Terran Chronicles
Chapter Two -- Extract
Discovery
... Jesper notices something out of place in a corner of the small cave ... hidden behind a rounded outcrop formed between the floor and wall of the cave, Jesper sees a sharply shaped, dark object which, when he puts a light near it from his candle, appears to have a handle of some kind ... he reaches for it and pulls it out from behind the rock ... it wasn’t heavy, not much more than, say, a cubit-wide wet piece of oak log that’s just been split into two pieces, each with a rounded and flat side ... he held it in his hands, looking it over carefully -- it appeared to be something he’d seen pictures of in the magazines in the village’s small library ... something you put papers or clothes into, something to carry stuff in when walking about in a city ... it was thirty-inch long and wide and about nine inches deep ... it had four strong hinges, four small legs for standing it upright and three mechanisms on the opposite end which had rolling number with a button under each set ... Jesper placed the container on the cave floor and pushed the buttons one by one and heard loud clicks but nothing else until he depressed the third button and was startled by a moderately loud hissing sound; simultaneously the container slowly opened in front of him ... there was another similar container inside, though smaller and much thinner and several compact implements stored efficiently throughout the bottom and top of the container ... there was a long rounded container which was on the right hand side of the main container width-wise ... it also opened up with a similar release of air and inside Jesper found several dozen shiny discs ... each disc was about 4 ˝ inches in diameter with a small hole in the centre .. each disc had a number on it (written in bright red near the hole) ... there also appeared to be 10 additional discs without a designation of any kind ... returning the discs to their place in the container, Jesper turned his attention to the square object that looked like a smaller version of the outer container ... there were two buttons on this one, on opposite sides of the small handle and as he simultaneously actioned them (he tried them separately with no reaction) the hiss of air occurred again, this time to a much lesser degree and the top of the square slowly opened itself ... when it was completely open, a picture appeared on the upraised portion of the smaller container and then it started to move ... Jesper jumped back from it in surprise ... there was someone’s face there, and the mouth was moving intermittently as if it was talking ... the face appeared friendly enough, so Jesper approached the machine for a closer look ... there was also many buttons with letters, numbers and other symbols on them ... over 90 of them ... presently three appeared to light up and started blinking ... one had the image of a mouth and the two others looked like arrows, one facing up and one down ... Jesper tentatively reached out and touched the one with the mouth and all of a sudden the person on the screen started to speak ! Jesper jumped back a second time ... listening closely and all the while watching the person on the screen, it seemed to Jesper to be repeating the same phrase over and over again, though he couldn’t understand anything of what was being said ... as he got back very close to the screen he noticed that a small box with writing appeared ... the writing was in several alphabets and some with strange symbols but Jesper did not recognize any of the words ... it was then that he noticed that the up and down arrow keys were lit up again ... he pressed the up arrow and nothing happened ... then, pressing the down arrow, he saw that the first word on the list became shaded (though he could still read it ... he then noticed that the person was now speaking in a different manner than before ... the phrase being spoken was still short, perhaps two or three sentences, but with a strange pronunciation, different from before ... he pressed the down arrow again and the next word became shaded and the language being spoken seemed to change again ... to be sure, he pressed the up arrow and the one he heard previously was back ... he continued to press the down arrow, listening for one of the two languages he was familiar with: “English” or “French” [’Anglish’ or ’Franch’ (as he pronounced them)] ...
r oansar t
© 1998 11 07
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