by Kip Hartzell
It is my most prized possession. I made sure it was with me when we escaped Terrah, and all through our trials. The book inextricably joined the Avion family with the Athain family. Although, I can’t explain our family ties, but we have trusted each other ever since. Now, that we are stranded on Earth, and in time, I’ve always felt safe and confident with John.”
“I appreciate that Drof, and I would follow you to the ends of space and time. We may need that book, could you bring it to the med-lab?”
“Of course, be there in ten.”
The screen went blank, and Drof put the book under his arm. He grabbed his jacket and went to the door, only to look back at the room he had tunneled out himself in the mountain hideout. He turned and walked out of the door wondering what kind of hare-brained adventure John was getting him into this time. He smiled, as he ran his hand over his bald head, at least he makes life worth living.
“I just saw all that, not just hearing it, or watching it, I saw it all. Whoa...” Jay drifted off into metal space.
Rhe-A took the device off, and put it aside. “His mental capabilities are growing, I’m surprised.”
Jay heard that, and sat up. “How long were we out?”
“Four hours thirteen minutes.”
“Wow, that’s it. I thought we were there for days.”
“Alright, what are the correlations?” John asked, as he strolled the room.
“I don’t think I’m going to be much help,” Jay said, swinging his legs back and forth. “Very little of that story was told to me by...you.” He felt dizzy for a few seconds, and steadied himself.
Drof stepped into the room with his book. Jay knew exactly who he was before the teleconference, by the description his Grandfather had given him. Jay stood up and looked up. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Avion,” he said, steepling his fingers and slightly bowing.
“It would be, Honored Drof-Avion, if we were being formal, but no formalities, we are family. Call me Drof.”
Jay, knew of the tradition of steepling his fingers, but he held out a hand anyway.
Drof engulfed his hand, shook it, and let go. “Here’s the journal you requested.”
John took it. “Drof, we still can’t figure out what I was trying to tell my Grandson.”
“Let me review the play back, and see if I can find something. The things that stand out, seem to me, a desperate situation that required desperate decisions.”
“That’s indicative to all our situations,” Athene-A blurted from behind them.
“True. Genetic manipulation has gone on since the beginning,” Drof added.
“A common theme would be, advancing faster that our wisdom to use it,” Athene-A pondered.
Pandor-A had been sitting quietly in the corner. “Perhaps, we should move on and try again. This session has revealed very little.”
John flipped through the book. “It’s not here.”
“What is...not there?” Athene-A asked.
“Near the time, Icarus was to explode, I saw bipedal light figures in the ship placing something on it. Drof, I saw your Grandfather, and Samari-A, disappear before the ship exploded.”
“Well, let’s find out,” Drof said, and then moved his hand over a console and fast forwarded the recording. “You are correct, it is not here.”
“But, I saw it, too,” Athene-A, said a little confused.
“And I, too,” Jay excitedly said.
“I would hypothesize that although the human mind is a recorder, it is much more than that,” Pandor-A recited in her own voice, “It records everything real, and imagined.”
“So, you’re saying we imagined that whole part?” John questioned her reasoning.
“Maybe not imagining, but manipulating, wanting them to survive so badly that your mind’s eye made them survive.”
“If that’s the case, then how can we trust any of the results we’ve experienced?” John put the book down.
“I believe these deceptive illusions are most active during stress, perhaps the machine program can be refined.”
“How do you explain Solest’s rapid decay soon after the incident. That’s not imaginary.”
“Yes, but how it started may be.”
“I could simply extract the memories,” Rhe-A said, “but it would leave him a slightly lower form of vegetable than he is already.”
“Hey, I’m still here, and what’s with the freakish fetish of yanking my brains out?” Jay argued as he stood up to her, only to face as high as her chest. “It was funny at first, but now you’re getting personal.”
She folded her arms. “I think I liked him better when he was docile.”
“I think I liked you better when you were Rhea Wilkenson.”
“Alright you two, we have more important things to deal with,” John said, as he quietly calmed them down.
Jay turned to John. “Maybe we can continue this tomorrow night.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.” John looked troubled. “We have a lot of data to go over. Pan, help Rhe-A reconfigure the computer parameters to eliminate the...imagination?”
“Very well,” Rhe-A said, giving Jay a slight smile before she turned to her console.
Chapter Six: Temporal Storage
Jay slipped quietly into his airbed covers, and dozed off. His mind still had residual effects from the mental connection. He tossed restlessly around until the sun came up. He heard the Professor rousting everyone awake.
He poked his head in the tent. “Come along, Mr. Rodgers, I want to see more of that enthusiasm.”
Jay sat up, putting his head in his hands. “Yeeha.” The sarcasm was not lost on the Professor, he shook his head, and moved on.
The chow hall tent flaps were tied to the side as Jay walked in. Most everyone was there, except Shelly. He half expected to be assaulted by her. When she set her mind to something, it was almost impossible to change it. He ate his usual breakfast, and then went to his assigned area.
Sweat rolled off of Jay’s forehead, when he strained to pull a rock out of a trench wall. He got it up onto the ground above his head, but, it balanced precariously on the edge. He climbed out, and shoved the rock with his foot. I began to roll down the hill toward another working group. “Damn,” he said, and chased after it. Catching up to it halfway down, he stumbled and fell, soon after, it rolled over his leg slowing its progress enough for him to stop it. While rubbing his leg, he could hear the group down below laughing and pointing. He shrugged his shoulder, and then let the rock go. It bowled through their work area, causing half a dozen of them to jump aside. It was Jay’s turn to laugh.
Jay was getting up when he stopped. “There it is again, that feeling, like a warm current in cold water,” he said to himself, while he started to dig. He raced back for a shovel, and had a sizable hole dug when the professor showed up.
“Mr. Rodgers, would you mind explaining to me why you’re out of your section?”
“Uh, well, the way I see it, if that is a temple, and the correct time period, it would make these people interested in celestial bodies, thus, here would be a point of the summer solstice.”
The Professor was baffled, but intrigued. “I dare say, Mr. Rodgers, that you have lost your-”
Jay’s shovel hit something hard. He reached down and wiped away the dirt. Strange hieroglyphs took shape on a stone background. The Professor smiled and grunted when he knelt down to help. Jay had never seen the man dig a hole in his life, so this must be important.
They dug until sundown, and to the point of exhaustion, as fifteen feet of stone stairs were cleared. The steps descended at a thirty-five-degree angle. Jay moved his light to an area where he recognized the symbols, and realized he’d just made a terrible mistake. “Okay, folks,” Jay started, “I think it’s time to call it a night.”
“But, we’re so close,” the Professor enthusiastically said.
“We’re worn out, we’re done, unless you want someone able to help you tomorrow, we should rest.”
> The crowd moaned in agreement.
“Very well,” the Professor conceded.
Jay moved quietly out of camp, amiss the snoring and mumblings of sleep talking people. In no time, he was on his way to Chrysalis. Tired, he sat in the pilot’s chair and studied the controls as he went.
“We’re glad you made it back,” Athene-A said, escorting him to the med-lab.
He walked into the well-lit sterile room, only to see John, Drof, and Pandor-A. “Where’s Rhe-A?”
“On another assignment,” John said, as he stood up. “Besides, how hard can it be?”
“Uh, well, real hard. She may be a pain in the ass, but she seems to know her job.”
“I’m joking. I hope I wasn’t boring as your Grandfather?”
“You were anything but. Anyway, I think I screwed up. I felt something in the ground and started digging. I found a staircase with your hieroglyphs on it. The Professor saw it, along with the rest of the crew.”
“Interesting, do you know its coordinates?” Jay told him, and then he spoke to his computer. “It’s one of our old monitoring sights. It should be empty.”
“It’s not. I sense something in there.”
“It’s possible something was left behind. Those we’re chaotic times.” John waved a hand over the console. “John to Aidan, could you come to the infirmary?” John turned to Jay. “We need to continue here.”
Aidan walked in taking up most of the doorway. “You asked for me?” the bull-man asked, starring at Jay.
“Yes, my friend, I have a job for you.” John took a handheld and handed it to him and said, “I need you to take a team and go to the dig sight, sabotage the area around these coordinates. We may have left some evidence of our existence there. Uh, no casualties.”
Jay could’ve sworn he saw Aidan smile. “As you wish. It is a pleasure to meet you again, descendant of Captain Athain.”
Jay sucked down his fear, and approached the giant and held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, too.”
Aidan reached out and shook his hand. Jay noticed the hand was as soft as his, and warm. Fear dissipated when he let go.
“We will leave now,” Aidan said, and left.
“Wow.”
“They are great soldiers, and great friends. I doubt we would’ve survived without them. Now, shall we get started.”
The white light was almost blinding, as John floated around in limbo. He tried to focus, but his mind kept drifting around, while pictures kept flashing all around him. The past memories would sometimes be in motion, while others would flash a 2-dimensional image. The pictures would float by just out of reach until he finally saw a motion picture of the Command Deck of the space ship Atlantis. He reached for it in the weightlessness of the white space that surrounded him. He couldn’t reach. He focused his concentration on the window into the Command Deck. Slowly, he began to move toward it.
It wasn’t long before his hand felt the window seal edges. He now had a hold of something he thought was solid. Putting both hands on the edges, he floated feet first into the open window. John suddenly felt gravity, and all his senses came back to life. He stood there looking around the massive Command Deck. The sights and sounds of the central nervous system of the vast ship was just as he remembered them, except there were no people anywhere within sight.
Captain John-Anee-Athain, once the great Captain of the mighty Space Ship Atlantis, now a small speck on the cosmic windshield, wandered around Atlantis’ Command Deck checking on things that didn’t need to be checked on. The suspended animation dimensional rift they encompassed was only limited by their own minds. Anything imagined in the containment field device felt real. He had no concept of time as he moved around the Captain’s command section in the upper center portion of the coliseum. The panoramic forward view screen only showed a moving stars cape that he had witnessed a thousand times.
Jay watched from a short distance, as John failed to notice him. Jay felt like a ghost on a ghost ship. He moved in closer, but knew he was only an observer here. John walked around feeling safe enough to reminisce. Jay could not only see what John was doing, but also what he was thinking. When he thought of the Destroyers, the ones who had driven him, and his kind to the situation they were in now: hiding in a hole after Atlantis was chased away, leaving them stranded on a beautiful planet with plenty to offer. Except, the freedom to leave and live without fear of being destroyed in a moment’s notice. Jay felt the fear and the realness of a devastating enemy.
Atlanteans, or Terrahanians, as they were known before the great exodus from Terrah when their sun went supernova, had been on earth for thousands of years living a peaceful life without fear of the Destroyers, who they thought they had evaded. Once they were discovered, Atlantis had no choice but to run leaving the Captain and thousands of citizens behind. The one thing that could have saved them was a crystal skull, known as the key. The key was of alien origin, that, not even the Atlanteans, knew who they were; they just referred to them as ‘the Inquisitors.’ The Inquisitors had given them many gifts, most notably, advanced technology. With this technology, they were able to escape the Destroyers by jumping from the Andromeda Galaxy to the Milky Way Galaxy. Once here, it was thought the menace was gone forever, until they appeared in the sky’s over Earth.
John’s memories flowed evenly as his thoughts became life like. Atlantis was caught off guard, and with many Atlanteans off ship to attend the trial of a former Councilor of 100, Aztek-Alon, who was being tried for enslaving the native populous. Who, themselves, had been given Atlantean genes to help them survive. At the time, the key to the enormous defense grid was in the hands of the renegade Councilor. The centuries old defense grid was a large number of power point systems placed all around the solar system, with enough power in the Agoam power crystals to assure the destruction of the Destroyers. The key was needed to activate the grid, but Aztek-Alon, in all his arrogance, refused to divulge its location. Thus, causing Atlantis to flee, leaving him and the stragglers behind. The Destroyers pursued Atlantis leaving the Earth-bound group alive as bait, as to draw out the ship and destroy all of them, at a later date.
Jay just marveled at the size of the ship, at times, he forgot it was a space ship. Atlantis was so large she could have been classified as a continent. Her tectonic plate gravity stabilizers kept the Earth together when she landed. When she left in such a hurry no precautions were taken, and the ship caused a tear in the planet’s surface leaving death and destruction in her wake. John re-lived that day as if were yesterday, the sky blackened as earthquakes shook the ground and toppled everything they had built. Fire fell from the sky to complete the destruction. Jay unconsciously ducked out of the way of falling debris. He could literally smell smoke and feel the heat. Aztek-Alon, in the confusion, escaped with the knowledge of the location of the key. It took months for the air to clear. The survivors massed together, and with the help of their Earth-born Cousins, began to rebuild. They scavenged all the technology they could find, and after thirty years, built a Temporal Storage Matrix Device, to house them timelessly until either the key was found, or Atlantis felt strong enough to return and defeat the Destroyers on her own.
Before the hideaway was built, many Atlanteans chose to take their chances in the real world and live life with the indigenous population, and split from the group. They left amicably, and their history is now unknown to John. He silently wished them the best of luck. The ones that chose to stay numbered in the thousands. All had hopes of a better future than the one they left behind. One complication was the Temporal Storage Device had a perceived flaw of leaking souls. Should a physical presence outside the temporal matrix have an energy signature similar to one inside the storage device, the energy signature would unite with a body in the real world. This phenomenon hadn’t happened yet, at least not that John had noticed. As he thought about what had happened, some of it would show across the large forward screen.
John’s thoughts went back to the Destroyers and how
much grief they had caused, suddenly they appeared on the forward screen. He was startled for a moment as the glossy black bat wing shaped ship loomed in the distance. He moved to the weapons console near the third row of consoles to his left. He pressed a few buttons, and energy weapons, rockets, and all manner of destruction rained down on the enemy ship. It rocked and then tilted. It glowed bright orange just before it unceremoniously exploded leaving nothing but debris as the light faded away.
“If it were only that easy,” John said, using this imaginary ploy to keep from losing track of reality, or his sanity.
He felt a little disconcerted about not knowing what time it was, or how much time had passed, so he began to experiment. He imagined himself in the rain forest on board Atlantis, without any indication of travel, he found himself there. Jay followed like a haunting specter. The wind was lightly rustling through the trees as sounds of birds and other animals were heard. He imagined himself in Acropolis, Atlantis’ largest city community, and he was instantly there. The city was just as he remembered it, except there were no people. He imagined himself all over the ship, he then began to expand his travels to Earth, and the time before the Destroyers came and drove off Atlantis. The sight was just as he imagined, if Helenas were still on top of Atlantis looking over the horizon with its countless blooming beautiful plants. Poseidon, an ancient hero, who’s family still existed, stood statuesque, pointing to the horizon. It was a shame this was all gone, rolled off the back of Atlantis as she fought to get into orbit.
John concentrated on his computer expert, Pandor-A. He called her name out loud. She promptly appeared behind him.
“Captain, you called,” she calmly said, as her bright blue eyes, dark long hair and olive tan face just stared at him.
“Pandor-A! Is it really you? Or is it my imagination?”
