The Long Road to Gaia (2 page)

Two witches sat on either side of a crystal
ball.

"And so it begins."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure as can be."

"You doom us all then."

"Not I. The scrying globe merely shows
us the most likely outcome."

"But it depends on the question?"

"As always."

"What did you ask it?"

"To show me the moment which begins
prophesy."

"And this is it?"

"Yes."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I've been asking this same
question every night since prophesy became an acceptable question."

"And you get this every night?"

"No. Just tonight."

"What does that mean?"

"Something in the cosmos just changed.
Until now prophesy had no focus. You know what the others have seen?"

"Yes, our doom. But it has never had
any focus for them either. They always say prophesy ends in our doom."

"They ask the wrong question, and are
shown the end result of it."

"And you ask the right question to get
something different?"

"I ask the right question to be given
the truth."

"What truth?"

"That our mother kin interpret
prophesy too literally."

"And you do not?"

"No. I seek the truth, not something
to use for political advantage."

"And the truth is?"

"As I said. Something just changed.
Prophesy is still there, but it is not as it was. And unless those who seek
change their questions, none else will see the truth."

"What is it we see?"

"A child."

"That's a child? Its skin is so
smooth. It’s the ugliest thing I've ever seen."

"True. But a child it is."

"Why a child?"

"Ah, now that is a different
question."

"Of course it is. But I’d still like
it asked."

"Well then, we shall."

The scrying crystal clouded for a long
time, and they waited patiently. At last, an image formed.

One being sat, while a triangle shape of
the same kind of beings stood behind. Darkness was before them.

"What does this mean?"

"The length of time to obtain the
image pushes the image well into the future."

"How far?"

"The same as prophesy states. We will
not see the Darkness, but our daughters will."

"And the image itself?"

"A single being will rise to challenge
the Darkness, where until now, none has been able to."

"The child we saw first?"

"No. But one of his line. If I read
the skrying correctly, what has changed is the likelihood of this line
surviving to produce the one."

"How can you be so sure?"

"You question my scrying?"

"I am sorry."

"So will we all."

"Does this not now give us hope?"

"It is too soon for hope. Perhaps a
hope of a hope."

"Should we tell anyone?"

"Not yet. But this species is now
worthy of our study."

"What species is it?"

"I've come across them before. They
are very young still. But even so young, the way they think gives answers we
might not have considered."

"Is this why only you have seen this?
Because you have seen them before?"

"No. But perhaps it is because I do
not dismiss them as irrelevant, as most above us in the ranks do."

"But who are they?"

"Humans."

The Mage-King stood over his scrying pool.
He grunted to himself, waved away the image, and cast another question into the
pool. A new image formed. He grunted again, and removed this one as well.

He turned, and walked back to his casual
time chair, showing the fatigue which came with complicated magic being
performed. But he did not sit.

"My Lord?" asked his son.
"What did you see that has you so somber?"

"Gather my council, immediately."

"Yes, Lord," said a bowing son,
who quickly cast a summoning spell.

The two of them, son leading his Mage-King,
left the private chambers, and walked at a measured pace to the council
chambers.

All were present when they entered. The son
took his place to the left of the Mage-King, who sat, signaling all others to
sit.

When all were not only seated, but
completely still, the Mage-King spoke.

"Tell me of prophesy," he asked
his first counselor.

"When…"

"Stop!"

Most of the council looked shocked. The
Mage-King looked around all their faces, one by one, by rank. None of them
showed any understanding.

"We know what prophesy says. I do not
need reminding of what it says. You are all magicians. Have you not been scrying
the future of our race?"

The son bit his tongue, having a glimpse of
where this was going. The pain gave him something to concentrate on.

There was silence for a few moments,
finally broken from the bottom of the table.

"The future Lord? Why? We have seers
for that. We know when our doom will come. What is there to check for
ourselves?"

Lightning arced down the table, striking
the young councilor in the chest. He was thrown backwards to hit the wall
behind, where he slumped down in death.

The table was silent once more, no-one
daring to even look at the punished carcass.

"You will all skry the future every
day from now on. You will supervise the seers, and exhort them to see further
ahead."

"Yes Lord," said his first
counselor.

"How far does the current head
counselor see?"

"Two generations Lord. In the fifty
generations since prophesy was made, no-one has seen further than two full
generations."

"I have seen three."

There were gasps of shock.

"What did you see Lord?" asked
his son carefully.

"Hope."

"Hope?" repeated his son.
"For fifty generations we have known our race ends in three. My son's son
will not be born. How can there be any hope?"

Instead of being blasted from his seat, his
father's hand touched his shoulder.

"Something has changed. I was given an
extra level to the scrying enchantment which has shown me the third generation
from now."

"Lord?" asked the first
counselor.

"Our doom comes for us. Nothing has
changed. But I saw hope that we might outrun it."

"Run? Lord? Where is there to
run?"

All eyes turned to the new voice, and the
one who spoke visibly quavered.

"We will run to the stars," said
his Mage-King. "The race must change. A way must be found for us to leave
this planet, and travel to others. We know other species exist on other
planets. We must devise ways to skry on them, and learn their secrets for
travel. We have two generations left for this task, or we go meekly into
extinction."

He looked around the table.

"We will NOT be going meekly into
extinction."

No-one was game to speak.

"Leave. The race must be re-tasked for
survival at all costs. I will see your progress at the next scheduled meeting.
Go."

He looked at the first counselor and his
son, biding them stay. He waited for the room to empty.

"We need a new branch of Seers."

"Their task Lord?"

"I have seen a new species. We must
keep track of them."

"They can help us?"

"No. But when our doom comes for us,
it also will come for them. By watching them, we will have a last warning. And
perhaps, the secret of our escape can be found in how they attempt theirs."

"Who are they?"

"Humans."

The room began to take shape around me.

We don’t meet very often, maybe once a
millennium, but this wasn’t one of the scheduled meetings.

The form the room takes always gives me a
clue as to what we're meeting about. The routine meetings are usually held at
Buddha Amitabha's Pure Land. Lush green settings, with ultra-high comfort, but
ultra-low tech.

This wasn’t even remotely on the same
level. Four walls in a beige colour. Floor with bad taste carpet. White
ceiling. Long thin wooden table, with twelve uncomfortable looking chairs on
the other side from me. Single even more uncomfortable chair on my side.

So, a mission. I hadn't had one in a few hundred
centuries, and wasn’t really wanting one now. Something was wrong somewhere, or
they wouldn’t be calling me in.

I activated recall to figure out the
planet.

Irk, Earth.

Twentieth century at a guess. The room
could loosely be described as 'early grunge'. Painted plasterboard walls.
1960's perhaps. Construction materials requiring some technology, but still
relatively early. Pre space flight for sure.

Not my favourite species, or period. A
century in which they kidded themselves they were civilized, while
systematically slaughtering more than at any time before in their history.

Last time I’d been there, I'd developed a
dislike for the species as a whole. The only thing I agreed with was the
saying, 'The more I see people, the more I prefer my cat.' Cats were easier to
deal with. If they'd become the dominant species on that miserable planet, it
wouldn’t have been so miserable.

I already knew I wasn’t going to be
accepting this mission. Unless it was to save the cats from extinction. I'd go
in for that. Most of the big ones were still around in that century, although
heading for oblivion already. I knew the smaller variations made it into the
next century, but I’d deliberately not cared where humans were going. Cats were
worth checking on, humans were not.

Of all the species in this galaxy, humans
rated down there with cockroaches as far as I was concerned. They had very few
redeeming qualities. Loving cats was one of them.

I looked at the chair. Nothing was going to
happen until I sat in it.

I focused my will on changing the chair
into something more comfortable. Nothing happened. Not a good sign. It meant
the meeting was time locked.

Correction, something had happened. Two
more chairs had appeared, on each end of the table. These were completely
different. Larger. More impressive. Bordering on thrones. Another bad sign.
Obviously some higher entities were taking an interest.

There was no point in delaying. The only
time being wasted here was my own.

I floated over to the chair, and 'sat'.
Sitting is a relative concept when you have no actual form.

Contact with the chair, solidified my form.
As I suspected, human male. I know some of my brother and sister avatars loved
the primitive forms, human especially. Their form enjoyed a level of
experiential awareness which wasn’t common in this galaxy. Personally, I could
take it or leave it, and I intended leaving it this time.

The council of the twelve appeared, all in
various human forms. Their appearance didn’t matter. We knew each other
regardless of how our avatars looked.

On the council, names were not used. They
were One through Twelve.

I was Thirteen.

The order of the numbers was in terms of actual
physical size. Humans would call us a 'celestial event'. Size was relative. A
sun was tiny in comparison to us, even though their avatars tended to think
they were the most important of all. But all they had were numbers. All their
real size put together, wouldn't place them collectively at this table.

We came into being with the galaxy itself.
Space time kept us too far apart to interact directly. A good thing too, as
most of us were incompatible. Our power allowed us to create these avatars of
ourselves, and we did so every time we needed to interact with each other, or the
mundane species below our level of existence.

Fourteen and Fifteen were continually
pressing to expand the council size to include them. Personally, I couldn’t
think of anything less desirable than sitting on a council. There was too much
to do. I always opposed the motions. The millennium meetings were quite enough
for me.

The last two joined us at the table. They
were larger avatars than our own, and not fully human. Both had four arms
instead of two, and the male had a trunk instead of a nose.

"We welcome Kali the Destroyer, and
Lord Ganesha to our meeting," said One.

It was going to be worse than I thought.
Those two only turned up when galaxy wide consequences were at stake.

I couldn’t think how such an insignificant
species as the humans could have anything to do with galactic wide
consequences. In fact, the only reason for me being here I could think of, was
they wanted me to stop them destroying themselves. And as far as I was
concerned, they could do so, and good riddance. All it needed was a button
press, somewhere on that world, and life would cease. The only reason for not
letting it happen, was the cats. Although I could rescue some I guess, and give
them their own planet.

I was suddenly aware I was being stared at,
by all of them.

"Are you with us Thirteen?" said
One. "Or are galactic events not worthy of your interest these days?"

One looked like a stern grandmother. Small
female figure with steely grey hair, and a perpetual frown. So unlike One's
normal appearance. Maybe this was more serious than I thought.

"What events?" I asked. "Humans
in the twentieth century weren’t going anywhere, except perhaps to their own
doom. How do they effect galactic events?"

"When were you last there?" asked
Two.

"You know perfectly well my last visit
to that benighted place was in 1945, their time."

"Not their finest hour," said
Five. "Why haven’t you been back?"

"Why would I? You judge a species on
how they treat their children."

"So?" prompted Eight.

"Throwing them into a gas chamber, and
then burning them, isn’t my idea of an enlightened species worth
surviving."

"Auschwitz?" asked Ten. I nodded.
"I can see why you think that. But judging a species on the basis of their
darkest hour, isn’t the best approach."

"Even at their best, they weren't much
better."

"That’s because you haven’t bothered
to ride the time line fully," said Nine.

Kali cleared her throat noisily.

"We chose you for this intervention
Thirteen," said One, "precisely because you haven’t seen what's
coming along the human time line."

"Intervention? What could possibly be
going to happen where we need to intervene with them? Or do you really expect
me to stop them from blowing themselves up?"

"Others are doing that," said
Kali.

"So what do you want of me?"

"You have a journey to go on,"
said One.

"Journey?"

I looked at them all one by one, giving
them my 'surely you can't be serious' expression. I’d spent enough time in
human form to establish a good number of expressions for all occasions.

Four laughed.

"Honestly Thirteen, you are so human
yourself sometimes. Perhaps it's part of you being the closest to them
spatially of all of us."

"Which makes it all the odder you
haven’t been following their timeline," said Three.

One stopped me responding.

"The intervention required," One
said, "is not for some six hundred Earth years. But to understand it when
it becomes necessary, you need to follow the events leading to it very closely.
Twelve will be your supervisor for this task."

Twelve nodded to me.

"You all seem to be assuming I will
agree to this," I said.

"You have no choice," said One.
"Your personal future is intermingled with the fate of the Humans."

"Really? How can you know that when I
do not?"

Ganesha stirred. All eyes turned to him.

"You know as well as anyone," he
said, "that the future is hidden when your own fate is involved."

"How can my fate be intertwined with
theirs?" I asked.

"That is the road you must walk to
find out," said One. "The road will lead you to a planet named
Outback. Groups of humans are praying for it even now. Their descendants will
get what they seek, but the journey is a long one, for Outback is at the end of
their arm of the galaxy. You must go with them on the journey."

"You're serious? Won't they find it a
bit strange I don’t die for six hundred years?"

"They will not notice you. There is no
need to be present for all of the time, just the important events along the
way. You can take on different personas at different times. And sometimes will
only require you to monitor without being seen."

"What has the 1960's to do with any of
this?"

"The story begins there," said
One. "Twelve will take you there when this meeting is complete."

"I haven't agreed to it yet. What if I'm
content to simply wait out the six hundred years? It's my choice, as it is with
all of us when asked to intervene."

"You didn’t come here to make a
choice," said Kali. "The choice was made at the moment of your coming
into being. You are here now to be shown the path you must walk."

"Must?"

"Must."

There was a silence as I looked at all of
them, and they looked at me.

Twelve broke it.

"Perhaps I should show Thirteen the
beginning now, and let some reality flow?"

"Good idea," said One. "Do
it."

I started to object, but the room
dissolved.