KronoQuest (Excerpt)

(This is as far as I got on one of my early attempts at writing a novel. I kept getting more and more ideas for other stories over time and kind of forgot about it, to be totally honest. Don't know if I'll ever pick it up again, but I hope you enjoy this little bit that I managed to finish regardless. )


On October 27th, 1999, something happened that would ultimately forever alter the past, present and future of the Earth, as well as the universe as a whole. After a typical day, or at least as typical as a day of being relentlessly bullied, followed by coming home to a half senile grandmother whose mental being was slipping away little by little each day could be considered, Alex Mason did what he usually did to try and forget his troubles. He laid out on the grass in his backyard and gazed up at the night sky, admiring the twinkling, glittering stars.

He was about as typical a kid as you could find in Suburban America. Fifteen years old, with short blonde hair, freckles and glasses giving him a somewhat nerdy yet mild mannered appearance, dressed in a red sweater and jeans as he lay sprawled out amidst the cool autumn air and assortment of red, yellow and brown leaves that lazily drifted from the trees and swirled in the gentle wind.

He didn’t know exactly why, but for some reason, he found himself doing this almost every night, especially when he had had a bad day. Which, if he was being totally honest, had to be at least three days out of every week. He knew it couldn’t be karma, because he certainly wasn’t what could be considered a bad kid. He was generally nice to people he met, and did very well in school. He never did anything to deliberately anger anyone, so he just couldn’t figure out why someone like Troy Gray would go out of their way to make his school life as miserable as possible.

Troy was pretty much every stereotype of a high school senior come to life. Big, mean, dumb and quarterback for the school football team. He had to be at least nearly a foot and a half taller than Alex, which made it all the more easy for him to intimidate and abuse him .

He never actually physically assaulted Alex, but he did everything his tiny little brain could think of to humiliate and demean him. Alex usually road his bike to school, and today, as he went to retrieve it, he found it’s usual glossy red paint job had been replaced with a bright pink one, as well as it being decorated with stickers of unicorns and other things most would consider “girly”.

Of course, Alex couldn’t prove it had been Troy who did it, but who else was so devoted to embarrassing him and making his life a living hell? Even if he had proof, he knew it wouldn’t do any good. The school had a so called “No Tolerance Policy” when it came to bullying, but everyone knew that was a joke. To Alex, what it really meant was they had no tolerance for the victims of bullying, because just last week, Jeff, a kid in his class who was also a victim of Troy, finally snapped after Troy had insulted his mother infront of the entire cafeteria and gave Troy a swift kick to the groin.

Rather than beating Jeff to a pulp, Troy let the school aid that had witnessed the whole thing deal with him. Jeff was sent to the principal and promptly suspended, while Troy got off scot free.

So, naturally, Alex wished there was some way that he could get some well deserved payback on Troy, and more importantly, not get caught in the process. As he stared up at the sky, the moon practically glowing down on him like a spotlight, he fantasized of various ways to teach Troy a lesson. He knew he could never stand a chance in a fight with someone Troy’s size, so most of his thoughts involved public humiliation or otherwise embarrassing him in some way.

Then, something caught his attention in the sky. He suddenly noticed a particular star he could have sworn hadn’t been there before. A star that seemed to glow with an intensity that far outmatched the others, and was steadily getting brighter. It was than that he realized the star was, in fact, not getting brighter, but coming closer and headed straight for him!

With no time to think, and his fight or flight response taking hold, Alex rolled quickly to the side of where he had been laying, mere seconds before the star made impact where he had just been. To his subconscious surprise, there was no noise or crater when whatever it had been that fell from the sky struck the earth.

In fact, the only indicator that anything had happened was the strange, spherical object that now lay in the grass where Alex’s head had been just moments before. Getting to his feet, he moved to examine it. Upon first glance, he knew immediately this was not a meteor. It was small, about the size of an apple, and perfectly round. It also seemed to be made of some kind of silvery metal and was covered in tiny etchings of some sort of language Alex didn’t recognize. A piece of a satellite, maybe?

Cautiously, he reached out to touch the strange object. Oddly, he couldn’t feel any heat radiating from it. As his hand drew closer, he thought he could somehow sense an aura of sorts coming from the thing. Like an energy field that became stronger the closer his fingers came to contact with it. The instant his skin touched the surface of the ball, there was a blinding flash, and all he could see was white. After that, images began to rapidly appear in his mind, one after another, as though he was watching a slideshow in fast forward.

The Pyramids of Egypt. The Colossus of Rhodes. A T-Rex fighting a Triceratops. The Great Wall of China. Countless historical battle scenes. All this and thousands more flashed though his mind until it felt like his skull was about to implode. Finally, the pictures stopped, and he was in his back yard again. The strange sphere was in his hand now, and for several moments, all he could do was stare at it with a mix of fear and awe.

He did not know what the thing was or where it came from, but one thing was for certain. It was not like anything the world had ever seen. In fact, he seriously doubted that this thing in his hand, whatever it was, had not been created by the likes of any human.

Looking around to make sure no random passerbys had seen what just happened, Alex tucked the orb into his pocket and went back inside the house and up to his room. Along the way, he passed his Grandmother who had fallen asleep in her favorite armchair watching The Price is Right, as she usually did.

For most of his life, Alex’s Grandmother had been his legal guardian and caregiver. He wasn’t technically an orphan. As far as he knew, his parents were still alive, but he hadn’t seen them in a decade.

Alex loved his Grandmother dearly. She was as kind and sweet a grandmother as anyone could wish for, but her age was catching up to her with a vengeance. It started with her forgetting small things like where she left her keys or the TV remote. But soon, it got much worse, and she was now at the point she couldn’t even remember what Alex’s parents even looked like. Alex worried it might be the beginning of Alzheimer’s, a thought which filled him to the core with dread. Not out of concern of what would become of him, but because his Grandmother didn’t deserve to live with such a terrible, mind devouring disease.

With all his might, he pushed the thought from his head and made his way up the stairs to his bedroom. He opened the door to find Chester, the family cat curled up on his bed. The formerly orange tabby was almost as old as Alex at this point, and no longer had the energy to play like he did when the two of them were both younger. His fur had changed from it’s original coat to almost completely grey in his old age, and his eyes were beginning to develop cataracts.

Chester lifted his head upon hearing the door open, and gave a low, rather hoarse meow as if to say hello to Alex, who gave the cat a light scratch behind the ears and a few head pats before returning his attention to the strange object in his hand.

In the corner of the room was a writing desk Alex used as a place to do homework. Turning on the desk lamp, he placed the metal ball on top of the polished wooden surface and sat down, just staring at it for several minutes, trying to comprehend what it had shown him when he touched it.

Now that he took a closer look and had better lighting, he noticed the inscriptions all over the sphere were lined along what looked to be a series of thin rings that criss-crossed all over the orb’s surface. It was also at this point, he suddenly recognized the bizzare symbols for what they represented, at least partially. He didn’t know how, but it was as though he could half read some of the runes, like they were in some language he had studied before but had long since faded from his memory.

Taking it in hand once again, he tried rotating the sections comprising the ball’s form, and found that they did in fact move. So, basically it’s a Rubik’s Cube from outer space, he thought. As he continued to twist and turn the rings somewhat absentmindedly, he pondered where the strange puzzle sphere had come from. As though his fingers had a mind of their own, they continued to manipulate the outer rings, almost as if they knew what the markings on them meant, like an alien form of braille.

While he was doing that, Chester had gotten up from his spot on Alex’s bed, and noticed the strange object in his owner’s hands. Despite his age, Chester’s natural feline curiosity had not faded, and he moved across the room and leaped onto the desk to see what it was.

Alex sat the sphere back down on the desk, smiling a bit at his cat’s inquisitiveness. Chester sniffed the metal ball a bit before batting at it with his paw, causing it to roll across the desk towards the edge. As Alex reached forward to catch it before it hit the floor, it was at that moment that something both amazing and seemingly impossible happened.

When Alex’s hand caught the sphere just as it was about to fall, his finger touched a small button on the very top of the object, activating it. Suddenly, to Alex’s bafflement, the ball began to rise out of his palm and levitate in the air. The rings and symbols etched into its surface began to spin rapidly in opposite directions, and there was a loud noise that filled the air, that almost sounded like the ticking of a clock amplified tenfold.

Finally, a blue light began to outline the orb, growing brighter and brighter, until it was almost blinding. As Alex couldn’t bear it any longer, just as he closed his eyes, he caught a glimpse of the light forming into a beam that struck directly at Chester.

After his sight had returned, Alex opened his eyes again, only for his jaw to practically drop into his lap at what he saw sitting on his desk. There, beside the now inactive mysterious sphere, directly where Chester had been seconds before, was a tiny little kitten.

There was no sign of the decrepit old Chester, just this small purring cat that couldn’t have been more than four weeks old. The kitten stared up at Alex with bright, almost glowing green eyes. It let out a small squeak, before nuzzling it’s face against his hand. It suddenly hit Alex that this kitten greatly resembled Chester when he was that age, same orange striped fur pattern and everything.

Only then did he come to the most logical conclusion. This kitten that was now licking his fingers in hopes of receiving a good back scratching was indeed Chester. As he absentmindedly petted his newly rejuvenated cat, he stared down at the sphere in sheer disbelief. What had just happened defied every law of science and nature, yet he had witnessed it with his own eyes.

Whatever this thing was, it had just reverted his cat back to it’s younger self. Like a proverbial fountain of youth. In the deepest recesses of his mind, a feint, curious voice echoed throughout his thoughts. A sudden desire to discover the answer to a single, burning question…

What else could it do?