Recalling Destiny

by Michael Blinkhoff

  “Do you have evidence proving any of this?” The U.S ambassador spoke up.

  “Aside from a global mass wave of unexplained deaths, at exactly the same time.”

  The ambassador grumbled in response.

  “You were all provided with a brief prior to my arrival, inside you will find more details relating to evidence. Specifically, my daughter was able to obtain some images that indicate to a higher power. There are also numerous transcripts, voice recordings and video footage that has been compiled. The Australian government has also been detailing information on the facility over the past few years, which has been provided. They endorse my information wholeheartedly.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to pour over the evidence, I have not been allocated enough time to discuss it all with you. But, the information is available for you, to assist in any measure possible.”

  The member for the U.S was about to ask another question when the chairman of the delegation stood up, calling for calm.

  “So Samuel, you say that you came here for two reasons. I do not wish to debate the legitimacy of the first reason,” the chairman spoke. “I believe that what you say here has credit and that we as responsible delegates would be foolish to ignore its authenticity.”

  “Moreover, to ignore its authenticity would be to our detriment. If what you claim to be true then I think we are all interested to hear what you surmise comes next?”

  “Next I require all of your assistance in finding the others,” he laid out his plan for them.

  “The others?” the chairman asked.

  “Did you think there was only one?”

  “I think it’s safe to assume that we know very little.”

  “I think it’s safe to assume we are playing right into the hands of this man,” a delegate called out inside the auditorium. “The representatives from India wish to withdraw any support for this man and any of his claims. He states humans are subject to some energy, rubbish, we are a biological species of this planet.”

  A few shouts rang out in the crowd in support, this in turn caused separate arguments to flare up and made the whole delegation slide into an unruly room. The chairman eventually called order to the delegation and allowed Samuel to respond.

  “Of course, if what I say is false then you have nothing to fear … do you?”

  “Explain yourself!” someone shouted from the room.

  Samuel allowed a quiet to settle before he answered. “If one thread in Australia can kill two hundred million people then what do you suppose one in India, China or the United States will do if it is restored, as I claim the others have?” He waited a moment before continuing, “How many dead souls will you have on your conscience then? If you are even alive …”

  The room went silent, a few members leaned over and spoke to others, some spoke through their headsets trying to ask their translators to repeat what Samuel had said. Samuel had of course, intentionally used fear as a ruse to lay his plan. He knew the threat of another catastrophe would spur any representative into action, for nobody wanted the blood of millions of people on their hands.

  Nobody wanted another Day of Darkness.

  Fear drives the sanest of men in the opposite direction. And the threat on them personally only made it easier to convince them; distract with chaos, control with fear.

  “What are you saying?” the Indian Ambassador asked. “And why would we want the assistance of the very man that claims he was responsible for this in the first place.”

  “Well, who better to serve you right?” he smiled. “And as I said, I was not responsible for this occurring. I have been under duress since Lucinda Caradoc wrested control of the facility from my hands many years ago.”

  “If you wish to ponder on how she could control a whole facility full of people and control their actions, then I defer to the Day of Darkness. The threat to our lives and the very lives of our loved ones were at risk.”

  “She engineered the event, and held us under threat of our own lives should we not comply with her requests.”

  “Now she is gone, fled with the thread and its energy and all those innocent people lost their lives.”

  “Samuel, are you aware of her plans? Do you know what she intends to do next?” another speaker asked.

  “As I have said to the representatives of Australia, I can help to ascertain her whereabouts, from the facilities housed at Destiny. The technology and resources available there are the best way for us to locate her whereabouts. Allow me access to your intelligence agencies and we can find her. But as to what her intentions are, I cannot say.”

  Again the floor broke into an unruly mob, shouts and accusations flying everywhere at the mention of the facility and Samuel’s possible return, but it wasn’t the Chairman who called quiet to the floor. It was the representative from Sri Lanka who stood up and called for quiet, begging for an audience.

  “Members of the delegation, silence please, the member from Sri Lanka wishes to speak,” the Chairman spoke aloud, silencing the room.

  “Thank you, Mr Chairman.” The delegate from Sri Lanka stood up, “Samuel, I stand here among my colleagues and ponder all that you have said. For such information that you bring is very strange and most unusual. I found myself wondering on what it is that brought you here, to talk with us.”

  “If anyone in this room has queries about Samuel and as to what his intentions are let me pose you this question.”

  “If he intended to mislead us, then why inform us? If he planned such an event, why did he return here? I find it highly unlikely he would return to his government and then ask for our assistance. Furthermore, he had no requirement to inform us and come here today.”

  “He could quite easily only have spoken with the Australian government and laid his intentions before them. This would have saved the Australian Government the embarrassment of being the nation responsible for the event.”

  “So why come here, to the United Nations?” The Sri Lankan Ambassador held up his hands.

  “I surmise Samuel has come here for one reason, and that is to prevent such a thing from occurring again … he needs us to work together. If what he claims is true, then there are more threads out there in the world. And if there are more, he is going to need our help to find them and stop them from falling into dangerous hands, am I not right?”

  “This event can happen again, yes.” Samuel confirmed. “She is out there, wielding a great unknown power.”

  “And if such a thing can happen again, then more lives will be lost, am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that life could be yours, is that also possible Mr Richardson?”

  “Yes, mine, yours and everyone else here is at risk and without my help you are going to be powerless to stop it. The threads are the most powerful force on Earth.”

  “We cannot simply tell the world of this.” The delegate from the United States spoke up. “We cannot tell the world a large percentage died simply because some crazed woman decided she wanted to wield some strange power. No that will not work.”

  “Then what would you suggest we tell the populace?” a German delegate replied.

  “People won’t believe the actual truth, I believe we should tell them the other truth, that this was caused by a terrorist. For if what you say is true, that it was her, that woman, then she’s the damn terrorist!”

  “Typical response from a damned Yank, covering up the truth!” the Russian ambassador spoke up.

  “Order,” the speaker called. “This is a discussion panel, Mr Richardson is here to provide us with information, not to foster petty insults.”

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, I apologise,” Samuel interrupted. “I don’t mean to disrupt your delegation, nor do I presume to tell you how to best represent your respective countries. I did come here for a reason and it was not to debate these mat
ters.”

  “The facts have been presented to you as I know them and with what I have available to me on hand. More evidence can be found from within the installation.”

  “Mr Richardson, did you not state you are locked out of the facility and your government are at present attempting to dig their way in?”

  “That is true. But it is not the only way in sir,” he replied simply.

  “Explain yourself!” The British Ambassador called out.

  “If you want to prevent this from happening again then I need your permission to re-establish the Destiny facility and your co-operation in allocating resources to assist in the discovery of the other threads around the globe.”

  “I have provided a brief, which you all should have a copy of. This outlines everything that I have discussed in more detail, provides some specific evidence and has a detailed plan for moving forward.”

  “My intention after this conference is to re-open the Destiny facility where I can co-ordinate with all the respective governments on their progress in ascertaining the whereabouts of the threads. Together we can work towards prevention, together we can stop something like this from ever happening again. We work together, as a global force.”

  “As for the culprit, Lucinda Caradoc, we have information that she is in Melbourne city, arrangements have already been made to try and capture her.”

  “I have only come here to help, to tell the truth and to try and prevent such devastation from happening again. You have the evidence; the decision is yours.”

  “I thank you for your time, I will eagerly await your response.”

  The screen flicked off and the auditorium went silent.

  “Ok Ladies and Gentlemen,” the speaker announced aloud inside the hall. “We will allow a forty-five-minute recess before proceedings re-commence. The next item for the agenda is in relation to a series of unexplained fatalities on indigenous communities in the Pacific region, a separate issue to the Day of Darkness. We will reconvene on this item after the break.”

  - -

  Truck

  They sit quietly in the temporary mess tent, preparing the night’s meal. The wind blows in through the tent flap occasionally, helping to clear the hot air from within but also bringing with it dust. Alison is busy over the stove whilst Truck sits on a table preparing vegetables.

  Outside three other men sit under the stars, Aboriginal men, who prepare their meal by the campfire in a more traditional fashion.

  The night air is cool and offers a slight breeze, enough to allay the pain of having of endured another hot Grecian summer’s day. The group spend their days under the ground, digging for something, by night they eat and rest.

  But two others are missing from the nightly ritual of dinner, as they have been from all meals taken in the small camp. As Truck prepares his meal, he steals a look out the tent flap up to the crest of the mountain, noticing both Smith and Harrison seated together.

  They sit strangely, in a posture normally akin to a form of meditation, they don’t move, just sit. Truck doesn’t know how long they stay like that, for he goes to bed soon after eating, but his confusion at their nightly vigil atop the mountain is apparent. And he is struggling to understand why they don’t eat or drink.

  Together with Alison, he finishes the meal preparations and joins the three native Australian men by the campfire.

  It is a small camp, setup in a desolate corner of Santorini Island near the highest peak. The earth here is too barren for crops or domiciles, so they are alone, save for the odd mountain goat.

  Nearby a digging pit can be seen, evidence of recent excavations taking place.

  “What do you think they do up there every night?” Truck asked as he sucked the meat from the bones of his meal.

  “Do what?”

  “Go up the top of the mountain to sit up there every night, and then wait until the sun rises before coming back down?”

  “I don’t know Truck,” Alison replied.

  “Do you think they sleep up there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well they must be doing something up there right?”

  “Mate, I wouldn’t have a clue, have you tried asking one of them?”

  “I rarely see them, they’re either digging in the pit or up there at night.”

  “Truck?”

  “What?”

  “You can’t ask me questions when the answers lie with the people your talking about.”

  “Well don’t you know what they’re up to?”

  “Well, I have an idea …”

  “Alison?”

  “Oh alright Truck,” she put her spoon down. “I know enough.”

  “Tell me then.”

  “He used to do it back when we were excavating Destiny, thirty years ago.”

  “Who?”

  “Smith, you dummy, he used to sit alone up by a mountain … every night, just as he does now.”

  “Oh, you knew him back then?”

  “Yes.” She slurped her food.

  “Tell me about him.”

  “I can only tell you what I know, if it makes you happy?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  “Truck,” she exhaled. “I’ll start from what I know, how I have seen it.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Ok, so thirty odd years ago, I was out in the central Australian desert, on a dig. Me and my guys here we dug up this fella, but this fella isn’t dead. Before we’ve even uncovered him from the dirt, his eyes open and we realise he’s alive. For the next hour or so we continue to carefully dig him out of the sandy grave he’s put in, until eventually he comes free. He stands tall, stretches and walks free like he’d been in there for less than three minutes.”

  “But he wasn’t in there three minutes, I was out there for months, which means he was buried underground for at least that time.”

  “Then we take him to my tent, sit him on a chair and we talk. Although this is Smith, so talking with him isn’t easy, right? Anyway, he tells me he’s a man of earth and that he was buried because of a fire that came from the sky. He tells me my friends are about to uncover something threatening to ruin his land, that it was the fire from the sky that brought it here.”

  “The man tells me he wants to stop it and send it home, back to wherever it came from.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He’s also bound when I find him, by strange foreign manacles. I ask him about them and he tells me they also came from the sky, a man called Fahwad had put them on him.”

  “Who?”

  “Fahwad.”

  “Who is Fahwad?”

  “Do I really have to do this?”

  “Alison, yes, it helps me to understand.”

  “Sorry Truck, this gets ... tiring,” she sighed. “And I hate talking.”

  “Mister Truck … night time for dreamtime.” Wally, one of Alison’s assistants, spoke quietly. “Speak of land that time forgot.”

  “Please Alison?” Truck ignored him.

  “Ok,” she continued. “I take Smith on as my ‘foreman’ and bring him to the site known today as Destiny. He worked there, uncovering the thread with me and my team and a group of others. The day we uncovered it Smith told me all about the danger it posed. He told me he needed to destroy it.”

  “Destroy it?”

  “Well more like remove it and send it back to where it came from.”

  “So, I took it to the team and we hashed it out that night, I told them what Smith had told me and left them to discuss it. But the only conclusion they came to was to think it over and to discuss again in the morning.”

  “By morning Samuel, Lucinda and Smith had all disappeared. To where I don’t know but Marion tells me that she found blood in Smith’s tent. Three days later Lucinda returned and spoke nothing of what ha
ppened. She just took us down to the blue light and showed us what power it contained. Connecting a wire with some electrical device and bringing up an energy thread on a rudimentary computer screen.”

  “I asked her what had become of Smith but she ignored me, instead trying to divert my attention with this thing called the thread.”

  “I left soon thereafter. I wanted nothing to do with them.”

  “Why?”

  “Somehow they’d all colluded to get rid of him, I’m sure of it, otherwise he would have been there. I figured he was in their way so they made him disappear. There seemed little point in staying after that, if they were willing to kill him, then they surely wouldn’t think twice about me if I voiced my objections.”

  “And who was this Fahwad guy?”

  She inclined her head towards him. “He was the light, down the tunnel. Somehow he had perished and that was what remained of him, a blue light.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I disappear, I thought forever. Many years later I’m contacted by one of the original group, Suni, and she gets me to agree to meet with her. We meet, she tells me everything that’s happened since I’d left and also asks for my help to find the other threads.”

  “I ask her why and her answer led me to believe she was no different to Lucinda or Samuel, she just wanted her own little Destiny. I avoided her after the meeting and had every intention of staying away from her for good.”

  “What changed?”

  “Yonas.”

  “Who?”

  “Yonas.”

  “The hell did he come from?”

  “I’d been looking for more evidence ever since I left the mountains, I knew more threads were out there, I just needed to find them. But what I found first wasn’t a thread, it was a coffin.”

  “A what?”

  “At least that’s what it looked like, but it wasn’t one. I uncovered it in Africa about six years ago. Before I even had time to study it though, Samuel and his bunch of spies realised my discovery and sent in a team to steal it from me. Me and my three boys here, we left … before they got there. We left empty handed.”