I tried to find solace in the old man’s words and try to understand what the meaning of the premonition was about. Hell I didn’t fully understand how they would come up with the premonition in the first place. We have known since earth that magic was all a hoax. I opened the scroll but it was unintelligible. I’ve never seen writing like this and I couldn’t even read the characters. I know that when we left earth humans had many languages and that through our travels to the new land a new language emerged. Not English or Spanish but an amalgamation of all the languages. But this didn’t look familiar. There was a few words that looked to be written in our language. But the words seemed strange. I had no idea what the word “family” meant. I opened the old textbook and tried to decipher that but it seemed to be in the same weird language. Maybe it was Mercurian. I went over towards the old man but when I was right next to him a weird device began to ring.
The old man stood up and glanced over at me, “good you’re up. Time to get moving. Don’t want you to get caught.”
“I tried to make sense of your book and scroll but it’s in a weird gibberish.” I said hand them to him.
“Gibberish?… Oh… English… it’s a decent language though over complicated. Some words were spelled the same but had different meanings in different sentences. Some had different spellings for words that sounded the same but the spelling made them mean something else.” The old man started to explain. “Never mind. It’s an antiquated system of communication that we have moved passed as a species. But you will find that on the Mercurian side of the shadow ring, some people still use it and other languages that are just as antiquated.”
“So how do I fit in? I can’t learn this language in the time to get there.” I asked with a defeatist tone.
“Have you learned nothing from me lad? They aren’t that different. They still speak the planet common tongue. And it’s not like everyone there speaks multiple languages. Some only speak one.” The old man said. “Now let’s get a move on. We don’t have much time left.” He grabbed a few items throwing them in his rucksack and stood up.
“What about the rest of the stuff? Don’t you need to cover your tracks better?” I asked worried about them following our tracks.
“Yes, I need to put the decon chamber in my rucksack…” he said rolling his eyes.
“I’m not sure that will work. Maybe a truck.” I said with genuine concern.
“It’s sarcasm. Not to worry. I will teach you on our way.” The old man said, “the stuff I leave here was here before I came here and will be here long after I’m gone. I’m pretty sure it was an old troop contraband store.” We headed deeper into the cave. As we did the light dimmed it felt like leaving my childhood behind. The cave started to narrow and I started to get worried. But the old man just kept walking deeper in with confidence. When the darkness had become too much the old man pulled out a flashlight. The light shown right on this weird device with circles placed under the device.
“It’s based on old schematics. It’s called an automobile.” The old man said opening the door and pointing with an open hand.
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