The Theta Prophecy
Read The Theta Prophecy Online
Authors: Chris Dietzel
The Theta Prophecy
CHRIS DIETZEL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidence.
THE THETA PROPHECY, Copyright 2015 by Chris Dietzel.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Watch The World End Publishing.
ISBN-13: 978-1515146872
ISBN-10: 1515146871
Cover Design: Levente Szabo
Editor: D.L. MacKenzie
Author Photo: Jodie McFadden
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Also by Chris Dietzel
Dystopian
The Theta Timeline
The Theta Patient
Apocalyptic
The Man Who Watched The World End
A Different Alchemy
The Hauntings Of Playing God
The Last Teacher
The Theta Prophecy
“No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.”
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
- Samuel Johnson
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.”
Nineteen Eighty-Four
- George Orwell
PART ONE – OAK ISLAND
“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.”
A Moveable Feast
- Ernest Hemingway
Year: Unknown
In much of life, there are only negligible differences between things that are beneficial and things that are lethal. No one understands this better than those who live off the earth, picking berries and mushrooms with the knowledge that the right ones can keep people alive and healthy, while the wrong ones can lead to a slow and painful death.
From an early age, the Mi’kmaq natives of Nova Scotia were taught by their elders how to survive on nothing but plants. This wasn’t because the Mi’kmaq were herbivores—they were, in fact, regular hunters—it was because they knew the importance of being able to survive if their circumstances quickly changed. For reasons they could not understand, there were years when fish were not plentiful in the waters. So too were there times when moose and deer were in smaller numbers than other years. During these times, they were thankful they could tell the difference between poisonous mushrooms and berries and the ones that would keep them nourished.
Even when the hunters were successful, daily life was tenuous during the harsh coastal winters. Plant life became sparse. Squirrels and rabbits ate an absurd amount of the nuts that the people would have liked to collect for themselves. On the occasions the hunters had to travel further to find their next kill, or when people were too far away from their village to get back under cover before a storm came through, each person had to be able to survive on their own until conditions improved.
By the age of four, Mi’kmaq children knew the subtle differences between nutritious berries and those that could cause vomiting and diarrhea. They could also tell the difference between mushrooms that were high in vitamins and those that caused severe kidney and liver damage. By the age of six, Mi’kmaq children were allowed to help gather food for their families. Rather than viewing it as work, something they had to do when they would rather be playing with their friends, the children felt honored to be given this duty and took it very seriously.
The Mi’kmaq could adapt and persevere through conditions that would have wiped out other civilizations or at least forced them to migrate to warmer climates, but they also possessed qualities that other civilizations might find less admirable. Their religious beliefs, for example. They believed in not just a single deity, as did the men who would one day arrive by ship and immediately begin trying to convert everyone, but two deities. They also believed that certain members of their tribe were sorcerers who possessed healing powers. To the Mi’kmaq, magic and spirits were real things—things to be feared and respected. But for all of their superstitions, they were survivors. This was why a six-year-old Mi’kmaq girl, alone in the wilderness, could live on her own longer than men from the future who would delight in calling themselves hunters. Men from these future civilizations, priding themselves on their civility and resourcefulness, wouldn’t know the first thing about how to survive on their own in the freezing north.
And yet, while some tribes are nomadic and some learn to live through even the most savage winters, and some people believe in one god and others believe in multiple gods, some responses are universal. Such was the case when a six-year-old Mi’kmaq girl, three miles from her village, holding a woven basket half-filled with dark red berries, saw a flash of light in the sky unlike anything she had ever seen before.
It was not lightning. She would have known if a storm were coming by the clouds and darkening sky. It was the wrong time of year to be the northern lights. Rather, it was a burst of light as if the sky were opening up from the realm of the gods. What else could she think other than that some miraculous power, greater than herself, was appearing before her? That was why she dropped to both knees and began praying.
The brilliant white light was a thousand feet out to sea, maybe a hundred and fifty feet in the air. It flashed with an even purer light than the sun. Then, a moment later, a man fell out of the sky from the exact spot where the light was and plummeted toward the water.
The girl began mumbling prayers as quickly as she could.
Date: 1795
From the coast, a nearby series of islands presented itself like a spattering of alternate worlds. Daniel had no way of knowing about the Theta Timeline or the existence of other possible realities playing out in an infinite series of universes. If he had understood how time actually worked, he would know that somewhere out there, realities were playing out in which the coast he was standing on didn’t even exist; others where mankind had never evolved from monkeys; and yes, as difficult as it was to believe, even realities in which he wasn’t standing on the shore wishing for something greater than the life set out in front of him.
His father would be looking for him soon. As much as Daniel knew he should pull away from watching the waves breaking against the rocks, he couldn’t make his feet obey. Depending on the time of day, the water ranged in color from orange to green and then to blue. With the sun at his back, fading behind the trees, the water was devoid of color, a black abyss. Every once in a while, small bubbles surfaced, fish roaming, hidden in a world of their own in the darkness below. What he would give to be amongst them, free to go anywhere he wanted, too much ocean in front of him to explore in one lifetime.
Instead, he was stuck right where he was. His parents’ home was somewhere behind him along with the rest of the town. The old church he went to every Sunday. The drab collection of farms. The dreary life his parents had. All of it was pulling him away from the coast and from the islands that taunted him with their unknown possibilities.
Each dash of land was kept separate from him and from the life he knew by crashing waves, by millions of gallons of seawater. Yet each one resembled the very place he was standing on—it wasn’t as if one was red like Mars and the others even more exotic—and because of that they held the possibility of something other than the life he was expected to have. He had to have a greater purpose on earth than helping on his parents’ farm and growing old. There just had to be something else. Each speck of land, each dot against the glimmering ocean, offered the hope.
On one island, he might meet a stranded beauty, the lone survivor of a shipwrecked vessel. They would spend the rest of their lives making love and living as the king and queen of their own private oasis. Never again would he have to worry about whether or not a girl might refuse his request for a dance at a church social, where the boys and girls met under strict supervision, granted thirty minutes to dance with anyone they chose. The adult chaperones forbid anything more intimate than both dancers placing their hands on their partners’ shoulders or waist. Hips were not permitted to touch. Certainly no kissing. On his island, however, he would be able to dance with his stranded beauty as often as he wanted, and they could do anything else they pleased as well—all the things that were frowned upon where he lived.
On another island, he would find monsters and exotic creatures. Without a way to swim to the mainland, the beasts would be stuck on their island—forgotten by time—a primitive and uncharted land of unknown dangers. It would be up to Daniel to explore the land. A monster the size of his town’s church would stomp the ground and try to gobble him up in its oversized jaws. He would jump to the side and smack its nose with the blunt side of his spear, making it cry and go looking for something easier to eat. On another part of the island, he would find a species of creature that was a hybrid of bears and cats. They would be round and cuddly and roar, yet they would rub against his leg and sit in his lap anytime he paused for rest. The entire island would offer wonders he had never seen before.
On yet another island, there would be riches of unthinkable proportions. Thick wooden chests too heavy to move. When he broke away the locks and opened the lids he would find gold coins, gold cups and crowns, gold necklaces. Gold everything. Another chest would be reserved for gold jewelry. He would need to recruit his friends just to help him carry it all. Even so, there would be so much gold that he would have to make at least four separate trips across the water to carry it all. The last thing he would want would be a sinking boat, a treasure lost at the bottom of the ocean, because he tried to carry too much at once. He would become not just the richest man in Lunenburg County, but the richest anywhere on the continent. He would have more gold than he could ever possibly spend.
On the nights he felt particularly gloomy about his future prospects, about the chance of ever leaving the small town for bustling New York City, he envisioned not only becoming the wealthiest man in the New World but in all the world. Kings would offer their daughters to him if only he would consider taking their hand in marriage. Cities would be named after him.
A flock of birds, flying in the shape of a V, offered faint calls as they mocked him, demonstrating how easy it was to go from one place to another. If he had his slingshot on him, he would have shot at them. In front of him, a fish came to the surface just long enough to poke its mouth out of the water. Then it was gone again.
With a groan, he backed slowly away from the water. Each minute away from home was another minute for his father to contemplate how he could keep his boy too busy to goof off like this.
Another step backward, followed by a loud sigh. Somewhere out there, a better life existed. He just had to find it. One of the good things about being eighteen years old is the never-ending hope that circumstances would change. Later in life, the burden of daily chores, of working from sunup to sundown, could make a man forget he was ever a dreamer. One day, he could even look at his own children and scoff at their grand fantasies, of their desire to live in the big city. But for now at least, Daniel was still young enough to wake up each day with the fanciful hope that a beautiful woman or an amazing adventure or unthinkable riches might be out there waiting for him.
On the few occasions when he did have a day off to do whatever he wanted, he would collect his friends and they would explore one of these islands. It wasn’t charting the unknown world and they didn’t seriously expect to find gigantic treasures, but it was the best way to feel like they might find a way to escape the town they lived in—for a few hours at least.
It seemed like a game with very limited possibilities, but with well over three hundred nearby islands, they could explore for years without seeing the same thing twice. When they only had half a day to goof off, they selected one of the islands close to shore. When they didn’t have to be back until sundown, they took the canoe toward the more distant islands.
Standing on the shore and looking out at the water, he had attempted every type of imaginable trick to convince himself treasures or beautiful women or forgotten monsters were closer than they really were.
There were nights he thought he could hear a woman’s beckoning, the enchanting call of someone stranded, wanting him to rescue her. Of course, she would fall in love with him as soon as they saw each other. But the noise, a soft and lyrical whistle, became repetitive and he realized it was nothing more than one of those brown birds with the red tails—he couldn’t remember their name—trying to find a mate. Right scenario, wrong species.
There were also nights in which he heard monstrous roars, unearthly sounds that couldn’t possibly be caused by bears, wolves, or anything else from this land.
“It’s a whale,” his father said, no excitement or annoyance or anything else in his voice.
“I’ve heard whales before, Pa. They don’t sound like that.”
“Almost never do. But that’s a whale. Only ever heard them make those noises a few times in my life. Might be hurt. Not really sure.”
Without waiting for further debate, Daniel’s father would go back to reading a book by candlelight. His father would remain in that chair until the candle burned itself out simply because he was too tired to do anything else. Life was hard in the outer reaches of civilization. It wasn’t easy waking up with the sun, working outside all day, no matter if it was raining or snowing, and only turning in when the sun went down over the hills. It made old men of people who were otherwise much too young to be hobbled. As Daniel watched his father’s eyelids droop closed, he knew he didn’t want to be sitting in a similar chair when he was his old man’s age.
If the lyrical calls were birds and the roars were whales, that only left him with the possibility of what the distant lights might be. Each time a flickering light appeared on one of the islands, he imagined a band of pirates sneaking ashore to bury their treasure. Little did the smugglers know Daniel could see their lanterns in the night and would arrive the next day to dig up their riches. But before that could happen, the flickering light took form, became more permanent, and Daniel could tell the lantern didn’t belong to a group of pirates on a nearby island but to a boat that was arriving in the bay with a shipment for the town. Sometimes, the lights were caused by the moon’s reflection off seals as they swam in the water. Other times, the lights were shooting stars. They belonged to everything except pirates burying their treasure.
That never stopped Daniel and his buddies from exploring each island in the hope of finding these things, however. Indeed, there was nothing that could discourage a teenager, a young man, from fantasies of grandeur and riches… a better life.