Another tale from ‘The Further Adventures of Cara Delaggwei’
by Patrick Gabriel Doyle
(For parts 1 & 2 see January and February 2021)
Pt.3.
Cara Delaggwei sped on …
Through starfields and incandescent nebulae, her zaucer a microdot in the vast emptinesses between the somethings – she knew, of course, that those emptinesses weren’t perhaps as empty as they might appear to be.
She knew not where she was going nor even where she’d been. She was just … going. And that, for the moment, was enough. It was all she had – that moment.
It was all she could be sure of … and even that was … well … tricky!
Atlantis?
Sometimes, there.
Sometimes, gone.
She hadn't fathomed out quite why.
Sometimes THERE:
Ticking along quite nicely, thank you.
Her home planet; everything as it should be.
Sometimes GONE:
A cataclysm she didn't understand:
A whole planet reduced to asteroids – hundreds of
thousands of them – all zooming and drifting through
the Solaarz System.
Over vast expanses of time, she'd witnessed asteroids and dust from Atlantis gather around certain planets, forming attractive rings. Some moons had also been formed, allied to the larger planets within the System. Most moons, however, were of earlier formation. Some of them even older than her!
HOWEVER, all it took was the blink of an eye or the hint of a thought and she could be easily shifted from one universe where Atlantis had been destroyed to another where it was ticking along quite happily.
She had no control over it and was forced to admit that she didn't really understand what was going on – although she half-suspected her zaucer's particle propulsion unit may have something to do with it. Maybe there were entanglements between particles activant in the quantum drive and associate particles still existent in pre-Disruption Atlantis.
ANYWAY, it all left her way-out-there, on her own, and feeling a bit like some cranky, science-fiction character from the Homud stories she'd heard on Urth, which of course … ;-) … well, okay, maybe not so cranky!
Urth – sigh – She felt a real connection with that planet.
It was from there that she had first witnessed the Disruption of Atlantis and the subsequent destruction wrought by the Atlantean fallout.
BUT, something else … On Urth she had witnessed a strange, evolutionary twist; accelerated, and maybe even caused by asteroid impact: The consolidation of mammalian species and the rise of the Homud.
Suddenly, there was a tapping on the dome of the zaucer.
Cara was kind of surprised at how unsurprised she was – considering she had been hurtling through space at a high rate of SPN although she hadn't quite hit first level P-jump.
Now, however the zaucer was at rest, parked on an elaborately tiled floor in some expansive space suggesting courtyards and colonnades.
In some ways it reminded her of Atlantis.
A small, winged creature was perched atop the dome. It cocked its head and peered at her with a twinkly eye. She could see similar creatures flittering all around the space.
She activated the dome’s depixilator, remembering to repixil her own head-dome (just in case) and keeping one hand on her stun-gun (just in case), she stepped out onto the main body of the zaucer.
The creature flittered away.
Her boot-heels clacked pleasingly on the tiled floor, echoing around the space. She didn't feel overly anxious or even guarded – more kind of: ‘Ok – let's see what happens. …’
Fluttering wings everywhere.
From somewhere
a chair
had appeared.
Cara stopped.
She looked at the chair – well wouldn't you?
She looked from side to side and behind … just in case!
Of course, the zaucer had disappeared – ‘Well, that was not unexpected!’
“Welcome to Avarium, Cara Delaggwei.”
The voice came from the chair.
‘I am not going to speak to a chair!’ she said, speaking to the chair.
“No! Then you need to think about who is sitting in the chair.”
That was easy. … She sat in the chair.
In front of her was a man wearing nicely draped material and a pair of sandals.
‘This is so clichéd!’ said she.
“Indeed!” said he. “Cliché is often indicative of the universal.”
‘Mmm? In what way?’
“In the way that it becomes representative of a core concept – an expression of –”
‘So, who are you, anyway?’
“- of … erm … I … I am Philospher.”
‘Ah! And this place?’
“Avarium, of course.”
‘Of course. And these flying creatures?’
“Well birds, of course!”
‘Yes, of course … although that doesn't really explain why they are virtually transparent. What is the location of this Avarium and where is my zaucer?’
“Ah, so many questions. Good! Questions are my sustenance. The birds, they aren't really birds, you see.”
‘You don't say!’
“Yes, they are forms, as yet unconstruct – ideas not yet actualised. Unthought thoughts that –”
‘So, what’s this chair?’
“– that … it is actualized – but what you see is your concept of a chair. Yes, a chair exists in that space –”
‘That used to be a bird?’
“In some way … but the chair you see is not the chair I see –”
‘But how do you know that? You're not looking through my eyes.’
“It is the way of Avarium – each Form has a –”
‘I'm sorry I don't have time for this!’
Cara closed her eyes, flipped a thought, and was instantly back in the zaucer, zipping smoothly through space. She allowed herself a brief moment of satisfaction at comprehending the nature of Avarium and a brief ‘whoops … sorry!’ at her abruptness towards The Philosopher, whether he existed or not.
*A spark of insight
The merest glint of understanding as to why
maybe(!)
Atlantis….
keeps disappearing …
and re-appearing*
NOT why The Disruption Event actually occurs … or, well … maybe … but something in the nature of Avarium … something in the nature of the idea-birds …
HAD Atlantis somehow become suspended – formed/unformed – relevant to her perception? Or … was it actually becoming unformed due to some future event unfolding?
‘But how could that be?’
… unless time wasn't the linear, or even concentric process she'd almost unthinkingly accepted … maybe it was more kind of … well … dappled.
‘Ha … How can one exist for untold millennia and not even question the nature of time?
Mmm … Perhaps that which we have in abundance we question least.’
And so, with these murmurations sinuating through in her mind, Cara Delaggwei sped on …
~
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