Read Wind-Scarred (The Will of the Elements, Book 1) Online

Authors: Sky Corbelli

Tags: #adventure, #wind, #future, #wormhole, #hawkins, #stargate, #element, #ezra

Wind-Scarred (The Will of the Elements, Book 1) (3 page)

BOOK: Wind-Scarred (The Will of the Elements, Book 1)
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There was a brief tingle as he passed
through the barrier at seventeen minutes after five, and then he
was free.

The flight to his rendezvous point took
another fifteen minutes, and even the joy of riding on the wind was
hampered by the bleak and monotonous landscape. Endless miles of
short, stubby grass rolled down to the base of the mountain range
that encircled the city in a second, naturally formed ring of
protection from the supposed desolation that lay beyond. The last
remnants of mankind had hidden here for over a thousand years,
after their forefathers had nearly destroyed the world. The Great
War, they called it, a conflict that left nothing but uninhabitable
wasteland and poisoned oceans, lakes and rivers. Mankind had flexed
its muscles, and life had been driven nearly to extinction.

At least, that's what the
history books said. Ezra had seen the planet though, from the
viewport of the ill-fated
Millennial
Legacy
launch during the celebration of
the thousandth Founder's Day, seven years ago. It had looked
beautiful and serene and perfect and vibrant. It had looked alive.
After he was given a clean bill of health and released to his
research, Ezra had run tests on grass gathered outside the barrier.
The textbooks all said that Sanctuary was founded on one of the few
places that had been relatively untouched by the war and its
horrible aftermath, but he had found nothing out of the ordinary
about the plants outside. There was no residual radiation, no
subatomic deformities at all. They were just plants. Boring, ugly
plants, to be sure, but healthy and natural.

Thinking back to his time spent recovering
aboard the space station, there had been no windows that faced
Earth. When he had asked about it, the nurses had told him that the
planet was so hideous that the station had been purposely designed
that way, to remind mankind that their future lay out in the stars,
not tied to a dying world.

But Ezra knew that
something had changed. He had hinted at it to colleagues, but
no-one ever seemed to take him seriously enough to just look at the
facts: somehow, the world had renewed itself.
Well,
he thought resolutely,
if they're too blind, then I'll just have to open
their eyes. I'll open everyone's eyes, and usher in a golden age of
expansion and rediscovery
. He nodded to
himself. He would show them something, something to make this a
Founder's Day that shook Sanctuary to its roots. Something that
would have made his parents proud.

Ezra shook his head. Science, he had to
focus on science.

As the glider descended, he saw the wormhole
snap into existence. One moment there was the monotonous brown of
the grassy slope. The next there was a one meter wide window into
his lab.

The thing to understand
about wormholes was connectivity. Sub-atomic particles could move
from one place to another instantaneously. It was a simple matter
to follow the paths they left, one jump to the next, and connect
two points in space. The matter from one point was
practically
already in
the other point, with quantum tunneling. And, since the position of
any particle was a naturally uncertain element, switching the
locations was as simple as dumping Heisenberg waves through the
connection.
The slope ahead of Ezra was
still connected the plain patch of grass that had been switched
with the generator platform, but that patch of grass was now
connected to his lab back in Sanctuary.

The real trick was accounting for the
wormhole's behavior around the space where it was created: namely,
that it liked to stay there. The Earth, however, had a tendency to
move rather quickly around the sun and its own axis.

The lab's generators could pull along both
ends of the wormhole while maintaining the portal itself – locking
them in their positions relative to the surface of the Earth – for
a total of four hours before the batteries would fail and the
connection would drop. Cut that time in half for the second
wormhole he would generate to jump outside the mountains, and Ezra
had just under two hours to complete his expedition if he wanted to
avoid a very long walk home. And some explaining when he got to the
barrier. Probably safe to just keep it short and sweet then.

He quickly folded the glider and tossed it
back into the lab, collecting his gear and checking the radiation
badge. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he entered in the
coordinates for his destination.

Ezra took a deep breath as the wormhole
connected, and stepped through. He found himself standing on a flat
shelf of stone, blinking in the sunlight, as he took his first look
at the world.

Chapter
3
Surprises
and Sheep

The sun was still setting on this side of
the mountains, painting the landscape in shades of orange and pink.
It was a breathtaking view. Far below his little shelf of stone,
rolling fields and sprawling forests stretched out to the horizon.
He had a brief, fluttering feeling of being too exposed. With no
mountains looming up to devour half the sky, the world just kept
going on and on until it curved out of sight. Nothing he could have
done could have prepared him for this sight. Fortunately, he had
been prepared for his lack of preparation. The timer on the
wormhole controller beeped obnoxiously at him, snapping him out of
his reverie. Berating himself for standing around and staring like
an idiot, Ezra readied his antique analogue hologram camera and
began narrating.


What you are seeing here is actual footage from outside the
mountains. As you can see, the world is not a wasteland anymore.
Things are living and growing and thriving out here. In fact,” he
pulled off his radiation badge and dangled it in front of the
camera's lens, “there is no measurable residual radiation, and the
air is fresh and clean.”

Ezra began to focus the camera on various
features of the landscape below, naming them off as he went.


You can see that there are fields of this long, golden grass
spread out all around us. There is also a natural forest off to the
north...” he reoriented to bring it into frame. “Those trees must
be massive to be visible with the naked eye from up here. And look!
A stream is flowing out of the forest and
oh-my-god-did-you-see-tha
t
! A fish! A fish just jumped out of
the water! There is animal life out in the world! The Earth is
capable of supporting life again!”

Hardly able to contain his excitement, Ezra
rambled on as he skimmed the forest line in search of more wonders.
He went on for quite a while, the light slowly fading around
him.


More trees, more grass... did something move there?! No, no
that was just the wind... let's see here, grass, grass, trees,
and-”

Startled, Ezra jerked his head up and
squinted off into the distance, and was quickly struck with
embarrassment for doing something so pointless. He returned to the
camera and his narration.


There are mammals down there. A whole big group of them! It's
a little dark, but you can see that they're white and they look
fluffy...” Ezra raked his memory for the right word, the name for
the animals out there. Liza Crawford had spouted some nonsense when
trying to get him to go to sleep back when she babysat for him, it
had something to do with counting... “Sheep! Those are sheep! It's
a group, uh, gaggle, no, no, flock! A flock of sheep! This is the
most amazing thing any human being has seen in over a thousand
years! Oh! And a dog! It looks like it's running toward the sheep
and... and... around them... almost like it's trying to... make
them change directions or...” Ezra trailed off,
confused.

A dog?
Running sheep around like that? Herding! That was the word!
There were some old vids floating around on the net where dogs did
things like that, but there was always a person with them,
directing them where to go. Ezra scanned the camera toward around
the edges of the miraculous flock until he saw, “A shepherd, out
there with the sheep.” His words came out as a whisper, “A girl. A
human girl,” he continued in a stunned voice, “outside of
Sanctuary, with a flock of sheep and a dog and she has a staff and
she's herding the sheep toward... toward a road.”

Ezra gulped down the lump that was forming
in his throat and continued hoarsely. “And... and there are wagons
on the road. And more people. They're all moving in the same
direction.” He zoomed the camera in as far as it would manage. “I
can see... I can see a wall, and what look like rooftops behind it.
A town. A town that is not Sanctuary, full of people who are not in
Sanctuary. But no-one is allowed to leave Sanctuary, and there's no
way down from here and no way across the mountains. They don't seem
to have much in the way of technology, and all of that together
would mean...it would mean,” Ezra paused, reaching his conclusion
but afraid to utter it aloud. Steeling himself, he whispered, “It
would mean that they aren't from Sanctuary. That they have been
living out here the whole time. How could we not know about this?
Who could...” he jerked his head up.

Who could have hidden this? Who would want
to? He looked down at the camera in his hands in horror. This was
no new discovery. This was a secret. This was someone's secret.
When a person stumbled across information in the genetically locked
data banks of one of the Legacy families, even as an honest
accident, they disappeared. Certainly, some of them resurfaced
years later, either as adopted members of the family or as raving
lunatics with black marks on their names... but no-one ever went
back to their old life.

Who wanted to keep this a secret, and what
would they do to make it sure it stayed hidden? He had the sudden
urge to destroy the camera, leave the crushed remains here, step
back to his lab and hole up there for the next few years. It had
happened before. A brilliant scientist on the perpetual verge of a
what he thought would be a world-shattering breakthrough would
sometimes lock himself away from everything. Then, years later, he
would surprise colleagues by not being dead and sometimes being
sane. He could just say that he was absorbed in his work. His work!
Ezra was suddenly flooded with relief. His work was important. His
family was important. Not even the Chancellor himself could get
away with vanishing him. Or could he?

Back and forth Ezra paced, feeling better as
he rationalized his importance to society or his chances of keeping
this secret, then despairing as he theorized what would happen when
the wrong person found out. The camera captured minutes of
fascinating footage of the ground, his feet, the mountain beside
him, until a loud beeping snapped him back to reality. The wormhole
device announced that he had thirty minutes before both wormholes
would shut down. He stared down at the controller. That would
certainly end his dilemma. What stories would crop up to explain
his mysterious disappearance?

He looked back up toward where the town had
been. If he could find a way down... maybe even project a wormhole
to the surface, he could make a place for himself in the outside
world. Maybe he could be happy out there.

Ezra sighed. No. There were some things that
the human spirit just would not allow. That was a coward's way out.
Not saying anything at all, that was a coward's way too. He had a
plan, a mission. He looked back at the camera. This may be
someone's secret, but everyone deserved to know. Ezra knew what he
had to do. He would go back. He would find a cafe well away from
home. He would anonymously upload the video to the net. Then he
would do everything in his power to be a good citizen, bury himself
in work, court who-so-ever Miss O'Donnell felt appropriate, and
wait to see what would happen. That was what he had to do. That was
the right thing to do.

Set in his resolve, Ezra stepped back
through the portal and began the short walk his lab. He stopped
just before walking in and took one last look around the shadowy
landscape inside the mountains. It wasn't right that they lived
boxed in like this. It wasn't fair that they thought themselves
alone on a barren planet. His eyes lingered on the gentle purple
glow of the barrier around Sanctuary. Splashes of bright color were
visible even from here, lighting the sky as the Founder's Day
celebration kicked into full swing.

How much more would they rejoice to know
that there was a whole world of beauty and wonder waiting outside?
How much could they help the people living out there with modern
innovations? He had wanted to make this a Founder's Day that the
whole world would remember, and that was what he was going to do,
consequences be damned. With a determined little smile on his face
he stepped toward the wormhole home.

And watched it blink out of existence.

Chapter
4
Hidden
Hallways

Ezra stared dumbfounded at where the
wormhole had been. He frantically checked his clock. Twenty five
minutes remained on his timer. There must have been some kind of
power fluctuation, or maybe sustaining a wormhole through a
wormhole reduced efficiency.


Breathe Ezra,” he said to himself, “You're okay. You planned
for this, that's why all the closer ports are shut down for the
night.”

Without the support of a real wormhole
generator, his controller could only create and maintain a portal
for about half a second. Enough time to drop a wormhole on himself
and connect it to the nearest active port or generator then jump
through immediately. He was fine, there was no problem. His
contingency plan had included scenarios like this, and Ezra had
practiced this technique back in his lab several times. It had just
never occurred to him that he might actually have to use it.

BOOK: Wind-Scarred (The Will of the Elements, Book 1)
12.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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