by Grant Fausey
"I never realized how beautiful you where," he said, covering his words with a moan. "I'm in the arms of an angel."
"I'm not an angel!" laughed Sara Jolland. "You're having delusions of grandeur."
"That's a matter of opinion."
"Who are you?"
Callen ... my name is Callen Sheers."
The youth moved anxiously, trying to get a better angle on her. Whatever she was doing, he didn’t want to miss a moment of it. Callen rolled over onto his leg and was in instant, unadulterated pain. He grabbed his leg, realizing it was going to be impossible to take another step. "I think they're broken," he announced with a clenched-fist and a cringed face.
Jolland ran her hands along his legs. "Are you sure? Both of them?"
"No––" snapped Callen. "I'm not sure. They hurt like hell and I'm kind of numb."
"I don't feel anything broken; can you stand on them?"
"Maybe––if you'll give me a hand!"
Jolland hesitated then reached under his arm, pulling him from the ground. If they were broken, he was going to let out one hell–of–a scream. If they weren't, he was going to scream, but a little bit softer. Not that being a little wobbly would put him in any kind of peculiar situation.
Callen stood on his left leg, putting his weight around her shoulder to see if he was able to stand. "I think I'm okay," he said graciously.
"You're welcome," answered the dark-haired beauty.
Callen turned quickly, searching the debris with his eyes, while keeping a hold of her like a crutch. His eyes locked on the bellow of smoke rising from the crash site; most of the flames were gone, but there was a piece or two of smoldering remains.
"I'm afraid she's dead," said Sara Jolland. "I couldn't save her!"
"Yeah–– Not to worry," he muttered, soberly, "She didn't die in the crash."
"What is she?"
The wreckage scattered over a fairly wide distance, covering a lot of the ground around the watering hole. The youth tugged at Jolland's arm, but stopped when he kicked aside some of the pieces of the basket, revealing the woman's charred remains.
"Pity" he whimpered. "She was a good friend, I need to give her a proper burial." The mechanical woman didn't move; every part of her body lay perfectly still. All that remained of her were melted hunks of plastic, scorched wires and a few cables. "She's the first of her kind."
Jolland looked up at the youth, expecting a better answer. After all, this was a catastrophe.
"I guess you could consider her my mother."
Your mother–– Thought Jolland, her face curled at the thought. Such a relationship between a man and mechanical woman he called mother was decidedly something she didn't want to know anything more about. Appalled as she was by the idea. Undoubtedly she was some sort of sex machine, or his partner in some inhuman taxi. But then again, maybe the course the young man had taken lead to different facts. After all, he called her mother. Perhaps it was synonymous, perhaps ...she appeared human and that gave her the characteristics of a bounty hunter.
"I'll bet she’s an assassin,” said Sara Jolland putting two and two together like some proverbial detective. Fitting death for a…."
Jolland thought for a long minute. If this newcomer fit the description her father and Rallumn’s treacherous Alpha Elite she had grown up hearing about–then the gang of cutthroats sent out into the galaxy to ride the universe of humanity were real. As frightening as that was she couldn’t let it cloud her judgment. There was more to her companion then she could put a finger on.
"We haven't much time," said Callen. He looked up at Jolland as if pushed together by the remains of the twisted body parts on the ground. "These cliffs are treacherous, and this valley is going to become a fireball when those fools fire that thing."
"What thing," Jolland asked, bluntly.
"Looks like someone must have...."
"What?"
"You really don't know, do you?"
"Know what?” Jolland’s voice tightened. “What you're talking about?"
"The crystals..." answered Callen. "They told me you were innocent, but I didn't believe them."
"Believe who?"
"The damn fools who are creating a devastation device with crystals this big!” Callen cupped his hands around Jolland's arms to make a big circle. “When the thing goes off–– POW! This whole planet's going to…."
"Devastation devices?"
"Coupled to beam drivers!" he responded.
"Beam drivers?" Jolland balked, her eyes as big as saucers. "You're from the future!"
"Right!" snapped Callen, hobbling away from her. "Came back to save your skinny ass–– got caught up in a crossfire between agents who want you dead."
"Dead? Me–– What for."
"History, Jolland. I'm here to set the course of the future on the right path."
"On the right path––" Jolland snarled, angrily. "... With devastation devices, beam drivers and a robot! You're a bounty hunter, plain and simple!"
Jolland pulled away. She made an obscene gesture with her middle finger, and marked time, outraged at the thought of it. This stranger knew her name and more about the reason she was here, than she did. It didn't make sense. "How do you know my name?” She asked directly. “I didn't tell you!"
"Does it matter?"
"Yeah, I think it does!"
"Don't play the fool, Jolland! Do you really think you are the only one that knows you're here?"
She didn't answer; it was a dead giveaway, and he wasn’t giving her much time. "This is the past, Jolland.” He was being coy. “A lot of people in the future are counting on your death ... a lot are counting on your survival! The next few hours will tell if history will remain the same or be altered."
Jolland yanked her arm away, whistled for her trusted steed. "It's time to go."
"Wait!" shouted Callen. "You don't understand!" He voice was demanding. "This Earth is about to undergo a transformation: A polar shift to be exact. If you don't listen to me, you're going to die too."
"I don't understand," she conceded. The events unraveling before her were confusing, if not bewildering. "What does all this have to do with me?"
"You're going to die, Jolland, just as surely as that transport's never going to make it off this rock again.” Callen pointed in the direction of the spaceport where the giant space ark landed. “You're going to die.”
I'm here to stop that from happening. Those fools up there with the beam drivers are about to start the whole ball rolling, and when they do, life here isn't going to be worth a nickel. It's going to be a living hell."
Jolland looked to the sky ... thinking safety in the sky.
"The sky won't be safe either, Jolland. Not for about a hundred years. There's no place to hide!" Callen pulled a small round object about the size of a golf ball from his pant pocket and placed it in the center of what was left of the robot's chest. "I'd better I cremate her remains now, rather than wait for the blast. They could catch our scent, and hunt us down like animals."
"Who?” Sara Jolland felt afraid for the first time. “What are you talking about?"
Callen stared at Jolland. "They didn't tell you anything before they sent you here, did they?"
"No!" she said. Callen hesitated. He felt disheartened for her. "Maybe they didn't want you to survive either!"
"This is Kel-fee territory.” Jolland huffed, desponded. “They're ruthless hunters, Jolland. Why don't you take your whatever that is on ahead, but be careful. The quicker we move, the happier I'll be."
Jolland looked back at her steed. He snarled, sniffing the air. There was something in the wind––an uneasy calm before the storm. “I'll catch up in a minute or so.”
Callen placed the ball on auto destruct. "This ought to do the job on both the robot and the skiff."
"I don't know why I should listen to you."
"Because if you don't, you're going to be cremated!”
Callen took a step closer, said: "Look–– I've
told you all I can."
"Why all this?"
"Because that's what I was born to do. All I want to do is…”
“Stop!” Jolland leaped onto the back of her dragon. "It’s not possible!
“This is nuts and I'm out of here," Callen depressed the timer and ran after her.
"Get off!" screamed Jolland!
"There isn't time!"
"Get off, before I...."
"Go!"
"Get off...."
"No–– Now get this thing over the hill, will you? I'm not ready to die just yet!"
The timer flashed red symbols in a countdown counting off seconds until detonation. Jolland rode hard, disappearing over the face of the mountain. The device exploded in a fireball, which instantly vaporized the body, the basket, and half the boulders next to it. A shock wave roared away from the explosion, the flash dissipating quickly. The event left a monstrous hole in the ground: One that could have easily taken their lives.
––– 6 –––
ROLLING THUNDER
The spillway was ancient, hundreds of thousands of years old eroded from the bedrock below the mountain trail. Jolland thought it manmade, but travelling the treacherous cliffs gave her a second opinion. She pulled the reins and the dragon stopped at a bend in the aqueduct. Jolland dismounted, her soft sole shoes hitting the ground beside the dragon's talons. Mud squeezed out around the edges, so she instinctively let out a little whine. Callen slipped down behind her, dismounting without a sound; his eyes on the scarecrows that surrounded them. They couldn't picked a worse place to dismount, he thought. The scarecrows, dressed in shabby clothing, lined the far wall of the spillway in six spots, each stuffed with a kind of firewood and brush. Wicker men.
"We have to keep moving," Callen announced. His voice was definitely an uneasily tone. Jolland turned around to look at him, giving him quite a stare. She could see the fear in his eyes.
"Then kept moving," she said angrily, walking just ahead of him. She stopped mid stride at the edge of a stone bridge. She took a long look at the path in front of her. The water roared beneath its thin crisscrossed layers of sedimentary rock coursing the curve to where a narrow ledge sloped downward supporting the closest scarecrow, where the stone bridge met the cliff face.
"Are you sure there's no other way across this ravine?" she asked Callen, realizing there was nothing to hold on too.
"There are other land bridges further on, but I'm not sure how far we'd have to travel to find one." Callen looked up at the sun. "We're running out of time," he continued. "If we get caught up here when they detonate...."
"This is ridicules," snapped Jolland, cutting him off mid sentence. She already knew what he was going to say. "We're flying out of here, right now!"
"No–– We’re not. You can't." Callen grabbed her by the arm, pulling at her. "If you fly out of here, you won't stand a chance in hell of getting out of this alive."
"Getting out of what, alive?" Her voice cracked and she bucked, yanking her arm out of his grip. "Why are you so sure of what is going to happen. I don't even know if you're telling me the...."
Jolland stopped mid-sentence; no time to finish. The ground beneath her feet began to quiver like the tremors she remembered from her childhood. Her words drowned out by the loudest clap of thunder she had ever heard. A blinding light filled the sky behind them and she covered her eyes with her forearms. Three nuclear explosions rose into the sky, lifting the valley floor in an upheaval of energy that burst into brilliant columns of light. Each cylinder filled with enough energy release to bleach the sky. Hot wind raced across the land boiling the pond with the force of an explosion that stole every breath from the air around her.
It climbed higher, the atmosphere vaporized; swept away into the darkening ring around the pulsars of energy. The scarecrows ripped away from the walls, whipped into the air as rising balls of flame. The spillway crumbled, dropping huge hunks of the stone bridges into the gorge below. The archway toppled, collapsing in upon it self as it was engulfed in a landslide of debris.
Jolland felt the ground slip below her feet. Callen tackled her, tumbling with her over the cliff into the depths of the water–filled gorge.
The dragon steed lifted into the air with a deadly instinct. Its wings beating against the hot air in a frenzied cloud of dust unleashed by the explosion of beam drivers on the horizon. The beast screamed in agony, torched to the bone by the searing thermal energy of the explosion. Beyond, Jolland raced down the spillway. Callen right behind her, completely out of control. There was no possibility of stopping, no alterable course following the river to a point of drop-off: Only the rush of water slamming waves, plunging over the drop-offs into the depths of the gorge echoed above the roar of the wind.
Jolland's eyes widened, her head bobbing up and down in the rushing water; the cliff in front of her collapsing, tumbling into the shifting waves and the roaring waters. The sound growing louder, rolling and twisting the land in rumbling forces that shifted the earth in an unwarranted transformation of quakes and tidal waves. The canyon's edge collapsed, sending the spillway into an upheaval of chaos that ended with terrain changing events that forced the water along an entirely new route. The waves ripped through the edge of the cliffs, shooting down a waterfall into the basin below. A lake began to take shape, forming against the shifting walls of the canyon.
Jolland went over the edge, screaming for all she was worth. Callen right behind her; below them the river filled with deadly debris. The water arched, splashing upward in curves that crashed in upon them. Callen hit the water smashing into the waves, debris falling on top of him colliding in a landslide of pebbles, dirt and rubble that drug them both beneath the waves. Sara Jolland's head broke the surface, darting back and forth as she gasped for air in a frenzy: The shore now more than a few hundred yards away; the distance growing by the moment reaching nearly a quarter mile or more in some places.
The water was getting deeper by the minute. Jolland was beyond afraid. She couldn't think, only react; she was in the center of a widening new ocean. The pull of the water became a strengthening undertow that pulled at her waist, rushing her along the basin across rapids on a course descending into the valley.
Callen's back washed up to the top of the waves, smashing into the side of a tree. Jolland swam for him, grabbed a hold of his shirt and pulled. His head bobbed from under the waves heading towards land's edge. An ocean–sized lake, a river's width away, then two. She panicked, trying to figure a way to reach the shore. The forestland, anything, but it was a futile effort. All that was left of the meadow was the swirling mass of clouds in the darkening sky. The branches submerged treetop breaking the water in a natural curve, rowing gently to shore. Jolland considering the odds: The trip would be swift like a dog paddle, the rapid moving waters once they calmed.
The force pulled her, striking her in the face slapping at her eyes. She was in a marathon; her life was the grand prize. She was exhausted; each stroke taking the effort of an Olympic swimmer, wrestling waves to the best of her ability, she kept trying to keep her mind afloat as well. She was abandoned in an ocean of adrenaline. She could feel wonder pumping through her veins then fatigue, digging her fingers into the soil; she realized she had reached the shore. A feeling of success rushed through her entire body: An uncontrollable scream of relief laughed and cried along side of her. Her arms jittery, weak from the intense exercise in survival; she gave out and finally hitting her head gently on the sandy ground, unable to move another inch.
––7––
THE SIGN
The fourth dimension … the fourth universe.
I watched the horizon with tired eyes, preoccupied with thoughts of our arrival. The Earth was beautiful, filled with natural wonders and a charming beauty unequalled on Rampia. Sending Jolland here was the fulfillment of a wish, one only a father could understand. Maccon simply wanted to give Sara Jolland a better life. But that wasn’t possible, because she was destined to be more. I pull
ed at my hand, keeping an open eye on the blistering sun as it poked through the cracks in the landmasses overhead. In its own way, Rampia was as beautiful a morning light as any witnessed on Earth. Then it happened; I drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. The fog exhaled, curled about my ghostly hand like smoke, marked from tiny trails in the wind.
Our lives slipped forward in time then back again, pacing our merger with the Source. I was searching, reaching out to something within both of us; something other than ourselves: A calling presence, like the consciousness of another. The voice whispered like no other, repeated indistinguishably nearly inaudible words, as if they were calling to me from some far of place.
“It's a day of rebellion, a new dawn for the future of mankind.” He said.
Rallumn raised an eyebrow; his breath freezing as it left his mouth. My mind slipped forward, pushing me further into the unknown. I was talking to myself or, at least, addressing another part of myself. The presence I felt was growing stronger, becoming a greater part of me, making choices on a different level of awareness than either Maccon or myself. I knew he felt incomplete, because I felt helpless as if something wasn't whole anymore. Our mind was like an abyss, stretched out into the darkness, seeing shadows of things yet to come, premonitions perhaps, visions of the future that bridged the mind with a keen sense of reality, extending life into the frontier. The trail of dust lingered beyond the rubble of the dinosaur migration, crossing the Athinian plain under the watchful eyes and skillful hands of the generations of herders.
His sight was extraordinary, a sense of vision opened to the depths of the mind surrounding greater distances. Beyond the confines of the plains to the great barrier as it exploded in a violent eruption of hot gases, expanding into a single streak of brilliant red light. An intense arc of tremendous power entered the vision through the clouds in the heavens above him. He smiled. I smiled. We smiled and awaited the unknown, embracing the vision like an insane man.