Islands In Time

By Charles Justus Garard

Chararcters from CIRCLES AND REALMS return, including an otherworldly lady named Gabriella. Cale Allison is again on his sister's farm where his brother Paul was abducted ten years before. He projects himself into the ancient Sumeria where his leg is injured. 

He and an Asian lady friend are thrown into the future where the US continent has been flooded. They are both transported by helicopter to new islands in the Atlantic, but not before the young Asian girl is raoed by marauders. There meet GIllian Nash and others from that surreal place. 

What they learn is that the islands are under the control of a despotic regime. However, even these island elite are being watched by the Custodians, aliens or the Anunnaki who inflfuenced Sumer in ancient times, 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Justus Garard
• Release date: Nov 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781792325649

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*

ISLANDS IN TIME

PRELUDE

~

Cale: "It seemed so real, Brother. I wasn’t just remote viewing any longer with Helen sitting next to the bed. It was like I went through some sort of wormhole. I could see a nobleman making exchanges with the bullae. I could see pottery being made."

Paul: Nobleman? How could you tell?

Cale: "His wasm. Family insignia or crest."

Paul: And you had time-traveled?

Cale: Not sure. I was remote viewing and suddenly I felt like I was there.

Paul: "Someone there . . .didn’t see you?"

Cale: Yes. But no one that I knew.

Paul: Cale. Have you been. . .

Cale: No. I haven’t even been vaping.

Paul: Were you limping?

Cale: Yes. I was distracted by seeing Sumerians up close and walked into a cart laden with vegetables. Even when I found myself back with our sister in this world, it still hurt.

Paul: Did you see Gabriella?

Cale: No. Not in that world.

Paul: And the first people, like an Adam and Eve?

Cale: "I don’t know. No frame of reference. The first people ... their orbit, their year, would have been 3,600 of our years. So, when Nibiru came around millions of years ago, it would have struck Tiamat and created Earth."

Paul: And?

Cale: The extraterrestrial Anunnaki, as some Sumerians believed them to be, came from a much later journey. They were either their gods or aliens.

Paul: I had a strange dream, Cale: surreal and yet very real. I was in a desert and I saw people dressed in clothes that looked like gowns or robes – if that makes sense. This was in a city that looked spectacular with huge palaces that were reddish color. People were nodding at me as if I belonged there.

Cale: Was it a dream based on what happened to you ten years ago? Did it look like the future?

Paul: Not at all. They were dressed like you see people in those movies about history. Like those religious movies. Movies about Roman and Greek and Egyptian people.

Cale: Then it was the distant past.

Paul: Accept for one thing.

Cale: What was that?

Paul: In the distance, I could saw what looked like the nose cone of a rocket ship, like we used to see in 1950s movies.

Cale: "That’s it, Bro. The nose cone or obelisk that you saw was a shem."

*

Chapter One

~

Cale Allison stood in front of the MARTA station, fishing for a token from his pants pocket that he had purchased earlier. He dropped the token into the slot and listened to the loud buzz. The metal bar gave way as he pressed his crotch against it.

He took the pipe out of his mouth and scratched his beard with the stem. Too hot to be wearing a beard, he knew, even a short one. The pipe had gone out. He tamped the ashes with the end of a fine-point marker pen and dropped the pipe into his book bag bearing the emblem of Luther Owens College on its side.

He descended on the escalator, watching the rowdy black kids screaming and slapping each other. Some of the kids noticed him. In this neighborhood, he was a minority. Only summer schools were in session now, so these kids must be those who needed extra help.

Hey, Mama, a high school student yelled at a girl who was moving away from him. You lookin' fine. I'm gonna take care of you.

The student's friend said something inaudible.

You're talkin' about my future wife, the first student said.

The object of his desires continued to stroll away from him. She had undoubtedly heard this kind of line so many times that it barely registered any longer.

When Cale reached the dark underground level, he removed his sunglasses and leaned against the brick wall next to the elevator, watching the red light farther down the tracks. When it finally turned green, he breathed, as he usually did, a sigh of relief.

The familiar echoing bellow of the train echoed through the tunnel, and the kids moved out to meet it.

Cale waited, wanting to read the destination in the window just above the train operator's station. Indian Creek Station. Good. This train, as did most of them did, was going far beyond where he needed to get off.

The train slid to a halt with a loud sigh.

Cale hurried toward the still-closed door that was nearest to where he waited, quickly surveying the coach through the windows to determine the availability of forward-facing seats. He knew that most of the cars would be crowded with young students and that the businessmen would be getting on at the Omni station or the main hub station in downtown Atlanta.

The doors hissed open simultaneously and a bell sounded.

Cale dragged himself into the coach and swung his book bag around so that it landed on his lap just as he sat on a forward-facing seat. He liked those seats that were near the front of the coach.

He settled into the seat and waited, surveying the contents of the coach. Most of the other occupants were older riders. High school kids liked to plant themselves in the rear of the train where they could sprawl out and continue with their giggling and shouting.

Cale relaxed a moment, waiting until he felt comfortable.

The bell sounded. The train hissed and groaned before it started to crawl. It picked up speed, and soon they were careening forward through the dark. Yellow tunnel lights flew by outside the windows. Faces of the passengers admired themselves in the windows that had become mirrors.

When the train stopped at the Omni station, other students and one businessman poured in. Maybe it was too early in the afternoon for the regular business commuter crowd. One of the students carried a folded costume and another dragged one section of a stage prop; they both, evidently, had been involved in a high school play.

The train lurched forward again. Seemingly only an instant after they picked up speed, the operator announced that the next station was Five Points where one could gain access to the north-south train line as well as Underground Atlanta and several other prominent sites.

One of the high school girls looked at him. It was an appreciative stare.

This still happened occasionally, and Cale enjoyed it down deep inside. He wanted to say: Honey, if you only knew how old I am. Like many middle-aged men, he liked to flirt with the sweet young things, even his female students. Unlike one or two of his colleagues, he did nothing beyond that. His second wife, after all, had originally been one of his students at a community college back in Illinois.

He smiled to himself as the girl continued to watch him. He groped around inside his book bag, moved aside his paperback book on UFOs that he had retrieved from Jerry Bennett’s office, and took out the newspaper The Chronicle of Higher Education.

He wondered what play the girls had put on or rehearsed for that day. He thought about asking them.

A full-page Chronicle article under a standing head Observer described how few people read lengthy books any longer because of competition from the internet and electronic gadgets. Everybody seemed concerned about getting somewhere else in a hurry. Students didn’t like to read. They wanted to play computer games instead of doing homework, and scores were dropping. The colleges and universities were suffering. There were also stories of final grades being changed.

Grade changing was not unheard of at Luthers Owen College. Cale did know that parents had complained to the dean about their children’s lower scores, and the dean had caved in to them. Students who had failed two of his classes and one class taught by his Chinese colleague Dr. Chengyang Hwang were allowed to walk across the graduation stage.

What’s this generation going to be like? the author of the article asked, referring to his students as unintellectual. They don’t have any social skills or work ethic. Some can’t even write a sentence.

Cale rolled up the newspaper as if he were going to hit a fly and re-inserted it into his book bag.

He closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the sounds of the train on the tracks and the murmuring and occasional street slang from the other passengers.  Then he heard the quiet but familiar ring.

Cale removed his cell phone that was also in his book bag.

~

Paul: Where are you now?

Cale: On MARTA. Just left the campus.

Paul: Why on the train? Where’s your old VW?

Cale: It needs a new floorboard on the passenger’s side, so I am nervous about driving it this far. Plus, I don’t want to leave it at the airport.

Paul: Luther Owens is still open?

Cale: Yes. But without its accreditation. Very few students are left for summer classes.

Paul: Do they still pay you?

Cale: Oh yeah. I’m the only Anglo PhD still teaching there.

Paul: Isn’t there an Asian professor there?

Cale: Yes. Dr. Hwang in math. But he’s on his way out, as I will be soon.

Paul: Hwang. I remember you mentioning a Dina Hwang.

Cale: Yes. Dina is his daughter. They’re Taiwanese.

Paul: Seems that she had a crush on you, or the other way around.

Cale: Could be.

Paul: So, you’re headed for the airport.

Cale: Yep. Got my luggage, but I’m not taking too much – just to go to Helen’s.

Paul: And from the Atlanta airport, you and Gabriella are to fly up to St. Louis.

Cale: Right. Helen’s going to pick us up at Lambert Field.

Paul: Your lady friend is going with you all that way just to meet Helen?

Cale: Right. Helen invited Gaby when I mentioned the farmyard where the crop circle was found. I know it was ten years ago. She knows that. But she wants to see the field – to feel it under her feet, she says.

Paul: What made her interested in something to far away?

Cale: Because I told her about what happened on the farm back then – our contact, as it were.

Paul: She’s interested in UFOs?

Cale: Yes. But not just UFOs like you and I would think of.

Paul: What then?

Cale: Well. She thinks they came from Nibiru. The story is that visitors from that planet landed in ancient Sumer thousands of years ago. Some believed them to be the gods called the Anunnaki. Others thought that the Anunnaki were the alien visitors.

Paul: Thousands of years in the past?

Cale: Yes. Gabriella can tell you more. She’s an expert on the Sumerians.

~

Five Points Station, said the operator on the intercom that carried his message to all of the cars in the commuter train. This is your exchange point for the north or south lines.

This was where he needed to disembark and catch the next train headed south to Harzfield/Jackson International Airport.

The coach in the south train was was more crowded than the east-west line, Cale noticed, but the girls with the play costumes and theater props were gone. He hadn't seen them get off at the main intersection, so they had either taken a north-bound train or remained to travel further east.

Cale slipped the cellular phone back into its faux leather case and tucked it in next to the moist newspaper in his book bag. He thought about the reason why he continued to subscribe to the cumbersome academic publication – probably the reason why most instructors and professors wanted it: the numerous pages of job openings, domestically and overseas.

*

An air hostess breezed down the aisle with a rattling cart. Cale indicated that he wanted a Diet Coke for himself and a Sprite for Gabriella.

Thank you, Gaby told him. Anyway, how much did you tell your brother?

Cale shrugged. Not much. Just about your belief in the story or legend – whatever it is—about visitors from the planet Niribu supposedly influencing the ancient Sumerians.

She leaned toward him from her passenger seat next to him. Not a story or legend. Niribu struck the larger planet of Tiamat, which split it up to create the asteroid belt. Part of it eventually became the planet Earth. Those who were sent to Earth from Nibiru, supposedly by the god Anu, were the Anunnaki.

Cale flinched. Ouuww. He looked around to see if any other passengers sitting in a nearby seat might have heard.

What’s wrong?

He touched his left ear. My hearing aid.

Making noises again?

Yes. Sometimes . . . not often . . . I pick up signals from somewhere.

Still?

Particularly when I wake up in the mornings. I hear what sounds like far-away radio stations. Music. Voices.

Wow. Her gaze bounced back and forth from his face to the faces of the passenger seated behind them. What happened to your hearing?

Bad sinus infection when I was a kid in the eighth grade.

Oh.

Anyway, about the Sumerians. . . Cale felt the seat belt pull against him as he twisted toward her. Jerry Bennett, a colleague at Luther Owens College, liked to talk about architecture history and just history in general. He told me about Sumerian architecture, about the red mudbricks instead of concrete. He even mentioned that he had heard of people who believed that they were descended from the original Igigi who colonized the Earth.

But the Igigi, she said as a statement, not as a question. "were designated by the Anunnaki to be the working class, the miners who did heavy labor until they revolted. They were advanced compared to later mortals, but they