Future Past

Nilankha

Lupercal 3, A.C. 233

There is no good place to start, as the saying goes, so one must start wherever one is. I am here, in the city of Surakosai, chronicling our town and our age in this new world of NoantriGyal. It is only 233 years since our people came to this pristine world through the Great Gate, but for those born here, it is the only home they ever knew and they consider themselves natives. As a student of our history, I know better, and the more one studies the past, the more vivid, and unreachable, the Old Worlds become.

At one point a distinguished woman of my acquaintance asked the famous physicist and Nouergist Tanheu Afboureh Souteth whether we could, in time and with effort, re-establish the Great Gate and return home to the interstellar civilization we left behind. His answer was complex. Yes, with the proper alignment of a black hole, (which is highly unlikely to happen again) we might be able to do it...but you never know when, or where, you would arrive. You could find yourself marooned on a world where a primitive non-technological society prevailed, or you could be transported into the thick of some horrifying war. The Gateway, indeed all teleportation, violates conventional relativistic laws, and without a stable stellar situation, any return would be thrown into random outcomes of space-time. Like it or not, he said, we are here on New Earth for good, and we had better make the best of it. And yet, he said with a touch of wistfulness, this Earth is a backward place compared to what must still exist 100,000 light years away, the Old Worlds with their impossible technology and star-spanning federations.

My name is Nilankha Beroussi Nebior, and I am a lady of the Walaku (or priestly-academic) caste of the Khemaru people. I write this column for the View, a magazine edited by the admirable Anthimia Kaltagiron, whose chronicle of a year's life at the Nouergic Institute was published in 224. As you know, it was widely popular, as people never seem to get enough stories and information about the mysterious Institute where psionic powers are trained and analyzed. I am not affiliated with the Institute, but it certainly is a major factor in Surakosan society. Its white "castle," situated on the hill above the city, serves as a self-proclaimed "astral watchtower," as well as an architectural landmark one cannot miss.

I am, in fact, related to Tanheu, through the Nebior line, and I can even trace my kinship to the greatest of all the Nouergists so far on New Earth, the legendary Enlil of Acragas. I am also descended from the line of Berossus, who was the only Khemaru to have been the Ensi, or head of state, at Eridu, the great academic city now sadly wrecked by the massive earthquake of 230. We of the Walaku all tend to be related to each other in one way or another. Unfortunately this has not resulted in my having any significant nouetic gift; the mindworld does not intrude on my quiet hours. However, there are plenty of other ways of gaining information, as I hope you will read in the pages to follow.