Saturn Rises Rough Draft

The sky was tainted with signs of morning.  Saturn’s trek to noon stains the horizon in a sea of crimson as it moves.  The tundra has not seen darkness since Saturn ignited into the solar system’s second sun 4-years ago.  Earth is a desert now.  No one would have imagined that Antarctica would be home to the only population of life, but it’s not a dream watching people die from heat exposure and exhaustion habitually; it’s a nightmarish reality.  This is not the life I envisioned for myself at the age of 27, or am I 25?  Are we still spinning around the original sun at the same rate?  Is my name still Walter?  Honestly, these questions are the least of my worries.  Limited space and access to bare necessities have transformed all beings into violent territorial savages.  I have yet to see another human for 10 Saturn days.  Saturn stays in the sky three times longer than the sun, so by calculation I haven’t seen a human in about a month.  I do see human pets that were brought here to board the Mother Ship; but, unfortunately, that never occurred.

            The haze of evaporating waters block any visual observation within arm’s reach.  Sound becomes the primary mode of sense until Saturn is over the horizon.  I have learned it’s best to sit still until the fog ends.  Running the risk of encountering hungry and desperate dogs camouflaged in the smoke screened tundra is high when Saturn rises.  I sit cautiously on full alert with my K-bar at the ready.  Frantic dogs aren’t the only animals searching for food in the haze.      In the thick of waiting out the fog, I reminisce on younger days.  Society regressed from the 21st-century customs.  We connected via the Internet and traveled via highways and airplanes, but the surge of radiation from Saturn all but destroyed our satellite systems.  The Internet is a nostalgic memory now.  I can recall paying for this luxury with my credit card on my laptop from the comfort of my one-room apartment in New York, New York.  Now, all goods are paid for with water, and there’s no one around to make any friendly exchanges.  The Mother Ship rebellion was the cause.  I think the title is better represented as the Mother Ship Royal Rumble.  It’s hard to imagine how chaotic humans can be when death is imminent, but when survival is questionable, and your only means of escape is a spaceship big enough for 30 people amongst 5,000 survivors who constructed the craft, you end up turning the most civilized human beings into demons choreographed by Satan, or Saturn.  I wanted no part in the bloodbath and figured I would take my chances in the unfrozen Antarctic Tundra.  I’d rather die of starvation and heat exhaustion as a man then play the lottery claiming a seat on the Mother Ship as a murderer.

            Water was 80% of Earth less than five years ago.  Now water occupies 30% of the planet.  15% of all water is at the North Pole, and the rest is in Antarctica, which is the last bio-diverse body of land.  That was the last report given by the Antarctic Space Initiative before the Mother Ship Royal Rumble.  My canteen is three-quarters full, and I have just taken a sip to dilute the salt in my lungs.  Usually I would deepen my breathing pattern during Saturn’s rising to inhale the water vapor, but after traveling away from SnowTown Lake or what is left of it, the ocean water dominates the vapors. 

            After nurturing my palate, I started to hear footsteps of what I assumed was a 3-foot tall 4-legged animal.  Its direction was walking across my frontal plane 50 yards away.  I get the impression that this entity started towards me until it realized it might not be the predator.  The 4-legged cadence tapping the ground began to increase its tempo into a jog.  Strangely enough, within the cadence, the 4-legged gallop turned into a two-legged stride, and the two-legged striding being made a 135-degree turn into a full sprint straight at me.  The acceleration of this creature was unreal; there was no animal on Earth that could match such speed.  I had less than a second to respond with my K-bar, but I was frozen in my lotus posture.  I couldn’t see the creature’s eyes, but I was captured by them, hypnotize.  Once the creature was in arms reach, it stopped in the midst of a full-out sprint and darted its arm straight at my neck lifting me to its face.  This creature wasn’t human.  It was about 7-foot tall with no signs of a nose or mouth.  Its skin felt like cartilage; smooth, clammy and dense with three wider and longer than average fingers with its opposable thumb collapsing the carotid artery on the right side of my neck.  It pulled me closer to its face.  I could see that it had no pupils, but I could tell that the creature amplified its observation of me when it’s whole black eyes darkened, sucking in my presence.  Before I collapsed into blackness, I could hear in my mind a voice that sounded like a one-person choir of the same tone say, “This is the one.”  The carotid artery blockage was too much for me to bear and I collapsed in the arms of the unknown.

           

Ch. 2

            I awakened startled, and sweating.  The first thought I had was, “Where is my water!”  I waved my hands over the ground like a metal detector searching for my canteen.  As the seconds ticked by combing the sands, my anxiety swelled.  I prayed the random creature I encountered earlier didn’t take my canteen while I was unconscious.  I knocked my hand over a plastic rectangular device of which I presumed wasn’t natural, but the algorithm in my head could only analyze awkward shape of a canteen not rectangular structures.  The feeling of desperation overwhelmed my senses dominating my consciousness.  I was in full panic mode.  I stopped, took a deep breath and relaxed the tension out of my musculature.  “Where am I?”  I realized that the morning fog was over and I had access to my eyes once again.  After scanning the immediate area, I noticed my canteen about a meter away laid on its side.  Luckily the cap was on.  Once I identified where my canteen was, I turned my attention to the plastic device I ran my hand over.  It had the appearance of a laptop, an Apple laptop, my laptop.  The grey protective cover, the W etched on the left side of the cover, “why is my computer here?” I thought to myself.  I slowly crawled my way through the Antarctic sands to study the device.  “I left you in New York… How… What…,” I said a loud as if the computer was going to tell me how it arrived.  I opened the device to notice more evidence that I was the owner.  The clear plastic key cover, the long crack running diagonally along the screen, and the decal sticker on the bottom left side of the keyboard that read, “Knowing is growing.”  The astonishment for my computer appearing out of thick air made me forget that I was just blood choked by an alien a moment ago.  I scanned the area again somewhat fearful of seeing the creature, but all I could see was the desert bushes, miniature sand tornadoes and the mountains in the background.  I pushed the power button on the computer, and the customary whine of ignition brought in a surge of excitement.  “It’s on, with no power cord!”  Again no one responded to my comments.

            I waited for the identification screen to show.  While I waited, I noticed that Saturn was past the time of the fog and the second stage of Earth heat was setting in.  At this point, Antarctica’s temperature rises to about 125 degrees Fahrenheit.  New York would be 250 degrees Fahrenheit right now.  This is the cool part of the day.  The morning fog keeps you hydrated, but you can’t see.  The second stage is sweltering, but it’s the only time you can travel around the landscape in the summer.  At stage three you can only be out in the suns for 15 minutes or you will be cooked alive.  When Saturn is the only star in the sky in the winter when the Sun doesn’t make it to Antarctica, the temperature reverses to a habitable weather pattern which is why Antarctica is the only place you can still experience life.  Fortunately, I awakened from my unconsciousness before stage three heat started or else I would have been in a permanent state of unconsciousness.  I had time to briskly walk to the shade of the mountain caves about a half-mile from my location, so while the computer was revving up, I headed for shelter.

            When I got to the cave, I looked into the camera to enter my passcode.  The eye is the hardest part of the body to duplicate, so it makes the best password.  On the desktop screen, one of my journal writings was open.  For the most part, I am organized with my college writing assignments putting all documents into folders; so witnessing one of my papers out of place was an immediate draw.  As I pondered over the desktop document, the monotone choir voice spoke to me again, “You know how to stay.  We choose you.  You appreciate.”  I scouted the cave wildly swiveling my head from corner to corner.  “Where are you?  Please don’t hurt me!”  I could see no figures in the cave.  I assumed with great hope that the creature was speaking to me telepathically, but I didn’t understand the message.  Once I calmed down by convincing myself that I was alone in the cave, I turned my focus back to the computer screen.  The document title read, “1JUL32: Free Writing Journal – 1.”  While in New York, I was finalizing my dissertation on the benefits of free writing.  I started a daily free writing journal and made entries every day for a month, and this was the first.  I haven’t read any entry I made since I started the journal.  I just wrote them down and put them in a folder.  I clicked the full screen mode on the document and was puzzled by what was written.

            This day, all day, why shadows grace the living?  Will we see shadows when the moon returns to fullness?  No shadows exist, nothing but stars.  Twins they stand as good and evil.  They both burn the land. Burn it to oblivion.  Neither is good.  Neither is evil.  Who is the destroyer?  Neither can save me.  I want to see shadows.  No shadows exist here.  Go to what you create.  I’m not tall like them, but they hear me.  I’m not fast like them, but they see me.  I lead them; they need me so save me, please.  I write in transmission.  They listen to me.  I am grateful.  Everyone else does not see me.  They die from the sky twins.  Never will you rise again.  Your sins will sizzle in the night sky.  The night of the Stars.  South is the way.  Stand in the South vortex.  I need no Airplanes.  The body can fly.  Float to the center.  Exert magnetism.  Stand in the vortex, and I see you again. 66467788273998.  The solar system is pregnant.  The child will learn. 

            I was immediately struck with loneliness.  I recalled the times in my undergraduate studies of how I never attended college events, how I never ate with friends in the cafeteria, how I spent my time in my room working on my assignments so dedicated to receiving a Ph.D in Emotional Cognition.  I was consider a child prodigy from the age of 7, and was attending Harvard for as long as I can remember.  I was dedicated, ambitious and motivated to my studies, but I was lonely.  No one new me and I knew no one.  The section that read, “I’m not tall like them, but they hear me.  I’m not fast like them, but they see me.  I lead them; they need me so save me, please,” was surreal.  I kept running the thought in my head that I was talking about the creature that snatched me off the ground.  “That creature said I was the one,” I said to myself, “The one of what?”  The document started to feel more and more prophetic.  “No shadows, nothing but stars.”  I dialogued in my head some more, “Was I talking about Saturn and the Sun?  The good and evil?”  Again, the monotone choir came into my head, “Look at what you did, you knew us before we knew you.”  I sat quietly in the cave for a moment trying to come to terms with everything that has happened so far.  “Okay, I’m alone in a cave with two suns burning the earth.  I found my computer, of which I didn’t carry with me to Antarctica.  I saw an alien who just choked me and keeps speaking to me telepathically about how I know them and I am the one, and my free writing experiment is predicting my every move…  I’m going crazy!”

            Stage three heat has officially set in, and will be in effect for 24-hours.  I put my computer down for a while to take my mind off of my current situation and decided to scour the cave for grubs and edible plants.  I figured that some of the recent incidences could have been hallucinations, so I attempted to feed myself before looking any further into these strange turn of events.  I lifted my computer and searched my document menu for where I place the other 30 entries of free writings.  I found the location and clicked on the next free writing in line of succession, “2JUL32: Free Writing Journal – 2.”  Which was as unreal as the first entry:

            Stars are not fire.  Nothing burns from stars.  They burn from needs.  Stars magnetize.  Magnetism is energy, concentration, thought, focus, waves of patterns with no solid foundation that can be so.  Why are you so hot?  The stars don’t burn you.  That’s what you think.  Who told you the stars were hot?  The stars are what you want them to be.  The stars are what you need them to be.  Magnetism is the beginning of all elements.  Why eat anything other than the beginning?  Why drink anything other than the beginning?  Magnetism creates earth, water, wind, fire.  Magnetism has no direction.  It amplifies directions.  How strong a thought is for heat makes it hot.  How strong a thought is for cold makes it cold.  How long a thought maintains balance creates seasons, and Karma changes directions.  Find comfort in magnetism and walk the land as custodian.  Strength of thought will change this world.  Strength of thought will change you.  3897590984738.  The stars need masters.  They don’t think for themselves.

            “Stars are not fire.”  I sat in the sentence for a while.  “Stars are not fire.”  I heard several theories about what the universe is.  The Earth is flat, we are one of many black holes universes, and the universe is entirely electric, are just a few.  I thought all of these theories were true in their own right, but the stars are not fire, nothing burns from stars just sounded so far fetched.  I suddenly came to the realization that these are free writings.  “Why am I putting so much stock into some random unconscious thoughts?” I questioned defensively.  For some reason I felt as if my world view was severally challenged.  Something about the words in the free writings was convincing.  I didn’t remember the verbiage of these entries coming off so direct and absolute.  The writings carried a scripture like tone.  In the process of free writing, I theorized that the words don’t come from a conscious place.  Free writing felt like channeling thoughts of other people or several people at the same time, which is why I hypothesized that writings were gibberish.  “Why would non-burning stars seem relevant to me 5 years ago anyway?  What about magnetism?  I can eat and drink magnetism?  I can control seasons?”  I began to boil with frustration.  “What does this mean!?!  Some body help me, I don’t understand!?!”  I shouted at the top of my lungs.  My anger was irrational. There was more to know about this, and for some reason I started to see the journal writings as truth.  With the threat of death just a couple steps outside this cave I needed something to believe in.  I had to calm down.  The frustration steamed off of top of my shoulders and hovered at the upper portion of my lungs.  My confusion was painful at this point.  “You know.  Don’t be afraid of what you know.”  For some reason, the sound of the monotone voice was reassuring to hear.  “What do I know?”  I attempted to make conversation with the voice.  “What is it that I know?  I’m scared.  I don’t want to die like this.”  “Trust your mind.  What is your history?”  This time after the voice spoke, I felt the voice leave my psychic space, like a memory wafting out of imagination.  My thoughts of the alien creature shed some layers of fear.  I took a couple of deep breaths to bring my tension down again and blocked the negative mental imageries of the prevailing moment.  Once I had some semblance of bearing, I redirected my focus back to the computer screen.  I felt sure that the answers I was looking for lied in the journals.  I didn’t know where else to concentrate the last remaining bits of my faith in surviving Earth’s re-genesis.  My attention was fully locked on discovering what these writings had to say.  I double touched the next document marked 3JUL32: Free Writing Journal – 3, closed my eyes, took a deep breath and prepared for instruction.