The Lost Time Probe

by V Bertolaccini

  What could exist in a gateway? What were they up against?

  It never accelerated further! It hung there thickening, directly behind them, swirling around in intelligent ways, with intelligent formations, and as he watched it to see if it was being controlled or controlling itself. Yet he was sure it was a form of probe attempting to check them out!

  He mentally detected it doing something, and wondered what would happen next, and he watched Orwell examine it, as they all spun through space, as mind-bending lines of stars shot by, as they accelerated faster at a hyper speed, and he was sure Orwell was going to say something. He was sure he was not fully able to fully explain its presence, and how it got there, but had an idea.

  The probe shifted creepily, forming a more turbulent thickening formation, forming shapes in itself, and they checked it with horror as well as excitement.

  Strange sights and silent sounds began manifesting everywhere about them – like partially visible life forms were appearing – and it was forming something around them.

  Strange glows and swirls formed and reformed, while the energy around them increased and increased, as though something was manifesting, and creating itself about them, almost in a bubble formation, surrounding them.

  Chapter 15

  The Living Jungle

  They woke on the ground in a strange jungle landscape, and they examined what was there with interest, wondering what was there and why it was there, and in the trees formations above Cronenberg saw a strange weird cloudless ivory sky, and he spotted an easy way to climb up, using strange formations like branches, and he realized how peaceful it was there and he rested on a boulder, and smelt a scent in the atmosphere, which he could not recall, and he suddenly detected it was an animal smell.

  He knew it was not a normal jungle, for some reason, and it was not like any other jungle that they had been in, and he suddenly saw Anders climb up the tree he had been examining, which he found a way to climb up, and he realized he was taking the route up it that he saw.

  The others all stood looking up at him as he reached the top, while they shaded their eyes with their hands, and Cronenberg took a good look around and saw their problem and that they could not see through the tree formations and ground vegetation further than a short distance, and it confused him and them, as they for one never knew where on the landscape of the world they were and where they should go to, and he could not grasp how they would leave there and if they should just remain there.

  Anders looked out, at the top, and shouted down that the jungle region vanished at a region, away in the distance, and he pointed in the direction, and Cronenberg noted the direction, and tried using a compass he had to see if there was a magnetic pole on the world that they could use to navigate, and he found there was a weak movement at the direction Anders had pointed at, and he examined it surprised and wondered what it was, as it seemed different from the Earth’s magnetic field.

  It surprised him how swift Anders was at climbing, and that he had some experience, and he realized how things had changed.

  Cronenberg realized how much the place reminded him of the Earth and he allowed his spacesuit to fill its air tanks with air, as some of the other astronauts were doing, and he was amazed at the environment and how he reacted to it instinctively, realizing how much he missed being out in the open on the Earth.

  He suddenly felt something hidden below was on his ankle and that he had noticed it before, and he wondered if it was one of the species of the world and he realized that he had not even heard a noise on the world or seen any form of animals and it seemed strange, and it was also strange as nobody had encountered any normal life forms on other worlds and they were now, only days from being on Mars, treating such things as normal, and he gasped at what could be there and felt something grab his ankle and he jerked, and he looked but in the dense undergrowth around his legs he saw nothing, and never felt it anymore, and ignored it.

  What sort of world were they on? What did its empty silence mean? He could not hear anything away into the distance, and realized that it could be in a cold region and wintertime there and that the silence was due to it having been a deep cold winter there.

  The others reacted by almost whispering to each other, and when Anders climbed down on the ground from a lower branch Cronenberg took them away in the direction where Anders had spotted the jungle ending.

  As he walked away his leg became painful, and he felt something rapped around it, and tried to pull the thing off it, which looked like a plant or vine around the lower part of his knee but as he pulled it hard it grabbed him harder and it felt like an animal. It was strong and went down his leg.

  He checked a front pocket of his spacesuit for something to remove it. Yet it was too close to his leg for him to use anything that would damage his spacesuit, as it would be dangerous if it was damaged. In the end he grabbed a sharp piece of rock on the ground and struggled to cut it off, and when it fell he lifted his leg up and stamped down hard on it.

  “Did you see that?” Rosenberg announced, warning him of something he seemed to notice he had missed, as he moved up to his side, and he marched out in front of the group, and he looked out where he pointed, but saw nothing, and stopped and looked more firmly.

  “What?” he finally asked, wondering what he was suggesting.

  He suddenly saw a small tree that Rosenberg was looking at and that it was moving about at the roots, as if struggling to do something, and he examined it more, and to his surprise saw it was attempting to move itself towards them and he saw it carefully moving its large clump of roots over the ground.

  On the ground near him he saw a glimmer off a rock and he picked it up and examined what it was and saw it had a shiny stone in it, and he examined it to see if it had any value, and he removed the shiny stone, from the chunk of crumbling rock, and watched Rosenberg trying to remove something from his leg.

  At the side of his eyes he saw Anders pick up a similar large rock, and as he examined his rock he watched him hurl it at the small tree, which was moving faster towards them, and he watched it seeing what it would do, and watched the rock smash into its tree shape, and to his surprise it jumped at another tree close to it in Anders direction, like a life form, and the other tree fought back as it attacked it furiously and they all stood with their mouths open as the two tree life forms fought each other with all their strength, and other trees and areas of vegetation joined in, and the whole area around them seemed to react to it, and started preparing itself for something, and a massive a riot of tree shapes broke out between all the tree life forms, with the bottoms of many still embedded in the ground.

  Everything around them seemed to be smashing, grabbing, and fighting in a frenzy of fighting, and fighting to the death, and he wondered how such life forms could survive so close to each other, and he started examining them trying to grasp something!

  The fighting life forms spread out across their sides like a wave in a lake, with a speed they could not understand.

  All the life forms at every level going down into the ground were attacking each other, and he kept trying to grasp how they were so responsive to the reactions. When they moved swiftly away to an unaffected region they felt it below them, under their feet, they seemed to sense the tension in what was below, and brace themselves, preparing for the silent wave of savagery to fully reach their place, and he was sure their main level of intelligence and brain area was below the ground.

  As they attempted to move forwards all the life forms about them grabbed at their legs.

  A sudden silent rustling and whipping noise came towards them as they rushed away.

  When they looked back they saw the entire jungle fighting, and entire trees jumping at each other at every place visible, in an immense frenzy of activity. Even the lower areas were now wrestling and struggling with each other.

  When the ground below them started vibrating furiously and underground plants and roots started becoming furious they started running
fast, just avoiding hitting things, and started running at full speed for their lives, as they frantically tried to kill them!

  Chapter 16

  The Dark World

  The last shreds of sunlight vanished beneath the trees behind them, swiftly going under the horizon, and a deep black winter night engulfed them, and Cronenberg studied his surroundings over and over trying to explain why the jungle had entirely altered, and in a matter of a few miles, from where they had arrived on the world, the entire jungle, landscape, and temperature had altered incredibly, and he had a hard time believing the life form trees were all gone, and replaced with normal forms of trees.

  Though they were gone the place was as deadly as ever, there were deadly tremors blasting through the ground there, and the temperature was still furiously falling, and falling to the temperature on Mars, and rocks from hills regularly came crashing down, smashing into trees, and there were landslides, and tremors had even shaken them off their feet.

  Yet the trees were vanishing, and the region Anders had seen from the treetop was appearing, and they still plodded on to get there to get rid of the tree life forms, which they still watched out for, and at the side of their eyes.

  The whole place looked different, and he considered if there was something there that the life forms were avoiding, and he wondered if it was a far greater danger to them! Yet he was sure it was the tremors, when they were at their worst!

  He regularly stopped and looked for miles fascinated, seeing endless miles of damaged smashed up landscape, and he realized it was some form of fault line, and perhaps an early Earth one, when its thickness was not great, and starting to harden, with thin areas of crust with vast and powerful tremors.

  They were now like an army group, after the jungle attack and vicious tremors, who had far more experience in searching, examining, documenting, and detecting what was there, and what others might miss.

  It was bringing them back to life after a long length of inactivity, and lack of anything of interest, and he could not recall ever doing anything like it before. At times he still could not believe that he was on another world, lost in space galaxies away from the solar system!

  In a matter of an hour the entire place was deep in snow and it shrouded all the hills and tree formations and they could barely believe that they had landed in a jungle, and it had been like a really hot jungle location, and he realized the dangers, and he wondered what a world with its climate changes would be like living on, and what the animals would be like.

  The snow landscape was untouched by any intelligent life forms, but they had only seen that location of the world, and at times it was empty of sound, and like Mars, but with a deep silence that he had only heard in thick winter snow landscapes. It reminded him of what he thought another alien world would be like! An empty desolate world, and lost away in the stars!

  What was shocking was they could not even get lost as they never knew what the world or surrounding stars were like, or where anything was, and all they could do is lose their way going to where there were no trees at all, and he was unsure if they even knew accurately where that would lead to. All that they had was their faith in a gateway emerging and taking them away.

  He never knew what was actually happening and what was there was doing and what its intention was, and what the eventual outcome would be.

  There was nothing to recognize anywhere and he watched some of the astronauts attempt to pick up any communications with their spacesuit equipment, and eventually give up.

  They all started getting too exhausted, wading and wading, through deep snow areas, and not recognizing anything, and he realized it was time they looked for shelter, and perhaps somewhere with some significant to rest and spend the night, and while he searched everywhere, and had the others searched too, and he started to notice a distant and peculiar hum, similar to a distant engine whirling, out at an unknown place, which was shadowing them, and he started trying to grasp the source.

  The altered route they took, going to the hum and where there were hills and rock faces, and he was disappointed to find their legs almost becoming stuck in deep bogs of stinking vegetation, buried below the snow there, which started to resemble a form of quicksand, as it grew in depth, and he started to wonder if they could even find somewhere there where they could actually be allowed to shelter, as they were sure as hell not going to stay under the trees or vegetation anywhere, even though they had tested it out there, as there could be some of the life forms hidden away there. There was a definite look of a swamp emerging around them, but the hill became closer and closer, and the only refuge from the cold winter environment, and the depth became deeper and deeper, just as they were about to make it to safety!

  A cold haze edged its way around them and the undergrowth there as well, as though something saw them being trapped there, and they started slowing and calming themselves, preparing for the worst, and allowing themselves to rest and gain energy.

  The place and situation was nothing like anything any of them had seen before elsewhere!

  He could not get if it was a strange environment about him, something strange existing there, or a combination of things that created reactions.

  He watched strange vapor clouds shift within the mist, as if hiding within the mist, and perhaps a form of intelligent mist, always shadowing them – as if probing them, and analyzing them for some purpose.

  Nobody said anything and they looked like they were wondering if it had real intelligence, and he noticed some of it around them, and them vaguely watching it linger over deep pools of slime in the mind-bending swamp.

  Could it do anything other than probe them? How could it detect them? What did it use to exist? What was it doing there? Did it have some form of animal food source or was it after something else?

  As a scientist, as well as many other things, he wished he could get some samples from it, but decided to wait until they had properly checked if it was dangerous.

  Gusts of freezing wind blew and withdrew in opposite directions, blowing and sucking, shifting the cloud about, giving him the feeling that something else, invisible and nearby, was breathing over them or something! Something of supernatural or advanced alien origins, but with an animal nature, or something was there and the environment was reacting to its presence or its paranormal powers!

  Chapter 17

  The Mist Formation

  His legs became stuck in deep bogs of freezing icy water, even through his spacesuit, and he wondered if it could damage it, and he knew that they would have to do something soon, and he waited and watched and noticed that the others were mainly waiting for something.

  It was then he gasped and realized what he had missed and that the fog formed a perfect square shape right about them, with them directly at the center, and it intensified, and he realized that they were trapped.

  “Where are we going ...?” Anders spluttered, fighting for air, furious that he had been put in such situation.

  He stopped and showed how annoyed he was at the way things were going, and started kicking the muck under his feet up and grabbed a clump of it and threw it hard into the square mist cloud and they all watched on with horror and curiosity, and Cronenberg was amazed that it bounced of it, as though repelled by some force within it, and he wondered if it could crush them if it contracted.

  “Perhaps it’s a life form trying to protect something over at the hill ...” Rosenberg moaned, giving glances about at them and their reactions, and Cronenberg realized that he could be right and that he had not thought of it as a normal life form.

  “Where can we go?” Anders continued, wondering what they’d do next. Barely able to realize what the outcome of such a situation would be.

  They all stood and examined other areas of the hill they could go to, and they went in a direction that was entirely different and away from where they had been going, and the mist there!

  “What’s there?” Anders asked, vaguely confused, not seeing anything but th
e surrounding square mist cloud getting in the way.

  Everyone watched on in horror and confusion when the square mist cloud started altering and rearranging itself, getting ready to do something, and the mist formation also altered at the hill, and it started to move to a new location!

  Chapter 18

  The Entrance

  Once they set foot on the hill, out of nowhere, a light emerged in the distant mist formation, and Cronenberg stood considering if it was going to contact them or attack them, as a first contact situation or something else, but he never fully knew what to do, and if it was something entirely new.

  Its radiance pulsated like a motorized life form, magically illuminating areas of the hill, stretching shadows from formations everywhere about their front as it intensified.

  While he silently observed loud thuds of something he thought it was the earthquakes reoccurring but after listening to it intensely it became clear it was like something of immense weight shifting around, and he considered if it was still reacting to them or it carrying out what it normally did, and he realized that he could not tell as he had never heard anything like it.

  Out of nowhere, other lights emerged through the undergrowth nearer, with their radiance pulsating like living things, magically illuminating everything far more brightly, blinding their eyes with intense beams, lighting everything about them everywhere and fully showing them their surroundings and all its detail, and they decided to scurry away to the most distant location.

  While they moved away faster he silently observed deep pounds and creature sounds with immense weight coming at them, out of view, causing them to scurry away faster and faster.