The First Era

by Andrew Bardsley

  Finally, after about half an hour of listening and watching for any movement, Ahava picked up the computer tablet again. He opened up the H-Knowlogy application and started to read. The home page had a search bar at the top and a list of topics below. Most of the topics seemed familiar. He clicked on one marked engineering and this loaded a new page, just like a web browser. The page that loaded was just like a ‘Wiki’ page for engineering. Ahava spent some time clicking through different topics. All the material was information that he had learned as part of his degrees or during his career. He then went back to the front page and looked at the topics listed. There were a lot of topics on the different hobbies that he had enjoyed over the years. This list included history, woodwork, metalwork, weapon making, drawing, and painting. Clicking through the topics, he noticed that as with the engineering pages, it was information that he was familiar with.

  Back to the home page again, there were a number of topics he did not know anything about. The first one to catch his interest was Metaphysics. Feeling a rising excitement, he clicked on the link. The page loaded quickly and displayed the following:

  Metaphysics: An Introduction

  Metaphysics is the branch of knowledge that studies the essence of a thing. This includes questions of being, becoming, existence, and reality. The word "metaphysics" comes from the Greek words that literally mean "beyond nature". "Nature" in this sense refers to the nature of a thing, such as its cause and purpose. Metaphysics then studies questions of a thing beyond or above questions of its nature, in particular, its essence or its qualities of being.

  Ok, thought Ahava, this reads very much like the scientific papers I used to read.

  Ahava read further into the article. The introduction about Metaphysics outlined how it could be used to change the essence of reality. The 'Classical Elements Metaphysics System’ shown in the H-Stats application detailed the classical elements from the understanding of the ancients of earth, water, air, fire, and ether, which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances. The following sensible qualities decided the elements, as Fire is both hot and dry; Air is both hot and wet (for air is like vapor); Water is both cold and wet; Earth is both cold and dry; and the concept of ether was used to explain several natural phenomena, such as the traveling of light, gravity, and space-time.

  This is really heavy stuff, thought Ahava and carried on reading, while intently gazing at the screen:

  Each of the elements has three properties. Fire is sharp, subtle, and mobile while its opposite, earth, is blunt, dense, and immobile; they are joined by the intermediate elements, air and water, in the following fashion.

  The article detailed that the elements exist in the world around him in different degrees. The concentration of the elemental energies depended on the surrounding environment. If he was close to seas, lakes or rivers then there was a greater concentration of the water element. When he was around a fire, then the concentration of the fire element would be high. There were other examples detailed as well, but Ahava wanted to move on to how to use the elements.

  Going back to the article, it stated the following point that Ahava found useful:

  The flux rate value in the H-Stats application described the amount of the element he could channel;

  The value would increase with use of the elemental power or interaction with the elements in the form it was found in the environment or living creatures;

  The flux rate could be transferred to and from Ahava into materials and other living creatures;

  When channeling the elemental powers the power came from the environment. An example the text explained was if he was using the fire element to produce a flame, the surrounding temperature in the environment would drop;

  The channel of the elements could be both positive and negative, i.e., for fire you could heat up an item with a flame or use the power to remove heat that would freeze items;

  In addition, the elemental powers could be stored in materials that represented the elements that could be drawn upon for a use at a later date;

  Aristotle's Rhetoric Emotions was a system that described the emotional and intellectual interaction between creatures. The flux rate worked on the same principle as the elemental powers. The only difference was that power came from creatures, including himself; and

  All elements and emotions could be mixed for different properties and effects.

  Ahava put the computer tablet down, on the now-cold stone floor of the cave. Jumping up with excitement and pacing around the small cave, he felt the first real happiness since arriving. He had always loved playing the Magician in any game, as the idea intrigued him. This system seemed to have an element of what could be considered magic. With rising excitement, he went back to reading the article on the tablet.

  At the bottom of the article was a link to a video clip on how to start using the system. Before Ahava could click on the link an information box popped up on the tablet screen. Ahava read it:

  Top Tip

  These elements were used by Hippocrates in describing the human body with an association with the four humors: yellow bile (fire), black bile (earth), blood (air), and phlegm (water). Medical care was primarily about helping the patient stay in or return to his/her own personal natural balanced state.

  OK, thought Ahava, a combined use of the elements of fire, earth, air, and water can be used for healing. That is useful to know, as I will certainly need healing if things carry on being as dangerous as they have been today.

  Ahava finally clicked on the link to the video clip. The application ’H-TV' started up and ran a video of a man in strange robes talking. The style of the video was like the ‘Open University’ program that used to run during the seventies. It was very dry and factual, with bad lighting and backdrops.

  What Ahava understood from the 10-minute tutorial was that the control of the powers was all down to his imagination. There were no chants or other magical trickery involved in this system; the power could be used by any part of his body or any inanimate object he infused with the power; the control depended on the sensitivity of feeling he had, i.e., he could get finer control using the tips of his fingers, as they were most sensitive to touch. All the different powers could be mixed for different effect; it was up to him to experiment to gain understanding. The flux values gave the distance from him the powers could reach and the size of the effect, and each decimal was roughly equal to a millimeter.

  Putting the computer tablet back in the laptop bag. Ahava got up and rubbed his hands together with excitement. He had always enjoyed experimenting. He had even done three years of research as an engineer.

  Right, he thought, time to have a go. I will try out the fire first, as it may have the most direct effect.

  Moving to a darker part of the cave and facing the back wall, so he could see the fire as it formed, Ahava pointed his index finger up and away from his body. He imagined a flame coming out of the top of his index finger. What appeared was a small flame, about two centimeters big, coming from the top of his index finger. The flame was yellow in appearance, like a candle flame, but with no soot coming off the top. The first thing he felt was the excitement of what he had just done. Then a sharp burning pain on the tip of the index finger hit him. Letting the flame disappear, he waved his hand in the air to try and cool it and then sucked his finger. Slowly the pain subsided and he was left with a burn mark on the tip of his finger.

  Still ecstatically happy with what he had achieved, he thought about what he had done wrong. Ahava remembered from the tutorial that the flux values also determined the distance the elemental power would reach from his body. With this in mind, he tried again, with his middle finger, imagining a flame about two centimeters from this finger. The time the same flame appeared just two centimeters above the middle finger. He screamed with excitement and waved the flame around in the air.

  For a while Ahava just stood there watching the small flame; it seemed like
it could go on forever. He now experimented with turning up the power. Nothing happened. He then slowly thought about lowering the power, and the flame size got smaller and dimmer until it went out. The next thing he tried was having a flame come from each of his fingers on a hand. This produced four small flames a small distance from each finger. All the flames were smaller than the one he had created before. Then he tried a flame on the top of his palm, which was a slow, lazy flame over the entire area of his palm.

  This is great, thought Ahava, but not very powerful. Maybe that will come in time when the flux value increases. The next thing I should try is mixing another elemental power with fire.

  He decided to try air. Again, he imagined a flame out of his middle finger. After he had a steady flame, he imagined adding air to the flame. The flame immediately turned a light shade of blue. This was like when using a Bunsen burner in a chemistry class; when opening the air vent the flame changed from a yellow to blue. This gave a much hotter flame. Ahava moved over to the wood pile and directed the flame onto a piece of wood. This started to burn a two-centimeter hole in the wood. Playing around with the flame, he imagined it as very thin. The flame was still two centimeters long and about as thin as a pencil lead. The flame had a greater intensity. Ahava moved it across the wood and it acted like a small cutting touch.

  Very pleased with what had happened so far, Ahava spent the next few hours experimenting with different elemental powers and variations on different mixtures of the powers.

  Ahava thought that his findings could be summed up in the following points:

  One, fire produced fire, as expected;

  Two, with the earth elemental power he could change the shape of rocks, stone, and dust, At the moment he could only make fine needles and indents about a finger width. But if he moved his finger over the rock slowly, he could slowly form it into the shape he wanted. It just took a long time;

  Three, the air elemental power pushed air like a fan. If he added a small amount of fire then the air was hot. With a small amount of negative fire, the air was cold;

  Four, the water elemental power seemed to pull water out of the air, forming droplets that got bigger over time. He then could move the water around and control its shape;

  Five, ether was a difficult elemental force to understand. Initially he formed a strange bubble above his finger that distorted the light going through it. He tried it with the other elemental forces;

  With air two things were apparent: you could get a sense of the space around and what was in it. This was like a three-dimensional model you could examine from all sides. He could also levitate small objects;

  Using earth with ether gave him a sense of what elements were in the earth or rocks. Using the earth elemental power, he could then separate out the materials and shape them. As with everything else, this took a long time;

  Six, Earth, water and air together enabled him to shape wood; and finally,

  Seven, Earth, water, air and fire together enabled him to heal some of the scratches he got from moving the wood earlier today. He also healed the burn on his finger.

  After all of what happened today, Ahava fell asleep by the fire. During the night he dreamed of his family.

  Chapter Three: An Emergency Rescue

  Ahava had had an awful night’s sleep. He had not been able to get comfortable on the rock floor of the cave. He also was afraid of anything getting past his temporary barrier. He had been awake just before the sun started to peek from behind the hill in the distance. He had fed the fire throughout the night but now it had burned down to embers. The glowing embers gave off a warmth that helped keep the cold at bay.

  As he was just starting to think about what to do today, “Up you get,” shouted Thoth in his head. “I know you are not ready for the dangers of the world, but I have an emergency rescue for you to do. Something has gone wrong and you are close enough that you could help.”

  “Why should I help with anything you want me to do?” said Ahava, slightly startled. “You have left me stranded here.”

  “That's right,” said Thoth in an impatient voice, “but you heard of the carrot and the stick approach to motivation? Well, I’ll tell you what the carrot is. It is that I will triple the normal points for this task. The stick, I will leave up to your imagination.”

  Ahava thought about what the stick could be, and in his imagination, Thoth could make his life a lot worse. He conceded the point and agreed to the task.

  “Ok,” said Thoth, “I need you to rescue a princess that has been taken captive. She is close to the river down the hill, with only five guards at this moment. You need to hurry, so pick up your club and get moving.”

  With the instructions, Ahava grabbed his club and got down slowly from the ledge. Then he walked out of the camp area, pulling the thorn branches back from the entrance. There was now just enough light to see where he was walking. He started down the hill, heading toward the closest point of the river. It was half an hour of running, and walking when he was out of breath, to get close to the river. He looked up and downstream for any sign of life. Upstream he could hear a group of people walking toward him close to the river bank. One of the members of the group was doing a lot of shouting.

  Thinking this was the guards with the princess that Thoth was talking about, he decided to hide behind a close bush. His quickly-thought-out plan was to let them pass him by and try to attack from behind them. The group got closer. Ahava could start to make out the figures of the people in the group. To his surprise, all of the group were about half his height. Five of the group had large heads with thin, twisted bodies. They held spears as high as their heads. The final member of the group was the same height but stocky. There were tusks coming out from the bottom of her mouth. He thought that she must be the princess that Thoth was telling him to rescue. She had her hands behind her back. Every now and then the guards would hit her with the ends of their spears to get her to move. When they did this, she would shout and spit at them.

  When they were about twenty meters from his hiding place, one of the guards pushed over the princess with a spear. She got up and head-butted the guard in the face. It made a crushing sound. The guard fell down and the other guards turned around and surrounded him. Ahava decided this was his opportunity to attack. Springing out from behind the bushes, with his club raised, he ran toward the group. As he got closer, one of the guards must have heard him running. The creature turned around and started to raise his spear at Ahava. Before he could fully raise it, Ahava hit the spear with his club. Not being able to stop himself in time, he ran into the guard. Both of them tumbled over into the dirt. Ahava managed to pick himself up and swing his club at the guard on the ground. The club hit the guard in the body. It made a loud thud and caved in his ribs. Turning around, he saw the princess kicking the guard. She had head-butted him in the face as he was lying on the ground. He was now close to the other guards. Trying to swing his club at them, he managed to get a glancing blow on one and knock him over. As he was too close for the creatures to use their spears, one of the guards jumped at him. The creature grabbed his shirt and pulled his claw across Ahava's face. Screaming with pain, Ahava dropped his club. Hitting the creature did very little, so he tried using the fire and air elemental power. He formed a thin blue flame on his index finger. He then used this to cut into the creature's head. Screaming in agony, the creature fell down. Ahava got up and looked around for any other attackers. He saw the princess kicking one of the guards in between the legs. The guard grunted and fell down, rolling over in agony while the princess kicked him in the head until he stopped moving.

  Ahava saw the final guard running away, back upstream along the bank of the river.

  “Get him,” shouted the princess.

  Ahava tried to start running after the guard but was too out of breath to run. He stood there panting.

  “What are you doing?” shouted the princess angrily while moving toward Ahava. “If he gets away, we will have the whole tribe co
ming after us.”

  As Ahava could not speak, he just looked at her and shrugged his shoulders. She walked over and kicked him in the shin.

  There were four bodies lying on the ground. None of them were moving and there was blood everywhere. In addition to the carnage, there was one mad princess going around and kicking the bodies, swearing all the time. Ahava looked around for a knife to cut the rope binding her hands. He only found the sharp spearhead made out of stone. Going over to the princess, he indicated he wanted to cut the rope, which she allowed.

  “We better start moving,” said Ahava. “I have a camp close to here that’s a bit safer. It is up the hill, about a half an hour’s walk.”

  The princess nodded her head in acceptance. Before they walked back Ahava picked up some small bags each of the guards had. The trip back to the camp was in silence. After pulling the thorn bushes back to close the entrance, the princess went to an isolated spot and ignored Ahava.

  Thinking that it was better to leave her alone for now, he decided to check out any tasks he had. He opened up the H-Tasks application as he sat in the cave. He read the list:

  One- Survive the first night;

  Two- Find food, water, and shelter;

  Three- Make a weapon;

  Four- start using Metaphysics;