One of the Beginnings
SK: This constant chatter about age is starting to annoy me. I came here to find out about the Microsoft Wars, not listen to yarns about a world that might not have existed.
JS: Do you have any idea how long the human species has occupied this planet?
SK: No, but I’m certain you will tell me another story about it and that you were there at the beginning.
JS: No. I don’t know the answer, either. Neither did my grandfather and he had a lot of recorded history to draw upon.
SK: Then what is the point of your question?
JS: When men and women first emerge from the cycle, they always seem to believe their history started with them. At least, the newer generations seem to grow into that belief. Eventually higher minds come along and start wondering how humans got here, then they go searching for a missing link.
SK: What missing link?
JS: The animal that proves man evolved from some form of chimpanzee or ape, since those are the animals found in the wild that most closely resemble humans.
SK: You mean they resemble men in both look and personality. Women couldn’t possibly have come from such a creature!
JS: Be that as it may, all this has happened before and it will all happen again.
SK: What?
JS: Pity your world didn’t manage to save that.
SK: Save what? Isn’t it your world, too?
JS: A copy of Disney’s Peter Pan. It provided joy and inspiration to billions of children around the world.
SK: And I’m just supposed to believe such a statement?
JS: There is a copy of it on the book shelf behind you. My grandfather used to read it to me when I was a child. He said it was important at least one copy be saved this cycle.
SK: What cycle?
JS: Depends on who you ask. The Mayan calendar had a 5,125 year cycle. Others say a Mayan sun age is somewhere between 4,000 and 4,100 years in length, while a galaxy cycle is 26,000 years or so in length.
SK: So which one are you talking about?
JS: I cannot be certain.
SK: What is the point then?
JS: You need to understand one of the beginnings to understand what happened.
SK: One of them? How many have their been?
JS: That’s unknown. There have definitely been two but most survivors believe there were many more.
SK: What survivors? What makes them, or you, if you are them, believe there were more?
JS: The pyramids and the starting date for the cycle.
SK: Pyramids? Starting date?
JS: Earth That Was had a country called Egypt—at least for much of the last cycle. During ancient times, leaders were known as kings, at least until the 18th dynasty and Thutmosis. Grandfather claimed he was “one of our people,” but I didn’t really pay attention to that.
During this dynasty, kings started being called pharaohs. Originally, pharaoh meant “great house” and referred to the building of the king, not the person or the family. Over the years, it came to refer to the king.
Egyptians developed a tradition of building a pyramid for a ruler when they died. The first pyramid was the step pyramid at Saqqara, built for King Djoser (Zoser) in the 27th century BC. That tradition turned out to really suck for the personal slaves, since they ended up being buried with the ruler so they could be with him in the afterlife.
SK: But they weren’t dead yet.
JS: Well, if you are sealed up in an air-tight room without food and water, eventually that will be a moot point.
SK: So a pyramid is a tomb of some kind?
JS: Yes. A great stone structure with many hidden rooms and passages. Every face of the structure is the shape of a triangle, which is how the structure got its name.
SK: Why would a building like this make you doubt the number of beginnings and what is this starting date you are talking about?
JS: The starting date is most important, or I should say, the most befuddling. Prior to this last disaster, there had been three major geological changes during this galaxy cycle. For reasons unknown to anyone now, the first was in 20,200 BC and that was chosen as the starting date for this galaxy cycle. Many survivors believe there was a why behind that choice but all record of it has been lost. This date also happens to be the peak of the last glacial expansion known as the Ice Age. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the starting date for the galaxy cycle is roughly seven centuries after the step pyramid was built, which was many centuries after the last big polar shift.
SK: Well, assuming you are correct about that, what do the pyramids have to do with it?
JS: It’s about what is recorded in them—more importantly, the fact we went back to recording in stone within protected structures. This level of durability for basic information tells us they, our ancestors, knew information got lost using other storage methods.
SK: Other storage methods?
JS: What are you writing on?
SK: Paper.
JS: Just how well does that hold up in either a flood or a fire?
SK: Oh. Is that why we have so few books, at least according to your statements?
JS: Correct.
SK: What basic information is recorded in the pyramids then?
JS: Previous earth alignments. This allowed us to track and predict future polar shifts at cycle ends. We may not be able to predict which cycle end will cause the polar shift but we can predict where the new poles will be and what land masses should survive the geological upheaval.
SK: How is it so few people survived, then?
JS: Those who studied built their bunkers in the safe places; stockpiled food, water, information and technology; and then hunkered down to ride it out. There was no attempt to share bunkers once things went south.
SK: That’s a damned cold and selfish thing to say.
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You are reading a special promotional version of “John Smith – Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars.” This is the third book of the “Earth That Was” trilogy. You can obtain the entire trilogy in EPUB form from here:
