Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs (trilogy)

Kingdom Of The Nanosaurs - chapter 21

21. Shadix

The images flickered like an old black and white movie reel.

The entire world Morgan found himself in was a uniform thundercloud grey; a featureless plain whose sameness was only broken by the unlikely sight of a screen that dominated what could be called the sky. The hemisphere above him was awash with fast moving images. Morgan remembered his dad taking him to the London Planetarium. The experience was similar.

Morgan was cold; a chill numbness gripped him in an icy embrace and his head was aching from the vibratory throbbing being emitted by the Cosmic Algorithm. It was, Morgan realized, emitting a distress signal. The figures and glyphs comprising the mysterious configuration appeared to be alive, dancing to an agitated rhythm of their own eager to emerge into the world. It took Morgan some little time to realize that the memory etched into his cerebral cortex was staving off dark and violent thoughts of imminent death that were trying to infiltrate their way into his mind.

There was a tangible undercurrent of fear and defeat permeating this strange penumbral world. It was no place for a human soul to be. Soft whispers of long dead voices drifted on a wind that was trying to probe and seep into his mind.

Morgan could not move. He was attached to something but could not make out what it was. He seemed to be able to move his arms but his back was fixed. His first thoughts were of Lin and Winston. He could remember being outside a great and grand building of some importance. There had been a beast there, an odd mythical beast. Morgan struggled to remember the name. Taurus. That was it. But he was finding it hard to remember other things. He knew the algorithm that dominated his mind was something special; something almost sacred that he had been chosen to protect. But he was finding it difficult to recall his life.

He looked up at the movie screen. Grainy images tumbled and raced, switching from one scene to another without warning and in no logical sequence. Morgan struggled hard to make sense of them and then it dawned on him that he was looking at scenes from Earth. The old newsreel flashed up faces and places, some events he recognized, most he didn’t. It felt like something or someone was playing around with the tuning, trying to find the right wavelength.

Suddenly, the pace of the newsreel slowed although the images remained monochrome. The mysterious projectionist had found the required focus. Morgan stared at the celestial screen with his heart racing because his own image filled the sky. Scenes from his fifteen plus years of life were being replayed. He watched as he saw himself as a toddler and then a very young boy living an idyllic life with his parents. He sobbed as he watched his memories unfold in gigantic moviescope as an insidious finger of dark thought began to insert itself into his mind and soul. ‘You will never see your life again,’ the voice was uttering in mental shards of thought that were as cold and penetrating.

The dark movie reel ran on and on, with images of his childhood playing with friends, splashing with joy in the river Cam, then his life at school, his attempts at writing poetry and his friendship with Winston and Lin. A kaleidoscope of imagery filmed by some insane and bloody minded director ran footage of the most recent events in Morgan’s life: information he had memorized, the comet and the freak weather storms, Inish Crag and the first sight of the nanosaurs, Taurus and the amazing swim across treacherous straits, Winston and Lin on board the goods train, Buckingham Palace and Tom Wheeler and finally images of his parents being led from the Palace in the company of van Linden. How much of this did he remember? The movie was trying to remind him, to jog his memory but his brain was shrouded in gauze and cotton wool.

A terrifying thought occurred to him. What if his memories were being wiped in some arcane manner? He knew that his memory had been one of his most unusual abilities or gifts. It had often frustrated him and he had wanted to get rid of it on occasions and just be normal. Now, the prospect of it being erased forever shocked him into fight back mode. No, they couldn’t take his memories away. Were they trying to capture the Cosmic Algorithm? Of course, that had to be it. But who were they?