We awoke to the dawn chorus yet again.
After a small breakfast and some relaxing in the sand with the sound of the waves soothing our minds, we set off on the long flight back to the other side of the island.
We knew we were on the other side of the island, because we had all flown up till we could see where we were this morning, though we didn’t know how the portal had zapped us here.
So we flew into the sky, having no idea what awaited us.
* * *
There actually wasn’t much awaiting us, just an intriguing story about a mutated talking monkey that used to be a human in the cave that the other guys found while we were away.
They told us the story of the monkey who lived in the cave. He had a time machine, and the other guys had gone into it and seen themselves going backwards for the last five days.
Then they had got really freaked out because they had kept going back, and they had ended up breaking their way out of it. Whatever happened, they didn’t want to know what they had done their life and see it backwards.
All the people who had been in the cave were cracking jokes and laughing about the monkey, but Maddy seemed upset about him, as if the idea of a human evolving backwards into a monkey and being doomed to walk this earth in the mutated derogatory body of a simian.
We went back to the waterfall for the night, as everybody liked it there, and it wasn’t haunted with bad memories like the cave and the valley.
We all slept peacefully that night, dreaming of our adventures on Matainui that were to come.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Diary Day 5 [Draft]
Today I woke a lot more peacefully.
If you can call waking to the dawn chorus of a million birds peaceful.
It seems we were all woken up by this, because when I crawled out of the tent I could see everyone else doing the same.
We had a nice breakfast consisting of leftover meat and muesli bars, and then we set off, following one of the large streams that branched off from the bottom of the waterfall. It went in the direction of the two mountains, going through a valley and veering towards the middle of the left of the two large formations.
* * *
We had been walking for almost an hour through the rough terrain when we noticed it.
The water was rising.
It had been steadily rising, and was now only a metre away, rather than the previous 5 metres. How we didn’t notice it until now, I do not know. We were now marching single file through a deep and steep ravine, with the ever-rising water growing closer. Due to the steepness of the sides, we couldn’t walk away.
In the end, me, Grayson and Leon flew everyone else up the rocky sides and set them on another path far up above. We didn’t join them. We had noticed a glowing light out in the middle of the ravine, which was now full of water, like a small lake.
The light was growing. It had started off as what had looked like a small rock, but now was a large column rising to the darkening sky up above. It was spinning slowly, and green foamy scum was forming around the bottom. It looked like it was made of shining golden particles floating around, like when dust is stirred up underneath large window or skylight, and they just swirl around in random patterns in the golden rays of sunlight.
We went up to it, and just floated around it for a bit. It was so beautiful. I could’ve stayed there and watched it forever, but I didn’t because I noticed Grayson moving out of the corner of my eye. He was approaching it, and touched it.
It was like he had been zapped with a bolt of lightning. The metal of his suit turned gold and shiny. He started shaking uncontrollably, and then he disappeared. It was like the flying pyramid all over again.
Me and Leon did the same, and I felt like I was on fire and had no control over my thrashing limbs, but of course, it was all in my head and my body remained perfectly still except for the sparks flying over and under my skin. The next second, the biggest jolt yet hit me and the air around me went black as I was flung into another dimension by the portal of light.
* * *
A sharp pain in my side woke me. I was laying awkwardly on a piece of driftwood, sand around my legs and in my hair. The feeling of the jolt was fresh in my mind and the feeling of the blackness around me engulfed my senses until I felt trapped, unable to escape from the falling, falling...
I sat upright quickly, too quickly, and got head-rush from the sudden trip back to reality.
I was sitting on a beach, with Grayson and Leon scattered around nearby in similar uncomfortable positions.
They woke not long after, and we set up our tents for a long, sleepless night.
If you can call waking to the dawn chorus of a million birds peaceful.
It seems we were all woken up by this, because when I crawled out of the tent I could see everyone else doing the same.
We had a nice breakfast consisting of leftover meat and muesli bars, and then we set off, following one of the large streams that branched off from the bottom of the waterfall. It went in the direction of the two mountains, going through a valley and veering towards the middle of the left of the two large formations.
* * *
We had been walking for almost an hour through the rough terrain when we noticed it.
The water was rising.
It had been steadily rising, and was now only a metre away, rather than the previous 5 metres. How we didn’t notice it until now, I do not know. We were now marching single file through a deep and steep ravine, with the ever-rising water growing closer. Due to the steepness of the sides, we couldn’t walk away.
In the end, me, Grayson and Leon flew everyone else up the rocky sides and set them on another path far up above. We didn’t join them. We had noticed a glowing light out in the middle of the ravine, which was now full of water, like a small lake.
The light was growing. It had started off as what had looked like a small rock, but now was a large column rising to the darkening sky up above. It was spinning slowly, and green foamy scum was forming around the bottom. It looked like it was made of shining golden particles floating around, like when dust is stirred up underneath large window or skylight, and they just swirl around in random patterns in the golden rays of sunlight.
We went up to it, and just floated around it for a bit. It was so beautiful. I could’ve stayed there and watched it forever, but I didn’t because I noticed Grayson moving out of the corner of my eye. He was approaching it, and touched it.
It was like he had been zapped with a bolt of lightning. The metal of his suit turned gold and shiny. He started shaking uncontrollably, and then he disappeared. It was like the flying pyramid all over again.
Me and Leon did the same, and I felt like I was on fire and had no control over my thrashing limbs, but of course, it was all in my head and my body remained perfectly still except for the sparks flying over and under my skin. The next second, the biggest jolt yet hit me and the air around me went black as I was flung into another dimension by the portal of light.
* * *
A sharp pain in my side woke me. I was laying awkwardly on a piece of driftwood, sand around my legs and in my hair. The feeling of the jolt was fresh in my mind and the feeling of the blackness around me engulfed my senses until I felt trapped, unable to escape from the falling, falling...
I sat upright quickly, too quickly, and got head-rush from the sudden trip back to reality.
I was sitting on a beach, with Grayson and Leon scattered around nearby in similar uncomfortable positions.
They woke not long after, and we set up our tents for a long, sleepless night.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Diary Day 4 [Draft]
A throbbing ache in my head woke me up.
What had happened?
The memories came back as a fresh wave of pain hit me from the side and knocked me off my elbows and onto my back again. I put my hand behind my head for support and to check out the lump that was forming. I was rather surprised when I felt hair, not hard metal. I must have hit the watch and caused it to turn me human on the way down, because the bruise on my side from hitting a chunk of stone on the way down was definitely flesh, not metal. I push the button on my watch to turn invincible again, and jump up. The other boys are lying around me, but the girls are nowhere to be seen. If they had already got up and not woken us, it would’ve been most rude!
From the look of the daylight filtering through from above, it is mid-morning.
Josiah woke to me shaking him, and (yet again) swung his hammer at me. This time I was prepared though, so I grabbed it, and ducked. He still managed to jar my arm though, and the metal made a soft plinking noise as he hit it.
Together we woke everyone else, and went looking for the girls. They were lying in an adjacent building, under some ferns when we found them. Well, we didn’t exactly find them. Under the ferns were two goddess-like people, with wings, and a white Pegasus. They stirred and woke. The all jumped at the sight of each other and themselves, but then they realised that they had been turned into magnificent beings, and left the weird building with us. We saw a huge swamp monster climbing over the crater, carrying something, and one of the goddesses behind us screamed.
A voice came floating over to us from the other side of the crater.
“Don’t worry, it’s just me,” said the creature in a rather familiar British accent.
“James!” we all exclaimed, and ran over to meet him.
He was carrying Emma, who was badly hurt. We used the combined powers of Sam’s skull and Mac’s one (which he found on the spaceship) to heal her. She was still a little hurt and sleepy, so we muscle men took turns carrying her as we went down the mountain.
But before we descended, we climbed up to the top of one of the temples, the biggest one, and we could see the whole island. We could see the whole island! It was incredible. We could see caves, valleys, hills, rocks, forests, trees. The whole island was spread out before us.
We could see a water fall down below, crashing into the pool with a thunderous roar. That was where we were headed.
We finally got to the bottom and found the waterfall. We drank from it, and we instantly felt refreshed and better. We gave some to Emma, and she fully recovered in a matter of seconds.
Even though it was only mid-afternoon, we all agreed to set up camp and take the day off. Some of us went off hunting, and others went out foraging. But I was tired, so I set up my tent, crawled inside, and went to sleep.
* * *
It was dark when I woke up. I crawled back out of my tent, and slowly walked towards the mesmerizing light and heat of a fire that someone had set up. Most of the others were around, but some, I presumed, were still sleeping or had gone into their tents. I noticed that Morgan, Leah, and Maddi were human again. What a relief!
Mac and Malik had done a great job of hunting, so we all had a bit of roasted meat that they had caught before we retired for the night.
What had happened?
The memories came back as a fresh wave of pain hit me from the side and knocked me off my elbows and onto my back again. I put my hand behind my head for support and to check out the lump that was forming. I was rather surprised when I felt hair, not hard metal. I must have hit the watch and caused it to turn me human on the way down, because the bruise on my side from hitting a chunk of stone on the way down was definitely flesh, not metal. I push the button on my watch to turn invincible again, and jump up. The other boys are lying around me, but the girls are nowhere to be seen. If they had already got up and not woken us, it would’ve been most rude!
From the look of the daylight filtering through from above, it is mid-morning.
Josiah woke to me shaking him, and (yet again) swung his hammer at me. This time I was prepared though, so I grabbed it, and ducked. He still managed to jar my arm though, and the metal made a soft plinking noise as he hit it.
Together we woke everyone else, and went looking for the girls. They were lying in an adjacent building, under some ferns when we found them. Well, we didn’t exactly find them. Under the ferns were two goddess-like people, with wings, and a white Pegasus. They stirred and woke. The all jumped at the sight of each other and themselves, but then they realised that they had been turned into magnificent beings, and left the weird building with us. We saw a huge swamp monster climbing over the crater, carrying something, and one of the goddesses behind us screamed.
A voice came floating over to us from the other side of the crater.
“Don’t worry, it’s just me,” said the creature in a rather familiar British accent.
“James!” we all exclaimed, and ran over to meet him.
He was carrying Emma, who was badly hurt. We used the combined powers of Sam’s skull and Mac’s one (which he found on the spaceship) to heal her. She was still a little hurt and sleepy, so we muscle men took turns carrying her as we went down the mountain.
But before we descended, we climbed up to the top of one of the temples, the biggest one, and we could see the whole island. We could see the whole island! It was incredible. We could see caves, valleys, hills, rocks, forests, trees. The whole island was spread out before us.
We could see a water fall down below, crashing into the pool with a thunderous roar. That was where we were headed.
We finally got to the bottom and found the waterfall. We drank from it, and we instantly felt refreshed and better. We gave some to Emma, and she fully recovered in a matter of seconds.
Even though it was only mid-afternoon, we all agreed to set up camp and take the day off. Some of us went off hunting, and others went out foraging. But I was tired, so I set up my tent, crawled inside, and went to sleep.
* * *
It was dark when I woke up. I crawled back out of my tent, and slowly walked towards the mesmerizing light and heat of a fire that someone had set up. Most of the others were around, but some, I presumed, were still sleeping or had gone into their tents. I noticed that Morgan, Leah, and Maddi were human again. What a relief!
Mac and Malik had done a great job of hunting, so we all had a bit of roasted meat that they had caught before we retired for the night.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Diary Day 3 [Draft]
I awoke on silky smooth bed sheets, and wondered how I had come to be in such a paradise. Then I remembered.
The memory of reaching out to the spaceship and the never-ending void of the blackness hit me like a bullet train.
I. Was. In. A. Spaceship!
I leapt up to survey my surroundings. Luckily enough I was in some sort of cell, and Leon, Grayson, Malik, and Mac were lying around on other beds.
I looked at myself. I was still silver, and eager to get out. I figured that between me, Leon and Grayson we could carry Malik and Mac.
Before the others woke up, I began pushing some of the other buttons. I knew that the first one activated/deactivated the silver surfer-ness, and the second one enabled me to fly (I had figured that out on the way to the spaceship after pushing it and falling). But there were still the other seven to experiment with.
I pushed the third button and I couldn’t find any difference. “Oh, well I’ll try that one again later,” I told myself. It actually enabled me to walk through walls, but I didn’t know that then.
After pushing the fourth button a few times, it also wielded few results. It turned alien force-fields on and off (little did I know that then), but I hope I caused some disruption.
I decided to skip the fifth for now and push the sixth. I couldn’t feel any difference in me after pushing it, so I looked around me. I then looked down and saw, well, didn’t see anything. I was invisible! This was so cool!
I pushed the seventh, and nothing happened, so I looked to the one I had skipped. I didn’t know then, but it would help later on when
The fifth, as soon as I pushed it, the air around me turned red and everything within 2 metres of me was incinerated. I was now glad that I had gone down the other end of the cell so I wouldn’t be disruptive to the others. I soon pushed it again and turned the heat thing off. I stopped experimenting after that, so I just sat and waited for the others to awake.
After the others were awake, I proposed my plan to escape. Malik and Mac told us that there were girls from their group in another cell, but I tried to smash a hole in the wall anyway, and ended up hurting my knuckles. Even though I was invincible, it seemed that I couldn’t break through this wall.
We soon gave up and sat around, wondering what we were in for. Some of us caught up with our friends, and all the latest happenings on the island, and some others started thinking about our current predicament and how to escape from it.
After a while we were escorted to a small chamber. There was so much hustle-bustle that I didn’t even get to see the escort very well, but I think they looked rather other-worldish and alien-like. The girls were also being herded into the room from the opposite side.
After a quick reunion, we were seated in front of a great computer. On its display a movie had started rolling, so we sat quietly and watched.
“IN THE BEGINNING,” It boomed. “THERE WAS EARTH. EARTH WAS A SIMPLE PLACE, INHABITED BY CREATURES LIVING IN HARMONY, UNTIL ALONG CAME THE HUMAN RACE.
“THE HUMAN RACE DESTROYED MOST OF WHAT WAS GOOD AND BUILT HULKING GREAT STRUCTURES, DESTROYED THE ECO SYSTEMS, AND FOUGHT THE NATURAL BALANCE OF THE PLANET.
“IT WAS THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING TERRIBLE. PRETTY SOON THE PLANET WAS DYING, MUCH BEFORE ITS TIME.
“AS THE HUMAN RACE EVOLVED, SO DID ITS GREED AND WAYS OF DESTROYING THE PLANET. BUT THERE WERE ALSO SOME GOOD HUMANS. THEY SET UP ECO-HAVENS, WILDLIFE SANCTUARIES FOR MOTHER NATURE’S CHILDREN.
“ONE OF THESE WAS SET UP BY A GROUP OF EXPLORERS FROM HAMILTON, NEW ZEALAND ON THIS ISLAND HERE, MATAINUI. AS THE POLLUTION GOT WORSE, THE HUMAN RACE GRADUALLY DIED OUT, AND NOW, IN THE YEAR 3059, THE SPECIES ARE ALL BUT EXTINCT. WE ARE FRIENDS TO THE GALAXY, AND COULD NOT SIMPLY SIT BY AND WATCH THE PLANET DIE. SO WE INTERVENED, AND SET UP PROTECTIVE SHIELDS AROUND THE MOST SUSTAINABLE HAVENS ON EARTH. MATAINUI WAS ONE OF THESE”
It finished talking, and a bunch of symbols flashed up, and I interpreted them as being some sort of end credits. Another feature soon started rolling, narrated by the same booming voice as the last.
“A BRIEF HISTORY OF MATAINUI,” it boomed at us.
“EVEN BEFORE MATAINUI WAS DISCOVERED BY MAN, THEIR POLLUTION REACHED IT BY WAY OF SEA, KILLING OFF NATIVE BIRD, ANIMAL AND SEA LIFE. WHEN A GROUP OF EXPLORERS FROM FAIRFIELD INTERMEDIATE, HAMILTON DISCOVERED IT IN 2009,” (everyone gasped at that) “IT WAS NOT LONG BEFORE THEY HAD EXPLORED THE WHOLE ISLAND AND DECIDED TO SET UP A SUSTAINABLE COLONY.
“THE ‘TRIBES’ WERE SET UP IN DIFFERENT AREAS. SOME LIVED IN THE TUNNELS AND CAVES THAT DOTTED THE ISLAND. SOME LIVED ON THE BEACHES AND OTHERS IN THE TREES. ONE VILLAGE SPECIALISED IN FARMING AROUND THE LAND, AND CARING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, WHILE OTHERS SPECIALISED IN RESTORING NATURAL HABITATS. SOME EVEN ADVENTURED INTO THE SCIENCE OF CLONING EXTINCT ANIMALS.” Another gasp at that. “THEY BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE WHAT OTHERS HAD DESTROYED.
“THEY MADE INTERNATIONAL NEWS HEADLINES ALL OVER THE WORLD. OTHERS MIGRATED FROM COUNTRIES TO FOLLOW THEIR EXAMPLE, BUT MANY WERE TURNED AWAY AS THEY COULD NOT RISK BRINGING UNSUSTAINABILTY AND BAD LIVING HABITS INTO THE GREAT COMMUNITY THAT WAS MATAINUI.
“AFTER A WHILE, IN THE AGE OF THEIR DESCENDANTS, AS ALL GOOD THINGS DO, SOMETHING WENT WRONG. THE FIRST SIGNS OF UNSUSTAINABILTY APPEARED. THE OTHER TRIBES DISCOVERED THAT ONE OF THE TRIBES HAD BEEN DUMPING RUBBISH IN HIDDEN PITS, AND IMPORTING STUFF FROM THE MAINLAND. THE OTHER TRIBES WERE SO USED TO BEING ECO FRIENDLY THAT THE IDEA OF DUMPING RUBBISH IN A NATURAL CREVASSE AND IMPORTING COMMERCIALLY MADE PRODUCTS WAS ABHORRENT TO THEM, AND THEY ALL DECIDED THAT NO PUNISHMENT WAS EXTREME ENOUGH TO BRING JUSTICE TO THE LAND, SO IN THE NIGHT THEY CREPT INTO THE VILLAGE AND KILLED ALL ITS MEMBERS. THAT WAS ONLY THE FIRST OF THE DARK SPLODGES ON MATAINUI’S RECORD.
“A LOT LATER ON, POLLUTION GREW SO GREAT ON EARTH THAT THE INHABITANTS OF MATAINUI WERE UNDER GREAT STRESS TO PROTECT THEIR BELOVED OWN. THE HUMAN RACE, AND INADVERTEDLY, ALL THE OTHER SPECIES ON EARTH WERE DYING. THE POLLUTION WAS POISONING EVERY LIVING THING IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
“WE GREATER BEINGS WERE WATCHING FROM OUTER SPACE, SPYING ON THE UNAWARE HUMAN BEINGS. AT THE POINT THAT RICH HUMANS EVACUATED THE PLANET IN FAVOUR OF ANOTHER ONE, AND SOME OTHERS MOVED UNDERGROUND TO ‘SAFE’ HAVENS KITTED OUT WITH HYDRO POWER FROM THE POLLUTED STREAMS UNDER THERE AND SUPPLIES TO LAST A NUMBER OF YEARS.
“WE SET UP PROTECTIVE SPHERES AROUND SOME HABITATS THAT WERE NOT BEYOND REPAIR AND DESERVED TO SURVIVE. MATAINUI WAS ONE. OTHERS INCLUDED SOME SECLUDED SPOTS OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLE, AND CERTAIN UNINHABITED POINTS IN THE DESERTS OF NORTH AFRICA AND THE PLAINS OF NORTHERN ASIA. THERE ARE SOME OTHERS, REMOTE PLACES UNTOUCHED BY MAN THAT WE ALSO SET UP SPHERES AROUND.
“THE SPHERES ARE THE REASON WHY YOU CANNOT SEE THE STARS AT NIGHT, AND THE DARK ROLLING CLOUDS OF POLLUTION STOP ABOUT 200 METRES OFFSHORE.”
More strange symbols rolled up, and an alien walked in as the screen went blank again. He was dark skinned, his skin looking almost hippo-like textured. He was big and had strange tentacle-like things where his seven legs and three arms would’ve been. He wore a simple garment made of white cloth; it flowed over his large body like a silk blanket over a large rock.
He spoke in a smooth, yet commanding voice that was like music to my ears. He was talking about us being released, but as I looked around, I realised that only us silver surfers could hear him and also understand. We somehow came to an agreement that we were to be released on top of the big mountain I the South-west (?) corner of the island.
* * *
As we were beamed down, we found ourselves in a Machu Picchu-like set up. It was like being sent back in time, only we were in the future. I soon remembered about Josiah and Sam, so I flew over to the little mountain as fast as I could to get him and our stuff so we could make it back to the big Mayan/Aztec city before dark.
I arrived and knew something was different straight away. I couldn’t see anybody. I searched around the campsite, before taking a peep inside the tent. Josiah was laying limply, his chest rising and falling as he slept peacefully. He had a large hammer next to him, resembling Thor’s Hammer, which I had seen in a cartoon once. I thought about cartoons and sighed. That world was long gone, and I wondered if I would ever see another animated figure get up to crazy things ever again. I got over it quickly though, and leant over him and shook. I shook him slow at first, but he wasn’t waking, so I shook him violently.
He woke with a start, a rather large start. He grabbed the hammer and tried to hit me, but I managed to get it through to him that it was me, and not some intruder person.
I asked where Sam was and he replied by saying “He wasn’t here when I woke up, and there was his faceprint and some footprints in the mud over there.” He pointed to a stand of trees about ten metres away. I was secretly glad inside because it meant I didn’t have to carry TWO people back across the island. I tried not to let it show on my face though, and helped Josiah grab up all our stuff and told him he could fill me in on everything on the way back to the city. He told me that he had woken up and Sam had been gone, so he looked around and found the marks. Sam had left all of his stuff, including the skull, so I still had a rather large load. After he had looked for Sam, Josiah had gone and done some exploring in the cave that we had found our cool stuff in. Instead of looking in the bit of the cave where we had found the chests, he dived into the black stuff and had found another chest. He had taken ages to get it to the top, taking several tries, because it was so heavy. When he had opened it, he had found THOR’S HAMMER!!!
At first he couldn’t lift it, but then he had put on the amulet underneath it. It had given him the strength to lift the hammer, and smash anything in his way with it.
After telling me all that, he fell asleep.
* * *
He awoke to me shaking him again to tell him we were almost there. I was glad that he hadn’t tried to hit me with the hammer again, as it would’ve been a bit awkward considering we were 100 metres in the air. It was fast approaching dark. We were approaching through a narrow crack in the roof of one of the temples, and I had to yell to make Grayson move out of the way so we could land. He asked what happened to Sam, and I explained. He didn’t say anything, but busied himself by going through all the stuff we had now. When I asked Grayson where the others were, he just pointed and said “Uhhh” in a grunt-like fashion. When I found the others, I asked them what was up with Grayson. They just said he had wanted to camp somewhere else for the night, not in a big scary temple place, but they had come here for the night anyway. Shrugging that info aside, I set up my bed for the night and went out scouting for food with the rest of our new group. It was a while before we came across anything. Mac yelled “Come look at this, I found something.”
It was only a small bush with a few shrivelled-up berries on it, but we kept looking around that area to see if there were any more fruitful bushes. I said this pun out loud, but no-one seemed to understand it.
After another five or ten minutes of searching, we found another bush hiding underneath an ugly and twisted tree, so we picked some berries and took them back to the temple.
After we had eaten them, we immediately felt full and contented. They made us drowsy. So drowsy, that most of us fell where we stood.
The memory of reaching out to the spaceship and the never-ending void of the blackness hit me like a bullet train.
I. Was. In. A. Spaceship!
I leapt up to survey my surroundings. Luckily enough I was in some sort of cell, and Leon, Grayson, Malik, and Mac were lying around on other beds.
I looked at myself. I was still silver, and eager to get out. I figured that between me, Leon and Grayson we could carry Malik and Mac.
Before the others woke up, I began pushing some of the other buttons. I knew that the first one activated/deactivated the silver surfer-ness, and the second one enabled me to fly (I had figured that out on the way to the spaceship after pushing it and falling). But there were still the other seven to experiment with.
I pushed the third button and I couldn’t find any difference. “Oh, well I’ll try that one again later,” I told myself. It actually enabled me to walk through walls, but I didn’t know that then.
After pushing the fourth button a few times, it also wielded few results. It turned alien force-fields on and off (little did I know that then), but I hope I caused some disruption.
I decided to skip the fifth for now and push the sixth. I couldn’t feel any difference in me after pushing it, so I looked around me. I then looked down and saw, well, didn’t see anything. I was invisible! This was so cool!
I pushed the seventh, and nothing happened, so I looked to the one I had skipped. I didn’t know then, but it would help later on when
The fifth, as soon as I pushed it, the air around me turned red and everything within 2 metres of me was incinerated. I was now glad that I had gone down the other end of the cell so I wouldn’t be disruptive to the others. I soon pushed it again and turned the heat thing off. I stopped experimenting after that, so I just sat and waited for the others to awake.
After the others were awake, I proposed my plan to escape. Malik and Mac told us that there were girls from their group in another cell, but I tried to smash a hole in the wall anyway, and ended up hurting my knuckles. Even though I was invincible, it seemed that I couldn’t break through this wall.
We soon gave up and sat around, wondering what we were in for. Some of us caught up with our friends, and all the latest happenings on the island, and some others started thinking about our current predicament and how to escape from it.
After a while we were escorted to a small chamber. There was so much hustle-bustle that I didn’t even get to see the escort very well, but I think they looked rather other-worldish and alien-like. The girls were also being herded into the room from the opposite side.
After a quick reunion, we were seated in front of a great computer. On its display a movie had started rolling, so we sat quietly and watched.
“IN THE BEGINNING,” It boomed. “THERE WAS EARTH. EARTH WAS A SIMPLE PLACE, INHABITED BY CREATURES LIVING IN HARMONY, UNTIL ALONG CAME THE HUMAN RACE.
“THE HUMAN RACE DESTROYED MOST OF WHAT WAS GOOD AND BUILT HULKING GREAT STRUCTURES, DESTROYED THE ECO SYSTEMS, AND FOUGHT THE NATURAL BALANCE OF THE PLANET.
“IT WAS THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING TERRIBLE. PRETTY SOON THE PLANET WAS DYING, MUCH BEFORE ITS TIME.
“AS THE HUMAN RACE EVOLVED, SO DID ITS GREED AND WAYS OF DESTROYING THE PLANET. BUT THERE WERE ALSO SOME GOOD HUMANS. THEY SET UP ECO-HAVENS, WILDLIFE SANCTUARIES FOR MOTHER NATURE’S CHILDREN.
“ONE OF THESE WAS SET UP BY A GROUP OF EXPLORERS FROM HAMILTON, NEW ZEALAND ON THIS ISLAND HERE, MATAINUI. AS THE POLLUTION GOT WORSE, THE HUMAN RACE GRADUALLY DIED OUT, AND NOW, IN THE YEAR 3059, THE SPECIES ARE ALL BUT EXTINCT. WE ARE FRIENDS TO THE GALAXY, AND COULD NOT SIMPLY SIT BY AND WATCH THE PLANET DIE. SO WE INTERVENED, AND SET UP PROTECTIVE SHIELDS AROUND THE MOST SUSTAINABLE HAVENS ON EARTH. MATAINUI WAS ONE OF THESE”
It finished talking, and a bunch of symbols flashed up, and I interpreted them as being some sort of end credits. Another feature soon started rolling, narrated by the same booming voice as the last.
“A BRIEF HISTORY OF MATAINUI,” it boomed at us.
“EVEN BEFORE MATAINUI WAS DISCOVERED BY MAN, THEIR POLLUTION REACHED IT BY WAY OF SEA, KILLING OFF NATIVE BIRD, ANIMAL AND SEA LIFE. WHEN A GROUP OF EXPLORERS FROM FAIRFIELD INTERMEDIATE, HAMILTON DISCOVERED IT IN 2009,” (everyone gasped at that) “IT WAS NOT LONG BEFORE THEY HAD EXPLORED THE WHOLE ISLAND AND DECIDED TO SET UP A SUSTAINABLE COLONY.
“THE ‘TRIBES’ WERE SET UP IN DIFFERENT AREAS. SOME LIVED IN THE TUNNELS AND CAVES THAT DOTTED THE ISLAND. SOME LIVED ON THE BEACHES AND OTHERS IN THE TREES. ONE VILLAGE SPECIALISED IN FARMING AROUND THE LAND, AND CARING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, WHILE OTHERS SPECIALISED IN RESTORING NATURAL HABITATS. SOME EVEN ADVENTURED INTO THE SCIENCE OF CLONING EXTINCT ANIMALS.” Another gasp at that. “THEY BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE WHAT OTHERS HAD DESTROYED.
“THEY MADE INTERNATIONAL NEWS HEADLINES ALL OVER THE WORLD. OTHERS MIGRATED FROM COUNTRIES TO FOLLOW THEIR EXAMPLE, BUT MANY WERE TURNED AWAY AS THEY COULD NOT RISK BRINGING UNSUSTAINABILTY AND BAD LIVING HABITS INTO THE GREAT COMMUNITY THAT WAS MATAINUI.
“AFTER A WHILE, IN THE AGE OF THEIR DESCENDANTS, AS ALL GOOD THINGS DO, SOMETHING WENT WRONG. THE FIRST SIGNS OF UNSUSTAINABILTY APPEARED. THE OTHER TRIBES DISCOVERED THAT ONE OF THE TRIBES HAD BEEN DUMPING RUBBISH IN HIDDEN PITS, AND IMPORTING STUFF FROM THE MAINLAND. THE OTHER TRIBES WERE SO USED TO BEING ECO FRIENDLY THAT THE IDEA OF DUMPING RUBBISH IN A NATURAL CREVASSE AND IMPORTING COMMERCIALLY MADE PRODUCTS WAS ABHORRENT TO THEM, AND THEY ALL DECIDED THAT NO PUNISHMENT WAS EXTREME ENOUGH TO BRING JUSTICE TO THE LAND, SO IN THE NIGHT THEY CREPT INTO THE VILLAGE AND KILLED ALL ITS MEMBERS. THAT WAS ONLY THE FIRST OF THE DARK SPLODGES ON MATAINUI’S RECORD.
“A LOT LATER ON, POLLUTION GREW SO GREAT ON EARTH THAT THE INHABITANTS OF MATAINUI WERE UNDER GREAT STRESS TO PROTECT THEIR BELOVED OWN. THE HUMAN RACE, AND INADVERTEDLY, ALL THE OTHER SPECIES ON EARTH WERE DYING. THE POLLUTION WAS POISONING EVERY LIVING THING IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
“WE GREATER BEINGS WERE WATCHING FROM OUTER SPACE, SPYING ON THE UNAWARE HUMAN BEINGS. AT THE POINT THAT RICH HUMANS EVACUATED THE PLANET IN FAVOUR OF ANOTHER ONE, AND SOME OTHERS MOVED UNDERGROUND TO ‘SAFE’ HAVENS KITTED OUT WITH HYDRO POWER FROM THE POLLUTED STREAMS UNDER THERE AND SUPPLIES TO LAST A NUMBER OF YEARS.
“WE SET UP PROTECTIVE SPHERES AROUND SOME HABITATS THAT WERE NOT BEYOND REPAIR AND DESERVED TO SURVIVE. MATAINUI WAS ONE. OTHERS INCLUDED SOME SECLUDED SPOTS OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLE, AND CERTAIN UNINHABITED POINTS IN THE DESERTS OF NORTH AFRICA AND THE PLAINS OF NORTHERN ASIA. THERE ARE SOME OTHERS, REMOTE PLACES UNTOUCHED BY MAN THAT WE ALSO SET UP SPHERES AROUND.
“THE SPHERES ARE THE REASON WHY YOU CANNOT SEE THE STARS AT NIGHT, AND THE DARK ROLLING CLOUDS OF POLLUTION STOP ABOUT 200 METRES OFFSHORE.”
More strange symbols rolled up, and an alien walked in as the screen went blank again. He was dark skinned, his skin looking almost hippo-like textured. He was big and had strange tentacle-like things where his seven legs and three arms would’ve been. He wore a simple garment made of white cloth; it flowed over his large body like a silk blanket over a large rock.
He spoke in a smooth, yet commanding voice that was like music to my ears. He was talking about us being released, but as I looked around, I realised that only us silver surfers could hear him and also understand. We somehow came to an agreement that we were to be released on top of the big mountain I the South-west (?) corner of the island.
* * *
As we were beamed down, we found ourselves in a Machu Picchu-like set up. It was like being sent back in time, only we were in the future. I soon remembered about Josiah and Sam, so I flew over to the little mountain as fast as I could to get him and our stuff so we could make it back to the big Mayan/Aztec city before dark.
I arrived and knew something was different straight away. I couldn’t see anybody. I searched around the campsite, before taking a peep inside the tent. Josiah was laying limply, his chest rising and falling as he slept peacefully. He had a large hammer next to him, resembling Thor’s Hammer, which I had seen in a cartoon once. I thought about cartoons and sighed. That world was long gone, and I wondered if I would ever see another animated figure get up to crazy things ever again. I got over it quickly though, and leant over him and shook. I shook him slow at first, but he wasn’t waking, so I shook him violently.
He woke with a start, a rather large start. He grabbed the hammer and tried to hit me, but I managed to get it through to him that it was me, and not some intruder person.
I asked where Sam was and he replied by saying “He wasn’t here when I woke up, and there was his faceprint and some footprints in the mud over there.” He pointed to a stand of trees about ten metres away. I was secretly glad inside because it meant I didn’t have to carry TWO people back across the island. I tried not to let it show on my face though, and helped Josiah grab up all our stuff and told him he could fill me in on everything on the way back to the city. He told me that he had woken up and Sam had been gone, so he looked around and found the marks. Sam had left all of his stuff, including the skull, so I still had a rather large load. After he had looked for Sam, Josiah had gone and done some exploring in the cave that we had found our cool stuff in. Instead of looking in the bit of the cave where we had found the chests, he dived into the black stuff and had found another chest. He had taken ages to get it to the top, taking several tries, because it was so heavy. When he had opened it, he had found THOR’S HAMMER!!!
At first he couldn’t lift it, but then he had put on the amulet underneath it. It had given him the strength to lift the hammer, and smash anything in his way with it.
After telling me all that, he fell asleep.
* * *
He awoke to me shaking him again to tell him we were almost there. I was glad that he hadn’t tried to hit me with the hammer again, as it would’ve been a bit awkward considering we were 100 metres in the air. It was fast approaching dark. We were approaching through a narrow crack in the roof of one of the temples, and I had to yell to make Grayson move out of the way so we could land. He asked what happened to Sam, and I explained. He didn’t say anything, but busied himself by going through all the stuff we had now. When I asked Grayson where the others were, he just pointed and said “Uhhh” in a grunt-like fashion. When I found the others, I asked them what was up with Grayson. They just said he had wanted to camp somewhere else for the night, not in a big scary temple place, but they had come here for the night anyway. Shrugging that info aside, I set up my bed for the night and went out scouting for food with the rest of our new group. It was a while before we came across anything. Mac yelled “Come look at this, I found something.”
It was only a small bush with a few shrivelled-up berries on it, but we kept looking around that area to see if there were any more fruitful bushes. I said this pun out loud, but no-one seemed to understand it.
After another five or ten minutes of searching, we found another bush hiding underneath an ugly and twisted tree, so we picked some berries and took them back to the temple.
After we had eaten them, we immediately felt full and contented. They made us drowsy. So drowsy, that most of us fell where we stood.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Diary Prologue
The hunt was on.
I was extremely nervous, and I had been running for at least 10 minutes. Not so much for some, but I didn’t exactly have a perfect physique.
I could still hear the pursuers. They were running a lot faster than me; it was amazing they hadn’t already caught up. I could see the approaching flames of their torches shining through the trees.
They were savages, mutants, if you will.
They occupied the island of Matainui, fierce, ugly little creatures, evolved, and bred, for an eventual kill and the hunt that preceded it.
They wore nothing but the wooden beads around their neck and a loincloth covering their genitals.
I tripped on a tree root and stumbled, costing me valuable time.
I knew I had to get to the cave.
I felt a sharp pain in my foot and looked down.
They had thrown a sharp rock at me, and it had struck the back of my leg. The blood was flowing freely, and my sock was already soaked.
I stumbled on a rock that I hadn’t seen coming, and fell.
I knew now that it was all over. The savages surrounded me, and their leader approached.
He jumped on my chest, and raised his spear for the kill.
It was only then that I awoke from the nightmare, with that last image burned in my mind.
One hot shower and a large breakfast later, I was still wondering about my dream.
I was packing my bag at the time, fearing for the trip ahead, a feeling of dread and doom forming an endless, mind-numbing pit of disaster in the bottom of my stomach.
The class had been planning the trip for weeks. It was a 2-week bush trip to the remote island of Matainui, and was the first time anyone had gone there. It was just going to be Mr Woody and all of us kids.
By now I had finished packing, and was pretty much ready to leave.
My family drove me to school, where we were taking a bus to Kawhia Harbour, where we would catch a seaplane to Matainui.
I waved goodbye and boarded the bus, just trying to enjoy myself as I suppressed my doubt and chatted away to my friends...
I was extremely nervous, and I had been running for at least 10 minutes. Not so much for some, but I didn’t exactly have a perfect physique.
I could still hear the pursuers. They were running a lot faster than me; it was amazing they hadn’t already caught up. I could see the approaching flames of their torches shining through the trees.
They were savages, mutants, if you will.
They occupied the island of Matainui, fierce, ugly little creatures, evolved, and bred, for an eventual kill and the hunt that preceded it.
They wore nothing but the wooden beads around their neck and a loincloth covering their genitals.
I tripped on a tree root and stumbled, costing me valuable time.
I knew I had to get to the cave.
I felt a sharp pain in my foot and looked down.
They had thrown a sharp rock at me, and it had struck the back of my leg. The blood was flowing freely, and my sock was already soaked.
I stumbled on a rock that I hadn’t seen coming, and fell.
I knew now that it was all over. The savages surrounded me, and their leader approached.
He jumped on my chest, and raised his spear for the kill.
It was only then that I awoke from the nightmare, with that last image burned in my mind.
One hot shower and a large breakfast later, I was still wondering about my dream.
I was packing my bag at the time, fearing for the trip ahead, a feeling of dread and doom forming an endless, mind-numbing pit of disaster in the bottom of my stomach.
The class had been planning the trip for weeks. It was a 2-week bush trip to the remote island of Matainui, and was the first time anyone had gone there. It was just going to be Mr Woody and all of us kids.
By now I had finished packing, and was pretty much ready to leave.
My family drove me to school, where we were taking a bus to Kawhia Harbour, where we would catch a seaplane to Matainui.
I waved goodbye and boarded the bus, just trying to enjoy myself as I suppressed my doubt and chatted away to my friends...
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Day 2 [Draft]
DAY 2
I awoke in the morning with a slight headache, and after a quick check to see if I was still only part octopus, deciding that my condition had not worsened overnight, I quickly got changed into fresh clothes, stuffed an extra pair of socks into my shoes so my tentacle wouldn’t fall out, and put them on before I crawled out of the shelter. It was cold but warming up, and over breakfast we decided what we were going to do today.
One muesli bar thing and a lengthy discussion later, we decided that we were going to explore the forests. The menacing storm clouds still hung on the horizon, and we didn’t want to still be on the beach if a big storm hit.
* * *
We were walking along, chopping repeatedly at the tough vines covering our path. I limped along, my leg beginning to feel better, I could even walk on it some more. It was strange really; it was hardening, and turning almost scaly (?). My own body was starting to freak me out! The hair on my arms had grown a lot thicker as, well, and felt rough to the touch. I forgot all about it when Grayson, who was in the lead, exclaimed at the vines in front of him.
The vines had suddenly turned green, and were living now. We kept chopping, and we hit dead vines again. We had a small group discussion, and we quickly decided to follow the green vines, as they were a lot easier to chop through, and would require only Grayson to chop, rather than Grayson, Sam, and Josiah.
We were going for some time before I realised I could faintly make out the shapes of trees above the vines. I pointed it out to Leon, but he seemed not to care. Not at all disheartened, I started looking at the vines themselves instead. When Grayson chopped at them, they pulled back slightly from the cold touch of steel, and contented themselves by squirting us with the white gunk coming out of their severed limbs. To make faster progress, Josiah and Sam stood next to Grayson, and started chopping as well. With three of the five of us chopping, we made greater progress, and soon we were speeding along, and I was struggling to keep up. I looked behind us, and for some reason, the track seemed narrower than it was before. I jogged to catch up with the group, and re-took my place next to Leon.
Now we were chopping in-between trees, and we had to step over and around large, brown, fibrous husks. Suddenly, a short scream echoed as Grayson was plucked from the ground by a thick vine that lashed down and grabbed him by the waist. Sam started to scream “Look out”, but another thick vine, this one with a gash in it, grabbed him and pulled high into the air.
I saw the next one creeping towards Josiah, and I quickly used the new-found strength in my arm to latch on. I lost my grip, but amazingly my suckered arm kept me attached. Leon was still on the ground, in shock, when I realised that the vines had not gone for me or him, because we had not been chopping.
We reached the top of the tree faster than I would have thought possible, and were pulled towards the trunk of the tree. As Josiah got squeezed until he was unconscious, I tried to get a handhold or leverage point on the tree, to stop us being pulled any further up or away. When reached out to grab on, I found the trunk to be spongy, and soft, and what was even weirder, there was a small hole about where Josiah was. I quickly worked out that that was where the vine was coming from, and that Josiah was about to be sucked in to the tree!
...Everything had gone black. It had been a minute or two since being sucked into the tree and my mind starting to feel fuzz...
Fuzzzzz...
Fuzzzzzzzzzzz...
* * *
I awoke to Leon slapping my face and pushing my chest repeatedly. He was opening his mouth for the kiss of life when I opened my eyes and said “Ew, Leon, I don’t want to kiss you”.
“I don’t want to kiss you either,” he replied defensively, “but I was trying to wake you up. You weren’t breathing!”
“What happened?”, I asked.
“You guys got sucked into the tree by those vine things, and then I realised that these husk things were actually big lumps of manure from the trees, and they were gonna eat you, and then I chopped at the tree base, and you guys came falling down out of the tree and landed on these big piles of manure, and you weren’t breathing, and you were covered in goopy stuff, like tree spit or something.”, He said overwhelmingly quickly.
I looked down, and sure enough, I was sitting on top of a crushed husk, and as I went to get up, I could hear the bones of the digested animal inside crack, and the smell of decomposed bodies and manure floated up to me.
“Oh, that is foul”, I screeched.
I jumped up and looked around. Josiah, Grayson, and Sam were sitting dazed around on other husks, and I felt relieved to know that we were all still alive. We were in some sort of clearing, and there were husks of all sizes around. There were big husks, taller than me, all the way down to little husks, as big as the palm of my hand.
I decided to see what sort of animal I had landed on, so I sorted through the crushed pile, until I found a three-fingered, one-thumbed hand. It was about 20 cm long, and was attached to an arm bone. I decided to play a trick on Grayson, so I quickly broke the arm off, and ran to hide behind him. I reached up from behind the husk, and placed the hand on Grayson’s shoulder. He screamed and leapt up.
“That’s not funny, you know, Andrew”, he said.
I could just make out what he was saying through my fits and bouts of laughter. When I understood what he had said, I cracked up even harder.
When I had regained control over myself, I said “I found this in the husk that I landed on, why don’t we see what else we can find”. The whole group heard me say that, and so we all started looking through different husks. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I had unconsciously put the arm in my bag.
We had been looking for ages, and were just about to give up, when Leon yelled “Hey look guys, I found a silver thingy. It has a symbol on it, some sort of eye”.
Grayson took a quick look at it, and then said conclusively “It’s the Eye of Horus”.
“What’s that mean?” Sam asked.
“The Eye is a symbol of protection and royal power from deities, in this case from Horus” he replied knowledgably.
“Whatever it is, it looks pretty cool, and there are some more symbols on it further down, but we’ll have to translate them later” I said. “Right now, I want to get the heck out of here, before those vines close up again”.
We all agreed with that, and after short moment to prepare ourselves, we started at a galloping pace. The vines had already grown back a little, but since they were cut three abreast, it was easy for us to run single file.
I was behind a little bit, with my leg still being a little hard to use, but it was even more solid now, and I could walk on it well, even run. We made good time, reaching the dead vines in about half an hour. We were all exhausted by then, so we stopped running, and walked the long tunnel instead...
* * *
We arrived back at the beach about lunchtime. We were all starved from our near-death experience and our run back from it. I decided it was cause for celebration, so I cracked open my lunchbox packed on the first day, threw away my rotten sandwich, and shared out my packet of chips.
I borrowed the silver thing from Leon and took a closer look. It was flat on the bottom but rounded on top, and from above looked like a long ellipse, with pointed ends, almost like a futuristic TV remote. It had the Eye of Horus symbol on it, and just below that was a strange hand symbol, like the skeleton of the hand we had found earlier.
After that and a muesli bar, we made plans for what we were going to do next.
The whole group decided that we should go up the mountain, and so we had a brief rest and set off towards the mountain.
* * *
It was easier going uphill, without so much bush and scrub in the way. We could even walk five abreast. After about five minutes we met a stream, and it was so hot that I suggested we take our shoes off and walk in it. The water felt good on my tentacle, and after walking for a few minutes I was contented hobbling along, watching the reflections on the water’s surface.
A rainbow reflected off the water, and floated downstream.
Wait a second, rainbows don’t float...
“Get out of the water quickly!” I screamed as loudly as possible. “WE HAVE TO GET OUT NOW”.
I quickly explained to the group how I had seen those rainbows before, in the water that turned me into an octopus thing.
So we continued by foot, and were walking next to the stream when, about two-thirds of the way up the mountain, we met some tributaries forking off the sides, but we kept walking straight. The stream grew narrower, and we continued walking by it as it dwindled and dwindled until we were walking with one foot on either side of it, until it vanished. We looked for it for a bit, but were unsuccessful, so we returned to the last place we saw it, and after some close looking we found that it had curved under a bush to the left, and was headed in a different direction.
We peeked round to investigate where it had gone, and were confronted with a rocky lump, with a cave about 2 feet high, and 2 wide.
We were a rather democratic group, so after another discussion, Grayson, Leon and I crawled into the cave, and left Josiah and Sam outside to set up camp for the night, as it was approaching late afternoon, and they were more fatigued than the rest of us.
We were crawling along in the dark, with me bringing up the rear as I tried to find my torch, when we heard a strange leathery flapping noise. It was a rhythmic sound going “Fwump, fwump, fwump” repeatedly. It almost sounded like the wings of a flying creature...
Sam cried out as it hit him first. It was a small black shape in the darkness that came from nowhere and latched on to his neck.
I fumbled for my torch with increasing worry.
The same happened to Grayson and I felt him fall in front of me.
I could hear another coming round for me when I finally found my torch and gave the ugly little thing a blast of the light. Its dislike of the brightness was obvious and instant. It wheeled around and quickly flapped away. I shone the powerful beam on the other two, and they flew away also.
They resembled bats, though slightly larger, and with long tails that hung behind them. Their skin was like scaly leather, and looked rough to the touch. We decided that we hadn’t come this far to be disappointed, so we kept crawling, but this time I was in the lead, holding my light for the others to see with.
The passage grew wider, and we could stand upright in it now, it was growing big. We were walking next to each other now, and the ground suddenly dropped away. Using mine and Grayson’s torches (which he found with my assistance), we could see that the small chamber below was mostly filled with a pool of some black oily substance, swirling around playfully in the beams of our torches. On the other side of the open space, we could see a cave sitting upon a ledge above the water level carved into the rock, and in it was five alienistic chests, with digital displays on them, and keypads to open then.
I couldn’t wait to see what was in them so I jumped off the high-up bit where we were and landed in the thick black stuff. I went under, and couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
I felt Grayson and Leon splash down beside me as I struggled for air. I was sluggish and my arms felt unresponsive as they tried to thrash.
Suddenly, a slimy tentacle rubbed against me. EELS, my brain cried out. I was fighting an uphill battle to escape, and I was just about to open my mouth, when my hand hit the surface and the cold air gave me another wind. I just managed to get my head above the surface as I began to open my mouth.
I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t got my head above water in time, but only for a moment, because Leon and Grayson popped up beside me, and together we struggled our way towards the cave on the other side.
The swim was mercifully short, although it contained too many eels for me to enjoy it the slightest bit. We reached the ledge not a moment too soon, the eels were driving me mad and I fought the urge to scream as one found a gap in my shirt and weaselled (or eeled) its way inside.
As soon as we were standing I reached inside my filthy black clothes and pulled out the eel. It wriggled through my fingers and I dropped it on my shoe. It was only then that I looked down and realised that I was covered from head to toe in that dark, slimy gloop.
I looked over at Grayson and Leon, and they looked like emos where they had cleared the gloop off their faces, but still had black hair, clothes, and dark smudges round their eyes.
I forgot about all that when I turned around and remembered about the chests!
We went up to the chests and there was a strange keypad with different symbols on it, and as I pushed the fifth one along, one with a strange symbol on it, it whirred and the display flashed. It seemed to be flicking through different numbers, and when I stopped pushing it stopped on a random number. I pushed it again, and it stopped on a different number. After a few more pushes to make sure it was completely random (and for my own enjoyment of the flashing lights), we probed around the rest of the cave.
There were only the five awesome chests, and an obscured marking carved into the cave wall. We could make out the first five letters.
It said “F” “I” “B” “O” “N” then the writing was obscured, and then we think the last letter was and “I”. I had always loved solving puzzles like this and so it only took me and Grayson (sorry Leon) a few seconds to work it out.
We both chanted “FIBONACCI” in unison as we figured it out.
I pulled out the piece of paper and pencil that was in my Swiss Army knife packet and with a little help, we figured out the Fibonacci sequence to 5 places.
”1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946” I yelled.
The chests had three places featured on the display, and as we counted up the three digit numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, and lo and behold, there were five. I called first dibs on the first chest, and when I opened it was full of jewels and precious metals.
There was diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, topaz, lapis lazuli, opals, and amethysts. There was gold, silver, platinum, and many more metals that I didn’t know the name of.
I quickly closed the chest and savoured the image of it in my mind. As soon as he had recovered from the shock of all jewels and stuff, Leon said he was going to open the next chest.
It contained an amulet. It was shaped like the eye shape on the remote thing.
“The Eye of Horus!” Grayson exclaimed. “Awesome! Like I said earlier, this is a symbol of protection”.
It Grayson’s turn to open the next chest, so he entered the next code, and when he opened it he was disappointed to find a small skull, looking like the Aztec symbol for death, Miquiztli. He decided to give it to Sam.
It was my turn to open the second-to-last chest. I opened his chest, and found a rack of nine test tubes. There were two rows, with one larger on at the end.
The tubes were corked, and each one was a different colour from the last.
There was red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, clear, white, and black.
We put them back gently and then it was Leon’s turn to open the last chest.
He raced over to me, grabbed my pad with the numbers, and ran over to the last chest. He got the number, typed it in, and the chest made a whoosh as it relinquished its treasures. His face fell as he opened his chest and he couldn’t see anything. But then, Grayson pointed out something down in the corner of his chest. Three somethings, actually. They were small silver bracelets, like watches, with lots of strange symbols and buttons on them. He put one on, and randomly picked a button to push. Something happened, and the air around him fizzled and popped. There was a sudden flash, and when I could see again I couldn’t see Leon. In his place was a silver shining, roughly man-shaped creature, like the Silver Surfer from the Fantastic Four movie. We were gaping at it for what seemed like an eternity, taking in its shining curves, its polished, featureless face, its chrome chest, when it spoke.
“Would you guys quit staring at me like that?”
“Leon?” I said
“Yeah, what?” he said, before he looked down and saw himself. He jumped with shock and hit the roof of the cave. He was like some sort of superhuman.
I asked hesitantly, “Can I borrow one?”.
He threw me one with superhuman strength, and it almost knocked me off my feet. I almost dropped it, but caught it at the last moment. It seemed to grow as I put it on over my wrist, and then it shrunk until it fitted comfortably over my wrist. I pushed the same button Leon had pushed, and my world went black, then it was back and I looked down. I new what was coming, but I still jumped and dropped my torch, which broke, when I saw my flawlessly smooth body. The silver had even gone over my tentacle, and I hit myself to find out what it sounded like. I stumbled slightly under the impact of the super-strong blow, but I didn’t feel a thing. It made a dull, full sounding sound, like hitting a, well, a silver surfer thing.
I saw Leon throw the remaining one to Grayson, and as he changed, he also dropped his torch, and strangely I could still see.
“Awesome, we can see in the dark” I yelled. The cave shook in response.
I gave Leon a little playful shove. He went sprawling, but recovered and gave me a harder shove back.
It was harder than I had anticipated, and I went flying into the wall. It shook, but seemed to be fairly solid.
Suddenly, a rock fell loose from the cave roof up above.
Then another.
And another.
We grabbed the chests with the stuff in it (We had fitted it all into two chests) and fled. With their newfound powers Leon and Grayson tried to jump for the entrance tunnel, but missed and ended hanging off the ledge. I was a bit more hesitant, and I thought about what I was going to do before I went for it. I willed myself to jump further than the others, but I had never been very sporting at stuff like that, so I closed my eyes and willed myself to go up to the edge as I bent my legs to jump. I heard Grayson, or maybe it was Leon, gasp. I poked my eyes open a crack, and almost fell.
I was floating through the air above the oily substance.
I was scared so much, that I closed my eyes again and willed myself up to the ledge.
I opened my eyes again when I felt the ground beneath my feet. I fell to my knees and was seriously considering kissing the ground when Grayson and Leon pulled themselves up beside me. We just sat in silence for a moment before Leon started gushing questions about my short flight.
“How do you do that?”
“What did it feel like?”
“Did you push a button to do that?”
“Can you teach me to do that?”
“Enough,” I told him. “I just thought about getting to the ledge really, really hard”.
We crawled as fast as we could to the entrance of the cave, and blinked in the dying sunlight. Well, we blinked as much as a silver surfer thing can blink.
* * *
It was much later, and we were about to retire to our tents (which had been kindly set up by Josiah and Sam in our absence), when we saw a silver pyramid rise and fly into the air from about 200 metres inland.
We told Josiah where we were going (Sam was going toilet in the bushes), and flew off, all three of us.
We arrived at the shining pyramid in record time, flying at a speed of at least 100 kilometres an hour, and as soon as we arrived we started searching.
It was massive, but completely flawless and smooth.
We grouped on the far side, to decide what to do next, when Grayson reached out and touched it.
He vanished. We panicked. We touched it.
NOTHING BUT BLACK.
I awoke in the morning with a slight headache, and after a quick check to see if I was still only part octopus, deciding that my condition had not worsened overnight, I quickly got changed into fresh clothes, stuffed an extra pair of socks into my shoes so my tentacle wouldn’t fall out, and put them on before I crawled out of the shelter. It was cold but warming up, and over breakfast we decided what we were going to do today.
One muesli bar thing and a lengthy discussion later, we decided that we were going to explore the forests. The menacing storm clouds still hung on the horizon, and we didn’t want to still be on the beach if a big storm hit.
* * *
We were walking along, chopping repeatedly at the tough vines covering our path. I limped along, my leg beginning to feel better, I could even walk on it some more. It was strange really; it was hardening, and turning almost scaly (?). My own body was starting to freak me out! The hair on my arms had grown a lot thicker as, well, and felt rough to the touch. I forgot all about it when Grayson, who was in the lead, exclaimed at the vines in front of him.
The vines had suddenly turned green, and were living now. We kept chopping, and we hit dead vines again. We had a small group discussion, and we quickly decided to follow the green vines, as they were a lot easier to chop through, and would require only Grayson to chop, rather than Grayson, Sam, and Josiah.
We were going for some time before I realised I could faintly make out the shapes of trees above the vines. I pointed it out to Leon, but he seemed not to care. Not at all disheartened, I started looking at the vines themselves instead. When Grayson chopped at them, they pulled back slightly from the cold touch of steel, and contented themselves by squirting us with the white gunk coming out of their severed limbs. To make faster progress, Josiah and Sam stood next to Grayson, and started chopping as well. With three of the five of us chopping, we made greater progress, and soon we were speeding along, and I was struggling to keep up. I looked behind us, and for some reason, the track seemed narrower than it was before. I jogged to catch up with the group, and re-took my place next to Leon.
Now we were chopping in-between trees, and we had to step over and around large, brown, fibrous husks. Suddenly, a short scream echoed as Grayson was plucked from the ground by a thick vine that lashed down and grabbed him by the waist. Sam started to scream “Look out”, but another thick vine, this one with a gash in it, grabbed him and pulled high into the air.
I saw the next one creeping towards Josiah, and I quickly used the new-found strength in my arm to latch on. I lost my grip, but amazingly my suckered arm kept me attached. Leon was still on the ground, in shock, when I realised that the vines had not gone for me or him, because we had not been chopping.
We reached the top of the tree faster than I would have thought possible, and were pulled towards the trunk of the tree. As Josiah got squeezed until he was unconscious, I tried to get a handhold or leverage point on the tree, to stop us being pulled any further up or away. When reached out to grab on, I found the trunk to be spongy, and soft, and what was even weirder, there was a small hole about where Josiah was. I quickly worked out that that was where the vine was coming from, and that Josiah was about to be sucked in to the tree!
...Everything had gone black. It had been a minute or two since being sucked into the tree and my mind starting to feel fuzz...
Fuzzzzz...
Fuzzzzzzzzzzz...
* * *
I awoke to Leon slapping my face and pushing my chest repeatedly. He was opening his mouth for the kiss of life when I opened my eyes and said “Ew, Leon, I don’t want to kiss you”.
“I don’t want to kiss you either,” he replied defensively, “but I was trying to wake you up. You weren’t breathing!”
“What happened?”, I asked.
“You guys got sucked into the tree by those vine things, and then I realised that these husk things were actually big lumps of manure from the trees, and they were gonna eat you, and then I chopped at the tree base, and you guys came falling down out of the tree and landed on these big piles of manure, and you weren’t breathing, and you were covered in goopy stuff, like tree spit or something.”, He said overwhelmingly quickly.
I looked down, and sure enough, I was sitting on top of a crushed husk, and as I went to get up, I could hear the bones of the digested animal inside crack, and the smell of decomposed bodies and manure floated up to me.
“Oh, that is foul”, I screeched.
I jumped up and looked around. Josiah, Grayson, and Sam were sitting dazed around on other husks, and I felt relieved to know that we were all still alive. We were in some sort of clearing, and there were husks of all sizes around. There were big husks, taller than me, all the way down to little husks, as big as the palm of my hand.
I decided to see what sort of animal I had landed on, so I sorted through the crushed pile, until I found a three-fingered, one-thumbed hand. It was about 20 cm long, and was attached to an arm bone. I decided to play a trick on Grayson, so I quickly broke the arm off, and ran to hide behind him. I reached up from behind the husk, and placed the hand on Grayson’s shoulder. He screamed and leapt up.
“That’s not funny, you know, Andrew”, he said.
I could just make out what he was saying through my fits and bouts of laughter. When I understood what he had said, I cracked up even harder.
When I had regained control over myself, I said “I found this in the husk that I landed on, why don’t we see what else we can find”. The whole group heard me say that, and so we all started looking through different husks. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I had unconsciously put the arm in my bag.
We had been looking for ages, and were just about to give up, when Leon yelled “Hey look guys, I found a silver thingy. It has a symbol on it, some sort of eye”.
Grayson took a quick look at it, and then said conclusively “It’s the Eye of Horus”.
“What’s that mean?” Sam asked.
“The Eye is a symbol of protection and royal power from deities, in this case from Horus” he replied knowledgably.
“Whatever it is, it looks pretty cool, and there are some more symbols on it further down, but we’ll have to translate them later” I said. “Right now, I want to get the heck out of here, before those vines close up again”.
We all agreed with that, and after short moment to prepare ourselves, we started at a galloping pace. The vines had already grown back a little, but since they were cut three abreast, it was easy for us to run single file.
I was behind a little bit, with my leg still being a little hard to use, but it was even more solid now, and I could walk on it well, even run. We made good time, reaching the dead vines in about half an hour. We were all exhausted by then, so we stopped running, and walked the long tunnel instead...
* * *
We arrived back at the beach about lunchtime. We were all starved from our near-death experience and our run back from it. I decided it was cause for celebration, so I cracked open my lunchbox packed on the first day, threw away my rotten sandwich, and shared out my packet of chips.
I borrowed the silver thing from Leon and took a closer look. It was flat on the bottom but rounded on top, and from above looked like a long ellipse, with pointed ends, almost like a futuristic TV remote. It had the Eye of Horus symbol on it, and just below that was a strange hand symbol, like the skeleton of the hand we had found earlier.
After that and a muesli bar, we made plans for what we were going to do next.
The whole group decided that we should go up the mountain, and so we had a brief rest and set off towards the mountain.
* * *
It was easier going uphill, without so much bush and scrub in the way. We could even walk five abreast. After about five minutes we met a stream, and it was so hot that I suggested we take our shoes off and walk in it. The water felt good on my tentacle, and after walking for a few minutes I was contented hobbling along, watching the reflections on the water’s surface.
A rainbow reflected off the water, and floated downstream.
Wait a second, rainbows don’t float...
“Get out of the water quickly!” I screamed as loudly as possible. “WE HAVE TO GET OUT NOW”.
I quickly explained to the group how I had seen those rainbows before, in the water that turned me into an octopus thing.
So we continued by foot, and were walking next to the stream when, about two-thirds of the way up the mountain, we met some tributaries forking off the sides, but we kept walking straight. The stream grew narrower, and we continued walking by it as it dwindled and dwindled until we were walking with one foot on either side of it, until it vanished. We looked for it for a bit, but were unsuccessful, so we returned to the last place we saw it, and after some close looking we found that it had curved under a bush to the left, and was headed in a different direction.
We peeked round to investigate where it had gone, and were confronted with a rocky lump, with a cave about 2 feet high, and 2 wide.
We were a rather democratic group, so after another discussion, Grayson, Leon and I crawled into the cave, and left Josiah and Sam outside to set up camp for the night, as it was approaching late afternoon, and they were more fatigued than the rest of us.
We were crawling along in the dark, with me bringing up the rear as I tried to find my torch, when we heard a strange leathery flapping noise. It was a rhythmic sound going “Fwump, fwump, fwump” repeatedly. It almost sounded like the wings of a flying creature...
Sam cried out as it hit him first. It was a small black shape in the darkness that came from nowhere and latched on to his neck.
I fumbled for my torch with increasing worry.
The same happened to Grayson and I felt him fall in front of me.
I could hear another coming round for me when I finally found my torch and gave the ugly little thing a blast of the light. Its dislike of the brightness was obvious and instant. It wheeled around and quickly flapped away. I shone the powerful beam on the other two, and they flew away also.
They resembled bats, though slightly larger, and with long tails that hung behind them. Their skin was like scaly leather, and looked rough to the touch. We decided that we hadn’t come this far to be disappointed, so we kept crawling, but this time I was in the lead, holding my light for the others to see with.
The passage grew wider, and we could stand upright in it now, it was growing big. We were walking next to each other now, and the ground suddenly dropped away. Using mine and Grayson’s torches (which he found with my assistance), we could see that the small chamber below was mostly filled with a pool of some black oily substance, swirling around playfully in the beams of our torches. On the other side of the open space, we could see a cave sitting upon a ledge above the water level carved into the rock, and in it was five alienistic chests, with digital displays on them, and keypads to open then.
I couldn’t wait to see what was in them so I jumped off the high-up bit where we were and landed in the thick black stuff. I went under, and couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
I felt Grayson and Leon splash down beside me as I struggled for air. I was sluggish and my arms felt unresponsive as they tried to thrash.
Suddenly, a slimy tentacle rubbed against me. EELS, my brain cried out. I was fighting an uphill battle to escape, and I was just about to open my mouth, when my hand hit the surface and the cold air gave me another wind. I just managed to get my head above the surface as I began to open my mouth.
I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t got my head above water in time, but only for a moment, because Leon and Grayson popped up beside me, and together we struggled our way towards the cave on the other side.
The swim was mercifully short, although it contained too many eels for me to enjoy it the slightest bit. We reached the ledge not a moment too soon, the eels were driving me mad and I fought the urge to scream as one found a gap in my shirt and weaselled (or eeled) its way inside.
As soon as we were standing I reached inside my filthy black clothes and pulled out the eel. It wriggled through my fingers and I dropped it on my shoe. It was only then that I looked down and realised that I was covered from head to toe in that dark, slimy gloop.
I looked over at Grayson and Leon, and they looked like emos where they had cleared the gloop off their faces, but still had black hair, clothes, and dark smudges round their eyes.
I forgot about all that when I turned around and remembered about the chests!
We went up to the chests and there was a strange keypad with different symbols on it, and as I pushed the fifth one along, one with a strange symbol on it, it whirred and the display flashed. It seemed to be flicking through different numbers, and when I stopped pushing it stopped on a random number. I pushed it again, and it stopped on a different number. After a few more pushes to make sure it was completely random (and for my own enjoyment of the flashing lights), we probed around the rest of the cave.
There were only the five awesome chests, and an obscured marking carved into the cave wall. We could make out the first five letters.
It said “F” “I” “B” “O” “N” then the writing was obscured, and then we think the last letter was and “I”. I had always loved solving puzzles like this and so it only took me and Grayson (sorry Leon) a few seconds to work it out.
We both chanted “FIBONACCI” in unison as we figured it out.
I pulled out the piece of paper and pencil that was in my Swiss Army knife packet and with a little help, we figured out the Fibonacci sequence to 5 places.
”1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946” I yelled.
The chests had three places featured on the display, and as we counted up the three digit numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, and lo and behold, there were five. I called first dibs on the first chest, and when I opened it was full of jewels and precious metals.
There was diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, topaz, lapis lazuli, opals, and amethysts. There was gold, silver, platinum, and many more metals that I didn’t know the name of.
I quickly closed the chest and savoured the image of it in my mind. As soon as he had recovered from the shock of all jewels and stuff, Leon said he was going to open the next chest.
It contained an amulet. It was shaped like the eye shape on the remote thing.
“The Eye of Horus!” Grayson exclaimed. “Awesome! Like I said earlier, this is a symbol of protection”.
It Grayson’s turn to open the next chest, so he entered the next code, and when he opened it he was disappointed to find a small skull, looking like the Aztec symbol for death, Miquiztli. He decided to give it to Sam.
It was my turn to open the second-to-last chest. I opened his chest, and found a rack of nine test tubes. There were two rows, with one larger on at the end.
The tubes were corked, and each one was a different colour from the last.
There was red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, clear, white, and black.
We put them back gently and then it was Leon’s turn to open the last chest.
He raced over to me, grabbed my pad with the numbers, and ran over to the last chest. He got the number, typed it in, and the chest made a whoosh as it relinquished its treasures. His face fell as he opened his chest and he couldn’t see anything. But then, Grayson pointed out something down in the corner of his chest. Three somethings, actually. They were small silver bracelets, like watches, with lots of strange symbols and buttons on them. He put one on, and randomly picked a button to push. Something happened, and the air around him fizzled and popped. There was a sudden flash, and when I could see again I couldn’t see Leon. In his place was a silver shining, roughly man-shaped creature, like the Silver Surfer from the Fantastic Four movie. We were gaping at it for what seemed like an eternity, taking in its shining curves, its polished, featureless face, its chrome chest, when it spoke.
“Would you guys quit staring at me like that?”
“Leon?” I said
“Yeah, what?” he said, before he looked down and saw himself. He jumped with shock and hit the roof of the cave. He was like some sort of superhuman.
I asked hesitantly, “Can I borrow one?”.
He threw me one with superhuman strength, and it almost knocked me off my feet. I almost dropped it, but caught it at the last moment. It seemed to grow as I put it on over my wrist, and then it shrunk until it fitted comfortably over my wrist. I pushed the same button Leon had pushed, and my world went black, then it was back and I looked down. I new what was coming, but I still jumped and dropped my torch, which broke, when I saw my flawlessly smooth body. The silver had even gone over my tentacle, and I hit myself to find out what it sounded like. I stumbled slightly under the impact of the super-strong blow, but I didn’t feel a thing. It made a dull, full sounding sound, like hitting a, well, a silver surfer thing.
I saw Leon throw the remaining one to Grayson, and as he changed, he also dropped his torch, and strangely I could still see.
“Awesome, we can see in the dark” I yelled. The cave shook in response.
I gave Leon a little playful shove. He went sprawling, but recovered and gave me a harder shove back.
It was harder than I had anticipated, and I went flying into the wall. It shook, but seemed to be fairly solid.
Suddenly, a rock fell loose from the cave roof up above.
Then another.
And another.
We grabbed the chests with the stuff in it (We had fitted it all into two chests) and fled. With their newfound powers Leon and Grayson tried to jump for the entrance tunnel, but missed and ended hanging off the ledge. I was a bit more hesitant, and I thought about what I was going to do before I went for it. I willed myself to jump further than the others, but I had never been very sporting at stuff like that, so I closed my eyes and willed myself to go up to the edge as I bent my legs to jump. I heard Grayson, or maybe it was Leon, gasp. I poked my eyes open a crack, and almost fell.
I was floating through the air above the oily substance.
I was scared so much, that I closed my eyes again and willed myself up to the ledge.
I opened my eyes again when I felt the ground beneath my feet. I fell to my knees and was seriously considering kissing the ground when Grayson and Leon pulled themselves up beside me. We just sat in silence for a moment before Leon started gushing questions about my short flight.
“How do you do that?”
“What did it feel like?”
“Did you push a button to do that?”
“Can you teach me to do that?”
“Enough,” I told him. “I just thought about getting to the ledge really, really hard”.
We crawled as fast as we could to the entrance of the cave, and blinked in the dying sunlight. Well, we blinked as much as a silver surfer thing can blink.
* * *
It was much later, and we were about to retire to our tents (which had been kindly set up by Josiah and Sam in our absence), when we saw a silver pyramid rise and fly into the air from about 200 metres inland.
We told Josiah where we were going (Sam was going toilet in the bushes), and flew off, all three of us.
We arrived at the shining pyramid in record time, flying at a speed of at least 100 kilometres an hour, and as soon as we arrived we started searching.
It was massive, but completely flawless and smooth.
We grouped on the far side, to decide what to do next, when Grayson reached out and touched it.
He vanished. We panicked. We touched it.
NOTHING BUT BLACK.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
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