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It was the morning of Saturday, September 23, 2023. Clint Rodgers, aka Cowboy, who was the fittest, led the group of seventeen up the steep southern slope of Pike’s Peak, which was located in the Sierra Nevada mountain range due east of San Francisco.
Following him were his girlfriend, the actress Lauren Cole, Tommy Jones, the alien contactee and time shifter, Jonesy’s wife Lori and their four girls, Carla, Clara, Catherine and Connie, Snake and his girlfriend, Trixie, Dirk DeRongo and his girlfriend, Inga, Ludwig and his wife, Ivana, Ace and his Italian girlfriend, Johanna, and trailing at the rear came Melvin, the cinematographer. They each carried a heavy backpack, which was full of survival gear, and wore tough, all-weather mountain clothes.
‘Nine years today, be bound to your family on Pike’s Peak, east of San Francisco.’
That was what the alien lady told Jonesy as she flew next to him, as he flew circles above her space ship in his trike. That was nine years before, to the day. He managed to video her on his iPhone. A few days later, he showed the footage to Snake, his old school chum, who saw plenty of potential in it and hired Ludwig, a director, to organise a crew to film a documentary dealing with the event. They produced a total of eight documentaries in the following nine years. The documentaries were huge hits all over the world making Snake, Jonesy and the rest of the crew wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. As the project progressed from year to year, the individuals in the crew grew closer, becoming less of a crew and more of a family. And so it eventuated that they all decided that they would follow the alien lady’s instructions and be on top of Pike’s Peak on the 23rd of September, 2023, all together, all bound to each other with rope because one of the group, Ludwig, had a theory that Jonesy would be time shifted into the future and that he would pull anyone, or anything, that was bound to him, through time with him.
They huddled in a group on top of Pike’s Peak as Jonesy tied them together via their wrists. Some of them glanced at the empty truck parked way down the slope on the trail.
It had been their transport from their house in Pinecrest Lake, which was located five or so miles down the road.
‘What time is it?’ asked Trixie.
Snake looked at his watch and replied,
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‘Quarter past one, cupcakes, west coast time. Less than ten minutes to go.’
‘I’m frightened, daddy,’ said Connie, the youngest of Jonesy’s girls.
‘There’s nothin to be frightened about, sweetheart, cause we got it all worked out.’
He gathered his family into a tight bundle and hugged them all. ‘Besides, your daddy is here now an he’d never let anythin bad happen to you, ever.’
They all grouped into a tight bundle, hugged each other and gazed skyward.
‘There it is,’ exclaimed DeRongo, ‘there’s the comet, right on time and right on target.’
They all stopped breathing as they observed the huge menace appear in the sky directly above and slightly to the east of them. Then, in the blink of an eye, like an edit in one of their documentaries, the comet disappeared and they suddenly found themselves buried waist-deep in pristine white snow.
‘Holy Toledo,’ exclaimed Snake, ‘I don’t remember it snowin.’
Ludwig burst out laughing in a state of total euphoria,
‘It’s happened!’
Everyone started laughing, cheering, high fiving and hugging each other.
‘There you go girls,’ said Jonesy in a reassuring voice, ‘Told’ja we’d be OK.’
They dug themselves out of the snow and untied the rope that connected them.
When everyone was untied and free of the snow, Snake came up to Jonesy, faced him, placed his hands on his shoulders, looked deeply into his eyes and declared,
‘This comes from each an every one of us, Jonesy, thank you compadre, we all owe you our lives and are indebted to you for as long as we live.’
Jonesy, feeling somewhat embarrassed, replied,
‘Swear an oath, Snake, you ain’t usually one for so much bullshittin.’
Everyone laughed. Cowboy pointed down the hill and observed,
‘Look, the truck is gone!’
Melvin pointed north-east. ‘Look at the black cloud in the distance.’
Everyone looked in that direction.
‘It looks like an active volcano,’ said Ludwig. ‘It appears to be hundreds of miles away.’
‘It might be Yellowstone,’ suggested Jonesy.
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‘Look at the way it rises and then bends due east in the jet stream. That would be at least 25,000 feet high. The smoke stack looks pretty wispy, though. I reckon that that volcano has done its worst and is in the process of shutting down.’
‘Look over there,’ said Trixie in a puzzled voice. She pointed due east. ‘I thought I saw somethin flash in the sky.’
‘Where, cupcakes?’ responded Snake.
‘There, right there,’ she pointed again, ‘there, in the sky.’
‘Oh yeah,’ exclaimed DeRongo, ‘I see it! There it is! I think it’s headed this way!’
‘It’s your aliens, Jonesy,’ exclaimed Ludwig.
They all huddled together in a tight group, all completely mesmerised by the approaching flying object. As it approached closer, Jonesy declared,
‘It’s the same silver disk that has been visitin Green River over the years.’
The exquisite craft slowed and came to a levitating stop about 50 feet to the east of them. Its surface glinted in the afternoon sun as a panel opened on its upper hull. A human, dressed in a body-hugging, electronic suit, that completely covered him from head to toe, floated out of the opening in the space ship, flew down and landed in the midst of them. The alien pulled a pair of goggles off his eyes and a balaclava off his head and let them hang behind his neck. All the females skipped a heartbeat as he revealed his handsome face. He was tall, about 6’2”, and broad across the shoulders. His skin was either dark or deeply-tanned and he wore his sun-bleached, brown hair shoulder length.
Everyone was immediately struck by his self-assured demeanour. He smiled and enquired in a most manly tone, ‘Is everyone OK?’
That set them all off. Seventeen voices fired off with every kind of question imaginable. It was impossible to make anyone out. He smiled and waited for them to calm down. He fully understood their excitement. Finally, unable to control himself anymore, he broke into a hearty belly laugh. Gradually, one by one, they all stopped jabbering. He looked warmly at all their faces and introduced himself.
‘Hello, my name is Noah and I come from a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, called Rama. Rama is almost identical to Earth. It is my sincere pleasure to meet you all.’
That set them all off again. Noah smiled and patiently waited for the kerfuffle to subside. Eventually Ludwig, who everyone considered to be the most eloquent in the group, asked the first question.
‘Have we been time shifted?’
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‘Affirmative. It is the 23rd of September, 2123.’
That set them all babbling again. Noah couldn’t help but laugh. After they all settled down again, Ludwig asked the next question.
‘What happened to all the people?’
Noah looked at them all, shrugged his shoulders and replied,
‘I only just got here myself. I haven’t really had a chance to look around, except for the hellhole that remained after the comet hit. There was nothing alive in there. I suspect that everyone is gone, but I don’t know.’
‘Gone? You mean dead?’ Jonesy asked.
‘Pretty much, but life is full of surprises. I guess that we won’t know for sure until after we’ve done some exploring.’
Lori, Jonesy’s wife, asked Noah,
‘Why was my husband chosen to be saved? Why not someone else?’
Noah looked surprised by the question. He thought for a moment, then replied with a question.
‘How would you describe your husband in a couple of words?’
Lori thought about it and said, ‘Kind and loving, and a little crazy.’
‘There you go,’ said Noah, ‘and I believe that he has had some experience with LSD.
That made him a most excellent candidate to interact with fully telepathic people such as the Rama.’
Jonesy grinned a cheeky grin,
‘See, pumpkin, it weren’t all bad like you thought.’
She looked at him like she was looking at a mischievous child. Noah observed,
‘I see that you are all very well prepared.’
‘Snake’s the organiser,’ said Cowboy.
‘Snake? What a colourful name. Which one of you is Snake?’ Noah held out his hand.
Snake stepped forward and shook it.
‘I’m Snake, an it’s nice to actually meet you after all these years.’
‘Ditto to that, Snake. How are you set for supplies?’
‘We’ve got about two weeks’ worth on our backs an there might be a container buried in the ground down the mountain in Pinecrest Lake, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to find it after all these years. We could go for a lot longer if we could find the container.’
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‘I see,’ said Noah in a thoughtful voice. He paused, then continued, ‘Firstly, I need to fly to Australia to hook up with other survivors, then I will return and join you for a short time. Give me three days. You may witness the occasional ship traversing the sky.’ He looked at their weapons. ‘I see that you are well armed. Er, it is my guess that there are, at best, around about a hundred-odd thousand Earth humans left on the planet at this time. That number will more than likely dwindle in the short term for a variety of reasons.
Many of those reasons could not have been foreseen by anyone. All in all, there is certainly plenty of room for everyone and there should never be a need for any of you to compete with anyone for anything.’
‘A hundred-odd thousand?’ exclaimed Ludwig. ‘There used to be eight billion.’
Noah shook his head and sighed,
‘Yes, that was one nasty comet. So, you will all be all right for a few days?’
‘I think so, Noah,’ replied Snake.
‘We’d better get down off this mountain before we start feeling the cold,’ suggested DeRongo.
‘Yes,’ Noah agreed, ‘you should try to get yourselves below the snowline before dark. I must go now, but I will find you in three days or maybe three and a half. Until we meet again then …’
They watched him pull his balaclava and goggles over his head and launch into the sky like Superman. He re-entered his ship, the panel closed and the ship literally disappeared from view.
‘That was incredible,’ said DeRongo.
‘We don’t wanna spend a night in the snow if we can help it,’ said Cowboy.
‘You never said nothin about snow, Snake,’ said Trixie.
‘Well, I ain’t no Nostradumbass, cupcakes. How was I supposed to know there was gonna be snow in the future?’
They partially ploughed through, partially slid down, the snowy mountainside. The heavy packs made the going more difficult.
‘Everything looks different,’ observed DeRongo. ‘It’s like were coming down a completely different mountain.’
‘We seem to be higher, but who could be sure?’ added Ludwig.
They slid down the slope dodging huge boulders along the way.
‘There are no trees. Where are the trees?’ Jonesy asked.
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Melvin took a look down the slope through his binoculars. He was looking at the treeline.
‘I can’t make it out too clear, Jonesy, but there don’t appear to be any old trees left standin down there. We still got about a thousand feet to go to get below the snowline.’
‘I can’t get over how everything looks different,’ Jonesy replied.
The sky was a clear, deep blue. A light, westerly breeze waffled up the slope. It was approaching 3.00pm and the afternoon sun warmed the western side of the Sierra Nevada Range enough to generate a long, cumulus cloudstreet stretching southward for as far as the eye could see.
They could feel the air getting warmer as they descended down the mountain. They made their first camp right on the edge of the snowline. They barely had enough time to set up their tents before it became too dark to see. They cooked their freeze-dried meals on top of their small butane stoves and used LED lights for vision.
‘At least we don’t have to worry about water,’ said Ludwig.
‘How far do you reckon it is to Pinecrest, Jonesy?’
‘About three miles as the crow flies, I reckon, Snake.’
…….
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