Jötnar

The Moon, Mare Tranquillitatis , September 17th, 2047

Bjarne couldn't keep his eyes of the blue veins that ran over his old wrinkled hands. What life existed between his memories and him having become the owner of these old hands Bjarne didn't know. All he had from what laid between were faces, feelings and the both confusing and confused tales from the other three people he shared his predicament with. While Bjarne realized this was the present, that he was an old man now who had lived a long life leading him here, everything felt as if he was still in fact himself. His young self, not the old and wrinkled owner of these hands, the owner of these fingers he kept spreading before him.
Like he was looking through the eyes of his future self, seeing what might one day be. But this wasn't the future, this was 'now'!

His body knew. These pictures in his head, the feelings he felt when recalling them, they knew. Erased! Yes, and what a life he must have lived to find himself in this future. Not the future he had imagined when he was still himself. When he was still young. Bjarne felt the distance between his memories and his 'now' as a wide schism. A schism where two warm lights were hovering and emitting the warmest of lights. There were two people in those lights, no not whole people, just pictures, and feelings. Feelings of love. Feelings of worry too. But mostly of love.

"It really is a mindfuck, isn't it?", the Rastafari in the well-tailored black suit spoke.

"What is sir?" Bjarne responded as he tried to ground himself in the here and now. "Ah, you mean being erased? Yes, you are right sir."

"Could you please stop calling me sir, sir? It doesn't feel right a man your age calling me sir. I get why it comes naturally to you with the erasure and all, but I would appreciate it if you were to call me John. Could you please call me John sir?"

"Yes, yes, of cause sir … err, John, as long as you call me Bjarne, OK?" Bjarne spoke as he made a small step towards John and stuck out his hand.

"Stay away from him!" The short-haired lady snapped. "Don't touch him, sir! I told you, he is extremely dangerous, more dangerous than you could ever imagine."

As Bjarne looked at the lady, he saw a genuine look of fear in her eyes. Then he looked back to John and all he saw was confusion.

"I don't think John means us any harm mam. Look at him, mam?"

"Don't be tricked by his lack of recent 'memories'. He is a New Zion agent. He might not remember being a New Zion agent, his reflexes sure remember. Even though he is still tied up, he could snap your neck like it's nothing if you came to close."

Bjarne looked at John once more. He didn't look all that dangerous anymore. The lady in his head had warned him about this man and now this lady as well. He might have been dangerous 'before'; before Bjarne and the man in the suit got erased, but now? He sure didn't look dangerous. Didn't feel dangerous either.

"Mam, are you sure he is dangerous now? We are all in the same predicament, surely everybody realizes that now?"

"If she is what I think she is, and if I am what she thinks I am, then, yes, she has reason to be afraid of me, Bjarne, but you and the young man have nothing to fear from me." John spoke. "If I really have agent fighting skills and she is a quant or a New Babylon operative, then she has reason to be afraid. These monsters killed my dad. They murdered my dad. Look at her Bjarne, just look at her. Look at that air of superiority that she carries herself with. I know you don't remember anything of what I do remember. Your memories are older than I am. But she? Her people? They are worse than the Nazis you learned about in school!"

Now Bjarne looked at the lady again. How he wished he could remember anything about the more recent world history. One of these two was a good guy. The other one wasn't, but who was who?

"Don't let him get into your head Bjarne. His people hunted down the people who brought stability to the world. They would have killed us all without even a trial if we hadn't fled the planet. Just don't listen to him Bjarne. You heard him, he wants to hurt me because apparently, his father died in a war that 'they' started."

"He didn't die in the war!" John shouted out angrily. "He was assassinated by a PUPR agent. Murdered in cold blood by these monsters! I swear, lady, if I get the chance to revenge my father I will"

"Enough!" Bjarne said in a stern, yet not too loud voice. As he said it he realized this wasn't the young him speaking now. This was the old man without his memories. The young him was gone and Bjarne felt empty beyond empty. Bjarne looked around the room and saw the young man standing against the wall.

"You! Young man, are you aligned with John or the lady?", Bjarne spoke with an air of authority that was strangely friendly at the same time.

"No, sir", the young man responded. "I'm just a student Professor Fjelstad." Professor! Wow. For a short instance, the young boy was back. Or was he? "Replace fear with wonder!". Was that a memory? It felt deep. No, not a memory, training, deep training like John's agent skills that remained despite his erasure.

"Good," Bjarne said, "what is your name young man? Could you tell me about the history that exists between their two factions!".

"I'm Robert, Professor. Robert Gottschalk. And I don't think we should be discussing politics right now Professor." The young man looked at the lady than back at him. "We need to get out of here before it gets dark, I truly can't stretch the importance of that. If we don't Professor, we will all die a horrible death. We really need to wake her up. There is a real monster out there so if you ask me we should forget about anyone in here being a monster as long as Fenrir is out there ready to tear us to pieces at the fall of night."

"Enough of that nonsense" the lady called out. That name though: 'Fenrir'. Its mention struck Bjarne with fear. His memory might have been gone, the feelings that used to come with those memories apparently were not.

"I don't believe it is nonsense!" Bjarne said sternly. "What's your name, young lady?"

"Gwen", the lady responded as she looked stunned at him. Bjarne realized he had just ousted Gwen from her position as team leader. "Let us listen to what the young man has to say. Robert, you seem to know more about our situation than the rest of us. We are in this together. Debrief us on what you know. Where are we and what is our most imminent problem?"

"We are on the Moon sir, Mare Tranquillitatis, we really need to get out of here before dark! We are inside of a living spaceship professor Fjelstad. It is called Sleipnir and apparently, I am its pilot. But I can't fly it out of here Professor, not without her, I can't fly Sleipnir without her sir!"

While what the boy described sounded alien and like the rantings of someone who was having a bad trip on psychedelic drugs, somehow the young man's story made perfect sense to him. He even understood who 'she' was. The lady in his head, they had to wake Azraella for some reason, but why? It was Fenrir, the feeling of fear came over Bjarne once more, he knew the danger the boy was talking about was something called Fenrir, he knew the memory of Fenrir, his memory of Fenrir had been tied to a deep fear, but while the fear was there in an almost debilitating way, the memory itself was just one more part of the emptiness that filled Bjarne.

"Yes, I understand, we need to wake her up." Bjarne looked at Gwen. "We need to wake her up now!"

"Wake who up? What are you two talking about? I am the only female on this ship and I'm wide awake Bjarne." Gwen responded with a look of disbelieve in her eyes. But then at that very moment, a small shiny sphere materialized halfway between Bjarne's and Gwen's face. The sphere grew to a size a tiny bit larger than that of a baseball and all of a sudden something fell out from under it. Gwen made a quick step forward, crouched and snatched the falling object just a fraction of a second before when it would have hit the ground.

Bjarne took a step back in confusion. What did just happen there? Bjarne looked at John. Then as Robert. Robert looked as stunned as Bjarne felt, yet strangely John's face didn't look surprised at all. Bjarne looked back at Gwen who was now putting her right hand to her ear.

"What is it?" Bjarne asked.

"It's Granddad! It's my grandfather. Hi Granddad, can you hear me?" As Gwen spoke, the glittering sphere went pitch black, yet at every silence, it went back to its glittering state. The sphere had shrunk back to its original size of about two centimeters in diameter. Gwen kept conversing with …. Apparently with her grandfather, but it was hard to make sense of it all hearing only half of the conversation.

"It is hard to explain Granddad, I'm not sure I can fully assess the situation here."

"Are you telling me I really am on the moon?"

"I am not sure Granddad. I cut two of them loose, but I'm afraid they might have lost their marbles due to some kind of truth injection."

"No time to tell you about that Granddad. They both seem to think we are in danger up here, but they are both kind of incoherent."

"OK"

"Seriously"

"OK"

"OK"

Gwen looked at Robert while pointing at the sphere that was slowly growing again.

"Put your hands below that sphere Robert, It's important."

As Robert moved closer to the sphere, the sphere grew to a diameter of about forty centimeters. Then a rectangular object came dropping down into Robert's hands and the sphere shrank back to its original size.

"It's display unit" Robert spoke.

"Turn it on" Gwen commanded.

"OK"

"Yes"

"Seriously? No?"

"OK"

Then an image appeared on the screen. An image of a planet of sorts. It looked like the earth, in a way. A white earth covered partially in dark clouds. It wasn't the earth, but the way an earth-like planet could look like if the whole planet would be frozen over. A truly beautiful sight. Then the image changed. Fingers. A huge eye with no iris and the most eerie of pupils.

"Two meters?" Gwen spoke with fear in her voice.

Robert's face went completely white at those words spoken by Gwen.

"It's them!" Robert exclaimed. "It's really them!"

Bjarne looked at Robert's startled face.

"It's who Robert?" Bjarne asked in a friendly tone.

"It's them Professor! It's the Jötnar",

At the sound of the name Jötnar, a shock went through Bjarne's body. As if a silent scream of a thousand voices sounded in agony and each of the voices touched Bjarne's heart at its deepest core in a most personal way.

"But we still need to get off this rock, we need to get off of this rock 'now', we need to wake her up!!"

Gwen looked at Robert and then at Bjarne.

"We'll wake her up soon enough. Right now I first need to give my Granddad my codes. The world needs to know what is going on, and so does Mart-One".

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If you enjoyed this chapter, you can find the rest of this story so far through this index. If you would like to win some SBD, I am running a Beta Reading Lottery each month to help me improve my work and to help you win one of the prices ranging from $ 1.5 SBD to $10,- SBD. You can find this month's beta reading lottery/contest here.

Cover art by Keith Draws