AFT 3.0 Storm Birds
The soldiers lined along the edge of the valley, at attention, their stanchions firmly planted in the ground.
But what was most striking was the bonfires which lined the surrounding cliffs.
Perhaps it was an echo of the indigenous, who had lit bonfires on the headlands to communicate with the tribes up and down the coast.
Or to alert danger, as they had done when the ghost ships arrived, filled with those strangely dressed ghosts with their firesticks; as frightened or bewildered as they may have been, they did not realise, could not have conceived, that their world was coming to an end.
That the genocides past, present and future, were about to be visited upon them.
And that the comfortable guilt of the white middle classes which would grow and festoon in the centuries beyond could provide no comfort whatsoever.
But more like, as he gazed around the rim of those echo chambers, those sharp valleys, as he saw the bonfires burning on the cliffs, many located in the exact same spots as the ancient temples, they were a warning or a signal from the future, that there, not a case of where but when, in their chaos and stricken time, those fires indicated another crisis; as those helicopters, manned with another species of men who looked down on the populations below as the military had looked down on the people below, as the comfortable populations of the 21st Century had recalled, if they recalled at all, the Neanderthals. As stupid, inferior. Even as their DNA still ran through their blood.
But there it was, those fires; incense ravaged, distressed, urgent; speaking to, or recalling, those scenes of Jesus in the temples of the Middle East. But here, in these cold valleys and ancient places, as the glories of another civilisation hovered in the air, and collapsed, or faced imminent collapse, for the very same reason so many civilisations had perished before, they had ignored the common people, mistreated the serfs, the peasantry, yes, the common people whose struggles, virtues and struggles they had ignored as somehow inferior, or irrelevant.
But it wasn't that, the contempt they held for their fellow creations.
As those humans who lived 2000 years after the birth of Christ, the human Christ, had sneered at their own uneducated, had regarded as zoo animals their ancestors, chimpanzees, apes, a bewildering style and number of variations, these things, these trains or chains of DNA which spread down through the centuries to this.
And in that incense soaked temple so far in the future, a desperate priest, a high born energy, borne aloft if you will, reached back to find a solution to his present day; another time of universal deceit, another time when contempt for the ordinary citizen had led eventually, ultimately, to social chaos, to rack and ruin and the collapse of their own social order, as other living beings rose to assert their right to exist.
You only had to look at the swirling chaos of the trees to understand, this divine creation outcompeted itself.
And that priest; he wanted to know. He sought a desperate solution. His own life, it appeared, was in danger, as the throngs gathered around his last refuge, his last resting place, as he burnt in volume the last of his incense, as he sought if not an eternity for himself an understanding of eternity itself, as he sought to know, no matter how high born, how it had all come to be.
Those secrets we would never tell.
Those dodges and weaves would cement their secrets in a time stream beyond normal human ken.
And the nation they then called "Australia", that place which had been so full of certitudes and by the standards of much of the future population, unimaginable wealth, to be able to go to their shops and markets, to be able to buy goods from all over the world, for these soon unimaginable luxuries taken for granted by the citizenry at large.
These things, those fires, those smells and sense of burning, of conflagration, of a terrible, terrifying time.
And that priest, hurling through the stone walls, escaping the throng, knowing in no way what to do, that his life was at an end at the hands of masses gathering in revolt outside the temple walls, that everything they had believed possible was now extinguished, that these things would creep back through time and bless them with an urgency of mission. For these mysteries. These terrible travesties. For these breaches of the spirit. For this time that was their time, for these prayers that were their prayers.
They chanted in an urgent invocation. They pleaded for mercy as the mob broke down the walls, their centuries of affluence and high status at an end.
They wanted to know how to proceed, yet there was no real answer. Those entities, those time machines which knew all there was to know, those enhanced, modified humans who could already mind read and yet had denied their technologies to their fellows, those mindless bureaucrats and heartless souls, it was coming to an end, this period of human history, these fates. And yet still, that seer reached back to him, seeking safety, or a solution, seeking he knew not what, or why, or how.
While above the storm birds circled and wheeled high in the sky.
And the answers to the questions they sought; the wisdom they sought. There were no answers. Those high flying birds.
NEWS STORIES
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11662761/Billionaire-Bill-Gates-seen-three-bodyguards-Australian-Museum.html
Billionaire Bill Gates was spotted with three bodyguards as he exited the Australian Museum in Sydney on Saturday.
The Microsoft mogul, 67, whose net worth is $101 billion, stepped out in the harbour city before a meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Mr Gates looked to be sightseeing at the popular attraction, with him dressed casually holding a small gift bag.
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Sydney isn't THAT scary! Billionaire Bill Gates, 67, was seen with three bodyguards as he exited the Australian Museum in Sydney on Saturday before meeting the Prime Minister
Gates looked suitably relaxed wearing a blue long-sleeve shirt along with a pair of tan chinos and a belt.
