Time's Emissary

By Martin J Cox

Inspired by the author’s recurring childhood dream of a beautiful, unknown place which became reality many years later, this story is about the destiny of two people. They live in totally different worlds: one, in a dying universe which perished before ours was even born; the other, growing up on Earth, between the two World Wars. They only meet in dreams until, many years later, these dreams, too, become reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528995696

Martin J Cox

The author was born in Oxford in 1943 and later grew up in Leicester, then Loughborough. Having studied typographic design, he was, for many years, a publicity manager for an electrical engineering company. He has had a life-long interest in astronomy and was, for many years, a member of the British Astronomical Association. Now retired; he has a wife, two daughters and two grandchildren.

Book preview

Prologue

And so the Book was written; a Book of thoughts written in the Mind. And, as its story was the thoughts of the Mind, it was as real as the Mind itself and these thoughts were older than time and vaster than space. The people in it were merely characters in the text, but all of them were real to each other. They were thoughts that flickered across the Mind and were gone, passing fancies, each remaining just long enough to conceive and colour the next. Only the thoughts of the Book remained, and these were as timeless as the Mind itself, for, without these thoughts, even time did not exist. And as the Mind thought of things, so they were created, each thought creating more as the Book grew; each character reacting to others and to the Universe itself.

And one thought was of a messenger who could span the time and space of the whole Book, a thought to link the rest. One who was chosen to live like a god but dream like a child; he alone of the selected few survived to preserve the thoughts of the Book as the heavens died and to carry them over to a new beginning. And as the Book continued to grow, the characters in it grew old and died, save he alone who grew, not with years but with wisdom and compassion, for in his timeless life the Universe became his alone. The distances created by the Mind to ensure the isolation of its characters became merely a matter of time to sleep, a time to dream of worlds past and worlds to be, of people and places to whom he was merely one character among many. A character swept, as helplessly as they, beneath the bridges of time towards the sea of rest except that, for him, there would be no rest but a new beginning.

He had watched as the universe he knew collapsed and died, as though the Book that contained all those he had known and loved had closed but with him on the outside, leaving him with just his memories. But, from this, the Book opened again and a new universe grew and, as this developed, he entered again and watched from inside as new worlds were born from the ashes of the old. As the old universe died and the new one was born, the whole of time was played out before him, and he was destined to be its only witness: the lone watcher who had become the eyes of time itself and its emissary from the past.

He alone had known the sorrow of eternal life; only he had known the loneliness of a god until, in the far depths of the Book, he reached the world that had existed only in his Mind. For, in this world, the dreams of his past were to appear before him and he could at last walk amongst those people and places that he thought had only been in his imagination. He had grown tired of endless travel and his ageing Mind was dreaming, more than living, of a land where he could rest. When he found this land, he did not know it for it was young and wild. Only a dying vestige of curiosity held him there and the strange feeling that this seemed like coming home, as though words in his head were saying, This is the land of your dreams.

Chapter 1

The Awakening, Earth Orbit

He awoke to the call of the ship; something must be happening down there. He moved drowsily to the monitors to check the latest images and noticed that, now, there were also radio signals being received. During the last 400 of the planet’s orbits, there must have been a significant advance in their technology. At last, he could monitor their progress without the danger and inconvenience of sending down the disks with their increasing likelihood of being noticed.

He had stayed out here, far above the planet, for several 100 million of its years, watching a little of each development and then sleeping for long periods in between. Looking down, he could see the continents turning, almost imperceptibly, into the sunlight from this stable parking orbit ahead of the planet’s moon. Observation had been easy; only a matter of sending out the disks to scan its surface. Vast developments had taken place: he had watched the gradual extinction of the marsh-monsters, except one flying specie which had bred successively smaller. This one, having the ability to move rapidly, could choose its environment, whereas the more cumbersome reptiles had perished when the climate had been devastated by volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes. He had seen, through the disks, these flying reptiles develop along with many other species of smaller animals and fish, gradually spreading to all parts of the globe, some evolving back to larger sizes, particularly in the oceans where buoyancy allowed almost unlimited growth.

He had grown quite used to this pattern; many planets passed through these stages and he had seen enough of them to last a lifetime. A lifetime! He smiled, how meaningless the expression seemed now. As he had seen it all before, he was in a mind to move on. He had only to wait for the last disks to return, to check their visual recordings before drifting on again. But, as he scanned through the last recordings, something startled him. He reversed the recording and repeated the part that had caught his attention. The later disks had been programmed to pass over a large equatorial continent. In a clearing, heading north, were hundreds of man-like creatures, covered in thick hair. They had an almost upright posture and, although still primitive, were definitely communal and organised. Here was something he had longed to see since the dawn of this universe. Other planets he had found suitable for advanced life never appeared to reach this stage, or the transition to intelligent life had occurred long before his arrival and they had perished. This small world would merit a much longer inspection.

Having seen the migration of these animal-men, he had slept for many orbits. When he next awoke, there was already a wide-spread growth of villages and trade. Later, though, superstitions and religions had sprung up and the sight of occasional spying disks caused panic, and human sacrifices were made to appease the apparently angry gods. He had no wish to interfere with their development, let alone cause death or panic. The disks still went down but remained at high altitudes as it was better to sacrifice some clarity in return for these people’s natural development. Now that larger villages, tracks and even vessels, were being built, it was easier to keep a watch on their movements. Wherever they went now, shelters were built and their fires could be seen flickering on the valley-sides at night.

When he had first parked in this orbit, there was no great activity on the planet and just a few disks were sufficient, which he controlled from the ship. The disks were the eyes of the ship which, normally, it controlled for its own benefit and protection, although he could, at will, send out any of them and pilot them remotely from the ship. From here, he could ‘travel’ with them, seeing through their cameras as though he was flying in the disks himself. The ship and its disks could all be commanded by him mentally and communicate back to him by thought, speech or visual display so that there were few physical controls and instruments needed. He could move with the freedom and impunity of a god, swooping over mountains, through valleys and across oceans at any speed, the wonderful experience being like a dream. He thought back to when, as a boy, he had dreamed endlessly of being able to fly, free as a bird, to wherever he wished. How little he had realised then that his childhood fantasies would fall far short of what was now commonplace for him.

As evolution on this planet had accelerated, more disks were needed and so many were sent under a combined programme to cover the greatest number of areas possible so that he could selectively watch recordings later. It was a beautiful sight, looking out of the main observation port, watching the disks on their way to and from the distant turquoise world with its little moon over to his left and the whole celestial sphere stretching behind. The disks drifted away from beneath him, getting smaller and smaller before disappearing into specks as they accelerated along their invisible course from the ship to the planet. In this parked position, the ship was at one of the gravitational stable points forming an equilateral triangle with the planet and its moon, with the ship’s portal permanently pointed at the planet, simply because he never got tired of this view. The disk of the galaxy lay at an angle to the plane of this planetary system, behind the curtain of nearer stars and a few of the planets that were out of the glare of the system’s star which was almost behind and to his left.

With the sun’s blinding light hidden, these planets could be seen in more detail through the large scope on the flight deck and he recognised two of the gas giants that he had passed on his way into this system, so very long ago. The whole vista was breath-taking, with the silvery grey moon to his left enhancing the vivid colours of the planet with its blue oceans, orange deserts, green