VANGUARD
followed underneath by today's date, and the current time.
It is at that moment that the disk begins to crack in a fractal spiral radiating out from the center of the plate. Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny interlocking ceramic gears spin and thousand of minuscule panels unfold revealing a perfect spherical lens held within a lattice work of delicate entwining golden wires. A glow builds at the center of the lens and a faint holographic image appears hovering translucent in the air above the awaken disk. The wavering rainbow colored visage is of Adela standing in what appears to be a jungle hillside. The web of golden wires begins to vibrate in conjunction with the hologram of Adela as it begins to speak in a tinny metallic approximation of her voice. This is what it says:
"Okay, here goes. Hopefully you are seeing this. The last time you saw me was two hundred thousand years ago. No, wait... from now. Two hundred thousand years from now. Ringo, Shota and I were teleporting to the sarcophagus thing down on the ocean floor. It was a trap. Obviously. Maybe you know that, maybe you don't. There was a bright flash. Ringo and I... we were, well, we were sent back in time. Way back. Ringo tells me this is our world's middle to late Pleistocene era. Really early homosapiens. They are not friendly. Shota didn't appear with us. We can only assume that he was sent to another time or escaped the blast somehow. It's been, what, a few months now. We've tried to figure out a way home. Back to Emerald City then, in the future. No luck. But we, well, Ringo has a plan. But before we try it I have some things to tell you. First..."
The figure bends down out of the edges of the hologram and when Adele stands back up she is holding a distinctly human looking toddler.
"Say hello to little Shakyamuni Junior. So, long story short. We met some aliens. Ancient outer space multi-dimensional ones. They are raising this little guy here. Don't worry, I am just babysitting. Shota, if you are watching and alive... we are both pretty sure this is you. So you are like, at least two hundred thousand years old. The aliens guys, they are evolving the cavemen to help protect him. So, how is that for an origin myth. Anyway, yeah... it has been a weird couple of months. Second, the sarcophagus this... it is a weapon of last resort. It needs to be taken away from those SCALE whackjobs. It is meant to 'weaponize' the evolved human population when the time comes. I get the feeling that we would not like whatever that means. All the doomsday, Monkey King stuff Ringo and her friends were saying. All real. This is going to be where it all goes down. Trust me, prehistoric aliens told me so."
Adela sets down the boy Shota and he disappears from view.
"Okay, so this is the crazy plan part. So the aliens are extremely resistant with us coming with them. And I get the distinct feeling that teleporting invisible onto their spaceship is a good way to get me killed. Ringo says seeking out the Battle Nexus could drastically affect the time line so that is also out. Obviously we can't time travel back to the present the way we came... so Ringo has an idea. She is going to reconfigure herself into a cocoon and, using some technology we liberated from our alien friends, a message... this message actually. We are currently standing on what will one day be Mount Forge. Ringo assures me her physiology will allow her to keep me in suspended animation until you eventually get this message. Once you do, this message disk should act as a homing beacon that will lead you to us. I assume you will need to bring some shovels. Or a backhoe. Well, so. That is it. I will see you in a few minutes or a few hundred thousand years, depending on which end of this message you are on."
The image wavers for a second and then resumes,
"Oh yeah, one last thing. Apparently the aliens say I am not harmonically consistent with this universal frequency. In other words, I am from another universe. Ain't that some shit? See you on the flip side."
And then the image fades and the lens begins to pulse faintly along one edge glass surface, as if pointing toward a distant something.
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