* Writing it I get the thrill of creating a world, and for a short time live in it, among the characters in my novels.
* Secondly, I get feedback from the readers of the story. I love to get feedback, email me every day if you like and let me know what you think.
(Updated 11-6-2007)
"It's not dating correctly on the carbon test" sighed John, sticking his pockets deep into his labcoat. There's absolutely no radioactive carbon in the rock, even in the material we're sure came from the ground around it.
"Is that even possible?", Sue questioned.
"Apparently. The machine picks up the signature in everything else I've tested."
"So, what does that mean?"
"On top of the mystery, we have yet another mystery."
Paul interrupted, "Three mysteries, we got the ultrasound results back, it's hollow."
John pulled the paper from Paul's hand, on the paper he could make out the shape of the rock among the static. There was a very clear signature in the results indicating a pocket inside the rock. Spherical it looked, almost too perfectly spherical. "Is it a perfect sphere?" he inquired.
Paul smiled "Yes, within .01%"
"Than it's not natural?" John smiled back.
"Most likely not." Paul agreed.
Sue added, "If it's not natural, and the tests on the rock show it has no carbon, scorch marks most likely from atmospheric entry, and was found in a fairly large crater, can we assume ..."
"No assumptions yet, we don't know anything, other than we have a lot more unknowns than we have knowns. We all have our pet theories, but let's stick with more study until we're sure.
"Where's Derrick? I want to see his mass spectromiter results" John requested.
"He stepped outside for some air, I think the machine was still running the tests."
"Ok, I'll go get him." John accepted.
Outside, Derrick was sitting on the back porch of a small white single story house. His thoughts were drifting as he watched the shadow of a cloud slowly creep down the driveway towards the small gravel road. The grass scrubland, and gently sloping hills beyond that road were a sharp, but very welcome contrast to the 5 person lab beneith the old generic house.
Derrick suspected he was working for the government, but his paycheck always claimed he was working for "United Analysis and Survey Consulting". It didn't matter to him, he was always excited to take things apart and put them together, to find out where things came from, and why. If someone was willing to pay him, and give him excellent equipment to do so, he was more than happy to take that money.
The call had come in at 4am. The phone rang, his Caller ID indicated a blocked number. Usually he wouldn't have answered it, and let it go right to his machine, but it was 4am, which meant it was either important, or a wrong number. A wrong number at this time of night was likely to be someone drunk, which had it's entertainment value.
"Hello?" he had answered, trying to sound more asleep than he really was so he wouldn't be expected to be a quick thinker.
"Sir," the voice on the other end responded, a voice which was neither drunk, or fooling around. "Sir, we have an analysis job that requires your expertice." He didn't ask for Derrick by name, but there was an acknowlegement in his voice that showed he recognized the voice, which was odd, as Derrick didn't recognize the stranger's voice.
"What is it, something interesting?"
"We're not sure. It was found in the Nevada Dessert by aeriel radar. It reflected a signal back that was 2.3 times more powerfull than the plane itself was sending out"
"Ok, that's going to fit well into my interesting category. When does the job start?"
"As soon as you put pants on, and step out into the van parked in your driveway I am calling you from."
"Oh. I'm not the only one interested in this then, am I?"
"No sir, I can assure you I wouldn't be here at 4am if it was just a curiousity to you and myself."
"I'll be right out."
Derrick dressed, picked up his laptop, pda, cell phone, external battery pack, his thumb drive. He turned back to pick up his keys that he had forgotten. Now that he was out of the bedroom, he could hear the smooth idle of the van waiting for him in the drive way. Putting on shoes, he dropped his keys, then his pda. Sticking his arm under the couch he retireved a small duffle bag, which he hurridly put his personal technology into, added a change of clothes. Flipping out the light, Derrick fumbled for the box of douhnuts on the counter with one hand, while opening the side door with the other.
"Hello Derrick." a voice said, holding the door open.
"Morning." Derrick mumbled, then asked the driver for his name.
"David." He offered his hand as a formality, knowing Derrick had no free hands.
Derrick handed him the box of doughnuts. "Doughnut?"
David smiled, took the box of doughnuts, and led Derrick to the van.
"I hope you're more awake than I am." Derrick offered, as he blinked to try to clear the vision in his eyes.
"Just got on shift 3 hours ago, slept well last night."
"Great. How long a drive do we have?"
"Twenty minutes tops."
"Local lab?" Derric wondered.
"Nope, 45 minute plane ride, and then a 45 minute drive from there."
"Which lab?"
"31A"
"Oh, I see. This is important as well as interesting."
"Yes."
The ride was quick, the plane was sitting on the runway when they arrived, jets alive and sighing rippled air. David led Derrick onto the plane, his seat was the front seat on the small plane. David then opened the door to the cabin, and closed it behind him. The plane roared to life, and they were quickly airborn. Slightly less quickly they were landing again. David came out of the cabin, and led Derrick to another identical van.
"Driver and Pilot?" Derrick asked.
"Keeps the number of loose ends to a minimum."
They drove away from the airport, down paved, and then gravel roads, and finally to a small white house in the middle of gently rolling fields.
"Here you go, Lab 31A"
Derrick was met at the front door by John, who introduced himself as project lead, and led to the back down the wooden stairs, and into the sealed lab.
"Derrick?" John called through the back door.
"Back here" Derrick answered.
"That spectrometer report done yet?" John asked.
"Nope, about, um..." he looked at his watch, "Yes! About 5 minutes ago."
"What are the results?" John asked.
Derrick pulled out his PDA, waited for it to connect to the network, and glared at it. "That's odd. Most of the readings are normal compounds. Oxygen, carbon, iron, etc. Rocks basically. Here's an unusual spike, the system can't identify the isotope. Maybe some impossibly heavy carbon, or oxygen, something with way too many neutrons for it's structure. Something that unballanced shoudn't be stable for more than the blink of an eye, but this rock shows that almost 20% of it is made of this atom."
"Is that possible?"
"Obviously."
"What would make something like this?"
"If I were trying to make it, I'd fill a suitcase with money, and see if tha almighty will take a bribe. I can't think of any other way."
"So, we have something impossible down in the lab?"
"Clearly not, as it exists. What we're missing is the understanding of how it could exist. It's not impossible, we're just ignorant."
John handed over the morning's research, showing the hollow inside the rock, and the carbon dating results. "What do we do with this?"
Derrick pondered the results for a few moments. "Perhaps we could try various radiation bombardment, with the hope that it doesn't destabalize the impossible atoms in the rock."
"Ok, let's go to the lab and try some things."
John headed down first, Derrick sighed happily and followed him, a good mystery like this was hard to find.
"Sue, can you get some of the Gamma sources, we're going to see what a little radiation does to this thing."
"Sure, right on it."
"Paul, can you put it into a sample container so we can isolate it?"
Paul picked the rock up gingerly, and as he said "Sure." tripped over a loose wire on the floor. For a moment he juggled the rock and himself, falling gracefully, but as his balance shifted, and the rock went flying as he tried to steady himself.
Each person in the room uttered their best wearword, as they watched the rock clunk against the metal shelving, and onto the floor.
"It's intact." John said, "Paul, pick it up."
Paul picked the rock up, it crumbled a bit, and he carried it carefully over to the sample container. As he was putting it into the container, the rock popped, the bottom cleaved off, and a shining sphere dropped into the sammple container.
"What's that?" Sue asked.
"I'm not sure." Paul said, setting to remainder of the rock off to the side so they could look at the sphere.
"Look at that, it looks brighter than the room, the light patterns almost look like water rippling across the surface of it."
Paul opened his mouth as to say something, staggered forward, caught his ballance for a brief moment, then fell to the floor making a gurgling noise, which ended with a thump, a groan and his body motionless on the ground.
Derrick stared a moment at the sphere, he'd never seen an object that looked so beautiful, yet at the same time projected such a feeling of dread that he would have broken his own leg to get away from it. He darted up the stairs, and into the back yard, the feeling subsided to a minor caution. Sue followed closely behind Derrick her face pale and bloodless, her motions more animal than human.
"John stayed behind, he was going to try to get it back into the rock."
"NO!" Derrick screamed, unsure of why he knew that it was a bad idea. Dispite the feeling of dread he rushed back into the house down the stairs screaming at the top of his lungs "John, don't touch it."
John had the sample container in his hands, and was begining to roll the sphere back towards the hollow rock. "I've almost go this, it'll be ok." the sphere rolled into the hollow in the rock, the feeling of dread vanished.
"There we go, feels better already."
"It scares me beyond reason." Derrick stated.
"Me too." John responded, "Let's get out of here." and he stepped away from the rock.
John wasn't two feet away from the sphere when it lurched, and the rock shifted, it's structure crumbling slightly and tipping the open face towards the table. The sphere rolled forward, teetered on the edge of the rock, the feeling of dread rising, it fell forward towards the table, and John reached out his hand to push it back into the hollow. As his hand touched the sphere, the peak of the ripples turned black as night, the spaces between covered with an impossibly bright glowing light.
Derrick ran, behind him he knew John was dead, he could hear the gurgling of the death crawling into John's body. Then the body hit the floor, Derrick was almost up the stairs. On the patio ahead of him he saw Sue's eyes, they were blank, her throat was making a gurgling sound as she fell towards the ground. Derrick, stopped, standing in the middle of the patio. He picked up his phone, calling the head office in New York. The call rang twice, and picked up, "UASC Research branch, this is Gina ..." the voice cut off abruptly, as Derrick listened horrified to the sound of dying from over 2000 miles away.
He hung up as Gina hit the floor. A sick feeling crawled through his body, yet he held on long enough to call the one foreign number he had programmed into his phone, a research lab in Sydney Australia that he had consulted for over the internet once or twice. The phone at the other end was picked up, sounded more like it was knocked off the hook, and Derrick again listened to the gurgling sound of death, on the other side of the world.
He looked down at Sue's body, no blood, no bruising, just dead. That's when the world was snuffed out from his view, as if he had been enveloped in tar. Derrick still felt his body, but the sounds, light, warmth, cold and reality of the world vanished from around him.
There was a feeling of being lifted out of the universe, and being pushed a great distance. Suddenly he was standing in waist high grass, the ground beneith him was soggy, and he was slowly sinking into it. He stepped foward, slogging through the marshy ground, until he reached higher ground, where the earth beneith his feet didn't try to pull him into it. Around him trees grew tall, and the grass covered everthing from horizon to horizon. There was no house, no barn, no road. The curves of the hills were less than where he had been, but the trees and plants growing upon them were wilder. This land looked untouched by human hands.
He looked at the hills in the distance, they were covered in trees, no roads. There were no planes in the sky, no contrails from where they had been. The sun was just on the horizon, inching towards the far side of the planet, ready to plunge him into darkeness again, this one not so absolute.
He trudged along the ridge of the hill, sticking to the high dry ground, and moved towards the hills, with luck he could find shelter, and
not find out what kind of life stalked through these hills. He walked for almost an hour as the sun dipped below the horizon. The moon above was bright and lit his way, so he was able to keep going until he reached the forest, and found a cluster of trees to huddle against. Fortunately the air was warm, and he didn't need to make a fire to keep warm. Once huddled into the trees, he looked up at the moon that had lit his way, it was the same moon he had grown up with, same craters, same shadows. He hadn't traveled anywhere at all, but he still had the sense had had traveled a great distance. He fell asleep watching the stars.
(Updated 11-7-2007)
A sharp noise woke him from his sleep, and he looked around. Silence filled the air around him, as his ears strained to hear anything that was out of place. Snap, a branch cracked far behind him. Derrick spun around, peering at the darkness where the crack had sounded. Snap, again, and again. Peering into the darkness, he realized there was a light in front of him, a glow, orange and warm feeling. He hurridly stood up, and started picking his way through the trees, the orange glow getting brighter as he closed in on it. Where there was fire, and breaking branches, there would be people. Maybe he had found some campers, and they would be able to show him how to get back to civilization.
He began making noises as he approached the camp, no sense in being shot because he startled them. "Hello, I was lost, and saw your camp fire." and "My name is Derrick, I'm happy to see you."
Finally a voice came back, the accent was strange, but understandable if Derrick listened carefully enough. "Hello friend. We would be glad to to have you around our fire this evening.
"Good to hear friendly words, I am almost there" Derrick called, as he manuvered around a tree. Stepping out of the trees into the clearing, he blinked his eyes at the brightness of the fire. Night vision adjusted, and he saw the group of men surrounding the fire. There were at least twenty of them, dressed in leather tunics and leather boots. With mugs in their hands, they bid Derrick a cheerfull welcome to their camp.
"Well met! I and Rodrick leader of the hunters. Your accent is strange Derrick, where do you come from?" inquired the best dressed among the group.
"I'm from the US, I grew up in Georgia, and spent a lot of time in New York."
"I have not heard of these villages, no doubt they are very far away."
Derrick pondered for a second, suddenly feeling that the road he was looking for must be far away. "I had thought anybody I might meet would have heard about them, they are large cities. But perhaps I am further away from home than I believed."
"I have traveled long and far, and have never heard of such cities. You must have traveled far indeed. Even your style of dress is foreign to these parts."
Derrick looked down at his jeans and tshirt, imediately loosing all hope that he had simply stumbled upon a group of historical recreationists. These people were the people that lived here, they were not pretending. Derrick shuddered inwardly, he was a great distance from home. His mind began to run through the possibilities, alternate universe, dead and in some sort of afterlife, thrown to the past, or the future, dreaming, insane, drugged and hypnotized. It would take some work to narrow down the choices, some he may never be able to disprove.
"This is common dress where I come from, I am feeling very far from home."
"Then tonight, you may eat at our fire, and drink with my men, tomorrow we hunt, then we will go back to our village."
Derrick found himself handed a piece of cooked meat, bare handed. Into his other hand was thrust a rough clay mug, filled with something green. The meat filled his belly, and the drink quieted his thoughts so the thoughts of "Did everyone die?" and "Did they all come to a place like this?" could be blurred out by the cheerfull yelling of hunters.
Morning came too early for Derrick, the sun pried him from sleep, and the thundering in his head told him he'd had too much of the green beverage to drink last night. In a way, he was surprised to find himself still in this place, with these people, he had idly thought he might wake up somewhere else.
After a breakfast of cooked oats, and dried fruit, the hunters separated into pairs, Derrick went with the leader and his hunting partner. They used spears to hunt deer and some sort of a cross between buffalo and cow.
"So, you use spears to hunt these animals?" Derrick asked.
"Of course, we can't throw rocks at them, or run after then and cut them with a stone blade. This is much better."
"How about a bow and arrow?"
"A what?"
Derrick explained a bow and arrow to Rodrick, who didn't quite grasp the concecpt. Derrick picked up a branch from the ground, borrowed a thin strip of leather, and fashioned a barely functional bow. He took another stick, and shot it 30 feet away with little effort.
"That doesn't look much better." the man remarked.
"This is just to show you, I can make a better one if I find the right wood."
"Show me, I would like to see that."
While his hunting party went and hunted, Derrick stayed behind at the camp, using a stone axe, and stone knife to cut and shape a branch from a nearby tree. He hoped somewhere in this place there was someone with a rotary tool, but he'd settle for a metal knife, even if he had to make it himself.
After time, Derrick had turned a branch and some leather strips into a bow, he smiled as the string twanged when he flicked it with his finger. Some straight branches growing nearby he fashioned into arrows and used strips of bark securred into a groove on the tail as fins. The bark wouldn't last over repeated shots, but it would work fine for a demonstration.
He had a spearhead from one of the broken spears, it was a little big for the arrow, but it should work. He made two other arrows, using whatever rock he could find in the area, nothing that was a perfect arrow head, but enough to show it would work.
After his crafting, he took his arrows, and bow and headed out towards where the hunters were hunting. He held the bow and arrow aloft and showed it to Rodrick. "Well, it looks pretty, but does it work?"
"Let's find a deer" Derrick offered.
It took amost 4 hours of trudging through the trees and grasses until they found a herd of deer, Rodrick motioned to Derick to try to procede. Derrick nocked the arrow in the bow, pulled back, aimed as carefully as he could, and just to be safe shot towards a group of deer that were close to each other.
Twang. The arrow rocketed away, towards the deer, he didn't hit the deer he had been aiming for, but the one next to it, the deer surrounding it ran, as did the injured derr, but much slower. Derrick shot another arrow, the distance to the deer was greater, and he missed. He nocked the 3rd arrow, running after the deer, which was moving away faster than he could run, he shot the arrow, while running, and missed by twenty feet. He kneeled down on the grass to catch his breath when Rodrick walked up to him.
"I'm not a great hunter, and I haven't used a bow and arrow for a long time. I failed." Derrick huffed between breaths.
"Look again." Rodrick smiled.
Derrick stood up, and found the deer had run another hundred feet, and fallen. In utter shock, and amazement he jumped up into the air, threw his hands up and shouted "Whoohoo!"
"You've done better today than I have, and I've been hunting since I was twelve. Will you make me a bow and teach me how to use it?"
"Of course. Will you teach me what to do with that deer now that I've killed it?"
"You come from a strange place. To know about bows, but not skinning a deer."
"I was not a hunter, I made and learned things for the good of my people."
"Will you make things for my people? It would help us very much." Rodrick asked excitedly.
"I need to find out why I'm here, and why I ended up here. As long as staying with your people does not interfere with my questions, I will stay and help."
"Thank you. Now it's time to learn to skin a deer. The walk to the village is long, and we will need to leave soon to return home before the sun sets."
There are some things a computer using, scientist with two PHD's, probably working for the government, is not prepared for. He butchered the job of butchering the deer, but in the end Rodrick was happy with the work Derrick had done.