to take a walk.”
“Ok, I think I might go talk to Smith. I’ve haven’t really spoken much with him, but given what Alison’s said I figure it’s probably the best thing to do.”
“Good idea … straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Recalling Destiny Page 49