Darker Tide

Darker Tide - Part 1

If a man should forget how vast the world is or how little it cares for him, let him but take to the ocean in a small boat.

Darker Tide

Prologue

The standard model of cosmology tells us that the universe is made up of 5% ordinary matter, 27% dark matter, and 68% dark energy. In other words there is nearly six times as much dark matter as there is matter. And get this. Nobody knows what dark matter or dark energy is. All they know is that you can't see it, you can't touch it. The only way we know it's there is through its gravitational effect.

We don't have a clear idea of where all this dark matter is, but it is entirely possible that some of it is right here with us. The gravitational pull of the Earth will draw any dark matter nearby to it and that dark matter will sink through the world to form its own dark core that moves within our planet. For all we know dark matter is as diverse as ordinary matter and the dark world within our own is populated by creatures wholly beyond our senses. By a similar measure a dark star may burn within our Sun.

The Earth has been hit by meteors throughout its multi-billion year history, some large enough to lead to mass extinction, devastate continents, or even throw enough debris into space to create a moon. Similarly the Dark Earth could be hit by dark matter meteors and we would know nothing of it. Unless, at times of such extremes, the levels of dark energy allow something of one world to bleed into the other... The truth is that we simply don't know. The fact that 95% of the universe's mass comprises stuff that we have no description for other than 'dark' is a reminder of just how little any of us know and of how much, good or bad, there is to discover.

Aspiration, Maine, 1985.

"I can see the sea!" From Elias's perch, high in the arms of the oak, he could make out the waters of Pemaquid Sound. A distant blue blur, speckled red with the setting sun. It was a view you couldn't get anywhere in town, a glimpse through the notch in Henner's ridge where the road ran to Pines Point.

"Get down! You're too high!" James hollered, fifteen yards below in the first great fork of the branches. He stood where the boys intended to build their treehouse platform. All Elias could see of his friend through the crowding leaves was the occasional flash of his red hair.

Way down at the base of the tree where they'd stacked the stolen timbers Robbie was shouting a question. Elias couldn't make out the words over the hiss of leaves seething in the breeze.

Elias clung to the swaying branch, dirty, sweaty, heart pounding as much from fear as from exertion. The low expectations of his friends had driven him higher than was safe. This was the sort of daredevil stunt Robbie might get up to, but Robbie's brawn made him better suited to hefting lumber down below than to testing the strength of the upper branches. At last being scrawny had some pay-off!

"Can you see town?" James called.

Elias turned his head. He wanted to lift his glasses and rub his eyes but that would mean letting go of the branch with one hand. Not going to happen.

"No, just more trees." The tape over his left lens wasn't helping. Elias's father had covered it on doctor's orders to encourage his lazy eye, but right now Elias wanted his best eye on the job. He squinted but still the waving greenery revealed no hint of Aspiration, not the blue roofs of the chemical factory on the west side, not even the spire of St Anthony's up on Pike's Hill.

"Get your ass down here then! I need help pulling these planks up."

However scary climbing up is, climbing down always manages to be scarier. Elias was half way to the fork when a loud crackle of static from his back pocket nearly startled him into losing his hold. He arrived scratched and trembling, his arms aching from the death grip he'd maintained on the branches.