EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (13 page)

I looked at her with a puzzled glance of doubt and question. Mina looked out into the glow of the magma and said, “Think of it this way, Bryce Monroe, if the planet should die, we all die with it.” The clarity of her words stabbed into my thoughts with absolute finality and icy truth. A wave of fear made me shudder with concern for our future. This was Jasmina’s message and her mission. I began to put together why I was allowed to witness all of this. This wasn’t just some mystical attraction or fortunate happenstance. She and I were chosen for this connection and this task. Being a human from the surface, this was my tour of her world in an effort to show me what was at risk of being ended and lost forever. She was showing me that the delicate balance of our biosphere was far more tentative than humans cared to believe and that any number of potential ends were pending and out of Teranian ability to control or prevent.

Mina gestured for us to leave this place. We took a wide swing around the lava tube and rocketed off through New Tera. I could see countless changes in the terrain as we moved through various regions. There were varying concentrations of Terans and animals as well as areas that appeared to be forested with massive trees and other areas that might pass for endless lawn or farmland. There were bodies of water throughout the land and countless windows into the oceans. One sight I repeatedly hoped to witness was whales swimming past one of the windows and it was in my mind to ask Mina to show this to me if it were ever possible. Then it occurred to my endlessly curious mind whether I might be able to reach out and touch one swimming by.

Mina answered my thoughts, “Yes, my star man, someday
you may swim with the whales and they may want to touch you also.” I grinned in utter satisfaction.

As we cruised through the Void, Mina told me that we were going back to her home if I wished or she could show me how rest is taken here in New Tera. She could tell that I was ready for a break. Soon we were back where we had entered New Tera. I could see the Vug we had used to come through Earth’s crust. There we settled on the surface below. We walked for a short distance and stopped. There was no apparent reason for stopping in this particular spot, but Mina sat on the ground and reached up for me to lower myself as well. As we sat, small creatures scurried out from where we would settle. Mina said that when one needs to rest, it is done in this manner. I thought I had already experienced this aspect of life in her world.

She whispered, “You lie back so that your head touches the ground.” As we lay there an apparent static energy began to glow between our heads and the surface we were touching. She called this an accelerated awareness of the spirit. My body felt an energizing glow and my skin felt a sensation of tiny pinpricks and fiery heat at the point of each prick. As we remained prone, inner warmth began to develop and grow. I felt heavy as though I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. In what seemed like seconds the sensations had ended suddenly, and I craved more.

Mina stood and looked down at me. She took a deep breath and reached down to help me rise. As I rose I felt powerful and energized. I looked at Jasmina in amazement. This beat the heck out of a full night’s sleep. This was what had occurred earlier when I needed sleep. Jasmina told me that this would be enough rest for me to go on for several days, but since I had no idea of time as it passed, I could only trust my gut to tell me when I would need rest again. We walked for some time watching as Terans went about their work around us. Coming to the base of a pillar, we both leaned against it to watch others go by while we talked. It seemed surreal to me that these people and my own people looked so similar and yet they were so different, so advanced, evolved, and powerful. They were calm, quiet, and seemed to be very happy.

Mina stopped my thinking with her words, “It is not as you see it to be. What you see here is the world we support. It is as a room in your home, neat, quiet, everything where you want it, everything where you put it. This is how we keep our part of this and other worlds. But all is not perfect in the universe. Many of your people’s concerns are founded in reality. Your people have seen alien visitors. They have seen many unexplained anomalies. There is a dark side to the universe beyond this planet. Much of what is a danger to us all, we Terans work hard to protect against. There are outsiders who would take this planet for their own, but we make it appear as though this planet is rapidly dying. Part of this façade takes the form of the deserts above. To outsiders, deserts near the equator and polar ice caps denote planetary decay gone out of control. We have generated this appearance to deceive some of the worst of the marauders that have come here over time. There have been other less evolved species who have visited this world many times, but typically they are driven off by our energy and influence.

“There is one danger that is even more hazardous than the dark side of humans, the dark side of Terans. It is not an immediate concern, but this is something I must share with you so that you will always trust that I share everything with you. Before we left to come here, there was a rebellion on Tera. Many Terans grew to abuse their power. They began to feel that they were superior to others of their own race. They created a religion that justified all of their evil actions. They would travel to other worlds and rob those worlds of all their valuable resources. Anything considered rare in that world became coveted by our dark ones and was taken to a place that they modified to be their treasure trove. This treasure planet became an obsession for the dark ones. As they began to fight amongst themselves over their precious bounty, the rest of our race recognized that there would someday need to be a break between our kinds. When we departed Tera, the dark ones were abandoned to live out their last moments on Tera. We blocked their ability to jump from Tera as the planet destroyer black dwarf star made its final approach. We have maintained a vigil since those days, many millions of years ago. There is no confirmation of their demise. Our concern has always kept us on guard, keeping watch over the space surrounding our solar system. We make certain that the dark ones keep their distance from our worlds, not just this planet, but the worlds of Terans who traveled to the other bio-formed Teran shell planets throughout the universe.

“It has been so long since those turbulent times that many planets believe that the dark ones (Teranor) vanished with Tera when the dwarf star disrupted our home world. We here of EarthUnder do not share this confidence with our sister planets. We remain in constant vigil and so even if we succeed in persuading mankind to change their destructive ways, there will always remain this threat concern. One of our greatest concerns has been that our corrupted brothers and sisters might direct an unstoppable event our way from some distant point in space in retribution for our desertion of their spirits on Tera. So even if you and I succeed, Bryce Monroe Sterling, in saving Earth from immediate demise, we may someday have to leave this world for another. We can take the whole of mankind with us, but not unless they understand and agree to join us.”

As Mina spoke, we sat on two humps rising up from the surface, and she reached out to place a small peanut-shaped object in my hand. She had another in her hand, which she put in her mouth and began to chew. When I asked what it was she said it was our meal for the day, a blend of probiotic ingredients containing tetrameric protein, fiber, and concentrated carbohydrates. In a survival situation, one of these meal pods can sustain a human for as many as thirty days on Earth’s surface. I popped the meal pod into my mouth showing all the faith and trust I could muster. As I bit down for the first time it had the viscosity of well-used chewing gum and a flavor similar to raspberries and meadow foam honey. As I chewed the pleasant meal pod, it slowly dissolved away to nothing. Jasmina told me that this would give me strength and energy while maintaining all of my body’s physiological requirements. She noted that my physical well-being would allow me to more efficiently assimilate further orientation into her world. She also included that it would not be much longer before we would be leaving Tera to move back to the surface of Earth, where we would embark on our journey.

Mina leaned over and picked up some sphagnum from the earth below, pushed it into the pool next to us, and then squeezed the water into her mouth as she tilted her head back to catch the falling stream of water. She then offered the mossy sponge to me for a drink from the pond. As I hesitated, she assured me that water gets no more pure than this. In all my travels over the planet through the years, I have always been leery of drinking the local water. I have been sick from waterborne critters so many times that I always hesitate as those painful memories race through my mind. Again, I acted on trust and allowed myself to mirror Mina’s actions.

My mother always enjoyed the taste of really pure water. In fact the town where I grew up had wonderful, pure, clean water and Mom always told us that this was why we lived in that town. She used to describe how our water came from a deep well and that the water was pressed through a thin seam in Columbia Basalt two thousand feet below the surface. Mom was a school teacher by career, but her education was hydrogeology and her passion was the arts. I grew up in a home filled with music, family antiques, and Mom’s art collection on the walls. As I tasted the refreshing, cold water from the pond, it was as if I were back there in time listening to Mom preach her water words.

Jasmina crinkled a small reassuring smile of authority as she told me, “This is the same water that comes from your well at home, filtered by the same rock.”

It felt good to hear her say this. A fond memory of my childhood brought back by something from this new world was helping me to feel more at home here deep in the belly of my own planet.

As we sat I asked Mina about other destructive powers that represent danger to humans such as earthquakes. She explained that planet Earth is always growing, both from the roughly one hundred tons of debris that falls through the atmosphere each day, most of which is dust, and also because the Earth is expanding from within. She told me that the Terans control this movement we call plate tectonics. That even though they work to slow the movement and struggle to stop continental shifts as soon as possible, a small amount of destructive energy does escape their grasp. She then explained that things would be far more violent if the Terans weren’t here to maintain the planet’s movement. She reminded me that this is a living planet and that they can control much of Earth’s volatility but they cannot stop it. All that Earth does is an integral part of the biosphere we call home.

Jasmina took my hand and led me up into the air again. This time we flew to a window into one of the oceans. We hovered near the bottom edge of the massive opening into the Brine. Once we drew within a few yards of the water I could feel the energy that was holding the water in place. I could hear the sounds of the sea as if I were in the water. Facing the window I could see little else but the wall of water since the window must be thousands of yards high and even wider. There were no fish visible, but at the bottom I could see hundreds of steel drums covered with sediment. Mina explained to me that this was Man’s idea for nuclear waste disposal. These were ordinary steel drums filled with concrete and waste material from nuclear power plants and nuclear bomb manufacturing. I could see that the steel was rusting away.

Mina was trying to show me the human “out of sight, out of mind” approach to pollution problems. This was one of many examples of what she had talked about earlier. The list was endless: oil drilling, mining, water drilling, asphalt and concrete roads and parking lots, burning waste, dumping waste in the oceans and landfills, hiding it in salt mines. Ignoring the energy of our life-giving sun, Man has dammed our glorious rivers for hydroelectric power. Gas-powered automobiles on asphalt roads and jets in the upper atmosphere burn fuel producing deadly gases and belching them into the air. Burning fields and forests, draining virtually all of our waste into rivers, oceans, and the ground; all are deadly practices. She could have listed many more examples, but she knew I understood the message. She told me how she needed to communicate with the world leaders of my people that this must all stop immediately in order to save the planet for us all. She added that it would be much easier for Earthlings to save this planet than to grow accustomed to a new and fairly hostile alternative home world.

Mina cast deep into my mind with her beautiful eyes and said quite clearly, “Your birds are dropping from the sky. You are eating fish that are filled with the poison you dump into your waters. Your fruit and vegetables are filled with toxins and dioxins and you spray them with poisons to kill the insects that attack them for their own nourishment. The flesh of the animals you eat is tainted with toxins and hormones, and the air you breathe is causing cancer. From outside your civilization this appears to be a global death wish. We can help Mankind but only if they choose to change their destructive direction. The end result of the human course is an end for the Terans as well, but we do not choose to go with the humans any further down that path of self-destruction. This is what needs to be conveyed to your current global leaders. Terans do not have leaders. When you speak to one of us you communicate with us all. I am merely chosen to do this task, as are you, Bryce Monroe Sterling. Together we must start this change.”

She pointed to the wall of sea water in front of us. “Your scientists call this part of the ocean dead. There is not enough oxygen remaining here to support life. This is an infection that will spread until the oceans of this world roll over and die. If that comes to be, then we all will die. Scientists used to believe that an ice age would take millions of years to return. I tell you that a global ice age only takes three of your years to occur. Your scientists believe that the oceans can heal themselves while Man keeps using them as toilets. I tell you that one day the breathable air will simply fade away and in just one of your twenty-four-hour days. I know this is hard for you to hear, so try to understand how hard it has been for my people to watch. Your people must come to realize that the end is near and if it comes to another planetary move, the ones who have fallen into darkness will be left behind to expire. This will be hard for many to accept, but it will be done regardless of emotional reaction. This will all be revealed to your leaders as we make our attempt to communicate our concerns about our coexistence here. After that it will be up to your people to decide how we move forward to save this planet. Either way this goes will be difficult for us all to complete. For now I would like you to meet some Terans. Then, we will move back to the surface after you and I discuss our approach to the next phase.”