by Mayer, Bob
“Yes,” Edith said. “He’ll be with us shortly.”
“What’s that?” Scout asked, pointing to a large, six-foot-high hourglass that stuck out from the balcony they were on, suspended over the floor. Sand was slowly running down from the top to the bottom. It was almost done.
“Time,” Edith said. “The only time we keep here. Six shifts of the glass, four hours each. Equals a day.” She pointed. “Watch.” The last of the sand ran through, and the glass slowly rotated and the sand began its tumbling again. From just below, a bugle rang out, announcing the change. The call was picked up by other instruments: other bugles, horns, drums, even someone yodeling . . . a cacophony of sound that lasted almost a minute and then faded away.
Doors opened on the outside of the ramp and people streamed in, replacing a sixth of those on duty.
“We maintain continuity through shifts,” Edith said.
“Where do they go?” Scout asked.
“To their quarters,” Edith said vaguely. “They stay among those from their own era.” She changed the subject. “We track not only our timeline here, but what we can gather on other timelines. Especially the ones that don’t make it.”
“What do you mean ‘don’t make it’?” Moms asked.
“They end,” Edith said. “For humanity that is. The planet is still there.” She paused. “Usually.”
Everyone digested that for a few seconds.
Edith continued. “We need to understand how they failed. Where they went wrong. Whether they ended internally, which means without interference from other timelines. Such as all-out nuclear war. Sadly that’s a rather common occurrence since it appears almost every timeline moves into the nuclear age if they make it to the twentieth century. Or a plague with one-hundred-percent kill. That’s ended a line or two even before the twentieth century. Or simply destroying the planet’s infrastructure to the point where human life isn’t sustainable. Much more likely to happen than most people believe; in fact, almost inevitable, we’re afraid. Before we concern ourselves with external attacks from beyond our timeline, we must guard against our own flawed humanity.”
“That was our mission also,” Moms said.
“It was in the present,” Edith agreed. “You were on the forward edge of the time wave as it evolves. But we, and now you, cover the entire timeline, a much broader spectrum.” She spread her hands, taking in the entirety of the Possibility Palace, and that punctuated her statement with an exclamation point. “And then there are the timelines harvested by the Shadow.”
“Harvested for what?” Eagle asked.
“Everything and anything.” Edith paused. “Some timelines have been entirely stripped of natural resources, particularly air and water. You saw how the Valkyries controlled by the Ratnik were reaping humans for their body parts? The Shadow reaps entire planets for their resources.
“It’s troublesome. We used to think the Shadow was a single timeline. And perhaps it is, but we’re starting to suspect that the Shadow is some larger entity than just a timeline and has corrupted several timelines to do its bidding because the attacks are not consistent. The goals of the harvesting are often widely variable. The vagaries of the variables as the Administrator likes to say. Possibilities.”
“How do you learn about these other timelines?” Doc asked.
“Refugees who make it to the Space Between,” Edith said. “The Amelia Earhart you met, for example. She was not from our timeline. She was a survivor from a timeline that is no longer viable due to the Shadow. Which is why she can’t go back.”
“What happened to the Amelia Earhart from our timeline?” Scout asked.
Edith shook her head. “As best we can tell, she really did crash on her round-the-world flight and died.”
“And you don’t know who or what this Shadow is?” Moms asked.
“No.” Edith seemed troubled by the question. “The Administrator will brief you shortly. Please come with me.”
“What’s that?” Scout asked, pointing to the right and down at the ramp just below the balcony. A grayish-white fog obscured one end of the ramp as it ascended.
“That,” Edith said, “is the present, leading into the unknown future.”
Approximately 10,000 BC
A thousand men and women manned the fortress walls, waiting to die bravely. They were the elite of the Atlantean army, handpicked for this last mission. The survivors of a seven-year war against an enemy none had ever returned to describe, but there were rumors of monsters and worse. They were armed with spear, sword, and bow, and knew these weapons would be useless against what the approaching darkness was bringing. There were persistent rumors of other weapons that had been developed, but the rumors were bitter because the weapons were not to be used to save them or their home, but the future.
Such is the nature of true sacrifice. Still, they stood tall on the ramparts and looked out to the sea from which their doom would come.
The fortress was set on the smallest of thirteen volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Although the smallest, this island, centrally located, was the most important, as it was the seat of power for the Empire of Atlantis. The fortress wall surrounded a magnificent city, consisting of more than forty square miles of homes, temples, government buildings, and businesses constructed from a fine white marble that gleamed in the late afternoon sun. In the very center of the city, a huge pyramid had hurriedly been constructed. It was more than three hundred feet high with a level top twenty feet wide. Contrasting with the rest of the city, it was built of black stone.
On the top of the pyramid stood the High Defender. She was a tall woman with short red hair and pale skin, clad in a white robe with red trim and wore a crystal amulet around her neck as a sign of her special position.
Her eyes were icy blue, and they were currently scanning to all points of the compass from the center of Atlantis. In every direction, darkness covered the ocean, a black wall over a mile high of undeterminable depth: the Shadow’s domain. The circle of black was slowly closing on the center island, the capital city that had once ruled the other twelve islands in the middle of the Atlantic and colonies on both sides of the ocean. The twelve islands were uninhabited now after having been overrun, year after year, two by two, for the past six, by the Shadow.
It had started seven years ago to the day. Two islands to the west had been consumed by the unknown darkness in just twenty-four hours. When the Shadow lifted, no one was left. No one alive, no bodies, nothing. Then exactly six years ago, two islands to the south suffered the same fate. Then five years ago, on the same date, two to the north.
There was nothing special about this particular day of the year as far as the Atlanteans could determine. But by the third-year anniversary, the assault was anticipated. Nevertheless there was nothing that could be done to avert the same result as islands five and six were consumed. Most had escaped beforehand, warned by the Defenders of the coming doom, their ships spreading out across the ocean before the darkness finished encircling. The twelve tribes of Atlantis sought haven far over the seas, carrying with them the legend of their kingdom and the knowledge that had been given in visions to the Defenders by the Ones Before.
Years four and five saw two more islands wiped out.
The islands were covered in darkness. Once more, when it withdrew, there was no sign of the handful who had remained behind out of sheer stubbornness and despair. There were always those who would refuse to leave their homes, no matter what was coming.
Now as the seventh-year anniversary of doom approached, all knew it would be time for their capital, the last of Atlantis, to suffer the same fate.
Just after midnight, the blackness had appeared, closer than ever before, completely encircling the capital island. As dawn approached so did the darkness. Ahead of the darkness were monsters of the sea—kraken—attacking ships that were futilely trying to fight the inevitable.
A man stood by the High Defender’s side. He was dressed in the pla
in leather of an ordinary warrior, although he was anything but ordinary. He was the Administrator. Next to him was an obsidian, three-foot-high triangular column. Gathered behind him were six men, dressed similarly, with an identical device next to each one of them. Each of the men had a bulging pack slung over his shoulder containing scrolls.
After the second-year attack, a select few among the Atlanteans, all women, began receiving visions and hearing voices from some unseen entity calling itself the Ones Before, warning them about the nature of the force behind the darkness—the Shadow—and telling them ways to combat the threat. At first, the visions and voices were ignored as the warriors tried to use traditional means to fight the Shadow, but when all those attempts became abject failures, the people were forced to turn to these seers.
Thus the Defenders were formed. The darkness over the two islands the previous year was destroyed by a pyramid and the sacrifice of a Defender and several warriors exactly as the Ones Before instructed. But the islands were devastated by the defense, stripped bare of life, and all involved were killed. It was hoped that this disaster might mean an end to the Shadow, but now they knew that hope was in vain. Meanwhile, the Administrator and his select people worked on another possible means of fighting the Shadow based on information gleaned from the visions sent by the Ones Before.
For the past year, desperate visions warned of the coming threat and now it was here, on schedule. Pri Tor shifted her gaze to those gathered on the broad stairs of the pyramid: twelve priestesses like her, one Defender survivor from each island who’d been at the capital in service and thus escaped the destruction of her home. Two warriors stood by, the taller of whom held a staff, one end of which was a razor-sharp spearhead and the other a seven-headed snake—the Naga. Behind her was a large slab with the contour of a human etched into its stone surface.
Pri Tor spoke in a low voice that only the Administrator could hear. “I regret to say that I tremble at what is to come.”
“Your visions are incomplete,” the Administrator said.
“I do not understand what these Ones Before want from us,” Pri Tor said. “I thought we could defeat it,” she added, nodding toward the approaching darkness.
“We will,” the Administrator said. “But apparently not here and, more importantly, not now.” He waited a moment. “You can come with us.”
“My place is here and now,” Pri Tor said. “I only know what must be done now to save the rest of the world in this time. We will take this attack with us into oblivion and save the possibilities for the future. It is time for you to escape and live in that future. I do not know where your travels will take you.” She nodded toward the horizon. “I sent my other priestesses away last month. Spread to the far seas. Some will survive. Some will keep the bloodline of the Defenders viable. Keep the Sight viable. I have kept only the handful needed.”
“You are the ruler of the twelve here and now,” the Adminstrator acknowledged.
“And you will take the six over the paths of time,” Pri Tor acknowledged. “Let us hope one of us ultimately succeeds.”
“We have a little bit of time,” the Administrator said, with a glance at the approaching darkness.
“Time.” Pri Tor shook her head. “I do not understand it. I do not understand why it is this day, of all days, every year now.”
The Administrator had no answer because he didn’t understand either.
The High Defender reached out, lightly touching the Administrator’s leather armor over his heart. “Believe here, before you think here,” she pointed at his head. “That is the one message the Ones Before have sent consistently. Good must triumph over evil. Love over hate. We cannot think our way into that.”
The Administrator bowed his head for a moment. “That is how it shall be and how we shall teach those who follow us.”
Pri Tor’s attention was elsewhere now. She called out to her priestesses. “It is time.”
The dozen priestesses bowed their heads in prayer for several moments.
“Go,” Pri Tor ordered. The priestesses made their way down the stairs and then scattered to the twelve positions on the walls that Pri Tor had chosen as a result of the vision she had been given. Meanwhile, Pri Tor took a dark red cloth from her pocket and draped it over her shoulders. It was inscribed with hieroglyphic writing, a gift from the Ones Before, one of the few substantial things received via a gate besides the triangular pedestals. As far as Pri Tor and the Administrator could tell, both the Shadow and the Ones Before used the gates, although no human had ever entered one and come back to tell of it, and no representative of either side had ever come out of the darkness of a gate into light.
Pri Tor glanced at the Administrator standing next to the short, black triangular column and amended that thought: so far.
Pri Tor walked to the slab and climbed onto it, standing tall, where she could see all of the capital of Atlantis spread out around her, a halo of captured sunlight surrounded by a tower wall of darkness. She saw the chosen thousand on the walls. Would they be enough? she wondered briefly, and then dismissed the doubt. It was one of many decisions she’d had to make in the past week as the inevitable drew near. They had to be enough. The plan she’d “heard” from the Ones Before had indicated a thousand should be sufficient and she had to trust in it.
Pri Tor raised her gaze beyond. The Shadow was closer. Pri Tor looked at the fortress walls. The thousand warriors were ready. At the twelve designated points along the walls, her priestesses stood.
Pri Tor felt a trembling beneath her feet. The ground itself was unsteady, a result of the Shadow’s power.
She signaled and the two warriors came up the stairs and joined her.
“Be ready,” Pri Tor ordered. One of the warriors put the spearhead into a slit next to the slab. His steady hand rested on the snakeheads.
Then Pri Tor lay down, her body fitting into the outline. She felt more tremors. High above, all she could see was blue sky. A single seagull flew overhead. She felt a tremendous wave of sadness knowing this was her last day. There would be no more beautiful dawns and wondrous sunsets. The simple joys and the pains of life were all to be ended, and she didn’t understand why.
“How close?” she called out.
“Just about to touch the walls,” the warrior informed her.
She could feel the sheer evil of the darkness that approached. Of that, there was no doubt. Theological questioning and reasoning aside, there was the reality of the threat that had proven itself again and again over the past seven years.
“At the walls,” the warrior announced.
Pri Tor could hear the screams of the warriors at the city’s outermost defenses as the darkness slid over them and they encountered what was inside. She closed her eyes. She “felt” a wave of bravery mixed with despair from the warriors.
With great effort, Pri Tor lifted her head and looked toward the walls. Darkness had encompassed the southwest part of the structure, but she could see the two priestesses who had been overrun as deep blue silhouettes in the blackness, a beacon of positive power. Their skulls were absorbing the same thing her mind was feeling, the raw power of the warriors’ emotions, and the energy that was pouring through them to the pyramid.
The Administrator gave a signal and as one, the six men behind him placed their hands on top of their columns and they snapped out of existence in the here and now. His own hands hovered over his column. He gave one last look at the approaching darkness, back to Pri Tor, tears in his eyes, and then placed his hands on the flat surface and was gone.
A third and fourth Defender on the wall fell into the darkness. Bolts of blue, from the four now covered, flickered out to the others arranged around the wall, but most of the energy flew to the pyramid.
Pri Tor felt the power in her head building, almost unbearable. “Now,” she ordered.
The warrior turned his spear.
The pyramid began to vibrate. A blue glow suffused the slab and Pri Tor’s body. Energy fro
m the outlying Defenders came toward her, adding to the power. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. The skin on her face began rippling as if there were something alive beneath it. Then her flesh began peeling away as her eyes turned into two blue glowing orbs.
The darkness was closer now on all sides. Seven of the twelve Defenders were covered, sucking in power from the doomed warriors’ minds. Pri Tor had a moment of clarity when she realized what was happening—the absolute desperation of the warriors, combined with their bravery in the face of it, was tapping something primeval and very powerful, and the nearby Defenders were able to channel it to her.
Still the Shadow closed in.
Deep inside Pri Tor, she felt the darkness slide over the top of the pyramid and her body. She was still alive, her head the focal point of the skulls of twelve priestesses, the twelve Defenders, who had already given their all in the battle against the Shadow.
Her body felt faint and far away. She distantly heard a warrior shout something and then scream in agony. More power flowed in. All the Defenders were active now.
There was a pause and with a moment of clarity, she saw the lines of connection in the future: the descendants of her Defenders who had already left and spread out. Planting the seed of their line into their new lands. Moving forward into something she couldn’t see. A bright light. The future.
Bolts of blue shot out of Pri Tor’s head into the encompassing shadow.
Again and again, blue lightning burned off the top of the pyramid into the darkness. The consistency of the darkness began to change, swirls of blue mixing with the black, spinning about the top of the pyramid.
Pri Tor’s head was now a clear crystal, suffused with blue. The power from the twelve Defenders still poured into the pyramid, their heads also crystallized, still channeling raw emotion from the dying warriors.
Neither Shadow nor Defender would yield.
So the Earth did.
