Anarchistbanjo's World

“I already went through this with Crow,” he protested. “You already know more than I do. I can’t teach you anything you don’t already know. It would be wrong to take credit for teaching you when I didn’t.”

She relaxed a little. “Is that all that’s bothering you?”

He nodded glumly.

“Let me ask you something,” she said quietly. “Do you have any doubt in your ability to train newbies in survival skills? Any doubt at all? Even the smallest?”

“No I don’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Last fall I had to give additional training to three of my newbies so they would be ready for winter. I thought they were trained well enough and then realized they weren’t so I took extra time and gave them more training.”

She nodded. “Nobody made you do that did they?”

“No.”

“What does the Council of Elders think of your training?”

“I’m one of the better trainers.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the newbies I train are happier and healthier than a lot of the others. They also seem to make good trainers themselves and are mostly willing to train through the winter.”

She smiled at him. “Your parents created this program to bring people up to a certain skill level in both knowledge and demonstrated ability. Do you believe you have reached that skill level and are ready to move on to the next?”

“Yes I do.”

“But you can’t advance because the program will not allow early advancement even if you are already prepared correct?”

He nodded, “That’s right.”

“Well, I’m in the same situation,” she said. “I already know how to survive, how to defend myself and I am also a healer. I also know advanced techniques that my grandfather taught your parents and other advanced techniques that your parents in turn taught my grandfather.”

“Can you talk to my parents?” He interrupted.

“Yes,” she nodded biting her lower lip.

“Are they alive?”

“Tobal,” she said slowly with pain in her eyes. “Your parents are no longer human, and they are dying. They are asking for our help.”

“What do you mean, no longer human?” he shouted. “I see them and talk with them during circle.”

“What you see and talk with are their spirits,” she whispered. “They have developed their spirit bodies to the point they are almost physical. In fact, once their spirit bodies were physical and they could go anywhere they wished by changing their physical bodies to energy and teleporting instantly to where they wanted to go. They can’t do that anymore.”

She shuddered, “Your uncle captured them and imprisoned them. He wired them like electrical components into the circuitry of a machine and they have been kept alive artificially for over twenty years in special fluid filled tanks.”

“Tobal,” she said looking hard into his face with tears in her eyes. “I have traveled in the spirit to where they are kept imprisoned. Their physical bodies have mutated and become grossly deformed. Only their spirits remain human. They wish to be free of their physical bodies and become simply the Lord and Lady. But your uncle won’t let them die.”

“I need to see!” He sobbed in denial and fear. “I need to know for myself. I need to see them and talk with them. I need them to tell me.”

She put her arms around him as his shoulders shook and comforted him till he regained his composure.

Wiping angry tears from his eyes, he asked, “You’ll teach me?”

She held him against her breast. “I’ll teach you, Tobal. I promise.”

The first thing she taught him was the story of his parents and their classified research involving time travel. Ron and Rachel had built a matter transmission machine and tested it. This machine used powerful pulsating magnetic fields at certain resonant frequencies to create a gateway into time and space much like the ones in current use for matter transmission. The problem was that mineral and crystalline objects would work but organic materials would not.

After several years of research Ron and Rachel developed the first gateway or portal that allowed living matter to be transported through it to target locations and began using it themselves. This was an important military break through. It allowed troops to be transported instantly from one area to another and was immediately highly classified.

It was purely by accident the time traveling capability was developed. One of the giant capacitors malfunctioned while transmitting Ron and Rachel to a target location. It threw the entire machine out of phase and Ron and Rachel ended up in the 16th century.

When they didn’t appear at the target location retrieval was attempted and they were brought back successfully. They also brought some artifacts back with them. From that point on, the classified research became about time travel and not troop transmission.

By trial and error they were able to travel into the past and into the future and achieved access to twenty historical time periods and three future time periods. Each time period seemed to act as a nexus point in time and space. If the machine wasn’t keyed to a nexus point nothing happened.

It was like working random codes until you found one that worked. The process was slow and frustrating but also highly exciting at the same time. That was when the problems arrived. Ron and Rachel were able to go back in time through the machine but no one else could and live to tell about it. The machine did horrible things to those that tried, Drove them insane or deformed their bodies. No one knew why it only worked for his parents.

They had developed the necessary training programs to prepare other time travelers. But the machine only worked for Ron and Rachel. It was a classified military project and a team of scientists worked furiously to remodel the machine and make it work with other people.

It was only when both Ron and Rachel were hooked into the circuit with the machine at the same time and used as buffers that others were able to go through it. Tobal’s Uncle Harry was the first one to successfully time travel through the machine when it was hooked up in this fashion. He led a team through the machine several times to many previously unknown time periods in addition to those that your parents had discovered on their own.

There were problems with this because Ron and Rachel were not willing to be wired into the machine for hours at a time waiting for other time travelers to come and go. Trips into the past or future could only take two hours at the most and the drain on Ron and Rachel was severe. Their health suffered each time they hooked themselves into the machine and others used it.

Ron and Rachel were able to time travel themselves without any of those restrictions and could be away for weeks at a time. They felt it was more important they be allowed to make extended trips and do research than be confined wired to the machine so others could experience briefly what they could do for extended periods. They altered the machine and designed different programs searching for ways that others could use it.

Still the machine would only work if Ron and Rachel were wired into it. They tried wiring other time travelers into the machine and it killed them. It almost killed his Uncle Harry when he tried wiring himself and his wife into the machine. It did kill her and left his uncle paralyzed.

That was when his uncle went mad and had the gathering spot attacked and the villagers massacred. Ron and Rachel were seized and forcibly wired permanently into the machine and declared dead. That was when the program was officially closed down.

That was the story the Federation knew and was trying to keep secret. But there was much more to the story than that. There was an even greater part only Howling Wolf had known. Half way through the projects developmental stages Ron and Rachel were beginning to think that the problem was with the people and not with the machine itself. They discovered Howling Wolf and his secret shaman bi-location ability.

His parents thought this additional training was needed and started working in secret with Howling Wolf and a handful of others at the gathering spot on the lake. It was after Howling Wolf’s training on bi-location that they realized they no longer needed the machine to time travel to places they had already visited. They met in a secret place under the waterfall at the lake to do this training. It was where they would travel back in time and return with items to prove they had done it.

Howling Wolf needed help to time travel at first. Ron and Rachel had linked together with him and had made several trips back into different time periods. Later he had been able to go to those same locations but he was not able to go to new ones. It seemed the machine opened the gateway the first time and that once it was opened and a person properly attuned, they could travel through it at will. Even Ron and Rachel had needed the machine to open the gateway the first time to new locations.

At the lake the group discovered two people who had already been to a specific time period could take a third person without using the machine. Once that person had been taken and brought back they could make the journey on their own without help. Still they were only allowed access to the three future times and twenty historical times that Ron and Rachel had personally gone to. They were not able to go to the ones that had been discovered while Ron and Rachel were wired into the machine.

Llana had completed this training but her grandfather couldn’t link with her well enough to take her through by himself. He needed one other person to be able to do this. Both Ron and Rachel had linked with him and taken him through. There needed to be one more person to take Llana through without the machine and there were no others.

Howling Wolf thought they were all gone. All except Ron and Rachel, he and the others had called them the Lord and Lady. They were still there in the mountain complex held prisoner and alive. Things were not right because they were both ill and were both slowly dying.

Llana felt they needed her help and she needed their help to time travel. She had talked with them in the spirit and they had told her they would help her.

Then Llana spoke of the massacre at the lake and how the small group of people had been below in the cave time traveling when it had happened. Howling Wolf and the others had emerged from the cave only to find their families murdered. They had buried them in a mass grave and raised the pile of stones over the dead bodies. Afterward they had left not knowing whom to trust and knowing their very lives were in danger if they were ever found.

This was all news to Tobal and he was beginning to think she was crazy until he remembered Melanie had said something about time travel. He thought about the strange shop in Old Spokane with its “replicas” and suddenly he wasn’t sure about anything anymore. He hadn’t thought about Heliopolis as having the secret technology of time travel the Federation was willing to kill for. The Federation would kill to keep it and would kill to prevent it from getting into the wrong hands.

Suddenly he thought of Sarah’s father, Adam and knew Adam and Howling Wolf could teach Llana time travel if they did it together. They were both trained and could take her with them if they went together. They could also teach him if he were properly prepared. He thought about telling Llana about Adam and decided to wait until he had been trained so he could go with her at the same time. They didn’t need his parents to time travel but they might need to time travel to rescue his parents.

He thought of circle and the pagan rituals they practiced with the Lord and Lady. They represented much more than the old ways suddenly and he liked them that way. They were ways to communicate with his father and his mother who were still alive and needing his help. Then he thought about the 3rd degree and the medics flying around in air sleds and the med-alert bracelets they all wore and suddenly he felt a massive headache coming on.

Crow had taught Tobal how to work with spirit energies and open energy channels within his body. What Llana was teaching him was entirely different. She taught him how to reach deep within the depths of the earth for energy and security. She taught him how to use the energy of the earth to make himself stronger, how to stand against a tree and recharge himself after reaching the point of exhaustion. She also taught him how to control that energy and send it out.

He saw her one time walk up to a deer and pet it. Birds would come to her when she called them. Llana said the spirits of the plants and animals talked to her and told her what they wanted or how to make use of them. As the sap started running in the trees they collected maple sap to boil down for maple syrup and collected other newly sprouting plants and herbs for medicinal uses.