My first reaction was to immediately look around me, as if they could see me from this far away. I laughed at myself nervously when I realized how silly it was. I think back to the defenses I placed around my camp site and suddenly felt that it wasn't nearly enough. Judging by the size of the settlement there were what could be dozens of inhabitants. Wow...the implications wracked my brain while I was still trying to absorb the incredible view.
I also spotted a few columns of what looked liked water vapor, almost like fog. Given the temperature and time of day I surmised that they may be cave entrances. At times the humidity from underground will do that. I mark all of this on a crude map that I have drawn and begin back down the hill with time left in the day. I want to get back and shore up my defenses before dark.
I get about half way down the hill when I see what looks like a game trail leading down and decide to follow it to make better time. About 500 meters along the trail I hear something big ahead of me. Several somethings actually, walking right up the same trail! All I had was a crude spear and I could clearly see their silhouettes through the foliage. The first thing that came to mind was "Bugbear!!!" When I was a kid my friends and I used to play those old pen and paper RPGs. You could always count on running into a bugbear but I always wondered what they were supposed to look like. We never could afford the books with a drawing of one, hah. But these things...man, that's what I expect a bugbear to look like. Now that I am safe back at camp I took the time to draw them;
After calming myself I realized they were carrying some really nice iron weapons including clubs and axes. The smithing was really extraordinary and I realized this could be a key component of my main mission for the foreseeable future.
I need to get started as soon as possible on forging the QE beacon. I chose to use iron for several reasons and if these guys were friendly maybe they could help me. An unexpected and lucky turn of events for sure. The quantum entanglement method is the only hope I have to get a message back to Earth. It has been known to work precisely once before....with the tablets found in the Mombacho cave. That was a journal from the first human we know of to become a dimensional traveler. He was a doctor from California that had made an accidental discovery by using a multi-disciplinary approach that had gone overlooked. With the help of a few other really bright people they had managed to solve the puzzle. To say that they re-discovered it would be more accurate since they realized it was something well understood in the distant past. Lost to modern times with little chance of being dug up again, it could have been lost forever. But they did it, and here I am now. I am one of the first in what could become the next frontier for humanity. At least that's what we're hoping.
The QE method will allow me to transfer a written journal to a specific time and place on Earth. It's only possible with the help of a mysterious group of non-corporeal beings (think trans-dimensional ghosts) that call themselves "The Watchers". The knowledge of how to build the marker was originally given to humans by them hundreds of thousands of years before the modern era and can be found in variations down through history. I have to first write the message in clay then after firing the clay use it as a mold for casting it in iron. Once I have the iron tablets I have to use some very tricky metallurgy to create the chalice. A drop of my own blood will then be used to "complete the circuit" back to the day I did the same thing on Earth at the target location. If Astrid had told me that day at Newgrange what the purpose of her experiment really was I probably wouldn't have gone along with it! Of course I wouldn't change a thing now. It was just one of many ways she helped without me realizing it at the time.
Finding a cave system could bring all kinds of benefits but clearly the most important thing for now is finding out what exactly the neighbors to the north are like and if I can get access to their forge. I have a feeling that there will be no shortage of things to write home about.
To be continued...
Read Chapter 1
Read Chapter 2
Read Chapter 3
