situation made it hard for him to stay strong.
They broke through the last of the clouds and Jack gasped at the sight of the ground rushing towards them. He shielded Timmy’s head, closed his eyes and braced for impact – but impact never came. He slowly opened his eyes and saw that they were hovering a foot above the ground like everyone else; almost as if they were in zero gravity.
Some people jested around as they tried to touch down, but everyone simply hovered above the green field. Some of the younger boys giggled and enjoyed the feeling of zero gravity, but the adults – like Jack – grew concerned about the situation. Jack had realized long ago that if it looked too good to be true, then it probably is… and on this planet it always looked too good to be true.
Jack lifted his head as he floated parallel to the ground and studied the field – nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for a few scattered craters. He reached down towards the grass and tried to pull himself towards the ground as Timmy swam in the air around him. It was the first time since they were taken prisoner that Jack had seen Timmy smile and be care-free.
“You should try this.” Timmy chuckled amused.
“I will as soon as I can figure out what’s happening.” Jack said.
He noticed that of the thousands of people drifting parallel to the ground, he was one of only a handful of people actually trying to figure out what was happening – everyone else were joking around blissfully as if they didn’t just escape from a fire-enclosed prison and narrowly escaped giant worms and tentacles… and he wondered whether it wasn’t another ruse like the hypnotic ocean.
He grasped the grass again and pulled himself along like an astronaut in a space station.
“Stay close to me.” Jack told Timmy who playfully swam alongside him.
Jack pulled himself towards an unearthed root that stuck out from the side of a nearby crater. He grabbed a hold of it and was able to pull himself down towards the ground and as if by nature itself, his body quickly adjusted to the gravity of the field and he could walk around like normal.
“Come on.” Jack said unto Timmy as he held out his hands.
Timmy groaned, but allowed Jack to take a hold of him and put him down on the ground… and then it was over. As soon as his feet touched the ground, his body adjusted to the gravity of the field and the floating fun was no more. Timmy sulked a bit, but was glad to be safe and in one piece.
The two suns beat down mercilessly through the low lying clouds and Jack searched the field for some shelter and noticed two massive trees about ten yards from where they were standing. He took Timmy by the hand and walked over to the trees that were about two hundred feet in diameter each.
“We can rest here for a while.” Jack said.
“And then what?”
“I’m not sure.” Jack said and glanced back over his shoulder.
One by one the people behind them were able to pull themselves to the ground and stand upright.
As they neared the trees, Jack looked up in hopes of seeing the tops of the trees, but the trunks reached up for about twenty to thirty feet and then disappeared into the low lying clouds. Each tree had between three and five massive roots that dug into the ground like claws.
Jack sat down on one of the roots and assessed the new situation they were in while Timmy sat down cross-legged on the grass and toyed with a flower.
“Do you think we’ll see mommy again?” Timmy asked.
“I’m not even sure whether we’re on the same planet anymore.”
A light tremor made Jack inspect the root he sat on as well as the ground around it, but he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“Daddy, look…” Timmy said.
Timmy pointed at a massive crater where the second tree used to be and as another light tremor shook the root upon which he sat, he feared the worst. A loud bang and an impact tremor rattling the ground made Jack spin around – the second tree was now stationary about a hundred yards away. It was no tree… it was a leg. Those weren’t craters… they were footprints.
Jack rolled off the claw-nail on which he sat as the claw lifted up and the leg moved forward in a stride and slammed into the ground again. A deafening roar echoed across the field and the sound-waves thereof cleared the low-lying clouds. Jack shielded his eyes from the sunlight as he stared up at the gargantuan creature that towered above them like a twenty storey building. It almost looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex except that it had no front claws.
Jack picked Timmy up and watched as the monster walked away from them – squashing some of the people as they rushed to get to safety. It moved slowly, but one stride was equivalent to almost two hundred human strides – each step sending tremors coursing through the earth as it moved.
Jack scrutinized the beast and realized that it wasn’t trying to deliberately kill humans, but rather it seemed bewildered by their presence.
“Stop running!” Jack called out, but nobody listened.
Jack turned to Timmy and said, “I think it’s scared of us.”
“I’d be scared too if little floating creatures invaded my home.” Richard said from behind Jack.
“You made it.” Jack said relieved.
“It’s gonna take more than worms and tentacles to kill me. You might not think it to look at me, but I’m a survivor.”
Jack gave him a pat on the back and an approving nod. He was glad that at least one person he knew made it out of the concentration camp. The three of them watched as the monster walked off into the distance and the field became quiet again. It was a true quiet without any underlying hymns luring people to their deaths. For some reason Jack thought of the quiet being the real deal and not just the calm before the storm.
34
The giant monster never came back to the field and so Jack and the rest of the people set up camp for the night. Some gathered wood for fires and others caught little alien animals for food while Jack, Timmy and a few others constructed mattresses with leaves and undergrowth collected from a nearby cluster of trees.
It was quite apparent from the minute the monster left the field that it was the safest place on the planet for humans to be. Other creatures wouldn’t dare venture into the field of such a gargantuan creature as they all feared him, but didn’t know that he was scared away by humans.
The camp set up for the night eventually became permanent residence for the humans once they established that the valley was the safest place for them in this alien world. Jack and Richard were part of the committee that set up an exploration group to find the women of earth and draft a map of the town’s surroundings on their ventures. So far, the group consisting of ten volunteers, had scouted the lands for about ten miles 360 degrees around the town, but found no signs of human life.
In no time at all the town expanded beyond a simple camp site and an elected group built cabins for homes, dug a well for water and ditches for draining and sanitation. They were still stuck in the stone age when it came to communication, weapons and technology, but at least they were alive and had food in their bellies and a roof over their heads. The one thing their town lacked was women, but as time passed they had to live with the realization that they might never find the women or other men of earth.
As the map of explored territory grew the hope of finding other humans diminished. Except for the rocky wall to the north that reached up towards the heavens for miles and disappeared into the clouds along with the origin of the massive waterfall, there were no other signs that they were deep below the earth’s surface. The town had a panoramic view to the south, east and west of explored and unexplored territory, but the wall to the north placed concerns in Jack’s mind as to whether they were deep inside a ravine or not.
He remembered reading an article once by Professor Edwards about the vastness of space and how insignificant we really are. He once read an article in Popular Science Magazine back in June by physicist Samir Mathar in which he suggested that our solar system or even our galaxy co
uld be inside a supermassive black hole and we might not even know it. Despite spiralling down towards an unreachable singularity, life would go on as normal. Our solar system would orbit the sun and earth’s gravity would keep us grounded. Space is too big to fathom and consists of billions of galaxies each with billions of planets and stars like our own Milky Way. It was also discovered that a supermassive black hole is at the centre of most galaxies and is what rotates the clusters of planets, stars and space-dust.
The human race was transported millions of light years through space to an unknown planet, so who is to say that they field they were in wasn’t inside a massive crater big enough to hold an entire planet? If that were true, he might never find Alicia.
It was a sad and depressing thought that brought him down as he sat on a wicker chair on his porch and watched the town’s folk going about their daily lives. They had bakers, doctors and candlestick makers making their lives easier, but what if this was it? What if they were stuck in this town for ever and this was as good as it was going to get?
In the months after human settlement in Gargantuan’s field, they had discovered a field to the east where gold grew like weeds, a lagoon to the west with an abundance of fast reproducing fish to sustain the town’s hunger, carnivorous plants to the south and to the north, the rocky wall of the abyss from which they fell.
Though it’s been almost two
Age of Men Page 25