Epilogue: Ogdy’s Lodgepole
Waves of Shadow
Fog like a wave of shadowy umbra rises from the mist as if on dragonfly wings. A slender fragile vapor and a tenuous spray of transparent haze lies in thin fibrous sheets a handbreadth over the brackish murky water. Something else rises from within the depths of the river, which smells like a thousand years of decayed plant matter and lifeless animal remains. There is an eerie, otherworld silence over the entire region which is more noticeable closer to the water. The waves themselves muffle up against the wooden dock like a child against a father’s leg. There is no doubt that disturbances are not tolerated here. Four great rivers converged at this point into a great still marsh but there is no movement of life here. The sky is absent of birds and insects and no creature comes here to drink. Should you stand on its ill-fated shore and look across it you would not see the other side but you would see an infinite layer of shadowy vapor that held no perspective and which infinity cannot cipher.
On this river floats the most un-seaworthy vessel ever built by man or beast or alien. This small barque is so ancient that the memory of its construction has not been thought of for millennia. The wood of this boat is so dry and fragile that the slightest of waves could have broken it into pieces. Yet, some magic keeps it intact and sound and afloat. The port and starboard faces of the exterior of the boat are scarred and scraped, as if huge claws have tried to drag it down to the bottom. In the open ocean mariners for centuries have expected to see the occasional seagull come to catch a curious glimpse with the hope of a dropped morsel or the churning up a dead fish. This boat, however, has a sinister following of the scrawniest, disease-ridden ravens and crows ever born. Their feathers are thin and mired in garbage and feces and the birds exuded a disgusting odor all their own that is set apart from the stench of the river.
Literature has generally been unkind to the most famous of the four particular rivers here but had you looked into the depths of this fluid the agony of millions of dead, and even some of the undead, would be gazing back; their shrieks of horror and pain setting the mood and measuring their suffering. Their pleas for mercy would tear even the coldest of hearts. And then, and only then, might you truly understand the unkindness… and the scratches on the sides of the boat. This shadow world that Dante witnessed is crossed daily by Charon.
The shadow creature who piloted this boat was, by far, the strangest of all creatures. Part shadow, part cowl and part skeleton it was difficult to look directly at it. If you did, you would notice that he shimmered in his shadow and looked non-corporeal and miasmal and the simplest movements on his part would leave your eye grasping with nothing to hold onto. He wore a robe with a cowling, his face buried deep within the folds of his hood, and he swayed back and forth in the bottom of the boat in tune with the waves beneath the shriveled wood under his feet. Underneath the cowling was a cantankerous skinny daemon in the guise of a decrepit winged old man holding a double hammer in his hand. Around his skeletal wrist he wore an ancient bracelet with an icon from the I Ching stamped into its copper face. His eyes were empty of color and all humanity had evacuated his presence long ago. His was a dark soul.
One day Charon made his way to the shore and was confronted by a man with great courage and steely nerve for he stood as if he would be immune to the courses of nature and to the only outcome that the boatman had ever known.
“Did you bring the coin?” asked the boatman in a voice that heaved over with stagnant water and swamp weed. “An obolus for your thoughts”, he grinned.
“We have an arrangement,” declared the fearless man.
“Your arrangement was with another and not I. Everyone must come this way with me… there are no exceptions!”
“I wish to travel like the Heroes of yore!” he exclaimed.
“Your father awaits you…” growled the boatman to Ethan Rom.
Waves of Light
Looking up into the night sky and the layered conflagration falling from it the shaman understood that the tribal leader would soon be seeking him out. He measured his responses beforehand because he knew what a superstitious creature he was. He knew that what he was seeing was not a conjured night sky apparition and was certainly not associated with any gods or angels but it would be impossible to tell that to the tribe. Exactly what the fire in the sky was, he had yet to identify but he knew from the looks of it that it was some physical manifestation and not the gods expressing their anger. The tribe, however, expected superstition so he practiced his best speech about thunderstones and bolts of fire from god. He rolled his desiccated eagle bones and sighed.
Meanwhile his neighbors were in a panic and the only recourse they felt they had was to sacrifice all the young virgins of the tribe. Their screams as they were pushed into the mouth of a volcano could be heard for miles.
A little further away another group watched the movement of the wave of fire in the sky and recorded it. Their chiseled stones would tell others of this phenomenon four thousand years into the future.
At the same time, 3,000 miles away a group of islanders trained their telescopes at the night sky and calculated the odds of impact. Could this be another dinosaur killer? Many scholarly heads bent down to work on an answer.
****
Out beyond the star named Sol a millennium-old war of natural forces has just concluded. The loser spins without control back towards the pull of this star in a great ribbon-like stream of debris. As it journeys near the star a trail of comet dust and fine particles of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen burn off and remain in solar orbit. A stream is formed by the drag of cooking water vapor. Comet ice evaporates when it approaches the neighborhood of intense heat near the star. The remaining particles of oxygen, iron, silicon, magnesium and aluminum float out just beyond the gravitation pull of the sun as it moves away in its ever-revolving pilgrimage. The earth’s own orbit brings it ever closer to the path of the wave.
But before the earth can pass into its rubble-strewn tail the moon flitters through the wave like a fly to an electric bug zapper. Silent plumes of floating dust pop into existence all over the surface leaving behind craters from as small as a pinhead or a grain of sand to the size of baseballs. They are moving at 30,000 mindless miles per hour. And the dark side of Luna is pummeled with superheated motes.
As the earth orbits the sun on its infinite course, it passes through the tendril-like debris field spread out in a great wave across its path. When they plow through the atmosphere they are heated to more than 3,000 degrees, and they glow with an intensity that matches phosphor at midnight. Friction does not heat the meteor. Rather the meteor compresses air in front of it and the air heats up, in turn, boiling the elements of the meteor. The intense heat vaporizes most of the medium sized pieces, creating shooting stars. The larger pieces splatter, causing a bright fireball, and an explosion, which can be heard 30 miles away. Small bits burn up in the atmosphere, creating dramatic showers of illumination. A heavy wall of fire streaks through the sky, suggesting that a piece has entered the atmosphere at an oblique angle. Exploding in the oxygen rich atmosphere it sends out a hot wind and a thunderous echo that shakes the ground like an earthquake. There is a faint buzzing just beyond the realm of the audible. Small particles that have been blown into the atmosphere light the night sky. The “earth grazers” are both beautiful and prolific in the dry, clear air and there is an unusual lunar haze rarely witnessed. The train glows in bright colors like some Fourth of July Aurora Borealis. Gold-ochre, emerald and indigo sheets of floating ash appear gauze-like overhead.
Extraterrestrial objects hit the ground and blast out craters many times their size. Craters form much as they would on the moon or any other rocky planet. Smaller objects create simple, bowl-shaped craters. Larger impacts cause a rebound that creates a central peak; slipping along the rim which forms terraces. The largest impacts form basins in which multiple rebounds form several inner peaks. The air fills with steaming meteoroid dust particles and the debris trail falls upon the earth like a blanket.
And the sky is full of falling fire, lavender and loud.
****
Fog like a wave of shadowy umbra rises from the mist as if on dragonfly wings. A slender fragile vapor and a tenuous spray of transparent haze lies in thin fibrous sheets a handbreadth over the brackish murky water. Something else rises from within the depths of the river, which smells like a thousand years of decayed plant matter and lifeless animal remains. There is an eerie, otherworld silence over the entire region which is more noticeable closer to the water. The waves themselves muffle up against the wooden dock like a child against a father’s leg. There is no doubt that disturbances are not tolerated here. Four great rivers converged at this point into a great still marsh but there is no movement of life here. The sky is absent of birds and insects and no creature comes here to drink. Should you stand on its ill-fated shore and look across it you would not see the other side but you would see an infinite layer of shadowy vapor that held no perspective and which infinity cannot cipher.
On this river floats the most un-seaworthy vessel ever built by man or beast or alien. This small barque is so ancient that the memory of its construction has not been thought of for millennia. The wood of this boat is so dry and fragile that the slightest of waves could have broken it into pieces. Yet, some magic keeps it intact and sound and afloat. The port and starboard faces of the exterior of the boat are scarred and scraped, as if huge claws have tried to drag it down to the bottom. In the open ocean mariners for centuries have expected to see the occasional seagull come to catch a curious glimpse with the hope of a dropped morsel or the churning up a dead fish. This boat, however, has a sinister following of the scrawniest, disease-ridden ravens and crows ever born. Their feathers are thin and mired in garbage and feces and the birds exuded a disgusting odor all their own that is set apart from the stench of the river.
Literature has generally been unkind to the most famous of the four particular rivers here but had you looked into the depths of this fluid the agony of millions of dead, and even some of the undead, would be gazing back; their shrieks of horror and pain setting the mood and measuring their suffering. Their pleas for mercy would tear even the coldest of hearts. And then, and only then, might you truly understand the unkindness… and the scratches on the sides of the boat. This shadow world that Dante witnessed is crossed daily by Charon.
The shadow creature who piloted this boat was, by far, the strangest of all creatures. Part shadow, part cowl and part skeleton it was difficult to look directly at it. If you did, you would notice that he shimmered in his shadow and looked non-corporeal and miasmal and the simplest movements on his part would leave your eye grasping with nothing to hold onto. He wore a robe with a cowling, his face buried deep within the folds of his hood, and he swayed back and forth in the bottom of the boat in tune with the waves beneath the shriveled wood under his feet. Underneath the cowling was a cantankerous skinny daemon in the guise of a decrepit winged old man holding a double hammer in his hand. Around his skeletal wrist he wore an ancient bracelet with an icon from the I Ching stamped into its copper face. His eyes were empty of color and all humanity had evacuated his presence long ago. His was a dark soul.
One day Charon made his way to the shore and was confronted by a man with great courage and steely nerve for he stood as if he would be immune to the courses of nature and to the only outcome that the boatman had ever known.
“Did you bring the coin?” asked the boatman in a voice that heaved over with stagnant water and swamp weed. “An obolus for your thoughts”, he grinned.
“We have an arrangement,” declared the fearless man.
“Your arrangement was with another and not I. Everyone must come this way with me… there are no exceptions!”
“I wish to travel like the Heroes of yore!” he exclaimed.
“Your father awaits you…” growled the boatman to Ethan Rom.
Waves of Light
Looking up into the night sky and the layered conflagration falling from it the shaman understood that the tribal leader would soon be seeking him out. He measured his responses beforehand because he knew what a superstitious creature he was. He knew that what he was seeing was not a conjured night sky apparition and was certainly not associated with any gods or angels but it would be impossible to tell that to the tribe. Exactly what the fire in the sky was, he had yet to identify but he knew from the looks of it that it was some physical manifestation and not the gods expressing their anger. The tribe, however, expected superstition so he practiced his best speech about thunderstones and bolts of fire from god. He rolled his desiccated eagle bones and sighed.
Meanwhile his neighbors were in a panic and the only recourse they felt they had was to sacrifice all the young virgins of the tribe. Their screams as they were pushed into the mouth of a volcano could be heard for miles.
A little further away another group watched the movement of the wave of fire in the sky and recorded it. Their chiseled stones would tell others of this phenomenon four thousand years into the future.
At the same time, 3,000 miles away a group of islanders trained their telescopes at the night sky and calculated the odds of impact. Could this be another dinosaur killer? Many scholarly heads bent down to work on an answer.
****
Out beyond the star named Sol a millennium-old war of natural forces has just concluded. The loser spins without control back towards the pull of this star in a great ribbon-like stream of debris. As it journeys near the star a trail of comet dust and fine particles of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen burn off and remain in solar orbit. A stream is formed by the drag of cooking water vapor. Comet ice evaporates when it approaches the neighborhood of intense heat near the star. The remaining particles of oxygen, iron, silicon, magnesium and aluminum float out just beyond the gravitation pull of the sun as it moves away in its ever-revolving pilgrimage. The earth’s own orbit brings it ever closer to the path of the wave.
But before the earth can pass into its rubble-strewn tail the moon flitters through the wave like a fly to an electric bug zapper. Silent plumes of floating dust pop into existence all over the surface leaving behind craters from as small as a pinhead or a grain of sand to the size of baseballs. They are moving at 30,000 mindless miles per hour. And the dark side of Luna is pummeled with superheated motes.
As the earth orbits the sun on its infinite course, it passes through the tendril-like debris field spread out in a great wave across its path. When they plow through the atmosphere they are heated to more than 3,000 degrees, and they glow with an intensity that matches phosphor at midnight. Friction does not heat the meteor. Rather the meteor compresses air in front of it and the air heats up, in turn, boiling the elements of the meteor. The intense heat vaporizes most of the medium sized pieces, creating shooting stars. The larger pieces splatter, causing a bright fireball, and an explosion, which can be heard 30 miles away. Small bits burn up in the atmosphere, creating dramatic showers of illumination. A heavy wall of fire streaks through the sky, suggesting that a piece has entered the atmosphere at an oblique angle. Exploding in the oxygen rich atmosphere it sends out a hot wind and a thunderous echo that shakes the ground like an earthquake. There is a faint buzzing just beyond the realm of the audible. Small particles that have been blown into the atmosphere light the night sky. The “earth grazers” are both beautiful and prolific in the dry, clear air and there is an unusual lunar haze rarely witnessed. The train glows in bright colors like some Fourth of July Aurora Borealis. Gold-ochre, emerald and indigo sheets of floating ash appear gauze-like overhead.
Extraterrestrial objects hit the ground and blast out craters many times their size. Craters form much as they would on the moon or any other rocky planet. Smaller objects create simple, bowl-shaped craters. Larger impacts cause a rebound that creates a central peak; slipping along the rim which forms terraces. The largest impacts form basins in which multiple rebounds form several inner peaks. The air fills with steaming meteoroid dust particles and the debris trail falls upon the earth like a blanket.
And the sky is full of falling fire, lavender and loud.
****
posted by The Alternative One at 9:27 PM
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