The Pangaea Protocol

Very few are rewarded for their gift of vision.

After being labeled a conspiracy theorist by the cruise liner crew and passengers, I wanted off. Besides, I believed the future and all the strange unidentified beings in it were likely awesome. I never wanted to test theories contrary to that.

Until the boat stopped.

The Queen Of Destiny just quit working, in the empty sea just off the Norwegian coastline. Everyone stood frozen until the clouds rolled in, looking for a fight. When a cylindrical light broke through, the crowd looked up in horror.

I wanted to scream "I told you so." A rush of vindication took over, and when the boat began to rise out of the water, people turned hysterical. I clung to a rail at the bow, with a sense of amusement as I watched how people behave during intense fear.

This was not scary. This was an adventure.

My first past life regression flashed by. I was taken not back or forward, but parallel. It was millions of years ago, yet somehow, there was proof that it was also the future. Regressions are often fuzzy. That session suddenly presented itself as prophetic.

People screamed and shoved each other. I kept my distance, watching the entire Norwegian coastline as the boat lifted higher and higher. Then it turned ugly.

People began to jump off the boat. Titanic ensued. That disaster was unnecessary. If they had just reacted early and moved everyone into boats immediately, no one would have died. And so it was, as reality set in. People jumped to their deaths as they met the sea with a clap, and the hysteria grew like bacteria.

The crew began to drop lifeboats, watching them land and diving in after them. But there was no boat salvageable enough to save them. We were now around 5000 feet up, and my ears had cracked 1000 feet earlier. I drifted back to when I flew small aircraft and wondered why anyone would jump out of a perfectly good plane? Same rule here. So far the boat was stable and safe. I was willing to take my chances. I had no concept of time passing, but eventually, everyone had jumped except for three of us clinging to the front of the bow.

Few people can remain calm in the midst of adversity, but there we were, suspended in the clouds on a cruise ship, exchanging names and occupations. Will was in his late 30s, tall and lean, with two degrees and a 5 star career in avionics. Madeleine was mid 40s, youthful and strong, and an architect with a passion for the unusual, as she plainly pointed out. And me? I had a few degrees under my belt, but that was years ago, and my recent profession was growing vegetables. Really great ones. Little did I know I was about to be growing an insane amount of them. Curiously, we were all single and no family.

We watched the horizon, listening to the sounds above us. There was an odd humming, like a machine, rhythmical and steady. And then, the real fun began.

Landscapes shifted into colors we had never seen before. Everything moved around us, like a hologram morphing and bending. The lands once separated began to join together into a single mass. Our altitude was high enough to witness all of it. The water below rose a thousand feet and then settled softly as the ground stopped shifting, and the trees and mountains transformed. The world we knew was left behind, and all the broken boats and bodies disappeared below.

"Look over there!" Will pointed. "There's life here." The words barely slipped his mouth when the ship began to lower slowly, back into the sea. "I believe we are in a time shift, perhaps years ahead or behind."

"It almost looks like Pangaea, an ancient world before our time," said Madeleine.

"Explain?" I needed reassurance. My conspiracy theories were not kicking in fast enough.