Ancient to Light

Paired stories with moderns & ancients.  Theme:  Genetic Cascade has started.  Certain persons may transport through time via concentration on & entry into flame.

Tone-setter for anthology:

It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each one’s work.  — 1 Cor 3:13

When you hide your face, they panic. Take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust. Send forth your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the earth. — Psalm 104:29-30

Prologue

I speak to you in your time, in your language, with your names for things.  So if you have ears to hear and a mind to contemplate, listen to my final call.  My word will make you become lamps for the journey that ends at the beginning, which is to be made new.

A thousand centuries ago, history was archived in the minds of elders and those they mesmerized with their accounts.  Harrowing hunts, heroic adventures, and catastrophic disasters echoed through generations by means of tales told among bands of children and adults gathered around the night fire, most half-dreaming after surviving the day’s rigors and dangers.  From your twenty-first century retrospective, it may seem that there can be little connection between you modern Homo sapiens and your distant cousins, the Neanderthals, or even the progenitor of both, ape-like Homo Heidelbergensis, two of which were the first to be endowed with the immortal spark.  So well lit is your domain of technology, processed food, and ample, reassuring artificial light.

But shadows yet dance where flames cannot illuminate.  Souls are reported, with accelerating frequency, wondering the expanse of time from what was their world to your time and just beyond.  Do they seek flame as illumination or as a defense?  Do anomalies emerge in brilliance too briefly to leave proof of the unseen?  How and why are fantastic species, once thought extinct, being glimpsed with increasing frequency in and beyond your time?  Is the past truly gone, or does it protrude from out of darkest smoke, like a spark wafting up from a campfire to later create a blaze?  Journey from your time into eons ago, for it returns but you will be changed.  You will become light if you believe what you see illuminated.  Witness ancient mysterious reach into decades ahead, where the struggle between light and darkness flares to test prophecy.

Now a torch reveals the intersection of old and new paths in a dark and foreboding wood.  Will you tread beyond the campfire at night, or brave the timeless wilderness, without one?  Look there, through the trees:  A torch approaches!  Who or what returns along the old trail you travel?  Come now through the very heart of the flame, for fire will test all, and purify as through fire.  It draws you irresistibly.  Footsteps pound nearer now, and faster.  Glimpse the torch carrier’s face, twisted in stark terror at some thundering, shadowy pursuer!

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Now for some story excerpts:

“The Dawn of Reason” is in Planetary Anthology: Earth My Ancient to Light (AtL) collection is named for its pivotal story. AtL will constitute a sequel to my novel, Ancient of Genes. Click here, or the book images, to read the Prologue and sample AtL short stories! . Three of ten short story pairs are complete; all are outlined. AtL features eerily connected, paired tales. The first is set in ancient times; the second around the year 2030. These stories progress like chapters in a novel, but can stand alone or in pairs.
Superversive Press’ Planetary Anthology: Earth features one of my AtL short stories, and Millhaven’s Tales of Adventure features a pair. Tuscany Bay Press acquired Superverse’s Planetary Anthology 11-book series and will offer a handsome boxed set by summer 2020. Click the image to the left to order the Earth anthology from the updated Tuscany Bay series.

“The Dawn of Reason” was originally first in an adventure fiction pair with “From the Reliquary of Job”. You will enjoy “From the Reliquary of Job” much more if you first read or hear “The Dawn of Reason”.

See the exciting 2-minute video trailer below for this 18 author anthology of explorers, lost worlds, strange and wondrous creatures, gods & goddesses of old, miraculous inventions, aliens, bots and post humans, brought together in this anthology of discovery and daring. Come explore the legends and chronicles of planet Earth and the space beyond!

It is rare when an editor at a competing press publishes a review of a competitor’s book. Jeffrey Blehar, editor of Millhaven Tales and blogger at Books of the Broken had this to say about his favorite two tales of eighteen in Planetary: Earth Anthology:

“The Dawn of Reason” by Dan Gallagher: On its base level, it is a re-telling of the dawn of conscience and reason. On another level, it paints a beautiful picture of early mankind. Brilliant imagery and an imaginative look back at man’s ancestors. One of the best of the bunch. …among my favorite stories. Planetary: Earth is well worth the read.

1a. The Dawn of Reason

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Excerpt:  “D’mea and V’ea had known from childhood that they were different from the rest of their kind.  The pair’s ancestors would become known a hundred thirty thousand years later as Homo heidelbergensis. But they were already divergent, and their progeny would become competitors to brother hominid races denisova, floresiensis, neanderthalensis and others.”

Get your copy of Planetary Anthology: Earth today!

Millhaven Press liked “Dawn of Reason” so much that it published it and “The Reliquary of Job” in Millhaven’s Tales of Adventure magazine Jan 2019.

 

1b. From the Reliquary of Job

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1b. From the Reliquary of Job

Bart Lloyd, Britain’s only celebrity paleontologist, glanced across the veranda table of their room at northwest Saudi Arabia’s Haql Hayat Hotel.  His tall, brown and muscular, forty year-old frame soaked his red polo despite a dry breeze.  He sheepishly alternated glances between his cell phone displaying 91º — 1614 hrs FRI 2 AUG 2035, and his slightly younger wife’s long black hair blowing gently about the profile of her lovely smooth black face, neck and shoulder.

Working a decade with Lloyd and the rest of Dr. Kevin Harrigan’s team at the now-destroyed Fossil Gene Redemption project in Iraq, Simone Kairaba had lost almost all of her Senegalese accent.  She turned from gazing out at the glistening blue Gulf of Aqaba to grin at Lloyd’s stare.  “What a world this region must have been when it was green and full of fantastic animals!  To study gene samples – well, if we find the parchment was right – and work with the Harrigans back in the States, now that the therapy has him fit and young again… it’s just so exciting!”

“We might even get the whole team together again,” Lloyd replied, just as upbeat.  “But it’s Kevin who needs to conquer his fear of Mon’s Middle East.  America’s got Mon hemmed in and on his best behavior.  Kevin would get his mojo back and see it’s perfectly safe.”  Lloyd paused, nervously eying his cell phone.  “Quarter past eight, Carolina time, Love.  Time to give a try.”

Kairaba cocked her head and frowned.  She set her Earl Grey tea upon her genetic scanner manual, spilling a drop that made a semi-circular stain.  She touched the back of Lloyd’s weathered hand.  “He’s too macho to not come, Bart, but please don’t ask him to come out here.  He needs to stay with Tykvah and their son.  A year isn’t enough to recover, psychologically, from dying or whatever they called it… nor the murder of a friend.”

“I’m his friend, too, and he needs to join us,” Lloyd said softly in his British accent, pulling off her hand and kissing her palm to allay his own irritation.  “He needs to stop wallowing in superstition.  It’s just a tale, Love; he didn’t see heaven.  What ‘Doctor Middle-age-crisis’ needs to see is what we’re about to open up to the world.”

Kairaba sighed as Lloyd activated CONTACTS on his phone.  Harrigan’s thoughtful smile, ruddy Irish-American face and graying auburn hair appeared on the screen.

“Kevin,” Lloyd exclaimed, “The day I wrote you about is nigh, dear fellow.  Tickets out here are in your email.  Bring Tykvah and young Ben, too.”

“Thanks, old friend, but you know I don’t trust Mon.  His officers tried to kill us all!  He has too much influence outside Iraq, even in Saudi.  Watch your back, Bart.”

“The embassy says it’s safe as tea, old boy.  He’s got scant pull here in ‘ol’ Arabie’, I’d wager.  We’ve been out here since the debriefing and no one’s molested us yet.  But Mon doesn’t scare you, a former Army Ranger, eh, what?”

“Not scared, Bart.  And daring me won’t work.”

“I’ll give you my theory, old bean.  That dream before they revived you has you spooked.   Get back on the horse, as it were!  Besides, Simone needs your help with specimens we anticipate finding.”

“I’ve got my work here in Cary.  Besides, you don’t know you’ll find anything, just because an uncertain translation from some pre-Nabataea parchment tells a tale of Job storing portions of sacrificial animal tissues, like relics, at an altar.  Might not be Job’s anyway.  A writer could have used Job’s name as chieftain to give credence to his tales.”

“The skins led us to the site, Kevin, and that was verified.  Day after tomorrow we open the chamber, soon as the supports arrive onsite.  Come along.  It’ll be good for what ails ya.”

“You mean you’ll find Job’s writings and prove that he never talked to God.  There is a God, Bart.  When I… Trust me on that one.”

“Barmy, you and Smythe; all bitten by the religion bug.  Crazy.  Freund spooked you all.”

There was silence for a moment.  “Kevin, I’m sorry.  I know you miss Freund.  We all do, and I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay, Bart.  You’ve got a good crew out there, and equipment galore.  I hope you find what you’re looking for… and you and Simone are welcome to visit back here.  I can get her clearance to use part of our lab.”

“Thanks.  We’ll do that.  Just check your email and think about it, right?  You’ll do that?”

“I will.  And, Bart:  You and Simone watch your back out there.  Goodbye, hero.”

Simone stepped around the table, and bent over to kiss Lloyd’s forehead.  “You are so stubborn.  Let’s get an early supper; beat the crowds at the Strand Café.”

Around six-thirty the next morning, they set off in their jeep, dressed in khaki desert wear.  As they reached the dig site ninety minutes east of Haql, Lloyd noticed that cell and radio communications stopped operating.  A text from Harrigan, sent late the previous night but appearing just before the blackout, elicited frowns:

“Get out.  Israeli newsfeed:  Iraqi Premier Mon pushing crackdowns on religious political parties in puppet states throughout region – incl Saudi.”

“Won’t affect us, my dear,” Lloyd said as their jeep passed a guard at a chain-link gate.  “Our permit’s in order, and I doubt Mon has as much influence here as the dictator likely believes.”

The entire day was productive and ordinary.  Lloyd and Kairaba chattered instructions to the jeans-clad Saudi crews.  Steadily, an archaic carved sandstone courtyard emerged at the foot of a huge rock hill they called a jebel.  Dust covered everyone, and sweat-and-dust paste had turned personnel into caricatures of ancient statues.  But almost all had broad smiles as they ignored the late afternoon tea break:  They had revealed reliefs depicting volcanic eruptions, a kneeling man reaching skyward, and fantastic animals carved into the blocks.  By supper, they reached an inscribed header stone at the entry point of a caved-in corridor.

“Bloody well preserved,” Simone almost sang as she and Lloyd giddily set up the camera and booted the translation program.

Four men set up steel supports inside the doorway, reinforcing to enable deeper excavation.  A sensor crew atop the rock formation above them called down, “It’s almost a thirty-foot long hallway.  Ends in a twenty-by-twenty foot room.  No adjoining chambers.”

Lloyd and Kairaba peered wide-eyed at the sandstone header, now sprayed with specially dyed water, and back to the “translation best-fit to language model” on the computer screen.

LET THE INNOCENT CONTEMPLATE RELIC-SACRIFICES TO AS-SUN WHO IS THE SOURCE OF THE RIVER OF LIFE, WHO WAS DEAD AND LIVES FOREVER

“Job was a sun worshipper.  That’ll put the world on its ear!” exclaimed Lloyd, inadvertently slapping his own cheek with a water bottle that squirted water into his ear.

“Very suave.  But it translates to ‘like the sun,’ Dearest.  Tomorrow we see the inside.”

————-

Lloyd and Kairaba found it difficult to fall asleep that night, wondering what the night shift they paid extra was revealing while they tried to rest at the hotel.  They were so excited, they did not even mind the phones, cell, and radio communications continuing to be inoperable, nor the lack of explanation from the hotel staff.  They overslept from exhaustion, but made it back to the dig site by nine.  They found the hallway fully excavated, even a few feet into the chamber, but there were no carvings or artifacts discovered.  In successive iterations of emplacing arched steel supports and removing debris, they reached a marble block and the far wall just after noon.

“We’re through,” Lloyd exclaimed into his radio to Kairaba, who was taking a break outside. “It’s past thirty feet in, and there are… Oh, just come see!”

The dust evacuator had pulled most of the dust from the air.  More tripod electric lights were brought in.  The pair hugged and giggled almost in sync, as the dust evacuator slowly cleared the haze.  A four-foot wide, stomach-high marble slab became visible at the far wall.

Brown dust lined an inch-wide furrow all the way around its top edge; a heap of charcoal dust adorned its center.  Now the far wall appeared as a collection of hundreds of four-inch wide cylindrical holes, vacuumed carefully just at the openings.  Each held a tiny canoe-shaped container with black material.

“Sacrificial leftovers,” cried Lloyd.  His voice rose in steps. “This… is an altar… and sacra-”

A worker finished dusting off a partially curled skin, thin like parchment, that hung at the center of the rear wall above the marble block.  Lloyd set his computer on a folding table next to the altar and held his camera up to the skin.  He sprayed a solution on the parchment and set the camera to emit ultraviolet, x-ray, micro- and radio waves, and other scanning energies.  Then his shaky fingers booted the translation program, setting it to compare and analyze the images.

PAIN BECAME NOTHING, FOR I WAS GIVEN TO SEE THE FIRST ONES ABANDON THE TREE OF BREAD.  THEY DESIRED ONLY THE WINE AND PLEASURE OF THE TREE OF REASON.  BOTH TREES WERE ONE INHERITANCE REJECTED:  MYSTERY OF ONE TREE ON TWO SIDES OF PIC-HON.  DEATH OF THE PLANTER-REDEEMER BECAME NECESSARY, YET HE LIVES TO OFFER THE FRUITS OF BOTH.

Lloyd stared, puzzled, at Kairaba; then he spoke slowly, hesitantly.  “Well.  This already proves the Job account wrong, I think.”

In Baghdad, military dictator Ishmael Mon leaned menacingly into General Akkad’s face.  “If they find any more supposed evidence that Job lived, it will be twisted into revivals of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  There will be challenges to my government and my socio-economic reforms.  We will lose control from Morocco to Indonesia.  Make every artifact irretrievable, and make it look like an accident.”

Akkad saluted and stepped quickly to his office.  He picked up a landline phone and dialed his weapons research officer.  “I want a ten-second release directed at these coordinates…”

————-

“Bart, do you feel that vibration?”

“No.  Wait.  Yes, it’s increase—”

Dust shook from the ceiling and the electric lights and steel supports began to rattle.

Lloyd thrust Kairaba back toward the entrance. “Get out, everyone,” he shouted, turning back and reaching for the parchment on the wall.  He tripped on a power cable by the altar, toppling a light and landing on his back.  As the light struck the floor, the bulb exploded in a flash; Lloyd saw the entire ceiling shatter into dust and shards directly above him.

“My God, get him out of there,” Kairaba coughed frantically through the dust plume as she tripped into the sunlight.  Guards and workmen ran to her and the other survivors, but they became rapidly wobbly as the earthquake worsened, then abated.  All was still, save for sobbing, screams, and workmen jumping into power-digger tractors.

Helicopters of the Iraqi Army thundered in from the northeast, across the nearby border with Jordan. They landed inside the security fence, throwing sand like a storm. Troops and medics rushed out and began to direct everyone away from the dig site and into the airships, except Kairaba. She was was thrown over a soldier’s back and tossed into a chair. In moments, the area was abandoned, save for a helicopter, four soldiers and Kairaba. She kicked at her “rescuers,” who began to interrogate her about what was found and the location of the parchment that had led her and Lloyd to begin the excavation. The dig site employees were whisked back to Haql airport, then offloaded and transferred to waiting Saudi ambulances, each with Iraqi guards.

…

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Snickering and laughter seemed to enliven even the low flames of the stack-stone, communal fire pit as the Cro-Magnons leaped and shouted in their dramatic storytelling.  Darkness nearly swallowed view of the fall colors in this vast deciduous forest that constituted most of what, in your time, is called the Iberian Peninsula of southwest Europe, sixty thousand winters ago.  Bone- and branch-framed huts, some thatched roof to ground and others walled with animal skins, surrounded the meeting place which reeked of cooking meats, body odor, and leaf fungi.  The cold could not penetrate the hearth area, nor the finely sewn fur coats and buckskin pants of these people, the Khayni.

A bearded man with a narrow nose had flipped upside-down, holding feet and hands to a wooden pillar that supported a huge spit propped high across the fire pit.  He pointed and laughed at another Khayni who sat, arms crossed and smirking, but who lacked even a single laugh.  Two fellow hunters, decked out with furry jackets and dog-head helmets, taunted the actor with barks.

One actor-hunter finger-jabbed and ridiculed another who clung, upended, to a spit pole.  This display ridiculed the portrayed hunter, who sat silently nearby.  “Then, Loudest Feet yelled that our dogs would eat him if we didn’t let him down from the snare!”

The other actor-storyteller knelt down and raised his leg at the suspended hunter.  “But the dogs would never eat Loudest Feet.  They just felt bad that he was so thirsty!”

The group erupted in raucous laughter again, tossing heads back and rattling multi-colored hair beads adorning snake-like dreadlocks.  Several men and women, and a few children, fell backward off their logs, spilling gourds of grog and losing their jerky in the air.

A hunter pointed to his chief’s wooden scepter, atop which was mounted the leathery head of a Neanderthal, the Abli race.  “We caught no Abli,” he lamented.  “They are all exterminated in every region, like the alligators we killed off from the lake of hot springs.  The fall trading gathering celebrated our people’s achievement of generations:  No more Abli!”

Cheers rose from the group.

A leather door slapped open fifty feet away.  Two giant bird skulls that marked the forbidden doorway of the village shaman shook as if alive.  All cheering and laughter stopped.

The shaman was a tall man of twenty-six winters, but his frowning brow and prematurely graying beard made him look as old as the chief, some fifteen years older.  The fire-walker’s eyes reflected what seemed to many like more firelight than struck them as he crossed the quadrangle toward the fire pit.  His white fur cape, striped with browned blood, was too small to fully cover him.  It had been that of a warrior trainee, scourged and slashed to death two harvests ago for following the shaman’s pleas to not participate in bludgeoning a family of Abli.

“Shh!  Travels Through Flame approaches,” came the quavering admonition from one young mother to her scruffy haired daughter.  She pulled the girl closer into her coat and covered the child’s eyes.

Another woman tossed her hands wildly aloft as she chattered derision at both the shaman and her leaders. “Which shall we do:  Fear or kill him who defies our chief and mocks our hunters by wearing the cape of the disobedient one?”

“Sh- shut your mouth or f-feel my fist,” the other dog-actor growled in a stammering whisper.

“You shut your own mouth, coward!” she quipped.  “He criticizes our great conquests and worships the false Abli god, yet you all lack the manhood to challenge him.”

The Shaman continued his stride into the recoiling clanspeople.  The Khayni actor on the post righted himself.  He and his fellows drew back into the crowd, sullen and silent at her derision.

“Once you brought us luck in battle.  Then you refused to help,” bellowed the grog-reeking chief, setting aside his grog and replacing his antlered skull crown atop his matted head.  He wobbled as he rose, clutching his thick wooden scepter and thrusting its ornament in the air.  “Now, you nag us since you began your shimmer-magic.  We do not believe you see the future.  You blaspheme our gods as mere creations of the Abli god.  You, the prophet of a long-silent god, bring us only bad luck.”

“Luck?  I bring you a call to return to As-sun, for you sought to deceive him with your second-best sacrifice.  The Abli, even some Khayni, seek and honor him.”

The chief’s eyes bulged.  “We are the sons of the gods, not the simpleton Abli!  Generations ago, we wasted sacrifices on As-sun, while the Abli took all the game.  Why were we not blessed?  We had to bless ourselves with atlatls, snares and ploughs.  If As-sun exists, let him show appreciation and blessings to the Khayni!”  The chief’s face reddened as his voice rose with the fists of his envy-inspired clan.  “Why not us?” he continued, almost pleading, his face now in tearful contortion.  “If As-sun blessed the Abli, could we have exterminated them?”  His scepter shook in his white-knuckled grip.  “There is no As-sun,” he shouted, lips quivering.  “We Khayni… we are as the gods.”

The crowd cheered wildly.  The shaman’s nostrils flared and he shook his head to one side, tossing dreadlocks back at them.  He stomped past the chief and the clan, each member recoiling from even the brush of his cloak.  His deeply resonant prophecy was both admonition and curse.

“You prize your will above As-sun’s, sacrificing nothing of real value to him and resenting our brothers, the Abli.  You and your progeny are cast out from before As-sun and marked ‘lovers of death’ to die… to die beyond your deaths.  You will be cleansed – as unclean meat in fire – to grow again from what is the dirt.  You begin your journey tonight!”

There was silence.  Then, one by one, the Khaynis hazarded some nervous laughter.  Now all erupted in laughter as they had at the skit.

The shaman stepped toward the fire, rising slightly above the ground as he moved.  All gasped and pulled each other back.  The air about him seemed to ripple with heat as he continued to step higher yet become smaller, whiter, and brighter.  He appeared to shrink and as he stepped into the highest flame, which hung motionless as the rest of the fire danced about it.

“Again he goes.  He will return with lies,” growled the chief.  The crowd whispered, grumbled, and stood facing the strange stationary flame.

“Dowse the fire,” burst the chief, “and extinguish all torches and stoves in the village!”  A look of disbelief and worry wrenched every face.  “Once he told me that a fire must blaze, or another burn nearby, at least as long as a night watchman stands… or he cannot return.  Do it, now!  Then meet me here.  Quickly, before he returns.”

“No!  They will come, the giant ones!” cried the formerly timid hunter, Loudest Feet.  “The Gungas rule the forest at night.  They watch us, always, and fear only the light.”

The chief struck Loudest Feet full in the chest with his gory scepter.  “Now!  Come, there is a full moon,” the chief assured his reassembled subjects.  “Enough light if we go to the island in the lake.  We will use the fishing hut on the island and be surrounded by light there; no flame.”

“It would take longer than a guard’s watch to reach the lake, Royal One,” called a woman, gripping two children crying and shaking within her pelt coat.  “Will not Gungas reach us first?”

“Not if we are stealthy and move as one.  I said ‘Now!’”

Everyone scrambled to throw dirt, grog and water on the fire.  It hissed like a snake.  Men and women dashed about the village, extinguishing torches, every last flame; then rushed back to the smoky remains of the communal fire.

The chief barked at his reassembled subjects.  “Stay together.  Everyone, tread quickly to the lake.  Keep the children and dogs quiet.  You, Loudest Feet:  Check all huts, and follow last.  Go!  Be silent!”

The rabble of half a hundred crept hesitantly two and three abreast into the footpath.  The dark autumn foliage rustled menacingly in the unpredictable breeze.  They stepped as softly as they could along the shadowy trail.  A gust curled giant fern branches onto the path, like furry arms lunging at them.  Something with quickening steps just off the path scattered crackling leaves.  It crashed out of the menacing darkness to cross just ahead of them.  Gasps sounded from those in front:  “Just a tusk-deer,” came the hyperventilated reassurance to those behind.  Dogs were yanked back violently to prevent pursuit.  All eyes strained and darted in every direction.  Overlapping hushes and murmurs evidenced desperate minds creating phantom forms out of the harmless bushes emerging from the moonlit dappling that surrounded them.

After several moments, distant, high-pitched growls and thrashes in the forest echoed down the valley from the dim hills to their left and right.  Splashes sounded to their right but no one could see more than silvery ripples in the creek, barely visible through the leaves.  Several children whimpered, and some women began to cry.  Dogs, straining at their tethers, whined and barked.

Nearer came the birdlike-howls until they seemed to be immediately behind them.  Then, the growls ceased.  But the crackling of dead leaves and twigs continued to close slowly in upon them.  They halted, covering youngsters’ mouths, straining to listen, and sniffing for Gunga scat.  Spears and axes trained outward, quivering.  Now the disturbance in the dark forest also stopped.

Suddenly a hunter’s voice quavered out from their ranks.  “Something mimicks our movements.  We are being stalked.  Run!”  The Khayni bumped into each other in a panicked surge to resume their trek; no, their escape.  “Faster,” urged the frantic voice.  “Faster!”

“Stop!” pleaded Loudest Feet’s woman.  “He was just behind me, and now he’s g-”

A gurgling scream shuddered everyone.  Branches and leaves rustled above the length of the group.  All looked up to see a dark comet-like form descend through the trees and bounce on the ground behind the chief.  The woman’s bloodied head rolled to a stop at his feet.

Children were dragged forward; some trampled.  Screams mixed with the dreaded howling growl of numerous Gungas.  Now, as they fell upon the troop, they showed themselves:  The gigantic, hairy creatures appeared half-human, half orangutan.  Moonlight glistened off bloodied human and beast alike, as men struggled to axe and spear a few.  Yet, the Khayni and their dogs were tossed aside like ripped up dolls, broken, moaning, and partially eaten.

Five adult Khayni men, two women and a teen staggered breathless to the lake.  The rafts were in shambles.  Gunga prints covered the mud bank.  The eight survivors dashed into the water…

Who will survive? What awaits in the water and beyond? Will Travels Through Flame be able to return? To complete this tale, Click here to experience these & other Adventures & nonfiction.

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3b.  A Glimpse Beyond

“Quiet, you guys,” the blue-pajama-clad eleven-year-old said under his breath.  “I told you my parents will kill me if they catch us in my dad’s lab!  I don’t think they go to sleep when they say they do.”

His five fellow Tenderfoot Scouts of Cary, North Carolina’s Boy Scout Troop 162 were also decked out in pajamas.  The boys pushed past their host into a basement laboratory in his four thousand plus square foot ranch house.  A faint smell of isopropyl alcohol greeted them.  They generally obeyed the commands of their longtime peer-leader, but now questioned his judgment.

“I don’t think we should be down here, Benjamin – whoa!” breathed one of his buddies. “Your dad really does have a genetics lab right in your house!”

“Duh!  Keep it down, I said… Oh no!”  The clock on the security console read 18 October 2036, 11:21 PM, and its seconds count had stopped.  “I think I can fix that so my Dad won’t know we were here.  But don’t touch anything!”

An oblivious guest reached toward the cage of a twice-sized tan cat, its head down in a bowl.

“And, hey, Russ,” warned young Harrigan, “you put your fingers in that cage and you’ll lose ‘em.  That’s not a freekin’ kitty cat!”

The cat turned to bear three-inch fangs, thin and serrated like steak knives, at the boy.  Its snarl was deep, vicious.  “Whoa!” the visitors exclaimed in common, stiffening as if at attention.

“Close the door,” Benjamin ordered as deeply under-toned as he could.  “Just follow me and I’ll show you I wasn’t telling ghost stories earlier.”

The youthful tour guide gathered his friends and led them to a large vault-like machine.  “This refrigerator is just like the one at the government lab where my parents work.  There are guards all over the place because that’s where they keep the virus that infected my dad.  It made him age so fast he died looking like he was some thousand-year-old mummy.”

“Yeah, right!” scoffed his fellow Scout.  “Your dad and your mom both look about fifty-something.  Prunes like my folks, but definitely alive at supper a few hours ago!”

“I said… he died,” Benjamin protested in an ominous tone, “but he came back when the Air Force medical people treated him.  My mom’s always on my back to give him a break ‘cause he’s had it tough the last two years.”  The boy paused, staring at the floor then deeply into their eyes.  “My dad saw purgatory and heaven.”

The boys gaped, silent; immobile.

“My dad was delirious when they revived him.  I think he was upset because his college buddy, a scientist named Freund, couldn’t be revived.  He doesn’t talk about it… gets really upset.  He was way-conflicted, like, did he do the right thing or not.  I heard him tell my mom after he recovered that he allowed some infection that could affect the world someday.”

“Wait, Ben,” one youth piped up.  “Why would he allow some sort of infection?”

“I donno why.  I’m not even sure he did because it’s been two years, and the world’s just fine.”

“What does the infection do to ya’?” two wide-eyed lads asked, almost as one.

“I overheard him say it recreates your ancestors.  Like, your kids are not new people when they’re born.  They’re your ancestors somehow stored – archived genes, he called it – in inherited DNA, and they get released by the virus.  He says that’s ‘archived gene expression’.”

The Scouts stood slack-jawed.  Then one boy broke out in laughter and began to sing a line from the Latham and Jaffe tune, “I’m My Own Grandpa!”

“Shut up,” young Harrigan demanded, then paused.  “But something did happen.  I’m proof.”

“Ben, Whoa.  What do you mean, you’re ‘proof’?  I think you’re using your dad’s weird lab to pull our legs, dude.”

“I have this power that I think some people had back as far as… well, Adam and Eve maybe.”

The boys continued to stare, cocking their heads nervously.

“Sometimes, when I look into a flame, it kinda…”

“Kind of what?” demanded one of his guests.

“Okay, watch this.”  Young Harrigan grabbed a sparker as he turned on the gas for a Bunsen Burner.  He squeezed the sparker and a flame thrust upward, sounding like a distant jet.  He adjusted it to an inch in height and focused his gaze upon the flickering blue heat source.

A silent minute passed.  The flame continued to flicker.  Ben began to turn red and nervously entreat his compatriots:  “Wait for it,” and “Here it comes,” and “Almost there.”  But nothing happened out of the ordinary, one embarrassing minute after another.

“Well, that’s working well, Ben.  Why don’t we get some of the leftover pizza, and hit the sack, okay?  We have to join the Patrol at nine, and-”

“Fine. Forget it.  I’m full of crap, okay.  Just forget it,” young Harrigan huffed as he pushed past his fellow Tenderfoots to exit the lab into the stairwell.  “Close the door and I’ll punch the code.”

Just then, one of the Scouts stepped to another cage containing a smelly chicken.  It hissed and opened its beak to reveal a row of sharp teeth.  It raised its wings, opening hand-like claws at their mid-points.  A scaly tail lashed angrily behind its thick, raptor-like talons.

The alarmed Scout gasped and recoiled. “Uh, Ben.  What is-”  Others chattered, incredulous.

“Out, now!” Ben commanded.

The boys scampered up the steps to the foyer.  Ben closed the stairway door behind them and entered another code at the console on the wall.  Again he hushed their crazed whispering.

“The tent’s out back.  Let’s get some sleep, and I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

The boys filed through the den, picking up their gear, into the back yard.  Young Harrigan said nothing the remainder of the night, and had little to say at breakfast or at the Scout meeting at their church the next morning.  The still incredulous scouts whispered among themselves, but no one dared question Ben at the meeting, which was for planning a mountain hiking trip.

Dr. Kevin Harrigan, dressed in jeans and a gray jersey, chauffeured his son in his red pick-up after the meeting.  “You want to talk about it, Ben?” he asked as they buckled in.  There was no answer.

The pair reached their home and walked to the kitchen.  Dr. Tykvah Harrigan tied her blue flowered robe tighter about her waist.  Hamburgers and condiments in steamy plastic wrap adorned the table.  Benjamin ignored these, continued to his room, and shut the door.

“Kevin, did Ben have a difficult Scout meeting?”  Benjamin’s mother asked her husband.

“He won’t speak for some reason,” replied Dr. Harrigan.  “Tykvah?”

“Hm?” She replied.

“I think we should tell him.”

“Shh!  Why?  Why now?”

“They were in the lab last night.  I checked the security recordings.  Ben knows about the virus, and he was trying to tell his friends how different he is.  He couldn’t get to that, completely.  He told them – and it’s far from clear to me – something strange.  He said he has some sort of powers, and was going to show them to the boys.  Some sort of proof.  But nothing happened, and he must have felt humiliated.  Why he would have such a belief, I don’t know.”

“Does he know about the dormant gene expression; about the cascade?”

“I think so.  On the security recording, he told them he’d overheard us discussing it.  We need to talk with him.”

Tykvah nodded to her husband and they headed for Ben’s room.  They quietly opened the door.  Benjamin stood at his window, facing the red maples and orange-brown oaks that formed the unfenced border with their neighbor’s farm beyond.  His parents stepped in between Ben and his neatly made bed, taking seats at its edge to face his rigid back.

“Ben?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“Your father and I would like to talk with you about getting into the lab last night.  You’re not supposed to be downstairs without your father or me, Ben.”

The young man turned to face his parents, but his father’s stern look caught his focus.  “A Scout is trustworthy, Ben,” Harrigan stated firmly.  “What have I always-” Tykvah grimaced at her husband.  “… What have your mother and I always taught you about not being sneaky; about respecting the rules; about character?”

“I’m sorry, Dad… Mom.  But I just had to show… No, I guess it’s Dad’s old Army saying.  ‘The maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters.’”

Harrigan smiled and pulled his son into a hug as Tykvah held the boy’s hand.  “What turns a father’s shame to pride,” his father boomed, gripping Ben’s upper arm with a powerful whack, “is when his son admits failure, then resolves to do the right thing.  Choosing God’s way over yours is an offering that helps you become a man, Ben.  Root your character in right decisions.”

“I will, Dad.  I know you’ve got something bothering you and making you worried, and I shouldn’t add to it.  I’m sorry.”

“Now, you’re getting to really be a Big Boy,” his mother declared, receiving an exasperated look from both males.  “But what in the world is this ‘power’ you told the boys you had, Ben.”

“I can go places,” he began tentatively, “other times and places.  If I focus on one flame, like the burner downstairs… Wait a minute!” Ben interrupted himself.  “You know you should have told me something… don’t you?”

Kevin Harrigan and his wife looked sheepishly at each other.

“Fine,” agreed his mother, nodding slowly then more rapidly at her husband.  “But first, we’d like a direct – a complete – answer!”

“My power, this thing I can do, doesn’t always work, and it’s only started in the last few months anyway.”

Young Harrigan led his parents to the basement door, and accessed the stairway and the lab.  He stepped to the black-topped table under the frosted basement windows and lit the Bunsen Burner.  The flame flickered but slowly steadied as the boy peered into it.

“Turn off the light,” Ben whispered.

Shortly, the room glowed only from the burner and a few instruments’ light diodes.  Then the flame held still.  Its blue hue became white, then brightened.  Ben crept slowly closer.  As he approached it, he glistened intensely and appeared to rise from the floor, even shrink.

His parents gaped, speechless.  As he reached the size of the flame itself, he suddenly disappeared within it.

Harrigan lurched, grasping empty air at the burner.  “Ben!”  He braced himself with his fists clenched upon the table.

Tykvah screamed, “Oh, dear God!  Ben!  Kevin what- where?”

Harrigan shrugged in a sudden shiver.  “I’ve seen that light before,” he whispered.  “When I died and…” his voice trailed off weakly.  Then he called out loudly, “Ben, it’s Dad.  Can you hear me?”  There was no reply.

Suddenly…

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4a.  The Path to Greatness

“We will need bigger rafts for the journey, Lesh,” the gray-brown complexioned shaman stated flatly as he rose from his hollow palm log.  He extended his hand from beneath his warm deer pelt shawl toward the fiery sandpit and retrieved a skewered fish.  He handed it to his similarly wrapped scribe, an adult now at half the leader’s forty years.  Moonlit waves of the outgoing tide rippled from an equatorial breeze that mixed the scent of foamy plankton with aroma of their supper.

Lesh cocked his head in puzzlement, dislodging unnoticed a scribing tool from his densely curled black hair.  He scooped out the fish and handed the largest chunk silently to Mahur.

The shaman’s wide nostrils flared and he nodded thanks.  Mahur gazed at the ocean, southward away from the peninsula, which, some five hundred fifty centuries later, would be referred to as the Southeast Asian island of Timor.

“Journey, master?” Lesh finally inquired, licking meat particles from his thick lips.  “We only reached this place five moons ago.  Tens of thousands have homes now, and fields.  We can go no farther, for there is nothing beyond the sea but more sea.”

“We must continue.  We will be pushed out by the light skinned straight-hairs of the North unless we sail beyond this sea, beyond where the monster riders dare.”

Lesh stared, incredulous.  “The Chi?  How do you know this, master, and how can you know there is anything beyond the sea?”

“The earth is round, Lesh.  I have seen it.  Tomorrow, I will show you and the council.”

The disciple could extract no more from his master that evening, and found sleep as frustrating as his misplacing of his pen to ink the prophecy on skins.  As the sun shone through the bamboo walls of their temple-hut, he dozed, hoping that his master had not been serious.

“Arise,” commanded Mahur, already dressed in ankle-wrap shoes, leather loin square, and primitive knapsack.  “Gather the council here.  Have all pack for a day’s hike north, up the mountain.  Bring the hemp ladders.”

The council of five Khuri elders reacted skeptically to Mahur’s prophecy about the Chi, but they agreed to accompany him.  Each brought a skin of water in their sacks, a rock-chip knife, and a spear-toting guard carrying a wood-rung rope ladder.  Mahur set Lesh on point, following deer trails toward the distant lush green ridge.  The last guard wore a small buckskin mask on the back of his head.  It bore the painted image of a human face to confuse tigers, which most often attack from behind.

They reached the high ridge, thick even at the peak with trees and vines.  Mahur had Lesh climb into the canopy to secure the left and right sides of the ladder to the highest near-horizontal limb that could bear at least one man’s weight.  Mahur had a guard secure the bottom to stout roots.  He rose first, allowing only the chief to accompany him.

Once off the ladder and standing braced upon the top limb, Mahur, Lesh, and the Chief began to chop a hole in the canopy to view the peninsula’s north beach.  The chief squinted and strained to gaze northward, almost falling off the limb as Lesh and Mahur held him fast.

“Stegodons!” gasped the Chief, again nearly falling off the limb as he squinted.

The largest elephants to ever live had exaggerated two-lobed foreheads, towering five feet above its twelve-foot-tall shoulders.  The beasts bore two fifteen-foot-long stabbing tusks, and one light-skinned warrior each.  There were fifty to sixty.  No doubt there would be several times that in the jungle village barely visible to the northwest.

“The Monster-riders have settled here, whispered Lesh.”

“We must link rafts to move our people to the land of the south,” Mahur declared.

“We are in the south, but this ridge will not stop the Chi!” quavered the chief.

“South, beyond the sea,” asserted the Shaman, breaking a few limbs behind him and motioning for Lesh to chop one he pointed out.  Mahur turned the Chief around on the limb.  “The world is round,” he stated triumphantly.  “The curve of the sea blocks your view from the beach, but here we see over its curve.”

The Chief squinted again and stared slack-jawed at the shaman.

_________________

It had taken many weeks. But over a thousand reed boats and rafts, each with a sail laid flat upon its deck, were now ready for launch.  Affixed beneath each was a pair of skids; these rested upon roller-logs, set parallel to the beach.  Bark and palm covered the sand beneath the rollers.  All was concealed under the forest canopy, just off the south beach.  Bags and racks, tethered to their decks under thatched frames, covered every vessel.  Family groups now stood alongside the rudderless barges holding ropes that linked squared sets of twenty-five boats.  Farthest inland stood men, some with brooms and rakes, ready to pass roller-logs forward and conceal tracks.  The cool morning water was calm as the tide peaked, waves low out to the reef.

“Why do you weep, Lesh?” Mahur asked. “This journey takes us away from war.”

“Master, will there ever be a land where our children may stay in peace?” he replied, stuffing his pen and stain in his bag.  “First the giants of Seth attacked our ancestors as they crossed north from our true home in the Rift Valley.  Then the Khayni pushed us – and the Thick-browed Abli – from the lands below the Caucuses.  Gungas of the interior plagued us when the ocean swallowed our cities of the coasts of India.  Now the Chi and their monsters… We Khuri seek only peace and trade and writing and… How can a humble people live free of humiliation?”

“Chiefs of all races seem only to seek power, tempting humiliating defeats,” Mahur replied in a hushed tone.  “But their people desire only peace.  I will try to guide our chief.”

Suddenly, a horn blew; others sounded in reaction.  The flotilla rolled forward across the beach from the thinned forest.  Row after row, clans jumped aboard, raising and bracing sails in the choreography they had carefully practiced.  After an hour, the flotilla was beyond the barely visible reef, each raft tied with scant slack within five-by-five sets.  There was roughly ten feet of slack between sets.  Hand signals from the chief kept adjustments to the sails more or less continuously capturing the southeasterly breeze.

Mahur had predicted that the trip would be four to five days on the sea, enduring rolling, vomiting, bumping, and desperately repairing tethers.  There were sightings of scale-less gray snake-like creatures, with wide-bulging mid sections and, some reported, giant flippers and tails.  Even some sharks were sighted, as wide as barges.  No attacks or broken rafts, yet, they reassured each other.  Perhaps another day or two, and they would be out of this cauldron of frightful predators surfacing, and dangerous leviathans glimpsed below.  Then came the attack.

Over twenty snake-like heads atop fifteen-foot serpentine necks rose together from below the east edge of the flotilla.  Elasmosauruses, all of whose teeth were hand-length fangs, now snapped furiously at back-peddling fishermen who tossed children to interior rafts.  Several rafts nearly capsized as the beasts thrust huge flippers onto decks.  Spears and obsidian hatchets beat them back, but not without the loss of five fighters.

The sea calmed, and remained so for two more days.  Fishing was banned in the wake of the attack as the horrifying reports of the battle spread.  The refugees began to just barely see strips of land to the east and west.  Soon these joined ahead; they were in a huge bay that led into what would, millennia later, be called northern Australia.  But on the morning of the seventh day, a squall appeared, chasing them, gaining on them.

Close to noon the sea swelled behind them as the squall revealed that it was a hurricane.  The wind pushed them faster toward land, but some masts began to crack, and with that the tethers between rafts and sets began to snap faster than could be repaired.  The sky darkened all around. The sea swelled behind them, rolling the flotilla high, rear side up, then accelerating them down to nearly sink in troughs as they witnessed sharks and ghastly sea creatures in the walls of water that rose ominously above.  Wind pulled them up onto more humps in the sea, and the process repeated.  The groups tore apart, and a few barges began to sink and threaten to drag others down into the hellish vortex.

Then it suddenly calmed, and the sea bulged gently, slowly, like molten tar.  The sun now shone above them, though they remained walled in by the threatening gray maelstrom that reached the heavens and flashed with lightning on every side.

Logs with tethers were thrown from raft to raft as the group tried to reassemble.  There was not a single mast intact, but they continued southward.  Screams resounded as raft after raft struck the reef, inches below the water, then lifted, teetering forward over it.  Ahead, the forest was flooded with storm surge; no beach could be seen.  They were heading rapidly and in swirls, back slightly then forward swiftly, into the groundless wall of trees.

As they struck the forest, some tried to tie up their rafts; others dove between the tattered palms.  Here and there a massive crocodile grabbed a swimmer and sank below the flotsam.

The water level lowered in fits and starts, washing numerous rafts and struggling swimmers back out into the bay.  Some climbed onto rafts or debris; some were yanked under the darkened water as scaly tails and an occasional shark fin lashed the foamy surface.

Having straddled land for an hour, the weakened storm broke in gray splotches to the ground, revealing a bright blue sky beyond.  The phenomenon continued left and right, rapidly dispersing the stormy wall behind them.  After another desperate hour, the skies held only great wispy remnants of the storm.  The odiferous beach reappeared, strewn with debris and dead or struggling creatures – human, aquatic and arboreal.  The forest, tangled with the same, was forebodingly dark.

Mahur and Lesh staggered to find each other and to gather and attend to their people.  The chief began gathering family, guards and workers about himself.  By nightfall, some twenty-five thousand had assembled alive.  The wounded were in the thousands, and the dead who had not disappeared were being stacked for burial the next day.  Torches and fires dotted the beach for miles.  Some slept on sand.  Others worked through the night to help the injured and recover sacks of provisions and tools.  The morning came, filled with hunger, pervasive soreness, and dread.  But scores of rescue parties helped thousands and began to rally the people’s spirit.

“Mahur, tonight you must go beyond the flame to learn how to advise me,” the chief ordered.  “I must know how we Khuri are to live here; how to recover.”

Mahur nodded.  “Build a fire there after sundown.”  He pointed to an indented section of forest, a cove just up the beach.  “The other fires will be blocked out by the forest on the left and right so I can focus on one fire.  Then, I will try to learn what I can.”

The Khuri continued their recovery throughout the day, gathering supplies and food, venturing into the bush.  Not all returned, and a few who did reported screams in the distance.  The sun dried the area, and debris became fuel for fires where tales of the great deeds of their ancestors raised their spirits:  The migration from Africa into Once-Eden and Persia, the building of great temples and cities along the coast of India, heroic battles as they spread along the south Asian coast.  But their stories and dances dwindled:  Spirits sank as they reached the point in their history when the Chi, tribes north of the tallest mountains, used the greatest of elephants to crush their civilization.

Mahur waited until neither sun nor other campfires illuminated his cove of the beach.  The chief grasped his arm tightly and spoke pleadingly.  “Go through to many times and places in the same instant and report back to me.”

As Mahur stared, entranced by the top-most flame, it halted still and began to change color to brilliant white.  He stepped closer, himself shining the same brilliant white, and appearing to rise far away because he shrank and rose through the air to step into the flame.

“How many of these magic walks in fire will he need to learn how we can succeed?” the chief asked Lesh just as Mahur disappeared.

“Hundreds, my chief.  It may take years, for he must map times ahead and places too if he is to see folly and wise action and their results.  Only then can he counsel you.”

“We could wither here on the beach, sick, hungry, and attacked by animals like those in reports today.  I will not let our people die off.  He must tell me tonight!”

Suddenly Mahur materialized back through the flame.

“Come,” the chief ordered.  “Come speak privately and tell me what you have seen.”

Mahur spoke in a fearful voice.  “My chief, I saw times and places, and many of each, but there is much yet to learn.”

“What will feed my people, and shelter them?”

“I saw this forest burn along the river to the next, and fields planted.  I saw wondrous and dangerous animals taken for food.  I saw deserts, and I saw caves for shelter.  I saw our people settle this place, which is a giant island.  I saw generations sail forth to islands in the Vast Ocean, and settle the coasts of two more giant islands across the Vast Ocean.  There were giant boats bringing white men here – not like the Chi, but with horses and fiery sticks.  Then I saw houses made from boards cut to form walls that stand upon rock that pours into huge squares.  I saw boats that move on dry tar pathways.  But there is more to see and an understanding of these things I lack completely.  Do not guide our people from what I have related!”

“Our people will be a mighty seafaring nation!  By burning the forests to make fields and more food than any competing race, we will support enough Khuri to conquer the world!  It will be my dynasty, for two of my wives and my eldest son survived the hurricane!”

“I cannot let you, chief.  What if-”

“What if you try to lead the Khuri and dispose of me?  That is what you were thinking.”

The chief struck the shaman with a bone club.  Mahur lay still; not even a breath.

“You have killed him!” shouted Lesh.

“Go now, and bury him, and say nothing of this or I will have you killed,” growled the chief.

Lesh pulled Mahur’s hands over his head and dragged him fifty feet down the beach.  Exhausted, he fell wailing upon his chest.  The shaman began to breathe.

“Quiet.  Do not move,” cautioned Lesh.  “He will kill you if he realizes you are not dead.”

Lesh dragged his mentor out of the cove and into the forest.  They stumbled toward the highlands for two days until they found a cave.  Lesh found food and treated Mahur’s wounds, but six nights later the shaman still sat wobbly and near death by their fire.

“Lesh, I must go through the flame one more time before I die.  There is something that worries me about what our murderous chief has concluded.”

Lesh helped him stand.  Mahur concentrated on the flame as before, and was gone.  Seconds later, he stepped back through it, winded and worried.

“Lesh, our people will not conquer the world by growing more food from burned lands!  I saw them starving.  I saw them desperately roaming the coasts and islands of the Vast Ocean to eke out a living because they will burn the land.  The Khuri could have a wonderful future, but we will suffer famine and be conquered from island to island if we make our land a desert!  Droughts will be worse if we… We would create great wonders if only… Lesh,” he gasped, coughing, “We must tell him this to prevent-”

Mahur fell beside the campfire, dead.  Lesh could not revive him.  He took a torch and ventured back to the beach community.  He reached it mid-morning the next day.  It appeared that almost all of the men were gone until he realized that they had hacked a huge fire break a mile or more southward into the forest.  Along the stubbly path, men were clearing leaves with stiff brooms.  Others stood by water skins, drenching leaves that were too difficult to sweep from the trimmed undergrowth.  Every hundred feet or so, a man stood with a lighted torch, staring inland toward the next torch holder.

“Where is the chief?” Lesh demanded.

“The chief said you are a traitor,” growled a torch man.  “If he sees you he will kill you.”

“Answer me!” demanded the former scribe.

“At the river fork, three creeks upland,” he barked back.

As Lesh raced up the firebreak, the torches were thrown, each in turn, east toward his left.  The fire expanded as he stumbled and sprinted farther uphill.  Finally, he saw the murderer.

“You must stop this, and never repeat it,” he called ahead.  The chief showed no sign of having heard him.  Lesh had to walk now, out of breath and hampered by smoke.  Men scrambled along the firebreak to contain breaches.  Fire climbed frighteningly fast up the dry trees and began to rain down west of the firebreak.  Animals screeched as it accelerated uncontrollably.

“Run back to the beach!” shouted the chief.  “All the better:  More cleared land.  Hurry!”

The chief and his guards ran past Lesh, who almost collapsed breathless and coughing.

“You!” shouted the chief angrily.  “Guards, kill hi-”

Suddenly, a thirty-four-foot-long Megalania lizard burst out of the inferno, its singed legs shaking off burning cinders.  It stepped with a surly gait between Lesh and the Chief.  The gray-green ancestor of komodo dragons cocked its head sideways and…

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4b.  Proof for One

“Secure for re-entry,” crackled U.S. Air Force Colonel Ed Richmond’s command on the loudspeaker of the only space shuttle to have survived mothballing.  The Quest was kept from public knowledge and secretly redesigned with armor, bigger wings, and the ability to take-off horizontally without boosters or external fuel; one time.  Its hold was pressurized and fitted with seats, just for the historic raid earlier that morning, 13 May, 2034.  A unit of U.S. Army Rangers had snatched research and researchers from Kevin Harrigan’s ancient species preserve and research facility in northern Iraq.  U.S. Intelligence experts had determined that Iraq’s new dictator had duped the geneticist, and had begun to develop genetic weapons of mass destruction.

“Will this thing make it?” asked Army Major Ronald Jasper.  “This old flying box is shot up pretty bad.”

“Hull integrity is holding or you couldn’t breath, Major.  The belly armor’s blown to shit but the heat shielding status is only down to ‘caution’.  Looks like a ‘go’.  Anyway, we didn’t reach a sustainable orbit after the fuel loss.  That’s why you still feel gravity above you; that, and the fact that we’re top-side-down.”

“Why can’t we be belly-down, sir?”

“Top-side has to face down for communications; for another moment, anyway.”

Richmond paused, then inquired for the status of the commando raiders and their new cargo.  “I’m surprised you guys aren’t barfing from feeling low gravity above you.  Everybody secure?  No cargo loose?”

“Double-checking, sir,” replied Jasper, switching his microphone to address his officers.  “Alpha team:” he barked, “Those genetics manufacturing… gizmos secure?”

“All good, sir.  Seven of our guys pretty shot up, but gonna make it.”

“Bravo, you got the Neanderthals in their seats?”

“Four in equipment lockers, sir; the rest belted in.  We ran out of seats, but they’re all sedated and secure.  Four Rangers wounded, none seriously.”

“Charlie, the Iraqi scientists locked down?”

“Nobody moves, sir.  Got these guys sedated also.  No Ranger casualties.”

“Command Sergeant Major DiNucci, you back with us?”

“He’s lost too much blood, sir,” called the medic, “but he’s stable.  Out cold from morphine.”

“If those idiots,” Jasper grumbled, “Harrigan and Freund, had just gotten in the damn shuttle instead of fighting me to get Neanderthals inside, DiNucci would be fine, Lieutenant Colonel Fulton would still be with us, and we’d have had total mission success!”

“Gotta land in one piece, Major,” crackled Richmond, monitoring the conversation.

“That’s reassuring, Colonel Richmond!” Jasper chimed.  “Anyway, we’re all up, sir.”

A digital screen behind the cockpit wall faced the Rangers’ cargo bay.  Its camera was programmed to face up and out of the Commander’s window; forward upon descent.  The Indian Ocean shown bright blue and filled the monitor, making the earth appear as if it were close above them.  The view of the earth receded from the monitor’s right-hand side as the vibration of retro rockets on the Quest’s starboard side rolled it to a belly-down attitude.  Soon the image showed black, dotted with stars, and then rapidly filled with whisps of gray as they again felt gravity beneath them; rapidly increasing.  Unable to reach California, they now fell from the sky toward Australia.

The Quest began to shake.  The monitor showed what looked like white hot air streaking by.  Land appeared beyond the ocean, but the fearsome shaking did not stop.  The green and tan earth grew fast, crowding out the blue ocean on the monitor.

The group intercom had not been shut off.  Jasper and the commandos cringed to hear Richmond’s near-paniced shout to his co-pilot.  “We’re coming down too slow.  No fuel to make the airstrip.  Can’t even make the desert!”

The monitor filled with green as the co-pilot shattered all confidence.  “Jungle!” he screamed.  The monitor still showed sky, as the craft’s attitude remained slightly nose-up.

Suddenly the screen filled with trees exploding like match sticks.  The Quest shuddered and lurched partially left, then right as its wings sliced low hillocks and skipped like a flat stone flung onto rippled water.  As the craft’s belly struck the ground and skidded, wobbling forward, the commandos were yanked forward, left and right, bruised against their restraints.  Momentarily the craft’s nose cut through another hillock and halted, pointing slightly skyward.

“Casualties?” demanded Richmond.

Jasper unbuckled silently and faught his nausea and trembling to stand and look around the compartment.  “Looks,” he hesitated, “looks like no casualties, sir.  Checking.  Just a moment.”

Squad leaders checked their men and captives, reporting up the chain of command.  In moments, Jasper relayed the status of bruises only – though the Neanderthals in the lockers had been particularly banged up.  In another few moments Richmond addressed the group.

“Washington says they cannot get to us.  But the Aussies will fly in food, medics and marines in four or five hours.  Tracked vehicles should be pushing through the bush to pick us up by tomorrow morning.”  He paused, then added, “Nobody gets off the Quest!”

“Some of us have to pee,” Jasper protested, “and… clean up a bit.  I could put out security.”

“Fine,” Richmond conceded, “But if it’s black, it’s thermal coating and too hot.  And stay by the ship.”

The roof doors opened to let in the few remaining hours of daylight as the left and right side doors just above the wings also swung upward.  Jasper and his men busied themselves with treating wounds from the battle, cataloguing genetic scanning and manufacturing equipment, redistributing ammunition, and other maintenance activities.  The crew inspected the damaged craft, climbing for an hour over splintered trees and brush.  Around six o’clock local time, the thick brush parted near the left wing.

There stood two elderly Aborigines, jean-clad, bare chested except for crucifixes, and sporting drenched sweat bands around their heads.  Each toted two rifles hanging muzzle-down from their shoulders.  Almost immediately a teen and two unarmed young men trudged into view.  The muscly pair shouldered a pole to which was tied a short-haired, wolf-sized male creature, light tan with inch-wide black stripes running the length of its body.  They dumped their heavy load off their shoulders onto the Quest’s wing.  Protruding from its wide, rodent-like head were small, angrily flattened ears and long, adz-like incisors.  It had inch-long hind claws.  Its front claws were twice as long, each with a thick, four inch thumb claw.  The commandos immediately trained their weapons on the profusely tatooed group.

“Don’t s’pose you’ll be needin’ to shoot us,” soothed the elder in a thick modern Australian accent.  He removed his sweatband to wipe the sweat that nevertheless drenched his face.

One of the scientists rescued from Iraq, Bart Lloyd, pushed his way through the soldiers despite his shot leg to limp up to the animal.  “That’s a Thylacoleo!” he shouted, motioning wildly behind him to his Australian collegue, Dr. Carl Smythe.

“Royt you ah,” Puffed the elder proudly.  “Bloody vicious beggars, infesting our forest and dropping out of trees in packs of foyv or six.  But I ‘spect we won’t see many ‘round he-ya for awhile, since you’ve gone and scraped through the jungle like a giant lawnmower.  Ain’t these space shuttles supposed to only be in museums?”

“This is a restricted area,” growled Jasper, racing Smythe out onto the wing.

“These are supposed to only be in Tasmania, and our destroyed research preserve!” interjected Smythe.

Lloyd ignored the Major and pumped the Aborigines.  “How could they be in the north?”

The young teen raised his hands high, as if he had authority to silence the group.  “The new creation begins.  You are part of this.  I have read the prophecies and seen much-”

“Wonderful,” Jasper broke in sharply.  “Now take your carcass back to your village and don’t get closer than a mile from this spacecraft.  You too, kid.”

“Ayr village is two hundred yards north,” the old man retorted, “aynd the kid’s name is Ronnie.”  Then he softened his tone.  “How ‘bout you mates come and join us for the cere’mini tonight.  You look loyk you could staynd to have a good meal.”

“I said get outta here now!” blasted the Major as his men motioned the hunting party away and the scientists back into the craft.  “And you two can study whatever you want after your debriefing back in Washington,” he growled at Lloyd and Smythe.

As they turned to leave, one of the Neanderthals stepped out onto the wing.  The Aborigines froze, except for the teen, and gaped.  “Come,” said the youth not surprised to see the ancient human cousin.  “They will discover more than those who our ayn-cestors killed off.”

Smythe and Lloyd cocked their heads, speechless at the boy’s reaction.  The visitors retreated, while Smyth helped Lloyd limp to a corner of the cargo bay to talk.  Dusk began to fall as the hum of propellers sounded from the north.  Momentarily, a dozen dual-rotor airplanes rotated their huge wings and hovered over the area.  All around them ropes dropped, bearing soldiers and supply boxes.  In minutes the area became busy with flood lights, trees being felled and hauled off by aircraft, and lookout positions being manned.  At nightfall another group descended toward them, cutting more trees away with chain saws and using flame throwers to clear brush followed by water sprays from hoses and pumps set up along a nearby creek.

In the busy and congested flurry, Lloyd distracted a guard while Smythe slipped through the bush toward the village.  Smythe lost the path, but soon found it by ear.  He could hear the bee-like rhythms of a didgeridoo and flutes.  These ebbed and flowed, wobbled and blared, giving a mysterious chanting quality to the music.  The performance ended in a screech-like flourish, then resumed more quietly as voices celebrated and told stories in one of the over three-hundred Aboriginal dialects – none of which Smythe understood.  He pushed branches aside and peered at a small community.  Some danced about a fire while the elder he had earlier met raised his arms to tell stories between dances.  The performers’ yellow ankle feathers and white painted skin stripes seemed to glow as the ceremony progressed.

“There he comes, one of ayr own countrymen, Oy see,” called the elder at the campfire, waiving the slimy Thylacoleo pelt on a pole.

“May I sit?” Smythe called.  “We ship outta he-ya in the morning sometime.”

“Shore, mate.  But we just have a moment more of this cere’mini.  So, be soy-lent while we recall ayr ayn-cestors who braved the oceans to settle this laynd.”

The ceremony ended, and the elder called for Ronnie to come forward.

“Sorry for the Major’s rudeness,” Smythe said.  “He has his orders.”

“What brings you dropin’ outta the skoy, friend?” inquired the elder.

“Until this morning, I worked at a commercial research facility in Iraq.  We recreated and studied ancient species, even humans, as you may have read in the papers.  A Doctor Kevin Harrigan came up with the process.  I was the project’s biologist and veterinarian; fascinating work.  But these commandos say Iraq wasn’t the peaceful republic the Allies left it as fifteen ye-ahs ago.  They said it was stealing and perverting the process to make some weapon.  I guess that’s why the Iraqis tried to kill us, but I donno how the Americans knew to rescue us.”

“Evil unwittingly serving God’s plan,” interrupted Ronnie, “and your work was helping bring about the rebirth of humankind, of all creation.”

Smythe pursed his lips and tried not to be dismissive.  “You know this how, young mayn?”

“Ronnie he-ya has found something quoyt unique, in a cave and in himself,” said the elder.

The youth took a box from next to his seat and opened it to reveal numerous leathery pages bearing strange writing.  “I found this a year ago in a cave fifty miles north of he-ya.  Lesh, a scribe of the Prophet Mahur, recorded ayr people’s moy-grations; they-ya hopes and dreams on this.  And he recorded some hints at ayr fu-cha on this record.”

“With respect,” Smythe said flatly, “I’ll believe it if I see it.  I don’t buy into spirits or God.”

“Oh, but you will!” protested Ronnie.  “The payst will protrude into the fu-cha here and there as the world approaches its end.  But the end will be its new beginnin’, a transfiguration we Christians call it.  That’s how we will all be resurrected.”

Now they’ah’s a switch,” laughed the elder.  “Aborigines having to be missionaries to you mod’n and enloyt’ned soy-entists!”

Smythe gave his hosts a frown, then forced a neutral expression.  “I think you’ve got your prophecies mixed up, young mayn.  The transfiguration is a story about three people who appeared and glowed, but the resurrection is held to be a physical regeneration after day-th.”

“The Thylacoleos have re-emerged,” Ronnie interrupted.  “That’s why you followed us tonight, yeah?”

“Yes.  But did they ever go extinct?  As to how they got he-ya, that is what I’d love to learn!”

Ronnie dismissed the inquiry and returned to his own curiosity. “How did you come to work with Neanderthals, and why… to bring back they-ah souls?”

“Scientific processes, m’boy.  Purely genetics, scanners, assembers, and surrogate parents.

“If you don’t mind,” Smythe continued, turning away from Ronnie to the elder and the other adults, “I’d like to know when the Thylacoleos began to show up here, and how they behave.”

The group was silent.  Smythe waited awkwardly.  “Will no one share anything about them?”

He rose, smiled, and bid them good evening, stepping away toward the Quest.

“I wouldn’t go out they-ah,” admonished the old man.

Smythe continued, undeterred.

“Somebody go with him,” ordered the elder.  No one moved.

Ronnie suddenly grabbed a torch, and ran to Smythe.  “It’s not safe out they-ah now.  Take this if you’re determined to go.”

“Thank you,” replied the scientist.

Eighty yards out, the trees began to rustle near the canopy.  Smythe dismissed it but stepped up his pace.  He heard a low, catlike grumbling to his left.  The lights of the shuttle began to appear dimly ahead.  Almost there, he told himself as his breathing began to race.

He gauged the distance to the shuttle at seventy-five yards just as the menacing purr began again from both left and right, only closer.  He stopped and held torch at a shaky arm’s length.  Only shadows stared back at him.  He started to run, ignoring the briars and vines, but the torch threatened to blow out or drop as he stumbled in the thick undergrowth.

Suddenly branches flailed violently all around him.  He saw one, forty feet up and fifty away, directly ahead:  A female, dark tan and void of stripes.  It eyed him with almost reptilian yellow eyes and emitted a vibrating snarl.  It reached into its belly pouch with its horrendous claws, pulling out two squirming spotted young and placing them upon a higher branch.  Smythe changed his course around its tree only to hear several drop behind, left, and right.

“Oh, God,” he prayed in a quavering whisper, not sure there was a deity.

The female’s snarl seemed to have signaled the males to drop first as she dropped, invisible, into the bush fifty feet ahead.  Now, three huge males hit the ground thirty feet beyond Smythe.  Slowly the marsupial lions corralled him, keeping a leap’s worth of space between them as they circled closer.  Smythe lashed out with the torch, almost extinguishing it with his swings.  There were five now, and they stopped circling to slowly pad directly at him from twenty feet away.

“Help,” he screamed, hoping the Rangers would hear him.  “Shoot in the air toward me!”

No reply, no shots.  Then…

What happens to Dr. Smythe? Who will this affect? How do these events connect to ancient Australia and Lesh? To complete this tale, Click here to experience these & other Adventures & nonfiction.

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