Quantum Time: Chapters 1 and 2

Brittany gasped, “What happened to him?”

A crowd of onlookers had began to gather around the four of them, as Cole turned to Jacquelyn, telling her; “Support his head, will you?”

“Sure thing,” Doing as she was told, Jacquelyn worked to make the man more comfortable and Cole stood up, backing away. The man lay there in obvious pain, his breathing shallow and his eyes tracking the scene in terror and confusion.

Addressing the crowd, Cole told them; “Go about your business folks, this is official business.” A few looked unconvinced, but most decided to continue on their way. Taking another look at the man’s face, Cole’s eyes widened in shock, awestruck; “Mark Iblis, I can’t believe it.”

Attempting a sitting position while Jacquelyn supported his upper back, Mark looked at Cole’s face in surprise, saying; “You’re Garconer.”

“More or less, help me load him into the car you two.” Leading Mark around the corner to Cole’s orange, nineteen sixty seven Roadster, Cole said; “This is Doctor Mark Iblis, he was considered one of the greatest Humanitarians of the fifty first century.” Mark glanced at him in surprise, Cole continuing with; “He helped thousands of my people get to safety in Wales at the height of the GHOST Wars throughout the fifty, seventies.”

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Chapter Two

Sliding in and out of consciousness, the jostle of the vehicle making him nauseous, Mark listened to the Garconer speak into his ancient communication device, his mobile perhaps? Then again, going by the accents surrounding him, Mark had a feeling he was no longer in Britain. The language the Humans around him spoke, Mark could barely understand them, he knew it had to be some form of pre-neo Earth British lingua franca, but it was like trying to read Beowulf in it’s original form. He could understand the basics, and the ethnomorphic properties of his species allowed him greater leeway in that aspect, but it was still slow going. Mark gazed up at the skyline around him. He saw no sign of any anti-grav generators. The buildings were all built into the foundations of the ground, and the vehicles were driven along the roadway, using what Mark could pick out as ancient fossil fuels.

As he lay there on the seat, wincing from the agony of his injuries, Mark was able to pick out the words ‘Doctor‘, and ‘severe injuries’ as the Garconer spoke into his mobile phone. Mark had a feeling these people didn’t call the device that, but he couldn’t for the life of him recall what name they did use for it. After all, this was three millennia before Mark’s time.

Attempting to push aside the pain, Mark thought back to the events leading him to this point. Mark may appear fully Human, but he wasn‘t really. Appearances, though they may be deceiving, it was all mere surface dressing. Beneath Mark’s lovely Human form lay the reality of a Ethnomorph. Mark had taken on this form decades earlier, crashing his System Jumper into the Thames, in the throws of a lifetime transfer. Mark’s people had long since evolved past the lower species’ need for the reproductive birth to death means of experiential growth. Whilst Mark’s true form was insubstantial to the Human eye, in his previous lifetime, he’d taken on the guise of a member of the Seren species; a creature with green skin and two elongated sponge-like tentacles at the top of his head, reminiscent of a Gumby toy.

The year was fifty, fifty by the Human calendar, and Mark was enjoying his first trip to Earth, when he’d experience a stroke. Alone in his ship, just passing Saturn, Mark had just enough strength to guide his system jumper into Earth’s orbital pattern. He knew there wasn’t enough time to get himself medical care before his Seren body could no longer hold his life force. So as Mark guided his ship into the planet’s atmosphere, his true form began the process of creating a new body for him. Now that he was inside Humanity’s evolutionary field, Mark’s new form took on the appearance of a member of the Human species. As his ship passed over the mega city of London, his true form took the local genetic lineage into account. The last memory Mark had of his old life was the sight of his ship slowly sliding under the cold, murky waters of the Thames.