1
It was Friday, October 8, 2123. Everyone, except for Fury, was fast asleep in the frigid darkness of the predawn. There had been talk the previous day, amongst the men, of the pragmatism of a timely evacuation from the Pinecrest camp.
‘It’s gonna get unbearable freezin up here,’ said Snake.
‘All the lake will be good for in the middle of winter will be ice skating,’ suggested Ludwig.
‘And we got no skates,’ said Cowboy.
‘We might havta move,’ said Jonesy looking at his wife and daughters.
In the end it was far more the cold than the radiation that swung their minds towards Noah’s relocation idea.
‘I never hunted kangaroo before,’ said Melvin.
Inga, who was Dirk DeRongo’s girlfriend and was very worldly, announced that she had eaten kangaroo before. ‘It’s like eating cardboard, dahlink,’ she said with a scowled-up face.
Fury enjoyed free rein around the Pinecrest camp. No one bothered to tie him down or attempted to control him. He could come and go as he pleased. Occasionally, during the period while everyone waited for Griffin’s return, he wandered off and explored the country for miles around. He found pockets of the sweetest grasses to eat, to which he often tended to return. However, most of the time he stayed close to the camp and kept company with the humans. He mostly hung around Jonesy’s tent because that was where Tip and Fin were staying. Jonesy and Lori took the twins in and almost immediately adopted them as their own. Clara, Catherine and Connie rapidly became their best friends and constant companions. Fury had preferred and loved the company of young girls ever since he was a colt. The girl he loved most was his precious, however he hadn’t seen her for some time.
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While everyone slept, Fury wandered down to the lakeshore for a drink of water.
Before he drank, he marvelled at the undistorted reflection of the star-encrusted firmament on the mirror surface of the lake. Each shining little point of light was rendered
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perfectly. Even though he was the most intelligent horse that had ever lived, he nonetheless could not understand what he was looking at. He did not know enough to even think about it. He did, though, like all animals, experience a fundamental, impish glee in the midst of it all, although he couldn’t understand that either.
As he admired the stars in the mirror, and just as he was about to take that drink, something unusual caught his eye. There, in the reflection, he observed one of the shining little lights moving while all the rest remained completely still.
3
Three days after leaving Griffin with Mimo, Noah and Hether returned.
They had spent the time frolicking together within the magical Delphian Forest. For three days and nights Noah forgot that he was no longer a child. For three days and nights he lived the life of an Ilf, flitting about like a bird, relishing in the delights of sacred delicacies and magical entheogens. He also took much pleasure in the stunning beauty of Hether herself, with whom he enjoyed numerous naked swims in a variety of sacred pools. And yes, there was lovemaking.
Upon their return, Hether initially, as was the custom, greeted Mimo in the mind plane. Following this telepathic greeting, the heavy, old door opened, with its customary long squeak, revealing Mimo standing there.
‘It still be a might curious, I be thinkin,’ she said referring to the door. ‘How be thee?’
‘We be most fine, Mimo. How be thee?’ Heather replied.
‘There be good news, there be. Griffin be fine,’ Mimo answered.
Everyone smiled as Noah and Hether entered Mimo’s stone cottage in the tree. They could see, through a partially open door, Griffin lying asleep in Mimo’s bed.
‘He be restin,’ explained Mimo. ‘I fixed him,’ she added, ‘I fixed him but good.’
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Fury watched as the softly-glowing, almond-shaped, sky lantern almost, but not quite, merged with its reflection above the centre of the lake.
The intergalactic cruiser dimmed its light as it came to a soundless hover.
‘We’ll wait till they wake up,’ said Noah. ‘How are you feeling by the way?’
‘Like I’ve been born for the third time,’ Griffin replied.
‘I am certainly pleased to hear that.’
In a brief flash, Noah picked up the residue of a memory from Griffin. The memory was that of a canopy of a small tree that was being suffocated by a parasitic vine. And he
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felt the vine being stripped out of the canopy from between all the branches and leaves.
The feeling was like the vine was being stripped from his own body, from between his own muscles and sinews. Strangely, for such a seasoned telepath as he, this experience, which was actually a residue of Mimo, was something quite new and illuminating.
5
Even as a boy, Jonesy was an early riser who loved the great outdoors. One of his favourite things was to be sitting by his campfire next to his motorbike, all alone out in the desert, miles from the noise of humanity, sipping on a hot cup of coffee, waiting for the sun to rise. This, as much as anything else, gladdened his soul to its core.
While still in high school, he learnt to grow pot. He sold most of what he grew and with the proceeds he bought himself a Triumph Scrambler, just like the one that Steve McQueen rode. McQueen was one of his boyhood heroes. Two years before the state of California allowed him a motorcycle licence, Jonesy packed his backpack, put on his helmet and goggles, fuelled up and took off for the deliverance of the Mojave Desert. He traded a couple of pounds of dope for a .44 Magnum with an old codger he knew up the street. The poor old bastard was dying of cancer so he wasn’t going to need it any more, however the reefer came in really handy because it helped to alleviate his symptoms.
Jonesy chose the .44 Magnum because it was the gun used by Clint Eastwood, his other boyhood hero, in all those Dirty Harry movies. Primarily he wanted the gun to scare off marauding coyotes that occasionally threatened him out in the desert. If they got too close, he ‘blew their brains out’. He always picked off the leader. This usually tended to scatter the pack. In general, he disliked killing. It was not part of his nature. He actually needed to be physically threatened to become lethal.
He carried the Magnum in a leather holster strapped to the left side of the motorbike. It hung between the gas tank and his left knee. He learnt to shoot with his left hand because he wanted to be able to draw and fire the gun while riding his bike. His right hand was always on the throttle in those situations.
One time, as he was rolling down a desert highway on his Triumph, a crazy, ugly
‘sonabitch’ in a matt-black Mustang pulled up beside him on the left side of the otherwise empty road. The driver wound down his window and made threatening overtures at Jonesy for no reason. The ‘psycho’ even tried to run him off the road one time. Well, Jonesy drew the .44 Magnum out of its holster, with his left hand, and pointed it at the driver’s head. The driver’s attitude instantly changed. Jonesy then aimed at and shot out the
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Mustang’s right front tire. The Mustang swerved and Jonesy watched, in his rear vision mirror, as it rolled over and over in a cloud of desert dust. He smiled, blew the smoke out of the end of the barrel, like Clint might have done, re-holstered his pistol and blasted up the long, desert highway towards the distant horizon. He was only sixteen when that happened.
6
It was early and it was cold. Jonesy dressed warmly and stuck his head through the tent opening. There was a hint of predawn light above the eastern horizon and it was absolutely calm. Immediately, prior to anything else, his attention was drawn in by the softly-glowing space ship levitating above the centre of the lake. For a moment his half-asleep brain struggled to kick itself over. He just stood there, frozen in space, until a thought emerged.
‘Noah?’
His mini trance was finally broken by the arrival of Fury who gently muzzled his shoulder.
‘I do believe they’re back,’ he said speaking to the horse. He had no idea that the horse actually understood him. The spaceship remained motionless. Jonesy stood there for a short while waiting for something to happen, and when nothing happened, he decided to proceed with his ritual morning routine of starting the campfire.
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Melvin poked his head out of his tent. Like every other morning, he saw Jonesy tending to the fire. Unlike every other morning, though, there was a spaceship levitating just above the water out in the middle of the lake. He grabbed a hold of Carla’s foot and gave it a good shake, rousing her out of her sleep.
‘They’re back, hon,’ he whispered.
‘Who’s back?’ she asked drowsily.
‘Noah and maybe Griffin.’
‘In their spaceship?’
‘Yeah.’
She scrambled out of bed and joined him outside.
‘Oh, I hope so,’ she said, ‘I so hope that he is alive. I prayed every night for his life.’
She scuttled over to her parent’s tent and woke everyone up. That set off a chain reaction around the camp and before long everyone ended up standing around the fire,
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trying to keep warm, with their eyes firmly fixated on the space ship. Tip and Fin stood either side of Fury down by the lake. Both the girls were already dressed in their GTT
overalls, with the hoods up and face masks and goggles at the ready for the burning rays of the imminent sunrise.
In the midst of the fire crackles, a voice whispered,
‘Look, it’s moving … it’s coming this way.’
The ship silently drifted towards them. It came to a stop levitating a foot above the water at the edge of the lake.
‘I think you ought to go first, Griffin,’ Noah suggested. ‘They are all waiting for you.’
‘How long till the sun comes?’ Griffin asked.
‘Not long,’ replied Noah.
‘I better dress for the burning light then.’
‘Certainly, Griffin, you do that.’
After a short pause, while Griffin prepared himself for daylight, a panel opened on the under surface of the craft and lowered itself as a ramp, nearly, but not quite, touching the grass on the bank. Everyone came down to the edge of the water and strained to see inside. They were all looking for Griffin.
As soon as Griffin appeared outside the ship, both Fin and Tip ran up the ramp and threw themselves into his arms. He hugged them both as they cried and he assured them that he was fine. He was also surprised at the much deeper way he perceived them now, with a whole new sense. Two things became instantly evident to him. Firstly, Fin and Tip were far more beautiful than he had ever realised before. And secondly, he realised that it was going to take him a while to get used to his new perception. Everyone he met was now semi-transparent. He sensed all their thoughts and emotions, and intentions. He remembered Mimo explaining it to him, ‘Thee be needin plenty of coachin.’ She also advised that, ‘in the meantime, thee be keeping it to yourself and not be showin it to nobody.’ So, he pretended to everyone that he did not have what Mimo called ‘the sight’.
Noah followed Griffin down the ramp. There came a wholehearted, spontaneous round of applause from the whole group with a couple of ‘whoops’ and ‘well dones’ for good measure. Snake stepped up to Griffin and warmly shook his hand. Then he turned to Noah and shook his hand as well. ‘Good to see you back, compadres,’ he said. ‘How was your trip?’
‘An unqualified success,’ Noah replied.
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‘We’ve been doin plenty of jawbonin about your idea of leavin since you been gone,’
said Snake.
‘I am pleased to hear that. And have you come to any decision?’
‘Well, we ain’t voted for it yet. We thought we’d wait till you came back before we made the final decision, but I’m pretty sure we’re all ready to go, cause winter seems to be comin early this year, an she’s raw.’
Noah looked at the fire and asked, ‘Is that Arbuckle’s I smell?’
‘Tain’t belly wash,’ Snake replied.
After hugging the girls and shaking Snake’s hand, Griffin stepped up to Fury and rubbed his forehead. He looked him directly in the eye and spoke to him in loving tones.
‘Hello, mighty horse.’
He was slightly taken aback when he clearly heard Fury’s response in his mind.
‘Hello, bright eyes. Where have you been?’
8
One by one, everyone took their turn at properly welcoming Griffin back into the camp. They finally all sat around the fire in a big circle. Jonesy threw extra wood on the flames while Snake poured Noah a cup of strong coffee. Noah brought out the intricately-carved, small, gold box containing the Mana and the small ceramic pipe.
‘I can think of no better way to celebrate Griffin’s recovery than partaking in a smoke of Mana,’ he said.
‘You said last time that it doubles your life,’ said Snake.
‘One puff will double its span,’ Noah repeated. ‘Two will extend it half as much again.
You’ve had those. If you continue to partake of it for the rest of your lives, you may expect to live up to around nine hundred years.’
Snake responded the same way as always upon hearing that news.
‘Holy guacamole!’
Noah looked at Fury who stood just outside the circle. He took a grain of the brown crumble from the gold box, stood up and stepped over to the stallion. He stroked his mane and placed it in his mouth. ‘Live long, mighty horse,’ he whispered into his ear. He chuckled as he telepathically heard, ‘I would have rather got a carrot.’
Noah taught them all the Raman custom of loading the pipe for someone else and wishing them a long life while lighting it.
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When the smoking was done, Noah closed the small, gold container and handed it to Snake. He also gave him the pipe.
‘This is for you,’ he said in a kind voice, ‘a gift from my people to your people. Smoke it every day the way I showed you and you will enjoy good health for a very, very long time.’
9
During breakfast, the discussion mostly focussed on the trio from the desert.
Everyone expressed their amazement at the miraculous nature of their survival.
‘Hardly more miraculous than yours,’ said Fin after she learnt of the group’s time shift.
There were oohs and ahhs as the trio related the story of their escape from one mile beneath the surface. Everyone was also amazed at hearing the story of the coyote attack and Fury’s daring intervention. Tip and Fin clung closely to their man as the whole Pinecrest camp declared them bona fide heroes of the human race.
After breakfast, the talk turned to relocation.
‘I’ll be able to levitate the container into the transporter ship no problem,’ explained Noah. ‘You won’t even need to dig it out of the ground.’
‘How you gonna do that?’ asked Jonesy.
‘I’ll use the tractor beam that is incorporated in all our transporter ships. How do you imagine we get things inside?’
‘Oh, a tractor beam,’ said Ludwig comically. ‘Naturally, what else.’
‘I suggest,’ Noah continued, ‘that, perhaps first thing tomorrow morning, you all replace all your things in the container, after which we’ll load it into the transporter ship.’
Everyone looked at the huge spaceship levitating about fifty yards beyond Melvin’s tent. It certainly appeared large enough to take the container as well as the whole group, including the horse.
As soon as the sun peeked over the horizon, Griffin and the girls covered their faces with their masks and goggles. They would have to hide from the daylight for another year, gradually letting their skins acclimatize to the light in the early mornings and late evenings. As well, Lori, Jonesy’s wife, began weaning the trio off their Food Bars with canned vegetable and fish soups, as well as her delicious flapjacks topped with maple syrup.
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They spent the rest of that day preparing for the move. They packed all their things and placed them together in bundles. Most everything was neatly stored away in the container by the end of the day. The tents were the last items to be packed away the following morning.
Everyone sat around the campfire that night and reminisced over the whole series of incredible events that had led up to their current situation. They also asked Noah plenty of questions. Everyone was most interested in Rama.
‘Tell us, Noah, about your planet, and tell us how you found Earth and why you took an interest in it.’
‘Well,’ Noah began after thinking for a while, ‘living on Rama is like living in a dream.
Everyone is free and independent, everyone makes their own energy at home, there are no governments or money, or anything like that, although we did learn how to counterfeit your money quite well, which came in particularly handy in the years before the comet.
‘We, the Rama, are similar to you in the way we live. We live as families in houses.
On Rama, families stay together. The old people live with the young, everyone together.
Certainly we travel, sometimes for extended periods like I am doing now, but we maintain constant relationship with our family members in the mind plane, which means telepathically, which is a lot more intimate than you might imagine, you see, because distance is irrelevant in telepathic communication. We travel and then we return home to our mothers and fathers, grandparents and grand-grandparents, and so on.
‘We instantly fell in love with Earth when we stumbled upon it. It is beautiful, just like Rama, and the environment is almost identical, perfectly suited for our visitations.
‘We also fell in love with many Earth humans,’ Noah looked at them all, ‘despite the fact that they were non-telepathic. Sadly, we found many on Earth to be infected by a telepathic disease. Er, that does not include anyone here. Unknowingly, the infected ones lost control of their bodies to truly evil, alien entities who, although not being physically able to exist in the Earth’s environment, could live their accursed lives through an Earth-human vessel and wreak havoc all over the planet until they achieved their ultimate goal, to destroy the planet through nuclear war. I prefer not to venture too far into this subject except to say that the people who were time shifted were special individuals who demonstrated supreme strength of spirit to resist the alien compulsion and retain the integrity of their own being. Besides ultra-violence, these dark abominations, through their human vessels, engaged in the destruction of the social order through a variety of
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sicknesses of nature, such as homosexuality and the particularly degenerate deviance of paedophilia. None of this exists on Rama.
‘All this is now gone from the Earth, consumed in the fires, earthquakes and floods following the impact of the comet.
‘Please do not think any more about what I just said because that was all in the past, before the comet. All living Earthlings in the present are free sentient beings not possessed by any foreign entities.’ He looked at them all and smiled and said, ‘You are all free to be as you choose to be.’
None of them even imagined the possibility of Noah actually monitoring and controlling each of their minds individually. He knew that none of them were actually free because they were now under Rama control. He monitored them because he could not allow any of them to have a subversive thought, for their own good, because in his own mind the Rama were the benevolent species, a force for good, and Earth was now theirs, and to them the Earth humans were, in a way, like pets that they dearly loved and took care of. Another analogy might be something like the saving of the most valuable animals from a burning zoo.
To say that none of the Earth humans were aware of Noah’s mind control over them is actually not completely true. There was one. Griffin had the thought, but held it back.
He sensed Noah’s control, but did not react. He remembered Mimo’s words well.
‘Thee got to be hidin the sight, boy.’
In spite of Griffin’s attempt to conceal a thought from Noah, Noah was onto him 100
percent. They glanced at one another. Noah smiled and thought,
‘You’ll have to get up mighty early in the morning, Griffin.’
As it turned out, Griffin understood the meaning of that phrase because Rip used to use it all the time down in the base. No one could fool him either.
10
Next morning, Saturday, October 9, 2123 (USA time), a day later in Australia, everyone gathered around the Pinecrest campfire for the last time. There was plenty of coffee and flapjacks to go around, not to mention canned bacon and tomatoes, as well as powdered eggs. They truly had a happy feast that morning, ‘to fuel up for the big move,’
Snake said.
After breakfast and a ritual smoke of Mana, the men began breaking down the tents and packing them, and their contents, into the container. As there was some spare space,
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they stuffed their backpacks and extra clothing in there as well. Noah told them that even though October was spring in the southern hemisphere, Noosa would require no more than shorts, a T-shirt and sandals to be comfortable.
During the process of loading the container, Ace, the helicopter pilot, asked Noah about the afore-mentioned tractor beam. His interest stemmed from his technical bent, as well as the fact that he had done many jobs, over the years, lifting and transporting heavy objects with a variety of helicopters.
Noah explained that what he termed ‘the tractor beam’ was in actual fact ‘three beams, of sorts.’
‘You see, Ace,’ Noah continued, ‘the primary beam, or it might be more appropriate to call it a vibration, causes the object to become transparent to the ubiquitous graviton field, which is what creates gravitational attraction and inertial mass in matter. It neutralises the mass of the object. That in turn renders the object, and its contents, weightless. This primary beam is supported and guided by a carrier laser beam, which is shaped to the exact dimensions of the object. The laser beam is what you can see. Once the object is rendered massless, a third invisible beam, it’s not really a beam and it sort of is, what happens is that an energetic, harmonic standing wave is set up between the ship and the object, which causes the two to become attracted to one another. And because both the ship and the object are massless, the amount of energy required to attract them together is less than that required for one beat of a sparrow’s wing, say, although I’ll need to use a tad more force to pull the container out of its semi-buried confinement. Have I made any sense to you?’
‘Some,’ said Ace. He shook his head and mumbled, ‘You guys got some awesome tech, man.’
‘Nyeah, it’s all relative, Ace. The best thing about it is that the whole process is controlled with the mind in exactly the same fashion that you control the movement of your own limbs. Exactly the same.’
‘Without thinking?’ Ace trigged.
‘Yes, without thinking,’ Noah confirmed.
11
Everyone stood and watched in complete awe as Noah remotely manoeuvred the transporter ship over the semi-buried container. They observed as four, large, triangular panels opened downwards, exposing the voluminous interior of the craft. A green beam
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next shone out through the centre of the square opening. It shone down upon the container, enveloping it by precisely circumscribing its rectangular shape. Up to this stage there was no sound.
Suddenly, a low hum began. It actually sounded like two hums in some type of harmonic chord. The group gasped in amazement as the heavy container began to move.
Dirt crumbled around it and stones rolled off its sides as it slowly, seemingly all by itself, extracted itself from its hundred-year-old internment and floated skyward directly into the hold of the ship. When it was inside, the panels closed. The ship then levitated down to the lakeshore where another panel opened and became a ramp inviting them to enter.
In ones and twos, they walked up the ramp into the spacious, intergalactic transporter. Leading the way were Snake and Trixie. Behind them came Jonesy, his wife Lori and three of his four daughters, Clara, Catherine and Connie. Following was Melvin and his flame, Carla, the fourth and eldest of Jonesy’s daughters. Next was Dirk DeRongo, often referred to as ‘the voice’ by the crew, and his stunning girlfriend, Inga. Following them were Clint Rogers, mostly known as Cowboy, and Lauren Cole his famous, movie-star girlfriend. Next were Ludwig and his lovely wife Ivana. Following them were Ace and his sizzling, Italian-goddess girlfriend, Johanna. Next to last up the ramp were Griffin, Fin and Tip. Making up the rear were Noah and Fury, the telepathic wonder horse who understood English and possessed a refreshingly twisted sense of humour.
‘A couple of fillies wouldn’t go astray,’ the horse thought to the alien.
‘I will scour the whole planet for them,’ the alien thought back to the horse.
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There was no one left on the ground to witness the two, intergalactic cruisers silently rise into the air. The large one carried Earth’s precious cargo while the small one was empty. It tagged along being flown remotely by Noah.
Initially, Noah flew them vertically skyward for a hundred miles. They parked up there for a while until everyone calmed down a bit. Not unexpectedly, they got quite excited about riding in a UFO for the first time. Experiencing everything on the spherical, holographic display only added to the hysteria. Reacting to the frenzied babble within the ship, Noah and Jonesy shared a hearty chuckle.
‘I think they all flew over the cuckoo’s nest,’ quipped Jonesy.
‘It’s a natural reaction,’ Noah replied.
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When everyone calmed down somewhat, and before they headed off across the Pacific, Noah took them for a brief scenic tour of what used to be the USA. They gasped at the sight of the huge, still smouldering, comet crater, the inland ocean that once used to be the Mississippi Valley, the unfamiliar new coastline of California and the complete absence of civilization.
‘No one left alive,’ commented Snake.
‘That comet sure did a job on the States,’ said DeRongo.
‘The nuclear reactors finished the job,’ Noah added in a frustrated voice. ‘However, that is the past, something best forgotten. For us, the future is in places like Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania and the islands of the South Pacific. Thank the One that the people who lived there steered away from nuclear energy. Thank the One for that.’
Ludwig contributed a final, haunting word.
‘America has been erased from the hard drive. There is not a trace of her, nothing, no backups. When, in the wake of time, she fades from our memories, she will become unremembered … forever … like she never existed.’
‘Er, not quite,’ said Noah.
‘No?’ Ludwig asked.
‘No. You see, we have saved all the music, all the movies, and all the great books.
They are all permanently stored in crystal memory on Rama. America will be remembered, through those, for a long, long time to come.
…….
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