The fourth person to take up permanent residence on the rogue planet of Durus
was a man by the name of Paul Harken. He came from family money, which gave
him the resources he needed to look for a way to somehow undo his wife’s
miscarriage. Due to a bit of time travel he once witnessed, he became obsessed
with figuring out how to reverse time, and fix the worst thing that had ever
happened to them. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have all the facts, or
really the qualifications, for this endeavor. He happened to be living in a
very special house; one that was built in the exact same place as another. The
First House, as it will come to be known in historical records, served as the
gateway to Durus. Savitri lived there with her family, Escher lived next door,
and one day explored it, and it was just behind the street where Rothko lived
when his adventure began. This house was a focal point of temporal energy, but
it was also corrupted, and unreliable. It sometimes existed on Earth, and
sometimes Durus, and it was impossible to predict when it would be where. And
so something was always destined to happen to Paul, just from living in his
new house for long enough. When he became trapped on Durus in 2008, he had
mixed feelings. He was relieved that he had never been crazy, and temporal
manipulation was a real thing, but heartbroken that he had not actually
succeeded in his goals. He didn’t let it get him down, though. He wanted to
survive, and there wasn’t much back on Earth that would drive him to try to
return. Plus, unlike with his predecessors, his entire house had come through
with him, which gave him a nice place to stay protected from the elements. His
new friends would appreciate it as well. While the Springfield portal had been
taking people over the course of the better part of three decades, the three
humans still around were all about the same age, because they had been taken
at different stages of their lives. Hark, as he liked to be called, filled
Escher and Rothko in on what they had missed since leaving Earth. He spoke of
the new technologies, and the political developments. In turn, they taught him
how to live on a rogue world, which was becoming increasingly easy, and not
just because of Hark’s intact house. When Savitri first arrived, it was all
but a barren wasteland. Over time, seeds magically made their way from Earth,
and added life. There were still no animals, but there was always plenty to
eat. Runoff from Watershed continued to irrigate more than enough farmland to
support all three of them. Things were all right. By then, Escher and Rothko’s
relationship with Effigy had faded away; not because anyone did anything
wrong, but more because they drifted apart, and the humans saw no benefit to
sticking with her. So Hark became the third in the new, new Triumvirate, which
they colloquially referred to as The Trident, because they were in their
twenties, and thought it sounded cool. Their reign lasted for about
eight years before the Deathfall suddenly added nearly thirteen hundred people
to the world’s population.
No comments :
Post a Comment