Recalling Destiny

by Michael Blinkhoff

  As Lucinda walked off in the direction of Smith’s tent, Samuel decided he needed some air and started wandering around the campsite, eventually deciding to walk up to the dig site and have a think up in the fresh air.

  The night stars guided him as he wandered up close to the entrance to the mine shaft. He stood there on the precipice of the excavation, looking at it for a moment before deciding to take a seat at its edge. Sitting there, feet dangling over the edge and deep in thought, he found himself peering over the edge and looking down into the depths of darkness.

  “What great mysteries do you hold?” he asked aloud.

  Strangely he thought he heard voices coming from below him, from the tunnel.

  Intrigued, he called out in reply and the voices sounded again, this time he took a closer look down the tunnel, “Hello?”

  No reply.

  Thinking it was the wind, he ignored it. Then he heard the voice again.

  He looked about him, but could see no other persons and wondered if perhaps the sound had come from within the mine shaft.

  “Smith? Is that you?” he called down into the mine.

  No response.

  Intrigued, Samuel decided he better take a closer look, lest some poor soul be in trouble down there. He moved to the edge, grabbed a hold of the ladder and swung himself downwards, shining a torch below him as he descended the shaft. At times he could hear voices but couldn’t see the people they belonged to. Not quite sure of himself he descended to the bottom of the shaft to investigate further.

  As he reached the ground he felt a chill and his body momentarily froze, as if in some sort of shock. He shivered with the sudden drop in temperature at first and then started to shake violently as if he’d just plunged into a freezing lake.

  “Hello, anyone down here?”

  The voices started booming louder now, deafening and disorienting him in the dark. He yelled out, screaming for the voices to stop but they didn’t relent. He panned the torch around inside the small shaft, searching for the source of the voice, but saw nothing. The cave was empty.

  Moving laboriously around inside the tunnel, he struggled to find the source of the voice and fell to his knees in anguish. He tried to block his ears with his fingers but the noise only grew louder, more penetrating inside his head.

  “Please stop!” he screamed, until he realised that the voices were, in actual fact, coming from his own head.

  Screaming with the pain being appropriated on him, Samuel cried out for the voices to stop, pleading with them. The voices were a booming, distorted mess inside his head, crying out nonsensically. In his pain he dropped the torch and it broke on the rocky ground underneath his feet, plunging him into complete darkness.

  Still the voices screeched and screamed, the pain overriding all his other instincts. He tried to make out where he was, hoping to find a way out, but was blind in the blackness. Samuel could only make out one light in the darkness, a blue light shimmering in the rock.

  Still frozen in some sort of controlled shock, he looked over to the light and felt the voices start to become clearer and less painful, the agony easing. Relieved the pain had lessened, he thought of escape and turned to try and get his bearings in the tunnel, but as soon as he looked away from the light the voices started screeching again inside his head.

  The voices, the light.

  Quickly he realised the voices must have something to do with the light. Every time he looked at the blue light the pain of the voices receded and the words became clearer. Desperate for some respite he focused his attention on the light and listened to the voices, trying to fathom what they were saying.

  “Hello?”

  They were beckoning him, calling to him.

  Come to the light.

  His eyes transfixed on the light and he moved towards it steadily, careful of his footing as he paced slowly towards it.

  Samuel, free me from this prison.

  “Say what now?”

  Set me free.

  “Where are you?”

  I’m in the light, come to me.

  “The light? What are you doing in there?”

  I’m trapped, can you help me Samuel?

  “How do you know my name?”

  I know many things Samuel, things that you cannot even dream of.

  Entranced by the voice Samuel moved right up next to the light and gazed into it, marvelling at its beauty. It was blue, but was constantly waving in and out of shades of it, shimmering blue neon one moment and ocean blue the next.

  Touch the light Samuel.

  Completely entranced and without thinking, he reached up and forced his hand into the light as if he were grabbing it, once he did so everything changed. Immediately he felt a warm sensation run up his arm, straight to his chest and then to the rest of his body.

  His muscles flexed and his entire body convulsed, Samuel felt as if he was being filled with some kind of matter. When he thought he could take no more, he released his grip on the light, but the light held him in place, against his will.

  The pain grew immense, and his head felt like it was rapidly expanding, he shouted at the top of his lungs but found no voice, for he could not breathe. He pulled again, this time found purchase and wretched his hand free of the light.

  He fell to his knees, clutching his hand and began vomiting all over the floor.

  But the voices had stopped.

  After the sickness passed he knew something was off, he could feel something else, something different inside him. And not just inside his head this time, he could feel it in his body now.

  Something had taken control of him. Something was inside him.

  “Hello Samuel,” a voice inside his head spoke, with a booming authority. “My name is Fahwad.”

  “What?”

  “I am Fahwad.”

  “Oh …” he stuttered. “My name is Samuel.”

  “No … we are Samuel.” Came the response.

  - -

  United Nations

  “Attention please … Ladies and Gentlemen, as discussed at the commencement of today’s proceedings we have a special guest speaker here today to assist and give testimony in relation to the act of terrorism on the Day of Darkness.” The speaker cleared his throat. “Please welcome Samuel Richardson of Australia, former Head of the Destiny facility.”

  There was no applause as the image of Samuel, sitting in a large conference room amongst several others, appeared on the main screen inside a massive auditorium. The auditorium was full of delegates from around the world, representatives of their respective countries.

  This was a special United Nations delegation.

  Samuel’s image was being transmitted via video link conference from a military command base in Sydney. There was no welcome from any of the delegates in the auditorium and no applause, they had been briefed about the situation prior to the meeting commencing.

  Two days earlier Samuel had arrived at a military base unannounced and had turned himself in. He had identified who he was and requested to be taken to the nation’s leader to discuss matters of importance.

  After some confusion about who he was and who the right person was to see him, Samuel was taken to see a special leadership panel that had been setup after the incident had occurred. A panel that had taken over leadership of the Australian government after the disaster had left so many dead, many of its leaders having perished.

  He introduced himself and met with three people who claimed to be the new interim leaders of the country. He told them of his role, of Destiny and its role in everything to date.

  The three leaders of course, knew much about the Destiny installation, as it had become a great focus of late for the Australian government. They divulged they were currently attempting to breach the secret facility’s main door. They also spoke of the informa
tion they’d learnt from nearly a hundred staff who worked at the facility and had grave concerns.

  They expressed their displeasure at Samuel for his cover up and questioned why it was that he’d disappeared and left the facility in ruins. They explained that a woman by the name of Catlin Conley had taken command of the facility and had refused entry to the government representatives stationed there.

  They were furious and threw all manner of accusations at him, claiming he would be brought to justice in a criminal court for his involvement, his punishment as severe as they could deal out.

  Samuel had already carefully laid his plans though, and under directions from Fahwad he deliberately returned to see these men, to tell his story. He only begged of them a moment’s patience so he could tell his side of the story.

  He knew they would object to him initially, but once they’d spent their energy grilling and threatening him, he knew he would have time to speak, time to tell them a story.

  He told them of his escape, how there was a small passageway secreted inside the facility. He utilised this to escape and make his way to Sydney.

  “Samuel, you are speaking with representatives of all the major nations, you have the floor for thirty minutes … good luck.”

  “Thank you, Mr Speaker and thank you ladies and gentlemen of the United Nations. I will forego the formalities here for the sake of timeliness, for what I bring to you is of the upmost importance to the future of mankind.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I come here today for two reasons. The first is to give an explanation into who I am, what I have achieved in my life and what that work has resulted in, that being the Day of Darkness.”

  “Secondly, I wish to tell you how we may resolve the issue and prevent it from occurring again.”

  Murmurings instantly took over the amphitheatre housing the delegates at the mention of the possibility of a reoccurrence. Nobody had fathomed a repeat of the event could be possible and nothing had been mentioned in the special brief Samuel provided prior to the meeting starting.

  In one sentence, he had turned them. He’d admitted to being responsible and then went on to mention it could happen again. At present, the worldwide death toll was over two hundred million.

  Fear is a powerful motivator.

  This was only the second special session of the U.N that had been called in response to the catastrophic event. The first session had not yielded much result, after much deliberation and little resolution the only thing to come out of the summit was that it would be henceforth known as the Day of Darkness.

  Up until this time the United Nations had been under the assumption the event was an act of terrorism, perpetuated by an unknown group. An act that was of such magnitude it had now accounted for well over two hundred million deaths worldwide. Such a thing could certainly not have been accidental it was said.

  All manner of experts had attended the initial summit to provide evidence claiming the event had been caused by something. Medical experts had attended claiming it was a super virus, concocted and released via bacteria in human food.

  Other members of the scientific community had blamed the incident on global warming, stating that man’s impact on Earth had grave repercussions. They claimed humans had damaged Earth so much that the Earth had decided to fight back.

  All in all, from all the speakers though, no real credible theory could be presented. No real evidence was found, only theories. And none of them had made any sense.

  The summit today had a very special addition to the agenda, called in response to a telephone call received at the U.N from the leaders of the new Australian government. A man had come forward claiming to know the real reason for the Day of Darkness, his theory was strongly endorsed by Australia and they had petitioned for an audience.

  Petitioned to bring this to the world, Samuel to the world, to the United Nations.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I want to tell you about a place called Destiny,” Samuel began.

  Samuel didn’t hold back, he outlined to the delegates his story right from the beginning and did so in the most convincing of ways. He spoke of how he had found a strange light in cave, many years ago and how it had radiated with a blue light of energy.

  He explained the blue light was an energy thread connected to human life, how it was responsible for life here on Earth, how life poured from the light to create man and woman alike.

  He spoke of how his team had found out how to read the energy. Over thirty years they had worked tirelessly trying to understand the discovery and adapt technology to better assist them. It wasn’t until recent technological enhancements were made that they were able to understand the light contained information that could be translated digitally.

  Samuel apologised to the panel then, for he told a story of a ruthless woman and her obsession with the thread, an obsession causing the eventual downfall of the facility. He lied and told them he was never in control of the facility, that it was under the control of a woman called Lucinda Caradoc.

  Samuel would attest to his innocence and have it backed up by the representatives from Australia who sat with him. Several former employees of the facility had claimed that Samuel was never a presence on the floors of Destiny, that he was always in his office and rarely came out. He said that he was a prisoner in the facility, Lucinda even having a guard stationed at his door to stop him from coming out.

  A government spokesman also attested several former employees of the facility had made statements to Lucinda’s overly cruel and dominant reign at the facility, claiming all manner of atrocities on the back of her commands. None of the former employees ever received an order from Samuel, except once Lucinda had left the facility for good.

  Samuel went on to claim his daughter’s life had also been threatened several times over the years by the former mistress of Destiny, to ensure his compliance. This eventually led Lucinda to capture his only daughter and imprison her inside the facility to use as a form of blackmail.

  He then described the way his daughter was captured and the brutality at which Lucinda had dealt with the government’s agents, killing several police officers in the process.

  “From what I understand, my daughter is still locked up in the facility,” he spoke regretfully. “I am sorry for my lack of action, but I had to protect my daughter’s life. Now it would seem, Lucinda has taken the power of Destiny for herself.”

  “You see the thread, when we found it, it was not whole. For it to be whole it needed all the fragments to return to it. That woman, she drove us in a direction which saw us gain the ability to restore the thread to its original state.”

  “When she did this, returned all the fragments to the light, it took the very life from people all over the world. It sucked it from them and restored the light to its full capacity. Once it was restored she took it and left the facility.”

  “This is why all those millions of people lost their lives. For power, for energy.” Samuel levelled his gaze at the audience.

  “This is all very unbelievable,” a member from the United States spoke up. “How did you conceive of such wild notions sir?”

  “I did not conceive of any such things. I speak only the truth.”

  “Well it all sounds very unreal. You tell us that a blue light in the ground is somehow connected to man? And said blue light was captured by a woman called Lucinda, who went on to cause the deaths of two hundred million people in the process?”

  “Yes.”

  “Samuel, sir, I am an educated man, as are many in this room at present. How do you expect us to believe in such nonsense?”

  “Do not assume your education entitles you to an informed decision sir, your education has only indoctrinated you into the present system, making you a slave to it and its purported truth.” Samuel countered easily.

  “Excuse me?”

  “And such a slave to the sys
tem can only believe what his masters indoctrinate him with, despite the very real truth staring him in the face. There is a history here, sir, a history of the Earth that you are very unaware of. And you are unaware because you allow a corporation to make your history books, to indoctrinate you with falsehoods.”

  “Assume now that you understand very little of what is happening because you know nothing of it, just as men knew nothing about the world before this one. So despite this seemingly impossible reality of what I say, it is true.”

  “Our lives are all intertwined, linked together inextricably by an energy source housed somewhere on this planet. That energy is, in essence, what gives life to us here on Earth. And it’s that very energy which has resulted in the deaths of so many people.”

  “I’m sorry Mr Richardson, how does a blue light, a thread as you call it, give life to humans on Earth exactly? Please help me to understand how a thread in the earth can make humans,” the representative from the United States asked.

  “How does a South American bug end up in western Europe, only to evolve and become something entirely different. How is it that elephants on the subcontinent are smaller than the African ones? How is that that there are many primates on almost every continent but they are all different somehow?”

  “I do not purport to claim any anthropological knowledge, but I do know the truth of man’s origins.”

  “My information has the existence of man dating back billions of years … billions, sir. Then one day something changed us, one day we co-existed with the Earth and the next we started destroying it. Something caused that change.”

  “Yes, yes, we have already heard from the environmentalist’s here,” the American spokesman continued his questioning. “They have no credible evidence to support man’s impact here on Earth is as great as they claim. And I still fail to see how this has any relevance to your ‘blue light created humans’ theory.”

  “Sir, what I am trying to tell you is that the light didn’t create humans, it evolved us. It changed what was already here.”