Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Augur's View: New Earth Chronicles, #1
The Augur's View: New Earth Chronicles, #1
The Augur's View: New Earth Chronicles, #1
Ebook494 pages6 hours

The Augur's View: New Earth Chronicles, #1

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

Those privy to ancient writings, after the Solar Flash jolts Earth in 2034, guard the greatest secret of alla real game-changer.

  • FINALIST (In 2 Categories): American Book Fest - Best Book Awards 2019

"...a compelling science fiction tale with post-apocalyptic undertones. There is a powerful sense of mystery—secrets hidden in ancient manuscripts and other worlds to explore. The Augur's View is exciting, featuring an imaginary setting that goes far beyond the world we know." ~ Readers' Favorite Book Reviews (5 STARS)

Eena, an Anunnaki/human hybrid, and her friend Gavin are among those abandoned on the surface after a coronal mass ejection. Even after surviving aircraft falling from the skies, raging winds, and unrelenting electrical storms, revulsion grips Eena when the new rulers offer her a rise in "status" by working in a lab to clone infants—the secret future workforce.

When Eena discovers at last the portal to ancient Mu, and finds the giant augurs that fly there, she enlists their help. It may be the last, best chance to achieve human sovereignty.

EVOLVED PUBLISHING PRESENTS a compelling speculative/visionary tale, with post-apocalyptic elements, to bring the past full circle into the future, in this first book in the "New Earth Chronicles" series. [DRM-Free]

"...a fast-paced story that embraces all kinds of social, political, moral, and ethical questions while remaining firmly rooted in the dreams, ambitions, and struggles of young people who reach for a better world. It's a powerful opener to a hero's journey in which the world beckons with new opportunity and danger, the promise of futuristic science and technology, and the dreams of survivors who both struggle and love on different levels." ~ Midwest Book Review, D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer

 

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 1, 2019
ISBN9781622533695
The Augur's View: New Earth Chronicles, #1
Author

Victoria Lehrer

In seventh grade, Mrs. Trader inspired me both as a writer and a teacher. In her class, I learned I loved to write and that my classmates liked to hear my stories. Her spirited students engaged in dramatic performances, hands-on projects, and lively discussions—nothing like the poor subdued souls across the hall, managed by the teacher with long green eyes. So Mrs. Trader was my model when I started a school and set aside my writing—that is, until it dawned on me that tribes of children have loved learning by listening to stories for thousands of years. So I wrote about a million words that speak to head and heart, which I am still reading to my child listeners. But now I’m writing stories, my second million words, to speak to the heads and hearts of adult readers and listeners, and hoping my classmates will like them.

Related authors

Related to The Augur's View

Titles in the series (5)

View More

Related ebooks

Science Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for The Augur's View

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    The Augur's View - Victoria Lehrer

    As Eena plotted her escape from Township 26, she never imagined departing in a plane with a mystery pilot for an unknown reason to an unidentified location.

    The first citizen to be airborne since the Solar Flash of 2034, the twenty-five-year-old’s gut screamed this flight was not to fulfill dreams of freedom. Nor did landing at a ghostly airport amid surreal runways of haphazardly parked jets ease the tension in her belly. A man in uniform told her they were in Transtopia Metro, formerly Colorado Springs. He escorted her to an overhauled car, and they sped away, swerving around potholes until they skidded to a stop at the hospital in Fort Carson, Colorado.

    The stale air of an old building assaulted Eena’s nostrils as she descended three flights of stairs, entered a long, narrow hall, and hesitated at the open door on the right. A man at a desk looked up from his clipboard to greet her by name and introduce himself as Doctor Olsen.

    In the low-ceilinged room, the fluorescent lights buzzed and crackled a warning that she, a seeker of fellow insurgents, had landed in the lair of the controllers.

    Head tilted, the doctor leaned back in his chair as though sizing her up beneath half lowered lids. Then he shifted forward and announced with the exuberance of a salesman, You’re about to learn that today is your lucky day.

    At a loss, she stared blankly into gray eyes that matched the walls.

    The official stood up. But first a tour. Come with me.

    Past a succession of closed doors, the doctor’s shoes echoed an irregular staccato until, at a door labeled GESTATION CHAMBER, he paused to open it with an expectant flair. Prepare yourself for the technology of the future.

    A sense of unease clenched her gut as Eena entered the dimly lit room where recessed florescence cast a blue glow on transparent tubes that lined the walls. The liquid in each glass womb buoyed a baby attached to an artificial umbilical cord, a conveyance from an automated source of metered sustenance. At the far end of the room amid the murmur of soft beeps, a clinician with a clipboard and an air of detached efficiency checked monitors and gauges.

    Behold the future workforce, Olsen said as though a drumroll should accompany his introduction, pride of the Social Engineering Initiative.

    The subterranean realm enmeshed the visitors in gloom while Doctor Olsen prattled on about in vitro fertilization procedures, and red lights blinked the pulse of infant hearts beating in indifferent voids.

    Reeling from the impact of this violation of the biological ordering of life, Eena leaned against the wall. A chilling warmth curved into her spine, and she jerked forward, recoiling from contact with the container that held a floating infant.

    Apparently enamored with his clinical underworld, Doctor Olsen remained oblivious to Eena’s emotional state and continued to lecture to an audience of one who heard only unintelligible babble.

    He smiled at the conclusion of his dissertation. Clones, he said and, with a dramatic sweep of his arm, paused as though to let her absorb the implications of the surrounding wealth of potential.

    A baby, orphaned from the soothing beat of his mother’s heart, sought comfort as he sucked a tiny thumb.

    "Your future workforce, if you assume the mantle of your heritage—at least, on your father’s side."

    Eena struggled to withdraw her attention from the hypnotic hold of amniotic waters that answered every infant need except a mother’s devotion. Fighting back the assault of dizziness, she looked around for a chair. I need to sit.

    She swayed. With a tight grip on her arm, Doctor Olsen hurried her away from the glass containers for the warehousing of cloned workers. The doctor’s shoes click-clacked past the dun-colored doors, and they returned to the room where the nightmare had begun.

    When Eena’s head cleared, she sat across from the official and looked him straight in the eyes. "Please speak to me directly. You’ve alluded to ‘my lucky day’ and ‘my workforce.’ No more hints. Why am I here?"

    Doctor. Olsen’s eyes flickered slightly as though impacted by the force of her impatience. He picked up a narrow book and slid it to her. This is your genealogy on your father’s side.

    As Eena focused on the fifty-page chart of the family tree, he spoke another riddle. Your father was what’s known as ‘a royal blood’—a direct descendent of Anu—ancestor of the puppeteers who have pulled the strings behind the human stage for thousands of years.

    With those words, the dreamy sense of undisclosed truth that had dogged Eena’s youth snapped her to wakefulness. Her parents, now buried beneath the rubble left by a devastating tornado, had paraded vague, disparate images from her European lineage, bequeathing speculation as her only heritage from her father’s side.

    Yet, the Hopi/Dine’ roots that endowed her mother with doe-eyed beauty and a placid disposition had woven living connections into her psyche. Cords pulsed a vibrant continuum as her mother midwifed countless births, placing each newborn on the mother’s breast close to her soothing heartbeat.

    The evader was Eena’s tall distinguished father, a naturopathic physician of penetrating intelligence, who alluded to his ancestry with an offhand shrug. Now, as though again to cheat her yearning to know the truth, a chart compelled her gaze along a remote succession of titles and names. Unlike Hopi/Dine’ stories that quickened the pulse with tales of heroic feats, the inked genealogy entombed the echoes of the past in unresponsive silence.

    The doctor’s droned words pummeled her ears while her eyes traced the schematic, confirming generations descended from a single ancestor: Anu.

    What about the rest of humanity? Are we—they—not the children of Anu?

    Ah, the worker race. The remnant of a catastrophic flood, with switched off DNA.

    DNA?

    Yes, genetically modified by the progenitors.

    The progenitors?

    Anu’s cohorts, the progenitors, engineered a docile class of sturdy toilers, worshipful of royal hierarchies and willing to fight for them.

    I don’t see the connection to inactive DNA.

    Genetic keys responsible for independence, assertiveness, rebelliousness—traits like that.

    Hmm, I think I’m getting it.

    Problem is the coronal mass ejections and concurrent Earth changes have given the royal bloods some major headaches.

    Eena looked evenly at Doctor Olsen. Other than blown transformers, fried engines and destroyed surveillance satellites?

    Since Solar Flash, geneticists have made a startling discovery.

    That being....

    A reversal of the blocked genetic traits in captured insurgents, runners and out-of-the-box thinkers. My understanding is that a charged plasma field entering our solar system caused both Solar Flash and a magnetic reversal of the deactivated DNA.

    Eena nodded slowly. You’re saying the plasma stream triggered a DNA switch-on of insurgent traits in certain worker-bred people. Hope tweaked a sudden realization. I’m going to find these rebels. They are our allies.

    Doctor Olsen whirled a pen between thumbs and forefingers. Which brings us back to you, a mixture of royal blood and worker. There are many like yourself, children of defectors from the pure bloodline. But, after generations of intermarriage, their blood is more diluted than yours. To find a fifty-percenter is very rare, mostly because defections from the ruling class are rare.

    Eena could be doggedly persistent. So, how does this revelation make me ‘lucky’?

    You will never enjoy the prerogative of the ruling ten thousandth of a percent to set the course of human evolution. However, you are being offered an official role in the scientific design and ordering of the general population.

    Eena stared at him, her brain offering its own analogy. You mean like a beehive.

    He looked startled as though such allusions to the natural ordering of life were far removed from his consciousness.

    You know, drones, nurses, scouts, guards, the queen—every insect in the hive doing its repetitive job instinctively and without question.

    He whirled the pen to a vertical position and tapped the end on the desk. Yes, like that. The landlords are offering you a choice—either to spend your life as a drone or to serve as the queen’s attendant, so to speak.

    Eena imagined herself feeding the queen bee royal jelly. Unable to penetrate the soulless eyes across the desk, she examined the tightly intertwined fingers on her lap.

    However, if you accept this honor, you will have to swear an oath of loyalty to your royal bloodline and its right to rule.

    I’m curious about my authority over runners from townships and insurgents against the Union of the Americas.

    The doctor’s next words sliced with a clean edge. Eliminate them. Period. No exceptions.

    Eena scanned the jutting jaw past clamped lips to cold slate eyes.

    Her host glared ominously. You will be watched.

    She turned a page as though intently studying the family tree. How long do I have to decide? Concealing emotions that broiled behind an impassive face, Eena watched the doctor’s raised eyebrows register surprise—as if it were inconceivable she would choose to be any kind of worker other than a privileged official.

    One week. If you decide to accept this honor, your rigorous personality purification processes will begin.

    She nodded placidly while revulsion for the probable nature of rigorous personality purification processes churned her stomach.

    Doctor Olsen leaned back in his chair to look at her over the pen twirling between his thumbs and index fingers. I must warn you. You will not want to betray your benefactors with the slightest bending of the SEI policies.

    SEI?

    Social Engineering Initiative.

    I understand. Eena closed the record of her lineage.

    The doctor’s lips contrived a smile. He placed the pen in the black mesh metal holder, retrieved the book and brusquely tidied his desk. Is there anything else I can help you with?

    Eena cocked her head, her eyes focused on the red binders lining the shelf behind Doctor Olsen. So, what happens to those babies when they outgrow the containers?

    "Nurseries, of course, where they’ll be raised according to the strict guidelines of the SEI. The coming generation of workers will be our design from test tube to gestation tank to first through tenth developmental stage management facilities. None of these fortunate children will be subjected to the whims, outbursts, indecision, coddling—generally faulty modeling of biological parents. Instead, scientific protocols will steer their growth to an appropriate slot in the corporate workforce. When the grid is restored, we will resume the Enhanced Human Phase of the SEI."

    Enhanced Human?

    Bionic humans with chip enhancements for ongoing and instant responsiveness to directives from the central A.I.

    This assertion jolted Eena from appalled to perplexed.

    Doctor Olsen seemed to enjoy her confusion. Also known as ‘The Black Sun,’ placed in space countless ages ago by a race of sentient robots.

    Eena leveled her return gaze as this information meteor cratered her brain.

    I’ve presented you a brief introduction to this. He pointed to the row of two-inch blood red volumes, books one through eight. The Manual for Social Engineering Objectives and Protocols. As he read aloud the title, consummate zeal sounded each word.

    A silent void engulfed Eena as the deafening whoosh of tiny hearts pulsed humanity’s doomed future. She struggled to hold her shoulders erect.

    Eena stood, lifted her chin, and nodded that the meeting was concluded. As she turned toward the driver seated in the hall, she felt like sprinting from this realm of gloom, but forced herself to walk with stoic resolve through the door.

    Imperial Governor Charles Scholtz awaited his next appointment behind imposing carved teak doors. His office resided on the tenth floor of a still-standing tower bordering the scene of charred rubble—all that remained of the northern two-thirds of Transtopia Metro, the former Colorado Springs. A fifty-two-year-old of impeccable royal lineage, he resented the power shrink caused by Solar Flash. He resented being stripped of unbridled manipulation of those known as underlings, workers and eaters. He resented the severed connection with his god, the Black Sun.

    Following the population-leveling effects of Solar Flash, remnants of the powerful Landlords of the World, such as himself, had settled in the midst of the underlings. But from this height he could look down on the workers crawling like ants along the sidewalk below. While he was exiled from his secluded mansions and denied access to the sky watch satellite, that elevated point of view helped keep things in perspective.

    The governor’s superior positioning enabled him to endure tiresome, but necessary, meetings with SEI officials. Awaiting his next encounter with annoyance, he looked at the refurbished electronic clock. While contact with social engineering scientists that groveled for his favor was an irritant, he did want to know about Doctor Olsen’s meeting with the half-breed. As much as he disliked acknowledging a defector’s offspring, she could prove useful.

    Accustomed to godlike powers prior to Solar Flash, Scholtz and fellow progeny of Anu had siphoned the revenues of corporate appendages from the sale of arms, pharmaceuticals and petroleum. Meanwhile, humanity, the bionic workforce-in-the-making, breathed nano-particles rained from aircraft trails that cobwebbed the skies.

    The White Sun’s temper tantrum interrupted that glorious reign. But within a decade, by means of a restored grid and the rigorously re-implemented Social Engineering Initiative, the royal lineage of Anu would rise again.

    He turned to the wall map of Sector 10. A red circle targeted the vast forested portion bordered on the south and west sides by six townships plus Techno City, and on the east by Transtopia Metro. He needed the labor of every underling survivor to restore the hierarchy of dominance as soon as possible. Yet, he suspected an absentee workforce of hundreds, whose skills were essential to reconstruction, to be secreted in those mountains. And he knew that runners from the townships had escaped to that rugged terrain along the Continental Divide.

    He sighed in response to a tap at the door. Yes?

    Doctor Olsen is here.

    Not disposed to pleasantries, Imperial Governor Charles Scholtz stared at the approaching scientist and nodded for him to sit.

    Olsen swallowed nervously. Eena Burgemeister escaped, taking five runners with her.

    Outrage swallowed Scholtz’s initial disbelief. An insolent half-blood, not only rejecting his generosity, but also collecting runners.

    Leveling a hard stare at the man opposite him, he spoke with controlled fury. We will find them. He scanned the forest enclosed in red on the map as though their whereabouts would jump out at him until the angry jab of his finger tore a hole in the heart of the mountain forests.

    A gentle gust of pine-scented air feathered Eena’s cheek as she recalled the suffocating blow—the stark presentation of wall-to-wall containers of infants—that propelled her escape from Township 26 to Three Mountains Community. Following the forest trail atop Quartz Mountain, she shook off the memory of the visit to Fort Carson. Nonetheless, in the early morning freshness the silken strands of a dew-laden web warned that the control network would soon spider to Three Mountains. In a few years, the cords woven by surveillance satellites, the censored World Wide Web and sky-born, population-subduing nanites would again ensnare the planet. Inevitably, the claws that wound the surrounding townships in strands of deception would bind the escapees in this mountain haven, enabling the spinners of the web to devour the runners’ creative juices.

    Eena’s feet, moccasined in Matoskah’s gift, felt the strong roots that secured earth and trees; yet, each step heralded humanity’s precarious future. Of course, it was foolish for a woman in possession of a single pistol to strategize—okay, fantasize—how Three Mountains, a tiny, unarmed community of DNA-triggered runners, could depose a heavily weaponized regime. Yet she did. Mine is the only gun. But before this saga ends, we will possess an arsenal. A warbler’s trill echoed her intent.

    Eena had taken the problem to the old medicine man, who, in his familiar, enigmatic way, silently pushed together a little pile of grass and held an ignited stick beside it. What did that have to do with her impassioned query? No more was forthcoming. They’d have to continue that conversation—such as it was—another time.

    A herd of deer crossed the trail ahead as she recalled the words of Doctor Olsen: Through the SEI, the landlords are breeding a docile herd and culling the DNA-triggered insurgents. She wondered if she was so rebellious because of genes switched on by charged fields. Or was it the bloodline she shared with those she most detested?

    Curiously, the lead pair of deer turned a sharp right at a tree beside the trail. Watching the next three execute the exact same swerve, she smiled inwardly. She and the landlords did have one desire in common: both wanted to find these insurgents. Freedom seekers. Divided, we’re conquered; united—perhaps still conquered. But, who knows, maybe our rebellious spinnerets will weave our own web of power.

    Not one of the deer continued behind the tree to follow the herd’s path. As Eena puzzled over the deer’s odd behavior, her eyes followed a vine that wound its way straight up the trunk. Intertwined vines about thirty feet high formed a wide, symmetrical archway between two trees. The midsection of the arch grew as if extending over something solid. But no support was there, causing her to pause and ruminate over nature’s remarkable feat. Knowing it’s silly for a grown woman to respond to a childlike impulse, in which any opening is an invitation, she stepped through the vine bower—and into another world.

    Eena searched frantically for the familiar pines of Quartz Mountain as huge red-brown trunks closed ranks around her. Though the temperature was still cool, increased humidity caressed her skin. Cloud wisps mingled with a hazy mixture of terracotta reds amidst an array of muted greens as her gaze clarified a fantastic terrain. The trunk of the closest sequoia was so enormous, she imagined herself the size of the fairytale character, Thumbelina and speculated it would take close to twenty-five people with arms outstretched, fingers touching, to reach around its massive girth. She tilted her head back, her eyes following the staggering height of the giant conifer to the green foliage that, obscured by cloudbanks, capped the reddish bark.

    Closer to her face a pale green butterfly, a swallowtail with brilliant blue eyes on its wings, flirted with her gaze. Entranced, Eena followed the enormous creature. The size of two fists, it fluttered and floated into a lush meadow for a rendezvous with the bright pink flowers of a hydrangea bush. Surrounding the soft radiance of the clearing, majestic sequoias reigned in stately splendor and barred the encroachment of shadowed forest beyond.

    The only similarity between the portal-connected worlds was that in both Eena stood on a mountain slope, this incline being opposite the Quartz Mountain side. Feeling pulled farther into the exotic realm, she looked behind to locate the vine archway. But it wasn’t there. As she searched for the arc of vines and alarm escalated to panic, Eena shifted her gaze from tree to tree until an escarpment, a background wall of solid rock jutting from the mountainside, commandeered her focus. Inwardly protesting the presence of the stone face at her point of entry, she peered until her gaze found the perfect symmetry of an arc of inlaid stones about thirty feet from the ground. The stone border continued straight to the ground on either side, right where the trees hosting the vines would be at the Quartz Mountain entrance.

    Extending her arms forward, palms facing out, in case she was walking into a wall of solid granite, Eena retraced her steps through the portal and back again. Now confident of return access, she smiled with childish delight and resumed exploration of her newly discovered world.

    Gurgling notes of water coursing over stone drew her to a nearby stream cascading down the mountainside. Tumbling over boulders and through gullies carved in remote ages, the crystalline flow guided Eena’s descent through a primeval landscape of gargantuan proportions.

    A half hour later, she arrived in a broad valley where the stream emptied into a river meandering through lush plains and waves of grass that rippled around trees. The sight of large birds ensconced in clusters stopped her in her tracks, and she slowly turned three hundred-sixty degrees beneath an expansive sky trafficked with the birds’ takeoffs, flights and landings. Sunlight glinted on aquamarine plumage as flocks soared down to become patches of blue green moving in the pale green of the tall grass.

    Excitement croaked her voice. The birds—they’re everywhere. When she realized those weren’t flocks of large birds, astonishment gripped her. They were enormous, and she, proportionally miniature, like an inhabitant of Lilliput in Gulliver’s Travels.

    Something huge blocked Eena’s view, and she almost lost her balance as she adjusted her focus to see a person looking down at her from the back of one of the creatures. Rider and bird spiraled downward, arcing to a landing a few feet away. As claws reached for Earth and powerful wings displaced the air with a resounding phoom, Eena brushed aside the curly black tendrils that swept across her view.

    The mounted bird landed with wings momentarily extended, each easily a six-foot expanse from the torso. As the iridescent blue-green feathers folded along the coppery tinged underside, her gaze followed the powerful neck up to a small splash of copper behind the turquoise mandible. Crowning the head, a tall crest of pale, narrow feathers extended with diminishing length along the neck.

    Eena stared in bemusement as the bird pilot slid down the back of her mount and stepped away at the base of the tail. Pulling an exotic fruit from a small pouch, she approached the head of the creature to feed him with one hand and stroke him with the other. With a resonance that rumbled from his throat to become a melodic coo, the bird arched into her touch and lowered his crown as if for a pleasant and familiar ritual. She murmured softly and pressed her cheek against one bony jaw as her free hand scratched the other.

    A friendly smile lit the Polynesian features and crinkled tiny crows feet as her eyes turned toward Eena. I’m Leiani. Spoken as though giving her name would allay Eena’s confusion.

    Eena. After a brief pause, she asked, The bird?

    This is Diso, my nickname for him because he resembles a bird of paradise.

    As Eena’s gaze shifted back to Diso, she nodded, brimming with questions, not knowing what to ask first.

    Leiani seemed to understand the visitor’s speechless state. My first trip here was an overwhelming experience as well.

    Eena smiled her appreciation. You’re from the other side of the portal?

    After a final scratch, Diso moved away as Leiani answered. Yes, my father first brought me here about twelve years ago.

    Your father?

    He’s from here, although I don’t know if he’s still alive in this world.

    "This world?"

    The Land of Mu—also known as the Motherland of Earth’s ancient civilizations: Peru, Egypt, India, to name a few.

    As a voracious reader of alternative histories, referred to as pseudo-science by mainstream sources, Eena nodded.

    Leiani continued with a matter-of-fact tone. According to some sources, the last sinking of Mu was about 40,000 years ago.

    So the portal connects a different time as well as place. Eena’s eyes turned toward the enormous bird devouring exotic fruit beside a tree.

    My father was the first bird pilot in Mu.

    By now Eena was sufficiently grounded to be intrigued. He trained them? She noticed her companion wore on her upper arm a copper band etched with the vertical shape of a bird, head sideways, wings extended.

    Leiani smiled again. Come. You can listen to him in his own words.

    Crossing the stream that had led Eena to the valley, the women followed the river toward a circle of tall rectangular stones—monoliths looming about forty feet above the ground in a circle close to fifty feet in diameter.

    This is similar to Stonehenge in England, Eena mused.

    Yes. It’s also a sun calendar. Leiani led the way to the center of the circle. The arrangement of the stones tracks seasonal events such as the solstices and equinoxes.

    Eena’s guide gestured toward stone benches around the center of the complex. Have a seat.

    Eena sat down as Leiani stepped toward two concentric circles of stones inlaid flat in the ground around a central stone platform. Strange etchings embellished the granite.

    The glyphs relate the story of the rise of the bird-riding culture in Mu. If you look closely, you’ll see dots inconspicuously etched below the symbols. Pressed in sequence, they activate a code.

    Leiani stepped on consecutive rectangles with one, two, then three dots, setting off a buzzing sound and a colorful spray of lights atop the platform. She hurried to sit next to Eena as the three-dimensional image of a man shimmered into view.

    It’s a hologram, she whispered. The speaker, my father, identifies himself simply as Birdman.

    The figure standing with humble dignity appeared to be in his seventies. A copper armlet, etched with the symbol of an open-winged bird, encircled his forearm. The man’s white cloth kilt was adorned with an overlay of long coppery feathers and trimmed with aquamarine plumage below the waist. Downy teal feathers covered a skullcap fitted over straight black hair cut chin length, and brown eyes set in Polynesian features faced the audience.

    Static interfered with the beginning of the narration, but cleared up in time for the listeners to hear: ...the story of how I came to be called ‘Birdman’.

    Intrigued, Eena listened to Birdman describe how, from childhood through adolescence, he wooed the giant sky travelers. The latter stage of his narrative riveted her attention:

    By the time I turned fifteen, I began to envision the possibility of riding a young adult without interfering with the nesting cycle. Through the years of winning the sky travelers’ trust, I learned that, although fully grown at one year, they sexually mature at six years. During that intervening phase, they form flocks of adolescents, during which time piloting one would not interrupt courtship and nesting.

    In order to get close to a particular chick, I built a sturdy ladder and leaned it against the branch that held the nest. For several weeks, I accustomed the parent birds to my presence on ever-higher rungs until I finally sat on the branch at eye level with the birds. I must admit this was a rather dangerous feat to attempt. Having received more than one bloody puncture wound to an arm or leg, I recommend great caution if you attempt this strategy. The only way I learned to spare myself those punishing jabs was to come prepared with peace offerings of star fruit, mango or guava.

    Birdman continued to describe the bonding process during which he named the chick Skylar. Eena paid close attention to the next segment containing information that sounded essential for anyone else wanting to pilot a sky traveler:

    Skylar grew to be a fledgling accustomed to my voice and touch. As the yearling became a strong, short distance flyer, I noticed quite by accident that when I mentally called him, he came! I continued to perfect our telepathic communication even while planning the next big step—to fly with him. Day by day, I gained the full trust of the sky traveler, until at the age of one year he had grown to be a full-sized adult.

    Gradually, I prepared Skylar to accept my weight as a mounted passenger by leaning into and on him. Then one day, standing at his tail section, I laid my entire body over Skylar’s back. Startled, the bird mobilized into flight. I wrapped my arms around his neck and hung on for dear life. When Skylar finally landed, I immediately slid to the ground and approached his head for friendly reassurance. He had begun to relish a good scratch on the bony crest above his beak.

    Soon Skylar came to accept it as natural that I should climb aboard to fly with him. I became adept at guiding him with light touches. The discovery of a psychic rapport between us led to guidance primarily by means of telepathy. Thus began my system of bonding with the birds and training them to allow riders.

    I had not been to your world at that time, nor considered the possibility of piloting the birds through the portal.

    The narrator continued for a few minutes more, describing in more detail the protocols he developed. The hologram shimmered out of view, startling Eena back into the present while the phrase piloting the birds through the portal fluttered like a swallowtail before her mind’s eye.

    I noticed you stepped on three stones with dots, but there are actually six.

    Leiani brushed away tears. The second set activates another message. Altogether, it’s rather a lot to take in on a first visit.

    So, is your father with you now in this world, in Mu?

    No, I’m alone. The story of his life in America and how I came to live here is in a second message, which we can view another day.

    Eena touched Leiani’s arm. On the other side of the portal and down the mountain are fellow runners from townships. You’re welcome at Three Mountains Community.

    Leiani beamed her joy, her eyes wide open, with one hand over her heart.

    Drawn ever deeper into this fantasy world, Eena had a request, relayed in the tentative but eager voice of a child. May I touch Diso?

    Wordlessly, Leiani slipped her arm through Eena’s as though she were a long-lost sister and led her to the browsing bird.

    I’m not altogether sure of Diso’s reaction, since I’m the only human he has ever known.

    With Leiani positioned between the beak and Eena’s extended arm, the visitor ran her fingers along the soft feathers of the neck. The bird’s shiver of pleasure sent a responsive thrill through her fingertips, and she fluttered them over the raised hump of the forewing, her touch grazing the length of the wing.

    Suddenly, the huge bird shifted position and his neck shot up, the head held high and watchful, the beak poised to strike. Eena jerked away her hand.

    Reaching up to scratch Diso behind the jaw, Leiani spoke softly. Augurs don’t like their wings to be touched.

    As the head descended to continue dismembering a mango, relief flooded Eena. Augurs?

    Yes, my father’s name for the sky travelers.

    Where do they nest?

    In those cypress trees lining the river. Come.

    Glad to accept Leiani’s invitation, Eena gazed at the augurs circling the cloudless sky above the savannah and landing in the trees. In this land of gigantic fauna and flora, she wasn’t surprised that the massive trunks of the cypress trees rivaled, even surpassed, the girth of the redwoods. The trunk of the cypress just ahead of them was so huge Eena imagined a cozy room hollowed from its interior. The pair stepped over massive footholds securing the grassy shores and beneath lateral branching that formed graceful inverted skirts.

    Immersed in a sea of rumble-coo bird communications, Eena became aware of a pulsing sensation and placed a hand over her chest in response to the vibration. The sonic drumming was so pleasant, comforting even, she gave Leiani a questioning look.

    Her companion smiled. The birds emit ultrasonic sounds beneath our hearing. Leiani halted beside her. Look closely at the trees just ahead.

    Eena peered into the dense foliage until she became aware of a tangled mass of large sticks and grass resting atop the thick branches near the base of the closest tree.

    A nest! Easily triple the size of large eagles’ nests.

    Leiani smiled. And they last for many years. The birds mate for life and, unless a particularly strong storm destroys their nest, need to make only minor repairs for the twenty-five years or so they share it.

    Eena touched her arm, and they paused. A fledgling soared to the ground and, in response to the resonant rumble-coo of the parent’s encouragement, beat his wings furiously for the short flight back to the nest.

    Though a sense of wonder in this world buoyed Eena, concerns for the one on the other side of the portal weighted her mood. A vague glimmer connected piloting augurs with proactively facing the challenges of a post-apocalyptic Earth, and the power of an inborn sense of purpose, directed her next demand. Help me bond with an augur.

    Before the horrific series of events shattered Gavin Michael’s world, life in Bloomfield, New Mexico, was okay. Yes, the teen resented the dull confinement of high school seven hours a day, but since he never did homework, after school wasn’t a problem. He had electronic games, TV, and the freedom to skateboard across town or explore the desert with Mackie on shared adventures—riding for miles on trail bikes, camping out far from home, and searching for buried treasure.

    That was before Solar Flash blasted the grid in 2034, and with a dead engine, the plane crashed into a nearby apartment building, signaling the death of an era. Terrified, Gavin felt the shockwaves and watched smoke billow overhead. In the surrounding neighborhood, stillness prevailed—as though at the push of a pause button.

    Splintering the fragile silence, which was eerily bereft of the shrill screech of sirens, his father yelled, In the car!

    After Gavin and his parents piled in, he felt the jolt of a second shock when the ignition wouldn’t turn over. Then, an hour later, the toilet wouldn’t flush. And soon after that his mother cried because no water flowed from the kitchen faucet.

    Life became a series of bizarre cessations of normalcy—the

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1