Eureka! Moment:
August 27th. You and Tad. Charlie and me. The longest total lunar eclipse in 3000 years (supposed to last 90 mins).
You haven’t lived ’til you’ve seen Earth’s End. Let’s go watch the lights go out together!
Love,
Douglas
Tad hadn’t wanted to go. At all. But after the incessant bad dreams and the other drama of recent weeks, he concluded that perhaps he owed Petra this much. One long weekend, then back to seeking her some help for her anxieties. That was his offer. Petra accepted the terms and booked their plane tickets.
6
“It’s called The Abject,” Charlie began. He paused long enough to fish two bottles of Corona out of the cooler. He uncapped them and handed one to Petra. “The legend about this place, which supposedly goes back to before the Paleoindians, is that the Creator who shaped this world had forged a thousand planets before it. He was totally indifferent to the worlds he made and would destroy them on a whim. But whenever the Creator made a new world he would send four alien beings called the Watchers to keep an eye on that planet’s life-forms while he went off to keep building.
“These Watchers were omniscient. They floated around Earth, observing us puny humans as we fumbled our way up the food chain, but there wasn’t really much of interest down here to a starry being. The early tribes eventually stopped roaming and began to put down roots. Then for eons the Watchers saw nothing more than people planting in the spring, harvesting in the fall, popping out a few kids and teaching them the same song-and-dance. Over and over and over.
“Well, one of the Watchers got sick and tired of this. He wanted people to start looking up at the stars instead of just keeping their eyes on the soil year in, year out. He wanted to show them how deep this rabbit hole really was, so he broke the rules and flew down to Earth. He hid out in a desolate mountain.” Charlie nodded to The Abject. He was staring intently at Petra, as if trying to gauge how well he was managing to ratchet up the legend’s tension. “Once he was there this Watcher began sending out strange dreams to the people, visions of alien worlds and horrible cities that the Creator had laid to waste over the eons.
“Most of the early proto-humans didn’t think much of those dreams, or maybe they just didn’t understand them. But one man became utterly obsessed with them, so much so that after a while he couldn’t take the life of Homo sapiens any longer. He went off to live like a hermit, far away from boring old civilization. Naturally he chose the most remote mountain he could find to live his solitary life. Lo and behold, if this guy didn’t come upon the Watcher.
“The Watcher offered to teach this man some very special things, which he did. The man learned how to cross the wall of sleep, and how to speak to the dead souls in all the ruined cities that are buried somewhere out there.
“So things were going good—depending on your definition of good—for this man. But then the Watcher told him that their relationship was give and take. Since the man had been given a taste of the otherworldly, the Watcher wanted to get a better foothold in the worldly.
“He’d developed an interest in changing us humans, you see. An interest in giving us powers we weren’t meant to have. So the Watcher instructed his devotee to bring women to the cave for the purposes of . . . well, procreation. The Watcher wanted to create a species that looked human, but had monstrous souls. This race would have the best of both worlds; souls that could roam the stars and bodies that allowed the Watcher the use of opposable thumbs, taste-buds, emotions.
“The student obeyed and brought the Watcher women, probably against their will. In time a little colony of these half-human, half-Watcher beings began to grow within the mountain cave.
“Well, eventually the other Watchers got nervous about not hearing from their
August 27th. You and Tad. Charlie and me. The longest total lunar eclipse in 3000 years (supposed to last 90 mins).
You haven’t lived ’til you’ve seen Earth’s End. Let’s go watch the lights go out together!
Love,
Douglas
Tad hadn’t wanted to go. At all. But after the incessant bad dreams and the other drama of recent weeks, he concluded that perhaps he owed Petra this much. One long weekend, then back to seeking her some help for her anxieties. That was his offer. Petra accepted the terms and booked their plane tickets.
6
“It’s called The Abject,” Charlie began. He paused long enough to fish two bottles of Corona out of the cooler. He uncapped them and handed one to Petra. “The legend about this place, which supposedly goes back to before the Paleoindians, is that the Creator who shaped this world had forged a thousand planets before it. He was totally indifferent to the worlds he made and would destroy them on a whim. But whenever the Creator made a new world he would send four alien beings called the Watchers to keep an eye on that planet’s life-forms while he went off to keep building.
“These Watchers were omniscient. They floated around Earth, observing us puny humans as we fumbled our way up the food chain, but there wasn’t really much of interest down here to a starry being. The early tribes eventually stopped roaming and began to put down roots. Then for eons the Watchers saw nothing more than people planting in the spring, harvesting in the fall, popping out a few kids and teaching them the same song-and-dance. Over and over and over.
“Well, one of the Watchers got sick and tired of this. He wanted people to start looking up at the stars instead of just keeping their eyes on the soil year in, year out. He wanted to show them how deep this rabbit hole really was, so he broke the rules and flew down to Earth. He hid out in a desolate mountain.” Charlie nodded to The Abject. He was staring intently at Petra, as if trying to gauge how well he was managing to ratchet up the legend’s tension. “Once he was there this Watcher began sending out strange dreams to the people, visions of alien worlds and horrible cities that the Creator had laid to waste over the eons.
“Most of the early proto-humans didn’t think much of those dreams, or maybe they just didn’t understand them. But one man became utterly obsessed with them, so much so that after a while he couldn’t take the life of Homo sapiens any longer. He went off to live like a hermit, far away from boring old civilization. Naturally he chose the most remote mountain he could find to live his solitary life. Lo and behold, if this guy didn’t come upon the Watcher.
“The Watcher offered to teach this man some very special things, which he did. The man learned how to cross the wall of sleep, and how to speak to the dead souls in all the ruined cities that are buried somewhere out there.
“So things were going good—depending on your definition of good—for this man. But then the Watcher told him that their relationship was give and take. Since the man had been given a taste of the otherworldly, the Watcher wanted to get a better foothold in the worldly.
“He’d developed an interest in changing us humans, you see. An interest in giving us powers we weren’t meant to have. So the Watcher instructed his devotee to bring women to the cave for the purposes of . . . well, procreation. The Watcher wanted to create a species that looked human, but had monstrous souls. This race would have the best of both worlds; souls that could roam the stars and bodies that allowed the Watcher the use of opposable thumbs, taste-buds, emotions.
“The student obeyed and brought the Watcher women, probably against their will. In time a little colony of these half-human, half-Watcher beings began to grow within the mountain cave.
“Well, eventually the other Watchers got nervous about not hearing from their
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