Dual World Time Travelers

It was in dreams, where I have seen
Landscapes wherein one hill peered out on deep blue sky
Then another rising mountain feature steep and serene
Passing by paths that wind into infinite paths' supply

The scales of time, travel and recall
They are sighted and gliding on echoes of  galactic sprawl
A ghost planet nearing and to a ghost world must go
A world's past with mighty works can tread backward flow


Idumean Arch, A Shell Of Escape & Dual World Time Travelers

This story of time travel is a strange one and should be told. It reveals a multitude of purpose within a limited application of such a phenomena. For in the universe, linear and outward time is a dominant factor.

It begins in the far back ago. Ages past. A very steep range of time in a world's calculation in its unique orbit. It so happened that in this unfathomable past that a people had constructed an artificial planet. Having its own air and a set temperature. It was set to orbit and remain as a sort of passage of escape should it ever be needed. To keep a few lone travelers within its sphere. There they would remain but not age, and after an extreme long duration it became a lost entity still existing, long since muted. Dead like and drifted away. They called it the Shell of Escape for long script purposes and named it Ollarkynn Exeo.

In the ages that accumulated after losing track of Ollarkynn, the onward generations of people, still having the knowledge of this creation and thinking it lost to the stars, constructed a small container and device that would be capable of finding it and in that creation a pulse that could bring it back within orbit as the satellite it once functioned as or destroy it if it had become too dangerous or decayed after so long. By now Ollarkynn was a legend and a very distant prehistory of something more unknown to them than remembered.

It was a place, but it was merely a gateway or a suspended place that would not function in the usual cosmic ways. They knew something from long ago was traveling in space with them, this Shell of Escape, and they finished a task to create this container and device, like a radar or homing beacon and then contain the shell, the moon that drifted away.

The aforementioned device was a confined element of pure celestial energy. Compressed within the strongest element of their world. Lead ice and layered pitches of their own planetary sounds when they were used to break barriers past their own planetary path and go into a farther point ahead. But when Ollarkynn could not be brought back within the time they conceived would be reasonable, they safeguarded the container and device and locked them inside a housing chamber and buried it far beneath the grounds of a desert. Then documented all they had done and created and what its purpose was.

Now it is more than nine thousand long orbits since then, and this is where the story of the quest for a time traveling device and the purpose of destroying a malignant threat posed on a world called Idumean Arch begins...

In its present time, the gathered forces that consisted of military and scientists, this world had to succeed in this mission or perish out of existence. There was no other way. The task was known but it would never be easy. This was an impossible goal that had to be reached.

It was already a foregone conclusion that Ollarkynn would overshadow then be drawn into Idumean Arch's gravity to collide and disintegrate. They needed to find an object, a device from the past and bring it forward in time. It simply did not exist in their present time. "Where to begin? Let's start with the planet's orbit and rotation and its placement in where it will be in three orbit's time." The tall commander in white and hollow gray relayed to his fellow mission team members.

From there it was a matter of calculating movement and then the matter of harnessing the energy to reverse the planet's orbit to a past point in time without taking the planet itself with it, but a grounding platform adhered to an energy being conducted through a ship worthy of space travel to act as a make-shift planet.

"Are we taking the world back in time, or just traveling in a small number to the past?" Echoing the thoughts of the rest, a secondary guide asked, as the outline for this operation started to shape. But it would be tedious and difficult. "There's probably a way to just use the pathway with the same organic matter from our world and use an energy orb of making, but would all the matter or content of the world from the past be there if we arrive?"

It was discovered that they wouldn't encounter anyone from the past, nothing organic. All would be static. To recreate a path back to a path that had already been passed while their planet raced on its journey. But the energy and anti-matter they'd need to accomplish this feat was already being calculated and built. They could go back to the past to retrieve the ancient device, as it was an inanimate object and not organic at all, but they would have to develop a way to travel around on a static landscape that wasn't still in the physical universe to them. Instead they would have to, in a way, blend in with the essence of a dead plane or dimension where nothing moved through the entire sphere. A virtual dead zone where there would not be one wind, one sound from any source of the planet's vibrations or wavelengths. Merely an echo of where it once sailed.

And time would not pass at whatever point in the planet's past they arrived to. It would all be stagnant, although time would still pass in their world of the present. If they had known the point of origin where Ollarkynn Exeo had been at any time in their last thousand or so orbits, they could have made a way to go back in time there and find out what had went awry. However even if they had known, it was safer to stay within the orbiting sphere of something as solid as their own world. Eventually they would know the way to the strange small planet of old. In time.

A remote connection was fashioned to be tethered to the team that would land, more or less, where a world had already passed. The only solid ground there would be what the elements could conjure within the recollection of the physical universe in that instance of time. Suspended in each path of its journey by the energy nodes that could not be appropriately measured. All they could do was make a guess and test each passage in sharp seconds and clicks. But their time was running out and they had to send out their team.

A chilly sting of air rapidly melted to a warm and almost uncomfortable heat when they used the final construct of a capsule that propelled them into their destination in the past. The speeds had to be reached where light went in reverse, a negative speed forward, but exceeding backward, and when the vessel gained the momentum to follow the trail of orbit behind the planet, the travel back to a time already coursed through, was achieved.

At first it seemed nothing had changed, a dullness, as if still in a dream but now lucid and confusing surrounded them. A vast landscape of a settled dust. Everything looked hollow and lifeless. But there was treasure here. They had to find it and fast. The time they would be there might not be parallel to the time in their world and there was no way to know if anything aligned as it should. The mechanism and energies used to accomplish the feat of going back in time and place to something and somewhere already passed, was monumental in and of itself. But they had no time to take in that awe. They were on a mission after all.

The ancient records had shown that the object they sought was buried in an abandoned shrine that had been through an age underwater and then eventually turned back into desert. This is where they were now. At the time before the waters took hold. To set upon a quest to go into the past, to reset another world, and save something of the first world.

The eerie way of things here, they noted, as they flanked what was then, all seemed like a forgotten story that was never repeated, and pages were left open to fill in the blanks. That was the overwhelming feeling they experienced as they walked through the best planned route of this past world. They recognized nothing here. It was as if they landed on another completely different planet. But they were here, on their own world.


The quest now lived in dead places of muted tones
Barely visible paths woke and stirred underfoot and swift step
Like a passing dream of steep ways and shallow cones
Built up dunes that stretched over leagues of a whispering web

A sound echoing that gives no direction of its voice
Laboring through twines layered in thousand circle design
A time from a time that would lead to no other choice
But to come and gaze again upon infinity of the most sublime


After much time, and fearful of the time it felt to them, they located the shrine. The dry path was outlined with a shimmering light that emitted from a distant moon, and upon detection of where the light came, they were taken aback to see that Ollarkynn appeared to be in their dull lit sky. But it was just a reflection as to what would have been in the past. And it seemed just as muted and lifeless as the ground they presently stood. It was as if looking at a reflection in the haze of something that would disappear instantly if the slightest sound were made. They advanced into the shrine. It was difficult and oft times dangerous.

The geological form of things were naturally much different in the past. Waters had come and gone and shifted and settled in different areas than their present time. Although they were set fairly close to the last known location of the shrine, it would prove to be exhausting to tread these ancient routes. There were no ruins because all non-organic matter there was as if it was back then. They only knew part of what to expect from historical recollection.

After a time they secured the device and containment matter. The signal was sent forth to bring them back and return to the present of their time. Samples of the past were gathered and brought and as the journey was draining, they needed a turn of light in the present time to replenish. The sleep was deep so there were no stirring of events to rattle the mission team. But the presence of Ollarkynn was now very visible in their present sky. This was an omen with a vengeance. An entity on the mythically named Shell of Escape sought to escape from its host world. The energy being brought with it would be such that an intentional collision was designed and being carried out by the entity of this little world. Guiding it back and into the main world of its creation. But the entity was properly said to have been the little world itself.

There was little time to lose. The mission team was made fully aware on these turns of events. It was expected. Knowing from the historical telling that this was a possible outcome, the mission to retrieve the device and container was that much more than the exploitation of time travel. This was going to save their world. The only thing left was to understand how the mechanisms work and what to do.

"It had been gone even in those days we went back into, how was it then that we saw Ollarkynn?" The answer was not there, and the nearest guess was that somehow the device had some sort of hold on the phantom world and only passing by and through time's regular flow it could visibly be seen then. But when those times were being lived, the device cloaked it in that era apparently. It was only back in time through the passage that it revealed what a current flow of time had hidden. That's how the device worked. Like an Ark that hid another existence but once passed, it had no energy to bounce living light and movement on anything within its scope.

But none of this was in play now. The strange world was back and it was in stark existence. The dread was growing and the ways of the device and container had to be examined and applied with speed and accuracy. There would have been ancient writings on these matters but much was also lost in translation. This was, as in the travel back to the past, all best guesses and what they could apply scientifically. But it proved the past and its primitive language had the simple answers to capture and contain the rogue planet.

The device was once known as a light splitter. Of sorts. It was an energy manipulator that took light particles and separated them into a base element that solidified like single layers of ice-like substance and sprung to attach to a larger body that reflected light and so on. It could bounce off of many smaller objects in the air or in space, until reaching its target. The more surface it could use to bounce, the stronger the hold it could achieve. Like a web.

Light splitting was an art in ancient times. A magic used to sway the movements of the Ollarkynn Exeo from the grounds of Idumean Arch, this is what it would take to halt the impending collision of this returned vague and ghost-like world.

After making the apparatus needed and launching tested signals they positioned small floating bases made of little more than woven reed and twine. They were closing in on the target. The night air hung heavy. All was ready. Standing by was repeated and echoed through many voices. Awaited, the globular essence of the Exeo rose on the horizon.

The distinct markings on its surface was visible and pale. The horizon of its sphere could also be seen from the surface as if looking into a reflection of another world. A passing mystic vision of long ago. The bewilderment was intense. But it was showing to be moving closer to the planet's surface with a sustained movement of orbit that was not controlled by anything they knew. There was a will within the sphere and there was nothing to indicate any being or entity was living anywhere on Ollarkynn. But something was there. Someone was, no doubt, still existing there.

As such, no plans of destroying the target were ever devised. But the device they retrieved from the past was the key to the survival of their world and of Ollarkynn Exeo.

With a sudden force of wind and light, the base of the device shook and a light intensified and split into thousands of crystal like points and bounced off the makeshift moons they situated around the planet. Ollarkynn reacted to the light and the features on its surface were far more visible than it was at first reveal. The shadows of the deeper markings became hazier and then shrouded valleys and trenches in a fog. Nothing was detected in any case, to be there, but elements reacting to a natural phenomena.

An orbit was then sustained through a very precise deployment of energy beams of light and mimicked gravitational pull, until it was moving as it had before, without breaking past the alignment of where it had been originally created.

As the orbits of both celestial bodies carried on, the dread faded, and it was hard to tell what feelings they had of the days prior. The sense of urgency was a long gone memory. What remained was the accomplishment of time travel. They were far more advanced in the understanding of their own world now. The small grain of knowledge that the past had brought may not have seemed like much, there was no one to bring forth with the team, but there was something so deep in their consciences now. A connection they were now forever in tune to. A binding of wills, of spirit. Everyone was changed in small ways. In very large ways.

They sought to save their world and they did. They saved more than they knew at the time. Every part of it that ever existed. And that is the tale of Idumean Arch.


The wells of knowledge were deep, and the water welcomed every drop
Bouncing off the waves while underneath a layer stirred with memory
Weaving past a glowing moon to the next cloud top
The journey goes from pieces to endless energy

I cannot say if there were other elements that guided any way past
Landscapes wherein one hill peered out on deep blue sky
The tale spoken and remembered, with a spell it had cast
Passing by paths that wind into infinite paths of abundant supply


~~~

Originally posted on January 19, 2017
Originally wrapped up June 26, 2019
Originally written sometime in 2002

This was to be a novel-length story, having characters created belonging to this world, and detailing far more of the science involved in time travel or time movement as the case may be. I had never had the time to write this to what I had imagined it to be then. There was also no poetry in the original telling. This is a fragment but as some tales go, a fragment from some long ago idea of an event. There is no more I can say.