Farbar woke up with a hand around his throat. Fortunately, it was his own hand, and grunting with relief, he didn't stop to figure out why his appendage had acted so strangely. Perhaps there had been a curse on that bandi he touched. He was just glad it wasn't the hand of a torg that close to his jugular.

Awake now, for better or worse, he rolled out of the impromptu hammock he had fashioned from his cloak, hung between two giganut trees; his feet sliding into the shallow water beneath him without a sound. His tail, however, betrayed him, and before he knew it he was surrounded by a dozen or so wild hemhocks, snarling and snapping. But their minds were weak, and soon Farbar had them slinking back into the darkness, filled with fear.

Farbar knew it would not be long before the Others arrived, so he wasted no time completing his rituals, replenishing, loosening, opening up. In the space of six heartbeats he doubled in size. His armor fell away. It was no longer needed. He was in his dormic cycle. All he needed were his thoughts.

But even thoughts can betray you, as his instructor had been so fond of reminding him. And they were trying to betray him right now, with images of Her. He had to summon Rijar to drive them away. And not a moment too soon. The Others were here.

No-one ever saw the Others. Their presence was announced by their odor, fragrant and intoxicating, like the bark of the immature gonza plant that was used by so many these days. Next, the ambient temperature began to rise. Then they entered your mind.

The Others burst into your mind like some primitive constabulary searching for illicit drugs. Of course there were no more illicit drugs. Not for thousands of years. And there had been no constabularies for almost as long. The Others were like gods who had lost something, if such a thing was possible, which of course, it was. Anything and everything is possible. This was Moltov's seventh law.

The first thing the Others did was to ferret out and remove any thoughts of resistance. Then they removed any memories about thoughts of resistance, so that resistance was not simply removed as an option, it was completely removed from the universe of individual reality. It no longer existed, as a concept, or anything else. Then they suspended time.

Somehow, the Others were able to suspend time outside the mind, while inside the mind, it was business as usual. Even with all the advances in temporal and quantum mechanics over the millenia, no-one knew how this was done. Thoughts were shuffled, sifted, weighed, measured, and finally organized into categories of color. Then the Others would depart.

Before they departed, the Others always left a calling card. They always left behind one thought that wasn't there when they arrived. Sometimes it would be very detailed, like assembly instructions for a gravimetric device. Sometimes it would be helpful, like - there's a torg hiding behind that rock. And sometimes it would be something as apparently innocuous as - have a really nice day.

No one knew what they were up to. They certainly appeared to cause no harm. After they left, you felt pretty much the same as before, except that your mind was pleasantly refreshed and orderly, and the world seemed just a little more at peace. They were generally accepted as benign, highly evolved beings who got their kicks organizing minds. Cerebral house cleaners. What was in it for them was not known. Perhaps they fed off cerebral energy, and an organized mind facilitated their feeding. Perhaps they simply found pleasure in it. Perhaps it was a government plot. Except that governments no longer existed. And when the governments left, they took the conspiracy theorists with them (praise Moltov!).

So the Others were accepted, even welcomed by some, and Farbar patiently observed the Others now inside his mind. He speculated about their filing system. What was the significance of the colors? What was the common theme in each grouping? There appeared to be none. Happy thoughts right beside not so happy thoughts. Long thoughts next to short thoughts. Thoughts on the same subject put into different groups. Different colors. Where was the rhyme? Where was the reason? Maybe there was no rhyme nor reason. Then what was the point? Maybe there was no point! Maybe it was all random. But like all intelligent beings, Farbar was repelled by randomness. There must be a purpose. Mustn't there?

Because he was dormic, his thoughts were powerful, as the hemhocks had discovered. But even his dormic thoughts were no match for the Others. All he could do was watch and wait and muse. He had been occupied by the Others countless times. Everybody had. The Others were a part of everyday life. Since they suspended time, there was generally no disruptions, no disturbances that affected anybody in a negative way. So they coexisted, in some sort of symbiotic relationship that no-one (with the possible exception of the Others themselves), completely understood.

Fabar felt a very subtle lightheadedness, signaling the imminent departure of his guests, and began to mentally prepare to resume his pre-Other activities, as they were called. But instead of diminishing, his vertigo increased slightly, and when he looked for the thought they had left behind, he couldn't find it. Then, suddenly, it was there, only now - curiouser and curiouser - there was a voice attached! Come with us. It was an invitation and a command at the same time. It was one of the most pleasant, yet most compelling thoughts he had ever had. He had the feeling he was standing on the edge of infinity. And they were calling him. He had no choice. He leaped.

Woric laid his hand, palm down, on the ceremonial cutting board. His birthday guests gathered around to witness the ancient ritual, becoming silent and still. The antique knife was unwrapped. The atmosphere in the room was thick with reverence, and awe. The significance of the ritual was lost on no-one. At the center of the ritual, Woric stood tall and proud. There were words that needed to be spoken.

The ancient language came up from the depths like a ghost on the wind. Mortal limbs beware! Your father's father loved you. Do not forget! You must never forget. Then the knife came down, severing the tip of his little finger.

Woric casually brushed aside the pain without even thinking. It took only slightly more mental effort to stanch the flow of blood. Then, as everyone watched, the tip of Woric's finger began to grow back. It required only a small part of his will to speed up the normally day long regeneration process, and in less than a minute his finger was whole again. Lifting his hand high in the air, he shouted, "Never forget!" The room echoed, "Never Forget!" and the ritual was over. His birthday was over. He was five thousand years old.

Being relatively young, Woric still had trouble imagining a time when birthdays were celebrated every single year. When it was considered something special for a body to live to be a mere hundred years old. A time when life was so fleeting, it was unbelievably precious. Ironically, it was at this time, when life was so very short, that it was the least appreciated. The reason for this was thought to be an artifact of the primordial instinct for survival. At a time when death was always close at hand, it was unhealthy to place too much emphasis on the importance of a corporeal existence. A smile crossed Woric's face as he thought about how his ancient ancestors had devised a plethora of beliefs called religions that promised a lucid afterlife, all devised to keep the terror of death at bay.

Death! The very thought was one of the few things that could still send a shiver up Woric's spine. Although it was virtually eliminated, every once in a while, death did occur, and when it did, it was like a wave of sadness that passed through his entire species all at the same time - connected as they were. And then, of course, a new life had to be formed out of specially selected genetic material, and grown, and nurtured, and set on the right path.

Yes, their ancestors were now - in a way - their gods. Their creators. All the more important because the number of ancestors was so few, so finite. There would be no more. Woric, for instance, could never become anybody's ancestor. First you had to have children, and then you had to die, the latter only slightly less impossible than the former. Oh, if only they had known at the time how important they were. How important their short lives were! How important their small families were! There were no more individual families. Just one big family, trillions of souls, joined through a collective consciousness.

There were exactly 43,648,842,686 individuals in Woric's species, and that number had not changed since The Day of Reckoning, over 200,000 years ago. The day they stopped procreating, and increasing their numbers. Their medical knowledge had made them impervious to age. Impervious, indeed, to almost all diseases and injuries as well. They had conquered nearly all forms of death, and extended their lives indefinitely. Then, naturally, their population became out of control. Their home world, which was already overcrowded, became unlivable, and they were forced to move out among the stars.

But the stars were not empty. They were full of life, not all of which welcomed them with open arms. And one day there came a reckoning. Either stop procreating, or face annihilation. The choice was simple, and obvious, and in the end, acknowledged as a good thing. Things have to stop somewhere.

With the cessation of procreation came the cessation of physical evolution. For physical evolution requires the exchange of genetic material - the faster the exchange, the faster the evolution. So their bodies stopped evolving. But the spirit of evolution could not be stopped, and quite without realizing it, they began to evolve mentally, gradually learning to cultivate more and more of the vast virgin fields of their minds, previously untilled, and fallow. Now that was a glorious time in their history!

Slowly but surely, history became the only thing that mattered any more. The present was too easy to control, and the future too easy to predict. There was no challenge, no mystery to them, and without challenge and mystery, life was meaningless. So it was only the past that interested Woric, or anyone else for that matter. Where did we come from, and why! were the only questions worth asking any more. Where are we now? and Where are we going? were answered long ago. And ever since personal will learned to live side by side with quantum randomness and chance, the question why? had become irrelevant.

Except in the past. The far past. And the farther into the past one went, the more important the question why? became.

Elizabeth Jean Horsted was thirty-three years old, and still a virgin. Not that she was unattractive; she simply lacked (as if it were a crime), motive and opportunity.

Her passion however, remained completely intact, and when feelings of longing and loneliness overcame her, she turned to the stars. The night sky was her lover. She knew it in the most intimate of ways, for since the age of nine, she had been devoted to it. She had memorized all eighty-eight constellations by the time she was twelve, and as she grew, she studied. She roamed the halls of higher learning until she felt she had wrung all she could from the world of academia. Then she took her degrees, and her telescopes, and her books, and she moved to the mountains, to live mostly by night, alone with her infatuation. For Elizabeth truly loved the night sky. It was powerful. It was deep. It was mysterious. It alone excited her.

For Elizabeth, to watch the sunset was to engage in exquisite foreplay. She indulged, almost every evening, sitting cross-legged, facing west, amongst the wildflowers and long grass in front of her house. While other human beings, watching from other places, saw the illusion of the Sun sinking into the horizon, Elizabeth saw the reality of the horizon coming up to meet the Sun. She felt the mighty Earth rumbling beneath her thighs, carrying her along, helpless, on its massive, muscled back. Carrying her away from the harshness of the Sun, into the deep, seductive softness of the night.

As the sky darkened, her stomach tingled in anticipation, and when the stars slowly appeared, one by one, they touched her. Softly at first, mere suggestions of sensation, that made her soul reach out for more. As the stars slowly became brighter, and more numerous, their tiny touches combined, and finally coalesced, gradually becoming the awesome grasp of the sky itself, holding her in its massive arms. She would lie back, and stretch out her legs, and surrender to the ancient light of the stars. Light that was heavy with the weight of time. Light that was potent with the visions of space. Light that had traveled distances too great to even imagine. Light that penetrated her and filled her with its essence.

With eyes wide open, Elizabeth let the waves of photons pour over her, and envelope her. Her eyes drank deeply of the overhead spectacle, and she took long breaths of the sweet night air. She relaxed, and sighed, and soon a familiar feeling stirred at the base of her spine.

The more she relaxed, and surrendered, the deeper the sensations invaded her, stirring primal forces. Instinct took the place of thought, and her hands would wander - of their own volition - to forbidden places, and her pleasure would mount. Soft moans escaped her lips. Her pulse would quicken, her limbs would shiver, and she would feel a dam within her about to burst. But always, just as she felt something momentous about to occur ... the feeling would fade. Like an old jalopy not quite making it to the top of the hill, her exhilaration would sputter and die, and she would begin to coast backwards...

Needing more, aching for more, Elizabeth went to her telescope. She peered deep into the darkness of space, probing the night sky for its secrets. And like a true friend and confidant, the sky whispered its secrets to her.

And she whispered back. She told the sky personal, private thoughts that she would never dare tell anyone else. And the sky listened, and the sky sighed.

And Elizabeth came to know the night sky - better than any of her colleagues. The sky rewarded her devotion with esoteric insights into its design, and its function. It told her things it told no one else.

Ethically, she was obliged to share this knowledge with the scientific community, and while most of her colleagues would have siezed the notoriety like a dog snatching a piece of raw meat, Elizabeth had no interest in fame. She enjoyed anonymity, and felt no loyalty to her fellow scientists. She did however, feel a loyalty to the sky. The sky was always there for her, like a true friend. The sky gave her life purpose, when her life craved purpose. It was the sky she turned to for comfort and reassurance. So when the sky offered her one of its secrets, she was not about to betray its confidence. And the sky had told her a lot of secrets over the years.

But the sky was full of secrets. A thousand Elizabeths couldn't learn them all. To Elizabeth, the sky was the ultimate mystery, and the more she looked, the more mysterious it became.

The sky, looking back, regarded Elizabeth with no less fascination. For if there is one mystery even greater than the mystery of the cosmos, it is the mystery of the human soul.

Farbar was falling through time, and he didn't like it. He was moving too fast. Everything was a blur. He felt dizzy. He felt like he was going to throw up.

It was his first time falling through time, and he wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Like most of his people, he regularly moved through time with his thoughts. But this was different. Time travel through the power of thought was controlled. The places you visited were conceived and manufactured by your own imagination. As long as you could control your imagination, you were safe. And when it came to the power of the mind, control was everything. Fortunately the processes that released that power demanded the strictest mental discipline, so that it was not possible to time travel until the imagination (among other things) was firmly in harness.

Thoughts could take you anywhere, and anytime, but there was a catch. As real, and solid, and predetermined as it all seemed, it was an illusion. Or, at least, it was assumed it was an illusion. They were, after all, just thoughts. And although thoughts were often confused with reality, often substituted for reality, they were, in the end, simply thoughts.

What was happening to him now was completely different. He had no control. As hard as he tried, he could not bring his thoughts to bear, and change his situation in any way. He had never felt so helpless. And he didn't like it.

The Others were the ones in control at the moment it seemed. Farbar - and his thoughts - were just along for the ride. So, with practised discipline, he steered his thoughts toward the concept of time.

Time! Thou spectre! Where is thy meat? Where is thy bone, and blood? Where do we go to look for thee? Art thou a demon, or a god?

Time! The silent partner of the time/space corporation. The yin to counter-balance the yang of wide open space.

And just what in the name of Moltov is space, for that matter? Can space be separated from time? Even for the sake of discussion? Or must space and time always be considered together, as one indivisible... thing? If so, why are there two separate terms? Would it not be more proper to call that ethereal nothingness in which the Universe seems to reside something like the spime continuum? Or perhaps the tace medium? Or something completely original, like... but this was fruitless.

What do we know about time? We know that the faster one moves through space, the slower one moves through time. This was, in fact, Moltov's fourteenth law. Theoretically, according to the mathematics, at the ultimate speed - the speed of light - time stops all together. And what does space do at the ultimate speed? Does all of space become like one point, so that you would be everywhere at once? But unless you are a photon of light, and possess the properties of both a particle and a wave, attaining the speed of light is considered to be impossible. Once again... fruitless.

Farbar wondered if he was falling backwards or forwards through time. Then he wondered whether that kind of question had any meaning. Was there a backwards or forwards in the infinite loop that was the time/space continuum?

He struggled to marshal his thoughts. They were starting to get away from him. Contemplating the various paradoxes of time will do that.

The falling sensation Farbar was experiencing was disconcerting, and altogether unpleasant. Why was he falling? Was it not possible to move horizontally through time?

Then, just when he felt he could not stand it any longer, everything stopped. He looked down at himself, and was not surprised to see nothing there. This appeared to be a journey of the consciousness alone, and that was fine with him. Bodies were a nuisance at the best of times.

Directly in front of him were figures frozen in position, locked in a snapshot moment, their attitudes caught mid-enterprise, like mannequins on display. It appeared to be some sort of gathering. The figures were familiar, members of his own kind, and the setting seemed to be somewhere in the not too distant past. Someone was up on a stage, working with a Caster. Others were engaged in freework. There were young ones about. It was a fairly normal looking scene, except for the awkward poses in which some of the figures had been captured. But despite the bizarre motionless of it all, the scene was one of tranquil mediocrity.

Then he saw it. In amongst all the simple trappings of the back-to-nature lifestyle his people had evolved into - the bland, subtle, homespun clothing, stone tools, and wooden furniture scattered around, there was something very different looking. Something that stood out like a preep on a prap.

It was something completely out of place. It was something that hadn't been seen for thousands of years. It was something considered so evil, it had been eliminated, abolished, banned from the face of the planet.

It had been responsible for the deaths of billions.

It was a piece of technology.

Five thousand years ago, all technology had been outlawed on Farbar's planet. Possession was punishable by death. Technology had destroyed his species almost to extinction. Only a few hundred had survived the combined terrors of nuclear, chemical and biological wars. Technology had been trifled with. It had come too quickly, before they were ready.

They had let the genie out of the bottle before they had any idea how to control it. They stumbled upon the ability to build weapons of mass destruction before they were sufficiently grown-up enough to know not to build the damn things.

They had just begun to venture off their home world out into space. The trouble they might have caused was unimaginable. Thankfully for nearby worlds, Farbar's people began to self destruct before they could cause their neighbours too much grief. No-one even knew what the wars were about any more. The power of technology had gone to their heads. Greed and ignorance ruled. Jealousy and mayhem were the order of the day. By the time cooler heads prevailed, it was too late. Forces had been loosed that could not be stopped. The viruses and bacteria that had been cultured so carefully, and targeted so precisely, mutated before their very eyes, and ran rampant. There was nowhere to hide. Only those who's fickle genes were for some reason resistant to these self induced plagues had any hope for survival. And they were very few and very far between.

Scattered here and there over the face of the planet, separated by vast distances, alone or in small groups, the shell-shocked survivors were left with a world that was a wasteland - radioactive and full of poisons. Life expectancy was short. Procreation was difficult. The population continued to dwindle. Hope faded. It was not a happy time. Miraculously, after a long tortuous couple of centuries, when their abused planet was finally able to start regenerating itself again, when enough of the radiation and toxins had been absorbed and dissipated that green things began to cautiously emerge from the rubble, there were still a few of Farbar's people left - two or three hundred maybe; no-one knows for sure - stubbornly clinging to existence, so that against all odds, decidedly undeserved, their species persevered, as if the gods were holding them for some higher purpose.

Farbar's entire species had come within a whisker of being erased from reality, and now, as he gazed at the pastoral scene in front of him, blighted by the hated object in its midst, he shivered involuntarily. It had come so close! In the aftermath of their brush with annihilation, instead of simply moderating their habits, the survivors went to the extreme, as people gripped by fear are apt to do. The pendulum that had been pushed so far now swung back in the opposite direction with a vengeance. A people who had been entirely dependent on technology, now abandoned it completely.

They went back to nature; at least, what was left of nature, amongst the broken ruins. They lived as their ancient ancestors lived: in tents and stone huts. They tilled and harvested the land by hand. There were no transportation devices, no communication devices. It was almost as if the entire species was taken back in time.

Except that the few, scattered survivors of the End Wars (as they were called), were very different from their ancestors in one crucially important way: their brains, having had that much more time to evolve, were more highly developed. So although their lifestyle appeared primitive, their minds retained all their knowledge. When knowledge is passed down through enough generations, it becomes implanted in the genetic code. They may have eliminated all technology, but they did not eliminate the knowledge of technology. That would have just been silly, if it was possible at all.

Like most sentient lifeforms, Farbar's people had a lust for learning, building, creating. And since those energies could not be directed into technology any more, they were directed inwards, and slowly but surely, over centuries, over millenia, they began to master their minds.

Their world was full of dangers. They needed to protect themselves, and they needed to do it without the use of technology. So they began to evolve cerebrally. They discovered that their thoughts had enormous power. It was difficult to tap that power, however. It took a tremendous amount of mental discipline. But without technology, they had no other choice, and when enough desperate attempts are taken over a long enough period of time, sooner or later, progress is ultimately made. Slowly but surely, Farbar's people managed to put their tainted past behind them.

Time, however, not only heals all wounds, but also eventually brings the pendulum back in line, and ever so insidiously, like a spider stalking its prey, technology was creeping back into their lives.

to be continued...

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