![Picture](/uploads/6/3/0/7/6307972/audumla_1.png)
Audumla Station: A beginning at the end.
"Phaethon! It is about to begin sir!" called a gruff voice from the observation deck. The gaunt, blonde young man smiled. Using the archaic names of gods for the members of his team was, he felt, a masterstroke, on what would soon prove an exquisite canvas. He really ought to look up what his code-name meant, he mused absently; he'd chosen it at random and a wizened little co-worker had snickered to himself before walking away muttering something about ignorant imbeciles above their station, he thought he'd heard something about blowing the Imperator, before he'd turned away disinterestedly, Phaethon had never put much stock in what naysayers had to naysay about, especially when it regarded himself. As far as he was concerned it sounded majestic, and whatever other meaning it had, well he could look that up when the job was done. As he left the reception area he could hear the commentary "...and now, the man responsible for this decades entertainment, please warmly congratulate programmer 5073A from London IV, or as he shall be known for the duration of our show, Phaethon!"
Phaethon strode onto the observation deck to the thunderous applause of the select thousand viewers who were lucky enough to have on site seats. The screen dominated the deck, stretching from floor to ceiling some hundred feet up, yet curving over the comfortably reclined audience; it was based upon old designs used in the 21st century "Imax" theatres, the nostalgic element seemed to strike a chord for some reason among generations used to infinitely more immersive entertainment. At present the screen showed the breathtaking view of stars that surrounded Audumla Station. Phaethon proudly stepped onto an anti-grav platform, which smoothly rose to a height of thirty feet in front of the screen, before he addressed his audience.
"Thank you friends. The simulcrum orbs have been launched and within moments they will arrive on Earth, 50,000 B.C., on the 9th of June, 6 a.m. prime meridian old earth time. I have a feeling that the divergent causality we will be observing as a result, will prove a truly entertaining spectacle. Lets just hope it runs a bit longer than "Reagan, 1988 Apocalypse did"! Polite but a tad subdued laughter in the audience followed, as that spectacle had not rated particularly well in viewership, especially given how quickly Earth had wound up a charred empty planet thanks to Mr Reagan and Mr Gorbachev.
"As you know, this is merely the beachhead of the presentation, setting the scene and introducing key players for future viewings; this initial broadcast will last five hours, and will not have the benefit of being edited. However I believe that the exciting possibilities about to be made reality today, will hold you all spellbound! It's time to change history again my friends..." Phaethon's anti-grav unit slid to the side of the screen as it changed from its former celestial image.
The screen was now separated into twenty distinct screens, each focused on a fragile seeming (though in truth virtually indestructible, thanks to centuries of arms development that had surprisingly or not surprisingly depending on your view on life, led to uses in the entertainment industry) sphere, each of which appeared to contain, swirling in their shiny crystalline surfaces every colour imaginable. Phaethon sighed in relief, for it appeared that all of the orb satellites were functioning properly. He glanced down into the pit in front of the stage, where once centuries ago there would have been an orchestra (or a few decades ago for that matter, they'd made a brief nostalgic comeback then along with the old fashioned theatre style, but only the theatres had remained, for pit orchestras required too much staff), there were now the dozens of 'manipulators', the men and women whose task it was to guide the nano-sized satellites to wherever seemed to hold the most entertainment. The satellites were undetectable (at least in the age that they had been sent to), pretty close to indestructible, moved at incredible speed and could be manipulated, through the technology of the 24th century, from millions of light years and millenia of time distant (of course they were still impossible to retrieve from the divergent and often short lived realities that the orbs created, but the scientists hadn't given up hope on that yet).
The orbs on the screen could now be seen in a variety of environments, a stunning contrast to the nothingness of the timestream they had just been travelling through. Here an orb sat amongst mushrooms on a dark forest floor, there on a sand dune, blue sky on the horizon, and over there on a log in a steamy jungle, full of vines and small carapaced bitey things. Phaethon leaned forward eagerly, waiting to see the creatures of myth and legend, the gods of old, the heroes of story that his team had so painstakingly researched. Although he, being on the P.R. and concept side of things, would openly admit that much of what he was about to see would be just as new to himself as to the audience. Now they would watch them take form and be born by the simulcrum orbs, those fragile, alarmingly complex devices capable of creating anything a person can conceive of from the very stuff of the cosmos. All those beings would soon wander forth and cohabit an Earth that until mere moments ago was just like his own had been at 6.00 a.m. prime meridian time, on the 9th of June, 50,000 years before the birth of Christ.
And then...there it was. The first 'simulcrite', as they were affectionately called by the techies, appearing simultaneously on each of the screens beside the orbs. Perhaps the other viewers did not notice, but Phaethon did; that in all of the sub-screens the growing simulcrite appeared much the same. He hurriedly cross checked all the screens; a powerful man of maturity with blazing eyes, quickly growing first to human proportions and then beyond...
Certainly they varied in detail from screen to screen; in some he appeared asian, in others european, in others he was lame, in some he had only one eye, etc. But they all held the same air of authority, all moved in unison and suddenly all of them stared with smoldering anger straight into the 'invisible' satellites lenses. Phaethon recognized a few of the images: Zeus, Odin, Daghda, Jehovah, Ra...The sudden fear of God entered him, for the greatest fear of any godless man, is that they are wrong.
"No..." he murmured. The rest of the audience was muttering appreciatively at such a spectacular beginning to the show. But Phaethon knew...that they had all presumed too much, tampering with the fabric of creation in such ways. The weight of their folly held in the eyes of a couple dozen angry patriarchal gods...
Audumla Station would have melted from the intense wave of heat that radiated throughout the galaxy, except that it vanished much too fast to do so. Within the span of an exhaled breath, there remained no trace of humanity in the universe. The deities of a distant reality were placated. The usurpers were gone, the gods had been born...
And across the world in the year 50,000 B.C. (now a dating system that wasn't guaranteed to say the least) sentient beings of various species, homo sapiens, homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis and others lesser known, raised their heads and sniffed at a change in the air, almost beyond the senses and yet deep within their very core, a shift, an alteration, a tear. Something was wrong, something had altered and the world would never be the same again.
"Phaethon! It is about to begin sir!" called a gruff voice from the observation deck. The gaunt, blonde young man smiled. Using the archaic names of gods for the members of his team was, he felt, a masterstroke, on what would soon prove an exquisite canvas. He really ought to look up what his code-name meant, he mused absently; he'd chosen it at random and a wizened little co-worker had snickered to himself before walking away muttering something about ignorant imbeciles above their station, he thought he'd heard something about blowing the Imperator, before he'd turned away disinterestedly, Phaethon had never put much stock in what naysayers had to naysay about, especially when it regarded himself. As far as he was concerned it sounded majestic, and whatever other meaning it had, well he could look that up when the job was done. As he left the reception area he could hear the commentary "...and now, the man responsible for this decades entertainment, please warmly congratulate programmer 5073A from London IV, or as he shall be known for the duration of our show, Phaethon!"
Phaethon strode onto the observation deck to the thunderous applause of the select thousand viewers who were lucky enough to have on site seats. The screen dominated the deck, stretching from floor to ceiling some hundred feet up, yet curving over the comfortably reclined audience; it was based upon old designs used in the 21st century "Imax" theatres, the nostalgic element seemed to strike a chord for some reason among generations used to infinitely more immersive entertainment. At present the screen showed the breathtaking view of stars that surrounded Audumla Station. Phaethon proudly stepped onto an anti-grav platform, which smoothly rose to a height of thirty feet in front of the screen, before he addressed his audience.
"Thank you friends. The simulcrum orbs have been launched and within moments they will arrive on Earth, 50,000 B.C., on the 9th of June, 6 a.m. prime meridian old earth time. I have a feeling that the divergent causality we will be observing as a result, will prove a truly entertaining spectacle. Lets just hope it runs a bit longer than "Reagan, 1988 Apocalypse did"! Polite but a tad subdued laughter in the audience followed, as that spectacle had not rated particularly well in viewership, especially given how quickly Earth had wound up a charred empty planet thanks to Mr Reagan and Mr Gorbachev.
"As you know, this is merely the beachhead of the presentation, setting the scene and introducing key players for future viewings; this initial broadcast will last five hours, and will not have the benefit of being edited. However I believe that the exciting possibilities about to be made reality today, will hold you all spellbound! It's time to change history again my friends..." Phaethon's anti-grav unit slid to the side of the screen as it changed from its former celestial image.
The screen was now separated into twenty distinct screens, each focused on a fragile seeming (though in truth virtually indestructible, thanks to centuries of arms development that had surprisingly or not surprisingly depending on your view on life, led to uses in the entertainment industry) sphere, each of which appeared to contain, swirling in their shiny crystalline surfaces every colour imaginable. Phaethon sighed in relief, for it appeared that all of the orb satellites were functioning properly. He glanced down into the pit in front of the stage, where once centuries ago there would have been an orchestra (or a few decades ago for that matter, they'd made a brief nostalgic comeback then along with the old fashioned theatre style, but only the theatres had remained, for pit orchestras required too much staff), there were now the dozens of 'manipulators', the men and women whose task it was to guide the nano-sized satellites to wherever seemed to hold the most entertainment. The satellites were undetectable (at least in the age that they had been sent to), pretty close to indestructible, moved at incredible speed and could be manipulated, through the technology of the 24th century, from millions of light years and millenia of time distant (of course they were still impossible to retrieve from the divergent and often short lived realities that the orbs created, but the scientists hadn't given up hope on that yet).
The orbs on the screen could now be seen in a variety of environments, a stunning contrast to the nothingness of the timestream they had just been travelling through. Here an orb sat amongst mushrooms on a dark forest floor, there on a sand dune, blue sky on the horizon, and over there on a log in a steamy jungle, full of vines and small carapaced bitey things. Phaethon leaned forward eagerly, waiting to see the creatures of myth and legend, the gods of old, the heroes of story that his team had so painstakingly researched. Although he, being on the P.R. and concept side of things, would openly admit that much of what he was about to see would be just as new to himself as to the audience. Now they would watch them take form and be born by the simulcrum orbs, those fragile, alarmingly complex devices capable of creating anything a person can conceive of from the very stuff of the cosmos. All those beings would soon wander forth and cohabit an Earth that until mere moments ago was just like his own had been at 6.00 a.m. prime meridian time, on the 9th of June, 50,000 years before the birth of Christ.
And then...there it was. The first 'simulcrite', as they were affectionately called by the techies, appearing simultaneously on each of the screens beside the orbs. Perhaps the other viewers did not notice, but Phaethon did; that in all of the sub-screens the growing simulcrite appeared much the same. He hurriedly cross checked all the screens; a powerful man of maturity with blazing eyes, quickly growing first to human proportions and then beyond...
Certainly they varied in detail from screen to screen; in some he appeared asian, in others european, in others he was lame, in some he had only one eye, etc. But they all held the same air of authority, all moved in unison and suddenly all of them stared with smoldering anger straight into the 'invisible' satellites lenses. Phaethon recognized a few of the images: Zeus, Odin, Daghda, Jehovah, Ra...The sudden fear of God entered him, for the greatest fear of any godless man, is that they are wrong.
"No..." he murmured. The rest of the audience was muttering appreciatively at such a spectacular beginning to the show. But Phaethon knew...that they had all presumed too much, tampering with the fabric of creation in such ways. The weight of their folly held in the eyes of a couple dozen angry patriarchal gods...
Audumla Station would have melted from the intense wave of heat that radiated throughout the galaxy, except that it vanished much too fast to do so. Within the span of an exhaled breath, there remained no trace of humanity in the universe. The deities of a distant reality were placated. The usurpers were gone, the gods had been born...
And across the world in the year 50,000 B.C. (now a dating system that wasn't guaranteed to say the least) sentient beings of various species, homo sapiens, homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis and others lesser known, raised their heads and sniffed at a change in the air, almost beyond the senses and yet deep within their very core, a shift, an alteration, a tear. Something was wrong, something had altered and the world would never be the same again.
![Picture](/uploads/6/3/0/7/6307972/ambrosius_1.png)
Ambrosius
Second Snippet. First Draft.
[Set up: Owen and Hugh notice the brother and sister who have just moved into the house next door. Both step brothers are instantly besotted with her beauty, her brother is not impressed.]
He stood against the fence and coldly observed the two brothers. His left hand occasionally and flagrantly raising a spliff to his overtly sensuous lips. The look in his eye was enigmatic, caught somewhere between contempt and fascination. One plucked eyebrow raised ever so slightly more than the other. He resembled a malevolent James Dean...just less dead.
The moment was ruined as his mother roared at him to put his smoke out on the street. His only reaction was an infinitesimal further raising of his eyebrow and a deliberately long drag on the offending drug. Eventually Owen and Hugh noticed their audience in the midst of their rapture, for as one they turned to his arched appraising gaze.
Hugh didn't bother to conceal his instant dislike, an almost feral sneer crept onto his face almost without his awareness of it...almost. Owen gave a bashful smile like one does when caught in the act. Just as unconscious as Hughs sneer, he shrugged his broad shoulders in a "can you blame me?" expression and then returned his adoring gaze to the boys flaxen haired sister. Hugh did not. He noted the barely concealed challenge in the boys eyes and Hugh never, ever backed down from a challenge...ever. He stared back into the insouciant boys almond shaped eyes. His look turning from automatic repugnance to recognition of a challenge to resolve within mere eyeblinks. Adam finally looked down, pretending to be concerned about the amount of ash at the end of his smoke. Hugh smiled wolfishly and clapped Owen on the back startling him from his reverie.
Second Snippet. First Draft.
[Set up: Owen and Hugh notice the brother and sister who have just moved into the house next door. Both step brothers are instantly besotted with her beauty, her brother is not impressed.]
He stood against the fence and coldly observed the two brothers. His left hand occasionally and flagrantly raising a spliff to his overtly sensuous lips. The look in his eye was enigmatic, caught somewhere between contempt and fascination. One plucked eyebrow raised ever so slightly more than the other. He resembled a malevolent James Dean...just less dead.
The moment was ruined as his mother roared at him to put his smoke out on the street. His only reaction was an infinitesimal further raising of his eyebrow and a deliberately long drag on the offending drug. Eventually Owen and Hugh noticed their audience in the midst of their rapture, for as one they turned to his arched appraising gaze.
Hugh didn't bother to conceal his instant dislike, an almost feral sneer crept onto his face almost without his awareness of it...almost. Owen gave a bashful smile like one does when caught in the act. Just as unconscious as Hughs sneer, he shrugged his broad shoulders in a "can you blame me?" expression and then returned his adoring gaze to the boys flaxen haired sister. Hugh did not. He noted the barely concealed challenge in the boys eyes and Hugh never, ever backed down from a challenge...ever. He stared back into the insouciant boys almond shaped eyes. His look turning from automatic repugnance to recognition of a challenge to resolve within mere eyeblinks. Adam finally looked down, pretending to be concerned about the amount of ash at the end of his smoke. Hugh smiled wolfishly and clapped Owen on the back startling him from his reverie.
![Picture](/uploads/6/3/0/7/6307972/chrysalis_2.png)
Chrysalis
Excerpt. First Draft.
(Close to the London Docks 1880)
The man was red, the sort of flushed crimson that comes from a combination of working, no make that toiling, in the sun, and of broken blood vessels on the face and nose. If he were to roll up his sleeves past his biceps, which despite a healthy layer of fat, were still hard and cruel from lugging dockyard sacks filled with stones apparently for all their weight, one would have seen a poorly etched tattoo of a lion, upon lightly haired pale arms. His face appeared puffy and abnormal and that wasn’t just because of the new shiner that he’d just taken from a sailor, and the copious sweat on his forehead could have been soaked up with a rag, squeezed into a flagon and would still be as good an ale, with as robust an alcohol percentage as when he first drank it. It certainly couldn’t be any worse than the pigswill that the Bonny Jack usually served.
The sailor who’d punched him in the eye wasn’t really paying much attention to how the man looked though, the common room they faced each other in, was too murky and loud to make out more than the general shape and size of an opponent. Grimy layabouts pushed close, screeching their bets, while puffs of pipe or cheroot smoke and glinting eyes in the dim reaches of the tavern, were all that could be seen of men, every bit as hard and dangerous as the two now circling each other.
Excerpt. First Draft.
(Close to the London Docks 1880)
The man was red, the sort of flushed crimson that comes from a combination of working, no make that toiling, in the sun, and of broken blood vessels on the face and nose. If he were to roll up his sleeves past his biceps, which despite a healthy layer of fat, were still hard and cruel from lugging dockyard sacks filled with stones apparently for all their weight, one would have seen a poorly etched tattoo of a lion, upon lightly haired pale arms. His face appeared puffy and abnormal and that wasn’t just because of the new shiner that he’d just taken from a sailor, and the copious sweat on his forehead could have been soaked up with a rag, squeezed into a flagon and would still be as good an ale, with as robust an alcohol percentage as when he first drank it. It certainly couldn’t be any worse than the pigswill that the Bonny Jack usually served.
The sailor who’d punched him in the eye wasn’t really paying much attention to how the man looked though, the common room they faced each other in, was too murky and loud to make out more than the general shape and size of an opponent. Grimy layabouts pushed close, screeching their bets, while puffs of pipe or cheroot smoke and glinting eyes in the dim reaches of the tavern, were all that could be seen of men, every bit as hard and dangerous as the two now circling each other.
![Picture](/uploads/6/3/0/7/6307972/the-raid_1.png)
The Raid
He awoke in a ditch covered by mosquitoes, with their tiny bites and incessant buzzing, he shifted in the mud, brushing some leaves off himself and gazing at the constellation of Orion. Another night, another brawl. And so he had staggered over the hill out of sight of the docile little village on the coast, curled up in a ditch and tried to sleep. The constant bites may have woken him but feeling as he did, his brain throbbing, all energy sapped from his body, his stomach threatening to return the venison he'd so enjoyed the night before, it was something else that made him come to. Something seemed off, moreso than the usual of course, something was not right. The sounds from over the hill were not the same as he was used to. There was a strong smell of smoke, and a silence that should not have been. Pushing himself up and swaying at first, he walked towards his "home".
Aethelstan gripped the pommel of his sword, tight enough that his knuckles turned the same white as the chalk embankment that he had tried to sleep beneath. The sword he had mockingly named "Tebecranwulf", destroyer of wolves. It was rusted and blunt along one edge, nicked in four places from some archaic fight, and was generally a sorry excuse for a weapon of a saxon warrior with the name of a king, but then Aethelstan was neither. He was merely a sixteen year old herdsman, his dirty blond beard still wispy and his shoulders not yet filled out. His parents had been of a somewhat grandiose bent when they'd named him Aethelstan and thus far the boy had yet to live up to such a pretentious name on a mere serf. Those same parents now lay a mile up the track, butchered and covered by flies.
A day ago the village of Weymouth, nestled on the coast of Dorset, beside the turgid river Wey, had boasted a population of one hundred and two, a thriving community by the standards of 910 Anno Domini. Aethelstan and his two fellow villagers, Kimball the eeler and Banan the boarsman, who had all been absent during the slaughter, accounted for three...the rest of the village had been comprised of three old men and five old women, in other words those over the age of thirty five, thirteen middle aged men and nineteen middle aged women between the ages of twenty five and thirty four, fourteen more young men and twenty young women between the ages of thirteen and twenty four, and the rest were an assortment of children, from snot nosed toddlers to equally grubby preteens. One could count the fourteen odd slaves, mostly male farmhands, but then nobody counted the slaves, except perhaps for the buxom chestnut haired Irish girl Moira, who filled the dreams of many a Weymouth lad, but sadly only ministered to the ale induced flaccid needs of the village Chief Osric, formerly a corpulent, red nosed bully of a man, now Osric had been reduced to nothing more than a corpse face down, a very large axe gash in his back as he had turned to run, in his own hall.
It was not until the evening of the day after the raid, that Aethelstan had crept into the village and seen the devastation. Recovering fast from his hangover due to the immediacy of the threat, from his vantage on the hill above the village, he had seen uncommonly large billows of smoke wafting over the hill top, far more than could be produced by the blacksmith and the Chiefs hall, and so ignoring his woolen charges, he had sprinted to the summit and there spied the long ship a good distance out upon the tide. It sat in the water, sleek and menacing in an almost indifferent way, its dragon headed mast facing outwards. The boy stood upon the hilltop transfixed, a witness to the destruction of his home, the ocean breeze brisk and bracing against him. Two thoughts occurred to him, firstly that it was unlikely the invaders knew of Hrorgards stash of beer and secondly that the next time a Dane stepped foot on this shore would be their last. And so he stumbled towards Hrorgards burnt home.
He awoke in a ditch covered by mosquitoes, with their tiny bites and incessant buzzing, he shifted in the mud, brushing some leaves off himself and gazing at the constellation of Orion. Another night, another brawl. And so he had staggered over the hill out of sight of the docile little village on the coast, curled up in a ditch and tried to sleep. The constant bites may have woken him but feeling as he did, his brain throbbing, all energy sapped from his body, his stomach threatening to return the venison he'd so enjoyed the night before, it was something else that made him come to. Something seemed off, moreso than the usual of course, something was not right. The sounds from over the hill were not the same as he was used to. There was a strong smell of smoke, and a silence that should not have been. Pushing himself up and swaying at first, he walked towards his "home".
Aethelstan gripped the pommel of his sword, tight enough that his knuckles turned the same white as the chalk embankment that he had tried to sleep beneath. The sword he had mockingly named "Tebecranwulf", destroyer of wolves. It was rusted and blunt along one edge, nicked in four places from some archaic fight, and was generally a sorry excuse for a weapon of a saxon warrior with the name of a king, but then Aethelstan was neither. He was merely a sixteen year old herdsman, his dirty blond beard still wispy and his shoulders not yet filled out. His parents had been of a somewhat grandiose bent when they'd named him Aethelstan and thus far the boy had yet to live up to such a pretentious name on a mere serf. Those same parents now lay a mile up the track, butchered and covered by flies.
A day ago the village of Weymouth, nestled on the coast of Dorset, beside the turgid river Wey, had boasted a population of one hundred and two, a thriving community by the standards of 910 Anno Domini. Aethelstan and his two fellow villagers, Kimball the eeler and Banan the boarsman, who had all been absent during the slaughter, accounted for three...the rest of the village had been comprised of three old men and five old women, in other words those over the age of thirty five, thirteen middle aged men and nineteen middle aged women between the ages of twenty five and thirty four, fourteen more young men and twenty young women between the ages of thirteen and twenty four, and the rest were an assortment of children, from snot nosed toddlers to equally grubby preteens. One could count the fourteen odd slaves, mostly male farmhands, but then nobody counted the slaves, except perhaps for the buxom chestnut haired Irish girl Moira, who filled the dreams of many a Weymouth lad, but sadly only ministered to the ale induced flaccid needs of the village Chief Osric, formerly a corpulent, red nosed bully of a man, now Osric had been reduced to nothing more than a corpse face down, a very large axe gash in his back as he had turned to run, in his own hall.
It was not until the evening of the day after the raid, that Aethelstan had crept into the village and seen the devastation. Recovering fast from his hangover due to the immediacy of the threat, from his vantage on the hill above the village, he had seen uncommonly large billows of smoke wafting over the hill top, far more than could be produced by the blacksmith and the Chiefs hall, and so ignoring his woolen charges, he had sprinted to the summit and there spied the long ship a good distance out upon the tide. It sat in the water, sleek and menacing in an almost indifferent way, its dragon headed mast facing outwards. The boy stood upon the hilltop transfixed, a witness to the destruction of his home, the ocean breeze brisk and bracing against him. Two thoughts occurred to him, firstly that it was unlikely the invaders knew of Hrorgards stash of beer and secondly that the next time a Dane stepped foot on this shore would be their last. And so he stumbled towards Hrorgards burnt home.