by JD Lovil
Karla and Tom were paired up, as were Markus and Vera. Charla was still alone and frightened, but this time, Bailey seemed to feel no desire for interspecies sex with her, avoiding her entirely, but using the possum as an excuse for the neglect. Even though he was a dog, he still had more sense than most humans. Not that he was going for that girl, with whatever that was growing in her belly!
Unlike every other leg of their journey, the less than one hundred miles to Magnolia really were less than one hundred miles, possibly much less. If there was any time that another one thousand mile leg would have been welcomed, it was now, when the group faced an unknown task with an uncertain outcome. In barely an hour and a half, they were there.
A cross between a gypsy and a hippie, that is what the Sage looked like. You would dismiss him as normal, even perhaps shallow, until you happened to glance into his eyes. They seemed to go all the way down to some unknown heaven or hell. Somehow, the eyes, the long hair and the smile seemed to go together.
The Sage settled them into the curiously decorated parlor, where odd items which might have come from alien worlds claimed to be decorative items, although you knew they lied. He brought them each a bottle of water, a cup of coffee, and a shot of Absinthe. Everyone drank the shot first, followed by the cup and the bottle. Finally, the Sage got around to the briefing.
He told the group that each of the four originals would have a task in the past. Karla and the dog (and possum) were not included in the task, but they would act as emotional anchors to the present for the group. The Sage said that the present world was unbalanced in terms of the consensus reality due to some ambiguities in the past, which they would be sent back to address. After that, they would have to get tools and themselves to a specific location in order to complete a reset of reality.
The Sage whispered a short phrase which the group could not quite hear, and the flames of the candles decorating his parlor flamed up, threatening to set the house on fire, before they subsided. He said that he had just activated a sort of psychic shield about each of them, so that they would be able to exist in the eras that they found themselves in, and they would be safe from any native dangers of those times.
“You four shall each open that door and go down the hallway behind it. I will send each of you through at the correct second, and you will be confronted with your task.” The Sage said. “As soon as you complete the task, you will be returned.”
He went on to say that modern physicists would call the hallway a tuned wormhole, in this case restricted to travel in time, and directed by the mind of the Sage and the mind of the Cosmos itself. It would find the instants deep in ancestral time before the alternate world histories branched off, and would allow the changes that history needed.
Soon enough, the moment had come. They lined up in front of the door, and the Sage counted down the seconds using some type of mental clock to find the right time. First, he placed his hand on Charla shoulder, and before she could protest, he pushed her toward the door, which she opened with a trembling hand, and stepped forward. The remaining three saw a flash of light as the door swung shut, and then it was Tom’s turn. Next it was Vera’s time, and finally it was time for Markus. Then Karla, the Sage, Bailey (and the possum) found their selves alone.
******
Charla was blinded by the light as she felt the sensation of some massive acceleration. She was also almost overcome by nausea, which she suspected was due to both the acceleration and the now third trimester pregnancy that she was now enduring. The light finally vanished along with the feeling of acceleration, and an alien landscape formed around her.
She sees an ocean directly in front of her, with a rocky beach and gray-toned waves and water. The water was not open, but had a series of stone structures standing throughout the local bay. There were no plants or animals on the land, except for some slightly green slime washing about in the surf on the beach, and a couple of patches of something that might be a very primitive form of lichen or even mold on the face of one of the nearby rocks. There are some soft and plant-like structures that were washed up on the beach.
What she doesn’t know is that she has been transported to the Ediacaran period, some 850 million years in her past. Even the flora that she sees, primitive as it might seem, is more advanced than the modern theory of her human world would have credited. The rocks that are defying the wear and tear of the waves are oxygen producing cyanobacteria stromatolites. Deep in the ocean, far from the shallow beach are a few primitive and odd animal forms, more collections of bacteria than actual organisms, but starting to form various and odd macrostructures that never quite made it into the fossil record.
The oceans are fecund with fronded and spiculed sponges of various forms, and a number of fungal analogues live alongside their multi-bacterial counterparts, but would not last out the extinction events in the future. Charla did not know any of these details, but she recognized it as a world that was totally alien to her. The creature that inhabited her womb did not find it so alien as her, and it brought a sudden and urgent pain to Charla.
She kneeled down on the rocky soil under the intensity of the pain. In the middle of the most distant pasts, on an early Earth that she should not have been able to breathe on, she felt the first contractions begin to add to the pain. She panted, and she writhed, and she could find no reprieve from the unrelenting pain. She felt a wetness and a tearing, and the thing that was her spawn began to rip its way out of her body.
The protection that kept her alive was not a benefit in this. Long past the point where she would have passsed out, and succumbed to death, she was kept alive and conscious, to feel the pain, to feel the terror, and to watch in a state of madness beyond terror as the thing which tore its way out of her reared up on its array of limbs which included tentacles and pincers, and legs of sundry sorts, and it showed her a face which was so unnatural and so terrible that she literally could not see it!
The Thing that was her spawn grew monstrously, second by second, with tube-like limbs sucking water and small organisms out of the surf to feed the creature. Finally, it took a hold of her paralyzed body with limbs filled with hooks and pincers, and pulled it toward a great opening in its center, which was ringed in hundreds of sharp teeth like those of a shark. The pain redoubled as the creature began to devour its mother alive.
This is how the first of the Great Old Ones came to be on the ancient Earth.
Tom was blinded by the bands of intense light, and was lightly disquieted by the huge acceleration he felt. As the light dissipated, he saw a landscape out of any child’s book of prehistoric animals. The land was clothed in a variety of ferns, including some trees that looked like ferns. There was no grass to see, but everywhere you would expect it, he saw instead a rich carpet of mosses. A slight movement in the ferns showed a moist skinned Tetrapod, a primitive, but large amphibian form that moved on its mysterious mission a hundred feet away from the nearby stream that it must have come from.
He focused on the near horizon and one of the structures that he took to be an oddly formed hill moved in its place. Looking carefully, he saw that it was a single huge animal, with a bodily form so chaotic that he could not even define it. It was far larger than the largest whale or dinosaur that he had ever heard described. It was even larger than the largest redwood that he knew of. The creature had hundreds of endlessly roiling limbs of every description, and although Tom could not have said if it was an animal or plant, or something else entirely, he knew in his soul that it was predatory, and that it was cruel, and that it was entirely evil, in every sense of the word.
As he looked further, he saw that the great and monstrous creature was not alone, indeed, its fellow monsters were to be seen as far as the eye could see, hundreds if not thousands of Its Brethren stood about the ancient landscape. Above the greatest concentration of the creature, a circling and slow moving Aerial cyclone swirled above them.
He stood and watched them in amazement, knowing that if the creat
ures survived, all of the animals that would evolve on earth would have no chance of existing. As this thought crossed his mind, the first of the meteors appeared in the heavens. At first only a few streaks of meteoric light crossed the sky, and then more appeared as the first ones started impacting the creatures where they stood as though defying the gods. Soon the skies were filled with the fire of the falling meteors, and some of the giant forms are being struck and even destroyed by the impacts.
******
The heavens begin to glow as the fiery tails of the meteors blend together to show a heaven of flame. The creatures have noticed the force from the heavens, and they are now moving, some are heaving themselves into the waterways to find sanctuary, some find their way into the ocean deeps, and some are leaving the planet by more arcane means, some fade until they are no more, some rise in lighted forms into the skies themselves, and some sink into the earth as though it were no more than water. Soon enough, all of the creatures are gone from the surface.
Tom stands in awe of the events around him. One more occurs, as a meteor streaks down and stops suddenly in front of him, hovering about four feet above the ground. He sees now that it is a large crystalline structure, and somehow he knows that it is an intelligent structure, and that it is the mortal enemy of the great creatures. Tom suddenly knows that the giant things were the Great Old Ones, and that the crystalline beings had driven them away or into hibernation for Eons. He cannot understand what the crystalline beings are, or where they came from, but he knows that they are friends, and he knows that this one is supposed to return to the future with him.
He touches the skin of the being hovering before him, and the light returns to take him back to the hall of the Sage, and the crystalline being along with him. The light winks out, and he sees the door of the hallway from the inner side, and pushes it open as he staggers back into the parlor.
******
Vera is blinded by all the light around her, and her stomach feels unsettled by the sensation of huge acceleration. The light fades about her as the feeling of vast velocity vanishes. She looks about her and sees a panoramic scene of savanna all about her position, grasslands meeting clusters of trees as far as her eyes could see.
She looks about her, and she sees a small troop of some sort of large monkey that looks like a form of chimpanzee with a few great ape traits around the face and lower body. She considers herself to be a fair biologist, but she cannot place the specie. Just as she is determined to advance closer to the troop for further study, the bushes closest to her are suddenly disturbed, and a form darts out of the cover in abject terror.
It is a female, and a primate, and Vera can place it as being a form of Homo erectus, probably Homo ergaster, and it is being chased by a very formidable looking tiger. As the female rushes past her, Vera interposes herself between them, and screams as loudly as she can. The tiger collides with her in its rush, or at least it should have. Somehow, the tiger passes right through her with no resistance whatsoever.
The tiger could not process the event, she guesses, because instead of continuing the pursuit, it slinks off back into the underbrush. The young female is safe for now, and it was time for Vera to consider her position.
The tiger was a tiger, but the coat of fur that it sported was in yellows and browns, which she had never seen before. Homo ergaster would place the time to be sometime between 1.5 million and 800,000 years in the past. Why was she here?
The female has made it almost all the way to some stand-alone trees where Vera can see other Homo ergaster has sheltered. Just as she makes it to the shelter, Vera looks up into the sky to see why a large shadow has passed over her. She sees some form of aircraft, or spacecraft, floating via some unknown technology almost directly above the trees that shelter the primates.
As she watches, a ruby colored beam is played over the shelter, and Vera sees the primates all fall to the ground where they appear to be asleep. The large triangular craft lightly descends to the ground beside the trees, and a hatch opens on the craft. Four beings descend from the craft, each between eight and ten feet in height, with elongated heads (both in total height and in length back to front), thin and almost delicate looking fingers, and sporting a great deal of unfathomable technologies.
Vera understands innately that the aliens are in no way related to humans. Thousands of tiny items about them points out that they are not primates, not even mammals unless you close one eye. It is obvious by the way they look, and the way they move, that they are not from earth at all. They are an obvious advertisement for the idea of parallel evolution. They are what humans would be if they evolved on the planet of the aliens.
One of the aliens bends over, and easily places the female that Vera saved onto a floating table-like apparatus beside her. The alien runs some sort of scan over the female, and looks satisfied with the outcome. Vera prepares herself to intervene, and actually begins the first step when the light returns to take her home.
******
Markus is blinded by the light as the Hall takes him away at great speed. Only a moment does it last, but he senses that in that time, he has been far in space and in time. As the light fades around him, he sees the mud formed ziggurats that he has always associated with the early Sumerian empire. It might not sound so appealing, but these had been polished so that their surfaces gleamed like bronze in the sunlight.
All around him, people move in a bizarre variety of attire, from nude to simple loincloths to various forms of togas and even different forms of trousers. No zippers are apparent, though. They sometimes look at him with mild curiosity as they pass him, but none seem to have a problem with his presence. He overhears the chatter of some of the people as they pass by, and it is in some form of Arabic or Hebraic tongue, but he can understand them!
Everyone stops in place, suddenly, and some of them begin to look in the sky behind Markus, pointing and commenting loudly about some sort of battle. Markus turns about to see an unexpected sight, watching as large triangular space craft are exchanging fire with smaller but more maneuverable bell shaped craft. Missiles and laser fire are being exchanged between the two sorts of crafts, and the bell shaped crafts seem to gain the upper hand.
“Lord Indra in his Vimana is winning!” An excited native exclaims. From what he is seeing and hearing, Markus is beginning to understand what he is seeing. The Anunnaki, led by Enlil and Enki, is being driven off from the city of Uruk by the Devas, led by Lord Indra. Since there is no legend of Lord Indra lording it over the Sumerian Empire, this is apparently a war of liberation, with the Devas seeking to liberate the humans from the Anunnaki.
Markus knew that the Anunnaki were known in his own world to have built cities over two hundred thousand years ago, and according to legend, they left the Mesopotamian region by about seven thousand years ago. This was about the same time that history recorded any of the gods of ancient India as having occupied or ruled in any earthly city. Markus suspects that this is the deciding battle that removed the yoke of the old god’s rule from the necks of humanity.
Markus notices an object half obscured by the sands, perhaps a staff or a spear, but composed all of a gleaming coppery or bronzed metal. He bends over and picks it up. It is very light, and in his hands, it feels like it is almost alive! As he considers this, the light returns to take him home.
******
15 A Day of Rest
Tom and the other two had been back from the time trip about thirty minutes before the Sage was prepared to address them. The Trio needed the time to relax and to drink a lot of water. For some reason, the time trip took a lot of water out of their systems, and they needed to replace it.
They had not yet been told why Charla had failed to return, but in the presence of the stone, Tom seemed to have information about things that he didn’t have any source for, unless it was coming straight from the stone. Another odd thing about the stone was its size. It kept changing size, and even slightly altering its shape. Right now it was the right
size and shape for Tom to slip it into his back pocket, which was where it was right then. Back in the past, it was about the size of a basketball, and was globe-shaped.
He knew that Charla was dead, and that she had created some sort of causal loop, where if she hadn’t gone into the past, the gods that she was almost sacrificed to would never have existed. He thought he knew how it all hung together, but he decided to let the Sage explain it.
The three of them were sitting in easy chairs in the Sage’s parlor, and Bailey played with his possum in front of them, while Karla sat primly on the arm of Tom’s chair. The Sage took his place in front of them, and prepared to fill them in.
“As you know, Charla didn’t make it back.” The Sage said. “One of the unfortunate aspects of Destiny is that it is not always nice. Charla had to go back in time in order to begin the linage of the Great Old Ones, which she started by giving birth to the first of them. Once she had delivered, even if she had lived, she would have been in constant physical and mental pain ever after.”
He went on to say that these were linchpin historical events which were being erased from the timeline of this worldline by some fairly esoteric means, which he would discuss later. Suffice it to say that the history of the Great Old Ones and the genetic modification of the human ancestors by the Anunnaki, and the end of their dominance of the human line were all linchpin events that had to be securely embedded in the timeline in order to prevent the fragmentation of reality from continuing.
“But you are all exhausted now.” The Sage said. “Let’s find you beds for the night, and after you wake in the morning, and get some food and coffee in you, we will discuss the details of the tasks we need to complete in more detail.”
He said that he would try to keep the lecture short tomorrow, and then he suggested that we might want to spend the day on the University campus relaxing, and letting the situation soak in naturally.