A Long Distance Call

Another odd one, completely fictional and owned by tours truly. No stealing -or else I’ll sick my gremlins after you!

A Long Distance Call

By Plot Roach

I picked up the stone at a swap meet for four dollars. I didn’t think much of it other than it looked pretty nifty, kind of like a dark red jasper with a bit of flashy blue moonstone running through it in veins across the midsection of the stone. I had picked it up, liked the weight and look of it and thought to add it to my rock collection at home, nothing more.

I kept it in my pocket for the rest of the day, thinking nothing more of it until I got home and threw my clothes into the dirty clothes hamper, taking the stone, my keys, my wallet and some loose change and putting it on the end table next to my bed. It had been a long day traipsing about flea markets, swap meets and yard sales with my friend Ramona, who was always on the search for the elusive antique that she could restore and make big money off of. She had a garage and half her house filled with such finds, and the only thing she seemed to find was an empty wallet and more junk. But hey, she’s a friend, so I try not to judge her too harshly. I am the one who collects rocks after all.

So when I changed into my nightshirt and sweats and curled up into a little ball in the middle of my bed, I wasn’t really expecting a visitor. I was half asleep when it happened. The strange light, almost strobe like coming off the stone. I felt it behind my eyelids, more than actually seeing the lights. When I opened my eyes, it was like multicolored velvet rubbing against my eyeballs. The more I watched the swirls of light, the more I became entranced. I relaxed from my initial panic and just lay back to enjoy the show. Soon the lights settled into a rhythmic display. A pattern I could almost recognize as if from a long ago dream. I sat up in bed, taking the rock off the nightstand and sitting it in my lap. My fingers traced the patterns that the light etched into the stone, and for each time my hands made the correct pattern a chill crept through me and was replaced by happiness and warmth.

What am I doing? I thought. Playing the rock like some sort of musical instrument or handheld game? And as the patterns continued, speeding up in the process, I realized that the patterns might have some kind of meaning, like a message. But what?

The lights flashed quickly as I finished the last pattern and the rock fell dark once again. I waited, first a minute, then five and finally to ten before I gave up and set the rock back at my bedside table. I figured that if I had been in any danger from the stone before, it would have hurt me before the light show or anytime during its display. So I felt at ease around it, thinking that if the stone once again came to life, I would feel it, having the stone somewhat near me.

I drifted off to sleep, the patterns of the lights still in my mind. I dreamed about a strange place, it was far away and yet it felt like I had been there many times before. Like I had always known this land, had grown up there or something. I knew from the way the night sky looked and the presence of three moons, that this was no place on Earth. I marveled at how light I felt here, and the way the blue grass brushed my feet with leaves like feathered plumes. There was a call off in the distance of some animal that reminded me of a large cat like a leopard or lion. Yet I did not fear the sound, instead finding a kinship with the creature.

I felt a presence behind me as I was busy looking about the world around me. I turned and saw a figured carved from the universe itself. As if someone had taken a man’s form and filled it with the stars and blackness of space. The figure came closer, beckoning me to stay in place. When the figure stood a mere four feet away from me, it spoke. It did not use words, so much as left images in my head. It told a tale of this world and of the beings who came form here to visit my home world of Earth. The story moved in a fluid manner, as if flowing like a river and tickled like a butterfly’s wings in my brain.

Many had come to our planet, but only a few could return, the rest had decided to wait for the humans that they could trust with their secret. We, humans, had never been alone in all the time that we walked the planet, for the Universal Beings (as I now thought of them) had been around since the beginning of life on the planet. They had thought that the family of creatures known to us as dromaeosaurs (which included animals like microraptor and pyroraptor olympius) had shown great potential and might have come to rule our planet if given enough time and opposable thumbs.

Then they had to make do with us, the fallen children of the Ape clan. They had to wait for our brains to expand and for us to learn how to tame the land enough so that we weren’t in a constant state of fight or flight survival. Once we tamed enough of nature for it to serve us, we were able to open our minds to the possibilities of god, the afterlife and life beyond the physical we experienced in our everyday struggle to feed and procreate. Our kind, with their help, began to look to the stars for when to plant their crops, the best times to hunt the migrating beasts and even for answers of a more personal nature, like the meaning of life.

I saw from the images planted into my head that we had a long way to go as a species, but might not make it if we continued down the path we had set before us. We had grown too powerful in means of weapons, but not far enough in matters of the heart. So the Universal Beings who had stayed behind sought out the minds of the few who could persuade the people of Earth to find a different path, not as destructive and warlike. But one of fulfillment and love. I was to be one such being.

With the completion of the story, the Universal Being reached out and touched my head, moving through the matter of flesh and blood to touch me in the place where the spirit resides. I felt my body shift, almost like the lights from the stone at my bedside, and felt myself fill with healing energy. I felt the stone at my bedside once again come to life and sat up, the dream world left behind me, but the message forever tattooed upon my heart. I picked up the stone, but now it was just a plain rock, grey with no special designs or markings.

The next morning, while taking my morning jog, I ran into a man at a nearby gas station. I had stopped to buy a bottle of water, as he was busy filling up his gas tank. When our eyes met, I knew that there was something between us. I felt the energy flow like the waves of the ocean, back and forth, building with time.

“You met them too.” he said, in a matter of fact like tone.

“The Universal Beings?” I asked. And he nodded.

“I never thought to call them that, though.” he said. “To me they will always be ‘the First People.’”

We talked for the rest of the morning, about what we had witnessed, and about the plans that had been laid out before us. It turned out that he knew of a few groups of ‘our kind’, who were currently working on alternative fuels as well as finding methods of healing disease which before had no known cure. He kept his stone in the glove compartment box of his car. “So it can always remind me of why I do this.” he said. He traveled from group to group, finding others like myself and helped to bring us all together.

The next day I packed my bags and went with him to meet up with the closest group. I packed a few sentimental things to remember my old life, and made sure to pack the big grey rock that had started my journey into this strange but wonderful new world.

It turns out that it was a really good find for four dollars after all.