EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (10 page)

Chapter Six

The Void

B
efore long we had woven our way through the tiny village with children playing in the streets and people busily going about their lives. I could hear the playful squeals of the children’s voices long after we had cleared the edge of the town. As I stared out into the barren landscape, I thought to myself how magical the sound of children at play was. I remembered how happy it would make me feel after a long time in the field hunting for meteorites to hear the heartwarming sounds of children playing as I marched closer to camp or the village where base camp was set up. Hunting in groups we had all learned about safety in numbers. Over time it was realized that if you went out there with the intention of having fun, then even if nothing was found, it was still so much fun that you would always go back to search again. So many of my helpers and fellow hunters would bring the whole family along and that meant there were always children playing around camp or sitting around the campfire. There were days when coming out of the wilderness you were not quite sure if you were close to base camp until you heard the joyous noise of children at play; it always felt like coming home. As Mina slowed to move alongside of me rather than leading the way, I heard a slight sound of laughter and when I looked she was smiling brightly. She looked into my eyes and let out the slightest laugh as she spoke.

“This is why I admire you so greatly, Sterling; you see the beauty and the joy and humor in everything. I know this will be difficult for you to understand, but I hear your thoughts; I always have. When I watch you and listen to you, I feel love. I can hear your thoughts, my star man. I am not from this world. I hope this will not be too difficult for you, but I have no one else to turn to. In your dreams you saw me?”

“Yes,” I said, puzzled.

“That was my doing.” She continued the beginning of her reveal, “I needed you to come here now to do this with me. Do you remember the stone wall behind Simon’s truck? Do you recall how it felt to walk through that shroud?”

Again, I replied with a blank yes.

“This is how we have kept to ourselves through the millennia. In your eyes the wall is an endless depth of stone. To my people it is a heavy, gray matter of molecules that can be manipulated.”

I was about to ask about Mina’s references to her people when we came to a halt. Jasmina looked over to me and smiled as she took my hand in hers and told me to look down and watch my step. She gave my hand a light squeeze and stepped ahead pulling me along. Looking down I watched my steps. “What the heck!” blurted out of my mouth completely unrestrained. I was not prepared to see my lower legs sink into the ground. The ground was still there and still had the same opaque color. As we moved further into the rising horizon, we continued to sink lower step by step into the gently sloping ground. Remembering the wall experience I tried to relax.

I could feel that I was going to have a tough time going under. Looking over to Jasmina, she told me to simply breathe and continue forward with her. In an instant we were deep in the ground and obviously walking down a ramp. If I were to try to describe this experience I would say we were walking through thick, cool, gray soup. We could still see each other and could breathe normally. Although it broke all of the rules of modern physics, we were doing this and it felt real. Mina spoke as we walked and told me to keep an open mind, that there were still many more surprises to reveal and that she was certain I was the man to share this with.

Walking for a long distance, maybe miles, we arrived at the bottom of the ramp, but still there was more soup ahead. Here on what felt to be flat ground there was a dim illumination around us. I could see ahead an opening in the soup. It looked like a bubble or Vug similar to what is found in planetary basalt and classically it appeared to be lined with a thin layer of glass. Mina led me to this Vug and stepped inside, turning to offer her hands to lead me inside. Once standing within the Vug, Jasmina raised a hand and we began to move, rapidly accelerating through what should have been solid rock.

So far so crazy, thus far everything I was seeing broke the very rules of life on Earth. My mind was ablaze with unlimited questions. We seemed to travel endlessly through the soup, accelerating continuously. There were no bumps or surges, we were floating through the “Gray” at tremendous speed, but there was no sensation of force and we were standing stationary and comfortable. But it was becoming noticeably brighter. Then, without indication we were out of the gray stone soup and flying with no change of pace into what appeared to be a massive, endless cavern. My eyes could not judge scale, but this was a world below ground. In the far distance I could see massive stone pillars reaching from floor to ceiling; they tapered from broad at the base to narrow in the center and back to broad at the top. They appeared to be miles high. Everything was illuminated with dazzling bright light that emanated from everything. I could not see the end or the sides of this subterranean void. There were humanoids everywhere; they were walking on both top and bottom and many were apparently flying.

Jasmina spoke, “These are my people, we are Terans, we have lived here for many millions of your years. We have lived in harmony with humans on the surface of the Earth. We come from a dead planet that once existed nearby and was destroyed. We terraformed this world after it was surmised that our planet’s doom was pending. We call this EarthUnder or New Tera. It spans most of the planet. There are windows against the oceans where our oxygen supply is primarily produced as is yours on the surface of our biospheric shell planet.”

“We are humanoid in appearance, but much more evolved than humans. As an example, we use our brains as a community and we share all knowledge communally. We maintain the gravity of this planet, preventing Earth’s atmosphere from being scoured away by the solar and cosmic rays. Our mind energy allows us to hold the outer crust suspended about the planet core. The pillars you are seeing are a manifestation of our thought, which appears as a physical entity. The strength of this physical energy is much stronger than the rock they hold, which is part of what makes them visible to your eyes. We communicate without oral speech as we all are able to communicate through thought. The light you see is created by sono- and bioluminescence, which is part of our ecosystem. We live without sunlight. There are no circadian rhythms here. Our bodies do not oxidize. We are not ravaged by the damaging rays of direct sunlight. We age over much longer spans of time. Terans do not manufacture because we have no needs that are not met communally. We seldom sleep as we do not have daily cycles and rest only when it is needed. My people are able to fly with little effort, but rather through thought. Yes, I can hear your thoughts, feel what you feel, heal your wounds, watch you wherever you are. I can call to you when you are at rest, I can warn you when you are in danger, and I can love you for all time. Parts of my genetics are inside of you and all humankind. The ‘Gray’ or ‘Soup,’ as you enjoy calling it, is solid planet crust to humans, but to my kind it is manageable and easily manipulated. This has allowed our security and secrecy through time. Oh yes, we can swim the seas without breathing and a rare few of us have been genetically altered in order to exist on the surface.

“Most have no desire to visit the surface, but we have found that through time our future has become at risk. On our home world (Tera) we lived this same way. In time, we realized that the destruction of our home world was coming. We had the time to prepare and to select a planet to meet our basic needs, but then we had to adjust certain elements of that world in order to create a more hospitable place to live. With our minds we were able to perform two major, necessary feats: we adjusted the core and crust to house our population and we used our ability to travel here through thought in an instant by folding the ribbon of space. Everything we have here is as it was on Tera. This is only a small part of the entire image. I understand that you will have countless questions and I will enjoy answering them. Our lives are tied together and always have been. We all rely on the survival of the planet. You may remain here with me for as long as you feel the need, and I will be your guide.”

Jasmina went on to describe how her planet was destroyed millions of years earlier by a massive, rogue, black dwarf star, an event beyond Teran control to divert. She shared, in detail, how her race had been facing extinction if they did not move to another home world and that her planet’s population went to a number of new worlds, all of which had been conditioned for their arrival. The Earth was one of those chosen planets. They were able to project the approach of the star, but not prevent the cataclysm. The Terans had sufficient time to prepare themselves for the move as well as the worlds they would be moving to. She explained how they used a large part of the brain that still remains dormant in humans to create the energy needed to move through a folded ribbon in space. She described how our scientists have a basic idea of this concept, but parts are far more simple and basic while other aspects of travel through space and time are far more complicated than a human mind can comprehend.

Coming from this woman who had just healed my wounds and had flown us through solid rock at hyper speed with seemingly no inertia, anything she was willing to share I was easily led to believe. She went on to reveal that there were other events out there such as neutron stars or massive, maverick asteroids that would eventually pose a definitive threat. Right now we (Earth) were in the beginnings of a meteor swarm. I knew this to be evident; back in the earlier days of my work chasing new fireballs when there were only a handful of guys doing the same thing for a living, we would often talk about how we were lucky to get one new fall in a year’s time. But in the last decade there were more like five to ten per year and in the past year there had been roughly ten to twenty major, ground-shaking fireballs per week. Not all of them were putting inventory on the ground, but then some, like the bolide that blew up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, were doing more damage than we had seen in thousands of years.

Mina interjected, “Some are making way through our dusty atmosphere with tremendous mass and force. Just as Tunguska in 1908 and Sikhote Alin in 1947, Terans have been able to deflect these planet killers. But these events occur without our early detection because they come through wormholes that exist near our sun.”

Mina explained how Earth is a fragile ecosystem and that the Teranians live here in a delicate balance. She looked deep into my eyes and said that even man’s greatest scientific minds cannot explain such things as gravity or how space is folded or how light is bent.

She expounded without hesitation, “These and many others are things are done by my people through collective thought and the focus of our mental energy. These are efforts that your people will be able to participate in as well in millions of years when your bodies and minds evolve as ours have. We create the gravity that keeps this planet in its balance. The gravity fields we create that allow us to exist here in EarthUnder also maintain the gravitational ecosystem that you call your home world, Earth. Luna, Earth’s moon, is also an integral component of the Earth’s balanced ecosystem. We all live in and on the same biosphere: a spaceship if you like the term. We all travel through this protoplanetary disc together: our solar system. And,” she went on, “the oceans are our oxygen tanks. Most of the oxygen we all breathe comes from the oceans.”

She told me that widely dispersed through the Void, EarthUnder, there are massive windows to the seas and oceans and that the waters are suspended much like the stone above and below us. Jasmina explained that Terans pass through these windows at will and that oxygen flows freely as do all of the other atmospheric gases, which maintain the same balance of atmosphere we enjoy on Earth’s surface.

There was so much information coming at me that there was no room in my brain to form a solitary question. The induction into this new world was thrilling. I didn’t want Mina to stop. My eyes were filled with stimulation from all the dazzling colors. Nothing here was the same as my world; the light had a strange effect on the eyes, and there were frequent pools of water as clear as window glass. There were no structures or roads and no vehicles. The Vug must have been created for our arrival. Light was everywhere and there was very little shadow. People moved in fluid motion and some walked, but with a similar fluidity. The air was so pure that it burned the lungs and there was a clean taste to it. I could see detail at much greater distance and for as far as my eyes could focus there was the same brilliant light and movement. People were standing on both the floor and ceiling and plants grew in all directions.

Jasmina listened to my reactions and answered questions before I could ask them. As I glanced from one distracting anomaly to the next, she would begin to tell me about what I was seeing. She explained that the gravitational field generated by her people was omnipotent and that one can stand upright or soar from place to place depending on the need anywhere in EarthUnder. She took my hand again, and we began to glide. There was no feeling of inertia and no rush of air watering my eyes, but I could see that we were moving at great speed by the kaleidoscope effect on the surfaces above and below. Soon I could see where she was taking me; a window! This was a surreal treat; I could see from near the top to the bottom of an ocean. I hung there floating next to Mina, my jaw hanging open, breathing in the cool, clean air, and stared at the sunrays glimmering, dancing, and fading to nothing as they sliced their way deeper into the salt sea water. For the first time in the history of mankind, I was witnessing a single ray of light end its existence in the depths of the abyss. Near the surface I could see the shadows of large fish plying the water. At the bottom there were flashes of light from luminescent sea bottom creatures. I could smell the ocean and taste the salty brine on my tongue. Jasmina explained that there are many such connections with all of the oceans and that we all have the same symbiotic relationship with these great bodies of water.