The Thing from the Pit

Grandfather knew something was coming. He could feel it in his leg. Lisa rolled her eyes at this. He could always feel disaster in his leg.

"It's in the bone, amor," he said. "Be careful out there today."

Lisa tossed her bag over her shoulder and motioned for her brother to follow.

"Put your leg up, Abuelo," Antonio said.

The old man waved them off and fanned himself with his hat. Once they were away, padding down the dirt walk to the rusty gate at the edge of their yard, Antonio caught up to his sister.

"I don't like it," he said. "Abuelo doesn't like it."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "Abuelo thinks disaster will happen every day. Last week it was when the Mariachi stopped in town. The week before, a storm would topple the house."

Antonio glanced back at the small house and said, "It is a wonder it stands up through even the rain."

Lisa shrugged but she couldn't disagree. The house was more of a shack, built by their grandfather's father. It had sheltered the generations that had come after, but how it stood was a miracle.

"Someday," Lisa said. "We'll leave this place."

They turned down another dirt track toward town.

"You say this," Antonio said, "but I do not think that will be for us. What plan do you have? The garden barely makes enough for us. Abuela's clothing? No. I will be helping Pedro in his fields the rest of our lives."

"I will think of something," Lisa said and pulled the pack filled with her grandmother's creations tighter against her shoulder.

"Maybe think of some way to get better at making clothes the rich women like," Antonio suggested.

Lisa scoffed. Beneath their feet, the earth vibrated suddenly, stopping the two of them in place.

"Earthquake?" Antonio asked, looking about for shelter.

The tremor continued, increasing in intensity. Lisa looked up at the tall trees surrounding them, swaying with the vibrations. A short distance away lay a clearing.

"Over there," she said and started for it.

The earth rumbled now, making each quick step unsteady.

"Abuelo was right!" Antonio shouted over the shaking of the palms.

Lisa gritted her teeth and ran ahead, sweat beading on her skin in the oppressive Mexican heat. Antonio began to fall behind, the weight of the fruits on his back weighing him down.

"Drop it!" Lisa shouted back.

Antonio shook his head. He wouldn't let the fruit go. It was money, and they needed it. Lisa pulled further ahead, but two steps later, the earth gave a lurch beneath her and was suddenly gone.

The last thing she heard as the ground gave way was Antonio shouting her name. The slide into darkness that followed was a hellride of seconds that seemed to last a day. Waves of dirt and grass cascaded down on all sides as she tumbled and slid. She'd be buried alive, crushed beneath a mountain of earth for sure.

The fall ended, though, and while she was wet and caked in dirt, she'd been spared a tomb. Above, a thin shaft of light from the sun beamed down through dusty dark. She held her hand to her eyes and squinted. How far up was it? She couldn't tell.

The light was barely enough to see where she'd fallen, illuminating a tiny circle of earth where she sprawled, cut, bruised, and dirty.

"Lisa!" Antonio shouted from above.

Looking up, she saw his silhouette against the sun.

"I'm here!" she called back. "Can you see me?"

"Yes. Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Stay there. I will go find help!"

Lisa looked around the darkness. Where did he think she would go? Antonio's shadow disappeared. Lisa got to her feet and tested her limbs. Nothing seemed broken.

All around her was oppressive darkness, save for the spotlight created by the thin shaft of light from above. It was cold. She put her arms around herself and shivered.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see a bit further. It had been a lucky landing. To both her right and left, the sinkhole she'd been swallowed by continued downward. She'd landed on a hard slab of rock, which jutted out before her into blackness. She shivered, though not from the cold.

She resisted the urge to look up again, which would only spoil her sight once more. Instead, she examined the bare rock as she set her back against the wall. That was when she saw the thing.

The shaft of light from above caught it and it twinkled, a thin strip of glittering silver jutting from a thick layer of mud. Carefully, she knelt and began to dig it out. Perhaps it was some metal that would be worth something at the Mercado.

Pushing aside the mud revealed a flat slab of silver metal. She held it up to the light. Along its surface was some kind of writing that she couldn't read. Maybe this find was luckier than she'd thought. The historians were always looking for Mayan treasures.

The writing on the thing didn't look Mayan, but she couldn't be sure. As she was about to pocket it, though, the thing moved. It twitched in her hand but even the sudden fright wasn't enough to make her drop something of potential value. It moved again, this time curling into a band.

Lisa gasped, and this time she did drop it. The thing clattered to the stone, where it twitched again, jerked, and then flattened once more. She took a step back, but there was nowhere to go. The strip of metal curled, flexed, and began to slither along the ground like a snake.

It slid up her leg resisting her attempt to bat it away with dextrous movements and curls. It climbed her leg, slithered up her side, and when she moved to tear it away from her arm, the thing curled around it and locked itself in place.

Panicked, Lisa tugged at the thing but it was fastened tight, locked in place as if welded together. She shook her arm and pulled on the thing, but it wouldn't budge. As she watched in horror, the band turned molten and dissolved into her skin.

When it did, Lisa stood frozen. The shaft of sunlight from above disappeared. Her eyes rolled back and there was something in her head. It wasn't a voice. Not exactly. But it was there, a presence, like a shadow over her thoughts.

It dug through her mind like a thief going through drawers, reading her thoughts like a book. And as it happened, she couldn't move, couldn't speak; she was defenseless.

As suddenly as it happened, it ended. The thing withdrew. It was still there, but it had… shrunk, somehow. Now it simply lurked like a spider in the dark.

"¡Dios mío!" Lisa whispered.

The last thing she expected was a reply, but it came.

"A mythical construct borne out of a lack of understanding concerning the workings of the universe. An archaic attempt to explain that which was unexplainable through scientific understanding."

The voice wasn't a voice. It was like her own thought, only it was not hers. It was from the thing. And it was in her voice, in her language, but it was not her.

"Your reaction is to fear me," the thing said. "Do not. My intent is not malicious."

"What?" Lisa said to the darkness.

"The opposite, actually," said the thing.

"What are you?"

"To tell you would take more lifetimes than you have. Observe."

The feeling was like a hot knife jammed into the base of her skull, taking away her breath as Lisa fell to her knees in the darkness. What she saw then wasn't through her eyes. She lived it.

The sky above was alien, a roiling mass of dark clouds against a faded red sky. Twin suns hung there, one brilliant and blazing, while its smaller companion was a fraction of its glory. Between the stars, a wave of gas hung suspended, as if the larger were feeding off its dying twin.

Spread out before her was a world covered in water. Two small rocky masses of land dotted the oceans, laughably mirroring the twin stars in the sky. Between these two small continents, though, was a long strip of lush, green beauty. From her height, Lisa could make out the thick mass of trees, the deep canyons with fresh water rivers carving their way through the rock. She knew that if she could fly down to it, she'd find it teeming with life.

There was life on the rocky outer continents, too, primitive and vaguely resembling human. These creatures, however, looked into the sky and blinked with double eyelids. They eked out a living on the sparse grasses and frail trees, finding their shelter in caves and abundance in the oases that dotted the land.

"One day," the thing said in her head, "they will call their world Hyperia. They will come to rule a vast interstellar empire. Now, though, they are simply struggling to survive."

As Lisa observed, 10,000 years of history passed before her. The creatures migrated toward the sea, where they made homes and villages along the beaches. They learned the skills necessary to harvest the salt water for marine life, and eventually to master the oceans for travel.

Their travels brought them to the green land, each of them landing on opposite shores. As the ages passed, the creatures established villages that burgeoned into towns and cities. The coastal areas of the green land receded as habitation took over. The growth of their societies took them deeper into the jungles of the green land, where the peoples of the two rocky continents finally met.

Their interactions were tentative and peaceful at first, each of them trading what they had. The shared knowledge and resources. In those days, however, their beliefs differed. There were those that saw the ocean as a God, providing for their survival. The other sought their understanding in the stars and the pair of suns.

More and more years flew by as Lisa hung above the world. The cities grew, the greenery shrank, the people warred. At first, they killed one another with spears and swords, riding six-legged beasts with carapaces like armor. They unlocked the secrets of gunpowder and killed one another with firearms. More years blazed by as they fought for the dwindling resources of the once-green land to sustain their growing numbers.

One the Eastern continent, mushroom clouds consumed the ancestral home of one faction. Their end wasn't far behind. Those from the Western continent, their ancient rivals now defeated, turned on one another in endless battles for the slowly dying green land.

They turned their attention to the stars, the shattered nation of rivals banding together in a desperate attempt to save their species. Rockets flew, this time not with warheads, but with scientists and explorers. Lisa departed the world with them, floating along on the trail of fire from their engines.

In orbit, satellites bloomed by the hundreds and then thousands. More and more rockets, flew, establishing bases on the three small moons. From there, more ships departed. Many were lost, but others landed on their system's third planet.

This was a green place, alive, untamed, much like the green land they'd known for so long. It was here that they flourished, united now in their purpose to revitalize their race. And revitalize it they did. Another century saw more ships, faster, more advanced, departing for all the corners of the universe. They left communication buoys in their wake.

Then came the breakthrough that would make them true masters of the galaxy. While the ships before had been advanced, in interstellar terms they were slow. Those behemoths had been generational things, intended for long journeys. Their crews would never return to the new home they'd built.

The ships that flew in the next century had only to leave the shelter of their world, and then they rippled. Space and time folded in on themselves around these marvels, and the ships winked out only to reappear vast distances away. A journey of a thousand years became that of a second, and they began to spread like a virus.

The creatures that had once scratched at stones for bits of grass to survive now fell upon worlds populated by vastly different forms of life. More often than not, these places fell before them with barely a whisper of defiance. They encountered others that were their near-equals, but sheer numbers and determination saw these races conquered.

More centuries passed and the Hyperian's empire grew. It consumed entire solar systems, linking them together with massive hubs that used their space-folding technology to move space navies across light years in an instant.

Every so often, there was resistance, which was swiftly put down. They ensured that no other species they'd subjugated reached the same level of development as themselves. Their vassals became dependent on them, subjected to mind-altering technologies that limited their ability to think beyond a certain stage in development. But time caused internal strife and factions arose once more.

There were those who saw their empire as a blight, while others viewed it as a necessary component to universal order. The cohesion of the Hyperian's vast empire began to break down. The split saw their coveted technology fall into the hands of their subjugated rivals. An alliance of these formed, and the greatest war the universe had seen began.

Entire solar systems were wiped out as Lisa watched it happen. Untold billions met their end in fire as artificial novas consumed their worlds. For centuries it raged as Lisa and the uncaring universe observed. The Hyperians, once masters of all, fell before their enemies. Those enemies then turned on one another for the scraps.

The last of the interstellar emperors, in an act of spite, activated a doomsday weapon. A wave of psychic energy flowed outward in all directions, consuming worlds, debilitating species across the infinity of space. If they couldn't dominate the stars, no one would.

The wave inhibited the ability of sentient things to see those things about the universe that had given the Hyperians their power. For millennia, the curse would last. At a certain stage of development, whole species would turn away from pushing the boundaries of science and, instead, turn to in-fighting.

The curse of that now long-dead empire plagued even Lisa's home. She wept as the gravity of that truth hit her, though she didn't know if her actual self was in tears.

"I am all that remains of Hyperian's greatness," the thing in her head said. "A remnant that holds all their knowledge, their memory, and their history."

Lisa slumped, her face in the dirt as the eons of memory filled her mind. She felt old beyond words, tired beyond description. The sheer magnitude of those seconds of knowledge were a thing that consumed her, impossible to process. She lay in the mud, groaning with the weight of it, her body trembling.

"There was no way to convey it without showing you," the voice said.

Lisa couldn't respond. The chaos, the death, the burden of knowing it all made independent thought impossible. Above her, the sun dimmed as an hour passed.

When a new shadow fell over the top of the hole she lay in, Lisa was at last able to push herself to her knees.

"Lisa?" Antonio's voice called from above.

She sat up, her head spinning.

"I'm… I'm here," she said.

"She's okay," Antonio yelled to someone else. "We're throwing down a rope! Can you hold on to it?"

She staggered to her feet, hands on the wall for balance. "Yes."

Antonio and four men from the village had her free of the sinkhole some minutes later. When she awoke, it was a full day later and her grandmother hovered over her.

"Abuela?" Lisa croaked.

"Rest," her grandmother said. "You're home."

Lisa lay back. She was on the verge of believing it had all been a dream. She'd been unconscious in the sinkhole. But then the voice was in her head.

"I've learned from you. I know your desire. And you are beyond worrying now. What you want will come, and together we will make it come true."

Lisa slept again.