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Science Fiction and Fantasy
| print friendly version | |
| World pt2 | |
| By zee666 | ||||
| 25 August 2008 | ||||
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Part 2 New Klæwa; a blur on the horizon so many miles away. Jon stood atop a hill looking out over all below him, the dust land of south Tany and its many raised islands of green and sinking patches of dead grass and parched earth that had once been water, the source of life for many animals who had lived many Cycles ago, was a great expanse before him, titanic in its placement and existence. A wind blew strong at this altitude, sand and dirt into the lowlands. The air was crisp and clear, only the occasional particulate finding it’s way above the sand-sea below, it had a quality of vegetation but mainly smelt of the sea; of salt. His eye twitched and closed, water formed and he wiped it away. He shielded his eyes from the clashing of hot and cold wind and motioned to descend back into the lowlands, beginning his trek again, New Klæwa was out of his plain of vision within seconds. Although it was not conscious decision to think, nor a personality-conditioned instinctual response, a thought entered his mind, Good-bye New Klæwa. It almost sickened him that such a thought would come into being within him; far too child-like, too illogical, it was sad in his mind, it was a reminder that he had once happily and ignorantly followed the path the Zetinean government (or more all societies in general, as each was different in specifics but widely the same in most respects) had laid out for him as a child that he was expected to follow until his death. For the first time in a long time, he remembered his mother, Gods rest her soul, there was little to remember and recall on, little to smile at and think about. How pathetic you are Jon Maigne to think of such things, how dismaying. He took a moment to think of nothing and see the things in sight. The sun travelled across the sky in the manner expected; a steady amble in a slight arc. The dust-land was hard and parched and each grain of sand and dirt had been baked into it’s neighbours creating a solid mass of burnt and dead earth unfriendly to those who were unfamiliar to it, attacking the feet of all who had neither broad nor padded toes, burning at the soles made of rubber in abhorrence of the artificial nature of their existence and hating them for the fact they were not natural. Rubber is for the rubber trees, the mass of the plains had thought, it is their lifeblood and should not be as this is, black and broken and expendable, it took the heat of the sun and battled against the rhythmic fall of the black shoes of the human traveller, no wonder they left, the trees, man cutting them down and whittling away at the things there was once so many of. Back, man! Leave foreign whore for we to grow and become as we once were! You are not welcome! all the while the cries going unheard of by those who were unwilling to listen. The hours and the hatred of the earth took their toll on Doctor Jon Maigne eventually and after a time he stopped to rest beneath the shade (despite the sun being in it’s final moments of waking) of a tree whose leaves stretched out and spread beyond many yards, perhaps as far as a length of string. The tree possessed a character different from others of it’s genus, a calm old bark that would, if it were human, sit in the sand and watch the world go by, happy to let it’s life slip away with the world, content with death and ever watching things with a smile, ever without blinking, never a breath flowing through him or a thought coming to him. His back against the tree’s trunk, Jon slipped off his pack and pushed it away so it rested in an area between two large roots. His heart beat in his head at a steady, slow pace as the shadows of the small canopy crept by the sun pushing them along and eventually into the open where they would dissipate and die; first rapidly, his heart was, almost a hum as a mouse’s would be. It was a new sensation to take notice of his heartbeat, but an enjoyable one in such a situation as his, pleasurable it could be called by some, although pleasure had always been a matter of speculation and debate as all things were among human beings. In a state of mind divided from cynicism and tactlessness and quiet regret, Jon smiled and slept under the dying sun, seeking to take advantage of the cold of the approaching night and cool his being in sleep. The midday sun was depressed, it hid behind clouds and gave off a weak light making the valley he trekked through seem hazed with a grey-brown aura, not reflecting the abundance of life within it. After travelling across the plains spreading out from New-Klæwa for many days, stepping through the hostility of the earth and past the sad, dying faces of the trees, Jon realized he had made a mistake in his navigation and had veered on a more western path to his preferable course and had found himself with cliffs in the distance, a sign he was coming into a valley, and so he had. Back-tracking would solve the predicament but would waste precious time and the few resources he still had, without funding he had been limited to what he could bring. Going to the edge of the valley and attempting to find a path to the upland or otherwise climbing the rock face would only further disorient him and cause unnecessary complications. Continuing on the path the fates had decided for him seemed was the only possibility and so he accepted this and did so. The valley was far more lively than it’s highland neighbour and was a splendid change to the emptiness and the grass struggling to cling onto life lest it feed the cause of killing it’s kin, a battle that could only be lost. He had noticed, in fact, after losing his footing and falling into the dirt that the earth was far redder at the frontier of grass and shrubbery than it normally would be. Jon knew this was because of the lost minerals being absorbed back into the ground but some could say the blood of battle stained the grounds on which it was fought, a melancholy philosophy Jon believed but that same thought had been born within his mind when first he saw the sight before it was dismissed for logic, society's logic. The earth was more forgiving and inviting than the highlands but grass had been sparse upon entering the valley, but it had gradually grown in frequency as the cliffs rising just above the horizon had risen too a bizarre height considering their distance. Trees were far smaller here than they were in the uplands also but they were more common and bore fruit, occasionally even flowers and blossoms, tinted with blue and violet; cold but calm and still, it was no return for the heat. To his knowledge south Tany was in it’s cyclic dry season but in the valley it seemed like his own Zetinean Spring; there was life. What was strange though was the fact that there were no apparent signs of rainfall or any water whatsoever, it seemed life had evolved here to cope without water, or at least retain it for long periods of time, the life was much like that of the Firate deserts but the surrounding environment had no similarities apart from the already stated lack of water. Along with the varied and common floral activity small forms of fauna were common also, small mammals and birds were ample in their numbers and many lizards scuttled along the ground, eating the grass as they passed it, little was larger than his fist but only about a half-dozen of the species he could claim to have seen before, it was an enigma. It was only when a great crevasse penetrated by the roots of strange plants and mosses and grasses was before him that he realised the reason for the nature of the canyon. Upon retrieving his torch and shining it into the darkness (after shaking it vigorously due to a malfunction) he saw the answer, in vision was a great expanse, a canopy of trees and life was beneath him, the same World, he believed, that was beneath Lien. He took a breath and turned his head on it’s side, plugging his exposed ear and listening for any sounds that would tell a secret or story of the Under-World. The noise of western Gu’gon was reminiscent; a discovery, at last, worthy of his talent. Jon Maigne smiled and remained in place for many minutes, air rushed from his nostrils as he attempted to laugh and failed. Indeed his finding was a great one, but it seemed utterly insignificant to the possibilities, of which he now had an idea, of the Under-World. He observed unique behaviours, experienced new scents and even saw a colour which had not existed before then. He took a moment to record, collect, describe and then pondered on his thoughts, he felt like there was little time and that haste must be made if his goal was to ever be reached; knowing all the while that his thoughts were ludicrous and, unfortunately for him and his colleagues and all people of science, purely instinctual. And yet they scurried about his mind, ignoring his logic and disallowing the moments rest needed to fully realize the ramifications, consequences and inevitabilities of his discovery, and, despite it being so truly amazing, it was nothing but a momentary sighting of a few of the more aggressive and expansively-ranging species and genus’ of the under-World, leaving much to be seen and even more to be known. An innumerable amount to be known. As he lay among moss that had the orange shade of death but felt alive beneath him, Jon combated with his urges as a man of science. As he lay on his side or the other with one hand beneath his head or both hands beneath his head or both hands by his side trying to clear himself of superfluous mentality, he did not realize that he had fallen into sleep, waking many hours later with the sun. It had been early evening before, a faint yellow in the sky, it was now morning. He swung his pack onto his shoulders and adjusted it until so and he felt ready to disembark and leave the site of what could be his greatest triumph as an explorer and as a human being. This thought could be considered one of a socialite, of one who sought fame and the recognition of men and women of power, but, according to his thoughts and of everything deliberate within him, it was a site of triumph for the knowledge it represented, the knowledge that he could spread in the afterlife and so be seen as one who had embraced reality and shunned the laws of man, of those who were inferior and lesser things than he was and so discover the facts of the World and achieve some of the meaning of life; at least according to the religion of the now gone Båll, the religion he had embraced upon learning of it. Religion, some could say, is the bane of logic and undermines all that logic constructs. But Jon Maigne had rejected this belief and undertook, much like Peter Ӿho had but with the religion of south Duó’kh, the belief that religion and logic could balance one another and so, although give way to some facts that would not necessarily be facts, allow hypothesise to form and be enforced through the guidelines of religion and so be cross-examined with other hypothesise formed based on other religions and so create a generally-accepted belief that took the most likely aspects of each party and joined them into one, a simple, effective method that, although often wrong, was also often impossible to disprove. The Dulīndaŋtæn had also embraced this faith of many faiths and had indeed lead to the creation of the Arch-Magusey that ruled over the country and it’s people, as Dulīndaŋtæ was the most stable economic, governmental power in the World, the belief could hardly be faulted. But despite this, Jon Maigne and Peter Ӿho remained very unique in the way that they viewed their faiths as, unlike the Dulīndaŋtæn and the many scientific institutions across the World, the two formed opposing hypothesise using the same methods as they took into account much of what they had seen. Peter Ӿho and Jon Maigne worked often alongside, studying much of the same texts and structures that the other studied but it was their individual, hypocritical analysis’ of said texts and structures that lead to a very unique phenomenon, neither would conform to any other hypothesis. Now some could call this stubborn and others would say it was a need to be an anti-conformist but, upon explaining the reasoning to coming to said conclusions their cases were thorough. To one who is uncultured to scientific reasoning this may sound insignificant but the fact that each hypothesis of the staff of the Institute had been recorded and studied showed the genuine uniqueness of either mans’ thoughts and were, after much questioning, discovered to be well-thought out and undeniably their true opinion. Indeed it was an uncommon occurrence, but one that required little thought as thinking of it was futile due to the subject of the phenomenon; psychology, volatile, constantly changing to fit with the changes in society . These thoughts had not struck Jon as odd, nor had they gone into such depth, in fact they had been a simple memory and had left him within moments, overwhelmed by the surroundings and the present. He was upon an area of rock raised above the ground, looking in the direction of all he had traversed, the ball of his foot over nothing, his heels endeavouring to keep him upon the ground. Jon Maigne’s thoughts darted rapidly forward, thinking ahead to his exit from the canyon, then to the plains of south Tany and to Lien, spiralling around the possibilities and into the Under-World; where his heart lay. He landed in the dirt, feet first and firm.
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