Endless: An Autobiography of an Immortal

Chapter 10 - The Journey

Despite certain objections from O'a-sh-ot, I decided to press on in learning more about the device. Once again, I touched it and this time pressed a symbol that almost looked like a leaf. It opened again, but this time the inside was green in color and the symbols were different. I pressed one randomly. The green hue went from dark green to light green and back again. There was more noise, then the device closed and just stayed hovering like before I pressed the symbol. No build up, no movement other than the silent swirl. I pressed the same symbol again, which opened green. This time I pressed a different symbol. It did the same as before. After several attempts I decided that the green one was boring. Good thing a single device wasn't able to perform the full planet terraform I was inadvertently trying to activate, would have wiped out most life on the planet. Never really got that one to work. Well, except that time I briefly activated it on Socotra many years later. In my defense, those trees that would later be called Dracaena cinnabari are pretty cool looking and haven't spread off the island.

I went with another symbol this time around and it would shape the next few thousand years of my life. The floating device, which I'll call Omni from now on, and the reason for that will be exceedingly apparent soon, opened with a white colour. This time around I was drawn towards the circle that kept appearing above it when it opened. As I stepped around Omni it would always be a circle, so it was actually a really smooth rock shape. It had lines that looked like it was cracked but nothing was coming out of it. I went to touch it and it grew in size, from about the size of a fist to now about my head. There was a small pebble that was on it, then it disappeared, then back again, repeatedly. I knew not what to make of it. I went to touch the ball again and it shrunk in size, smaller than it was before and there was then another much smaller ball orbiting the previous one. I touched it and it grew in size and detail. Looking at it closely it looked very familiar on one side. It dawned on me what it was. I looked up. There in the sky was half of it. The smaller of the two balls never rotated, it only circled the larger one. Which means the same side was facing the bigger one. Looking back at the real one in the sky, I went through years of memory and recalled that it too never changed. Only slowly disappearing every so often. If the smaller ball from the device was the one in the sky, which was later called the moon, then the larger one must be the one I was standing on. Earth.

Elated with this new found knowledge, I decided to venture forth with pressing random things. It was still a white color, so I pressed a symbol on the inside that didn't look threatening. A slight noise was heard and the device closed. It moved slightly away from the setting sun then stopped. This was in the opposite direction that O'a-sh-ot was hiding in. Maybe I pressed another boring button. I went to retrieve it, but when I started walking towards it, it moved further away. I stopped, wondering what it was doing, but soon afterwards, it also stopped. O'a-sh-ot called after me. I tried again and Omni did the same thing. I decided to walk back to O'a-sh-ot and see if it came back as well as try to explain to her what I learned. Neither of those were successful. O'a-sh-ot just didn't understand what I was trying to say and to be fair, the language was not evolved enough to actually express it. I just had her load up and follow me as we walked towards Omni.

Like I knew would happen, as soon as we got within a few metres of it, it moved away again. After the sun started setting we stopped for the night, eating, but not talking much about what happened that day. By the third day of following Omni O'a-sh-ot was not having it. She didn't understand why we were chasing after it. She wanted to leave it and go back to where I said I was from, thinking since I was alone for so long, we could be alone without any danger. I felt that I truly needed to follow the device. I couldn't leave it. It was far too powerful to let anyone else have it. In the distance I noticed that Omni stopped. O'a-sh-ot was not happy with my reasoning. She had seen what the other devices could do and did not want anything else to happen to us. In those days we didn't point at things, but we did gesture. I had my palm open to the sky and my arm reaching towards Omni as it slipped into my hand. We both stopped talking and stared. O'a-sh-ot had never seen it up close in broad daylight before, having retreated to a safe distance before I started experimenting on it. I didn't know why, but the fact that it silently flew into my hand somehow convinced O'a-sh-ot to go along with me. That it can be controlled, even though I didn't know how I did it. Regardless, I didn't argue. I pressed the same sequence of buttons and Omni started heading the same direction as before. We silently followed.