by Ric Dawson
“Can we come in?” Kane asked.
“Sure, sure.” I swung the door wide as they came in, then glanced down the hallway in both directions. It was empty.
“Show him,” Kane said.
TJ produced a cigarette lighter and flipped it on. The flame whooshed out like a blowtorch and turned a deep blue with yellow flickering on the edges.
“Woah, what does the amount of blue mean?”
“Oxygen. Much of it!” TJ replied and smiled.
“Okay, so is that a bad or good thing?” I asked.
“My ancient geology poor, but Permian Age is best place for us, maybe even Late Permian.”
“Why am I getting the feeling this doesn’t end well?”
There was another knock on the door. Opening it, Jim and his team rolled in. “Looks like a hoedown!” Jim smiled, guns slung.
No sooner was the door closed than the rest of Octagon’s “lost in time” team knocked, wanting in. Luckily the room was built for eight-feet-tall dignitaries who enjoyed roomy spaces.
Everyone soon settled in on the couch, beds, chairs, and even the floor.
“Okay guys, well, TJ was just telling me why we’re screwed. Because I know that’s why Kane is over there scowling.”
TJ adjusted her headscarf and continued. “I point out to Lane that air is rich oxygen. Only time we could be is therefore Permian Age. Maybe Carboniferous age is possibility, but it feels like Permian. Therefore, we are somewhere on the continent of Pangea.”
Everyone was interested, but still no questions. I was baffled how it could feel like anything at all, since she sure as heck had never been to either of those ages. I kept quiet. TJ was on a roll.
“Does anyone recall why Permian Age ended?” TJ said with a twinkle in her eye.
Well, I sure as heck didn’t know. After a few moments, satisfied no one remembered high school geological time-lines, she continued.
“Permian Age end with largest mass extinction of Earth flora and animals recorded in fossil record.”
Then I understood. “Aww, come on, luck couldn’t be that bad. Ages are like, what, thousands of years long?”
“Tens of millions,” TJ said.
“See, millions and millions, what are the odds we landed close to this extinction event? Millions to one!”
There wasn’t a friendly face in the crowd.
“The high oxygen content in the air would account for how large everyone is. Scientists have shown correlations between high oxygen content in air to increased plant and animal size,” Molly injected.
“But that doesn’t explain the technology,” Melissa said.
I wanted to kiss them both as the topic shifted away from what a huge disaster we had on our hands. I was certain the extinction event was right around the corner.
The Fates loved a good laugh.
“Does anyone have any idea what the technology might be? It looks like they have propulsion without fossil fuel. Which I suppose makes sense since fossil fuel isn’t even around yet. Right?” I didn’t remember when all the biomass got crushed into black oily goo, but this current age seemed a good candidate for the source of the plants and animals.
“That makes sense, Lane. There has been some speculation that ancient cultures could have used mercury engines as propulsion. The Vimanas, for instance. Of course, that was based on dubious texts and later debunked by science. Other tenuous guesses based on biblical references like Ezekiel’s flying machine also suggest chemical fuel of some kind. However, I’ve never seen any speculation regarding propulsion systems using, what, a gravity or electromagnetic field manipulator of some kind? I just don’t know,” Molly said.
Puzzled, TJ just stood for a moment, staring out into the city.
Air cars moved around the city like flying carpets. All quiet except for the wind amid the structures, and the subsonic thrum of underground generators.
“Jeff, what do you think. Is this something like what Daedalus mentioned? Are they affecting the gravity field in such a way as to allow these flying, metal carpets to be pulled and pushed around?” I remarked.
“Maybe, Lane. Daedalus said that was how he affected the rotational inertia of spinning disks, by changing the mass distribution while it spun. But, he also said he did that from the cyber-psi, not from space time. He suggested it was energy intensive even for the small changes needed for hard disks.”
“Right. And we now know everything manipulated from a space time starting reference takes enormous energy.”
Everyone nodded. We had all seen that in action now, twice.
“Lane, what are we going to do? How do we get out of here?” Melissa said.
I knew this was on everyone’s mind.
“First we get in communication with our host. Which means we have to learn their language. They know about the portals; theirs was well taken care of. Also as obvious, this technology vanished long before our age. Which makes me wonder why. Given what we know about the forces allied against man, it seems inconceivable the fossil record has never shown any trace of the culture we see here. It’s my guess the portal tech was intentionally erased from our cultural knowledge along with this entire age.
“And, I can only surmise, any accidental discovery or artifact from this era that did not conform to ‘only dinosaurs and large plants existed here’ has been systematically buried, destroyed, or hidden in blood.”
Silence reigned as everyone soaked up the implications of that. Nods here and there told me they got the picture.
“I propose we gather all the intel that we can. If anyone has a gift for language then you’re lead on getting the language sorted. Jeff, you, TJ , and Mel need to examine every bit of manufactured tech that you see. Jim, your team can assess weapons capability. What do they use? I’ll absorb everything on the psionic end and, hopefully, we cannot only find a way home, but take back to our time tools to fight the Ziir’jal and their allies, minions, or whatever they are.”
“Yeah. Can do, Lane. Bulls, balls, and cattle prods,” Jim spoke up as others rallied with “heck yeahs” and “let’s rock.”
“Jim, can you and Kane stay a sec.” I looked from one to the other. They both nodded.
“Lane. I studied linguistics a bit back in school and I speak three languages. I’d be glad to help on the language end if no one else wants that job,” Molly offered up. No one else said anything.
“It’s all yours, Molly, just let us know if you need anything. Also, if you would, can you come with me to see Ogot,” I asked.
“Yes.”
Jim spoke to Sven and Melissa for a moment then they headed into the hall. Jim and Kane walked over to me on the terrace.
“So guys, look. I fumbled the ball with the Wraith team. If either of you want to be lead, I’ll step back. Especially you, Jim. You’re an officer.”
Jim nodded and scratched his chin. “I’ve spoken with Kane, and while you royally failed your fire team on the Wraith assault, fact is, you’re the only one who has the big picture on what we’re into here. Kane brought me up to speed on the attack in Woodland Park and what happened in the, what’d you call it? The ‘astral zone’ at Malmstrom.” He spit into the trashcan.
“It’s right out of the Twilight Zone. But. You’re our strategy lead. I’ll run any squad ops in the future. Just tell me what you need, bucko,” Jim finished.
“You know where I stand, Lane. You know the ground. While you don’t have rank, you’re the boss. Just tell me what needs new holes in it and I’m your man,” Kane said.
“Fellas, thanks. Let’s move our asses and get stuff done.”
In the back of my mind, a distant voice whispered: The event horizon approaches.
Crap. I knew it. Whatever the extinction event was, it was racing our way.
Deidra had warned me again.
She could reach through time as well. Interesting. Too bad she wouldn’t just spell it out, like “you have five minutes or you’re all dead.”
That wasn’t nearl
y as funny once I thought about it.
Jim and Kane left as Molly came in.
“You ready to try those linguistic skills?” I smiled.
“Yup, lay on, MacDuff.” She winked.
“Audam, you catch that?”
Yes, quote from Shakespeare’s MacBeth Act 5, Scene 8, meaning to rally forth and make a strong attack.
“Shakespeare. Nice. MacBeth, Act 8, Scene 5?” I winked back, too late noting I’d said it backwards.
Molly tilted her head slightly, frowning, then looked down at my metal-crusted hand and smirked.
“Nice try.”
I reminded myself she was a sharp gal. I was starting to like Molly.
Chastened and busted, I boldly walked from the room with my “yeah I’m still in charge” swagger. She followed behind, bright-eyed and still smirking.
Gawd, I guess this is my big chance to experience pubescent coupling attempts. (Gagging sounds.)
“You can shut up anytime, metalloid.”
My footsteps echoed down the marbled corridor. The hallway opened into the atrium we had arrived in. Snack tables full of dried meats and fruits lined the walls. Gold and shadow glittered off the portal pool through a thick curtain of green. We walked in silence, nodding to the occasional local that wandered by.
The sun slipped below the horizon and the city’s night lights bloomed in a display of soundless color.
“How do Obhireans measure time?”
Unknown
Splashes of water mingled with the fragrant aroma of flowers. Beams of light from alcoves and hidden floor indentations illuminated the atrium in prismatic scintillations. Stars twinkled like distant spotlights. So bright.
A tall figure walked among the trees. Ogot. He headed over to us. From a leather cylinder around his waist, he produced a seashell-shaped object and held it in the light.
He spoke for a moment, Chinese or Japanese maybe. I shook my head.
“Can you hear me now?” he said in English.
“Yes!” Molly and I both announced.
“Excellent! It is a great honor to meet you. We’ve had visions of important travelers coming, as well as great dangers fast approaching. That time is now upon us,” he said.
“It is a great honor to meet you,” I replied.
“Travelers. I am the Keeper of Portals for my people. I apologize for my haste, but I must impart wisdom to you before it is too late. Our scientists predict the time of disruption is near. We fear an attack is eminent from what you call the realm of psios. Our wisdom will be lost to history unless the transfer is successful. We may have to try several times before the Way of the Portals is clear. Is now a good time to begin for you?” Ogot asked.
“Yes. Now is fine. Molly is our language interpreter, by the way,” I said, pointing to Molly.
“The Way of the Portals is only for you, Lane, one who has been marked,” Ogot said.
“That’s fine, I don’t need nor want to know. I’ll just watch,” Molly said.
Ogot nodded. “Please follow me,” he said, and with that he strode towards a nearby archway. A short walk brought us to a complex of angular structures. The architectural style reminded me of Salvador Dali set to metal, glass, and brick. Buildings sprang from the ground like writhing tentacles. Rectangular sections protruded from twisted gold and steel to create a sense of structure and form suspended in air. Centers of gravity were situated to keep the structures upright while inducing a sense of dislocated floor and ceiling.
A flock of winged birds twice the size of gulls took to the air over a nearby pond. Then I heard it. A series of faraway booms, a multitude of distant explosions which preceded low, rumbling echoes that rang through the corridors as we walked into the complex.
Ogot looked in the direction of the booms.
“It has begun.” Then he continued into a spacious room with several metal tables and assorted electronic equipment. We waited until the ground tremors stopped.
“Please get on this table.” Ogot motioned to a nearby table. I climbed up and lay down. Workers began attaching electrical leads to my skin. Then they slipped a gold hemisphere with blue glowing streaks over my head and my eyesight was blocked.
Ogot stood next to me. “The electric leads are to monitor your physical body reactions to the process. The intellectual information is easy to transfer since it is a direct feed from my mind to yours. However, the experiential knowledge transfer involves activation of selected neural groups in the brain. This part of the process carries some risk for the accepting entity. Emotional patterns, by their very nature, overlay each other. Holographic induction and misfire effects can stimulate proximity patterns that were not part of the original knowledge. The resulting thermal events can damage brain tissues and distort the experiential hologram, even kill or cause insanity. The brain resists so stimuli must be applied to the body to distract your mind from interfering with the transfer. The best stimuli is pain. Our best medical doctors will be monitoring.”
“Pain? How much pain? And thanks for that thoroughly confusing and frightening summation,” I said.
I will be monitoring, Lane. I suspect Ogot is relying on that.
“Good to know.”
“We will now begin,” Ogot droned on.
Burning erupted in my mind. It was then I noticed the straps that pinned my body to the table.
I screamed, a long, long time. I gulped air between bouts of searing fire conflagration. This was worse than torture. Pain radiated from my toes to the top of my brain. I knew there were no nerve cells in the brain. But that didn’t stop the searing sensations from saying otherwise. I sweated. My body writhed and twisted in the straps. My skin burst into flame as my mind registered the acrid stench of burnt flesh. My eyeballs exploded from my skull like meteors.
I was outside my body watching fire consume my flesh, then back in my mind, then in the psi again, over and over for eternity. The transitions became pulses that increased in amplitude and frequency. My mind reeled and gasped for sanity.
Nothing existed except pain, universal and endless. The pulses blurred into one another and created a surging hum.
Snap …
My mind raced through the blackness of the void. The pain vanished.
The world had frozen. Time suspended? No. Something else.
My skin cooled as motes of thought shifted around me like fog. Motes brushed my consciousness. They tasted like tiny bursts of emotion. The medium appeared as a sea of tiny transparent time spheres like water molecules in the oceans. I tried to look around but instead moved through the time spheres like a beam passing through a box of glass marbles.
The motes of thought were outside of time.
A brief sensation of time occurred when my consciousness wave slipped through each new time marble. I willed myself to move.
My consciousness refracted through boundless depths, turning, reflecting, dispersing, superposing at countless micro densities and conglomerates in the time sea. I experienced thousands of times simultaneously.
A distant heart beat thrummed. Particle and wave. Particle and wave.
Time was alive!
RETURN TO NOW
Colonel Li
A sprinkle of headlights lit Highway 87 north out of Great Falls. The flat road ran straight and level ten miles from town. Wide fields of symmetric furrows marked freshly seeded wheat on either side of the highway. Moments earlier, Colonel Li had flashed his headlamps while passing a dark SUV pulled onto the shoulder. The Ford Setina flashed head-beams in return, then spun up its blue flashing emergency lights. Two men exited the vehicle in Air Force security uniforms and placed traffic cones on the highway. Men in a similar vehicle on the northern edge of the temporary landing zone did the same.
Colonel Li pulled into a small turnout and left the car engine running. Collecting his gear, he looked to the south at the yellow glow in the night sky. Great Falls was full ablaze.
The strange craft dropped from the dark and glided down to the road. The
soft whine of fans and rush of wind over its wings were the only sounds. Black, with slanted back wings and angular features, marked it as a stealth aircraft. Two rows of brilliant red lights, embedded in one hundred meters of plastic tubing, flashed to life along the rural highway.
The aircraft performed a vertical landing and rolled forward parallel with the turnout. The canopy rose and a rope ladder unrolled onto the side of the aircraft. Colonel Li mounted the ladder, tossed his kit inside, and climbed into the rear copilot seat. As soon as he settled, the stealth craft’s canopy lowered and it roared down the highway and lifted off. The aircraft banked and Colonel Li watched the road below as the Wraith support team began the rollup of the landing lights and allowed traffic to move again. His car would be picked up as the team scrubbed the landing site and disappeared back into rural America.
“Welcome aboard, Colonel Li. I am Major Zheshen. We will be taking a western track out to the rendezvous. The splash drop will be from five hundred meters via the slip tube. A sub will take you the rest of the way to Aogashima Base.”
“Thank you, Major. Are those new gun mounts on the wings?”
“Yes, Colonel, the new megawatt electrolasers.”
“Excellent news. What’s the range on the guns?”
“Full discharge at one mile, sir.”
“Impressive range. I will take a short nap en route. Wake me when we get close.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Li put his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. His mind rolled over the details of the splash drop. The aircraft had an ejection port that shot out a man-sized cylinder. He would be inside it. Drop parachutes deployed on the cylinder. Then a raft inflated while awaiting pickup from watercraft.
He gazed through the canopy, thinking. Most of the technology was stolen from various governments. Then sent to refinement with Wraith’s sister corporations in psionic, artificial intelligence, and nano-materials.