The Mystery of the Third Seal

By Margaret Pearce

James Tadworthy lives in a post-holocaust society in which there are no wars, no crime, no pollution, no disease, and no work. Everyone seemingly lives in perfect harmony with their tamed environment. Additionally, all knowledge is controlled by the Shepherds, a group that selflessly dedicates their lives to humanity's welfare and best interests.

But when James finds out the Shepherds' shocking and closely-guarded secret, he discovers that beneath the surface of his peaceful community is a world of violence and intrigue. Launched on a dangerous quest through a labyrinth of underground passages, James learns that the mysterious Third Seal is an airlock to the place of hidden learning from the past. Will their idyllic lives be changed forever by the truth?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writers Exchange E-Publishing
• Release date: Dec 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781920972493

Margaret Pearce

Margaret Pearce was born when the population of Australia was seven million – now it is some twenty-two million. Like many Australians, her forebears immigrated in the 1850's to find a better life for their children, part of the largest diaspora of the times.At seven when she found a lurid science fiction magazine, her unsupervised reading started. The cover had an almost naked female in a large wine glass and an interesting alien drinking her blood from a tap below. She has since been hooked on science fiction and fantasy. She completed a commercial course before being launched on an unsuspecting business world as a typist, stenographer and secretary before falling into copywriting. When she married, she commenced writing and even while raising children, found time to publish. When children grew, she decided to study for a arts degree as a mature age student and become a teacher, but writing continued to dominate her life.The Author lives in an underground house in the Australian bush, where she maintains her love of writing.

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By Margaret Pearce

http://www.writers-exchange.com

The Mystery of the Third Seal

Copyright 2006, 2015 Margaret Pearce

Writers Exchange E-Publishing

PO Box 372

ATHERTON  QLD  4883

Cover Art by: Laura Shinn and Sandy Cummins

Published by Writers Exchange E-Publishing

http://www.writers-exchange.com

ISBN 1920972498

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

First published Longman Australia Ltd. under the title of The Mystery of the Third Seal 1995 rights reverted

With acknowledgement to H.G. Wells The Time Machine

1young-adult

I have at last accepted that none of the others have survived. I am alone! No one will ever read this, but I still intend to leave a careful record of the dreadful events that culminated in the loss of our world.

The carefree flock I tend cannot comprehend my bitterness, loneliness and despair. How could they? Despite all my efforts to re-educate them, they remain pleasant, charming and childlike, filling in their golden hours playing. They have no memories of their past, and are as incurious about their future as any cattle bred for eating. And it is all my fault!

The destruction of our society can really be dated from the night my grandmother, Mrs. Agatha Tadworthy the Third, won the most sought after and envied television quiz prize of the year; six beautiful weeks of responsible and prestigious work in the Social Register Centre.

What a terrific gift - and Ma must be seventy if she's a day, Dad exulted. Wish it was me.

Maybe she'll decide she's too old and share it with us, Mum said wistfully over her spinning wheel.

I remained silent. The last time I had worked was for a measly twelve hours when the creek embankment had flooded, and that was only because I was there when it happened. I glared at grandmother's face on the screen, broad, powerful and high coloured with triumph. Why her?

Grandmother had lived through the chaotic era of the final Biological War when there had been full employment. Of course, the way she told it, we were supposed to be much better off in these days of full time leisure.

You're all spoilt, she had snorted. In my day, we were lucky to get a few hours to ourselves, and you kids have the lot! Our life is one glorious long weekend.

There was no reason for me to resent my grandmother. I was her favourite, and she loved me. I have her blue eyes and curly hair, although my locks are an improbable yellow and hers are bleached lighter with age. I also inherited her sturdy build and square face, while the rest of the family had the slender, small-boned bodies and delicate features set in oval faces that made the people in our community look so identical.

However, Grandmother showed her love by perpetually meddling. She didn't approve of the way I was educated, or raised to defer to authority and co-operate with everyone. Even my pot-holing and surfing came under her disapproval. She dosed me with archaic and foul tasting medicines if I was off colour, and sent me flying with a swing of her beefy arm when my meekness irritated her too much.

Life would have been easier if Grandmother was like the other olds, dreaming out their declining years in the soothing haze of pipe fumes, or even gathered in detached groups experimenting with the hallucinogenic drugs barred the under fifties. I mean, everyone had spare olds lurking around the family domes, but they pottered quietly and inoffensively. Grandmother was neither quiet nor inoffensive, nor did she potter.

She tramped ruthlessly through life like an autocrat; a despotic, overbearing, insensitive tyrant. She was a real live throwback to the barbaric times before the original holocaust.

The meek don't really inherit the earth, nor do the gutless, or the weaklings, she had jeered. If you want something, you stand up and fight for it.

It was significant that Mum was never called Mrs. Tadworthy the Fourth. Two Mrs. Tadworthys under the same dome would have been too much. Mum always went by the name of Mary Taddo. Dad was the one man who hadn't married a replica of his mother. I guess you didn't need more than one Agatha Tadworthy in your life.

But the lesson our society had learned very well was that the meek and humble          had inherited the earth. Aggression was dangerous. It had been proved again and again through the Sequential Wars, when nuclear holocausts had almost wiped the planet clean of existing civilizations; and later during the Biological Wars, when chemical warfare had exterminated most of the animal and insect life, as well as some of the surviving humans. Our ideal society had evolved policies of co-operation and tolerance to cope with problems. We all lived in harmony with our neighbours and in natural balance with our environment.

Except Grandmother, and now she had won the reward of six glorious weeks of real work. Of course, she did know more about computers and the old systems concerning them than anyone else in the community, but that didn't make it right!

James! Dad said insistently.

I blinked. Sellyane had slowed down her pedalling, and the darkening face on the screen danced and flickered into snow before vanishing into blankness. I stared at my father without comprehension.

Do you want some hot chocolate for supper? he asked. And a slice of my strawberry shortcake?

I shook myself, shifting the focus of my thoughts from the injustice of life to supper in one micro-second.

An excellent suggestion, I agreed. Make that two slices of your strawberry shortcake.

Looking back, I realise that death and destruction are determined by the unpredictable influence of timing. It was my sudden irritation with, and envy of, Grandmother that had made me decide to visit my closest friend Ellnell that next morning.

Had I visited even one day later, all evidence of the horrifying reality underlying our complacent ideal society would have been removed, and our eventless lives would have flowed on placidly, with never a ripple to warn of the ugly depths below.

2young-adult

The next morning, the envious population of Boronia Community gathered to watch Grandmother's triumphant departure to work. 

Grandmother thumped me on the shoulder, kissed Sellyanne and Dad, and shook hands with Mum. With one last wave to the assembled watchers, she joined the other passengers on the tram.

Cover those strawberries, she yelled. The rain could spoil them. Dad, who had been nurturing the best strawberry patch in the community for as long as I could remember, gave a meek nod. Aren't you a bit behind the timetable? she nagged the driver.

The driver flapped his reins. The three big horses moved placidly forward, pulling the tram after them. Soon, the horses shifted into their brisk trot, the tram rattling behind them. I watched until they reached the bushland and vanished behind the first curve, leaving only the twin rails shimmering faintly through the weeds of the track

I brooded again on the injustice of it all. There were computers at the Social Registry Centre, and the one television station, and not just powered by pedal-driven batteries. The rumours were that they were powered by the mysterious machines surviving from the high-tech age before the Biological Wars. Unfortunately, positions at the Social Registry Centre were hereditary, unless you were lucky enough to win a few weeks' work there.

I strolled across to the Sports Centre for a bicycle.  It had started to rain, and I pulled on an oiled cotton cape and hood before pedalling along the foot track through the surrounding bushland.

Ellnell Knellwell was my best friend, and lived in the Banksia Community only an hour's bike ride away. We usually did everything together; surfing, jogging and pot-holing. Since he and his girlfriend Charity Wilton had been injured pot-holing however, I had been discouraged from visiting until they were better, and I was bored.

This was the common malaise that bugged all of us from the time we finished compulsory schooling at the age of fourteen. We could go bicycling, hiking, surfing, kite-flying and pot-holing, or go to the community centre and pedal out videos of lectures covering everything from art to metaphysical poets, and detailed information on all the extinct species of animals, reptiles and insects. Leisure time seemed to stretch endlessly ahead of us. Working was much more stimulating and purposeful, but there wasn't enough to go around.

Our community was similar to the hundreds of others that dotted the country, each dominated by the large dome of the community centre, and behind and to one side, the twin domes of the Federation Church. On this day the collection of domed roofs reflected the sullen and lowering gray sky on all their solar panelled surfaces. It was not a day to go surfing.

The television antennas raised skeletal arms to the sky from the tops of all the chimneys. I glanced across to the circle of fenced land in the centre of our community, where we grew our cereals and vegetables, grazed our goats for milk, wool and sometimes eating. The rows of vegetables were neatly weeded and the waving cereals still not yet ripe enough to harvest. There would be no extra labour required yet!

The trouble with our world was that it was too safe! Pot-holing and surfing represented the only dangerous challenges in our lives, and even they paled after a while. There were no flies, no diseases, no deadly spiders or snakes, and no dangerous animals. Even our bees were stingless!

In fact, there had been no animals at all until the goats and horses were retrieved through some clever artificial breeding. There were no viruses or germs left. Even the allegedly common cold had vanished with the superior technology of the Biological Wars.

Those who survived the Biological Wars were healthy and vigorous, despite their smaller and more delicate bone structure, and were inclined through temperament and teaching, to be placid and tolerant. There were still always accidents, but once bones were set and cuts stitched, the self-healing and regenerative powers of the population meant a very short convalescence.

There only seemed as many of us as the environment could support.  Many couples were childless and no family had more than two children. There was no reason why our people shouldn't have lived longer, but the elders usually accelerated early deaths through drug experimentation--except for Grandmother, of course, and she would have been so much easier to get along with if she had dreamed her days away like all the other olds.

I rattled over the narrow footbridge across the river. The week's rain had swollen the river into a sleek, fast moving, turgid yellow plain across the valley. Once across, I laboured up the steep hill.

The domes of the Banksia Community became visible at the top of the hill. The rain had stopped, and the sun came out. The solar panels flashed into brilliance. I coasted down the winding