Descending to Eve, Part Ten – Al Onia

Human essence accreted. The collective focused on the drive. Its appetite sated, the conduit to the other side opened. It its universe of origin, the collective’s complimentary half functioned once more. This side had become too fragmented. The passage flowed one way to provide cerebral nourishment. The battle ended with victory, wholeness and the start of a new expansion.

Olduvai Gorge. November, 2052

Julia’s children carried her litter across the wasteland. Their feet stumbled on their way over the ruts left in passing by the multitudes preceding them. She raised her eyes to the darkened sky and had a sudden thought about the sky on a cold, clear night years ago on the other side of the world. She and her brother had left the body of their father on the frozen ground. What had been the names? What had been her names? She merged with the overwhelming mass of minds around her on this African plain. The memory of a young girl called Julia sparkled in her mind then quickly faded as the litter bore her to the end of a long journey.

Pierre finished his entry and sealed it in an envelope. The message presented his theories on Africa’s depopulation. Pierre believed the phenomenon to be a shift in distribution rather than an overall reduction. The citizens of eastern Africa had gone west. Or north or south. They’d been pushed aside by the visitors.

He slapped the envelope against his knee. The problem was, he decided, that there was no one to debate, no one to hone the theory before exposing it to the outside world. His last few communiqués to the Institute had gone unanswered. He didn’t know if anyone remained to receive them or if the boy he used as a messenger even took them to Moshi.

More self-aware and lucid then he’d been in a long time, Pierre spent his days watching the visitors pass by on the way to the gorge. They passed day and night though he always hid after sunset. He believed staying away from the visitors during the dark hours prolonged the time before his own cellular compulsion would carry him to the gorge’s edge and down.

One of his unanswered proposals speculated critical mass had been reached by the human race. Technology and civilization had delayed its reverse migration for millennia. Past the same point for Neanderthal. Would the next human species develop the strength to withstand the drive?

Pierre stared up through a rent in his shelter at the pre-dawn sky. He studied the constellations and found he remembered names and patterns. He heard the hundreds of feet shuffling around him. He kept watching the heavens. If the next species reached the stars before a future spawning call, could the migration occur?

His feet began to march in place. He moved from the shelter to the line of walkers. Their path spiraled to a distant center. No information passed outward but he knew Eve had arrived in the masses.

His final thought as an individual was that the drive would always win, too powerful for any land, water or space barrier to withstand.



Emerging Worlds is a Zealot Script Publication.

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