The End

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I would do anything
To live again
Breathe again

No promises
Of golden castles in the air
Of blessings beyond my wildest dreams

No kingdom
Beyond this world
Could ever replace
The taste of the evening air
The smell of the Earth
Your touch
And the love I have for this world

(Ashar, 71)

Epilogue

The boy sits still in the middle of the endless floor.
His head is held high and his eyes have a mischievous glint in them.
Then he looks into the mirror.
His anger has drawn a spiteful-looking face upon him.
He shouts at himself, without a sound.
Then he raises his right arm and hits the mirror.
It splinters into countless tiny shining particles - like a billion stars on the evening sky.
The illusion breaks.
Once again there is only darkness.
And the boy is alone.
And loneliness is all he knows.
Because now he knows it all.
After all, he made all of it happen.
The boy starts sobbing quietly, hiding his face between his knees.
He sits like this for a while, and then he looks up again.
His head held low and his eyes humble.
He turns his head to both sides and looks around him into the abyss.
He starts picking up the pieces of broken glass from the floor.
He turns them in his hands and inspects them one by one.
Then he starts to play with them, and slowly begins to build a new mirror.
Soon he can see his own reflection again.
The reflection is looking back at him and smiles.
Then it turns into many faces.
Familiar faces.
Gradually a whole new world starts growing around him, and soon he loses himself into the world inside the mirror.
The boy forgets once more who he is - or who he has been.
He shouts out in joy at the faces, and soon he starts playing with the other characters in the mirror.
He is no longer alone.
All is forgotten.
And once again he has a smile on his face.
He’s no longer aware
That it is all his own doing
And that he alone is responsible

“I am the End.”

(The End)

“I am.”

(The I in the Pyramid)

“I am the walrus.”

(John Lennon, 1967)

“I am the Internet.”

(Lee “Scratch” Perry, Oslo, 2006)

“I am Jesus Christ.”

(“Roy”, Northwood Sanatorium, 1971)

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

(John 14:6)

Amri

Amri looks out of the window.
The children are playing out in the sandy street.
The planes have stopped passing overhead, and the rubble from the collapsed buildings has been used as temporary constructions for the children to play their games.
“I’m the king of this castle!” a small boy standing on top of one of the shapeless heaps of broken stone proclaims, smiling from ear to ear while holding his sword made out of scrap metal high above his head.
Amri finds herself smiling for the first time in the year that has passed since her daughter died screaming in the flames of the burning white phosphor.
As she smiles, she forgets her grief for one second.
If for one second only.

I am Amri.

The Alien

The Alien sits in front of the white, blurry surface that is the control surface of his ship.
He gazes into the infinity of his own memories.
Endless black eyes that have seen a billion stars come and go; species come, then crumble; galaxies die, and be reborn again.
It is the passage of life.
He knows all too much about how it works.
The ebb and flow, and ever-spiraling illusion of time.
Still – every time he has a tiny glimpse into the destiny of any given creature in the cosmos, it makes his heart pound with pure enthusiasm, as he is reminded of the wonder that Life is, and has always been.
And how one is all, and all is full of love.
If only his lips would have allowed him to smile – he would.

I am The Alien.

Sebastian Melmoth

Sebastian Melmoth is walking slowly along the riverbank.
The Seine floats gently by, as if to assure him that history does likewise, bringing fresh water and hitherto unthinkable changes into this world.
He wonders how many of his pains could have been spared him, if only he had lived further down the stream, maybe even all the way down, where the river spread itself out into the vast open seas.
But what about all the thrills, then?
Would they, too, have been lost?

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

I am Sebastian Melmoth.

Eric Arthur Blair

Eric Arthur Blair fights for his life in the cold water.
He clings to the underside of his boat, which is floating overturned in the middle of the much-feared Corryvrekan stream.
His son Richard clings to his father's arm, and is terrified.
Eric tries to look calmly back into the boy’s eyes, but knows that the frothing waters around them will swallow them both at any second and spit their dead bodies far out into the Atlantic sea.
The black cliffs at the shore surrounding the frightening maelstrom make the chances of reaching land and surviving this seem even more impossible.
He knows that he might just have to accept their fate.
But still, he feels that it would not be right.
He has important things to do.
Tasks to fulfill.
He cannot give in now - not so close to the goal.
Suddenly Richard loses his grip and goes under.
Eric dives after him, and somehow manages to get them both above water again.
And then, as if by magic, he is filled with the most profound feeling of peace.
And, as he lies there, in the middle of his own Nemesis, clinging on to his beloved son, he just knows that they’re going to make it.
It’s going to be alright.
He just knows.

I am Eric Arthur Blair.

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla is standing next to his desk in deep thought.
In front of him lies the recently completed drawings for the construction of his Over Unity device – capable of producing an endless surplus of electrical energy by the exploitation of earth magnetism and gravity alone.
He has accomplished his life’s most challenging task, and knows it will change just about everything when the news get around to New York – or even just as far as to Edison’s spy, lurking outside his own property gates.
Tesla takes a deep breath, walks over to the window and looks out.
The forest outside is full of life on this warm summer evening, and the air is rich with the smell of flowers in bloom and fresh grass.
He can’t help but fall into a deeply melancholy state as he stands there viewing this beautiful, tranquil scenery.
The smells and sounds resemble those of his childhood, the forest in Belgrade, and even just standing here, thousands of miles and several decades away from the source of his memories, he still feels as though he is being transported by magic back to the source by these simple impressions on his senses.
Life, and Nature, he concludes - is truly the most wondrous thing.
And far, far superior in complexity to any of the technology he has created and surrounded himself with throughout his whole life.
As he stands there, carelessly letting his mind wander, he can feel something rising within - an urge he’s been getting during the last few days.
He’s already been going through this over and over with himself, and maybe he has even known it deep down, all along the way?
It is over.
He has succeeded.
The challenge in itself was what made him approach this problem to begin with, and, now that he has resolved it, he feels content, but also somehow empty.
This is good enough.
It will have to do for his personal fulfillment.
After all, hasn’t he always steered clear of the trappings of vanity, the same vanity that clearly had succeeded in taking control over the once creative minds of some of his peers?
Why should he give in to the temptations of attaining recognition and economical success, now that he has travelled thus far with totally different intentions?
It has to be done.
Nikola Tesla walks over to the drawing board once more.
He picks up the construction sketches, folds them with both hands, tears the papers into tiny little pieces, and throws them into the open, unlit fireplace.
There they lie atop an old heap of ashes, like pieces of the most perfect dream.
Broken.
And then, even though it is a warm summer evening, Nikola lights up the fireplace.
Life, after all, is far too beautiful for this to destroy it.

I am Nikola Tesla.

Mr. Christian

An elegantly dressed, grey-haired man walks into Joe Fendley’s office at Elberton Granite Finishing, Georgia.
“Morning, Sir”, he says, and before Joe manages to drop his usual welcoming phrases, the man continues in a loud, clear voice: “Mr. Christian. Pleased to meet you”, right hand outstretched.
“Pleased to meet you”, Joe says and shakes his hand. “What can I do for you?”
“I would like to purchase about 240,000 pounds of your finest granite, Sir,” the man says.
Joe feels his face losing colour and has to support himself on the desk with both his hands.
“Excuse me?”
“You do trade in granite, don’t you?” the man asks.
“Well, yes.” Joe says.
“Good. I heard so, and I would hate to have been given disinformation of any kind. In fact I heard you were the best in the country, vast as it is.” Mr. Christian says, and gives Joe a casual look, as if he’d just asked for today’s newsaper from a street seller.
“Well, that’s quite a lot of stone you’re asking.” Joe says.
“That’s the amount of stone I actually need”, the grey-haired gentleman proclaims, matter-of-factly.
“May I ask in what shape you will need the stones.? What sizes are we talking?”
“Well. Initially I had my mind set on pebbles, but on second thought I’d rather they be about five blocks at about sixteen feet height and one at about nine feet, six at about seven feet… Oh, what the hell, here’s the written instructions.”
The man hands Joe a paper with very thorough drawings of more than a dozen pieces of assorted rectangular and square monolith-like figures with very specific information of measurement written below.
Joe studies the drawings for a while, then he says, as he looks up from the paper: “This is possible. But it’ll cost you.”
“Money is not an issue”, is Mr. Christian’s swift reply. “We will also need some inscriptions to be made.” He hands Joe a new paper.
“What languages are these?” Joe asks.
“Several”, Mr. Christian answers.
“What does it say?”
“Oh, you know, the usual stuff: ‘maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature’, ‘guide reproduction wisely’, ‘improve fitness and diversity’, ‘prize truth — beauty — love — seek harmony with the infinite’, ‘protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts’, ‘let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court’ and ‘don’t be a cancer to the earth — leave room for nature — leave room for nature’. That kind of stuff."
Joe stares at the merry gentleman standing in front of him. He looks far too sane for the blabber coming out of his mouth, and he has just secured Joe’s retirement by showing up in the office placing such an impossibly valuable order for the company.
Joe hesitates, but eventually gets himself to say: “Hope you don’t mind me asking, but what’s it all for?”
His golden-goose customer looks back at him with clear, green eyes, then he leans forward as if to answer his question in the most intimate and secretive way - even though there is no-one else in the office: “It’s for making sure our future generations remember how things were done back in our day and age - in case something horrendous should happen.”
Joe scratches his chin, then he says; “But why would someone need to remember how things were done in our day and age, if the way we do things will lead to something horrendous?”
Mr. Christian stares blankly at him, and there is an enduring pause between the two men.
Joe can see the old man’s calm, almost smug persona changing, and starts to worry that he had just blown one of his own company’s largest contracts ever.
But then the grey-haired gentleman breaks his own silence:
“Either”, Mr. Christian says, “to make them able to start building a new world in the same fashion that we have done for the last few thousand years...”
Joe can feel a drop of sweat working its way down his right temple.
“Or…” - and here he makes an almost theatrical point of the following pause, “to make sure they never ever make the same mistakes again. Either way – it’s a winner!”
Joe exhales the lungful that he’s been holding for the last half-minute.
“Hell, what do I know?” Mr. Christian shrugs. “I only do what my boss tells me to do - like any other decent working man.”
“Sure.” Joe says as he walks around the desk to follow his customer to the door.
“So. I take it we have a deal then, Joe?”
Joe feels very relieved, and says: “We sure do!”
“Look forward to see the beauty”, Mr. Christian says just as Joe opens the door to let Mr. Christian out, then he suddenly turns around and adds:
“Oh, and one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Where will you be getting all this stone from?”
“Well, I guess the only place capable of delivering such sizes and amounts would be our own Pyramid Quarries, just a few miles west of town.”
“Good”, Mr. Christian says, and in his jolly gentleman’s manner he finally adds: “Now, is there any place nearby where a man can get a decent cup of coffee?”

ITS_JUST_LIFE

Sister Hida is repeatedly pushing one of the many buttons on the lower base of the machine, and she does, the Ancient letters are scrolling vertically across the flickering screen and disappearing out of the top end.
“So what do we make of it?” she asks, without turning around, eyes fixed on the screen.
“We’ve gone through the entire document, line by line”, a man standing behind her says. He is accompanied by another man and a woman, neither of whom say a word.
The man continues: “It has taken us a lot of time, and unprecedented efforts. Our sharpest researchers of the Ancient language have attacked this from every angle for weeks on end.”
“Yes?” Hida says, still scrolling the text up and down aimlessly.
“Well…” The man clearly has trouble getting to whatever point he initially had intended to get to. “There is a lot of information in there. A lot! That’s for sure. We have learned more about everyday Ancient life shortly before the Big Change than we have since the first Nobili diaries were found. And this is a personal view from a central point within Ancient culture. It is totally invaluable.”
Sister Hida turns around and looks directly at the man as she speaks: “And the most invaluable piece of information?”
Her firm look makes the man swallow an imaginary piece of shame, disappointment and bruised professional pride before he continues: “Well, I guess you mean to ask if we’ve found the description of the secret of the Scriptures of iX?”
“I guess I am”, Hida, who has returned to the scrolling of the text up and down, says faintly into the air.
The man clears his throat.
“Towards the end, the very end, there’s something about ‘falling from the sky’, which makes perfect sense, as if he actually foresees his own destiny before creating this scripture.”
“No doubt.” Hida says absently, loosing herself even more into the pointless scrolling.
“But then it continues with a passage describing ‘the importance of the symbols drawn on the seed of a tree’, and ‘barely escaping the raging Ape’. Then it goes on about ‘the appearing faces of demons and a man from the stars’, and from there on it just all gets even more incoherent. The words seem like they have been put there very hastily and in a disorderly fashion.”
“And?”
“To be honest it doesn’t make much sense at all, at least not to us.”
Hida turns around and stares worryingly at the trio of observers. She can’t believe her own ears. After all their efforts, her expectations had been built up to a maximum.
She rises to her feet and raises both hands in the air with wide open eyes, as she asks the man presenting the bad news:
“Is there anything else we might have missed? Anything?”
The man pauses for a number of seconds.
"No, Sister Hida” he finally says. "There's nothing else of use in there. Nothing that we don't already know."

Irretrievable information

“Well done, Sister Njoro!”
Njoro’s eyes gradually adjusted to the light.
Pi was sitting next to her bed. Smiling.
Some long forgotten animal reflex deep inside her wanted to catapult her right arm into a warm reunion with his happy face, but her body was far too weak to obey the order.
“It’s so good to see you”, Pi continued.
“You. Left me”, she barely managed to whisper.
“Ahh, yes. You are so strong. I knew you would be our only hope to match the R.O.S.E. agent.”
She had no notion of what he was talking about, but couldn’t believe he had the nerve to try to change the subject, after what she’d been through. Nevertheless, she had to admit that she was very happy to be lying in a warm bed after all her struggles out there on the ice.
As she touched in on the memories of what had happened, even briefly, a wave of sorrow washed over her as she remembered.
“Killed… Mungpuk”, she said quietly.
“Yes I know. As he would have killed all of us who don’t possess the powers that you do.”
Pi’s words still sounded like incoherent babbling to her, and didn’t make much sense, but she decided to not deal with it and start any discussions surrounding her strength at this moment.
Instead, she closed her eyes, and let the comforting softness of the bed embrace her, and fell asleep.

The passing of several days spent mostly in bed, with masses of strengthening food and loving care soon brought her back to life again, and the more she awakened to her regular self, the more she wanted to know about her new surroundings.
And know more of what really had been going on during their journey out here.
Pi had been keeping his distance for the last few days, and this had irritated her greatly as he’d already given her signals that he knew far more about matters than he'd been willing to share with her when they set out on this journey.
She considered his absence as proof of his growing fear of further confrontations regarding his own cowardly actions, so in one way it was understandable that he kept away.
However, about a week after her arrival, he suddenly appeared in her room. She was out of bed, dressed and was starting to feel rather restless.
“You’re better”, Pi said as he entered. Still smiling.
“Much better”, she replied, hoping it would sound alarming to him.
It didn’t seem to worry him at all. He only added: “I’m glad.”
Njoro didn’t feel glad.
“I guess you want to know more about all this?” Pi asked.
“Yes!”
“Please. Come, dear Sister Njoro.” He offered her his arm, and to her own surprise, she accepted the gesture, although her inner resistance would have been felt by anyone with their senses intact within her close surroundings.
They left her recovery room, and walked past many doors through a shiny white stone corridor leading into a giant hall that stretched as far as the harsh, yellow light that filled it could carry.
The hall looked very old, and was so big that she couldn’t imagine how she had not be able to see its exterior at surface level when she arrived. The roof must surely have reached far above the ice, unless they were really deep down below the surface.
Maybe she’d been so exhausted when she arrived that all she could see was the light from the tunnel gate?
She accepted that as an explanation.
Everything in here was very solid and well-kept, and she guessed the whole construction must have been immersed in a massive pool of water after it had been built, and then left to be swallowed by the surrounding ice over the years that had passed.
Many years, that must have been. It was like a sunken fortress from times long gone that was still fully intact due to the natural preservation qualities of its surroundings.
“Where are we?” Njoro asked, awestruck.
“This place used to be a most sacred site to the Ancients”, Pi answered in a lowered voice, as if to underline the sacredness of the place.
“Like a temple? Like our old temple-halls in the mountains back home?” Njoro offered.
“Not so much like a temple in the way we know it today. This is one of the last things they built before the Age of Restoration. It is a place where they tried store all the knowledge they had of the world.”
Njoro stopped walking, puzzled by this information.
“What? Here? Outside of themselves – in the material world? How could they possibly do that?”
Pi just smiled, it was evident that he found this idea as ridiculous as she did, although he seemed to have lived with the idea for a while and had probably grown used to it.
“But all the information in the world is already stored within the Soul of Everything. You cannot remove it from yourself, and believe that it will endure anywhere else!”
“Of course it is. But you have to remember that the Ancients had lost their connection with themselves, and therefore the connection with the Soul of Everything. So instead they made machines to hold their knowledge, enormous machines that reached across the whole world through a spider's web of moving electricity.”
“They built machines to keep all their knowledge of the world for them? How horrendous! It is truly like a nightmare.”
Njoro shuddered at the thought, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped.
“It certainly is”, Pi said thoughtfully. “Come! I will show you.”
They walked down the vast hall. After a short walk, they reached another exit, this time leading into a new and smaller corridor.
At each side of the corridor, there stood a line of strange objects on display, meticulously lined up on far-reaching racks mounted against the stone walls.
There were various devices made of wood, metals, textiles and stone, some rusty old pieces of junk and some very worn-out but similarly strange-looking objects made of materials unknown to Njoro.
“What are these things?” she asked.
“Basically, they are a good place to start.”
He let go of her arm, walked over to one of the racks, and picked one of the devices from its shelf.
“This”, he continued “is an early attempt by our own people to create a generator of electricity.”
The device contained of two cylinders of clear, yellowish stone – most likely amber, she figured, like some of the relics in the Temple back home were made of. The stone cylinders were mounted upon a wooden base by means of a metal construction and, stretched around both the amber wheels and another cylinder mounted to a metal crank, a twisted piece of woolen cloth had been fastened.
“But why would our people want to generate electricity?”
“In order to spark the ancient machines back to life, and reveal the mysteries they hold. As much as we now know about the Ancients there are as many things we don’t know, and some of these issues might turn out to be crucial for our own future - even if just to stop us from committing the same mistakes.”
“But why would we want to wake their horrible machines back to life? Couldn’t we just use our seers to gather this information by connecting to the Source of Everything? That’s what we’re for, isn’t it?”
Njoro sounded slightly insulted.
“Yes, of course we could – and are – using our seers to shine light on our dark past. But as we do, we only attain this information in the angle of how you see it – and you are all still people of this day and age, thankfully lacking the disturbances of an Ancient mindset. Wouldn’t it be quite interesting to understand how they viewed this information, and what uses they saw for it?
Njoro thoughtfully studied the device.
“So how does this work?” she asked as she stroked the woolen fabric with her fingers.
“It creates electricity out of mobile energy and friction between the wool and the stone, in a very inefficient and rather clumsy way, that is. But it has brought us one step closer to unraveling the mysteries of the Ancients’ technology.”
Njoro stopped stroking the rough fabric. It made the tips of her fingers sore.
“They used electrical energy to power all their machines?” she asked as he put the thing back on its shelf.
“The ones used to store knowledge, yes. But they had even cruder technologies that were powered by digging up the blood of the Earth and burning it in primitive devices that let out extreme amounts of toxics into the air. Eventually these technologies were creating such disturbances and imbalances inside Earth that she answered with horrifying earthquakes, weather disturbances and other ‘natural catastrophes’ as the Ancients would call them – all natural reactions from Mother Earth. But even they realized the madness of this and tried to change course towards the end.”
“Oh, thankfully! But they still stuck with electricity? It must have been the same power that the Savage intruder used for his strange devices? And it has also been the reason for great concerns among the Elders of the House in recent years by its growth and widespread use in the Middle-North, right?”
“Absolutely. And it’s the same energy that fuels the lights of this entire place.”
“I don’t understand. Shouldn’t we restrain from meddling too deeply with the past? Do we know what will happen should we actually succeed in revealing all the madness of our ancestors?”
“Too deeply, yes. But maybe we could prevent the disasters of the past if we understood better what mechanisms within us all would bring us on the road to such disaster? The past is only what we had to go through in order to get where we are today, but if no-one knows what we actually have gone through, all our costly experience is of no real use to anyone.”
Pi sounded very enthusiastic, something that she recognized from back when he convinced the House to take on this task back home in what seemed long ago.
He offered her his arm again, she took it, and they started walking slowly past the endless line of machines.
“So what exactly is electrical energy?” Njoro asked as they walked.
“I guess you can say that it is a force that exists within the imbalance of the Universe. Or rather; it is the force that seeks to re-balance the Universe.”
“Oh? Is it Love?” Njoro stopped walking and gazed at Pi with wide open eyes.
“No, not exactly.” Pi paused and stared at one of the machines on display. Then he said: “Maybe it is a different aspect of Love.”
They walked on in silence for a while, and then Pi continued his explanation:
“Electricity is a force created by the movement of charges within the particles that all matter in the physical world is built from. As within us, and within all of the Otherworld, the material part of the Universe is also dependent on total balance. Whenever any physical object falls out of balance by losing or gaining too much positive or negative charge, the appropriate complementing charge rushes in to restore the balance of the object. This movement of charge is what the Ancients named Electricity, and towards the end of their age most of their civilization was dependent upon it.”
“What do you mean? Were they feeding on the imbalance of the world? Like some kind of parasites?”
Pi smiled, for no reason that Njoro could fathom. This wasn’t funny at all.
“I guess one could view it like that, but it’s not the whole picture.”
“What is the whole picture, then?”
“I don’t know that myself, and hopefully it won’t ever be my burden to do that. But I can tell you more of what we know about our ancestors at this stage.”
“Please do.”
“Their craving for electricity meant that the Ancients were totally dependent on their world being out of balance at all times.”
“But that’s terrible! Simply terrible.” Njoro interrupted and shook her head in disbelief. “Balance is the most important principle of all. The basic nature of the Universe itself is the will to create unity and harmony through balance. Didn’t they know this?”
“They might have temporarily forgotten it for some reason. Or maybe they even wanted imbalance?” Pi said, and smiled.
“Why would anyone want such a thing?” Njoro was truly shocked.
“For excitement, maybe?”
“Excitement?” Njoro said furiously, and had to work hard in order to still the damaging emotional wave rising within her.
Pi continued:
“When everything is balanced, you are at peace with yourself and your surroundings, and there is harmony.”
“Of course. Our main goal as a species.” Njoro couldn’t believe why Pi would present her such inevitabilities and think it would make her feel better.
“But harmony can also make people feel motionless and dull, if the harmony gets too monotonous, don’t you think?”
“No! Not at all. What nonsense.”
“But sweet Njoro, wouldn’t you say that our adventure over the last months has been of any value at all? Hasn’t it by any means added to the experience of life?” Pi gestured into the air with shiny, clear eyes staring into an imaginary but doubtlessly bright infinity. “Would you rather we’d stay back in Lhasa, locked into the mundane cycles of repetitive everyday life?”
Njoro didn’t answer. She rather walked on and let her mind drift.
So here Pi was suggesting that the endless struggle across the ice, the entry of the horrible intruder that took her travel companions’ lives and nearly ended her own - were episodes purely to be viewed as sources for her excitement? This was too much for her to take in. How could he be so insensitive?
Or was it that she was being too sensible?
On the other hand, she knew deep within that this journey had already become unforgettable. Ever since they had set out for the Far North from Lhasa she had felt an underlying excitement in her that had been more than welcome into her life at the time, and as they reached the Archangel on the brink of the ice to gather their supplies and meet with the others, she had to admit that she’d been able to breathe more freely than she had been able to in a long time.
And then, the movement into the ice, and the lights, the silence, the connections to her travelling comrades…
“But these Ancients”, she finally broke the contemplating silence.
“Yes?” Pi answered, halted, and turned towards her.
“They met their own Nemesis by holding on to their set of values, didn’t they?”
He looked at her with something she figured was his version of a concerned look, which didn’t work - he still just looked happy.
“They went very far. Towards the end, they had developed into a species that opposed Life itself, and for that reason they had to go through the destruction that they eventually did. Or correction if you want.”
“But it could have so easily been undone. Made right again. With the right teachings…”
“Maybe. But they were possibly too entangled in the system they had built around them. Their mindset. Their very culture. It probably just started out as a way of trying to make life more convenient, but soon ended up becoming a prison of thought that fed off its creators in order to keep itself alive.”
Njoro walked a few more steps still trying to adjust her emotions to all this.
“But what was out here? Why did they build this place in the middle of the ice?” she finally asked.
They had now almost reached the end of the corridor with the machine display. It seemed to be leading into another hall opening up.
Pi stopped.
“Just before the Big Change and the Age of Restoration set in, they had gathered so much information in their machines all across the planet that they started getting problems with keeping the machines running.”
“I’m not surprised. Only Everything can hold the knowledge of Everything. We all know that you cannot separate knowledge from its source. Infinity is too big to fit into any of its parts.”
“Heat”, Pi said.
“Heat?” Njoro had a confused look on her face.
“Their machines were pushed to their limits to store more and more information, and as they were being run by the movement of electrical energy, the machines started producing so much heat that they were about to melt down and self-destruct the whole system. As we all know, energy cannot simply disappear into nothing, but only change shape, so it was inevitable that this would become a problem for them.”
“I guess they didn’t know that either?”
“It seems they had forgotten a whole lot of basic principles of Life and Nature. In a last desperate attempt, the most powerful guardians of the knowledge-machines built this place and moved enormous amounts of these devices here, far into the ice, to try and keep them cool enough to stay functioning.”
They reached the widened-out end of the corridor as a new giant hall opened up.
It was a crossroads where four tunnels met.
Above one of the tunnel entrances, there was an old worn-out inscription that read “o.g.l.e.” in yellow, blue, green and red Ancient letters.
To the left, an even more crumbled sign in blue read “a.c.e.b.o.o.” above the entrance, in the same ancient alphabet.
Pi led her by the arm over to the third entrance. It had the inscription “i.c.r.o.s.o.f.” above it, in dark blue lettering.
“This is the most well-preserved area. Come, I’ll show you”, he said and pulled her by the arm.
They walked through the short tunnel, and reached a new tall gate leading into a new area. There was an almost perfectly conserved inscription above it.
It read: “B.u.i.l.d.i.n.g.7.”
“This is amazing”, Njoro said. “It looks much less than a thousand years old.”
Pi stopped for a second, as if to admire the endurance of the inscription. “Yes, it has been very well preserved here in the ice. It is almost as if there has been some kind of magic involved, as if they left it all for us on purpose so we could understand their ways better”, he said, sounding slightly euphoric. “Come, let’s enter!”
As they passed through the gate called ‘Building 7’, an enormous hall opened up in front of them. The mere size of it was enough to make Njoro cling a little harder onto Pi’s arm, as if she was afraid of being swallowed by the space.
Then she saw the machine.
Or more precisely, the machines.
Stacked up from floor to ceiling was an arrangement of what seemed like an endless amount of small rectangular boxes – devices similar to some of those on display in the corridor they just had passed through.
It looked like a solid mountain, if it hadn’t been for the unnatural arrangement of the units.
At the base, filling the most part of the enormous floor, the boxes were arranged in a large square. On top of it, and for every new level up, a slightly smaller square of boxes had been placed, until it narrowed down to a single box at the very top - almost reaching the ceiling far above.
It made a giant peak with triangular walls on all four sides.
In between the boxes, arrays of strings were attached, making it look as if all the machines shared the same blood, like a giant hive-like entity.
The blood it craved, she guessed, must have been electrical energy.
Njoro was speechless.
It was a scary thing, but nevertheless an object of some kind of twisted, ancient beauty.
“What is this?” she whispered to Pi, as if afraid to wake the sleeping giant.
“I’m not sure”, Pi answered. “No-one’s really sure, actually.”
Pi held his breath for a second, and then continued: “But we think it might have been their God.”
Njoro gasped.
“Their God?”
Njoro shivered and thought the giant machine suddenly got a sinister quality to it.
“Ever since the Nobili found this place and started their work of attempting to restore and decipher all this, speculations have often ended up in theories surrounding the religions of the Ancients.”
“Who found this place?” Njoro asked.
“The Nobili.”
“Who are the Nobili?”
“They are our friends”, Pi said. “They are the survivors.”
“Survivors?”
“Yes. Like us. We shall meet them now.”
They left the great hall with the giant machine and returned through the short corridor back to the crossroads where they had entered.
There, they walked into the fourth tunnel, which had no inscription at all above its entrance.
After a short walk they came to a new gate, and above this one, in modern Global lettering, a red sign spelt: ‘NOBILI’
Past the gate, they entered into a different looking part of the underground complex. It seemed somehow newer than the other areas they’d been going through. There was more activity in this room. A low murmur could be heard from small groups of people scattered throughout the space.
A woman came to welcome them. She was tall, with dark hair and almost Eastern or Original features, and Njoro found her very beautiful looking.
“Welcome Sister Njoro”, the woman said. “I’m Hida”.
“Thank you”, Njoro answered, surprised that the woman already knew her name.
Pi just nodded and smiled at the woman. It was obvious they already knew each other.
The other crowds of people further into the hall behind Hida didn’t take much notice of their entrance. They all seemed busy, gathered around tables or bent over different devices deep into discussions.
All over the place, the bright flickering of electric light filled the space, and made it look somewhat otherworldly to Njoro’s eyes.
“Please come. Come and sit with me”, Hida said.
The three of them walked over to a seating section and sat down in three comfortable chairs surrounding a small table.
“You have gone through so much for us all, Sister Njoro; please let me begin by thanking you for your efforts on behalf of the Nobili.”
Njoro looked at Pi with a questioning expression.
“Please, Sister Hida, I think Sister Njoro is very eager to attain a deeper understanding of the whole situation, including these unfamiliar surroundings and the history of this place. Why don’t you please begin by telling us about yourselves, the Nobili?”
“Of course”, the woman Hida said. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Maybe the beginning would be a good point”, Pi smiled.
“The beginning is a long time ago, but luckily we’ve kept our history well. My people, that includes the most part of those you see inside this room as well as spread all over the Golden City, all descend from a small group of survivors from before the Age of Restoration. Much like your own people of Lhasa.”
“But out here? This far north? That’s impossible!” Njoro protested. “I thought it was mostly the Eastern peoples who lived through the Big Change, with only sporadic tribes of Originals surviving in the Northeast? At least that’s what I’ve been told since childhood.”
“Yes. I know. I know, but please listen.” Pi tried to calm her down.
Hida smiled, and continued: “A little more than a century before the Big Change, the Ancients were obsessed with the areas around the Far North. Because of their system of dividing land and people into ‘nations’, a race was started of sending people out to ‘conquer’ this area in a series of disastrous attempts. One such attempt was made with a giant airship filled with explorers and people of Ancient science. All men of Ancient science to be more precise.”
“Why all men?” Njoro asked.
“That was just another one of their strange ways, I guess. Anyway, the weather troubled this airship - a gale hit them by surprise. Of course had they known what we commonly know today about Nature, this wouldn’t have been such a big problem to foresee, but as they were unable to see the gale coming, they were forced to turn around and return to from where they had set out. But before they reached their destination, the ship crashed on the ice, and their leader, a man by the name Umberto Nobile, together with eight other members of the crew survived there until they were rescued. One died in the crash. As there were outpost settlements within reach as well as other expeditions in the area, eventually someone came to their rescue. Another six men – mostly men of science - were trapped inside the part of the airship wreck that got carried aloft by the storm, and transported far into the ice to the north of the crash site.”
“How horrible. Did they come to the rescue of the remaining men, too?”
Njoro felt touched by the story. It was as if she could sense the desperation the men may have felt, having been left out there on the ice on her own.
“No. And that changed a lot of things.”
Hida had a gloomy expression on her face, and leaned over towards Njoro as she continued:
“Most of all it changed the belief these men had in the society which they had wholeheartedly served and invested their entire lives in the duty of. The fact that they all survived…”
“They survived! How fantastic.”
“Yes, Sister Njoro. Truly fantastic. I - for one - am very happy for this. The wrecked airship stranded at what they would name Gilesland, after an observation that had been made decades earlier, but never found again. It was situated northwest off the coast of where the Archangel lies today - far into the ice. Of course the ice reaches further south these days than it did back then, but even at the time, the conditions in Gilesland must have been hard enough for a band of southern city-men of science.”
“What did they do? Make their back south again?”
“No. They stayed. There was no way they would go back to the society that had turned its back on them and left them out here to die. Instead, they created their own settlement, based on a mixture of all the scientific knowledge they had from their old world, and the natural liaison with their new surroundings that their survival now depended upon. Eventually they would meet hunting tribes of the Original people of the ice and later continued their blood by establishing families with women of these tribes. I am a result of one such family establishment that now spans across centuries, and so are the people you see around me here. We, Sister Njoro, are the Nobili.”
Njoro gazed with her mouth half-open at Hida, the Nobili woman.
“But… why have I never heard of you? Why haven’t you made contact with the rest of our Global society? You should be represented in the House of Lhasa, like all surviving peoples are entitled to.”
“I guess you can say it’s an old habit we have inherited over generations, but you must also remember that our closest Global settlement is the Middle North, and we are not too sure if we wouldn’t be better off staying a little invisible for the time being - looking at the latest developments in that region.”
“I guess that’s understandable.” Njoro said, and looked at Pi, who’ve been sitting quietly through Hida’s story.
Probably he’d heard it all before.
“But you have contacted us, and you speak Global very well, so something must have changed.” Njoro said.
“That’s true”, Pi said. “And that’s where our adventure begins, and your part of all this started.”
“Yes. Why DON’T you tell me where my part of this started?” Njoro said and turned towards Pi. She couldn’t hide her irritation, and didn’t care much trying either.
“Dear Sister Njoro. You are one of the most sensitive seers of the city of Lhasa born in our times”, Pi stated. “The Circle of the House knew that you would play a big part in the shaping of the world, even at an early stage in your development.”
“Flattering, but I didn’t exactly see all this coming. How come not?”
“You couldn’t imagine how difficult it has been for the circle of seers back home, in addition to those already present in the Golden City to keep it all from you. It takes a whole little commune of your strongest peers to keep your clarity looking in the different direction. You’re that strong!”
Njoro strongly disliked the enthusiasm Pi put behind telling her that she’d been willfully deceived by her own.
“But why? Why would you do such a thing, and leave me alone out there on the ice as prey to a murderous Savage? What kind of people have I believed to be my closest allies in life in all these years?”
She was almost in tears, looking Pi, who finally had stopped smiling, straight into his eyes and beyond.
“Please, Njoro. We will explain everything. He took her hand.
Hida spoke:
“When first we found this place, we decided that it should be the duty of the Nobili to take upon us the task to become the keepers of its secrets. We didn’t exactly know the extent of the secrets this place actually held, but it seemed to be a place of great significance. Not only to us, but to all survivors living today.”
“A treasure.” Njoro added.
“Or a curse. When we saw the development in the Middle North, where many ways of old suddenly started reappearing, concerns were arising among us. As people started tapping into the great sea of ideas within us all, a new urge awoke to pursue the hunt for technology, with all its conveniences for a more ‘pleasant’ human existence. We are worried that this hunt might lead to a new obsession, like in the Old World. We all have these urges in us to make life ‘easier’, even if we have been taught that we need to live in balance with Nature and all of our co-existence.”
“And as you know we’ve had the same concerns for some time within our circle back home”, Pi added.
Sister Hida continued:
“Our own seers advised us to reveal ourselves to the House of Lhasa and make a connection directly, as you seemed to be the people of the Global community who were most able to withstand a too hastily and unguided re-progress. Our two peoples agreed that there were simply too many traps awaiting those rushing themselves into this, and none of us really know enough about the past to come up with the right arguments to make them thread more carefully. It seems the people bitten with the urge for progress are losing their clarity in the intoxicating haze of expectations that arises.”
“But it seems we don’t know the solution any more than you do”, Njoro said, as if to lower Hida of the Nobili’s hopes to a more grounded level.
“No, we never expected such. But together we stand much stronger than apart, as I guess no-one here will deny?”
“Absolutely, Sister Hida”, Pi broke in. “And it seems we are just about to prove that.”
“What do you mean?” Njoro asked. “What more don’t I know?”
Hida spoke:
“As I told you, we Nobili are descendants of a group of Ancient men of science on one hand, and Original women on the other”, she explained. “Our traditions have always told us that technology in itself is not to be feared, but that people’s blindness can be lethal in combination with it. We - like you - seek balance. However, our teachings tell us that there has to be balance within the balance. This means that our ideal has never been to acquire total enduring harmony. Harmony sometimes also has to be countered with disharmony in order for life to be fulfilling.”
“Hmm… where did I just recently hear about a similar line of thought?” Njoro said, with narrowed eyes directed at her fellow Lhasa travel companion sitting next to her.
“Please, Njoro. Please listen”, Pi asked. “Open your mind.”
Njoro decided whether to express her full range of emotions concerning Pi and his carefree attitude towards her recent sufferings, but decided to keep it for later. Instead, she said:
“Maybe I can learn to understand your ways, but please see that it’s all very new to me now. And all this strongly reminds me of the ways of the Ancients as I’ve learned to know it, which I find quite alarming”, Njoro stated, and then gestured she would shut up and listen.
“I totally understand your concern, Sister Njoro, but let me remind you that the ways of the Ancients were very much about embracing the extreme. In the end, their polarized worldview made them blind even to their own progression as a species.” Hida leaned forward and gave Njoro a firm look. “For instance, they set their goals to re-create the world in their ‘own image’, and in the process they abandoned all their natural instruments of navigation; reading signs, using their intuition or noticing the reactions from their surroundings and fellow creatures to their own actions. They set their own personal goals, and assigned the fulfillment of a goal, and everything that harmonized with such fulfillment as ‘good’, and every hindrance or sign of their goal being out of tune with the natural harmony of things as ‘evil’. This meant that whenever their dreams and manipulations of their surroundings failed, they would condemn their surroundings and fellow creatures instead of using the resistance they met as a correction from the environment they were part of. Their idea developed into trying to create a ‘Kingdom on Earth’, but they forgot that Earth already is a ‘Kingdom’ in its own right – a Kingdom they should live as part of.”
“So you, the Nobili, also see clearly how they couldn’t keep moving in the direction that they did? That eventually they had to be corrected on a much larger scale?” Njoro gesticulated as she spoke, and felt she was getting quite excited about this conversation now.
“Absolutely, But we think that they were strangled by their own mindset more than corrected by Nature or self-destructed by their disharmonic technologies. They simply wouldn’t let go of their hierarchical structures of thought or their expectations of polarity in everything, so they eventually collectively accepted their ancient ‘prophecies’ and ceased to exist.”
“Prophecies?” Njoro asked. “Visions from their own seers?”
“No, we don’t believe so. We rather suggest that these ‘prophecies’ were historical blueprints for their own destruction, created by their wisdom keepers of the past. Originally, these were just meant to be maps of possible collective obstacles to be overcome – a set of common evolutionary tasks to be solved in co-operation. But as the Ancients never adapted to a new way of thinking, these blueprints instead became self-fulfilling prophecies of destruction.”
“Self-fulfilling?”
“Yes, their collective intellectual acceptance of these roadmaps pointing towards their own obliteration made them expect, and eventually take part in creating all kinds of disasters: epidemics, wars, violence, environmental collapse, the de-humanizing of their treatment of each other and a number of other nightmares-come-true.”
“So?”
“So the world of the Ancients ‘ended’ on their sacred chosen day of December 21st in the year of 2012, and the Age of Restoration began.”
Njoro sat quietly to let Hida’s words sink in for a while.
Pi said nothing.
Then Njoro asked: “So, I take it you – the people of the Nobili - don’t believe in repeating the ways of the Ancients, I guess?”
“Too much of anything is still too much, and surely we don’t want to repeat the disastrous mistakes made in the past. The experience of Life is too precious to let it turn into an arena for only pain and darkness to reign over those who’ve chosen to take part in it. And that is exactly why we intervened when we learned that the most progress-eager and uncontrollable Middle Northern forces had discovered the tracks of the Scriptures of iX.”
“The Scriptures of iX?”
“Not all Ancients were out of touch with their own Nature. Some kept their channels open throughout most of their lives, by either chance or free will. At great costs, that is, as the pain they experienced from having a world of total chaos, disharmony and darkness surround them would surely hurt and confuse them greatly.”
“And who were these people?”
“All kinds, when it comes to those who kept in touch with themselves and their abilities by chance. But throughout all ages there have always been numerous Inspirationals taking part in the evolution of Mankind, lending a lifetime to the cause of human progress. These Inspirationals have usually left their marks in different parts of human culture in the period they lived - sometimes in the field of science, and sometimes in other fields like art or scripture. Just before the Big Change, one such Inspirational placed a great secret with a man who lived at the time - a man who hadn’t closed off his own channels to Universal wisdom – by chance rather than choice.”
“What kind of secret?”
“Nothing less than the instructions to create a device that would provide Humankind with unlimited supplies of electrical energy.”
“What?”
“That’s right. A device to transform the energy of gravity and the magnetic field of the Earth, into electricity. ‘Free’ power.”
“But this must have been a fantastic treasure in the eyes of the Ancients?”
“Certainly. If you just take a look at the place we are in now, you soon understand that an unlimited supply of energy would have been the greatest gift to such a civilization.”
“But I haven’t heard about any of this before. What happened to this secret? Was it put to use by the Ancients?”
“No. The secret was brought to the grave with the Ancient who were given it. A cold grave. A grave, in fact, located a little further to the southwest of our present location.”
“What? Here? In the ice?” was all Njoro could say, as she was no longer sure whether it really was necessary for her to process all this information at this point. She had wanted to know more, yes, but it didn’t mean that she’d wanted a completely re-written history-lesson from a woman representing a people she’d never heard of, up until she’d just met her moments ago.
“And this, Sister Njoro, is where the importance of your participation becomes evident.”
Pi had stayed quiet for a long time now, but finally spoke again. Njoro had almost forgotten his presence.
“Really? And how is that?”
“Our Ancient friend who received this secret ended his life on Earth in an accident involving one of their flying-machines - a very crude and energy-consuming type of air travel. The wreck was buried in the ice with all the remains of the people inside it and their cargo. The secret is believed to have been noted down in a document that has come to be known as ‘The Scriptures of iX’, which was encoded and stored on an Ancient machine like the ones you can find all around the Golden City. The document is believed to be retrievable - if only we can understand how to extract information from the Ancients’ technology. This is what the Middle Northern forces bribed the seers to reveal, and set out to find before anyone else.”
“And in the race of getting to it first”, Hida continued, “You were our only hope to distract and overcome the highly lethal hired assassin that the R.O.S.E. alliance sent out to collect this treasure. You are the reason we got to it first.”
Njoro felt as if someone hit her in the stomach.
“R.O.S.E.?”
“Research On Soul Evolution – a small but very efficient and progress-hungry Middle Northern entity who’ve taken matters into their own hands. They operate totally independently from the Global Council and use Ancient methods of appealing to people’s greed and personal gain in order to recruit manpower. It was one of their agents that tracked us down and slaughtered the rest of our entourage.”
Njoro stared at Pi in disbelief.
“The Savage? He was ‘the rose’? It wasn’t just a nickname for one of the other entourages, as you told us? You lied to me!”
Pi looked down. Visibly ashamed.
Njoro continued. Very angrily:
“You told us that someone was following us when I could sense it after our first few days in the ice, but you told us all it was nothing but a ‘friendly game’ that had been agreed on, that we had set out from the Archangel in different entourages with different nicknames and were only playing this game to make each other move faster towards the destination. So no one knew that this was a most lethal ‘game’! How dare you? How do you think Mungpuk would feel about this? How do you feel about this? Or do you even feel anything at all about anything at all?”
Pi didn’t smile anymore.
He spoke quietly:
“Dear Njoro. This is the hardest part. Please forgive me, but you had to be kept away from this. For your own protection. And for the success of the whole mission. When you sensed it – and it was inevitable that you eventually would, I simply had to offer you an explanation. Otherwise you wouldn’t have let it go, and would have started following your sensations. But I assure you, all the others knew the risk involved in this. All but you. I am very aware that deception is the worst thing to happen to your kind, as it creates confusion and conflict between your senses and your trust in your surroundings - in this case, me, but I am truly very sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but the least we can do is reveal the whole truth to you now, so your mind might get some peace and you can start seeing clearly again.”
Njoro felt like crying or screaming. A feeling of deception and distrust filled her soul. A terrible feeling. She let go of Pi’s hand and took a deep breath.
“So? Was it worth it?” she said with great efforts to overcome her disappointment.
“Sister Njoro. You can’t possibly imagine how much your efforts have mattered. For all of us.” Hida said in a gentle voice. “There is no way we would have gotten to the site first and secured the Scriptures of iX if you hadn’t overcome the R.O.S.E. assassin. It would have been in their hands by now, and then there might have been no way back.”
Njoro knew she had to return to her room and be alone for a while, but one question forced itself out:
“How did it happen?”
“What?”
“How did I defeat him? What happened to him there in the snow cave? I only tried to heal him.”
“He fell ill, and died.”
“Ill? How?”
“His unbalanced organism couldn’t stand being exposed to you. You’re simply too pure of heart.”
Njoro rose to her feet, and left in silence.

The Golden City

Through the watery blur of her frost-numbed eyes, Njoro could see lights.
A golden glow shone through the blue monotony, and she didn’t know if this was a clear sign of her passing between the worlds for a final time as the woman Njoro from Lhasa - or if it was an actual light source back here in the material world.
Every cell in her body was cold as the grave, and she could barely move anymore, yet the view of the light gave her a final energy boost to crawl across the dry snow in its direction.
As she got closer, she could see that the light came from behind a tall gate set in an entrance to a tunnel leading underground, beneath the surface of the ice.
With the last of her strength, she got up on her feet and stumbled towards the gate – into her death, her rescue – or both.
The enormous metal doors of the gate were wide open, and just as she saw that the light was coming from further down the tunnel beyond, she fell.
She felt so endlessly tired, and just as she drifted off, lying in the cold snow, she thought she could hear voices.
And then there was nothing.

Expelled

An intense energy rush hit Mac, making his body shiver all over as he stepped firmly onto the staircase leading up to the main platform of the gallows.
As he stared coldly into the short future ahead of him, he could feel a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
He was completely fearless.
”Why are you smiling?” The Officer standing at the top of the stairs asked, in a nervous, cracking voice, desperately trying to demonstrate as much authority as he could possibly muster with such a weak and revealing voice. ”Don’t you know that you will die soon?”
”Well,” Mac said, ice cool and unfazed, ”I’ve never been hanged before, at least not as far as I can recollect. It might be a new experience.”
The remark left The Officer looking even more bewildered, trying desperately to avoid looking Mac straight back in the eye.
Two guards grabbed him by his arms and led him to the middle of the execution-device. As one of the guards secured the rope around Mac’s neck, he casually continued: ”And every new experience should be welcomed in this dire dance of mortality, don’t you agree?”
The two guards glanced swiftly at each other, then turned towards The Officer with puzzled, worried looks.
Then no one said anything for a while.
”But, you know …” Mac paused, and jacked his head slowly from side to side as to give his neck a good stretch to fit the rope. ”You are most welcome to join me on the ride, if you’d like.”
The Officer looked him in the eye with a mixture of deep hate and uncontrollable fear.
Mac totally ignored this, and continued:
”With MY looks and YOUR apparent MENTAL capacities, I’m sure we can even make HIStory together.”
The Officer was trembling with anger as he shouted his order.
The trapdoor below Mac’s feet opened.
The rope tightened, and reality shifted.
Everything was trembling and pulsating.
A reddish, flickering light was glowing from within the whole space around him. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere.
He could barely catch a glimpse of his surroundings in the turmoil, but found himself being hurled through a narrow passage of some sort. An illuminated tunnel that seemed to be composed of living flesh and blood.
And then, as suddenly as it had started and without any warning, it was all over.
He got up from the ground he was sitting on. The rope was gone.
He looked around, and found himself standing in the middle of a road he’d never seen before, in a strange little town with even stranger buildings.
Everything else was apparently normal. The sky, the trees, the crisp air. But all objects apart from those directly of Nature all had something unusual about them.
Surely this was also part of the magic of the House Witch!
He decided to ignore the strangeness of the place. He wouldn’t let her cheap tricks get to him and blur his judgment.
After all, he was a man on a mission. He had a simple job to do. It was to keep his focus on the task.
He collected himself, and took a deep breath.
Good.
Then he started walking down the small road.
He passed dusty little buildings with transparent front ends.
There was electricity, and electrically operated devices were all around, so this would be somewhere close to home, and not somewhere shitty down south or eastbound.
He’d actually never seen anywhere that had this much electricity before, come to think of it.
Maybe this was one of the more restricted areas in the Middle-North that he’d not been granted access to before? Shit! If this was the case it would be fantastic! Then they’d really progressed much further than what was being made publically available in the Middle-Northern cities.
But surely, if this was the case, someone from R.O.S.E. would be here to greet him soon?
If not…
Could it be that this was House of Lhasa’s secret polar location that he’d actually set out to find on this mission?
Bloody hell! How about that?
Those fuckers! This base looked like nothing he’d ever seen before. So much for the oh-we’re-so-scared-of-technology that the Traditionalists kept on blabbering about. The cheeky bastards had already built a whole city full of the stuff themselves!
Would you believe it?
Still, it looked quite shit. They had no style, even when they actually approached the future, they still got it all wrong, he concluded.

But what a scam!
It could have been that the Witch had poisoned him and first made him hallucinate and lose his senses temporarily, but that he’d then managed to overcome her, get out of the confusion, and finally made it to target.
He was a survivor, after all.
Mac decided to waste no more time, and get down to business.
He made a mental map of the surroundings within a perimeter of a couple of hundred meters. Not much to register, but just a few buildings down from where he now stood there was a place that seemed full of activity.
He ran towards the place, quickly pulled himself back up against the wall to the building next to the entrance, and waited in silence for a couple of minutes.
But no-one came out or entered, and he could see no guards or armed security.
He decided to play it head-first.
Without making any attempt at camouflaging himself he walked straight towards the building and in through the front door. Cheeky, he thought, but still a successful strategy.
The room was filled with low tables surrounded by chairs, and the walls were covered with meaningless, ugly paintings. To the left of the entrance was a long, tall counter. A few heads turned lazily as he entered, but nobody seemed to react to him being a stranger here at the base. He obviously was playing it right, maybe there were too many faces here to keep track.
After all he hadn’t been able to see any traces of the ice in any direction when he was outside, so the whole place must have been enormous.
He walked over to the counter, and stood himself in front of it as casually as he could, as if to ready himself for something.
He opened his bag and pulled out the memo-box, carefully hiding it in his palm.
He flicked through the pictures on the device, and opened the info-sheet on the target object drawing.
“I’ll be damned!” he whispered to himself below hearing level.
At least half the tables had people leaning over and operating devices exactly like the one that R.O.S.E. had set him out on his mission to secure.
Major problem.
How the hell would he play this now?
From the mission briefing he knew that what they were looking for was of very high priority, and crucial for gathering exclusive knowledge of the past, pre-catastrophic era. Mr. Sykes at R.O.S.E. even used the words “A possible key to unlock the future”.
So what did this information actually tell him?
Probably that something very, very special was contained within the target device.
And what happened to people when they owned something of high value and importance?
They started acting weird. And probably a little paranoid, too.
He’d have to just rush in on this one.
Behind the counter a man was busy preparing the strange black brew they seemed to drink in this place. Mac pretended to be studying the board on the wall.
Why the hell couldn’t they write in Global, and not some fucked up language? He couldn’t read a word.
The man approached him. It was now or never.
“So…” Mac said. “All is good?”
The man stared blankly at him.
Shit! These people were trained. Was his cover about to blow? Mac could feel his pulse accelerate.
“I mean, nothing unusual taking place? No problems?”
“Sorry mate, I really can’t follow you. You gotta speak more slowly. What are you saying? Did you say problem? You have a problem? You Russian, mate? You sound a bit Russian to me.”
Mac considered to rush for the door. This could blow any minute.
The man then gestured to someone sitting by one of the tables.
“Hey Boris! Come over here. This bloke don’t speak any language I know, but he sounds a bit Russian. Can you try to translate?”
A thin bearded man got up and approached them. Probably a guard. Mac thought through his possible moves to disarm him, five he could think of, but just as he was about to place a blow at the side of his neck and run for it the man said, in some strange old tongue: “Help you why come here?”
Mac decided to see if he could talk through this and slowly opened his tightened fist.
“I just wanted to ask whether everything was OK, you know. How things were going with our friend here and his business in general.”
The thin bearded man turned to the man behind the counter.
“He’s definitely not from any part of Russia that was known when I left back in ‘73, but from what I can make out he’s wondering if everything is OK with you and the coffee-shop.”
“If everything’s OK?” the man behind the counter answered. “As if it ever was. Why’s he asking?”
The beard turned to Mac, and in his ancient version of Middle-Northern asked: “He wonder why ask.”
Mac felt that he was gaining back some control over the situation, and decided to continue his pursuit: “Well you know. These days you get a lot of strange people just hanging around all over the place. Suspicious individuals. Up to all sorts of mischief. Anyone like that trespassing these premises?”
The man, whose name he now understood was Boris, spoke back to the counter-man, who answered him:
"Haha! That’s a good one. This guy a stray survivor from the Cold War or something? Suspicious people, eh? I wish something as exciting would happen in this sleepy old town. The only weird attractions we’ve got is Old Miss George and that crazy old raver boy that comes down here every Sunday, and they’re not much of a catch neither of them. One is a toothless and harmless old queen virgin, and the other one’s more of an acid casualty than anything the KGB would have sent to peep behind the Iron Curtain. All he ever does is sit alone at the usual window table drinking coffee, talking to himself for hours before walking around the park talking to the trees and then leaving town again. Not much more to him, really. Come to think of it I haven't seen him for a while, though."
The bearded man named Boris laughed out loud for a while and exchanged some more words with the counter-man, and finally said: “No. Not suspicions here.”
Mac felt defeated and clueless. Then he smiled goofily to the two men, and hastily left the place.
“What now?” Mac thought. “A Mission failed report?”.
It wasn’t like him. Not like him at all.
As he walked around the little town, carefully considering alternative approaches, he gradually started to notice the details of the place. Whatever his next move would be, maybe he should take some time to breathe. This place didn’t seem too bad, and after such a long time in the ice and then all the struggles with the Voodoo of the House Witch in the cave, maybe he needed a little rest and restoration before moving further?
It wasn’t as if anyone here had any suspicions towards him anyway, in fact, he suddenly felt very much at ease here in the little strange village.
Mac walked around the town for a while, and after a stroll by the bank of a nice little stream, he turned around and went back to the place with all the people inside.
After entering the door, he walked straight over to the counter, and without thinking he said to the man behind the counter: "Could I have something to drink, please?"
For some strange reason this time the man seemed to understand perfectly what he was saying.
"The usual?" the man behind the counter answered.
"Please." Mac answered, curious about what the usual was.
The man gave him a cup with a steaming hot, dark liquid. It looked nothing he was used to, but as this was his usual he decided to give it a try.
He walked across the room and sat down by a window table.
Leaning back in the chair, he tasted the hot black substance, being careful not to burn his lips. It tasted completely new, but had the same vague familiar feeling about it that the whole town now seemed to have. He quite liked it.
"This was the strangest of days", Mac thought.
Then he looked out into the fresh autumn air.
He felt calm. Far removed from all the usual alertness and mission-related frustrations.
This was a good place to be, he thought.
Maybe he would just stay here for a while?
At least until he’d figured out his next move.