by Kip Hartzell
“I don’t know. Probably won’t know for sure until we can talk in the real world,” she stated, as she looked around. “Helenas, was beautiful before…no wonder you recall this familiar part of your memories.”
“What did you recall before I called you? Even though you may be saying what my mind wants you to say.”
“True. I was trying to recall my years before the Sphere, and who made it, so I could better understand how we got to this point,” she sighed. “What do you want to know?”
The surrounding scene vanished away only to be traded for the Command Deck. John was sitting comfortably in his command chair while Pandor-A was sitting next to him noticing the change of venue. “So,” John started again, “we won’t know if we are actually communicating until we leave the Temporal Storage Device?”
“I believe so.”
“What do we do while we’re here?”
“I would suggest things that exercise the mind. Stay busy thinking, and no, I have no idea what day it is, or how long we’ve been here.”
“Are you reading my mind?”
“This is your mind. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. You’re in my mind, you tell me what I’m thinking.”
“I’m not in your mind, per say, I’m…” she stopped, “you’re playing with me, aren’t you?”
“You said to exercise my mind.”
Pandor-A huffed as she got up. “I’m leaving now, goodbye Captain,” she said, disappearing with no sound, or flashes of light.
Jay just listened to John’s mind as he rehashed his Grandfather’s story, but this was much better than the aural description, he wished he had some popcorn, and all this would be perfect. He stayed patient as John spent his dimensional time enjoying the peace and quiet of no serious command decisions, or being responsible for so many lives every single day. He wondered how Atlantis was doing, was she holding her own against the Destroyers, or was all this a futile attempt to survive. The Destroyers may just be experimenting with them, like lab rats, until they tire of them, and then simply snuff them out like a candle. He pushed his negative thoughts aside, and enjoyed his carefree days, often bringing Athene-A, and some of the other command personnel along for company. He still didn’t know if it was really his friends, or his imagination.
It wasn’t long before John started to become bored, and started wishing his self-imposed incarceration would end. The area around the Command Deck started to become bright white, and closing in from all sides, disintegrating all the imagined solid objects around him. John started to become anxious, as if being caught in a trap. He calmed himself and waited for the inevitable.
The area he now stood in felt solid under his feet, but no other characteristics could be seen other than the bright white mist. Soon the mist began to pull back and fade away, revealing the members of the crew that were slated to emerge from Temporal Storage Device at their predetermined time. The white room solidified to show people standing around looking at each other. John noticed, Athene-A looked the same. Pandor-A stood next to Drof-Avion as they looked at each other in confusion. Rhe-A and Delphi-Apollo were the first to actually move toward John. Jaraid was next to V’Rella and Subriasa. V’Rella’s green tinted complexion and emerald dreadlocks looked somewhat strange against the blue tight fitting environmental jumpsuit, which was the most common attire for the Atlanteans.
Subriasa wore the same type of Jumpsuit that covered the mostly pale and black sporadic spots on her horse half, except the horse portion of the Centaur had the tail exposed. Her brown hair was tied back neatly revealing her pointy ears, the upper human half showed little emotion, as she greeted everyone with a nod. John looked around to see Manatock appear out of the mist. The Minotaur was a great descendent of Enalphria, who was the first Minotaur to meet the Atlanteans. The lightning bolt shaped white spot on his forehead accentuated his typical black bullhead. The glossy black horns and deep black eyes glistened as the huge muscular bull-man joined the crowd.
“Hello crew. It’s good to see you all again. I think I’m seeing you,” John, said a little confused.
“What do we do now?” Athene-A asked Pandor-A.
“Patience,” was all she said.
It wasn’t long, in their terms, before a single black spot appeared a few feet away from the crowd. It grew like and ink spot on a piece of paper until it formed an edge, then another, until a black rectangle the size of a door stood in front of them. John looked at Pandor-A, who held out her hand in a motion for him to go first. John took the lead and moved to the black door. He put his hand through, and it disappeared, as if sticking it in black sludge. He didn’t know why, but he held his breath as he pushed on through, only to be met with stale cool air when he finally took a breath, and a dimly lit cave.
John moved on down the couple of steps to the cave floor and looked around. He then moved away from the device to let the others by. Jay was the last, he could feel the coolness, and smell the mustiness. He wondered around as if he was a lost tourist. Pandor-A moved to the main control console and turned up the cave luminescence. The light revealed a stuffy cave with fallen rock debris all around, and a thick coat of dust on everything. Pandor-A dusted off the console and examined the device. The cave gave off an abandoned feel as if more time had passed than they had planned.
Pandor-A was busy checking the TSD for malfunctions as the rest made their way to their respective areas. Most of them took a few minutes to reorient themselves, and then began their investigation of the area they left behind so many centuries before. John reassured everyone, and then let them continue with their pre-assigned jobs. Athene-A followed John over to Pandor-A, while she worked to power everything up.
“Pan,” John said, walking up beside her, “when are we?”
“According to the computer, one thousand years, give or take a few minutes for divergent orbital variance variables.”
“So…Pan. Did we actually converse while we were in the TSD?” John asked curiously.
“Did you tease me about exercising your mind?”
“Yes,” John said, surprised.
“Well, I guess we can share consciousness’s for a while,” she said, and then went back to work as if the discovery was an everyday occurrence.
John looked at Athene-A, they both got an embarrassing look on their faces.
“Ah…Hmm,” John stuttered, and looked away. “I should go check on the others.”
“Yes…I need to check the status of the satellites,” Athene-A muttered, as they tried to move around each other, without looking at each other.
John moved through the large cavern to an equally large one adjacent to it. He was strolling over to Drof, who was working at a computer terminal near a cave wall and heard someone yell. “Watch out!” John slowed his pace and looked in the direction of the shout, only to run chest first into the invisible shuttle. “Humph,” was all he said, bouncing back, rubbing his cheek.
“Are you okay?” Manatock asked, as he approached.
“Yes, just a little embarrassed. Drof!” John yelled through the invisible shuttle. John could see the back of his dark baldhead slightly moving back and forth, which he quickly recognized as laughter. “Put some warning lights up somewhere, for safety.” This only made him laugh longer. John quickly moved to another section of the cavern rubbing his face. He moved from place to place as more people began coming out of the Temporal Storage Device, to begin the cleanup, and making any needed repairs.
At first it appeared most, if not all, the equipment was functional and fully charged from being inactive for so long. John was starting to get concerned about the amount of people that wanted to stay out of the TSD. He didn’t know if the food processors were capable of handling this many. The air and waste recycling were now being booted up and would be online in a matter of minutes. The largest parts of the maze of tunnels were coming to life. The activity was a refreshing sight from the last stagnant thousand years. He marveled at his people working witho
ut hesitation. The sight and sounds of life permeated all through the cavern, as if it were a living, breathing ship. A couple of days of preparation and it would be time to see what was outside. The new-cloaked satellite would be the first thing out, in order give them a clearer view of what was out there. He couldn’t help but be concerned that the Destroyers were just waiting for them to emerge from hiding so they could simply exterminate them. Much like they did to the Settler’s Fleet all those thousands of years ago,
Jay felt, more than saw, the passage of time. The following cave-day met with a flurry of activity as the satellite was being prepared for launch. John sat in a control center much like the Command Deck of Atlantis, albeit, much smaller. He watched the screen, as the exit hole was re-drilled near the signal generator, that had been sending a random signal in all directions of space. The signal generator, was only one of many, set randomly across the globe, to assure a signal got out, even if it fell on deaf ears for the last thousand years.
John watched as the drill melted the rock until it broke the surface, and then quietly slid back down into its cradle to be moved back to its storage area. The satellite was now being moved into position as the launch sequence was initiated. The technicians pushed a few crystals and stood back. The teardrop shaped satellite’s antigravity units took over and the harness was removed. The satellite floated to a vertical position as the pointy end shot upward. The satellite faded from view, as the cloak took over, and only a brush of air could be felt, as the invisible satellite blasted off for orbit.
“We have a stable geosynchronous orbit,” Athene-A said, manipulating crystals to achieve optimum performance from the satellite. “Not much of a weather change. The area where Atlantis was has dissipated quite a bit. The Earth has healed itself much faster than I would have thought possible. No sign of any technological energy signature outputs.”
“Any energy output signature for the key?” John hopefully asked. The key he knew was a vital piece of their survival. The crystal skull he had commandeered from the Sphere had been the one item sophisticated enough to hold the targeting program for the solar system defense platforms that were built on planets, and moons, throughout the system. It had been missing since the end of the ‘Alon War’ and just before the appearance of the Destroyers. The skull was the key to Earth, and Atlantis’ defense, without it they had no chance at all to defeat the system murderers.
“Negative on the signature, but its energy output is so minuet we would have to be nearly on top of it to identify it,” Pandor-A recited.
“Understood,” John sullenly said. “Zoom in on our position. Let’s see what’s around us.”
Athene-A manipulated the 3-dimentional topographical landmass pictures to show their immediate area of a one-thousand-mile radius. “We still have large predators, no newcomer Cousins for a least a fifty-mile radius.” She sounded sad, “Athens is abandoned, and almost indistinguishable from the surrounding area. If we want to go out and get supplies, I’m not detecting anything that might hinder our activities.”
“How many people are out of the TSD?” John asked.
“About a thousand,” Pandor-A answered.
“Good, let’s keep it at that number for now. Start organizing supply parties and make sure they’re armed. If there’s no choice, they have the right to kill whatever’s attacking them.”
“Understood. The orders have been sent out,” she stated.
John watched the 3-D screen map of the cavern complex. A red spot appeared outside two of the tunnel entrances as the burrowing machine made quick work of the collapsed tunnel.
“The tunnel entrances will be open within the hour,” Athene-A informed.
“When will the shuttle bay doors be free?” John asked.
“Also, within the hour,” Athene-A quickly answered back.
“Good, let’s get a ten-person team together and see what we’ve left behind,” John instructed and then made his way to the shuttle bay.
He went into the shuttle bay portion of the cavern to see the sleek looking atmospheric, and space flying machine. He gave it a wide berth and moved a little slower as to not run into anything invisible that Drof might have left behind. He approached Drof, while he was going through the preflight checklist.
“Hey, old man. How much longer?” John said to get a spark out of him.
Drof looked up. “Who are you calling old?” He shot back with a smile. “Ready when you are.”
John was finally feeling alive again. The excitement of getting out of the cave and to actually see what had happened over the last thousand years was making him feel young again. Even though his age, and appearance, hadn’t changed since the day he stepped foot on Earth. He gathered up his expeditionary equipment and took his seat with the rest of the shuttle inhabitants. Subriasa began strapping into her specialized restraint slings, as V’Rella took a regular seat with the rest of the humans and minotaur’s. The lone cyclopean was wrestling with the adjustment restraints of the human sized chair to fit his girth. After everyone was seated and buckled in, except Allerisu Stonebreaker, who was still grunting and adjusting the chair, drawing everyone’s attention.
Allerisu gave a disarming smile that spread across his face bigger than his eye. “Uh, I’m good. Let’s go.”
Athene-A, Rhe-A, Jaraid, and Pandor-A, all smiled as they checked their own equipment. John secured the hatch and gave the indication that they were ready for dust-off, and then took his seat. The shuttle rose silently off the floor, just as the hanger doors creaked open like a clamshell. The shuttle gracefully slid down the tunnel until it reached what appeared to be a dead end. Drof pressed a crystal and the rock wall rolled aside to reveal another tunnel. They proceeded a short distance when a bright bluish light opened up to reveal an Earth much like the one they had left. Drof engaged the cloak as they left the tunnel and gained altitude. They could only tell the ship was accelerating or banking left, by looking out of the windows.
After takeoff, the seats that lined both sides of the craft were now able to swivel toward the center of the ship so the opposite sides could face each other. John pressed a few buttons on his handheld, and a 3-D topographical view of the area materialized. They unstrapped and circled the large map floating in front of them. Drof had put the shuttle in a circular search grid pattern with their base as the starting point. He made his way back to the group and helped identify the local differences. They were looking for Atlanteans, who might have survived this long, Atlantean technology that might have been missed, newcomer Cousins, and most of all, the key.
They expanded their search for several hours making note of several nearby settlements of humans, Centaurs, Minotaur’s and Cyclopes, but there was no sign of any Medusan physiology.
A short while later, John noticed a settlement with a large column of smoke rising from it. He had Drof break off the search pattern to go and investigate. As they moved in closer, they could detect a large group of Minotaur’s moving away from the devastated site. The Minotaurian group registered some human inhabitants within the crowd. John had Drof land near the destruction of the makeshift village.
They donned on their equipment and prepared to leave the shuttle. The area had already been scanned, and they knew there were no living creatures bigger than a rodent for miles. They still cautiously moved to the area of smoke and ash. As they closed in they could see the destruction. The first thing they noticed was the telltale smell of burning flesh. They slowly entered the razed village that was still smoldering. Newcomer Cousins lay strew all over the place, some with severed limbs, and large pools of blood that had already soaked into the ground.
They moved through the nomadic design of the settlement. Men, women, and children had been systematically massacred, some still burning where they lay. Some lie in the fetal position, but most showed defensive wounds. They didn’t go quietly. The group had found evidence of Minotaurian involvement, but weren’t absolutely positive they were the aggressors, or just part of the human tr
ibe.
Then they saw it, at the edge of the battle, a Minotaur was seen with a spear piercing the inside of his mouth extruding out of the back of its head; the spear was held by a human Cousin, who had a wooden spear sticking through his chest held by the Minotaur. Both lay there locked in mortal combat for eternity.
Manatock’s deep voice broke the silence, “I deduce that both our lineages have digressed back to the most primitive of attributes. They’ve learned to efficiently kill each other.”
“Yes, that they have. I was hoping for a more peaceful situation, maybe just using sticks and stones to hunt for food, forgoing technology, and enjoying life on this beautiful planet,” John said, and then he sadly walked away.
They unhappily took readings, trying to learn all they could about the ones they left behind. Rhe-A took DNA samples to determine how fast the Cousins were advancing. John felt the results bittersweet, as he learned that technological advancements were only slightly above the point at which they entered the TSD. This was at least good, in order to keep the Destroyers away, or uninterested. Because if their advancement evolved above space travel beyond their own solar system, the Destroyers would probably destroy the whole planet, anyway. Which was their pattern of destruction since they were first encountered. But their slow advancement was also bad because there was large-scale abuse, and suffering. Domination by the strong ruled the day.
They returned back to their mountain hideout to form a plan with all the new information they had acquired. More construction was underway to accomplish what they wanted to do undetected. More and more people were brought out of the TSD that had specialized skills. The place was hustling with activity, more cavern was dug out to make room for more covert activities. The plans were being drawn up to facilitate everyone. The cavern was becoming a sealed environment much like a ship in space.
The Council approved the plans for the Industrial Section, and the Machine Section to be combined to conserve power, and space. In the near future, there would be no rain forest, and a much smaller Ecological Section. They were going to develop a Farm Section, similar to the one the Settler’s developed on Tundra, another galaxy, and another lifetime ago. Food, for now, was to be gathered, and processed through the organic manipulator processors. Organic material could be stored on a molecular level. As long as the processor had power, it would never spoil, and the food sequencers could be programmed to suit any palate.
