TIME AND TIME AGAIN The sequel to 3037 (4 page)

He saw me staring at him and he said, “You want it Ashley?”

I ignored him and Joe looked like he was angrier than I had ever seen him, “What did I tell you, Abbott?”

“Oh, I forgot.”

“Yeah, right,
”
Joe said, shaking his head.

CHAPTER SIX

We had been playing in the water for over an hour and most of the children and some of the adults had joined us.

Irene came out of her house and called to us, “You should get Abbott back and let him talk to his people and see what they want to do.  I hope they all join us, I can’t wait to hear their stories.
”

He reluctantly left and we waved goodbye from the mouth of the cave.  He was going to tell his people about his experiences here and get them to join us.

I put my arms around Joe, “You know you don’t have anything to worry about, Joe.  I will always be true to you.”

“I know, Ashley.  I trust you but I don’t trust Abbott.”

“I really think he will forget about me when his wife get cleaned up and healed.”

“When do you think they’ll come back?”

“I don’t know.  Do you want to wait for them or what?”

He kissed my neck, “Or what.” He said and we headed for our cottage.

“I’m starving,” Joes said after we had made love on one of the spheres.  “What are we having for supper?”

“Let’s see if anyone has prepared anything
and put
it
out on the picnic table.”

Irene and several of the other ladies were putting an array of vegetable
s
on the table and the children were playing chase around it.

As I looked around, I realized how happy I was.

The supper conversation was about the people on this new planet.  It was still a mystery how Abbott and his people were living in the black area and obviously had bad lungs, while the white people lived in luxury.

We were just finishing up the dishes when we heard what sounded like an army of people coming toward the city.

It was Abbott and his people and Abbo
tt had already begu
n to get grayish.
 
The membrane wasn’t co
ver
ing the entrance to the city and the cave allowed them in
.

All of Abbott’s people, including the children, fell on their knees as soon as they were inside and the same foam that Abbott had had came out of their mo
uths.  The older the person was
the darker
gray the foam was.  I saw some babies with very light gray coming out of their mouths.

Ulla had run to her house when she saw them and collected as many bars of soap as she had and handed them out.  I saw some of the children try to eat them and Abbott had to explain what to do with it.

Abbott led them to the lake and they were soon slashing and laughing and having a high ole time.  Once they were clean, it was apparent that they were all blond haired and blue eyed.  After they got out, we got the food back out and fed them.  As they ate, they began to talk.

They talked about their life and how difficult it had been to live in the black area.

“Have you folks always lived in the black area?” I asked.

“No, just since the white people came,”
Nime
, Abbott’s wife said.  Once she was clean and healed, she turned out to be very pretty with her blond
h
air and blue eyes.
  She was much shorter than Abbott.  They had a little girl,
Cabrina
,
Josie
’s age, 11, a
nd a 14 year old son,
Sul
.  They
had taken off with the rest of the kids and teenagers toward the hills.

“How did they get you to live in that horrible area?” Joe asked.  “There were no weapons on
them that I could see and the men I saw looked like they were weak as babies.  So what did they use to make you leave?”

Abbott thought for a moment and then replied, “According to our belief,
a band of gods are supposed to come and rule over us for ten years.  If we obey them we will go to
Halla
.”

“So, you felt you had to do anything they said?”
Irene asked.

“Yes, and we only had a year and a half left, then we would all go to
Halla
,”
Nime
said.  “But it looks like we found
Halla
before the ten yea
rs were up.  I didn’t know the
H
all
a
gods would be so friendly.”

“Wait a minute, Abbott.  You think we’re the
Halla
gods?”

“How else do
we
explain all this?” he waved his hands around indicating everything around him.

“We can explain it,” I said, “But you have to listen with an open mind.”

They all leaned forward and didn’t interrupt, not once, while I told my whole story:

I died in 1973, on Earth, and woke up on
Sunio
two, Joe’s planet, in 3037.  There were very few people left on Joe’s planet and technology, uh, machines…never mind.  Things were implanted
into their brain so they could communicate without talking.  They were no longer able to have any children and they were dying.
  The government had lied to them and promised that the last implants would make them fertile again, but it was what was killing them.

They kept their heads shaved so they could put all these things inside their brains, so when I came into that world, they knew right away that I wasn’t one of them.

The people who had come to
their world like I did or the ones who had refused to have
the implants were put into muse
ums
, uh, places where people could go and look at these misfits.

Joe used to hike out in the woods and hills around where he lived and he had met Irene who lived in a cave.  So, when he met me he took me to see Irene thinking she may be able to help me.

We didn’t understand at the time what had happened to me and why I had ended up almost three thousand years later than when I had died on earth.

We didn’t know anything about the cave at that time.  We just thought it was a cave.  Nor did we know that the interesting houses where Joe and his people lived were part of the cave.
  The cave had grown them and let Joe’s people live in them.

Actually, Joe’s people didn’t know at the time either.  It wasn’t until his government tried to stop us by destroying Joe’s house that we began to see that the cave was a living thing.  We were able to rescue many of Joe’s people who were healed by the city before the cave lifted off into space and became transparent, uh, you could see through it.

As it lifted off, we saw that the dwellings where Joe’s peo
ple had lived were at the end of
the tendons of the thing we were in.  Uh, tendons…uh, kind of like your arms.

We floated in space for two years and finally landed on
Korona
, in the year 2637.  Some of you look confused.  What we have been able to learn is that time is not linear, uh, not in a straight line.  Time doesn’t start at one and the go to two and then three etc.  It sort of wraps around itself, so that you can, if you know how, go both forward and backwards.

Now, after we all have something to drink, I’m going to let Marion take up the story from when we landed on
Korona
.

CHAPTER SEVEN

We had all had something to drink and we had played with our children for awhile and Marion was ready to take over the story.
  This is what she said:

I lived on
Korona
all my life.  Before a group, who called themselves The
Mansonites
, came in a spaceship, there were two classes.  Some of us were very rich and some were very poor.  It had always been like that and I didn’t think anything about it.

My class was the rich ones and we lived in huge luxurious houses.  The lower class lived in tents and worked for us.  Looking back now, after living as an equal with my former maid, Edna, who has become my best friend, it seems so stupid.  But it was the only thing we knew.

And then Ted and the
Mansonites
landed in a spaceship.  They called us pigs and started killing us.  They got our servants to follow them and we didn’t have anyone to do for us.  Edna was the only servant we had left.

We were terrified of being killed.
  They called themselves the
Mansonites
because they were followers of Charles Manson.  Ashley, do you want to tell them about Charles Manson, since he lived in the time of your first life?

I looked a
t Charles Manson who looked
horrified and
I
went over and hugged him.  “I’m so glad you were able to take a different path,” I said.

“Thanks to you and Joe,” he said. “Go ahead and tell the story.  I’ll be all right.”

I settled myself back onto the sphere I had bee
n
sharing with Joe and began:

When we first landed on
Korona
, we met a man named Ted.  He was the great, great,
great,
I don’t know how many greats, grandson of Charles Manson.  A book that had been written during my first life, entitled, The Manson Family, was their bible.

The Manson family wasn’t really a family but was made up of Charles Manson and his f
ollowers.  Charles Manson was a very confused young man who thought that a popular singing group of the time was speaking to him in code and that he was supposed to start a war between the white and black people.  He called it Helter
Skelter
.

He ordered his followers to kill many people and they wrote PIGS on the walls of the people’s houses in blood.

He and his followers were sentenced to life in prison but, according to Ted, Charles Manson had many children and they all tried to follow in his footsteps.  A later generation stole a spaceship and
came to
Korona
where they continued to practice their belief.

Marion and
Rory,
and their maid
were the last of the original
inhabitants of
Korona
.  Aft
er they joined us, the
Mansonites
started joining us too.  Ted tried to stop them and ended up killing some of them before we were able to rescue them.

When we lifted off, Ted’s spaceship tried to follow us but the cave thing blasted them out of space.

When we landed the next time, it was on earth where I had lived in my first life, but the year was 1954.  We were able to rescue Charles Manson, whom you have all met, and save him from becoming the monster of my time in
m
y first life.

We lived on earth that second time for another two years and though
t
it was our final place to live.  The cave had left and we had gotten jobs, the kids were in school and we had made a life for ourselves.

Then one day the cave was back and we landed here.

When I finished my story, the all stood and bowed their heads and clicked their teeth together.

“I will tell our story now.” Abbott said and he began:

Our people lived here for many years and didn’t know there were other places.
  We ate what
we
grew.  W
e swam in the beautiful lakes and bathed in the waterfalls.

We built houses out of the rocks
that were
laying
around on the ground.  We had a good life.  But, ever since I was a little boy, I was taught that one day the gods would come down from the sky and make us live a horrible life for ten years.  After that, if we were obedient, we would spend eternity in
Halla
.

One day we were all sitting around together on the grass, eating the food we had prepared when everything went black like it was nighttime.  Then a bright light flashed and set fire to the area around us.

We ran and everywhere we ran the area around us caught fire.  Then it got black again and when the daylight finally came back there were the white people standing in the good area and we were in the burnt area.

The tall one, the one named
Rodena
, told us to stay where we were, that we were no longer welcome in the good area and then we knew they were the gods we had been taught to believe in.

Joe, you asked me if they had weapons to force us to live like we did.  Their only weapon was the fire and our own fear.