At first it felt like overdrive had been activated in his mind and he would race through a thousand thoughts in a moment. Images would flash rapidly across his consciousness, intertwined with multiple perspectives. But once he learnt to steady his old mind, to shut it down, he realised what he was truly capable of.
Of what he could feel in the memory of Smith.
Their third night together was the first time he learnt where Smith had been bestowed with the name Smith. He recalled the memory to Smith almost immediately, going back to when he had met Fahwad, back at the giant rock.
“Fahwad left you at the Red Rock, travelling north. And you followed him, for over a hundred years, finding a trail of dead negroid men in your wake. Until, one day, you came to a place called Idanya, and that’s where everything truly started going wrong.”
“The fire from the sky.”
In Smith’s mind that night had helped to solidify his purpose. He knew how this started, the first fire … Fahwad. And even though Harrison spoke of many other incidents, over hundreds of thousands of years, this one remained Smith’s primary focus.
Unfinished business.
“How old are you Smith?” Harrison asked him one night.
“Don’t know … see as seen? Memory answer?”
“Time isn’t really of consequence when I see your memories, it’s not something that ever occurs to you, only the moment does. But I sincerely get the feeling you’ve been around for an extremely long time.”
“Time, not important … see all as seen.”
“Have seen all of it? Have I seen everything you’ve seen?”
“Yes.”
Harrison knew if he really wants to know answers to the mystery of Smith, then henceforth he only need look within. Smith passed almost everything on to him now, every memory he’d ever collected was now a part of Harrison. But what Harrison lacked was the patience to wait for the answers to reveal themselves, or for the time to sort through them all.
For whilst he possessed them, he couldn’t go through every memory at once. It would take time, patience and a strong mind to navigate through it all. Harrison resolved himself to meditate, for as long as it took, to learn the depths of Smith’s memory.
He sat himself back down outside the shaft entrance on a large rock, where he’d been sitting the past few hours waiting for something to happen.
Earlier he’d tried to talk to Truck, to sit him down and try his best to explain everything to his friend. But Truck refused him, telling Harrison he didn’t need to explain. So instead Harrison did what he thought Smith would have, he took his hand and tried to share something with Truck in the manner Smith had shared with him.
He made Truck see as he had seen, but it seemed someone else had already made him see. He didn’t know enough about the blue light, but he knew its origins were from a person, a person from another place.
And that person had somehow already spoken to Truck, down in the cave.
Truck never hesitated, never questioned it, he just did what he thought right. Harrison went with him to the shaft, explaining the process to him and after a brief hand shake, Truck descended the mine shaft alone.
His expression, as he left, was one of a stranger. Although he looked at Harrison with a smile as he descended, his eyes told another story, his eyes finally realising the man before him was no longer his friend.
His friend had died, this man was someone else.
His patience now defeated, Harrison finally makes his mind up, jumping the shaft railing and scaling the walls, downwards to the bottom. When he hits the shaft floor he unslings a torch he’s clipped to his belt and is about to flick it on when all of a sudden he’s propelled back into the dirt wall from an unexpected thrust to his chest.
He flies a good ten feet in the air before thudding into the earthen wall of the shaft, the shock of the impact taking the wind from his lungs.
The owner of the hand steps into view and Harrison calls out as he recognises its owner. “Truck … stop … it’s me!” He pleads between breaths.
But if the man recognises Harrison it doesn’t show on his face, he comes forward and collects Harrison by the throat from the ground and hoists him up like a rag doll. His grip tightens and he forces Harrison against the back of the shaft, squeezing harder as his face contorts in anger.
Harrison can do nothing to stop it, he can’t even speak as the hold is so strong. He does the one thing he thinks might be of any use to him, he closes his eyes and shuts his mind down, just like Smith taught him.
With a hand around his throat it takes him a couple of extra seconds to get himself in the zone, but when he does he feels a calm overtake him. He enters into the other space.
“I am not Fahwad,” he says to himself, touching his wrist ever so slightly to his assailant’s hand.
An instant later he feels himself being let go and drops to the ground gasping.
“Who are you?”
Harrison picks himself up off the ground and considers the person’s eyes. He looks and sounds like Truck, but Harrison can sense his friend is no longer there. His look is relatively the same, save for a slightly elongated head, but it just doesn’t feel like Truck. Truck’s body has been taken over by the light.
“Who are you I should ask?”
“I am Iegar. What are you?”
“Am of this Earth,” Harrison starts. “And you, you are not.”
“Where am I?” he demands.
“You are on Earth, inside a cave that was dug to get you out.”
“Out of what? What has happened?”
“You came from the sky, along with your friends. You crashed, eventually coming to rest here. Now I need you to come with me.”
“No,” he stops Harrison with a hand to the chest. “You will answer now.”
“You cannot threaten me.”
“Many fear me, you should as well small child. I am a great warrior.”
Harrison looks back at him plain faced, unassuming. He does not fear this man. He doesn’t fear anyone anymore. “Your threats are empty and have no place here.”
“You think so little child?”
“Know so,” he leans forward, not taking his eyes off him.
“Who are you?”
“Have told you already, am of the earth.”
“Earth?”
“That is what call land here. Now … must leave, you friend need help and not have time to play around.” Harrison turns and begins exiting the shaft.
“What friends?” The bulky man calls after him.
“We leave now for Enoch, then we must return to help my friend Smith.”
“Enoch!” He grabs Harrison’s shirt tightly. “You know where he is?”
“My friend Alison does, she’s trying to bring him back as we speak.”
“Bring him back? From where?”
“You have been asleep a long time, as have the others.”
The man seems to sense himself and instinctively runs his hands all over himself, “What is this?”
“This is the body that has been given to you, to carry you through this world and back to your own.”
“And where is the man who it belonged to?”
“Truck …” Harrison’s head bows, “… he was friend.”
“He was like you?”
“No, he was a human being, a product of your own life force. And whilst he may have only been a small part of you, he was a great man and great friend.”
“Then we shall honour him with a great feast, but for now little one, I must find the others. A great danger lurks in this part of the world.”
“Fahwad,” Harrison answers him.
“You know of him already?”
“He is preparing now to capture Yonas, to take his power for his own. Once he has achieved this he wishes to take
the rest of you.”
“The crew, they are all alive?”
“Some …”
“Fahwad is here too?”
“Yes.”
“He must be stopped.”
“With your help, yes.”
“Come, let us not waste time, you say you have found Enoch, come then, it’s time to get the crew back together and go after Fahwad.”
- -
Marion
Lucinda stood there, overlooking the sight of what they’d uncovered and stared at it with an almost reverent awe. Marion too looked at the object, but in her mind only saw a coffin made of strange material, looking similar to dark graphite or carbon.
“What is it?” she asked. “Some sort of coffin?”
“Looks like one doesn’t it?” Lucinda mused, running her hands over it softly. “But I can assure you this is no coffin.”
“Lucinda?”
“Hold on,” she bent down, feeling for something on the bottom. “I think it is open already, I know they had to use it when he first came back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sorry,” she apologised as she flicked a hidden switch. “The best description I can give you is that this is a life vessel, a ship.”
“Samuel had this desk brought in, all the way from Africa,” Marion recalled. “About six years ago if I remember?”
“Yeah, he’d been trying to find it, or more succinctly, Fahwad spent a long time looking for it.”
“Thought he was dead?”
“No, not dead, just reduced to a blue light buried beneath the earth. And, much as Samuel tried to find the coffin over the years at Fahwad’s behest, they never discovered it. It was actually someone far more capable who discovered it … Alison.”
“Alison?” Marion asked. “Alison Benchley?”
“Yes,” she replied, hanging her head. “She was the one who found the coffin, but Samuel was the one who got it.”
“You didn’t kill her too, did you?”
“No. Samuel wanted to but I stopped him. She’d been there since the start and didn’t deserve to be treated like that. But more so, she was a friend, our friend before all this rubbish started. Sometimes I think taking her discovery away from her and leaving her with nothing was a fate much worse though, probably worse than death to her.”
“How so?”
“This was her father’s life work, her life work and it’s all the two of them lived for … to uncover the truth. After she left us thirty years ago I thought she went off in search of another life, but she kept at it, kept trying to fight for Smith. Despite the heavy odds against her she never gave up, she pursued the truth.”
“Hmmm, these things I never knew.”
“She’s the true hero here, the unsung hero who works in the background and never gets the praise, never gets recognised and seldom gets the thanks they deserve. She found Yonas, found the coffin and found Smith, twice. I’m guessing she’s responsible for the latest incident too ... what a woman she is and what terrible ones we’ve become.”
“Hmmm, and what, she just let you guys take this coffin from her?”
“Yep.”
“And then you brought it here?”
“Yes.”
“But it wasn’t a desk though, right?”
“No,” Lucinda replied, standing back up and fingering the lip of the coffin object. “We just used that to cover it up and bring it here, Samuel didn’t want anybody knowing about this one. He probably would’ve tried to keep it from me if he didn’t need my help.”
“You said it’s a vessel?”
Lucinda lifted the lid. “Yeah, sort of like a life raft. A method of transport I guess. But Samuel told me it also had regenerative properties as well, it has medical abilities of some sort.”
“For aliens?”
“I don’t like that term.”
“Well that’s what they are.”
“Well what does that make us then?” She opened the lid.
“Good point,” Marion said as she peered inside the coffin. “There’s nothing inside, it’s empty. Just some weird shapes on the walls”
“So it looks, but trust me it isn’t.”
“How?”
“Their technology is far more advanced than our own. Most of our technological capabilities have been developed from what they brought here.”
“Wow. This is incredible,” she peered inside the coffin. “So what can it do?”
“I’m not up to speed on everything but I know it can fly, or transport is perhaps a better description. And it acts as a medical bay, healing all manner of ailments it detects. Take a seat and let the coffin do the work so to speak, it has something like advanced A.I from what Samuel told me.”
“Sounds pretty cool.”
“Well, in the right hands maybe, but not ...”
“Who?”
“Fahwad Achmenabad.”
“Fahwad?”
“Yes. This Fahwad drove Samuel from within, towards his goal and finding this box was a goal of his for a very long time. Apparently, it can keep him alive, kind of like rejuvenating him.”
“And the rabbit hole only gets deeper.” Marion mused.
“The threads Marion, they don’t belong here. We don’t belong here. Do you understand what is really happening?”
“You know I think I do. If I think about all of this it is quite simple. Earth was Earth, Smith was man. Light falls from sky and crashes into Earth. Smith gets buried somehow in the midst of this. The things that came from the light couldn’t survive, they perished and their threads split the Earth and created humans.”
“Simple,” Lucinda said.
“Simple,” Marion responded. “But not so simple also …”
“How so?”
“This Fahwad guy, what about him?”
“I have done many bad things at his behest, Marion … and ... some even at my own.”
“It wasn’t that long ago now, that I first spoke to Sera. Don’t ask me how, but once I unravelled the section of the second thread it begun to talk to me. Normally a sane person would freak at the sound of another person’s voice inside their own, but not in this case, she was ... serene. Serene and peaceful to hear.”
“She was calm, soft, slow and most accommodating to my frustrations. In a very short amount of time I grew to trust and learn of her past. She told me fantastic tales of the place where she’d come from and the family she’d hoped were still there. It’s odd to share thoughts with someone inside your head, kind of like dreaming. You know something happened, but you’re not sure that you believe it or remember it properly.”
“She told me who she was, she was an officer in the armed services, sent on a mission to find a person and bring them back. They’d crashed here on Earth, their ship breaking apart in our atmosphere. Some of her crew landed on Earth, others disappeared completely. Quickly they were found by Fahwad, who was already here.”
“But Fahwad wasn’t friendly. He captured Sera and enslaved her underneath his great palace. She told me he had plans to steal her power, her life force, but after a battle between the two a great fire came from the sky.”
“Then the great flood came and wiped everything out, it washed them away and buried them deep under the earth.”
“But her people from the sky never really perished, they somehow remained, just as Fahwad had … buried over time, they became the threads?”
“Hmmm.”
“And those threads somehow made us what we are today.”
“Yeah, amazing,” Marion seemed a little distant. “Not too many people get to say they know where they come from.”
“As you said though Marion, the hole only gets deeper.”
“It always does.”
“Urghh.” Marion clasped her che
st in a sudden moment of pain and anxiety.
“What is it? Your heart?”
Marion let out a little squeal and rubbed her chest tightly, but the look on her face didn’t suggest she was in any physical pain.
“Marion?”
“I think it’s my heart.”
“That’s impossible, you should be a picture of health, I gave you ...” Lucinda stopped herself from reminding Marion of how she had revived her with the lives from the thread.
“No, it’s weird … urgh.” She let out a sigh, as the sudden pain receded.
“What the …?”
“I don’t know, something weird just happened,” she scratched her head, a little confused. “Anyway, where were we?” She returned them to their conversation, “I guess the question now is, what next?”
“We’re all a part of this, no matter how much we do, or don’t like it. I am a part of Sera, a product of her.”
“And what does she want?”
“She wants to come back, she wants to leave and go back to her family, but she wants more than anything, to stop Fahwad. Her team, her crew, that is why they came to Earth, to capture him and return him to their planet.”
“Who is this guy?”
“She told me that he was a criminal, an escapee who had fled her planet.”
“Criminal for what?”
“Apparently he created something, a menace that plagues their planet, the details of which I don’t comprehend. From what I understand he was kind of like a scientist and ran their research facility, he created something and now it roams their planet, leaving only destruction in its wake …”
“Hmmm ... and she came here with a team to bring him back?”
“Yeah, to get him to fix it.”
“So what happened to the rest of her team?”
“She doesn’t know where they all are.”
“What?”
“Sera is the first that I met of their group, and not so long ago I met another who calls himself Yonas. The others I’ve never met.”
“And what about Smith?”
“He’s not one of them.”
“This makes no sense.”
“Smith is a different fish all together, I think he’s from here, from the Earth and he’s trying to get the threads off his Earth. He wants to send them back to the sky, but he has a rather large problem.”
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