Oracle--Mutant Wood Read online

  How to contact the author

  Website – OracleSeries.com

  Email – [email protected]

  Oracle – Mutant Wood

  C.W. Trisef

  Other titles by C.W. Trisef

  Oracle – Sunken Earth (Book 1 in the Oracle Series)

  Oracle – Fire Island (Book 2 in the Oracle Series)

  Oracle – River of Ore (Book 3 in the Oracle Series)

  Oracle – Solar Wind (Book 4 in the Oracle Series)

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination.

  Written by – C.W. Trisef

  Cover designed by – Giuseppe Lipari

  Copyright © 2016 Trisef Book LLC

  Book 5 – Edition 1

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-4835634-3-5

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 0 THE INFINITY TREE

  CHAPTER 1 OF GAMES AND GOALS

  CHAPTER 2 POWER SERGE

  CHAPTER 3 THE KEEP’S SAKE

  CHAPTER 4 DEEP TROUBLE

  CHAPTER 5 SCARRED HEALTH

  CHAPTER 6 MIST SECRETS

  CHAPTER 7 GOING OUT ON A LIMB

  CHAPTER 8 THE UNTIMELY GUARDIAN

  CHAPTER 9 CHRISTMAS GUARDIAN ANGEL

  CHAPTER 10 LONG LIVE THE MUTANTS

  CHAPTER 11 MESSAGES OF WOOD AND STONE

  CHAPTER 12 SUBATOMIC PROBLEMS

  CHAPTER 13 THE NEOLITHIC TRAVELER

  CHAPTER 14 THE SKINNY ON FATS

  CHAPTER 15 TURNING THE PAIGE

  CHAPTER 16 SERGE PROTECTOR

  CHAPTER 17 THE REVENANTS

  CHAPTER 18 MUTANT WOOD

  CHAPTER 19 MOURNING IN THE EVENING

  CHAPTER 0

  THE INFINITY TREE

  Tunguska, Russia. June 30, 1908. 7:14 am.

  It was a day like any other. The old couple moved about their farm house slowly but dutifully. While the wife cleaned up the morning meal, the husband headed down the front porch. She washed the plates first, then the silverware. He grabbed his boots first, then his shovel. She watched him through the window as he paced away toward their little field, the same twinkle in her eye since the day they met so many years ago. Yes, it was just another typical day at the uneventful farm on the remote hill, tucked away among the dense woodlands of the vast Siberian wilderness.

  And then the sky split in two.

  She saw it first: a shiny spec off to the right, high in the sky, falling at a very slight angle toward the earth. It was moving fast, leaving a trail of bright light behind it. A shooting star, a Chinese firework, a gift from the gods—whatever it was, the country woman found it to be a delightful display…until the window started to rattle, followed by the dishes, then the entire house.

  Alarmed, the wife threw down her dishrag and rushed outside to alert her husband. She burst through the rickety door, yelling for him and pointing at the unidentified flying object, now much larger than a spec. He paused mid-shovel and gazed curiously at his wife, then spun around to see what she was motioning at. His jaw dropped at the sight: a second sun, plummeting to the ground.

  As lifelong Russians but cash-strapped farmers, the old couple had heard about a lot of things but actually seen very few of them. They stared at the oddity, mesmerized by its majesty, paralyzed by their perplexity. Although it was far away, its luster was almost blinding, only increasing as it plunged further and further through the atmosphere. The man stood spellbound until he felt the ground trembling beneath his feet. He glanced around: the field’s foliage was agitated, the smallest dirt clods were bouncing. When he looked back at the sky, the flaming fireball had slipped from view behind the treetops.

  There was dead silence on the farm for a moment as the couple anticipated impact. The husband turned to retreat to the house for shelter. He could see his wife already hurrying back up the porch, but then the world went blank. A blinding flash of white light snuffed out everything from view for a split second. No sooner had the flash blinded their eyes than a supersonic bang deafened their ears, followed by a mighty wind that pushed everything to the ground. The sound of a million trees being snapped in two filled the air. The woman screamed as every window in the house shattered.

  But there was no time to recover from this 1-2-3 punch—no time to prepare for what came next: the heat. A wave of wicked warmth washed over the land, withering the crops in an instant. Still on the ground, the man began to squirm. He clawed at his shirt, which felt like it was on fire. He rolled along the grass, hoping its dew-smitten blades would provide some shred of relief. They did, and then the heat abated. Panting, the old man rolled onto his back, expecting more trouble. But none came.

  When it seemed the danger was over, the worried wife fled down the hill to help her husband. He wasn’t moving; she hoped he was still alive. She found him staring up at the sky. There was a massive plume of grayish white smoke, rising like a mushroom, where the point of impact likely had been. She helped him to his feet. They looked around: as far as they could see, the forest was leveled. Every tree, its branches unharmed, had broken at its base and fallen on its side, all in the same direction away from the epicenter. Their farm was ruined. The barn had collapsed. Their house was still standing, but a portion of the roof had caved in. Amid so much destruction, the two of them were grateful they had survived.

  Word spread quickly among the small towns up and down the nearby Tunguska River. Rumor had it that the mysterious explosion was the work of deity—punishment for wrongdoing, chastisement for misconduct. As such, none of the locals dared to even get close to the condemned area, and no one ever did for many years.

  With one exception.

  In fact, just hours after impact, the first footprints were made at ground-zero. They belonged to an old man whose beard was as long as his hair, both as white as a ghost. He wore a black, flowing robe and kept one of his talon-like hands wrapped around a spirally-twisted cane. His enemies called him evil; his servants called him Lye.

  He moved with unnatural swiftness for such an old person, slowed down only by the occasional snag of his cloak on a branch. He was anxious to learn the result of the explosion, which had been the product of many decades of hard (and secret) work.

  While any normal creature would have required some kind of full-body suit for protection from the many harmful substances on the ground and in the air, Lye used nothing of the sort. His simple remedy was the occasional sip from a personal flask he kept hidden inside his robe’s chest pocket.

  The land had become swampy and boggy, and fallen tree trunks made for more climbing than walking. A mix of dust and smoke hung in the air, adding an eerie ambiance to the surroundings. It was like strolling through a twilight zone, somewhere between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. The warbling of birds had been replaced by the burbling of chemicals. Instead of scattered sunshine, there was radioactive luminescence.

  But Lye cared nothing for the damage he had wrought. Only the outcome mattered now. He moved with ever greater speed, eager to see if he could finally claim victory over such a stubborn situation. His hopes were high, as this was the first time he had employed the help of what he termed the ultimate weapon.

  He knew he was nearing the place of impact because of the trees. So far, all of the trees had been lying on the ground, their trunks snapped but branches unbroken, each one having fallen in the same radial direction away from the epicenter. Now, however, the trees were still standing upright, but their branches had been snapped off. This was because the force of the explosion had been vertical at first, then became horizontal and pushed out in all directions as it mad
e contact with the ground.

  But Lye was only interested in one tree in particular. It was the biggest, the oldest—the tree to which all others could trace their roots. In a sense, it was the mother tree. And, if all had gone according to plan, it should have been obliterated.

  Lye came to an abrupt halt. He couldn’t believe his evil eyes. There was the tree—still standing and still intact. In fact, it looked totally unfazed by the blast. The Tunguska Explosion had been a complete failure.

  His cold blood boiling with hot displeasure, Lye shook his fist at the twentieth-century sky and exclaimed, “Curse this tree!”

  CHAPTER 1

  OF GAMES AND GOALS

  Something was missing. Ret could sense an emptiness somewhere, either in his life or in the world (or perhaps both). There was a void—a gap—that needed to be filled, not just by anything but by a specific thing. It was an important part of something as a whole, like a member of a family whose unique role no one else can quite carry out. In his mind, he could see a system that wasn’t complete, still able to get by but continually suffering because of the absence of this one key component. It was irreplaceable. It was unsubstitutable. And it was missing.

  This emptiness gnawed at Ret. It made itself preeminent in his thoughts. The incessant feeling of something lacking made it difficult for him to ever feel fully content about anything. Frustration set in, striving to fill a space without knowing what belonged in it. Was it a person he needed to find? a place he needed to go? the next element? Whatever it was, Ret found it ironic that although the thing itself was never present, its absence was ever-present, constantly nagging him from sunrise to sunset. Eventually, like reconciling a checkbook with a missing entry, he had to abandon his search and try to be at peace with a skewed bottom-line.

  One thing that wasn’t missing, however, was Ret’s list of problems, which had been growing ever since he returned home from Antarctica and found a large group of protestors gathered along the southern tip of Tybee Island, directly across the creek from Coy Manor. It didn’t seem like anything too serious until Ret learned what they were upset about: him.

  “You’ve ruined our world!” they ranted.

  “No more elements!” they chanted.

  The locals said, “Shame on Coy!”

  The posters read, “Save a pyramid, arrest Ret Cooper!”

  The protest quickly evolved into a sort of occupation. Tents began to appear on the beach, placed among the signs and banners that had been staked in the sand. Activists came and went, intensity ebbed and flowed, but at least a few picketers were always present, refusing to back down until the Manor gave up.

  The Coopers and Coys had figured it would only be a matter of time before animosity began hitting closer to home. They were grateful to live on Little Tybee Island, which provided some measure of security since it was inaccessible to the public (unless you had a kayak or had ever Ben Coy). The two families did their best to ignore the unpleasant rally that had taken up residence on the shore next-door, but even their most cursory glances at the daily headlines or nightly news reminded them that anti-Oracle sentiment was engulfing the entire globe. In a way, this was nothing new; people had been complaining since the days of Sunken Earth. But now that the world knew exactly who was to blame, the accusations had become extremely pointed and personal.

  Every human being had at least one reason to be upset with Ret. Demonstrations were popping up in nearly every major city. Corporations were promising big bucks for people to take action. Economies were buckling, industries crumbling, and governments suffering. The whole world was in commotion, not to mention that the rapid climate change was throwing everyone’s lives up in the air. And, thanks to Lionel’s big mouth at the United Nations meeting, everything was Ret’s fault. Although the physicist had made an attempt to explain his actions before the two of them parted ways in Antarctica, Ret still felt like his number-one fan had made him out to be the world’s number-one enemy.

  As bad as all of that was, however, Ret was more displeased by the fact that the game of collecting elements was distracting everyone from the goal of changing people. While the game was to find natural elements and restore them to a ball in order to achieve world domination, the goal was to find social elements and restore them to the earth in order to achieve world peace. But the longer the game went on, the less Ret wanted to play it. It was turning the Oracle into a sort of Happy Meal, which kids either accept or reject based not on the chicken nuggets but on the toy, thus letting the lesser purpose of fun overshadow the higher purpose of food. It was the same with the Oracle; Ret could sense these dual purposes (one lesser, one higher) more and more whenever he recited the prophecy, which was often:

  What now is six, must be one;

  Earth’s imbalance to be undone.

  Fill the Oracle, pure elements reunite,

  Cure the world; one line has the rite.

  The lesser purpose pertained to curing the world as a planet—reuniting landmasses and purging waste-places. After being divided for centuries, the earth’s continents were now on track to come back together. Meanwhile, a global cleansing was underway: the Great River flushing out the Sahara Desert, and the great thaw making Antarctica inhabitable once again in its northern drift into warmer climates.

  And although there was much more to this lesser purpose, it would all be utterly wasted without the higher purpose, which pertained to curing the world as a people—a reversal of culture rather than continents. While this was the goal that interested Ret most, it also happened to be a concept that repulsed most everyone else and sent them back to the game, allowing them to pass GO and collect more elements, singing ‘too hard to correct it, so I’ll just neglect it,’ to borrow a phrase from Leo’s song.

  Why? Well, it’s easier to cure a ham than to cure a heart; in other words, the higher purpose is more difficult than the lesser one. The lesser is carried out by Mother Nature, but the higher comes by way of human nature—the former originates from without while the latter must come from within. While the lesser might require us to buy earthquake insurance, the higher requires us to ask ourselves tough questions.

  Unfortunately, this idea (nuggets before toys) has never seemed to sit well with generations past or present. But Ret belonged to a different generation—the one that would rather sweep problems off the earth than under a rug, the one that would rather dig into difficulties than get bailed out of them, the one that would rather attack the roots than whack the weeds. Unlike those before it, Ret’s generation would rather make a difference than make a fortune; they would rather get somewhere than get something. He knew our issues as a whole were not any bigger or stronger than us as a people, for, in fact, that was the very issue: us! It was our hearts that were at the heart of the matter—our natures that were the nature of the problem.

  Ret had a major dilemma on his hands. The unstoppable execution of the lesser meaning of ‘cure the world’ meant that the carrying out of the higher meaning needed to be kicked into high gear. If lesser were to finish before higher, the results would be disastrous. Clearly, the coalescing of the two was going to take some mad skills—the kind of stuff that heroes are made of.

  For what good would it do to bring the continents together if nations still want to nuke one another? It would do no good at all; in fact, the fruition of ‘what now is six, must be one’ would only make matters worse. Or what good would it do to bring every nation side by side if people still want to keep their borders strictly closed? And what good would it do if the northern half of Africa turned into a very fruitful land tomorrow if that region is still plagued by the greed of today?

  Ret was quickly coming to the conclusion that if he wanted everyone’s focus to shift from the game to the goal—from ‘fill the Oracle’ to prepare a people—then he had better do the same. He figured ‘pure elements reunite’ would happen with or without him; if the Oracle didn’t see to it, then Lye and another one of his clones would. But what about ‘earth’s im
balance to be undone’? How was he going to convince people to believe him and trust him?

  That was a tall order for someone who was wanted in 29 countries. No, when it came to relationships with others, Ret wasn’t doing so hot in that department these days (just ask the protestors across the creek). While most people might describe him as a loner, that was neither fair nor accurate. Ret was truly a people person—one who wasn’t afraid to look you in the eye, one who liked to crack a joke and share a laugh, one who would rather listen to you than talk about himself. Yet, the world rarely saw that side of him. They saw the wallflower, not the social butterfly; the guy with countless acquaintances but few, if any, friends; the recluse who preferred to keep himself aloof from people, even though inwardly he had volumes that he wanted to share.

  The reason Ret kept to himself was because he was different. He was not ashamed of his differences, but the world told him he should be, so he seldom shared them. He had learned long ago that to confide in people was to run the risk of being ridiculed—to be called crazy, that his dreams were too unlikely and his ideals too progressive. In many ways, Ret felt ahead of his time, like Sapiens among Neanderthals. He didn’t expect everyone to understand but just wished everyone would try to. For him, opening up was like a duck hunt, where the fowls are shot down as soon as they come up.

  You see, the thing that bothered Ret the most was how the game of modern life was distracting everyone from the goal of helping people. Because of the places he’d been and the people he’d met, Ret now lived in the real world, but everyone around him still seemed to live in their own little world. At the very least, he wished society was more mindful of the hordes of people on the earth who were in such great need. He wasn’t advocating we forfeit our own blessings, only that we use them to bless the lives of others.

  As much as Ret wanted to live a normal life, he possessed a gift that made it impossible for him to do so: vision. He could see things that most people couldn’t—not apparitions but aspirations, things that could and should happen. This was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because he knew what needed to occur in order to ‘cure the world’; a curse because whenever he told the world he wanted to cure it, they usually called him a crazy.