The Second Jewel of Earth

"So much collected wisdom and still no answers!" observed a very familiar male voice behind him.  The hair on the back of his neck rose.  No, it couldn't be!  That was yesterday in another reality.  He shivered involuntarily, hoping he was wrong about the voice. 

"I was just leaving," explained the Traveler abruptly, blinking his eyes and moving to gather up his notes, without directly addressing the speaker.  "The librarian said it would be all right if I just left these here," he added, gesturing toward the book collection.  He paused, handling a thin black book on the translation of the Rosetta stone, a marvelous find in an Egyptian archeological dig in the late eighteenth century.  That single stone tablet translated Egyptian hieroglyphics into ancient Greek.  The ancient Greek was then translated into modern Greek by historians, modern Greek into English.  Suddenly a modern man could read the thoughts of the ancient Egyptian - a whole world rediscovered.

"That's what I need!  I need a translation from one language to another," he said beneath his breath. 

"Asked and answered, a very long time ago!"

The Traveler's eyes widened!  He stared at the table top before him, unable to turn and face the speaker.  Asked and answered?  No!  That was another time and place!  He was never part of this reality.  His reality!  A cold fear gripped his heart.  They had found him.

A tall young man came out from among the assembled book racks, thumbing through the opening pages of some ancient leather-bound text he had found there, and sat down opposite him at the table.  The stranger could have been twenty or ten thousand years old, the Traveler could not tell his real age.  These creatures were timeless. 

"Yad'el?" gasped the Traveler.

"Also asked and answered!  Have you found what you are looking for?"

"You're not supposed to be here.  This is the future."

The companion looked about him with a sincerely puzzled expression, examining the surroundings carefully before responding.  "Time still runs on, Traveler.  I can be anywhere you are!"

"No!  I mean, you are just a figment of my imagination, part of that other reality," argued the Traveler, unsure of his own reasoning.  He licked his lips and scratched his eyebrow nervously.  "You are part of another world.''

“Said not!”  The young man sitting across the table slowly shook his head.  "No one ever said it was another world.  The Counselor said you were returning home and so you did, and so you are, and so you shall.  Only the time and location have changed."

"Only the time and location!" shouted the Traveler tensely, leaning forward across the table.  Another library patron shushed him from an adjacent study carrel.  He lowered his voice and leaned further toward his companion.  "Only the time!  I almost died in that other reality of yours.  Tell me that wasn't real!  It couldn't be!  That ancient past you showed me had nothing to do with this time and place.  Did it?  Tell me what it all means!"

His voice broke with tension and he began to sob, surprised at his own ragged emotions.  The pressure of the last twenty-four hours, or was it six months, was telling on him.  Too much coffee and too little sleep.  A desperate search for some sane explanation to yesterday's insanity.  He dropped back into his chair, staring at the peaceful face before him.  He recalled the awful battle with Ba'yel the Terrible that ended his last adventure and how this calm young man before him had become something  . . . something . . .

"You fought Ba'yel!  You became something else."

"Yes, Traveler,” affirmed Yad’el.  “It all happened, just as you remember it.  Not as some alternate reality, some dreamlike metaphor, or some mere idle speculation on your part; it is part of the history of your world."

"Yad’el, I've read all the histories I could find," retorted the Traveler, pushing a copy of some ancient text toward the mysterious creature sitting across from him.  "It never happened.  No one reports it that way!"

"That particular book is a product of the distorted timeline,” said Yad'el calmly, gesturing toward the volume being pushed across the table without touching it.