Endworlds - Nicholas Read [39]
“But there are other times, oh boy, everything go tipsy turvy, and bang!” He slapped his hands together like a thunderclap. “If comet fly too close or earth quake too much, whole face of planet can change in one night.”
Feeling like his brain was sinking in a pool of molasses, Eastwood didn’t see it yet.
Castle took charge again. “What Hummer’s saying is that a little more than five thousand years ago, the Earth went through a change. We look back through the fossil record, see bones trapped in stone and date them at millions of years. But if all the continental plates suddenly flipped over today, and every city, person and animal on the surface slid into the lava and was then squeezed by enormous pressure, your bones might end up buried in a rock a mile under the surface, their carbon leeching out like they’ve been there a million years because they’ve already been hammered a million year’s worth. An archeologist digs you up a year later, and based on their tests to date you, you look ancient. But you’ve only been there a year.”
Eastwood felt he was starting to understand when his armband winked red and Jax made a slow arc through the air with her right arm, pointing to a row of white terrace houses. The troupe turned in that direction. Castle continued as he absently pulled components out of his voluminous pockets and snapped them together, his hands working on their own from long experience.
“The buildings you see around you,” he began, clipping a net into a spring-loaded tube, “all the cities, cars, planes and technology we have all over the world and in orbit above us right now . . . all this has been on Earth before. The human race gets to a certain stage of development, and then around six and a half thousand years later the planet passes through some marker in space where there’s an inspection—”
“—a judgment,” Hummer corrected.
“Right, we pass what’s called a Line of Judgment where the human race shows we’re either ready to take on higher responsibilities, or it gets a makeover.”
Hummer slapped his hands together again for effect, his eyes wide like a mad man.
Eastwood got it. “You mentioned this last night. Right. And that’s when things flip over?”
“Exactly,” Castle mumbled distractedly as he struggled to lock an elastic spring into place. “They call it ‘replenishment’. The planet reboots to wipe out all traces of what came before, and a handful of survivors survive to seed the next Age.”
A giant hand slapped Eastwood’s shoulder. “This why we see oldest cultures start with complete language and math. It’s all part of the plan.”
“Whose plan?” Eastwood’s mind was racing. It all sounded so fantastic. But in his single day of memory and experience, how could he know what normal was meant to look like?
But he could tell these questions would have to wait. Looping his assembled weapon onto a belt hook, Castle slid a bandolier of darts with liquid ampoules up his forearm to his elbow, while further forward Lion was checking bearings from Jax’s display. Halting suddenly, Lion pumped a fist in the air and the group stopped in its tracks just outside a gated archway between a row of white stone buildings.
They’d arrived.
EASTWOOD GLANCED down at the satellite feed piggybacked onto his armband. Buildings displayed as blue lines behind a blue arc that was clearly the road. Seven green dots were clustered in front of that line. To the rear of each terrace house were small rectangles he rightly guessed to be inner city back gardens. And in one of these squares roamed a flashing red triangle superimposed with the words ‘Runner Class’.
They had found their target.
Out of curiosity, Eastwood pressed a finger onto the label, and was quietly delighted to see writing and illustrations appear. He found that the use of a fingertip allowed him to flick forwards and backwards through different sheets. No time to read it all now, but he did make out the words ‘fast and agile’ and ‘appears docile’ as he pressed a toggle to make the manual vanish. Noting other menu titles around the edges of the screen,