Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Jord was on a high. His mind was absolutely reeling under the impact of his discovery that he could see. Suddenly the things he had imagined his entire life, his mother Lena, Marick, Arutha, Old Rab and the others were real, visible and all yelling excitedly. Even Old Rab was up of his bench and mumbling vigorously along with the rest.

Jord was not disappointed at the world he saw. Sure it was different from his imagination. The smooth rock was white and the sun glared off it and made his eyes smart. The sun was another thing – squinting he peered up at it and felt the familiar warmth on his face only this time he could see it.

Suddenly his concentration was brought back to the people around him as someone was fingering his jacket.

He looked to see Old Rab standing close to him and peering up at him with rheumy eyes. He opened his mouth to speak and Jord could see the rotten teeth and holes where teeth used to be. A foul odour came out as he talked but Jord was used to that.

“Where did you get this?” Old Rab asked.

Jord cast his mind back to the experience in the sacred stone. “From inside the stone” he replied. “There was a thing in there it talked to me and gave me this and said something.”

Old Rab was joined by Arutha.

“What did he say boy?”

“Um I can’t quite remember. Something about becoming and bringing peace. Oh yes he said “Go now and bring peace to your people.” ”

“What does that mean Arutha?” And what are you doing?”

Jord’s voice rose up into a shriek for suddenly the tribes people had fallen silent as Arutha and Old Rab fell to their knees before him and placed their heads on the ground at Jord’s feet. Suddenly the whole tribe was doing the same.

Jord was frightened by this sudden turn of events and called out, “Please stand up. Someone tell em why you are doing this?” Arutha lifted his torso up straight but remained on his knees. “You Boy are whom the prophets of old spake. You are the Great Leader.”

“The Great Leader? You mean the one in the stories? But how can that be?”

Arutha answered him with a quote that Jord had heard many times before.

The dreamer will arise

The blind shall lead the tribe

The places of power will be restored

The people be multiplied

The coat of grand design

Will be worn with pride

Oppression will be lifted

By his sacrifice

By the time he had reached the second line his voice had been joined by 20 others as the whole tribe spoke in unison the words that each person knew by heart. Jord had learned them as a small boy also.

Jord’s eyes could not stay still. They darted around the place as his mind frantically tried to take in the import of what Arutha was saying.

A movement from the main plaza caught his attention. Whitefaces were coming into the meeting area. There were several of them, dressed alike. They were large and as they came through the entrance way they fanned out in a menacing manner.

Jord cried out “Whitefaces!” As one the people turned and saw the Whitefaces, and suddenly confusion reigned. The ranks of kneeling people suddenly turned into a swarm of activity as they rushed hither and thither, gathering belongings and seeking hiding places.

Arutha grabbed Jord and hustled the boy off behind the sacred stone. “Sit here and keep still” he commanded. Then he stalked haughtily around to the front of the stone and called out to the Whitefaces.

“What do you want with my people?” he called out in their language

The leader of the Whitefaces approached. “Nothing to fear old man” he called back. “What were you doing before we arrived though?”

“None of your business” grunted Arutha. “Tribe business. Speak your piece and be gone then.”

The leader of the Whitefaces said, “We were worried. There were reports of a bright light and an explosion coming from here. We have been sent to check it out.”

“Nothing to see here” Arutha replied indicating with a sweep of his hand the nearly deserted corner of the plaza. The patches of green grass interspersed with small hedges, benches and a couple of water fountains were surrounded by several tall trees and a few clumps of smaller ones. A few tribes folk lingered in small groups talking animatedly together.

“Nothing to see,” he repeated.

“We will need to see some of your people and ask them some questions” the leader continued.

Jord could hear the respect in his voice. After the big fight, Arutha was treated much more carefully by the Whitefaces. Apparently he had won a battle of words at the Whitefaces council and now they were required to direct all contact with the tribe through Arutha.

“They will say the same as I” Arutha responded, “Nothing to see here.”

“Nevertheless,” the leader replied, “we must.”

Arutha dismissed him with a wave of his hand and turned his back on him and walked over to the sacred stone. He called over his shoulder “Do what you must, but no-one goes with you without you first talking to me.”

The leader nodded to his men and they began going from group of people to group of people asking them if they had seen the light or heard the explosion. Everywhere the tribesmen just looked down at the ground and shuffled their feet and shook their heads. If they spoke it was a simple “No.”

Jord was not approached hidden out of sight as he was by the sacred stone.

Kat drove the route to the university on autopilot. She was only vaguely focussing on the road and the other traffic. Her mind was not clear right now. So many confusing thought crowded her brain. Try as she might she could not keep the image of Mario out of her mind. Her heart pulsed a little quicker the more she thought of him and with a start she realised her hands were clammy on the steering wheel.

“What is wrong with me?” she thought to her self.

She tried to focus on the road ahead of her but instead of clearing her mind she found that she was wondering if Mario was a good driver.

“Stop it now” she actually spoke out loud this time. “I will not fall in love. I do not need a boyfriend. I am going to finish my degree.” She intoned this mantra for the next few kilometres before she had to focus on getting through an intersection and once again thoughts of Mario spilled unbidden into her mind.

”This is ridiculous,” she told herself.

Finally pulling into the crowded student carpark she forgot about Mario as she located a park and reversed her car into it.

Kat was a good driver. Her father had ensured that she had had competent lessons and then before he helped her purchase her car he had arranged a series of advanced driving courses for her. Chris had been promised the same deal, but as he was refusing to cooperate and had not studied for his driving test, there were no driving lessons and no car. Chris appeared not to care, but Kat thought that secretly he might have been upset at the lack of independence that having a car would solve. On the surface his defiance of his parents was not rocked by the threat of losing the chance to be given a car, but Kat could see that that he envied her ability to come and go as she pleased. Sure he did the same, but it was on foot or skateboard with his mates, none of whom had cars.

Kat locked the car and headed to the lab where the tutorial was to be held. On the way she stopped at the small kiosk and purchased a packet of chewing gum. She didn’t usually eat the stuff but she reasoned to her self that she wanted to have fresh breath for Mario.

“Arrghh! There I go again,” she cried.

Arriving at the lab building Kat used her access card to gain entry and went to her lab slowly. She hoped Mario wasn’t there and at the same time she hoped he was. She was confused. Opening the door she peered nervously in and then came all the way in as she saw her friend Robin. Mario wasn’t in evidence and she was able to make small chat with Robin while they started getting ready for the experiment they were going to run today. Kat was studying human sciences and this experiment was to develop a test that they could run on campus to gauge reactions to hypothetical disaster scenarios. Today’s session was about designing the audio visual presentation that they could use in a sealed booth while the participant was wired to various physical receptors designed to assess his or her level of stress as a result of being required to make choices between two bad scenarios.

Kat and Robin continued to chat for the few minutes it took the rest of the class to dribble in. Robin’s partner arrived and they headed off to the audiovisual equipment to continue editing the sound score they were going to use. Kat and Mario had been assigned to the job of locating the receptors on the participant for the best possible analysis of physical responses to the scenarios and decisions. As she watched Robin head off a voice behind her with a cultured accent spoke.

“Good morning Princess Katarina.”

She spun around awkwardly, losing her balance as she turned too quickly and saw Mario standing there. He reached out a hand to steady her and the touch of his hand on her skin sent electric shocks charging through her. Already embarrassed at being caught unawares by the honey tongued Italian, she felt a crimson blush rush through her fair ski toward her face, and his brief touch ignited that into full fledged embarrassment. Knowing that she was giving away her emotions so openly only served to further embarrass the girl. Jerking her arm away she brusquely replied in a haughty tone.

“Morning. Shall we get started then?”

Mario looked amused and a mocking grin swept over his classic Italian features. He emulated her haughtiness by lifting his chin a little and peering down his long roman nose.

“Your wish is my command Princess Katarina.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.” She responded. The more she reacted to him the more annoyed with herself she got. She knew that this was his intention and she felt flustered to be the centre of his attention.

The remainder of the session was a blur. Mario’s constant touch as they attached, disconnected and reattached the sensors to each other and recorded the signal level strengths kept her body on fire and her brain was overwhelmed with the physical input. They finished recording the last set of data and put the equipment away in silence. All through the work Mario had kept the conversation to the barest minimum, but the looks he gave her were ravishing. She knew that he was watching her from under his long black eyelashes as she worked. This flustered her so much that her focussing on neat writing became her mechanism for controlling the emotions coursing through her.

Finally the session was over and she was able to say goodbye to Mario and rejoin Robin and 2 other girls Kim and Lara. The 3 girls immediately crowded around her and their voices dropped to conspiratorial whispers.

“Did he ask you out?”

“I saw you touching him, what does his skin feel like?”

“I would love to get my hands on him, you lucky girl”

Kat dismissed the questions with a wave of her hand and tried to pass it off,

“Oh it’s nothing much, I don’t really like him you know.”

The other girls were having none of that.

“Come on lets go get some lunch and you can tell us all.”

The 4 of them shouldered their bags and headed off to the cafeteria. Kat felt as if she was heading for the inquisition as her previous endorphin overload from being around Mario faded away.

As they walked Robin nudged Kat and they fell behind the others a pace or two.

“We still going to the beach today?” she asked quietly so the other two girls wouldn’t hear.

Robin didn’t have a car but she did have a boyfriend. He was a lifeguard at the local beach. She wanted to go so she could see him. Kat didn’t mind taking her because they got the use of the surf club facilities and that included an air-conditioned bar.

“Sure” she said, and lifted her t-shirt to show her bikini to her friend, “I am already dressed for it.”

Wolf whistles from two passing lads made her blush with embarrassment as she quickly dropped the t-shirt back down and ignored them.

Robin laughed and as they turned into the cafeteria entrance the other two girls, Kim and Lara, who had turned round at the sound of the whistles, said in unison, “Mario will be jealous” and all 4 girls burst out laughing!

Kat felt she was finally relaxing after the stressful morning of keeping her emotions in check.

The four lads were sitting back watching TV. It was a fairly quiet night. They had eaten dinner, and proceeded to get stoned. After they had cleaned up the equipment, they had played games on the TV for some time. Then they had passed a joint around as they sat back to watch TV. They didn’t pick a channel, but rather just turned it on and watched whatever showed. For some reason, there was an old documentary on about the Moving Rocks, the biggest rock band 15 years ago. As they watched it Chris noticed that the leader of the band was staring right at him. The leader suddenly stared directly at the camera.

“I am Darzzlegough leader of the Krecht,” he said.

“And I am Sryjan, second in command,” said the drummer. The camera turned to the bass player, who just stared and in a guttural voice growled, “I am your worst nightmare.”

Chris stared petrified. The other guys were all watching the TV blankly, but none of them had seemed to notice what was going on. As far as they were concerned, the documentary was simply showing a music clip of one of the band’s live performances.

The keyboardist was on screen now, and he said, “If you don’t join us we’ll get you.”

Suddenly, a news photographer was at the front of the band taking photos. His flash was mesmerising, and Chris just stared. His body was in stasis, but his mind was overloading. Suddenly, the photographer turned around, and pointed his camera right at Chris. There seemed an eternity before he pushed the button, and the flash exploded in Chris’s face, and the nightmare began.

The huge reptilian figure was covered in scaly plates of hard bone. There were a number of squat double-jointed legs around the semicircular base of the body. The body was actually oval in shape. It rose to a peak in the middle where four eyes bulged under a hard crest of bone. It looked more like a short centipede then anything else, but Chris was not noticing things like that. He was screaming harder than he had ever screamed before, long gut wrenching screams as he saw the four eyes just staring at him. In his peripheral vision, he noticed that he was lying on a cold wet sandy beach that stretched as far as he could see either side of him in both directions. The sea was sucking hungrily 20 feet behind him, and there were only low featureless dunes covered in a scraggly sea grass on the inland side – except for the creature. The sky was grey and featureless, he couldn’t tell if it was day or night or if there were clouds or any thing. He couldn’t move any part of his body except his face. He suddenly realised that he couldn’t hear his own screaming anymore, and then it occurred to him that no one else could either. The creature’s eyes all blinked suddenly. It was as if a piece of the hooded bone had shut; then as suddenly as it had gone down, the eyes were staring at him again. Although it didn’t move, Chris knew there was absolutely no way he could get away.

“Join us,” boomed a voice. The creature hadn’t opened any orifice, and Chris couldn’t see any remotely resembling a mouth. It still hadn’t moved, and then he knew that its voice was in his head. “Oh yes you are smart, but not for long.” Suddenly, an arm like tentacle uncoiled out from the body of the creature. The end was rounded and about the size of a pool ball. “Come on, we won’t hurt you.” The voice was seductively soft and sweet now, but Chris seemed immobile, unable to control even what his brain did. He screamed again, and realised that he wasn’t even controlling that.

“You’re not hurting our pretty one are you?” came a new voice. Chris’s eyes swivelled from side to side, but couldn’t locate the speaker. Suddenly a shadow loomed over him from behind. Looking back, he gagged, and then vomited violently as he caught a whiff of the stench of the new creature.

Roughly man shaped, although twice as tall as an ordinary man, this creature was menacing. His eyes were focused on Chris, and there was only hate in them. Suddenly Chris noticed the drumsticks in the creature’s hand, then realised that the clothing it was wearing, although ten sizes too small and ripped from stretching onto him was the same as the drummer from the Moving Rocks.

“Oh yes my pretty” it whined again, its honeyed tongue laced with menace. “Remember me? My name is Sryjan.” It reached out with its mind and Chris knew a moment of agonizing terror, as the creatures mind probe struck him. He caught glimpses of boiling mud, vast armies of similar creatures, fiery explosions, and agonising screams and through it all in the background, a maniacal laughter that grated every nerve in his body. Chris had no screaming left. He tried but there was nothing. The tentacle from the first creature started to caress his body. It oozed a substance that seemed to be acidic. As it touched his clothes, they dissolved in a small cloud of steam. The tall creature moved closer and bent his face over Chris’s, and this time its voice was all menace. “You have one choice, come willingly or we will make you.” Chris wanted to come willingly, he would have done anything, ANYTHING the creature asked, only to get away, but he seemed to have no control over his body, and with absolute terror, he felt his body hawk a lump of spittle up and his eyes saw it flung into the creature’s face. It never moved a muscle, but simply let the spit slide over its cheek muscles, and then it exhaled in a short sharp breath. Once again Chris smelt the fetid breath, and almost fainted as it passed over him. But his fainting would have been short-lived if he had fainted. Almost without moving the creature suddenly beckoned to the oval shaped one with the tentacle. The tentacle lifted up and the end morphed. From being a hard round ball, it suddenly turned into a pair of tongs, with crystalline knife-edges. They quivered poised above Chris’s abdomen, then with a single motion sliced into his skin, grabbed his right kidney, and wrenched it out. Once again it hovered motionlessly, the kidney glistening and viscera dripping onto Chris’s chest. There were no holes and no visible scar. Chris’s back arched in agony, and he uncontrollably thrashed on the ground. He wept and screamed, but his throat was so hoarse no sound came out, and then he retched. Vomit spewed up from his mouth and landed back on his face and streamed to the ground. The tall creature laughed unpleasantly. It reached for the kidney and plucked it from the tongs, which morphed back into the hard round ball again. Standing upright, the tall creature howled with maniacal laughter again and throwing his head back thrust Chris’s kidney into his mouth and started chewing. His every bite seemed to be agony for Chris; it seemed as if he was still connected to the kidney now rapidly becoming mince. “You are,” said the ovoid creature, and fresh terror swept through Chris as he suddenly realised what these two creatures planned to do.

Mercifully he fainted and the creatures and the pain faded away. With a sharp jerk he awoke in terror throwing the sheets off the bed as he realised it was all a dream.

Sunlight sparkling off the crystalline facets of distant spires was not what roused Jord from his sleep. It would have had difficulty piercing through the murk to reach him anyway. Besides Jord was blind from birth and knew the sun only as warmth on his face. No, something else had caused him to stir earlier than usual. He rolled to his side and lifted his face to the morning air. Sounds and smells were his way of navigating through life. He had gone to sleep behind the midden, as usual, and at first his nose could only pick up the smell of rotting food. He concentrated on the sounds, but the distant honks and constant growling of the brutes as he called them were no different from usual. His keen ear picked other sounds. Lena and Marick were arguing as always. Lena’s thin voice drifted to him on the wind, cutting through the other noises. Judging from the distance she was probably out in the gathering place. Marick’s sonorous rumble could not be understood as words, it was more an attempt to placate the constant barrage of abuse that Lena fed his way. Jord realised that it was only Lena’s lack of importance in the tribe that caused her to act this way. No one took her seriously, except Marick, but then no one took him seriously either. Their arguing hadn’t woken Jord, but something unusual had and he felt uneasy. He cautiously felt his way around the side of the midden and out into the open. You never knew what the Whitefaces were going to have done to his place in the night. The tribe existed here but it wasn’t their place. It used to be until the Whitefaces came and made unnatural stuff. The tribe existed right in the middle of the Whitefaces and were largely ignored. Occasionally one of their enforcers would come and take one of the tribe away and there would be wailing and fighting. They usually came back days later talking in wonder of the places they had been. The Whitefaces had made straight caves and had wonderful food. But their hearts were with the tribe. Jord ran his fingers over the smooth edge of the midden, then twisted his body to the right and walked the three paces with his hand outstretched til he reached the edge of the canyon. Even these canyons were made by the Whitefaces. Before they came, the elders told around the campfire, this area was bush. Many of the young had gone to the bush, now far away, but for Jord this was not a journey he could make without help, and so far he had no life partner to help him.

Away from the stench of the midden, Jord's nostrils started to pick up other smells. The excrement of the brutes was acrid but not too invasive. Another smell began to permeate and his uneasiness grew. It was a smell that was harsh and oppressive, like the smell before a thunderstorm, only this was much worse. Something ominous was going to happen. Trailing his hand along the edge of the canyon wall, as he had done almost every day of his life since he could walk, Jord walked the few paces to the meeting area. This was a large open place built by the whitefaces for their open-air meetings. The tribe used a corner of it to meet. There was a sacred rock there. Jord knew why it was sacred but he didn’t care. It wasn’t sacred to him, but the elders said it was so he just agreed to keep the peace. All that stuff washed over Jord. Being blind made him more aware of reality than the others in his tribe. At least this was his belief. They were all so worried about the way it used to be before the Whitefaces came, and what they were doing to the place. To Jord, who couldn’t see, this was kind of irrelevant. He lived here now – not in the past and couldn’t understand the fuss. As a result he had never had any trouble with the enforcers, though he had once been taken to one of their healing stations. It was after the big fight. The one that had been included in the annals of the elders and its story was solemnly intoned with the rest of the tribal history every year at the big feast. Jord hadn’t been involved in the fight. That had been caused by the Whitefaces taking exception to the words of Arutha, one of the tribe’s leaders. He had protested the removal of the sacred rock from the meeting place, even going to the extent of binding his body to it. In the end both he and the rock were removed. The meeting place was filled with the hard smooth rock and the sacred rock was embedded in it, so Jord couldn’t see what the fuss was about. After all the smooth rock was easier to keep clean then the grass and dirt that had been there before. The Whitefaces said that they didn’t want to hurt the tribe, just clean up the meeting place. Anyway the fight had been long and glorious. Even Jord had gotten involved swinging a tree branch around is head and howling with delight at being involved. A Whiteface had dodged his wild swings and grabbed him pinning his arms to his side. He had been put inside a brute, and the animal had taken him to the healing station. Here he had been poked and prodded, made to lie down and stand up and had many Whitefaces talk to him. He didn’t understand most of what they said, but was able to tell them his name and his tribes name and they seemed to understand that. He did hear the word blind several times and guessed that was about his eyes. Eventually they put him back in the brute and he was magically transported back to the meeting place. The tribe hadn’t even noticed he had gone, but then they didn’t usually notice what Jord did anyway.

None of the other tribe members seemed to notice the smell the way Jord did. It burned in his nostrils now – growing stronger by the minute. Lena and Marick were still arguing; they almost never stopped. Arutha he could hear shuffling around the sacred rock mumbling to himself. He almost never left its side now and considered himself its guardian. That wasn’t true of course; the guardians were the whole tribe. They were left the task of guarding the sacred rock until the Owners returned from the sky. Some of the tribe had thought that the Whitefaces were the Owners but that had been sorted out at the big fight. The Whitefaces did come out of the sky occasionally, but they were mostly ground dwellers. No the real Owners were enshrined in the legends of the tribe as beings of light, able to move immense distances instantly and who communicated with you by voices in your head.

Old Rab said he talked to them, but no one listed to old Rab much. He drank too much of the Whitefaces poison and spent most of his day in a stupor. Jord could hear his snoring now as a rattle as he exhaled followed by a long shuddering intake of air.

The smell was now acrid like the smell that followed a lightning strike. Jord had never seen one but he had heard the thunder boom, and the exclamations of the other tribe members telling him what they saw as the earthlight leaped to the sky. It was a sign the elders said of the earth calling to its Owners. But none of the other signs of a thunderstorm could be felt. The wind was still and unnaturally quiet, there was no smell of rain, and there was no thunder. Jord was almost panicky now and called out to the tribe.

“What’s happening? What can you see? What is the smell? Is it the Owners?”

“Don’t be silly boy”, mumbled Arutha. “There’s nothing – you must have had a bad dream.”

Lena stopped her tirade at Marick to peer at the boy. Lena was shortsighted and her face was perpetually scrunched up, as she needed to squint in order to see who was talking. “Jord?” she asked. “What’s the matter boy?”

Before Jord could answer it happened. An immense wall of sound covering all the audible points of the spectrum accompanied by a sharp inrush of wind was felt rather than heard. Jord instinctively grasped for something solid to anchor himself against what he felt certain was impending doom. Not being able to see he did not turn his head toward the glow of light that materialised in the small meeting area. The remainder of the tribe members who were present, not so physically handicapped, did turn as one, and stood transfixed at the sight.

Jord felt only the screaming wail of sound fade away and be replaced by a gentle vibration, a nearly inaudible humming noise. He turned reflexively to the sacred stone, which appeared to be the source of the humming noise. What happened next was confusing for Jord as a large amount of it was visual and his normal aural and nasal senses were overloaded with strange sounds. What did go down in the tribal history was what Arutha saw. An ephemeral being, apparently constructed only of light materialised in the glow as it waxed to a brightness greater than the sun ever was. Suddenly the glowing light snapped out and the being flowed forward toward the stone. Arutha later described it as liquid light, as fluid as the tall grass rustling in the breeze.

The sacred stone increased its humming noise, until the being touched it, and seemed to manipulate it. The sound stopped. The sacred stone appeared to open and the view Lena had from her perspective was that of a large cavern dimly lit from an unseen light source. The disquieting thing was that the cavern seemed to be larger than the entire meeting area, when the sacred stone only stood 4 feet tall. The being flowed inside and disappeared. The doorway remained open. Jord had by this time felt his way across to the stone, unaware of the being or of the other tribe members who were still frozen in place. He had felt drawn irresistibly to the stone and simply followed that urge as if controlled by an external force. Upon feeling the opening, he also slid his way carefully inside and disappeared from the view of the other tribe members. The doorway instantly disappeared.

This action was enough to break the spell. Excitedly gathering around the stone they all started talking at once, yammering and gesticulating wildly to each other.

”Quiet” yelled Arutha. They fell to silence in front of the elder. Even Old Rab, who had woken when the being appeared could tell that this was an important event for the tribe. Arutha raised his hand over the stone and seemed about to talk when Lena burst into tears.

“Bloody women” he mumbled and turned away from the others.

“Where is my Jord? What’s happened to him?” she moaned.

Marick put a comforting arm around her shoulder but she shrugged it off. Dropping to her knees in front of the stone she scrabbled frantically at the rough surface trying to pry open the doorway that had swallowed her son.

Old Rab sighed. Out came a loud and deep exhalation of breath that caused more than a few to turn away due to the stench. He opened his mouth and began to recite.

From the realm of the light

Came the owner of the stone

Appearing to all

To one he would call

The least would arise

And take the prize

Though receiving the gift

He turned from his own

Yet through that same gift

He would claim the throne

The rest of the tribe turned toward Old Rab. Even Lena was stunned into silence. Arutha came round to the front of the stone and looked over at Old Rab. No one had ever heard him speak like that before. No one had heard more than gibberish from Old Rab’s toothless gums for many years.

Arutha grinned suddenly and stretched out his hands toward Old Rab in the traditional sign of the blessing.

“Old Rab tells the truth!” he cried. “For this is a tale from even before my memory. I remember now the elders told Old Rab and I stories as we sat around the council fire in our initiation ceremony. Stories of the Owners and how they used to appear to men. Stories too fantastical to be true, and in our long years we only dismissed them as fairy tales. But I have finally seen, and Old Rab has reminded me. We have seen a miracle!”