THE SLIDE Part 4

Chapter 45: Flying Blind (part 2)

Fantasy: Departures into Chaos

Recap

Zed hung on a descending tow cable about four hundred feet in the air on a steady climb, pulling a glider-plane below.

Zed slipped, his hand was covered in slime. He lost his grip and slid several feet down the cable, back into the turbulence behind the plane.

Two bolts of lightning from nowhere sliced vertically — one from the northwest and one from the southeast. The two bolts left the air around the plane saturated with electrostatic energies. Zed hung on with his knees, legs twisted and upside-down.

Tem coughed and fell back awkwardly, getting stuck in the crawlspace. The black particles of slime bits slipped down his face and fizzled on the deck plating below him. He was disgusted and nauseated, vomiting over himself. Left in an aura of queasiness, he felt supremely grounded, powerful and vulnerable. He burst into uncontrollable sobbing for about a minute, stopped and smiled.

Pieces Unfold

“It is time, Me Lady,” the tall Druidic Priest bent down and gently put his fingers on Maria Papadopoulos’s shoulder. A second man with green skin and twigs, green leaves for his hair, shimmered next to the priest. He was there and not there, simultaneously.

The priest, the green man, and Maria, led by two archers, stepped through the chilly dew in the densely grouped cedar forest filled with fog and rising mists. They emerged onto a plain of purple grasses in the minutes before first light. Encircling them were monolithic stone structures. The high stones seemed to appear from nowhere.

The green man flung his shimmering spirit arms up towards the fading starlight and speaking through, the priest said:

“I call in the lens to include the husband of Maria and this space as one.”

The sun rose and the balloon’s sphere spiraled ‘round the stone circle in a wake of rainbow colors. Marie Bissett looked on from outside the circle. Maria Papadopoulos vanished and the metal balloon sphere circled thrice and popped out of their reality.

The SS guard found him and helped Tem get unstuck. He went back to the small open vent-hatch below the tail of the plane. There was no sign of Zed. Tem was crushed and wept openly, assuming Zed had fallen to his death.

“Why does he weep?” Mustafah, the storyteller, asked. Hannah laughed long and hard for a few seconds and managed to pull it together.

“You’re the storyteller. You must know.”

“Ah — the assumption. You make an assumption that I am the creator of the story. I am not. The story exists and the characters find their place, or their universal roles, within the tale. I tell the story from that place where the story has been laid out, as it has been for millennia.

“Please, answer my question, Hannah.”

“Just because Zed has played a role of dark deeds and meanness does not make him a bad or evil man. Tem knows this because his compassion has surfaced for one who has been in danger,” Hannah responded.

“Has been?” Mustafah raised a bushy eyebrow.

The light fountain fluctuated.

“Perhaps I have said too much.”

Ivanovich / Nikos, the Greek, pressed a damp cloth up against his wife’s brow. She slowly came back to herself as she opened her eyes.

“The cedar forest. I never left, and I feel rapid movement. How is that possible?” Maria asked, as he cradled her head in his lap.

“Yup. It is disorienting. We are inside the balloon sphere. Physicists call this space transdimensional repositioning. Basically, a very large space held in a much smaller space across dimensions.

“I understand the principle, theoretically, but how and why I am as much in the dark as you are,” Nikos said.

Maria grinned. “Magic,” she said. Nikos started to explain. She waved her hand in front of his face and said:

“Shut-up, husband. Kiss me.” They kissed and fell into a passionate rapture with one another.

Tem was inconsolable. He returned to his seat and collapsed in on himself. And he began to hear a voice in his head that repeated a phrase:

“Throttle the engine down when you reach the proper altitude.” Tem stood up and walked to the pilot’s alcove, wanting the voice to stop.

He leaned his head in through the opening and relayed the phrase to the navigator. She looked up at Tem and said, “I just got the same message in code on my screen here. I told Dono.” Dono was the pilot.

He began to throttle the engine down. The navigator informed Tem that it was Zed that sent to message from the other plane. She showed his numerical signature. Immediately Tem saw what had happened. The slime had lubricated the cable. Zed slid down it and was picked up by the plane in tow. It was that simple. But where did the slime originate?

The Debate

Kuzma, Farha, Hrez and Sophia continued to bicker, make a plan, nix the plan, shout and chase each other’s tails.

“He’s okay now. Tem’s okay,” Sophia said. The three others paid her no heed. She climbed up onto the kitchen table and announced:

“Did we not all see that the wormhole over the south pole?” Sophia asked in an accusatory tone.

Farha, Kuzma, and Hrez, halted in their tracks — dumbfounded.

“It could wreak destructive forces on the entire sphere.”

They acted like an inert glop of goop — without presence.

“Still nothing?” Sophia continued. And without pause: “The poles could reverse, causing massive earthquakes, storms that make the vortexes look like drizzles of rain and the erasure of all short- and long-term memory.”

They appeared lost, as if under a spell.

“The planetary sphere could be destroyed!” They looked at her, dumbfounded. “I don’t understand how we can be concerned with our individual lives or the life of Tem, or be stuck in not being able to decide or needing further examination when all of our lives are at stake now. It’s as Hrez used to say — ‘It’s incomprehensible.’ Get it?” the irritation had risen in her voice.

The Action

They looked at one another. Fully present and linked together, they visualized the polar region center. They then bilocated en masse.

Moments later, they found themselves underground in a great wide oval tunnel.

“It looks ancient, made by humans,” Hrez remarked.

“How is it we are here?” Farha asked.

“Right,” Kuzma agreed.

“I get there was a block put on us, but as to why, or who, I don’t know,” Sophia stated seriously.

“Where is that light coming from?” Kuzma wondered.

“Probably from those translucent crystals,” Hrez pointed, then dropped to one knee and listened intently, following Farha’s lead.

“What do you hear?” Kuzma asked her.

“That,” Sophia pointed towards the growing sound behind them. There was the sound of rushing water and a bright light on top of an on-coming wave that nearly filled the height and breath of the tunnel.

There was no place to go — no escape. If the impact from the wave didn’t kill them, they would surely drown.

The Previous Chapter — 44

I appreciate your continuing readership and applaud you that you take the time to read this longer work in an era of shrinking stories. Bravo!

Rebecca Romanelli | Blaine Coleman | Spyder | DL Nemeril | May More | David Price | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Melanie J. | Joseph Lieungh | Camille Grady | madmess’s thoughts | Orla K. | Ravyne Hawke | Winston | Margie Willis | Noorain Ali | Lee David Tyrrell | Libby Shively McAvoy | Lady Dr. Gabriella Korosi | Ilis Trudie Palmer | Rip Parker | Dr. Preeti Singh