Chapter 4: Mind Reading Monoliths?

-Back at the Gateway site-

“Argh ... it fuckin’ hurts.” A now very thin and sickly looking Fatty Alan crawled out of a small ditch at the field where no more than a few days ago James and his two companions had awoken. He stared at his surroundings and then at the starry night sky and then at his bloodied jumpsuit.

The night was dark and moonless, which in this case was very unfortunate for Fatty, seeing as the two moons are usually always on opposing sides of the planet. Fatty, being no astronomer, missed his chance to recognise the entirely different night sky and remained completely oblivious to the strange glow of the stars in this world.

Most odd and the thing Fatty most definitely should have picked up on, was that on this night all the stars twinkled in an orderly and seemingly rehearsed manner. Their twinkling started from the most northern star which would shine a little brighter then dimmer as the closest star south of them then shined and dimmed.

This process repeated until it looked like a Mexican wave of stars shining as it swept across the sky. Then it would go through endless reiterations of this trend from north to south.

Fatty having no interest in such things gave no attention to the peculiarities of the night sky, which if he’d observed, may have chosen differently from his pending action.

‘Where the hell am I? Something happened on the base. Fuck, I said it didn’t I? I’ll bet they had some monster locked away in that lab. It must have got loose. How the fuck did I get here though?’ he thought to himself.

Glancing around he noticed a floating light moving through the tree line in the distance. Thinking it was someone with a torch, he struggled up and moved towards that unknown light.

It wasn’t long until he passed the tree line following the light into the forest and the direction of the huge mountain James had noticed on his arrival.

-Gau Clan Mansion-

Whoosh! James shot out of bed feeling great. For the first time since as far back as his memory served, he felt good and didn’t feel like sleeping more. Gentle sunlight filled the room and birds sang as the refreshing smell of early morning dew filled his nose.

Through the window he could make out the courtyard, in the centre of which was the ‘ice slushy’ pond and beyond that the beginnings of a forested landscape with cobblestone and dirt paths leading in and out of the tree line.

As perfect as this scenery was, James’ mind was distracted from it, and filled with hundreds of conflicting thoughts. As much as they talked with Elder Gau yesterday the majority of questions were forwarded by the very science minded Dr Skay and a good deal of them even the Elder couldn’t answer.

Some of them the Elder didn’t even understand, and James made no effort to comprehend, instead focussing on things he thought mattered more. However, the greatest source of his conflicting thoughts was his growing suspicions.

From what he could deduce, in this world cultivators were kings and anyone who didn’t cultivate or had no spirit energy, himself for example, had no choice but to acquiesce to their betters. Moreover, even though commoners could seek out a meagre existence working in fields or other mediocre jobs, they would never truly be successful in this world.

Regardless of their endeavours, they would never amount to anything. The strong ruled the weak to accumulate resources and the feeble served the mighty for protection. Not just to be protected by from other strong cultivators with less than noble ideals, but also to be protected from nature itself.

“Humans aren’t the only cultivators in this universe.” James remembered this phrase said by Hao when Skay was questioning something regarding plant and animal life.

‘Not the only cultivators, good god, does he mean even a household pet can gain the strength of a godly being?’ James squinted slightly trying to see if the singing birds in the forest had supernatural powers. Other than perhaps being a little bigger and a bit more colourful looking, they perfectly resembled lorikeets and seemed just like Earth birds.

Though this was cause for concern, it wasn’t his most vexing issue. ‘Why? If the strong rule the weak and us mortals are but ants to cultivators, for what reason did they bring us here?’ This was James’ most immediate thought in this situation.

Although he hadn’t considered it before, now that he understood the nature of people in this world he couldn’t help wonder just what this Gau clan wanted and grew even more suspicious of them.

It wasn’t long after this thought that a middle-aged man wearing grey robes with a black embroidered sword and anvil on his left chest threw open the door and strolled into the guest room. After looking at James once he assumed a somewhat domineering posture with his hands on his hips and chest stuck out looking down his nose.

“Let’s go scum!” With a derogatory remark thrown out he turned and started marching out of the room paying no mind at all to James. James displayed no expression assuming his trademark dead fish eyes and hurried out to catch up to the Gau Clan disciple.

James could tell at a glance this fellow was certainly not as amiable as Hao and made no attempt to converse with or question him at all. He’d almost find this posturing amusing if he hadn’t just been considering how suspicious the Gau clan’s actions were.

After moving through the mansion, he found himself back in the main hall. Seated at the main table was Elder Gau who looked markedly older and somewhat stressed. Behind him was the figure of Hao standing there as always with an odd expression on his face as he stared at Skay. Even the servants in the hall looked somewhat bemused.

As opposed to everyone else’s strange expressions and the Elders rapid ageing, Dr Skay looked 10 years younger and had a blistering smile splitting his face as he rapid fired more questions followed by enthusiastic mutterings and the now oddly rare cursing.

James started to wonder if the Elder had been trapped here all night answering questions, or rather, trying to respond to questions, seeing as Skay’s inquiries were vastly more complicated than yesterday’s.

As James walked forward, he remembered a conversation yesterday regarding etiquette in this world and clasped hands to bow to the Elder and taking a chance to interrupt Skay.

“This Junior greets Senior Gau.” Seeing James arrive, Elder Gau’s face lit up like he’d seen a lifeboat while drowning at sea. Seeing this James put on timid expression and began to ask of Elder Gau.

“Elder I have a few questions I’d like to ask you.”

Hearing that there would only be more questions, the Elders face tensed, and he looked warily at James. Seeing this James chuckled inside.

“If the Elder hasn’t time, I’ll let you get back to your discussion with Dr Skay.” Said James throwing out a pleasant smile. Elder Gau’s face worsened further before an involuntary cry of “No!” erupted.

“Cough!, I mean feel free to give young Skay a break and ask a few question.”

‘A few I might actually understand.’ He thought to himself.

James face showed an odd expression when he heard Elder Gau refer to Skay as “young”. Seeing this expression Skay chuckled and jumped in to explain for James.

“Cultivators don’t age ... or rather they age incredibly slowly. Mind boggling no? I’ve got a few theories about this but at present can’t confirm anything without further understanding of this ‘spirit energy’.”

When saying ‘spirit energy’ Skay actually made quotations with his fingers, as if to mock their total lack of understanding and suggest it had nothing at all to do with something as intangible and superstitious as a spirit.

“If I had to theorise a reason then it probably has something to do with a reaction between...”

James stopped listening at this point as Skay started to launch into what James could already guess would be a very long explanation on Skay’s billion thoughts of the subject. Instead, he wanted to focus more on what exactly the purpose was in bringing them here.

James wasn’t particularly shaken up by the probable likeliness of all other humans on Earth being dead. Nor was he concerned with finding a way back to Earth. James had no family and few people he called friends, most of which happened to be on the base when all of this mess started.

Although he wanted to take a moment to process the complicated feelings he had and although he wanted to break out into hysteria and panic, he refused to.

He was curious as to how Jessy was, especially seeing as she had apparently bounced back in the last three days, but again he chose to conceal his worry even from himself as he focused on his one true goal. Survive!

Thinking to this point, James interrupted Skay’s continuous dialogue again as he dove to the root of his paranoias. His face became serious as he looked back to the Elder’s mysterious starry eyes after taking a seat at the table.

“Elder Gau, you’ve mentioned that had anyone else found us we’d be slaves. I could accept that you’re clan may just be filled with endless good intentions and soft hearts if this were Earth. However from what you’ve told us of your societies operation, as commoners we’ve no right to or are even deserving of your good will. I’d like to ask why you rescued us and more importantly, what are your intentions?”

Though he tried to say this in a composed and severe tone, his inner heart was quaking in fear. He knew that if their intentions were anything but pure he could do nothing to stop them. Xanzu alone seemed powerful enough to slap him to death with a wave of the hand.

Although Xanzu was worrying and James could detect nothing but malice from him, he wasn’t as concerned with him as he was with his father, Hao. This anxiety was fed be various ... recent traumas.

Hearing James’ question Elder Gau showed a surprised expression.

‘These Steppers are truly impressive. They just arrived, and one of them is already challenging me on things beyond even my knowledge and understanding of our world. This other junior appears to be well centred and according to Hao has peculiarly good dumb luck. He’s quite shrewd though to already be questioning our intentions. Hopefully, he isn’t a problem later.’ After this brief moment of thought, Elder Gau nodded, and his face resumed the slight smile and amiable face he had when they first met yesterday.

“Junior your question is a fair and pertinent one. Let me first ask, how old are you?”

“Twenty-five.” James replied.

“Well as you’ve just discovered, spirit cultivators in this world age slower than commoners such as yourselves. Here, many people start their training at fifteen or sixteen years of age. Although the period before your thirty has the fastest growth for early cultivation stages, it is not an ironclad rule to start cultivating before this period ends.

“Countless numbers of commoners have broken through the first spirit barrier from every age. Even senile old men have breached this barrier and wrested back a chance at life.”

The Elder’s gaze grew strange again as he glanced at Skay who was busy mumbling and drawing strange equations on his black tech-pad seemingly paying no attention to this discussion.

“As I said yesterday, it’s rare for commoners to come through a random Gateway, but it’s not unheard of. Moreover many people, whether regular or cultivator, who passed through such as you did have affected the history of our world because they have come from a universe not usually connected to Ascension Star. More aptly because they have brought knowledge of cultivator techniques and differing views of the natural laws with them from their own universe.”

Taking this pause in the Elder’s words Skay chimed in with blazing eye’s. “Boy, they rescued us because they want our knowledge to help them advance their own understanding of what they call the ‘natural laws’, which are just what they call the laws of physics and mathematics and chemistry and basically all our scientific rules. We’re here to teach them science!” Skay’s face distorted as it became fanatical and a maniacal laugh escaped his throat.

“HaHAhaHaa. Boy just imagine it. From what I understand, this entire world is devoid of our commoner science. Though they have a vast number of magical techniques, they don’t have our view or understanding. Everything they do is developed by a cause and effect trial by error, recorded and then passed down through the generations. Most of them don’t even understand how exactly they’re affecting the world, they only know that throwing some spirit energy around in a certain way, they do!