Down over the craggy cliff the conveyance rode the steel rail down along the steep sides of the plateau. Along the way birds flittered playfully among the bromeliads that hung there delicately between the sinewy rattan vines. After a few moments during which she dared not look into his eyes, the conveyance made the seamless transition from free fall to an abrupt yet comfortable landing. Exiting the conveyance, Xora led them on foot toward the citadel along the old road that crested the shoreline. There they were greeted roughly by the crashing sounds of the surf and mocking sea birds. There too they were harassed by blasts of wind borne sand. Ananda, to Xora's surprise had endured this well. As they moved, the silhouette of the ever present central tower of Breideblic grew ever larger. It was well after mid-day by the time they came upon it. To Ananda it stood there imposingly and somehow he sensed vaguely that it did not belong. It left him with an odd foreboding feeling, curious to why the crowd there swirled about oblivious carrying on with their daily business. Despite this they had passedthrough their midst unnoticed and without any of the excitement that marked the previous day. There within they came upon the temple and passed through the arch way from which hung a large set of wooden doors. As they approached the temple attendants pushed aside these massive doors held in place by an equally impressive set of stout hinges. They held them open until they had passed into the inner chamber, and then slowly closed the doors behind them.
Through an ornately decorated ante chamber they approached the threshold of the crystal room. He did not enter the space however, as he now felt an unconscious reservation. His stomach contents then threatened to come up on him as a wave of unseen energy played havoc with his equilibrium. To steady himself from falling he held tightly onto the wall beside him. Xora who stood beside him spied upon him his expression of discomfort and subtle apprehension. "What is it? Have you sensed something?" she asked delicately. He struggled to answer. "Last night I was witness to a terrifying vision. These images I fear were conjured here within this room. To these I am both drawn to and repelled from." She again placed her hand on his shoulder in a reassuring gesture of friendship. In that instant she too fell into a spell of unfamiliar emotions. She easily recognized these as not her own. She removed her hand at once and the flood of emotion and imagery that spilled into her consciousness had for the moment ceased. Then without warning as if her body had been possessed her eyes began to roll back uncontrollably within her head. She for the moment felt the distinct sensation of free fall as her mind filled with juxtaposed imagery both familiar and unrecognizable. Overcome, her legs had fallen from beneath her. Ananda was there however to catch her. There within the safety of his arms she was seemingly in an altered state. Though she was not conscious to it her body resonated with a kind of energy she had not before encountered.
A few moments later she awoke to find herself on the floor being cradled by Ananda. Though he held her she no longer felt the coursing energy flow through him. She sat up confused and a little embarrassed about her current predicament. "What happened? What was that? Did you feel it as well?"
"Yes, it was very powerful." She rose to her feet running her hands along the sides of her clothing as if to brush away some invisible debris. "Well what was that?" Ananda offered a somewhat feasible explanation.
"I was in direct contact with the room. I touched the threshold and a wave of communication rolled over me. You placed your hand upon me and you too seemed to be affected."
"Why were you not knocked unconscious?" "I don't know, but perhaps this energy field here held within is more attuned to my senses than yours. I think we shall soon learn." He reached his hand out toward hers. They held hands and walked into the center of the room careful to stay clear of its surface.
As was the practice she recited from a well-worn prayer wheel the words that both conferred blessing and activated the mechanism. As if he had anticipated their arrival, James's presence could again be sensed there. He spoke and his voiceresonated in a tone that seemed to mimic a cadence of fatherly concern, filling the space around them. "Lady Xora, Ananda, I welcome you. I am glad to see you have returned. In your absence I have discovered much that I wish to show you. Ananda turned to Xora and said in a reassuring tone, "For the mean time, I think it prudent that you should stay clear of me while within these walls; at least until we know more about the nature of this message." Though her intention was to stay and be a witness to this message she reluctantly acquiesced. She did not wish to express her dissatisfaction, so she signaled her agreement to his request with a simple nod of her head. She stepped quietly back into a darkened corner, though her eyes and ears remained fixed on him. "James please continue."
"Dear friends I must apologize for my lack of foresight. It seems I should have anticipated this turn of events. However hindsight is often clear than the first view, and it is not yet too late. It is good that you have returned for after my experience last night I have discovered the source of that cryptic message and there is still more there waiting to be discovered. But first there is a message there waiting for you. I do not understand how this message came to be here now as I have no memory of it and it appears to be quite old indeed. Would like me to play it for you now?"
"Yes, I would like that, very much thank you."
Though the crystal room did appear more as a of work art than of technology, to its true nature they would soon be witnesses. The interior surface of the crystal known to the ancients as The Oracle began to flash and hum in a kaleidoscope of color, as its vast energies mounted. Though its inner workings had remained unknown to any of the islands current inhabitants, the mechanism by use of a temporal displacement field was capable of passing any packet of data to any point within the continuum of space time. Long ago this cryptic message had been sent down through a micro gravity well to the waiting receiver on the other side. The message riding upon an electromagnetic field wave had by passed through the intervening years by tunneling its way through an unimaginably small tear in the fabric of the universe. In a feat of unrivaled technology it bore its way through, breaching the void that separated it from its other half in space and time. As the wave tunneled through the space between them the mechanism held in stasis the matched pair of quantum entanglements that represented the sender and the receiver. The message from a virtual middle ground that stood outside the universe would then flow effortlessly through either end.
From the shadows Xora looked on in rapt amazement as the connection was made. As the link was acquired the crystal room began to shine and resonate in a manner she had not before seen. There emanating from upon the surface of the wall and ceiling before him first appeared what he thought to be a kind of illusion. What they both saw there was a representation of a potential space as a dark sphere in three dimensions. Not a mere vacuum but a tangible expanse. For a moment this impossibility hung there as the air around it crackled and flashed with a visceral static charge. These appearances were fleeting and changing at an ever increasing rate. A closer look revealed that there within, what appeared to be the swirling black water of this void was a growing pin prick of light. As if approaching from a distance began to slowly fill the dark sphere. It hovered there suspended like a dandelion seed against the deep black. Before their eyes these flashing images were transformed to ones more distinct. Suddenly the room was filled with brightness akin to daylight. The images there though ancient were as bright and clear ason the day they were captured. Xora had little understanding of the strange symbols and objects she saw. Focusing upon the meaning of these images they had failed to notice that this projection had begun to fill the entirety of the space. Without warning the images again transformed. Before them there now appeared a vision of a raven haired beauty. She stood in regal splendor, dressed in finest clothing and jewelry. She was by far the most beautiful woman Xora had ever seen. She could barely believe her eyes for this image seemed to have an almost tactile presence as if she were truly there. Ananda and the figure within this vision seemed to lock gla
nces upon each other. Ananda reached out and tried to touch the figure before him and was confused as his hand passed straight through. Though she was not there in body there was energy present within the chamber that seemed to somehow respond to Ananda's own presence. Xora watched transfixed as the resonance willed from its beating crystal heart an emanation of soft warm glowing light. It began to fill the air surrounding him. Soon he was enveloped in its shimmering veil. As if amplifying his writhing emotion his mind hovered there, caught within its gentle embrace. Deeply he breathed in the amber tinted air that swirled and charged the space about him in an intoxicating haze. A soft familiar voice filled his conscious mind as the message having spanned the gap of millennia reached his ears. The words she spoke were soft but its content hard. With a word she would unravel a spell cast long ago.
From her hiding place within the shadows Xora continued to listen as she stared into the image emblazed there. She somehow recognized that it was Lady Samantha. In the language of their people Samantha had spoken to Ananda. Though Xora could not understand her strange tongue, she saw on the woman's image softness in her ebony black eyes that spoke volumes. She found there also something she had not known in her own life. It was the look of love from one to another. Feeling now more like a voyeur than a librarian, Xora was intent on learning the secrets that were there held between them.
To Ananda her voice was true and clear. "Ananda, do you recognize my voice? I am your queen, Lady Samantha. Long you have slept my beloved king. You have sacrificed much for your people though we must again awake you from your peaceful slumber. The time of alignment is once again upon us. You must again take up arms against our immortal foe." He looked at her in confusion as a swirl of images entered his mind. Though he could see conjured there shards of disjointed imagery, their reality stood for the moment beyond his comprehension. He cried out "I don't understand. What does it mean?"
"Soon it will be clear to you. With a key that was planted long ago we shall unlock this mystery with a simple question. And so I ask you, what is your name my king, my husband?"
Ananda's thoughts whirled as he stumbled through the trail of logic. "But I am Ananda. I am a prince, not a king. My blood brother Amida is king."
In a cool and reassuring voice she asked, "What name did you take upon your ascension to the throne?" A word appeared in his mind though he tried to speak it, it would not come. She asked again this time more insistently.
"I must ask you again my love, what is your name?" An involuntary stutter rose from the back of his animal brain and flowed out through the cage of his grimaced teeth. "I am Hector The King." In that instant the disjointed images that flowed through his mind coalesced into a crystallized sober reality. All that had been hidden had rushed in one leap to the forefront of his mind. All at once he found himself again within the grip of an overwhelming weariness. The way there before him now, seeming stark and bleak weighed heavily upon his conscience. For one last moment however he would forget his torment and remember Samantha. For they knew their time was brief, they looked upon each other through the lens of ages. Time it seemed had not dulled the shine they held there frozen each for the other. "Dear husband I am glad to see you have so well survived your journey." Tears welled and then rolled down her bronzed face. "It's fading; I may not see you again. My dear I'm sorry. Don't ever forget how well I love you." Still reeling from the effects of this neural download he could muster only the mostbasic sentiment, "And I you." As he spoke these words the image became distorted and a crackling sound of white noise filled his ears. Their unlikely presence there together, having surpassed its allotted bandwidth capabilities had reached its end. The image grew grainy and the background seemed to glow around her. Then in a burst of light the image flickered out and the aura about him evaporated. As mysteriously as she had appeared so had she gone. Xora emerged into this emotional vacuum from the shadows and stood beside Ananda. "Who is she?"
"That is my wife, though she now appears younger than she did in the images I saw yesterday."
"What is it that she's trying to tell you?"
"She's here she said to warn me of the coming of our eternal enemies." James in a perfunctory tone then spoke, "The connection has been severed. I'm sorry I held it as long as I could." So the signal having crossed the portal, through which no living thing could pass, was lost. Xora tried as best she could to make sense of what she had just witnessed. Because Ananda still had the translation device on his person, she at least had understood his side of the conversation. His responses were clear. It was also plain to her that by his responses, that he was not accustomed to this manner of communication. He was surprised and frightened by what he had witnessed there. Though he initially seemed stifled he managed to stumble over some of his words. He had also managed to recall her name and spoke it out loud. From his lips arose her name, "Samantha." With his arm reached out to her. Though they could not touch, she had seemed to respond too by reciprocating the gesture. The gesture she concluded was all it was. For even Xora's limited experience she could see that this could be no more than illusion. However for Ananda the experience had seemed quite real. Thinking critically she thought to herself that it all seemed a bit too theatrical. If this show she mused was produced wholly for his benefit, she wondered aloud, "To what end?" It did seem to her like an awful lot of trouble to put one's self through, for what?
Xora who had been the keeper of the books for more than twenty years had not in all those years seen such a display. She called impatiently out into the room that had now grown dark. "James, what was that exactly?" After a moment its boomingvoice responded.
"I'm sorry Lady Xora but all I can tell you is that this room in
which I have existed is not what you thought it to be. It is not primarily a memory bank, although it can serve that purpose. It is also a communication device. And I, as you have for so long suggested am merely a set of sophisticated programs. This truth has only now been made evident to me. This place is what had been called by the forerunners a temporal displacement field. Through such a device communications can be transmitted between two points at great distances in either space or time."
"Are you telling me that that conversation was no illusion?" "To that I cannot answer. The nature of such things is beyond my parameters. I can however say there was much more transmitted to Ananda than was made plain to you and me. I sensed though I could not read a set of data hidden within a stream of neuronelectric energy as it passed through the doorway between them."
She turned to look onto Ananda's face. His eyes had grown darker and wearier as if a great weight had been placedupon him. Though he seemed ill prepared to provide much in the way of answers, she wanted to learn what she could before his fragile memory faded. Xora was filled with questions. So she wasted no time and so began a subtle interrogation. "Ananda I want to help you. But to do so, I'll have to ask you some questions. Do you feel up to it? You are one of the forerunners, are you not?"
He lifted up his head and looked at her with ghostlike eyes. On his expression where once a playful spirit resided now hung a mask of anguished purpose. "Yes, I suppose I am." he answered, "We obviously would not call ourselves by that name. As I said before I come from the city state of Atlantia. However we in our era did not name ourselves for the land of our birth as you do. We were citizens of the world. You saw there an image of my long dead wife Samantha. Yesterday the woman I spoke with lived several decades after the one you just saw. Yet they were one and the same person, existing in different times." She deferred for a later time her questions on that matter. She preferred rather to speak about the emergency at hand. "Tell me again about this warning. Who are these eternal enemies you earlier mentioned?" He decided he would rather show her then, and be done with it rather than narrating its description. He pointed toward a vacant space in the room and said, "James, show me here charts of the night sky." The room again grew dark as an inky blackness studded with pinpricks of light representing the stars filled the
entirety of the room. He then recited a string of numbers that represented a vector coordinate to a corresponding place within the set of the three dimensional charts. The image grew brighter and larger until a representation of a wandering planet filled the room. "This planet like the others in our solar system revolves around Sol at a predictable rate. However where our year lasts three hundred and sixty five days, its irregular orbit brings it into the realm of the inner planets every twelve thousand five hundred of our Earth years. There are many names for this world. In my time it was called Nibaru. Its presence is heralded by great natural upheavals such as the ones you have now been witnessed to." She stared into the image of the great orb spinning slowly on its axis. High in its atmosphere red gossamer clouds floated high above the rusted chains of mountain that girdled its equator. "She has given me this warning, so I may now give it to you. Soon the fiery ships of the unnamed ones shall be within range of the Earth. Even as we speak, scouting parties may already be heading this way." She stuttered in disbelief as her mind reeled. "I don't understand. Who are these unnamed ones, and why would they want to come here?" Ananda seemed to grow weak and let the weight of his body lean along the edge of the wall. "James, reference the following files under the heading Archaic Mythology, Nibaru and Omega."
A Paradox in Retrograde Page 8
