The Nexus Colony

N
ot much had happened to the land in the last twenty-five thousand years.

Since the last ice began melting its way back toward the polar region of the planet, the mean temperature of the great continent had varied by only a few degrees, not even enough for any of the inhabitants of the land to notice. Here, along the lower regions of the temperate belt halfway between the equatorial plane and the pole, life was abundant, virtually undisturbed by the dynamic forces that continually and randomly changed and shaped the face of planet earth.

They were wanderers. Hunters and gatherers, as anthropologists would one day call them. As their clans had grown and strengthened, so had the regions become less accommodating to the increases in their numbers. And as clans competed with each other for survival, so began the massive wanderings to find new resources and new lands.

Despite the instincts that drove the clans to wander, they were locked in by the surrounding land itself. It would not be for another several millennia that the wanderers would become sea-faring races. But
The Visitors
had brought them too far along in their evolutionary development to leave them abandoned. The shamans would tell of the crossing of the great water that separated the lands of the earth while they slept. They awakened in this new land without ever knowing how or why they had arrived. The Earth Mother and the Sky Father were capable of doing unimaginable things, and they reverently accepted that.

* * * * *

The lone fisherman, with great effort and determination, paddled his crudely-sculpted wooden boat out from the shoreline. The warm, summer current pushed him along toward his favorite fishing waters that lay along the rocky crags of the wide-open bay. Behind him, the heavily forested coastline slowly receded, leaving the peaceful serenity of
The Land
to the quietude of the summer day.

The water gently lapped against the side of the boat. Turning northward toward the distant forest at the opposite end of the bay, he rested his weary arms for several minutes, wishing he could still paddle the boat with the strength and stamina of his youth when he could cross the wide bay without ever having to rest. But no more. He was advancing in his years, and it now took him twice, sometimes three times as long to paddle the bay.

Across the water, the peninsula rose majestically above the saltwater until it seemed to touch the sky itself. At night when he would watch from his camp, it was as if the Sky Father had painted a great blackness against the heavens, blotting out the stars that rose up out of the water each night from the edge of
The Land
. And it was there, high above on the top of the peninsula plateau, that the dancing white lights made their home. For many years now, he contemplated the dancing white lights, feeling as always, a great fear—and a far greater reverence taught to him by the shamans.

The water was unusually calm this day, and it made the effort to paddle along the current less strenuous. It was a welcome respite, perhaps a gift from the Earth Mother for all the years he had struggled against the elements to fish these abundant waters of the bay. Perhaps Earth Mother knew the end of his time was nearing, and she had provided him with a peaceful and calm journey. Slowly, he paddled through the current. As always, he took an occasional glance across the bay at the mountain home of the dancing white lights.

As the old man floated serenely along the current, his mind wandered back many seasons to his youth. They were exciting times. He still vividly recalled that day when he embarked upon his quest to become a man. His father and grandfather both had taught him well. The young boy’s innate ability to seek out and learn things for himself, the instinct for survival…they had all served him just as well on his trek into manhood.

Unlike the other young men who made their treks inland, he had always been lured by the mystery of the great open water to seek out the personal omens that would foretell his role in the future of the clan. He had learned only the rudiments of fishing the great water from the shoreline. Even his father and grandfather did not traverse the vast bay. The reason, which he now knew, was their even greater fear of the unknown.

So he learned himself, constructing boat after boat by watching the flotsam and studying how the currents carried the debris along the coastline. He soon deduced that a hollowed tree would float endlessly and could be propelled and guided along the currents. The Earth Mother was kind, and soon he learned how to fish the deeper water, providing delicacies for the clan that were unsurpassed even by the great clan members who appeared every summer at the gatherings. He became the greatest fisherman, and they told his stories over and over. In particular, the story of how he came to be named on his manhood trek.

But the day he embarked on his manhood quest was not to be the most incredible day of his life. That day was to come along the trek when he met the white lights from across the great bay. As the weeks passed, the young man had learned much from the Earth Mother. His youthful exuberance had driven him to wander far up the coastline, all the time watching the distant peninsula and wondering what it would be like to be on the other side of the great bay.

He would watch long into the night when the darkness came and the white lights would rise up from the peninsula plateau and dance like the embers rising from the clan’s fire. Night after night they would dance across the waters of the bay and shoot off into the blackness of the heavens to join their brothers and sisters dotting the cosmos above in the Sky Father’s home. Sometimes two, sometimes three or more. And on occasion, one of the lights would dip down along the coastline and sweep out across the waters of the bay, moving closer to him as he watched with fascination, hiding behind the dense foliage of the forest. The white lights would come so close that often he could see the other colors—red, blue, orange—that circled the white light like the vivid colors of the ceremonial robes of the clan elders. But the lights never came close enough for him to see their faces. They were always just lights, like the stars in the nighttime heavens.

Dancing white lights like rising embers of the fire. He would always tell the tale of his manhood trek when the clan was gathered around, using the dancing embers to illustrate his fascinating tale. But he was never quite able to illustrate his encounter with the blue beam. But the clan, nonetheless, would always fall into a revered silence when he spoke of the night when he braved an encounter with the white lights across the great bay.

His story at the clan gathering to welcome him back from his manhood quest had earned him the name that he would carry for the rest of his life. As each young man told his story, the elders would give to each the title for which they would be forever remembered by the clan. They called him Dancing Light Watcher. And now that he was a clan elder, Dancing Light Watcher’s position was more revered than ever. But he was a wanderer. Not content to live a sedentary existence, the old fisherman often went off into
The Land
to recapture perhaps one last time the glorious days of his youth.

He remembered that it was a warm summer night during the second month of his manhood trek when he observed the white lights moving far inland along the ridge of the peninsula plateau toward the area that he had been fishing in the days previous. Despite the growing sharp pain in his side, he became determined to paddle across the water yet again to perhaps get a chance at what he had dreamed all of all his life. To get a closer look of the white lights.

Early the next morning, having packed enough provisions for two days, he bravely paddled far out into the bay, then crossed at an angle to where the coastline first met the sloping ridge of the peninsula plateau. The very place where he had seen the white lights the night before.

Compelled by something deep within his spiritual self, something he could not explain, the young man became driven by some unknown force of will to learn what the white lights were all about. Were they an omen beckoning him to seek them out? Or were they a portent of the Earth Mother preparing him for his doom? Afraid, confused, the pain steadily increasing in his side, still he pressed forward driven by the force of his will to seek out the secrets of the Earth Mother.

By midday, he had paddled the coastline and had reached the location where the cliffs began to rise up toward the plateau from the bay. It was toward the end of summer, but still the flowers swayed gently in the sea breeze displaying their dazzling colors against the powdery blue sky. The forest was sparse here, but along the rocky ledges, shrubs and ferns grew in great abundance. Frequently he would stop to fill his stomach with the sweet blue berries that grew between the crags. The pain was getting worse, and he became upset with himself that in his haste he forgot to search for the roots before he crossed the bay that would help alleviate the pain. In vain, he searched for them here, but the forest on this side of the bay was absent of the medicine trees.

As he pressed onward rising higher in elevation, he stared in awe at the beauty of the bay beneath him and
The Land
far off in the distance. Easily he picked out the sculpted coastline where his racks of drying fishes were stretched out along the beach in the sun. How easy it seems it should be to jump across the water or soar like the birds to return to his camp. Or to be a dancing white light. From this height he could see the different hues across the surface of the water, places he knew where the water was of such a great depth that his fishing nets and line never reached the bottom. Those deep waters held creatures that brought fear even to him, the greatest of the clan fishermen.

The climb up the steep cliff was strenuous, but his body was young and strong and he was able to endure the pain that continued to grow in his side. By the time the sun had reached the ocean and began its plunge into the water, he had reached the top of the plateau. In the dusk of the early evening, he was able to catch a last glimpse of the huge bay and the endless expanse of open water that flowed off the end of the earth into oblivion. Not even the clan elders knew where the waters spilled. Here, he built his camp. Tomorrow, he would brave entering the home of the dancing white lights.

In the pitch blackness of that night, deep under the umbrella of the trees, the young man’s thoughts churned about discovering the secret of the white lights and taking back the knowledge to the clan elders. There, they would forever praise him for his bravery. But sleep did not come easily that night, as the discomfort in his side began turning into sharp, rapid pains. Once, he vomited, and even though the night was quite warm, he began to feel chills all over his body. Not wanting to risk letting the white lights know he was there, he refrained from making a fire to keep himself warm.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, as he fought the bouts of stabbing pain, the blackness of the forest was suddenly interrupted by a brilliance greater than the sun in the daytime sky. It startled him, and he sat up suddenly, overwhelmed with fear. The forest was hauntingly silent, so silent that he could not even hear the rustle of the foliage in the breeze. As the stillness continued to gather around him, the brilliant light, now blinding him to where he had to turn his face away, slowly approached as it silently passed through the trees. Not even a branch swayed along its path. The closer the light approached, the slower it moved and the more dazzling the forest became until there was blackness no longer. He could only look down toward the ground. It was at that moment in his life, a moment he would never forget, that the young man realized he had come face to face with a dancing white light.

In sheer panic, he jumped to his feet and began to run recklessly through the forest, the brilliant light following behind illuminating the way ahead. His heart pounded wildly, thumping in his chest until he thought it would explode from its cavity. And then suddenly the brilliance was surrounding him from every direction and he completely lost orientation as he stumbled to the forest floor, rolling himself up into a ball to protect himself from the wrath of the white light.

The brilliance completely enshrouded the young man. Somehow he forced himself to look upward through the trees. Through the opening in the forest canopy, through shielded eyes, he saw the source of the dazzling white light. Its image would be forever etched in his brain, yet he would forever be unable to describe what it was he saw that night.

The light was now completely centered over top of him. From out of the middle, a sudden flash of blue light shot downward like the beams of sunlight often did through the trees as they kissed the forest floor. Slowly, the blue beam, as wide as he was tall, moved directly toward him. He could not move. He could not cry out. He could do nothing but wait to become engulfed by the blue beam of light.

At the moment it passed over his body, he felt an instant calm, and he lost all fear of the light that was now lifting him slowly upward through the trees into the brilliance above. And as he rose through the shaft of blue light, his last thoughts were of how proud the elders would have been of him for being brave enough to meet with the white lights. When he reached the top of the shaft and entered the unknown realm of the white light, he fell into a deep sleep.

When he awoke, it was morning, and the sun had already climbed into position high in the sky above the plain of the plateau. As he looked across the water through glassy eyes, he could see the familiar distant shape of the peninsula. Groggy, he sat up. Fear suddenly engulfed him, as the memory of last night suddenly shot through his brain. He looked all around, his heart thumping wildly, but there was nothing there except the racks of dried fish and the gentle sounds of the waves lapping at the shoreline. Everything was as he had left it the day before. If indeed it was only yesterday.

His boat was secured to the rocks. How it got there…how he got there would haunt him for the rest of his life. It took the young fisherman a day to regain his full strength, and by some strange miracle, the stabbing pain in his right side had completely dissipated. There was only a scar, barely visible. The Earth Mother had touched him inside and taken away the pain.