Islands in the Sky

by Michel Savage

  "What is it Allen?" Mica asked as she passed me by, noticing my momentary distraction.

  "I don't know ...it might be nothing," I answered as I brushed my hands clean of the dry soil while we followed in Logan's shadow.

  At the far end of the grove we approached a massive structure which appeared to be a grand tree made of a course white crystal. Its branches filled the space above us in its canopy as its thick limbs seemed to penetrate into the roof of the structure supporting the foundation of the castle above. It looked oddly familiar to the iron tree we had seen above ground at our base camp; mimicking the design of every branch and twig of its larger counterpart. At its base sat an orb of red marble in stark contrast to the pale ivory trunk before us. Logan was the first to approach the strange artifact.

  "There are runes carved into this! Mica, come take a few pictures for the records," he ordered to his assistant.

  Mica stepped forward and took several shots with her camera from different angles of the blood red sphere, which was the diameter of an oversized bowling ball. Fine symbols were engraved into its surface. It sat in a shallow glass-like bowl, very similar to the one we had found on the elevator lift that crashed within the ice filled channel. Mica examined the bowl while Logan attempted to decipher the symbols on the rose colored stone.

  "I no longer have that bracelet battery which activated lift, and this orb doesn't seem to want to move easily," Mica admitted as she attempted to roll the stone ball in place to get a look at its underside.

  "Let me take a look," I offered to the two of them as I glanced at the setup. I had worked on machines before, and in its most simplest of construction it appeared to work like ball bearing; but one which had lost its lubricant to function properly, "this is only a guess, but it looks to me like its conductor has all dried up..." I noted off the top of my head.

  "Allen, give me your canteen," Mica ordered as her eyes widened at my suggestion. Off the top of my head I was thinking that some sort of grease would be needed to move the sphere in its socket; but apparently she wanted to try using water in its place.

  I handed her my half empty canteen and she gently poured it around the edge of the crimson sphere where it seeped into the recesses of the basin. Taking her flashlight from her pocket, she unscrewed the end cap and removed the batteries. With a note of caution, she touched one of the ends to the stone, but nothing happened.

  "Maybe try putting the positive end of one battery on that side and a negative end on the other," I blurted as a suggestion.

  It was a crude approach to the problem, but I could see what she what she was trying to do. Mica only needed a spark to jumpstart the device. There was a click as the batteries touched the water in which the stone sphere rested, and the orb lit up like a neon light. The symbols began to glow a searing white as the orb spun freely in place and came to rest with a ring of three circles coming to rest at its top.

  "Well, that's certainly interesting," Logan exclaimed, but couldn't help himself from touching the center ring. When his finger made contact with it, a woman's face made of light appeared above the crimson sphere within the recess of the tree. In shock, Logan withdrew his hand as a voice emanated from the hollow.

  "Jotunn, modir o'jord..." it began to announced in a tranquil feminine voice which held an underlying tone of authority. The words that followed didn't make as much sense as the first incantation, so Logan tried his hand at adjusting the device to see what it would do if it touched the other rings. However, as he did so the words she spoke became clear. Withdrawing his hand in surprise, the words again returned to an ancient gibberish until he once again place his hand on the vibrant sphere.

  "...and so it was the beginning and the end of our people; because we could not see with our eyes, nor hear with our ears the sacred voice of nature calling to us." the strange image finished its chant.

  "Hmm, I wonder how this works," Logan spat as he fiddled with the orb as he tried to turn it, "I can hear the words clearly when I'm in physical contact with this device."

  "What did it say?" Mica leaned forward and touched the red sphere at his side, trying to hear what the avatar said.

  "I will repeat myself, young one," the glowing image of the woman answered to her and the Logan's utter surprise, "the life giver and mother of the earth called forth to her people and warned of a time of change and reckoning; but we did not heed these omens; and so it was the beginning and the end of our people; because we could not see with our eyes, nor hear with our ears the sacred voice of nature calling to us."

  "She ...it heard me?" Mica blundered aloud in shock as she turned to Logan who was equally amazed.

  "I did young one," the image answered.

  "How can we understand their dialect?" Mica again spoke aloud to herself in wonder, still in disbelief of this ancient technology which was hundreds of thousands of years old could match, if not surpass, their modern computers. It was comprised of merely water and crystal and stone; and appeared to be nothing short of magic to the two scientists. Mica turned back and ushered me over to touch the marble orb beside them since I couldn't understand what they were hearing.

  "You now touch the heart stone, a source of both learning and healing and understanding among our many races and tribes," the woman spoke, "as long as you touch the stone, the wisdom of our elders can be passed through the third eye to translate and share our knowledge among the tongues of many peoples from those of distant lands beyond the sea and sky."

  "It must use a form of telepathy of some sort to communicate; which relies on physical contact with this device here to fulfill that function," Logan surmised as his assistant concurred with his hypothesis. His statement went unnoticed by the interactive apparatus.

  "Well, this is your chance Doc, ask it something," I urged while I nudged his shoulder.

  "We have traveled through many great cities that now lie in ruin. Tell us what this place is, and what became of your once thriving society?" Logan inquired. However, there followed a moment of awkward silence before it spoke again, but we all kept our hands touching the device so we wouldn't miss the answer.

  "Many moons ago before the time of bitter winds and ice, it is true that our green lands were once lush with life and our people were prosperous. However, the six domains of the great lands were threatened by the Trinity," the voice mentioned as six broken semi-circles appeared around the three rings Logan had touched on the orb, "during the conflict that arose in our efforts to defend our frontiers, we appropriated the great weapon of the Trinity which had split at its cusp."

  Logan had remembered tale the great mural had told of this event, and here it was being confirmed. These vast lands had once seen great violence which engulfed the entire continent; but the cost of peace had come at a perpetual winter which had stolen all life from its peaks to its shores.

  "We understood as much, but what happened after that great battle?" the professor inquired; eager for an answer.

  "We used the great weapon to fell the great wall of earth and stone against the vanquished; who then fled back to the seas. However, after the conflict was abated, hostilities rose between the remaining domains as the great weapon was deemed too powerful to possess for any single clan; so the great sphere was split apart and shared equally among them."

  The image of the woman's face was replaced by a circle of six rings; which displayed spheres within spheres that were separated into half a dozen sections.

  "But these weapons were cursed, as their very presence fed suspicion and strife, and created rivalries where balance had once existed before. Thus it was declared that the energy these weapons harvested would be better served as a resource of creation rather than that of destruction. Though the wisdom which gave birth to this age of freedom soon passed, and in its place were bred the seeds of contention," the face in the tree delivered, "brothers of the land pitted against one another, and those that were vanquished were condemned to servitude."

  "But everyone is dead now, we have seen t
heir tombs. How was it that these thriving lands are now locked in a perpetual season of ice?" Mica asked the mystical interface while the professor appeared to support her question with an eager nod.

  "The great weapon we captured from our enemies was repurposed to serve the six domains; but the danger of their use was never diminished. There came a time when this divided artifact once again synchronized to operate within the intent of its original design," the glowing face remarked, "as it harnessed the soul of the earth there came a time when this bleeding of sacred energy awakened great powers we had not seen before; and our folly caused a great catastrophe to spin the islands in the sky above our lands."

  "She means the stars. She is very well speaking of the polar shift which caused the equator to reposition eons ago when the continents were not yet as divided into the global positions we see them today," Mica noted for Logan and I.

  "Did anyone survive this great cataclysm when the position of the stars above changed?" Logan inquired regarding their mundane perspective of a massive continental shift. Again, an awkward silence followed his question until the interface responded once again.

  "During the time of the great war between the nine known domains and the great wall was shaken to fall upon our enemies; it was within these blocks of ancient stone we unearthed where our scholars discovered evidence of an civilization that predated our own by countless millennia," the voice of the device revealed much to Logan's sheer surprise, "These voices from the past told of a cycle of change upon our world from which the many races of men must begin anew as children. These same signs and portents revealed themselves once more; warning us of the dangers we were to face, but to our shame the words of our elders fell upon deaf ears."

  "Astounding!" Logan cried, "This ancient society uncovered evidence of an even older civilization which existed before their own whom had also fallen victim to the polar shift."

  "Are you saying it was those magnetic spheres ...those orbs devices which siphoned the energies of the earth itself; did they cause the catastrophe which decimated your people?" Mica asked the glowing interface.

  "Though the great weapon was split among each of the domains and was thought to have been rendered harmless, we did not expect the soul of the earth would awaken it once again. The wisdom of those that came before us had lain buried beneath our feet and we heard their voice too late to realize what we had done," the glowing maiden confessed, "The warmth of the sun fled us to rest upon the horizon and cold winds stripped the trees of our lush jungles and forest. Those of us that survived escaped underground and used the living earth to protect ourselves during this time of tragedy. The great tree is a symbol of equilibrium to the Asga; for what is above is also below which bears the fruit of life. Fire and wind above as water and earth below; all which cradles the element of life. With no where to turn, our people surrendered this sanctuary to find another home where they could flourish once again," the woman finished.

  Upon hearing that revelation we each removed our hands from the red orb to contemplate what we had learned. These ancient people used the power of a foreign enemy against themselves and exposed an even older culture before them from beneath the ruins of that great battle. They had divided the captured weapon among their peoples believing they had disarmed it; but when the cycle of polar shifts commenced once again, the results were disastrous. The parted weapon created a resonance with geomagnetic poles which spun the world into an unstable position which cast the continents into a new bearing.

  Mica knew there were geologic anomalies around the world that still remained unexplained, but this revelation shed new light upon those unanswered mysteries. Great forests turned to desert dunes swept with sand while snow fell upon once parched lands; sterilizing them with its cold embrace. The world itself had tumbled out of alignment; killing off countless species in a great extinction event. But this ancient culture saw balance in this turmoil; for the great tree was the representation of life which bound all other elements.

  Their religion and core theology wasn't based on the acts of men nor of nature, but they found divinity in the creation of life itself. It was a profound thought that took a while to sink in. The iron tree, this crystal tree and the various symbols thereof we had seen; we had taken far too absolute. The tree wasn't a deity to them; it was simply a symbol of hope.

  The problem we were facing now was evident and stretched far beyond our own survival upon this continent of ice. Once again a polar shift had been creeping upon the age of men, and we had inadvertently triggered the device that harnessed the geomagnetic fields; accelerating the conversion. It was the realization of that which sent us reeling with regret. In our efforts to escape the icy tomb of this forgotten civilization we had nudged the day of reckoning ever closer; putting billions of lives at risk.

  "Logan, ask that thing if there is a way we can turn off the electric sphere we activated!" I spat at the professor, suddenly realizing I might not have any sunny beaches left to retire on after this little jaunt.

  The professor once again placed his hand on the crimson stone and pressed the center ring; but nothing happened. Trying several more times, he became aggravated that it wouldn't activate the interface we had spoken with moments before.

  "Well criminy!" Logan barked, "I can't get this thing to turn back on!"

  Mica looked through her pack and found a spare set of batteries; but the process she had used before to jumpstart the device failed to work a second time. Clearly vexed by this change of events, Logan tried to spin the red stone ball and began tracing the symbols in an attempt to activate anything that could get the translation device working again. Unfortunately, the only thing that happened was that a crystal slate on the far wall lifted to expose a doorway; so Logan forced himself to be satisfied by that.

  "Well, that's better than nothing I suppose..." I whispered to myself, though aware that my strength was sapped when we turned to leave the stone forest. We were all suffering from exhaustion at this point and couldn't endure much more of this strain. Mica had used the last of our water to activate the AI device within the crystal tree; making me wonder if we only had a hours or days left before we eventually succumbed to fatigue.

  As we passed into the newly exposed corridor I thought I noticed the sound of something scampering through the petrified grove behind us; but passed it off as ambient noise grating at my nerves. Beyond the breach the passage came up short, leaving us in a chamber with a spiral staircase which hugged the outer wall. Each of the several levels we rose through were filled with different assortments of oddities we presumed to be varieties of studies and research. It wasn't until we hit the uppermost floor until we stumbled across something which spiked Logan's interest.

  Sitting on the edge of a crescent shaped table stood the model of an orb with several cross sections removed. It sat within an exact replica of the holding base we had seen supporting the first rotating sphere we encountered which Mica had triggered.

  "Most interesting," Logan exclaimed as he began to remove the inner pieces which fit together like a Chinese puzzle box, "these spheres nestle within one another and were separated into nearly equal parts," he noted; seeing how they fit like a globe within a globe, each one getting progressively smaller.

  "It almost appears like the theoretical model of the inner core of the earth," Mica gestured towards the device which floated within the bowl-shaped support.

  "I see ...now that would make sense, is each of these cores spun freely from one another they would create the effects of a dynamo which would generate a magnetic wave," Logan added, "what if our planet is not merely an iron core spinning in a pool of magma as geologist speculate; but instead resembles this intricate model here?"

  Mica took a close study of the inner pieces and how they merged, then realized what she had been missing all along.

  "Take a cube, its top, bottom and four sizes, right?" She proclaimed, "Now take that fundamental six sided shape and smooth it into a circle," she pointed to the sev
eral sections of globes which nestled into one another, "each side is needed to correspond to a place or coordinates in space. However in a sphere shape, like ours or any planet; they are interlocked in motion, acting like a gyroscope. However, sometimes these points fall in and out of sync; much like our own Sun's solar maximum and minimum, but on a much greater scale of time."

  I wasn't keen to the scientific data Mica was referring too, so I just nodded my head in agreement like an idiot; pretending as if I understood what she was saying. Logan, on the other hand, seemed quite absorbed with her hypothesis. It made sense to him for the fact that there was a visual model in front of them to confirm her deduction.

  "A geomagnetic collector and energy distributor in one elegant design..." Logan postulated the idea of it as his eyes went glassy with the mental strain of calculating the possibilities.

  "So let me get this straight," I interrupted the two researchers, "this model with all these hollow metals spheres within it might be a replica of this acclaimed great weapon that glowing woman out there was spouting off about; and it was dissected apart to create some sort of energy source for each of the six kingdoms across the Antarctic?"

  "Well, she noted them as 'domains' instead of kingdoms; but that's pretty much accurate, Allen," the professor granted.

  "And even though they were separated; each part continued to serve the same function by creating some sort of sympathetic or electromagnetic resonance," Mica added.

  "So that thing you ...I mean we activated," I corrected to not sound like a pretentious dick, "...will eventually trigger the other five energy orbs?"

  "That's the theory," Logan admitted, "from what I understood from that interface down there in the grove."

  Looking around the room for more information on this artifact, Mica found a map of the Antarctic shelf which displayed the way it had appeared in days long past. Great forests and valleys surrounded a central mountain peaks and a coastal ranges to the north surrounded by large rolling plains to either side. The high ridge mountain range the interface referred too during its dialog as the 'Great Wall' stretched the entire expanse, leaving east Antarctica as a large kidney shaped continent with several large island masses snaking into the oceans of the west. This apparently was where their adversaries they called the Trinity had emerged.