Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs (trilogy)

Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs - chapter 21

Morgan gave a start, trying to prevent the constant shivering getting a grip of him. He continued staring at the mighty movie of his life. The tone of the images seemed to shift. Was he looking at the future?. Then there were nanosaurs marching in formation and aerial nano birds patrolling the skies in squadrons, swooping and attacking people. And the people themselves looked ashen and frightened. New World Order guards were marching everywhere with no sign of the established police force in evidence. These images were viewed as through a grey and dismal web that partially obscured detail. Perhaps these were memories yet to be experienced as reality?

Morgan watched as images of everyday life were portrayed, but something wasn’t quite right. People were being pulled in and arrested, beaten and thrown into prison vehicles. Advertising hoardings had been transformed. Instead of sales pitches for electrical goods, perfumes or baby clothes, in their place commands and instructions were emblazoned on enormous advertising panels and flashed threateningly from neon signs. And minotaurs roamed the streets, heavily armed and terrorizing the population. People were running from every kind of artificial beast; nanosaurs that had once appeared so cuddly and friendly. Morgan thought for a moment he recognized Taurus and he experienced a pang of remorse and regret. But one minotaur was remarkably like another.

But he did recognize one man. Marius Natzler appeared making a speech from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Morgan couldn’t hear what he was saying. There was no sound, only the relentless impact of the grainy pictures that were starting to squeeze their way into his mind. Morgan stared at Natzler with real hatred. He had never hated anything or anyone before, except for Barker; but that was different. Then he noticed something. Natzler wasn’t just Natzler. All sense of the man’s human soul had been erased or eaten by a dark presence. One word entered his mind: Shadix. As soon as he experienced hatred he felt the insinuating voices that were probing his mind in search of the Cosmic Algorithm start to gain in power and it was clear that they could feed off his darkest emotions. He calmed himself and forced his mind into neutral.

But, the Shadix were saving the best till last. A huge image of his parents filled the sky dome. They were dead; lying in a pastoral setting hand in hand, fingers entwined as, in speeded up motion, grass grew around their bodies and their clothes rotted on their cadavers. Their bones were exposed gleaming white in bright sunshine as small nano rodents feasted on their flesh and nanosaur birds pecked out their eyes. Weeds grew in between their ribs and their bones began to crumble. Their skulls cracked open and metallic nano insects, worms and flies crawled out of their eye sockets. Then a wind blew across a now barren landscape and caught up the remaining dust of their skeletons, swirling particles of bone carried away by a ghostly zephyr. And then they were gone.

Morgan tore his eyes away from the screen weeping uncontrollably and weakening. Just as he was about to give in and succumb to the Shadix, the Cosmic Algorithm took control and filled him with high voltage energy. All at once he started to figure out his exact situation. He was attached to something that was preventing him from moving. He stared into the bland and neutral distance. At first he could see nothing except a dull, grey and endless stretch of land with no distinguishing features. But, the harder he stared, the more he began to make out the shapes of other figures attached to what looked like metal stakes with tubes attached at the top that stretched up into infinity.

It seemed that the more he screwed up his eyes and narrowed his focus, the more he could make out. And it wasn’t just people attached to poles that were lurking in the landscape. Black figures were walking amongst the captives. They seemed to flicker in and out of visibility so that as Morgan watched they appeared and disappeared rapidly. Other entities also stalked the land and these sent a chill to Morgan’s heart. They resembled long dead mediaeval knights dressed in tatters but with what appeared to be swords dangling from their waists. Their eyes were searchlights piercing through the sepulchral gloom. Further on were even more phantasmagoric creatures that made even nanosaurs seem ordinary and normal. There were beasts of various kinds that shifted in and out of focus. And in the air there were flying banshee-like creatures with siren voices crying out so shrilly that even deeper and more painful chills penetrated Morgan’s soul.