zero hour

now

Part I

The here and now. The Present Moment.

This was, has been, this shall always be the only moment.

Kinda Mind-boggling... isn't it?

But, forgive me, I must digress, for I've gotten a bit ahead of myself.

I have not really explained the context, nor set the stage for you dear reader!

I beg your forgiveness.

Let us take a look-see at where we are....

Far in the deep reaches of space, in a backwards and remarkably unpopular corner of the universe... far, far, away from where most of the more highly advanced, trans-dimensional space traveling, enlightened and peaceful civilizations lived with each other, collaborated and flourished under an Inter-Galactic Ruling Council of Peace (which sustained a Golden Era of nearly Utopian proportions); far, far from all of that.... there, once, could be found a middling, and quite young, spiral-armed galaxy with three, almost identical, life sustaining planets floating within it.

Each of these small, green, inhabited Life Pods was remarkably similar to the others. They were all infested with an over-crowded population of juvenile, un-evolved, greedy, selfish, confrontational, egomaniacal, endlessly talking, flesh avatars that insisted on calling themselves "Humanity"; endlessly bashing away at each other for dominance in a race to destroy themselves and the miraculous living space-ships that gave birth to them. The vast majority of the populations on each of these triplet gems of creation were (blissfully) unaware of the two sister Orbs, and the twin civilizations that lived on them. So blind to the relationship that these three "mirror" planets shared with each other were the sophomoric inhabitants of all three, that they all believed that their own planet (and thusly they themselves as inhabitants) absolutely must be wholly and entirely unique within the galaxy, and perhaps the entirety of the universe! All three, were in-fact, deeply and cosmically intertwined with each other in a profound way.

On each of these planets, for any one person you might meet, there was someone on the other three planets that was, essentially, them. Exactly like them. A twin, or more accurately, one of a set of triplets. You could say that each population on each of these planets was a Doppelganger* of each other. This made the fact that they were all ignorant of each other all the more fascinating to those observing the planets and their populations from far away.

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*Foot Note: Doppelgänger

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger (literally "double-goer") is a look-alike or double of a living person, sometimes portrayed as a paranormal phenomenon, and in some traditions as a harbinger of bad luck. In other traditions and stories, they recognize one's 'double-goer' as an evil twin. The word 'doppelgänger' is often used in a more general sense to describe any person who physically or behaviorally resembles another person.

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These observers, a very neutral and polite and timid third party, were a pragmatic and kind race of people from a fourth, surreptitiously hidden planet, that sat quite close to the Galactic Center of this particular Galaxy that our story is set in. Their plant had the really rather interesting privilege of being the only planetary system that resided quite literally at the closest possible orbit around the center of the galaxy without being pulled in and consumed by the Super-Massive Black hole that powered the very rotation of all the elegant spiral arms of this galactic disk. These timid people, hiding behind their dark impenetrable nebulae cloud were only observing the course of history unfold on these triplet planets in order to very subtly and humorously help them out with thier evolution, by creating trendy young adult fiction with a very sublimated and hidden or imbedded message. You'll see what I mean in a chapter soon enough.

For now, let's zoom in...

Now, it has not escaped me, dear friends, that the flow of this Narrative might get a bit wonky and unreadable quite fast, what with trying to sort out which of the three almost identical planets any of the action is happening on... And how each planet has it's own variety of languages, Names for places and things... It would be maddening trying to keep it all sorted. So... To keep things as simple as possible, I humbly propose to just use Names of places and things and people and stuff from your world. And when nessesary, I will indicate which of the three planets specifically we are narrating about by placing one of the following - (a) or (b) or (c) after a major proper noun. Simple enough?

Follow me dear readers, as we zoom in on one of these three shimmering planets, and touch base with the 'here and now' of its history, society, (with Names borrowed from your world) and the situation that our main characters find themselves in at this very moment of the here and now.

As we zoom in from above, is revealed that the earth is crawling with massive capitals of urban sprawl.

Each of these centers of metropolitan living were nearly over crowded, and pumping out dense smog into the air, and generally looking quite grim.

The people here, generally speaking, are all quite grim, too.

The world has been divided three ways, along fundamental Religio-Political lines.

Three Gods, Three Chosen Peoples, Three Mega-Nations "defending themselves" against the unholiness of the other two.

Funny how that tends to create a pretty permanent state of international conflict.

Two of the three civilizations on this here planet we are zooming into, would in your world very much resemble the Americas and the European Union.

Continuing to zoom in, until we can see details of terrain. Deep in the backwoods of a far-flung foothill along one one particularly isolated and hard to reach wrinkle of a mountain range so remarkably similar to the Rockies that run down from Canada to half way into Mexico that we might as well call them the same (along with almost all the other cities and geographical features we will be using in this story)... In a bunker, deep under one particularly boxy shaped cliff-face, strapped to a fully reclining chair with high-tech restraints at her wrists and ankles, sat Agent McGee.

She had been drugged... and now, slowly the darkness was lifting and she gradually regained feeling in her limbs.

Agent McGee, (looking quite a few years older than as the appeared in the earlier chapter), is slowly coming to the realizing that she is restrained in a chair, and in captivity, (along with two other people), and that her mouth is taped shut, to top it all off!!!

A brief moment of panic, as she freaks out at not having control of her body, her voice, her free will.

Then the frozen moment of self-questioning....

"Is this room... this room that I am in now... is this the same concrete interrogation room from all the pictures??? Was this the room that all the recordings, videos, and transcripts had been made of all those people? Is this the room in all the files in that box that had ruined my career 11 years ago???"

It's Zeppo's lair, or isn't it? She argues with herself back and forth for an eternity.
Then, she stops and just listens....

Nothing.

Dead Silence. It kinda felt as though she were deaf.

Zero input from the ear drums, or so it felt.

She shut her eyes and wept uncontrollably for at least an hour.

Then she passed out, exhausted, and slept a deep dark dreamless sleep.