Visitation - Reality (book 1 of 2)

LOSS OF THE LAST BASE IN THE MIDDLE SEA

“WELL TAURIA, COME ON, let’s have it. What is the bad news,” Philo enquired in a somewhat blunt manner, as was his way, but with genuine concern in his voice.

It had become Tauria's responsibility to provide the definitive report, if that were possible, to Philo, the Senior responsible for gathering together all the facts, snippets of information and anything else that could be gleaned or deduced concerning the recent disastrous events.

She was seated in one of the easy chairs of this informal interview room, opposite Philo, and had been selected specifically for the onerous task that had been placed upon her.

Another person was seated in the room but he was not introduced.

This was not good manners but it was beyond Tauria to complain. She wanted to get through the process that she was summoned there for and was not bothered any more who listened to her words; her exhaustion was almost total.

Tauria responded while glancing constantly at her lengthy and detailed report, that she had placed in her lap and which had been delivered in its final compiled and edited form, only a few hours previously.

“As you are aware,” she began hesitantly, “we lost the mid-sea base completely a long time ago with the volcanic and unexpected tectonic action in the area, but eventually secured another of the same on the small island that remained. Volcanic it most certainly was, but after the last episode, those hundreds of years ago, it appeared that all was well. It was dormant, no more tremors and no noticeable sign that any activity might start again.”

She glanced down at the report to ensure that she was following her own structured words.

“There were no reports of sulphurous gases leaving the ground; vegetation was well established again and ....”

“I know all that Tauria, I’ve also done my homework,” Philo interposed, “just get the critical stuff, the punch lines, move on, come along and move on.”

There was firmness and impatience about him but he was trying hard to be gentle. Recent events, of which he was trying to elucidate Tauria’s perspective notwithstanding the facts, had put him and quite a few others into an emotional state that they were unlikely to ever recover fully from.

“With the first new rumblings and signs of volcanic activity we started to ship out the equipment, through the locals’ method of sail boats. This was decided upon so as not to cause any alarm amongst them.”

“It was considered if a transit craft was to suddenly appear, it would have been deduced that invincible 'Gods' were coming to rescue some of their own, but not others, and this would have been inappropriate.”

Tauria continued but instead of overcoming her initial nervousness, and thereby gain some strength to her voice, she found it becoming thin and weak.

She was experiencing the effects of a continuous period of intense activity with little sleep and had to find the energy to keep going a little longer.

“From the historical information and the sensor readings that had been recorded, as soon as the early trembling had been felt, decisions had been made that sufficient time was available for the planned low key withdrawal.”

“I know, I know, move on, please,” Philo impatiently pushed, developing a sour disposition that he was finding hard to disguise. He had to be gentle, not something he was familiar with, and to obtain the personal overlay he required adding to the detailed technical report.

“Well the nub of the matter,” Tauria tried again, her voice beginning to tremble while she quickly paraphrased, “is that the volcano erupted, unexpectedly, in a truly explosive manner not only vaporising the remaining people and equipment at the base, but also causing all shipping in the area to sink immediately as a result of the tremendous blast and giant waves.”

“Our boat, the one carrying our last to leave personnel and the last cache of records, only a mile or so away from the island at the time, was completely lost and,” she stuttered over the last few words trying unsuccessfully to hold back the tears, “there is no hope of any survivors.”

Tauria had lost her beloved partner Merton in that blast. He had stayed behind at the base previously when she had been called to the other side of the world on an urgent call-out.

She had sailed away to a rendezvous with a transit craft waiting for her at the major island to the south. This had made her, effectively, the only survivor from the base, and as such a responsibility had been placed upon her, because of her close knowledge of those involved, for preparing and presenting a formal report; this she was doing now.

This was not a responsibility she wanted but one which was forced upon her in a cathartic belief, by those senior to her, that her sense of duty would carry her through and aid whatever healing was required.

She had been returning hurriedly back to base, in mid flight some one thousand miles or so away and was in mid conversation on the communication system, when it suddenly went dead and the blast wave rushing towards them struck, nearly knocking the craft out of the sky.

Her love had been sailing away from the island base when the big blast occurred.

He had returned after the first volcanic activity to recover the last of the important documents, readers, etc., and was amongst the last to leave in a local sailing craft only one hour’s distance away when the big explosion occurred.

Had caution been put to the wind and a transit craft employed, regardless of contradicting standing orders of it being visible to the local people? Settler’s lives could have been saved, including Merton’s.

Had Tauria returned sooner, she would have been with her partner to assist in the final departure preparations.

If events had gone to plan she would most certainly have perished with him; so many ‘if's’ now defining this tragedy.

Fate had dealt all concerned a deadly blow.

With no base to return to, her instructions from the most northerly base were to stay in the area because of events unfolding in the desert area. Observe without being observed and report were her orders and she was now delivering her resulting draft, or was it her final, report, as required.

Her sense of duty had carried her far but her batteries were running low and she just wanted to admit defeat as soon as possible.

“Signals had been received,” she managed to continue, “to say that one of the general purpose, anti-gravity, machines had been activated again. This was the one that had been given to the priests of the developing area, south of the Middle Sea, many hundreds of years previously and was thought to have been lost or damaged irreparably.”

She read her own words, with almost no emotion in her voice, from her report barely held steady in her now trembling hands.

“Nothing had been heard of it, no signals received for a very long time 1 and the only explanation had to be that it had run out of its special fuel, the converted monatomic gold metal.”

“It was possible that the priests entrusted with it, being no longer able to make it function properly, had thrown it away, or more possibly stored it somewhere secret, as some sort of hallowed relic.”

“Our local agent had been unable to determine where it might be and it had been given up, by us, as simply lost. That had been our official view at the time and also since.”

“However,” she moved on to current events, “a feint signal had been received to show that it not only existed but had been in use, at a maximum power level, for a very short period of time. Strangely, this had occurred a short while after the cataclysmic explosion and there was a view, for a while, that it had been triggered by an impacting shock wave. In technical terms, we simply did not know what had caused the transmission of this signal.”

Tauria had been tasked with finding out what had been going on as quickly as possible despite her loss. Her received advice was that all the Settlers had to harden up to accept events and despite any personal loss, continue with a revised prime objective placing their own welfare above the protection of the human populous.

The agent on the ground, who had been living as a local, was to have provided as much valuable information as possible when contacted; that contact had not come nor was any further word ever heard from him.

The people of the area were surely being affected by the eruptions, especially the huge continuous one, subsequent to the earlier singular explosion. The almost continuous type of explosive gas filled eruption was throwing fine ash at extremely high velocities up to the far edges of the atmosphere and the heavier sort to lower altitudes.

The spreading opaqueness, it was predicted, would cause serious global cooling effects resulting from the masking of solar incidence.

It seemed strangely coincidental that the machine would now be brought back into use momentarily after such an event and a lengthy absence.

Tauria continued with the detail of her report, which included the words of those others who had come rushing to the area from some great distances away, but whose intended assistance was to no avail.

She read the words off the report but they were delivered in a monotone and almost as a first person account of someone who was witnessing events as they unfolded.

The first part of this section was read, as best as she could, in a matter of fact style and told of the ancient records in providing a raison-d'être for the existence of the base.

“This happened once before, some thousands of years previously,” she continued with her presentation.

“According to the records, the loss occurred when the melting of the polar caps raised the sea levels so high that our flourishing watching base, on the large island north of this volcanic explosion, was submerged by the rising sea level. The entire land mass was starting to be submerged by the rapidly rising sea levels but the finality was caused as a result of a disastrous tectonic movement whose actions had not been anticipated.A massive lava chamber beneath the entire area, which must have been developing for some considerable time undetected, collapsed inwards as the intense pressure driving the explosive lava discharge disappeared. The combined events of a rapidly rising sea level, the volcanic eruption and the collapse of the lava chamber, occurred within a comparatively short period of time. It seemed that our attempts to help the emerging civilisations develop fully were as fraught, with a danger to our very existence, as it was to these people. This area of the Middle Sea seems not to be the place to be or we were just very unlucky. Perhaps we should have done our ‘watching' from somewhere else not too close to the island and just keep tabs from ...,” her voice trailed off to an indistinct mumble as her heart started to break.

She was dreadfully exhausted and the emotional impact of what had occurred, the loss of not only many people of her own kind but specifically her partner, now bore deeply into her as she recounted the events of her report.

Recovering her composure, sufficiently to continue, she stated that, “The location of the local ancient store of knowledge, which we hoped would remain secure, would now most certainly be so as any record of its precise location was lost, as this information was held primarily in the base . . .”

She wandered into the telling of recent events relating to the general-purpose machine signal which . . .

. . . And so the story unfolded .