A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL
ANaNoWriMo Challenge. (CHAPTER 26)
26 —Whit
The day started with a brilliant sunrise that left me feeling refreshed. For the last ten days we’d been rolling South—on our way to the Roost—crossing the open plain for the annual Tradifaree. Several of the larger villages surrounding the valley would also be gathered at the Roost—a circle of rock measuring one hundred meters across and three meters thick—it’s supposed to be sacred ground for some unknown, forgotten, reason.
They mean nothing to me, the old ways; they’re a hindrance more than anything else. But the Roost is a marvel to behold. It’s a mystery to me how the thing hasn’t collapsed on itself. Like I said, it’s a wide circle of stone supported by a single rock, flat on the top I’d imagine, standing at least ten meters in the air. They say they used to conduct human sacrifices up there, but I don’t believe it. At least, that’s not what Zard told me about the place. I’ve always been more inclined to follow his word than I have that of some old shaman. Zard wasn’t the kind of man to let superstition get in the way of his science. He had the critical mind of a thinker. He may have been a soldier, and fought in endless wars, but he was always a thinker first.
A wide stream of icy water cascaded its way down from The Vandals through a series of waterfalls, before flowing around the valley’s tall trees and along ancient game trails. That’s where the wild oxen live—I knew that much about the area—each ox was large enough to feed a family of twelve. We’re up front, among the lead caravans, the Algor’s banner snapping and rippling on a tall pole in a cold wind coming down from the mountains. Jaleen’s father is the Algor of the Clan, as well as one of the most respected men in Amaroose. He helped win the rebellion and free the people who had long been under the spell of Moorlock. But that’s a story for another day, as they say.
I was sitting with Jaleen, and Jarel, who was reading his star maps and telling us he’d figured it out. He said he knows the way through the mountains. I turned to look at the endless parade of wagons and goods trailing behind us, lost in a cloud of choking dust.
“You’ll never convince them to go through the mountains,” I said and Jarel replied that I’d have to help him convince the other Algors.
“Me? Why me? Ask Jaleen. She knows more about speaking to the Algors than I do.”
“You don’t have to speak to them.”
“Then why do I have to go?”
“To tell them that you’re going with me.”
“Why would I want to say that? Besides, you just told me that I don’t have to speak,” I laughed.
“They might name it after you,” he said. “All you have to do is tell them that you’re coming with me.”
“Why would they name it after me?”
“Why not? We could call it Whit’s End,” he said laughing; so did Jaleen, who seemed a little too keen to join in, I thought.
“And why are you laughing?” I said, leaning forward to look at her.
“Because it’s funny,” she smiled.
“You won’t be laughing that hard when I speak up and tell them you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And why would you say that?” Jarel asked.
“Because you don’t,” I said.
“You’re saying that because your father taught me to read the Star Charts, and not you.”
“Zard had his own reasons,” I said, urging the ox over a small tussock of grass with a gentle slap of the reins.
Not content to let me sit in the comfort of the caravan, he was determined to take me into the mountains. I told him I didn’t do well in the cold, and he said he’d packed furs in anticipation. The hardy kind we use in the cold season, he added, looking smug. I told him it was the cold season all the time in the mountains. He replied by saying the trail was five hundred meters wide, and went through the mountain where it crests the peak at its lowest point.
“You’ll never find your way through, because it’s buried under ice and snow.”
“I told you, it goes through the mountain,” Jarel said, as if that should explain it. “That means it was dug out by men who had a sole purpose in mind.”
“And what kind of purpose is that?”
“Survival.”
“You can’t think it’s still there if it was built Before the Cataclysm. Besides, even if it is, I told you, the opening will be clogged with ice and snow.”
“Well, that’s why we have to go then, isn’t it?”
*
Jaleen’s father, Jaswal, argued that a path through the mountains didn’t exist. A tall, muscular man, scarred from the many battles he’d fought, he was unprepared to let his two remaining children set off on an impossible quest. He stood in the middle of the council advising the other Algors that it was a dream founded on a myth. And while he had his backers—those few that agreed with him, no matter the argument—the other Algors were convinced that Jarel had found a way through the mountains.
Jarel had argued that he’d found the way through the mountains my father claimed twenty years before was real, and existed. Perhaps if I wasn’t there as a reminder of my father’s legacy, things might not have gone the way they did. But I was. Not that my presence was the determining factor in swaying the Council, but my reputation as a Huntsman—and as the son of Zard—may have added legitimacy to Jarel’s claim.
I don’t know. I wasn’t asked to speak, only to acknowledge that I was prepared to undergo a trip through a mountain pass no one had seen for unknown years. Jarel said a tunnel that had been bored through the mountains, and it didn’t matter if I didn’t believe the stories myself, my being there was enough to convince the other Algors that it did. My father’s legacy sometimes hung over me like a shadow of the past.
We made our way back to the camp, a myriad of tangled tents and wagons lit up with ten thousand campfires glimmering in the night; a shimmer of light that looked like spot fires on the grassy plain. There was a light wind blowing in from the East, picking up and scattering the detritus of untold thousands. The smell of roasting meat and fresh baked bread lingered; the cries of children at play; the laughter and screams of drunken revellers telling stories of wars long gone. It was camp life at its best, and tomorrow we’d be setting off on our own journey into mountains that promised their own adventure.
We spent most of the night preparing for our journey. The raft I’d made was loaded onto the small cart we’d be dragging behind us with our single dorkran, its shaggy fur a matted tangle of stench. I would’ve preferred using an ox, but oxen are animals more inclined to grassy plains, whereas dorkrans are more suited to higher altitudes.
Jaswal approached our camp, his large frame made somehow larger by the fire Jaleen was dropping wood on, the dinner she was preparing sizzling in various pots and pans in the flames. He stood silent in the shadows, watching.
“It’s a fool’s errand you’re bent on, then,” he said, stepping out of the shadows. It wasn’t an endorsement, but it wasn’t a denial, either. He’d understood his son’s need to prove his theory. It was Jarel’s way. He’d always been studious, and my father’s influence had done nothing to deter him from seeking the truth, wherever it might be.
“It’s not my errand,” Jaleen said, looking up from tending the flames.
“You might’ve tried to sway him.”
“Jarel? Are we talking about the same person? You know what he’s like.”
“Yes,” he said with a hint of resignation. He pulled up a stool and sat, warming himself in front of the fire. “It’s times like this I wish your mother were still here. She’d know what to say. He never listens to me—never has. He’s more Zard’s son than he is mine.”
“And why do you find it so hard to believe him?” Jaleen asked.
“People have been searching years for a way through the Vandals.”
“And your son is the one who found it.”
“Why would you agree to go?” he asked me.
“He’s determined to go, with, or without me,” I said. “Did you expect me to let him go alone? You’d never forgive yourself if something happened to him, but moreover, you’d never forgive me.”
“I suppose,” he said, heaving himself up with a big sigh. He picked up a small stick and stabbed it into the loose fitting rocks, looking up. “You’ll do whatever it takes not to let anything happen, I’m sure.”
“You know I will.”
He smiled, then nodded.
“You’re your father’s son,” he said.
* —STEVE
As a form of entertainment, VR’s been around for a thousand years. Maybe longer; I don’t know. My brain doesn’t work that way. But Dad used to play it when he was a kid, just like his dad did, and his dad before him. From what I know—or maybe I should say, from what little I know—VR was already a thing before the Cataclysm. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, it shows you the game’s potential.
The world Before the Cataclysm was well on its way to self-destruction. There were crop failures, and droughts world wide—dust farms they called them—made worse by tornados with winds bolstered by extreme temperatures. The planetary heat went up a tenth of a degree every year, for ten years, and then graduated to a degree a year over the next four. The polar ice caps melted and water levels increased by six meters. Methane gas, trapped under the polar ice caps, was released and entered the atmosphere. A volatile gas, methane often erupted inside of tall cumulus clouds—a result of the many lightning storms—and the flames singed across the sky. I don’t know if any of that’s true—it sounds too far fetched for me to believe—but it might be true. I suppose Mother Nature just got bored and decided to shake things up a bit. Do a little culling of the herd, as they like to say. I think the best thing that could’ve happened to us as a species was The Cataclysm.
I call it the Real Deal, because that’s when the world changed from what it was then, into what it is now. That we’ve accomplished what we have in such a short period of time is a testament to the determination of our species, a bow to the Spirit of Mankind. I’ve seen old time viddies that Zard had, showing what the world was like before. All I can say is that we’re better off for it having happened. One can see that Homo sapiens, as a species, had pretty much run out of time. Seeing that with the Cataclysm we were all but done for as a species, it’s good to know that there’s always a few that manage to survive, isn’t it? It’s estimated, that at one time, the total population of human life on the planet BTC, was 42 billion. And after? It was calculated at less than one hundred thousand. Before the Cataclysm, there were food riots and revolutions. It leads one to think that this was a world population that knew they were doomed. I don’t think it was a shock to anyone that people weren’t calling it the start of Mankind’s descent into extinction, but its culmination.
I suppose when the Cataclysm came, not one government could say they were prepared for it. How could they? Who could have predicted a super volcano erupting in the middle of whatever this place was called back then? The thing that’s always amazed me about all of that, is that it triggered all those other volcanoes. What did they call it? It was something fantastical sounding, like the The Ring of Fire. (Which, by the way, would be a doje name, as the kids say—or is that, the SID?) Do you think it came as a shock that the tectonic plates slipped with everything else that happened? Looking back, you think to yourself: Why wouldn’t there be a shift? With the planet being plunged into a seminal darkness, that fact of Science was proven beyond a doubt when it triggered a mini Ice-Age lasting over two hundred years.
I’m going to call it The Deep Freeze, in my book.
The events in the game take place two hundred years after all of that, though; in a more a pastoral world, or so one would think. But there are predators out there; things that lurk in the dark. I think it’s safe to say that the food chain took a drastic turn. There were cities that were rebuilt from the remnants, and industries that rose up out of the ashes, but there were no governments. Not yet.
If you want to live in a time where you’re on the ground floor of one of life’s greatest mysteries, you can take part in the Time Traveler’s Charade—a quest of sorts that lasts the one week, but comes in at a premium price. It’s one of the more high end programs Elite Games has to offer. It costs a small fortune, or so I’m told. I paid for the Executive package, which they don’t advertise on the holo, because packages start at a million credits.
It comes with a Pre-Cataclysmic preamble, the SID said.
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“That’s where you live your life in a past that’s so real, you’d think you’ve lived your entire life there. It comes complete with memories of childhood. You can have grandparents if you want; aunts, uncles, cousins. You can be rich, poor, an actor, or a singer, an athlete. The world is your oyster, as they say.”
“Who says?”
“That’s one of the idioms you have at your disposal. The language back then was challenging—more than our ATC world.”
“And that’s part of the package?” Sandy asked.
“Indeed.”
“No. Doje!” she said, leaning back and laughing.
I was convinced.
And just like he said, the moment when everything happened and we were dragged away into the future, I thought that I’d Time Travelled for real. Why wouldn’t you want to go back in time and see what the world had to offer then? I’d be a fool not taking it, considering the size of the inheritance.
Like it says in the brochure…It might not be real time travel, but it’s as close to it as you’re going to get. With the new VR, you feel as if you’re there—not just living it, but lost in it. That’s why they sell you the packages for a week at a time, but the Executive package is for twelve days. That’s a full year’s worth of living.
Now it was downtime.
It was a bright morning, the sun breaking through a low cloud cover and hitting the buildings around us; the airbots were following their pre-set courses. There were smaller bots zipping in between, up to different levels on the flight paths, and I watched them for a while, thinking maybe we’d grab a bot and fly out to the countryside.
Sometimes it feels good to get out of the city.