Forbidden Stars

TWELVE

Unknown Planet, 14725 Common Era (Nearly Ten-Thousand Years After Human Ascension)

The sand began to give way to beige saturated dirt and grit. Further, into the nomad's march, the æolian plains converged with a more vibrant mix of gravels, hinting Ivan to the climates to be had ahead. Dry hills of dry grass subside to grassy slopes of fertile soil and long stretches of meadowland between intermittent mounds and mountains.

Mountains converge with mountains, stone billion year foes or billion year lovers. Hardy moss clings to moistened boulders of mountainside runoff. Asserted grasses resist the cold and thinner air of the higher altitudes. Trees attack the monuments of rock, stubborn, welded to mountain faces. Fissures and crinks in rock prove homes to various creatures. Bushes and scrubs pepper the playing field of mountain goats and their predators. Fog condenses onto the leaves of plants and adheres to gravity, dropping onto the early morning affairs of a wild montane thicket. Cloud forests inhabit saddle-shaped valleys carved by ancient glaciers. Rainshadow winds push rings and semicircles of clouds onto the mountain's eastward face, enriching the life on the opposing side with life-bearing water. Drizzles of dense drops to an unremitting storm.

Deserts where plants tend to be wiry and without leaves. Desert pavements, rock outcrops, exposed bedrock and clays deposited by once-flowing water. Salt pans occupy the wake of temporary bodies of water which had once existed in the desert, saline lakes sparsely embedded within the salt plains. Caravans of people travel on forged trade routes through the desert. Sand seas, dune fields, alluvial plains; the eolian process, the couturier of the ergs.

Presently, Ivan stood atop a parabolic dune, overlooking countless others in a preset of dawn. Kilometers of air act as a distorting lens, marring the true nature of the horizon afar. The skies only just showed hints of clouds, and the deserts yonder only hints of life. An internal clockwork about him stopped, right there, right then. He was meant to be at this exact position at this exact time.

He peered much more yonder. Somewhere, an immaterial object had just arrived at this small life-clad world. Something immense, the size of a whole world, yet far more intricate than even he is capable of detailing. The object was more than that, it was a world of sorts, perhaps even an entire universe. Whatever its true nature, it was directly overhead.

A man appeared before Ivan, like in the old days when people teleported and translocated. This man certainly seemed old. He had that way about him, in the way he took one step forward and removed the hood of his cloak, the way his eyes moved and the way he inspected him.

"I know you," Ivan said into the light breeze. There was a definite certainty of familiarity with the man, by the way he nodded his head and mirrored what he said. They had known each other, though they had never met.

"You're the constructor of my dreams," Ivan said.

"And you, mine," the man replied. He was a moment.

"Was it real?" Ivan asked. "My dreams ... were they real?"

"They were as real as mine, I surmise. Everything in the extraverse seems to be that way." Extraverse. Ivan understood what he was referring to. "You were trapped," the man said ponderingly. "Barred off from your own universe."

"And you," Ivan started. "You were a ... leader, of your people. You built them a city and kept them to safety."

"I believe it would be adequate to say that we did those things, for each other."

"If it were not for your genius, I would not have found the other universe."

"And if it were not for yours, I would not have learned how to control The Engines. My people would have died."

"I've never known you. Yet, I always have. We come from separate universes, many universes apart. What connects us so?"

"I do not know. Though, I know a traveler who's likely to discover this." The man looked about himself, then peered upwards, where the ever-present world secretly nested.

"This marks the end of us," Ivan said. "I felt the connection wither away as you arrived."

"Whatever entity bound us no longer binds us so, though, I'm certain we may cross paths yet again." The man bowed slightly to Ivan. "Thank you, Ivan."

"Thank you, Norod."

The man departed as he left. Ivan now realized a universe of infinite potential.