Empty Land
Copyright© 2005 by Porlock
Prologue
Erotica Sex Story: Prologue - Novel number two in my 'Portals' series. Mak,a young man from a village of Neanderthal survivors is expelled and joins with a caravan of traders, finding adventure, excitement and love along the way.
Caution: This Erotica Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa mt/ft Consensual Romantic Heterosexual Science Fiction Interracial Slow
We know them as north and south, east and west, up and down. These three pairs of directions, plus the doubleheaded arrow of time, define the universe that we know. Mathematical physicists tell us that there may be seven other pairs of directions, so that the underlying reality is in the form of at least an elevendimensional manifold.
One current theory also suggests that the Big Bang at the beginning of time was not really a bang at all, but something that more closely resembled the shattering of a violently shaken bottle of warm champagne. Each bubble, differing however slightly in at least one fundamental characteristic from every other of its fellows, became a separate and distinct universe, coexisting with them against the background of this elevendimensional manifold.
Very near to ours, closer together than than pages in a book, floats a bubble that is a nearidentical twin to our own. This universe contains a twin of our galaxy, our system, even our planet. Every aspect of this other Earth is practically identical to our own. Indeed, aside from some minor details of geography, languages, names, and personalities, the planet could have been our own. Our own, that is, until the summer of 1349 AD...
In our world, the plagues of the Dark Ages came and went, slashing and chopping at the fabric of society, paving the way for the Renaissance Era where people were scarce, and thus valuable if only for that scarcity. In this other world, so nearly a twin of our own, one of these plagues mutated into an even deadlier form, exploding out of control until the human race was all but extinct.
In our world, there is substantial evidence to suggest that remnants of the subspecies we call Neanderthal survived beyond the fringes of civilization until at least the late Middle Ages. In this other world, a similar race also existed. After the plagues had died out, a few of these people, no longer pressed for living space, learned the arts of civilization from villagers who survived the plagues.
The time is just a few years in the future, when ingenious experimenters have found a way to bridge the gap between universes. The place is westcentral Europe, somewhere between Belgium and Austria, but should a lowflying airplane happen to slip across the border between universes the pilot would never recognize the countryside below. Where are the canals? The roads and bridges? The cities and towns? The varied and multitudinous works of Man? Flying lower, searching vainly for a place to land before his fuel is gone and twilight turns to deepest night, he might spot here and there a feeble glimmer of an oil lamp, shining dimly through thinscraped hide in a window, in one of a few scattered villages. But he would have to look in just the right place, at just the right time, because the villages are tiny, and frighteningly far apart. In this world the long night of man's extinction is already descending, and darkness is close at hand.
