by Dan Glover
He often left Ena to travel into the mountains of old central Scotland. The unused log cabin he discovered in the middle of the forest had become a sort of refuge for him. He didn’t understand this need he felt to be alone yet if he didn’t feed it, he became morose and moody.
Once he tried taking their oldest son Catan with him but the boy distracted his sense of solitude. He tried again with Niall, their youngest, but the same thing happened. He knew it wasn’t the children's fault... it was his. Yet he never repeated the experiment. He felt fortunate to have a partner like Ena. She understood his predilection towards isolation even if she didn’t share it.
Catan was now a grown man now with a family of his own. The rest of the children were adults too, save Niall, though at fifteen years of age he looked fully grown. Luciana, their youngest daughter, had left the Isle of Skye more than a year ago to settle in the south of old France. He found it strange how he could barely remember their formative years. It was as if he'd been away forever without ever being gone.
He was home for one of his increasingly infrequent visits. The Victorian mansion was badly in need of repairs—the slate roof had cracked under the weight of the centuries as had most of the windows on the upper floors and the whole house had developed a lean to the right, a likely sign of termites gnawing away at the foundation—but he hadn’t the gumption to tackle such chores.
It would be easier simply to move to another location. But then again, all the old habitats from before the time of the Great Dying were slowing rotting and going back to the earth. Alpin had become used to living in the squalor of a by-gone era though he knew that Ena deserved better.
"Lady Lauren called today, sweet Alpin. She wondered if we would be visiting Orchardton Hall soon."
Since the American scientists came to stay, cell phone towers had been repaired as well as the power stations. Alpin never realized how convenient it was to simply flip a switch and have the lights come on. He grew up using lanterns and candles for lighting. The old pumps were also hauled up out of the wells and repaired. Water flowed as if by magic when the faucets were turned on.
Over the last two centuries he noticed other minor miracles too. In her spare time, Ena dabbled with inventing small appliances that cooked the food and heated the water with a tiny glowing orb of energy that seemed to hang suspended in mid air. When he asked her about it, she giggled and told him it was her efforts at creating a cold fusion device.
Alpin prided himself on reading the history of science. He knew cold fusion was labeled an impossible dream by most leading researchers during the 21st century. Though it had been demonstrated a couple of times, the experiment had never been duplicated. He also knew Ena had no scientific training so the fact that she could succeed where hundreds and perhaps thousands of scientists failed seemed unrealistic at best.
When he stepped under the hot water coming out of the shower head, however, he realized his wife—while she may not have been a scientist—was an adept at seeing into the future. She undoubtedly had a sort of predilection towards inventing new and insightful ways of using common items in ways unforeseen.
The shower door opened and Ena stepped in. She still looked every bit as beautiful and inviting as she did on that long ago day when they swam to old France together though she had lost some of her shyness over the centuries.
"Will you come with me if I go to Orchardton Hall, my sweet Alpin? Everyone would love to see you."
"Yes... we should visit, my darling Ena. Perhaps we might invite the children to bring their families along too. They will enjoy seeing everyone again, especially the grandchildren. They must get lonely living in the wilderness like they do."
"Just let me know when you'll be around again, darling Alpin, and we'll make plans to go to Orchardton Hall."
"Where is Niall, my sweet Ena? I thought we might all go for a swim."
"He is living in the south of old France with his Grandfather Nate."
Alpin nodded his head and thought no more of it assuming that Pete and Karen had flown Niall there. He heard that they often visited Nate and Kirk at their winery in Toulon.
He missed the boy, but soon Ena provided him with the means to forget.
Chapter 3—Taking Flight
Pete had been a pilot before the Great Dying.
Even though Nate had long ago given up on the notion of flying to Lake Baikal, with the realization that Pete could show him things about flying that he could never learn on his own, the dream was rekindled.
"The fact that you were able to learn to fly all on your own is impressive, Mr. Nate. Normally it takes hundreds of hours of intensive training with a qualified instructor to do what you did."
"Thanks, Pete... I spent over a year studying the manuals before I managed to get my plane off the ground, and even then, I chose one with a parachute, just in case something happened while I was up high in the air."
"The plane you picked is the best one for beginners, Mr. Nate. If you studied the manual, then you know about the checklists. Tell me though... where do you procure fuel?"
"I found an underground tank at the airport and used a hand pump to fill the tank."
"You might want to take care with those underground tanks. The fiberglass ones may well hold up for centuries but if they're made of metal they might begin to leak. Water will seep in. If you get water in your fuel tank, it could stall out the engine."
"How can you tell what the tank is made of, Pete?"
"We'll have to dig it up, Mr. Nate. That's the only way to know for sure. We could search the installation records of they're available but odds are we will not find what we're searching for."
"Are you qualified to fly jets too?"
"Yes, just out of graduate school and in a fit of patriotism I joined the armed services. I trained as a fighter pilot though I never actually flew any wartime missions. When I got out of the Air Force I thought about becoming a commercial pilot. I decided instead to go back to the university and study for my doctorate."
"I considered learning to fly one of the jetliners I found in a hanger in Aberdeen. I thought it was pretty similar to the Piper I flew but I never actually chanced it."
"I'm not a mechanic but from what I understand, jet engines are much more maintenance intensive, Mr. Nate. Flying a jet is quite a bit more complicated as well. Tell me... why the interest in jets?"
"We travel to eastern Siberia every seven years. Normally we drive but the roads are disintegrating; each trip we are forced to bypass bridges that have collapsed and roads that are impassable. In a few more centuries it may well be impossible to drive there. I thought about renovating an airport near the Lake and flying there instead of driving. But Lady Lily was not in favor of such an endeavor so I put it aside."
"Ah... I see... yes, a jetliner would make the journey non-stop. If we had a fuel source here as well as one in Russia, we could make the trip there and back in a matter of hours. That's good thinking, Mr. Nate."
"Thank you, Pete. But Lady Lily was right... we have all the time in the world so why risk the danger of flying when we can stay on the ground? My thinking was a bit muddled for a while. They say it had something to do with Kāne and the vibrations he put off. Ever since we are no longer close to one another, my mind is much clearer."
"Any sort of travel has inherent dangers, Mr. Nate. Driving a vehicle along the ground may seem safer than flying but accidents happen anywhere. Your tires can suffer catastrophic blowouts, animals may be wandering into the road where you can collide with them... all manner of bad things can happen. All we can do is keep being aware of the situation as it unfolds."
"So tell me, Pete... what kind of work did you do at the university? Were you a professor?"
"No... I was never good around people. I haven’t the patience to teach. I did what they called bio-mechanical engineering. It was an emerging field; I thought the sky was the limit. We were seeking to meld living tissue with inorganic matter... sort of a living computer, like our bra
ins."
"Is that how you met Micah?"
"Micah kept to himself. I knew of him through the grape vine but never actually met the man... at least not until all hell broke loose."
"I'm not sure what you mean by the grape vine, Pete."
"Oh... I'm sorry, Mr. Nate... the grape vine is an old metaphor for gossip. People talked about Micah all the time, how he invented medical devices for surgeons and how he brought in millions of dollars to the university. They also talked about how he never left the top floor.
"I heard how he was working on some sort of silicon based nanotechnology that supposedly would revolutionize the medical field. He approached the problem from the opposite end of the spectrum that I was investigating. Rather than using biology to augment inorganic material, he assimilated inorganic material into living tissue."
"What do you think will happen to Micah?"
"I suspect he'll revert to what he was before you arrived."
"Do you think he's dangerous?"
"To himself or to us?"
"Do you think he will attempt to use his nanotechnology to infiltrate our people here? Is this something we need to be on the watch for?"
"I think the Western Hemisphere should be seen as off limits for the foreseeable future, Mr. Nate. What Micah is doing will spread over both continents. That was always the greatest fear when it came to nanotechnology in the old days, that it would escape the laboratory and manifest itself in ways no one ever thought of.
"Those things of Micah's have a mind of their own now. They are no longer under his control even though he may fool himself into thinking so. I don’t remember much about my interactions with Micah but I do remember that he was a megalomaniac. He considered that everyone else on earth was a fool, thus greatly inferior to him.
"He had dreams of creating a world where the frailties of man were a thing of the past. What he never realized is that our weaknesses are our greatest strength. Micah looked at disease as the enemy, to be rooted out and destroyed. He never stopped to think that our DNA contains large percentages of fossilized remnants of myriad viral and bacterial infections that make us who and what we are today."
"Tell me, Pete... do you suffer any ill effects from your time with Micah?"
"No, none that I know of... it is as if it never happened. I suppose I owe him my life. If not for Micah I would have died a century ago along with the rest of the human race."
"From what I understand, Pete, you didn’t have much of a life in old New York City. Micah kept you and the others as virtual prisoners. I suppose in some demented way he saved your life, but I suspect it had more to do with his experiments than any real urge to save your life."
"I'll agree with that, Mr. Nate. Believe me, there were times when I wished I was dead. I remember when Micah began bringing animals into the institute to inject with his nanobots and to study the affects on them. He was always programming those machines to achieve certain goals, the end result being beyond my purview.
"When he brought Chester into the compound, I realized what a special being he was. Micah never took the time to do more than poke and prod his specimens, just like he never bothered talking to us. When I began to sneak into the specimen room and interact with Chester, I thought we might each be the salvation to freedom we both desired.
"I knew Micah was cruel but it wasn’t until that time that I discovered how full of hate he actually was. He came into the specimen room unexpectedly and caught me playing with Chester. He was incensed. First, he tried ordering Chester to attack me but that didn’t work.
"That must be when he introduced the gas into the specimen room. Micah used it for unruly animals and on us when he tired of dealing with our propensity for violence. I don’t remember much about that time but I do recall being extremely angry all the time. It must have been another side effect of the nanobots.
"Anyway, when I woke up, Chester was gone and I was in the pit. That's where Micah put us when we gave him problems. It must have been an old well. It was located in one of the outbuildings behind Cornell University and it was cold and damp at the bottom. Sometimes he would feed us but sometimes he wouldn't.
"I still have nightmares of those days. When I wake up and it's dark, I think I am back down in the pit and I lay there wondering if I will get anything to eat today and when I will be let out. Gradually I work myself back to consciousness. I discover I am here and it is only a dream I am having and I am free.
"I'm not sure most people know what it means to be free."
"You're right, Pete. We take it for granted. I remember when I was flying and how I felt free. Sailing comes close to that same feeling but there is something about being in the air above it all and having the freedom to go anywhere you desire. Do you get that feeling too?"
"Absolutely, Mr. Nate... I always felt more alive in the air than I ever did on the ground. Maybe part of it was knowing I could die at any time. It made for an extraordinary experience. I miss it. What do you say we overhaul one of these jets and take it for a spin?"
The dream was still alive and well.
Chapter 4—Dragons
When the cloud first appeared Lily thought it was only the edge of an approaching thunderstorm.
She had nearly left Orchardton Hall for good. It wasn’t until Lauren and Natalia paid her a visit and managed to convince her to stay that she set aside her plans for traveling somewhere else, anywhere else.
She felt old in a way she never imagined feeling. Her bones ached, her blood seemed sluggish within her veins and arteries, and even her mind was becoming muddled. She noticed gray hair beginning to sprout on her scalp and the joints on her fingers swelling with arthritis.
She had lost the zest for living.
As a child she remembered watching the old Ladies of the Lake and how at times they drifted into the depths without attempting to save themselves. They were the ones who had suffered great loss, who had given up going on. One day they simply disappeared and sometimes it would be months or years before anyone even missed them.
They called it the diminishing.
Though members of her species were immortal beings they sometimes fell afoul of sickness and distress in ways that rivaled the monkeys who constantly chattered in the tree tops. With the gathering of the years there came wisdom but also great suffering. Loved ones became strangers. Family turned against each other.
There were no wars among her people but there existed something even worse. War enabled the monkey people to evolve into a great civilization but the diminishing only served to lead old women to a lonesome sort of death.
Lily never thought she'd fall prey to the disease.
She knew she had to leave Nate. The dreams told her so. She made up her mind not to fall too deeply in love with him but she failed at that just as she failed at everything else in life.
Watching the girls of the People giving birth to baby after baby only lent her misgivings at being what she was: a monster from the deep waters of Lake Baikal. She wondered how or why anyone could love her. She became certain that Lauren and Natalia were only telling her what she wished to hear, otherwise they would still be by her side.
On the day her old lovers appeared at her door she wanted to die. She planned on it. She cleaned her apartment so as not to leave a mess for the next occupant giving away her clothing and other possessions she had acquired over the years.
When the knocking started she ignored it.
She didn’t want to see anyone. It was no doubt just someone who'd heard she was giving away all her things. Anger arose in her heart at the callousness of it all. She thought whoever was knocking would soon tire of it and leave.
They did not.
The knocking only grew louder, more insistent and obnoxious. Going to the door and throwing it open, ready to lambaste whoever was standing on the other side, Lily saw her old lovers standing there holding hand and smiling at her in a way she had all but forgotten.
"Well, lovely Lily! You are here! We
were beginning to think you'd left already. Can we please come inside?"
"Why are you here, Lauren? What can I do for you?"
The cloud in the distance took the form of dragons circling high overhead which mirrored her own disillusions with not only love but the world and everything in it. As her former lovers attempted to muscle their way into the apartment Lily couldn’t take her eyes off the mist. She thought she saw dragons.
Her voice sounded discordant and mean. For the first time she could recall she did not address her lover with the proper respect one accords another who is a familiar. Lily felt guilt building yet shrugged it off as she attempted to close the door in her lovers' faces.
"Oh no you don't... we're coming in whether you want us here or not. We have some things to say."
Natalia was angry in a way Lily had never experienced before. She pushed her way into the apartment without waiting to be invited. It was oddly unlike the girl and yet endearing all the more.
"We've been patient with you, lovely Lily... perhaps too patient. We thought you'd come back to us of your own accord. Now we hear you are giving all your precious things away... that you are planning on leaving Orchardton Hall again, this time for good. Why do you hate us so, pretty Lily? What have we done to be treated in such a manner?"
"I don’t hate you, Natalia."
"Listen to you... you address us as if we were strangers. We've been together too long for that. You may still leave here but first you're going to tell us why you are shunning us. It isn’t right, precious Lily."
Lauren had tears in her eyes and a hurt in her voice that startled Lily into a sense of alternative reality. The sights she heard became more intense. Every nuance of her former lovers' voices became clear and insightful.
Lily stood in the doorway not wanting to face the irate lovers who powered their way in. The sunlight visibly dimmed as the dragons loomed closer. The wind became colder as rain began whipping sideways stinging like glass shards striking her in the face.
