On the morning of September 15, 2028, John Smith was embarking on a somewhat normal weekend excursion, somewhere in the northern cliffs of the Grand Canyon.
An avid, if not fanatical rock climber, he found it easier to climb solo, because it was very difficult to find anyone that could scale the cliffs and rocks he was capable of, and keep up with him.
Ascending from a plateau, at the top of a large ravine John happened upon an unusual marking on the face of the cliff that curiously appeared to be man-made.
At first glance, this seemed out of the ordinary, but given where this small almost hand size symbol was located seemed to be no less than astonishing.
His initial thoughts were, “who or what could put this here and how.” It was a very delicate and precise O, a zero, a perfect circle that looked as though it had been carved into the stone, but also, looked as though it were suspended in air and barely clinging to the rock.
As he brushed across the surface there was no sandy film or dust or anything that would indicate weather. As he brushed again several times a symbol that resembled an actual hand seemed to appear where it didn’t seem was there before, and “it felt almost like a fine marble or glass,” and as he pressed firmly against it with the palm of his hand spread out much like the symbol, John felt something unusual.
Instantly, he thought for a moment he was falling. He couldn’t hold onto anything, the rock that had been holding him secure against the face of the cliff disappeared. His hand and half of his arm, and part of his leg were actually inside the mountain.
Even more startling, John found himself now standing on the side of a cliff that had no shelf. There shouldn’t be a place to even grab hold of let alone something flat enough to put his foot onto, yet, there was. John now found himself in quite a dilemma.
There was nothing to brace against except a floor that he could feel, but couldn’t see, and the more he tried to get away from this hole that seemed to be devouring his legs and arms the deeper inside he found himself. It would have been very difficult under the circumstances to climb back up, but even if he was scared to death, he knew he couldn’t resist the temptation to go further in.
Finally, he planted his other foot onto the invisible surface and took a step forward. He remembered thinking; “this is definitely going to be the end of me.” Incredibly, he was okay, or at least he looked okay. His arms and legs and body seemed in one piece. But, everything else was anything but normal. He instantly felt a surge of energy, lightness, and a sense of perfection that he hadn’t felt since childhood, which he now remembered quite vividly.
The walls appeared to be perfectly carved into the side of the mountain face, if as though someone had taken a very fine carving tool and with the most delicate precision, carved out the rock, to look like glass or marble in the most beautiful curves and forms he had ever seen. And behind him where he had just entered from, was the entire canyon laid out like a masterpiece.
“May I be of assistance?” A voice from behind him! “My goodness,” shouted John! A man who appears to be old, very old, maybe in his 80’s with long gray hair and wearing a long white robe was standing before him.
“His first impression was that he was strangely similar to his Father, but much older.” “Where am I,” John asked. “And who are you?”
“Well, my name is Adjumentu.” I am the controller of this vessel.” “Vessel you say! This is a vessel Mr. Adjum..?”
“Adjumentu, Mr. Smith or you could just call me Adju. And, yes this as you may be familiar with the term, is a vessel or vehicle that has the ability to move or travel.”
“Ah! So we are in a vehicle that isn’t moving, but can move, suspended in mid-air on the side of a mountain, and it’s invisible at that?”
“Well, I am programmed to answer questions as best I can and to expand upon those questions as I think necessary.”
“Wait a minute; you’re programmed, as in computer program?”
“Yes, Mr. Smith!”
“Okay, you’re a program? Then I guess I should be asking you, where do you come from, who programmed you, and how do you know my name?”
“Well, that will be a little more difficult to explain. Please, Mr. Smith, sit down.” Suddenly, two chairs appeared. Adju sat down in one and invited John to sit down in the other.
“What a rush, my God, this guy is like a God and he knows my name, and he makes two chairs appear out of thin air.” John pinched himself. “Oh my God, I can’t pinch myself!” “Am I dreaming? What’s going on Adju? Are you real?”
“No, you are not dreaming. This is real and I am real. Well, as real as any other form of energy that exists in this universe. Are clouds real Mr. Smith? Is a bolt of lightning real? You see, I have no mass. I am energy or an energy form, we call aether. And, you can’t pinch yourself because at the moment you are an energy form as well, no different than me, at the moment.”
“Energy form”, John shouted in amazement.
“Inside OrTerra, you must be in the form of energy. OrTerra is energy! There are many things in this universe that you and your mankind have little understanding of.”
“You mean, you’re not from mankind,” exclaimed John? “As I said, I am an energy form that has been created to aid the Ascendant, but my creators are from a planet many billions of light years away from Earth. I understand that you are confused, and if you would allow me, I would be pleased to explain everything to you?”
“Well, that’s a lot to take in, ah, Mr. Adju. Aliens? Other planets? Billions of light years away? “Okay, yes I’m confused, to put it lightly, but first can I ask you a few questions?”
“Certainly, please continue!”
“You said that I was an energy form! Why am I still in one piece, why am I talking, and where did my body go. And who is this Ascendant?”
Smiling, Adju replied, “Yes, I said you were an energy form, which you are, not unlike myself. And, you are still in one piece, as you put it because the energy form that has been created from your body mass and your spirit energy has been held together by an energy force that maintains your molecular structure. Without this energy force, your molecules would be scattered throughout OrTerra. You can still talk because, to put this simply, all things are made up of energy. The process that converted your body to energy allows you to maintain many of the necessary bodily functions that allow communication and thought. “You really don’t need to move your mouth, and we are communicating by way of energy. Once you become more accustomed, you will be able to communicate with me anytime and from any place on this planet by simply thinking.” And to answer your last question; you are Ascendant.”
“Me, I’m Ascendant?
So, let me get this straight. You were created to assist me?”
“Yes, John! Now, let me ask you a question,” uttered, Adju? “You have already experienced changes in your body. You’re no longer tired or sore nor do you have a desire to eat, but tell me, do you remember where you were last week, last month or last year?”
John began thinking and realized, he could remember everything, as though even his childhood had just happened. His recollection was perfect. He could remember the day he was born.
“What’s happened to me? I feel not only like I can remember everything, but I’m smarter. I know things that I didn’t know before.”
“Your brain and all its electrical currents are unrestrained by any physical impediment. Your brain is now working at 100% capacity.” “OrTerra is a special vessel that has been created to perform certain tasks, one of them being the historical documentation of planets,” Adju commented. “Planets, as in plural, Adju?”
“Yes,” replied Adju. “There are thousands of planets that have similar vessels as OrTerra.”
Hold on there! You mean there are thousands of planets with life forms?
Not merely lifeforms John, but living thriving civilizations, some very similar to your Earth as you call it, and some very different.
“So, wow, that’s impossible for me to get my head around. Okay, so why me?”
“OrTerra is programmed to allow certain earthlings’ entry into OrTerra. The Aelians are a very curious species that have gathered information from many thousands of civilizations and have decided to allow access to OrTerra under certain conditions. Once the entry system is activated, DNA is recorded and designation Ascendant is assigned.” To explain this properly and as best that you will understand, your DNA has a certain composition that warrants the activation of the Ascendant criteria.
“You said this vessel records planet history! So you travel to other planets?”
“No, this vessel is specific to this planet and has been recording history for more than a hundred million of your earth years.”
“No way, you’re kidding?”
“No, John, I do not kid?”
“How is this accomplished, and what part of history do you record?”
“OrTerra records all of history or should I say, every second, of every day, of every square inch, of this planet, and has been stored here in the archives of OrTerra.”
“But how and where are the cameras?”
“Well, that’s interesting,” quipped Adju. “You could call them cameras, but they are called adelopods. Small cameras, as you might think of them, smaller than you can see with your human eye, and similar to what you would call bacteria have been deployed just outside Earth’s atmosphere. There are billions of these tiny, cameras as you call them, circling the planet collecting and transmitting data to OrTerra instantly.”
“What do you do with this information,” said John, as he carefully mulled over in his mind exactly what all this meant.
“Well,” Adju continued, “the information is automatically streamed to Aelian, and of course stored here for reference as is deemed necessary.”
“So what you’re saying is you have pictures from orbit, looking back to Earth recording exactly what, for the past hundred million or so years?”
“Well, it may be easier to show you rather than try to explain, John.” “Do I have your permission, to show you images of your childhood?”
“My childhood, barked John, you have pictures of my childhood?”
“Not exactly pictures as you might be familiar with, remarked Adju.”
Suddenly, the room was engulfed with the street where John grew up. They appeared to no longer be in OrTerra but were standing in the middle of the street, the Sun was shining and they could see all the way down the street, in both directions. And, right in front of them, not more than 10 feet stood John and his older brother Jason playing on the lawn in front of their house.
“Adju, what’s happening?”
“This is a recording of the event that took place on August 23, 2002 at this place on earth.” Adju raised his hands in the air as to signify the place they were standing.
“I remember it like it was yesterday!” “That’s my older brother Jason. He was 12 and I was 10. Wow, I can remember everything about that day. It’s Saturday. I remember what I had for breakfast, what I did at school the day before, and that my Mother is home and inside. Can we look inside?”
“Well yes, but why don’t you, ah should I say, take it for a ride yourself.”
Suddenly, everything stopped! John and his younger brother were frozen! The ball they were playing with, the wind, everything, it all sort of zoomed out, became smaller. And the sky now became a giant picture of the Earth with the scene they were looking at in the middle. A large screen appeared with icons and markings. It was a control panel of sorts.
“This is what we call an anaphero.” Adju showed John how to touch it and move his finger towards the house. Everything started to move again, and the house was moving towards them and in an instant, they were inside.
There stood John’s mother and his sister. He hadn’t seen his mother since she died almost 20 years ago when he was only 15. John stood motionless for almost a full minute.
“Hello John, is there something wrong?” Adju was saying.
“I guess I was in a daze, seeing my Mother again.”
“Just move your finger here, or if you prefer, with a little practice, you can manipulate the device with your thoughts!”
Everything began moving faster and faster. The more John pushed one of the indicators the faster time went by until; they were in the present time. And there was John’s Dad in the same place he left him this morning when he stopped by for coffee.
Adju seemed almost anxious to show him more. “Move this, and you change what your people refer to as GPS (Global Positioning Satellites). But this of course is much more delicate.” Suddenly, they were moving again. This time, they were moving across the state, the country, the ocean and westward to Hawaii. They were now in the middle of a busy intersection.
“We are watching what’s taking place right now? Is that correct?”
“Yes, John, you are catching on very fast.”
“That’s just unbelievable! And this indicator here, I can stay in the same geographical point and move it back?” As John moved what he thought was the time indicator, yet was actually the space indicator. He was actually moving at a point straight out into space. They were now looking from a position just outside the earth’s atmosphere. Looking back at earth they could see the moon just off to the left and the sun further in the distance.
“This is incredible! So, this must be what it’s like to be an astronaut? Without the space suit or space ship, LOL! I am going to need another word for incredible, I seem to be out of descriptive adjectives for the events of the past few moments.”
With a simple adjustment by Adju, they were back on earth. I simply thought 1970 and in an instant, we were now going back in history, many of the buildings suddenly disappear and the cars and people just going about their business appearing much like John would have imagined in 1970. December 7, 1941, and now they were looking at what could only be Pearl Harbor, with battleships and uniformed men everywhere.
Now even further back faster and faster. The buildings disappear completely, replaced by shacks and huts and then just meadows. Further and further they go, no more people, just animals, and birds, all indistinguishable by John. The year indicated 348,112 B.C. John was in a sort of trance. He traveled to Rome, Greece, Egypt and hundreds of more places. When he finally stopped he thought it had only been a few hours, but in fact, it had been more than 20 hours. He saw things that no man had ever seen or even imagined.
“It’s time for me to go home Adju, everyone will be worried.”