I felt a cold chill run through my body. Not terribly cold, but cold enough to bother me. The only other feeling was a dull ache in my head. I usually only feel like this when I sleep in an uncomfortable position....
Sleep?
I lifted my head up, only to bring about a jarring sensation similar to a hangover. I looked around my surroundings. I had fallen asleep... on a shipping dock.
I attempted to slowly lift my body up from the ground, fighting muscle fatigue and the ringing inside my ears. I could hear seagulls in the distance and the ocean gently breaking on the dock I had rested on.
Where am I? How the heck did I get here?
There was only one ship at the dock, and I doubt that I could've arrived here on it. It had sunken to the point where only the lookout mast was sticking above the surface of the water. It looked as if water had slowly crept through the bottom of the hull, bringing the mighty vessel to its knees.
I managed to get myself in an upright position and gave my surroundings a quick once over. At the other end of the dock was a staircase spiraling up the base of a hill, leading up to a giant monument of some sort. By the base of the stairway was a podium with a large electrical switch on it, like you'd see in an old industrial fuse box.
To my left was a long retaining wall, with a walkway going alongside the top. On the other side of the walkway was a large building which resembled something out of ancient Greek architecture.
I'd better find out where I am.
I did a quick inventory of myself, making sure I wasn't the victim of a mugging from the night before. Satisfied that everything was in order, I decided to go about and find someone.
I walked up the stairs until I came to the very top, where the strange monument sat. I now noticed that it resembled a large gear wheel, half buried into the ground, and another gear laying on its side. Next to it was a podium similar to the one at the base of the stairs.
From here, I could see a great deal around me. I could see the first building, with another one along side it. The second building seemed to burrow deep into a mountain where a strange looking tower stood. I could also see the sunken ship, and what appeared to be a small forest surrounding one particularly massive tree that blocked the rest of my view. Wherever I was, I certainly didn't remember coming to this place.
I continued looking around, and I suddenly realised that I was on an island. In almost all directions, all I could see was ocean, and from my high vantage point I was getting a good strong whiff of the sea air blowing in from the south side of the island (assuming that the far side of the island was south). How the bloody hell did I get here?
I walked halfway down the steps and then along the concrete retaining wall. At the other end was another set of steps leading around to the front of the first building. From there, I followed a path that was made out of wooden beams laid down across the ground. I was about to enter the first building when I noticed a note on the ground. It looked yellowed and crumpled, but I was still able to read what it said....
Catherine,
I've left you a message
of utmost importance in
our fore-chamber beside
the dock. Enter the number
of marker switches on
this island into the imager
to retrieve the message.
Yours,
Atrus
Who's Catherine? Who's Atrus? I put the note in my coat pocket and decided to try looking inside the two buildings.
From the front, the two buildings appeared to be styled from ancient Greek architecture. The first building was circular with columns along the exterior wall connecting to a blue domed ceiling. At the front of the building was a wooden door, and another podium similar to the ones I had seen earlier. Perhaps these were one of the marker switches that was mentioned in the letter.
Out of curiosity I flipped the switch. Nothing happened. No lights, no noises. The base of the switch sounded hollow when I kicked it, but I couldn't find a way to open it.
The second building was rectangular and appeared to extend into the mountain directly behind it. I tried walking along the side of the building, but the ground was too steep, and I had difficulty with the shoes I was wearing.
I walked back to the edge of the grass and rounded the corner to the door of the circular building. I gave the door handle a sharp tug and walked inside.
The inside of the room was totally bare. Aside from several small spotlights aimed at the ceiling, the walls were devoid of any form of decoration. In fact there was almost nothing in this room at all. The floor was solid oak, polished and stained, making it stand out amongst the bright white walls. In the very center of the room was a massive laid back chair, similar to something I'd see in a dentist's office. Above the chair on a massive swinging arm was an apparatus unknown to me.
Out of mild curiosity I sat down in the chair. The apparatus above my head was a viewer screen of some sort. It held a small screen, a bank of LEDS, a single button, and several rows of sliding levers. The LED bank displayed a date: Jan 1, 0, 12:00AM.
I played around with the sliders and pressed the button. The date had changed. Each slider would change either the month, the day, the year, or the time of day. But no matter what changes I made, the screen stayed blank. Disappointed, I stood up onto my feet and walked out of the building. As I closed the door, I flipped the lights off. Maybe the next building would have something of interest.
The path branched off directly in front of the second building. Down the path, I could see a well, and some trees, but further down the path was obscured by a misty fog that lingered close to the ground. I continued along the path up the steps into the next building.
While the interior of previous building had a spartan look to it, this building had a more distinguished look, a decor suited to a very classy museum, or an old library perhaps. In fact, judging by the large shelf of books at the far end of the room, I'd guess that this place was a library.
The room was octagonal shaped, the only light coming from a massive chandelier hanging from an ornately painted domed ceiling. My footsteps echoed on the solid oak floor as I walked towards the center of the room. Flanking the large bookshelf were two paintings. One painting was of a passageway possibly in this same building, and another painting was of the doorway I had just entered from.
On the left and right hand sides of the room were display shelves. Each one held a book, and a piece of paper, prominently illuminated by a banker's lamp just above the shelf. Behind me was the doorway I entered from. To the left of the doorway was a fireplace, and to the right of the doorway was another painting.
I turned around at the final painting and stared at it for a second. It appeared to be a map, perhaps of this very island. At the bottom of the painting was a small plaque that read Tower Rotation, whatever that ment. If the map was oriented to a compass heading, then the dock was to the south. There were no labels for the surrounding ocean or landmarks, but several areas of the map were highlighted. To be specific, the library itself and the domed building were marked with a white outline pen. The tower on the mountain was highlighted with a red tint.
Why would these features be highlighted? Why wasn't anything labeled?
I turned back towards the main bookshelf, hoping that I might find some more information. My hopes were soon crushed when I noticed that many of these books were in no condition to be read. I'd check book after book, only to find out that each one had been scorched in some fashion, or had all of their pages burned out, leaving a hardcover shell, deceiving the literate mind.
Out of what was probably a hundred or so books, only four had survived. There was a fifth one that was still partially intact, but it appeared to be nothing but page after page of strange patterns. A strange puzzle for someone to figure out later, perhaps.
I took the four surviving books and put them in a pile on the floor. They had appeared to be journals written by someone as of yet unknown to me. The pages were crinkled and dirty suggesting that the journals themselves had been through quite a bit.
The first book detailed the accounts of a man who had traveled to a strange land where he encountered a tribe of intelligent monkeys.
Intelligent monkeys? Primates perhaps. Natives with a lot of body hair? I could hardly beleive any of it, and yet the very nature of the book suggested that it was indeed a journal, written by someone who had actually encountered these beings.
I dismissed the parts that I beleived were fictional and continued reading through the journals. Each once described a very different land, with different people and apparantly different levels of technology. Perhaps whoever wrote these books traveled from this island, maybe on the boat out on the dock.
The names of the places were very strange. The Channelwood Age, the Mechanical Age, neither of which I have heard of. But the more I read, the stranger it became. In one of the books, the author gave an account of actually creating a boat. Unfortunately, something dreadfuly wrong happened and the boat somehow moored itself onto the rocks.
There were also several names mentioned in the journals. Emmit, Prann, Will, Catherine....
Wait. Catherine? This must be Catherine from the letter I found outside. Whoever wrote these journals appeared to be Catherine's husband. Perhaps it was this Atrus fellow who wrote the letter I found outside. It also appeared that the writer of these journals had two sons, Sirrus and Achenar. I continued reading, mentally absorbing the details into my head.
After two hours of solid reading I stood up to get some circulation back to my legs. I had wondered whether the time reading those journals had been worth it or not. They talked about very strange lands, all islands of one sort or another that I had never even heard of. In some paragraphs the author gave the impression that he himself had created these worlds. Of course, if it turned out to be just fiction, then I guess the author did create these worlds in a way.
I went back to the shelf and looked again at the burned books. I rummaged through a few of them at random. The few pages that were intact had very strange, intricate symbols on them, suggstive of a written language. The pages themselves were very course, yet delicate to the touch. Too bad I would never be able to read them.
There were the two other books....
At opposite ends of the octogonal room sat the two books on their display shelves. One book was red, the other one blue. Perhaps they were reference books of sorts, or merely books that were favored by whomever owned the library.
I went over towards the red book and examined the thick volume. Next to the book was a red page the same size of the book, suggesting that it came from the book itself. I opened the book up and noticed that a few pages were indeed missing from the book.
The single page, and the many pages of the book were filled with the strange symbols I had seen earlier. They indeed looked like some form of complex written language, unlike any language that I had ever seen before. At the end of the book on the right hand page was a small picture of a red cloud. I noticed at this point that the opposite page was missing. I took the single page from the shelf and placed it inside the book where it belonged.
Suddenly a glowing red light came from the binding of the book and the page mered with the spine of the book. I looked it over and there was no evidence that it had even been ripped out of the book!
And then right in front of my eyes, the picture changed! The clouds began to move around, swirling in an eliptical pattern. The clouds disappated for a bit and then a new image appeared. The image of a person. A man.
"Who are you?", the man asked. There were other cries and words uttered, but I couldn't make out anything the man was saying. His image was fading in and out among the swirling clouds.
"Red pages!" the man cried, and then he began to disappear. His image was soon lost in the clody mist in the small picture.
I dropped the book in horror. What kind of a place is this?