by Eric Black
Just after they returned the facility, the first of the exploration party began to get sick. Then, others in the facility became ill. Of the fifty six survivors of the facility, eight died. With the self-contained atmosphere, the survivors were living in a bubble of biological diseases. They had vaccinations against the biological agents but they weren’t as effective as they hoped.
Finally, the situation came to a head. They took a vote and it was agreed – they had no choice but to vacate the facility.
Five months after the world shook, the survivors of the facility, led by Julius Babel, left for New Orleans. They would have to take their chances.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It had been many years since Jacques left his people. He had volunteered to leave them the first time, hoping that his time away from New Orleans would lessen the memories of his slaughtered family. He had encountered much to distract him as he traveled to what was left of Washington, D.C. and even more distraction when he learned the nation for which he had fought during the Gulf War no longer existed.
He had returned back to his people and found that the laughter was too much. The darkness that grew within him made it nearly impossible for him to move on from what had happened and join in with that laughter. He left again, searching the world in hope of finding some sort of peace. When he found the world dead, he knew if he was going to continue in this life, he would have to find his own source of peace.
The closer he came to New Orleans on his approach, the more he finally felt at ease. He stopped in the city of Covington, just north of Lake Pontchartrain. The city had once only been forty miles from New Orleans but with the destruction of the bridges across the lake, the distance on foot was now greatly increased.
Lake Pontchartrain had become fouled by the debris and pollutants from the air. The waters were covered by a grey film (over the next four hundred years, the lake would dry up and become a desolate plain). Jacques thought there was something morbidly serene about the grey lake and would spend hours watching the waters roll the debris that had invaded the lake.
Jacques walked past the statue of President Ronald Reagan that inhabited the town. The statue was ten feet tall on a six foot base and was reputed to be the tallest statue of Reagan in existence. Surrounding the statue and everywhere else that he looked, most of the trees were burned and had fallen and most of the grass was gone. In a few years there would be only dirt. Many of the homes in the town were burned down. There were no people.
Jacques found a house that was on the outskirts of town that was small but had a great view of the surrounding areas. The home was well stocked with canned goods – in fact an entire basement pantry of glass jars of home-canned food. The home also had a small enclosed water tower that was ninety percent full. He tested the water and found that it was good.
For four hundred years he lived alone in his house. No one from his former group came that far north and no one from the outside world came that far south (if they still lived).
If he would have met someone from New Orleans – now just called Orleans – he would have learned that the same abilities that he had obtained had been obtained by others. No one else had all of the abilities that he had but nearly everyone possessed at least one of his abilities. It seemed their experimenting with Parapsychology had yielded success. The abilities of others were successfully harvested and implanted into those with previous non-abilities. Then, genetics took over and those abilities were passed on and grew.
Jacques was still not able to explain why he now possessed every ability they had studied and how those abilities continued to grow.
If he had spoken with any of the descendants of his former group, he would have learned that they branched off into two groups. The two groups were defined by their specific study areas at the facility just before the world changed. The division of the groups was based on the previous relationships and comfort level of each group with one other so that they might work better as a team in exploring New Orleans. The separation was more of a survival tactic than anything. The two groups each took half of New Orleans with a mission of determining the livability of their respected part of the city.
The first group, led by Julius Babel, had been studying the chokka, a type of squid. The name came from the South African version of the creature. They had discovered the squid produced a naturally occurring parapsychological chemical.
Upon study of the creature, they learned that specific subspecies of the chokka possessed a unique chemical as part of their biological makeup that gave them a strength advantage over their cousins. When the chemical was transplanted into test mice, it gave the mice incredible strength. The group had just begun to explore the options when the earth shook.
The second group consisted of members who were working on a phenomenon called returning. Returning was a rare talent in which a host could recall any item that he had touched in the past and that object would appear before him at will. The original team leader had been from the Czech Republic and the name of the phenomenon in his native tongue was návratu. Since návratu sounded more exotic to the group than returning, the name stuck.
So the two groups took on the names of the team projects – the Chokka team and Návratu team. They had no idea that the separation of the two groups would eventually lead to a malevolent split.
Over time, the names of the teams became the adopted name of the people in that group, almost as if they were their own tribe of people. When both groups found that New Orleans was livable (there were still some concerns about radiation), they decided that the Chokka group would settle the French Quarter, the Arts District, and the Garden District, ignoring what was once downtown. The Návratu group settled the Ninth Ward.
Once settled, the new people of New Orleans went about reclaiming their daily lives. There was a good mixture of males and females and soon couples were married and brought the second generation of their group into the new world. The children were born naturally with many of the same psychic abilities that their parents had developed artificially. The two sides were unsure of the level of the abilities on either side and this led to jealously and then distrust. The groups began to fear what the other group could achieve with the new abilities. Paranoia settled in and conflicts began.
It wasn’t long until the two groups were at war with one another. The people that only thirty years earlier had struggled for survival together when their nation crumbled were divided and bitter enemies.
Eventually, the Návratu were forced from Orleans by the Chokka. They moved to the Outerlands and later the Barren Lands, plotting their revenge. The Chokka learned that the one of the German members of the Návratu had begun calling their nation Klopp as a homage to the well-known German footballer and coach. They would be known going forward as Klopph.
Jacques knew none of this. If he had, he wouldn’t have cared. What he did care about was the object that he had discovered in what the people of Orleans called the Barren Lands (he still called it St. Tammany Parish). The object was something that they had been working on before the world shook. He had last seen the object at the facility and he had no idea how the object came to be at the edge of what used to be Lake Pontchartrain.
The object was delicate and so he picked it up carefully. Then very carefully, he took it back to his home.
He had no idea he was being watched.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“How do they work?” The man, like Julius, was on the first team to study the newly discovered portals.
“I’m not quite sure yet.” Julius replied. “All I know is that we can control them. Not where they go but we can open and close them. And they all seem to revolve around water.”
No one at that point was authorized to go through the portals to see where the portals led; but they had experienced the pull of the portals, so they knew they went somewhere. What they didn’t know about the portals was that not only did they lead to another place but another time (at least most of them). Soon, they wou
ld travel through the portals and learn that they opened in a world that was eerily similar, yet at the same time, very odd. The team would surmise that the portals led to an alternate reality but that was not true.
The first portal they used was the fountain in Jackson Square. The fountain was built in 1960, but what most people didn’t know was that the fountain was built on an original water source that was instrumental in the French Mississippi Company’s decision to settle the town of New Orleans. The native tribes who lived there prior to the French told stories of the water. The water was said to posseses great mysticism but the tribesmen refused to describe what that meant.
Julius was part of the first team that went over. He was shocked to learn that the exit point was the Taj Mahal portal. They didn’t think much about it at the time, but years later they were astonished when they reused the portal and discovered that it led to a time before the world shook. It led to their past.
That discovery caused debate on whether they should go back through and return to when the planet was full of billions of living people. Many in the group argued that they had to go back and warn the world that there would be a catastrophic event that would claim nearly the entire population of the earth. Julius considered his sister and her family but argued that going back would change nothing. “No one will listen. Don’t you remember those times? As Americans, we were so consumed with ourselves that we thought we were above the atrocities of the world. Remember how we largely ignored the invasion of China and India? The government back then would think we were crazy. Or worse – we could be looked at as a terrorist group.
“Besides, we can’t inhabit our old lives. There can’t be two of us in the same time. The only reason we lived is that we were in the facility. It’s not like we can just knock on the door and explain that we’re from the future and would like to live through everything again. What happens next, a third group of us shows up, and then a fourth?”
Julius’ logic was sound, even though not everyone was content with the decision. In the end, they stayed and chose to learn all they could about the portal. To protect the waters and to give them a better environment in which to learn, they erected a building around the fountain.
Through their study of the portal, they eventually began to gather details on how the portal worked. They didn’t have all of the specifics but they had some general theories. These notes detailing the theories would allow a future generation to build the Bejárat after the original portal was buried beneath the rubble of the building that was designed to protect it.
One of their greater accomplishments was the genetic creating of the Pishacha, engineered to protect the buried portal.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jacques looked down at the Tipler cylinder – the device that originally been designed for time travel. The group that had disagreed with Julius on the decision not to go back in time developed the device to accomplish just that without use of the portals.
It didn’t work. All of the theories behind the cylinder were sound but in the end, the cylinder didn’t establish a means to travel through time.
The cylinder did have an unexpected side effect, however. While it did not allow for time travel, it did allow for travel from place to place.
Jacques had been part of the team that developed the cylinder. He had seen the empty world. It was a world of death. He knew that mankind would not survive long-term and did not want to be a part of it. He had argued that in going back, they could at least warn their families.
During the research on the cylinder, Jacques had come across an obscure report of two scientists in Tennessee who had developed a method of traveling through time (he wasn’t entirely sure how the copy of the report had ended up at the facility). Filed with this documentation were other reports of people throughout history suspected of being able to travel through time. During World War I, there were rumors of men who would appear and then disappear. Someone had deduced that Jack the Ripper was a time traveler. There were also several century old written records that spoke of mystic waters. One of those written records mentioned a great battle waged to protect those waters. Unbelievably, two of the people named in the battle were Juan Ponce de Leon and Christopher Columbus.
In the end, however, time travel was not produced as they had hoped. But they had succeeded in developing a method of moving mass from one location to another. Jacques now held that method in his hand. It would allow him to search the world for other people. He had searched the old remains of Mexico, Canada, Russia, and China but to no avail. But Europe, Africa, South America, and Australia remained. Who knew, perhaps the war had changed the environment so that Antarctica was now inhabitable. Jacques intended to use the device to find out. At the very least, it would give him purpose once again.
Triana watched Jacques from a safe distance. She was suspicious of the man, unsure if he was Klopph or not. It seemed strange that someone would be this far into the Barren Lands.
She watched the strange man for about an hour, curious as to who he was and what he was doing. She studied the object in his hand. If it was something that would do her people harm, she wanted to be able to describe it to her uncle.
She followed the man to his home, intrigued at the complexity of the structure. All around her, the world was wasted, yet here lived a man in a house that was as nice as any home in the Garden Quarter.
When she had seen all she cared to see, she turned and continued south, to where she hoped her home lay.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Babel looked over at his mother sleeping on the airline. They had spoken more on what his mother knew about his father’s childhood but didn’t want to draw too much attention to themselves from someone who might eavesdrop in the close confines of the plane, so they didn’t go into much detail.
It was a short flight from Nashville to JFK but long flight from JFK to Amsterdam and Babel was glad when they finally arrived. The flight had a choice of three mid-air movies and he was only mildly interested in one. He ended up watching the same movie twice, not that he paid much attention to the movie either time. His mind was filled with questions that would have to wait until Amsterdam to be asked.
They intentionally inserted a one-day layover in Amsterdam into their flight plans. The extra day in Amsterdam would give them time to sit and talk.
They checked into their hotel and then went downstairs, entering the streets along the canals. Down the street from the hotel was a corner pub that wasn’t too full. There was a secluded booth in the corner of the pub where they chose to continue their conversation. Drinks ordered and delivered, Babel began the first of his questions.
“So why do you think Dad would have gone over to his world?”
Alicia took a sip of her drink and looked at her son wearily. It had been a long flight. “As I mentioned before, the way between this world and that world is through the waters. I’m not sure what happens there to allow people to come here. But your father came here from there and it only makes sense if he can do it then someone else can as well.”
“If someone did come here, why would they want to bring Dad back? He’s been here for years.”
“Babel, your father didn’t tell me much about that world but he did tell me that his parents were important people over there. His parents, your grandparents, were killed but your father escaped. He was a teenager when he came over.”
“So they wanted him because of my grandparents? If they were killed and he escaped and was no longer a part of that world, why worry about him?”
“I don’t know Babel.”
Babel looked at his mother. “What did you do the first time Dad told you he was from another world?”
Alicia laughed. “He didn’t tell me right away of course. I think our first conversation was when I asked him about his parents. He told me they had been killed but didn’t go into too much detail. Over time, he gave me more insight into his life.
“The first time he told me he was from another world, he
was drunk. I thought he was crazy. He showed me the picture of the Taj Mahal and explained to me how it worked. Over time, he convinced me.”
Babel thought on that for a while and Alicia was content to sit in silence as Babel gathered his thoughts. “When we get to India, how am I going to enter the other world?” Babel said distantly.
“I’m not sure. I asked your father that same question – how could someone pass through from this side? His answer was that it was complicated but if he ever needed to, he could. He also said that you and he were the only ones would be able to open the way to that world.”
“So when we get there, I’ll just know what to do?”
Alicia nodded. “According to your father, yes.”
Babel looked at his mother seriously. “Why didn’t either of you ever tell me?”
“When should we have told you Babel? In high school? College? If you knew, it would have made you different. Life is hard enough. Would knowing that you were half-alien have made anything easier?”
Babel shrugged. He was angry that he hadn’t known but it wasn’t a time to confront that anger. He needed to save his father. He knew that his parents were just trying to protect him and he would address the matter with them at a later time. Both of them together, after he had brought his father back.
“What are the people over there like?” Babel asked. The waitress approached the table and interrupted before his mother could answer. They both ordered one more drink. When the drinks were delivered, his mother answered his question.
“The people there look just like your father and you. Did you ever notice your father having an extra eye?”
Babel smiled and shook his head. “I guess not.”