1
Griffin awoke into a much friendlier environment. The burning light was gone. He clambered out of his bivouac and awkwardly stood up. He pulled the hood off his head and the mask off his face and gazed west. His jaw dropped as he marveled at the spectacular palate of rich, glowing colours emblazoning the ‘big nothing’ above the western horizon. It was just after sunset on Thursday, September 23, 2123.
‘Girls …’ he called out. He heard the sounds of whining from their little half-tents.
‘Come on you two, you’ve got to see this.’
‘It’s too early, mommy.’
‘Just another minute.’
Griffin laughed, ‘Boy you’re funny at wake time. You’ve got to come out and see this.
It’s absolutely spectacular.’
After a couple more whines, Tip and Fin crawled out from beneath their bivouacs.
They stood up, removed their hoods and masks as they looked around, and when they faced west, gasped in awe at the spectacular, desert twilight.
‘Oh my God!’ they both gasped.
Tip began to cry, ‘I never, ever imagined anything so beautiful.’
All three became filled with emotion.
‘I wish dad could see this,’ said Fin sobbing.
The western horizon was airbrushed in fluorescent yellows, oranges, reds, purples and dark blues fading into a star-encrusted black. However, the most outstandingly striking feature was the white crescent of light floating in the sky just beyond all the colours.
‘It must be the Moon,’ said Griffin. ‘You can tell that it’s a sphere. See how the unlit side is plainly visible?’
‘Yes,’ replied the girls in a haunting tone.
‘I think that it is being lit by the Sun and because it is floating in the great nothing off to one side of us, we mainly see the lit side. The dark side must be being lit by the reflected light from our surface, which is also a sphere …’
‘And is called the Earth,’ Fin interjected.
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‘Correctomundo, Fin. That is what it says in RG3’s journal. And remember how it also says that the Moon changes shape from a circle to a crescent and on some nights completely disappears?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Fin.
‘Me too,’ added Tip.
The line of the horizon was not flat, but hilly. They stood on a high, desert plain at an altitude of about 4,500 feet above sea level. The hills directly to the west of them peaked at around 6,000 feet above sea level.
‘Are those hills or mountains, Griff?’ asked Tip.
Griff rubbed his thinly-bearded chin, thought for a while, then replied,
‘Well, that depends, Tippy.’
‘On what?’ both girls asked.
‘On whether there’s anything bigger on the other side of them. If there ain’t, well, then they’re mountains.’
They packed away their bivouacs and sat on the ground to have breakfast. They welcomed the evening coolness. Griffin retrieved the compass from his pack and checked their direction.
‘We might follow the flatness and veer slightly to the south-west and try to skirt around those mountains,’ he suggested pointing at the hills ahead. ‘We should try to avoid rough ground as much as possible.’
2
Exactly one hundred years before, to the day, Joey parked her shadow-black, 500-horsepower Raptor at the back of Burger King, just outside the desert town of Tonopah, Nevada, where she had just filled up with gas. All morning she had been towing her pride and joy, and best friend in the whole world, a midnight-black, Quarter-Horse-Stallion named Fury. She got out and opened the back of the matching horse trailer and let the magnificent beast out. Fury stood at a tall seventeen hands. She brought out a bucket and filled it with water from a nearby tap. It was just after 2.00pm on September 23, 2023.
She looked around. There was nothing but desert country everywhere. There was a valley to the west and a range of hills to the east. She left the stallion un-tethered and free to drink and forage. Fury was the most intelligent horse on the planet at that time who was totally devoted to Joey, his best friend and kindred spirit. She wandered into the
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restaurant for a meal. A young girl working behind the counter noticed the rig and the horse through the window. She commented,
‘Aasum riiiig.’
‘Thanks,’ came the reply.
‘That your stallion?’
‘Yup.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Fury.’
‘Fury? Get outa here!’ exclaimed the girl behind the counter. ‘Like the horse in the TV show?’
‘Yup, that’s right.’
‘That’s pretty crazy. You won’t believe this, but ma daddy weaned me on that show.
What’s your pleasure?’
‘Burger-n-Coke, thank you kindly.’
‘Sho-nuff darlin,’ said the girl. There was no one else in the restaurant. After she brought Joey her meal, she said,
‘You know, sweetie, there’s nuthin but UFO crap on TV, an somethin about a stupid comet. So much bullkaky if you ask me. Most the time I don’t even bother with the damfool thaing anymow.’
She paused and looked longingly at Joey’s horse munching away at a tuft of grass he found. She then turned back to Joey, who was healthily hoeing into her burger, and suggested,
‘You know, you won’t believe this, but I got the show right here. I like to watch it when there ain’t nuthin but crap on TV, which is most the time. You wanna see some while you’re eatin?’
Joey looked up, surprised, and replied with a mouthful of burger,
‘Sure. I ain’t seen that show in ages.’
The girl grabbed her phone, found the file and wi-fied it to the TV.
‘I got it on my phone,’ she said all cool like.
While eight billion people watched a live broadcast about a comet, two horse-loving cowgirls watched a show about a magnificent black stallion. It began, From out of the west, where untamed horses still roam the rugged valleys and canyons, comes Fury, king of the wild stallions. And here, hard riding men still battle the open range
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for a living. Men like Jim Newton, owner of the Broken Wheel Ranch, and Pete, his top hand, who cut his teeth on a branding iron. Wild as Fury is, there’s one human voice he’s learned to love and obey … the voice of the boy who once saved his life, the boy whose unswerving devotion succeeded in taming a savage spirit where spur and lariat failed, Jim Newton’s boy, Joey. There’s a mutual trust and affection that everyone can understand, the eternal story of a noble creature of the wild and of the boy who loves him, a love that’s shared by pint-sized Rodney Jenkins, better known a Pee Wee. But now it’s roundup time and there they go, racing over the range, rounding up the wild herds; men, boys and stallion acting as one, a team working and playing together as only real pals can. This is the range country, the last frontier, where men still challenge nature and keep alive the best traditions of the Old West, and where the free spirit of the wide-open spaces is reflected in the nature of the black stallion known as Fury.
The girl looked out the window at the horse. She observed how he raised his head and looked directly up into the sky. The next thing she saw left her disbelieving her eyes.
The horse suddenly vanished from view. She just had enough time to say, ‘Hey, your horse just disappeared …’ before she completely lost her voice. Her gaze froze to the north as she witnessed the whole universe explode in a burst of intense white light, 17,000 times hotter than the Sun. Seconds later, she, Joey, Burger King, Tonopah, and everything else in Nevada, was vaporized to Kingdom Come.
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As the last vestiges of purple twilight faded into black and the crescent moon hung in the western sky above, Griffin, Fin and Tip set off on their south-westward trek across the parched, desert valley towards the silhouettes of the hills in the distance.
After about an hour and a half of walking, they observed in awe how the Moon had moved in the sky in a westerly direction, following the Sun.
‘It’s properly dark now,’ said Griffin, ‘just the Moon to light our way.’
Moonlight was like daylight to them, a complete departure from the total black they experienced underground. They did not feel a need to break out their LED headlamps to light the way for them. Their eyes adjusted to the darkness far better than surface-dwelling human eyes of old could, although the longer they spent on the surface the worse their night vision would become. They would gradually adapt to the daylight, but the process would be slow, taking as long as a year for total acclimatization. They walked on.
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4
Fury emptied the bucket of water. After his thirst was thoroughly quenched, he glanced into the restaurant and focused onto his ‘kindred’. He could see her in there talking to another human girl. Contented that he knew her whereabouts, he muzzled around the ground, looking for a tasty tuft of grass, when something caught his eye. It was something in the sky. He looked up at the strange thing, when suddenly, faster than suddenly, the strange thing disappeared before his very eyes. He looked over to his kindred and was shocked to see that she and the restaurant, and everything else, including the truck and his trailer, had mysteriously vanished as well. He whinnied and spun around. The first thing he noticed was that the ground beneath his hooves was more slippery, like glass covered with sand, and it cracked under his shoes. He shook his head side to side and his breathing became stressed. He turned and turned, looking for his precious kindred, but she was nowhere to be seen. He whinnied again and reared up on his hind legs. His right hind leg slipped out from beneath him and he nearly fell over. That caused him to calm down somewhat. Despite all his intelligence, he just couldn’t understand what had happened. He thought out to her,
‘Hey … Joey … where did you go? You have forgotten me!’
He more carefully turned on the spot a few times. A less intelligent horse would have allowed himself to become highly distressed by now, and probably panicked, but not Fury. After all, he was the smartest horse alive. He looked around at the ground. There was not one tuft of juicy grass, or any other kind of vegetation, for as far as the eye could see. When he looked in the direction of the Sun, he could see patches of bright reflection of it on the ground, where the sand was blown off the glass.
He had a think. After thinking for a while, he acted. He raised his head and sniffed the air. It was mid-afternoon. He assessed the terrain. He could see nothing but featureless flat plain out to the northwest. He could see that he was on the western slopes of a range of hills that ran from north to south. There was a gap in the hills to the east and another one to the southeast, and there was a big hill due south. He could see flat ground out to the west. It was a valley of sorts and it skirted some distant hills in the southwesterly direction. Everywhere was dry, un-vegetated desert. His ears cocked forward as he focused his instincts on the prevailing elements. He was using his inner compass, sensing for the direction home, which was the Broken Wheel Ranch that was located on the outskirts of Bakersfield, California.
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He became conflicted by two instincts, to wait for his kindred to return, or to leave and head for home. He scanned the distant horizons in all directions and they were all empty. The only sounds were the light gusts of an arid breeze. There was no sign of kindred. He knew that he had to do something or he would end up dying of thirst where he was. All of a sudden, he locked his gaze onto a hill in the distance, in the southerly direction, and carefully trotted off over the slippery surface.
The glass cracked beneath Fury’s hooves as he skillfully traversed the otherworldly landscape. His shiny, black coat glistened in the afternoon glare. He sped up into a canter in places where the glassy surface was covered with more windblown sand. He quickly learnt to skirt around the exposed sheets of slippery, cracked glass. He aimed through a gap between the big hill to the south and a smaller hill just to the west of it. Once past them, he set off southwest, aiming for a gap between two peaks about five miles away.
As he ran, he veered slightly towards the eastern slopes of the right peak, which one hundred years before went by the name of Mount Butte. He wanted to gain some elevation so that he could get a better look at the ground up ahead.
About one hundred feet above the valley, he looked ahead into the distance. There, about 10 miles away, he could see a broad, shimmering white line of a dry bed of a salt lake.
…….
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