Eric Olafson, Neoviking 001b

Prelude Part 2: Egill Skallagrímsson

Year 4990, OTT

The old man was known as the Hermit of the Skalil Rock. In whispered voices they also called him a Wizard and no one, not even the Elders themselves, dared to speak against his council in the rare events when he did appear at the Thing and took the seat of the Eldest.

His name was legend and his life now spanned over four hundred years.

There were still many stories told about the last great clan War, when the Lords of the Rocks fought each other. Not just with sword and axe but with weapons brought from beyond the sky, terrible weapons against neither walls of concrete or Nilfeheim rock could stand.

Egill was a young and strong clan lord back then, avoiding allegiances and not taking sides, but was dragged into the war as men of the Uhim clan attacked his Burg and killed every living soul, while he was away fishing.

Egill, having lost his beloved wife and his sons and everything he loved and held dear, went to war, and became the most ruthless killer and fighter of that war. Single handedly he killed hundreds of the Uhim Alliance and at the climax of that war he dropped a nuclear bomb onto Uhim Island.

The use of a nuclear weapon ended the war and brought the shocked clan leaders together. All clan leaders from both the Alliance of the East and the Western Pact signed the Truce of Uhim that granted anyone access to any part of the oceans. It also cemented the power of the Circle of Elders as the highest authority of law.

Egill, numb with grief, took possession of the Skalil Rock.

No one remembered who had built the small burg on top of the tall rock, but it was said to be haunted and remained unoccupied for ages, on a world where dry land was the rarest commodity.

Today no one remembered his full name, or that it was him who had nuked the Uhim clan into oblivion.

Yet he was once the clan Chief of the Skallagrímsson clan, and he was called Egill.

Ever since his wife had died, appearance mattered little to him. He wore worn leather pants, patched with different materials and in a very unskilled fashion, the tunic and the fur anorak were smudgy and torn. There wasn’t much pelt left on the hooded fur cape and it too was stained and torn. Egill’s emaciated face was framed by thin, stringy hair that had the same color as pale yellowish bones. His thin, unevenly growing beard was of the same color, but his eyes glowed with the spark of a bright mind.

For the most part of the past four centuries he lived all by himself on this tall rock formation that could be found in the so called Blue Reaches of the southern oceans.

Skalil Rock was a thin column-like rock, about three hundred meters tall and on top no more than about fifty or sixty meters across. The base of the pillar, at the point where it reached the surface was only about 120 meters in diameter.

Here he had planned to live out his natural life, but it was also here where he met Tyr and it was this god-like entity that gifted him with psionic powers.

To reach the small Burg, that was built on top of the rock pillar, one had to use a basket, attached to a steel cable and an electric winch.

The first year of a new Longnight had arrived; in another twelve or thirteen months the ice flows that already drifted around his burg would have become a solid ice surface.

Egill had just returned from one of his rare shopping trips. His submarine, the only one of its kind on all Nilfeheim, was loaded with the usual dry goods and packed groceries.

He sighed. This was the downside of being a hermit, he had no one to help him carry the things. He was muttering curses and grunted every time he carried boxes and bags to the elevator basket.

Egill did not turn as a deep voice in his head said, “You could get all the help you wanted or even buy one of these robots I heard about. Even use your telekinetics to float the things up in your nest. Instead of cursing the ice of the rock.”

Egill placed a box with salt, spices and ready to eat dinners into the basket and turned. There, next to the sleek Submarine in the churning waves and between the ice floes, surfaced an immense whitish shape with huge triangular shaped fins on top.

The largest predatory fish known to Union science was the Tyranno Fin of Nilfeheim, sleek true fish, some of them bigger than the Blue Whales of distant Earth.

This albino animal that just surfaced next to Egill’s submarine was the largest Tyranno on Nilfeheim and it was sentient.

Egill knew the white fish for almost his entire life. It was Egill who had given the fish a name and called him Tyr.

Egill was one of a handful people who knew Tyr, but many hunters and fishers had seen it over the many centuries man had been on this world. There were stories and legends about the White Tyranno told at the tables of the old taverns that lined the Western Seawall outside the city limits of Halstaad Fjord, where only fishermen and Tyranno hunters gathered.

Egill now did turn to face his humongous non-human friend and said in the same soundless mental way, “And you could use a fraction of your telekinetic powers to help me instead of giving me a lecture.”

Now he approached the edge of the small dock at the side of the Pillar. “I am surprised to see you still awake. Longnight has begun.”

“You short lived humans have not really noticed that the Longnights slowly grow shorter again, as they have been so long ago. I foresee the time when Longnights are of equal length with Shortsummer. Our rather odd orbit, caused in part by the fifth planet that is technically a failed sun and its massive gravitational pull, is slowly but surely deteriorating...”

Egill held his head. “Don’t fill my mind with all those equations. I am not interested in those things. I don’t even understand most of it. I am not like you who hangs around the Union school rock, telepathically spying on the kids and their lessons.”

“Where else should a simple fish like me gain all the wonderful knowledge about the Universe and the United Stars? Thankfully, your off-world brethren are much more interested in in these things than you and this is the reason your kind could bridge the vast distance and invade my peaceful and quiet world.”

“You are more a god than a simple anything. You know full well that all you have to do is reveal yourself to the Union Outpost. I may be a just a grumpy Nilfeheim loner but even I know that a talking fish would not raise many eyebrows out there. The Union would come and most likely remove and resettle all humans. Union law is quite clear on that. You are sentient and you have been here first.”

“It is not that simple. This world was colonized before it became Union. After almost 3000 of your years, this is as much their world as it is mine. I am quite content with the arrangement as it is. Besides, without humans coming to this world I would not be sentient.”

“How can we have anything to do with that? You told me you have been sentient being long before humans set foot on this planet.”

“Because you humans always think in mono directional linear ways when it comes to time. Cause and effect always applies but does not always have to be in a simple line.”

Egill sat down on one of the steel bollards and crossed his arms while he looked at the immense being before him with much affection.

“So you saying future and past are the same thing and that everything is already decided and that existence is preordained? If the future is set then there is no such thing as free will. With a set future, there is no good and evil. Heroes are heroes because the outcome is clear and criminals are not responsible.”

“No Egill, the future is very much like a dough, an unshapely mass of possibilities, but there are many ingredients that need to be there. The outcome is predictable as a cake, but no one knows what shape it might take, if it is a good cake, or perhaps a burned excuse for a baked product...”

Egill, the groceries and everything vanished from sight only to reappear in the main hall of his small burg.

Tyr had once more demonstrated his tremendous psionic abilities. The translocation of almost a ton of groceries was no easy feat.

He simultaneously completed his explanation.

“ ... meaning the framework of the future is there and can be predicted and some conditions are preordained.”

“You are the only fish in the history of the Universe who can compare time with baking a cake. That is the only thing I really understood. The Norse of this world believe I am a wizard and have clairvoyance. They want me to throw the runes and then see the future as this is what a Seer and Wizard is supposed to do. But I am no Wizard and far from wise. What are these conditions you speak about?”

“It is shaped by events and decisions made in the past and in the now by the sum of all that is alive. These decisions are based on a very basic set of rules if you will. For example there is technically no such condition as cold. It is defined by the absence of heat. The same thing is true to many conditions and concepts. Darkness is the absence of light. Death the absence of life and so forth. Nothing occurs without having an effect. The very existence of the Metaverse as it is now depends on a balance. If light completely eliminates darkness, how can it be still light? If there is only good, how can it remain good?

The Saresii of old call it Proka-Aku and a religious philosophy of your own homeworld called Taoism calls it Yin and Yang. I am quite fascinated with the many religions and philosophies you humans came up with. To the Elders of the Universe, this concept is known as the RULE.

Some events must occur or perhaps prevented from occurring, and these events are preordained and therefore can be predicted. It is not clairvoyance.

Was the cake analogy not sufficient?”

Egill rummaged through the bags and boxes of his shopping trip and found the bottle of vodka he was looking for.

“I would lie to you if I said I understand, but it sounds as if it should make sense. So what does this all mean, big fish? Why are you telling me all this? I sense in all this there is the reason for your visit. Not that I am complaining, any reason you find to visit me is a good one.”

“I am about to go to sleep, Egill but while I sleep there will be such an event, it is an event more important than perhaps any other.”

Egill poured himself a generous helping of the clear liquid into a reasonably clean cup and topped it off with cola.

Here inside his burg he didn’t have to be traditional. “Do you want me to wake you when it happens, whatever you think will happen?”

“No Egill, you can’t reach me once I retreat to the Sleep Mountains. My mind is awake like yours, my body and nature is still Tyranno Fin.

I want you to go to the Olafson clan and be present when Ilva Ragnarsson delivers her first born and also be there at his naming day.”

Gretel almost died, she had not found Bendixen Rock, nor seen any other land. She could not even see Olafson Rock anymore.

She had lost count of the day and nights she bopped in rough sea.

While the boat had a power cube with enough energy to steer that boat at least two times right around the globe, it wasn’t very fast, had no cabin and was used to go relatively short distances over the open water so fishermen could attach air hoses to harpooned Tyrannos and Three Fins.

Finding one of the small islands that dotted the otherwise featureless ocean of Nilfeheim was almost impossible.

By now she was dehydrated and so cold she didn’t even shiver anymore.

She had spent at least six or seven days at sea, cold, hungry and completely dehydrated.

But then there was a bright floodlight.

What happened next, she remembered only in dream like, vague images.

She found herself in a clean bed, in a shiny and strange place with friendly faces and mechanical things with hands floating in mid air.

A man came to her bed with a warm smile and said, “I am Dr. Capers and you are at the Clinic on Union Island. We have treated you for hypothermia, dehydration and a host of infections. The school bus flier who spotted you saved your life young lady.”

Gretel started crying.

The doctor said. “We are short on Psych Staff, but I can request an Avatar if you like to talk to a female counselor.”

Another man in white came into view. “You still need to learn a lot about Nilfeheim, she hasn’t understood a word you said.”

The man sat on the bed next to her. “You are a Lowmen’s girl right? That would also explain why you were found trying to cross Nilfeheim oceans in something akin to a nut shell.”

She nodded. “I am Gretel Hemstead of Olafson’s Rock. Please don’t take me back. I can not pay for anything but I can work.”

“No worries, Gretel. No one will take you anywhere against your will. All services are free. You are on Union Ground and not even the Circle of Elders and all clan Chiefs can harm you here.”

She made big eyes. “They can’t?”

“No they can’t. While the cursed Nilfeheim Exception is inhumane and forces us to close eyes to terrible things, here you are a free sentient being.”

“What is to become of me?”

“You relax, take it easy for a while. Eat and sleep and watch GalNet. Social can get you a space bus ticket to any place you like. You can then take steps to become a Union Citizen. I can also run your DNA against the CITI if you permit that. Maybe there are relatives of yours out there.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“Every Union citizen has a copy of their biological data inside a huge library of sorts, not all but many have permissions on file, allowing social services to find family ties.”

“Lord Volund has killed everyone.”

“It is not advertised and forbidden by these Elders, but there are Lowmen every year who manage to leave this world. It is a long shot, but who knows.”

She felt like a different person, everything on this Union Island was clean, sparkling clean. There was wonderful food in a seemingly endless variety. It came out of machines and no one asked her to pay for it.

On the third day, the old doctor came to her room and commented on her good looks and how pleased he was to see her doing so much better. Then he said. “I have great news for you. You have a sister who lives on Holstein, a planet only a few lightyears from here. She awaits your call.”

“A sister?”

“Why don’t you speak to her? I show you how to make a GalNet call.”

She did have a sister. Her name was Lora and she did remember Lora from when she was still very young.

Lora, so her family told her, had simply vanished one day.

This was not unusual. Lowmen, especially pretty women were raped and abused by the Lords and then murdered and disposed in the endless oceans. No one openly talked about it of course. But when she started to develop and begun to fill her simple dresses in an appealing way, her mother had warned her to keep it hidden as best as she could. She knew about the whispered stories when the women scrubbed hides or stomped them into vats of revolting liquids.

It was then she also learned that her looks and boobs could be used as means to get things from men.

This is how she caught the eye of Isegrim and seduced the foolish brute.

Now she had learned that her sister hid among leather bales aboard a freight skimmer and escaped in Halstaad Fjord.

Lora managed to reach the spaceport and Union Social Services provided her with a Non-Cit travel permit and a spacebus ticket to Holstein.

Holstein, so Lora told her, was the destination of many Lowmen who managed to leave Nilfeheim. There they could go to Union school and none of them ever looked back.

Lora had stayed on Holstein and was hired by a dairy farm.

After the long GalNet call, Gretel too left Nilfeheim aboard a spacebus.

Everything was scary at first. She saw beings that weren’t human. Things that moved and talked. Appearing to her like living nightmares, but no one seemed to even notice. Humans acted as if these monsters were people.

But it did not take her long to see that no one was afraid and there weren’t any clan lords anywhere.

The flight to Holstein was short and her sister greeted her with a long hug right after she had landed.

Her sister was a full citizen, even served her twenty two month citizen service as a Union court clerk.

Lora used to be a hide scrubber just like her, but now was a shift manager at a large industrial farm. She was responsible for 20,000 dairy cows and 200 workers, robots and earned 6300 credits every Union month. She owned her own home at the outskirts of Neu Itzehoe, a picturesque town of 300,000 surrounded by rolling hills and meadows full of green grass and light forests.

From Lora’s veranda there was a wonderful vista across the town and a small space port in the far distance.

Lora was dating a local Manure Management Engineer and had serious plans to marry and get kids.

To Gretel, Lora looked more alien than the non-humanoid beings she had seen on the bus. Her sister did not wear braids, but had a modern haircut with bangs and shoulder long hair. Instead of linen dress, apron and bare feet, she wore a pantsuit, coveralls and short dresses, cute looking shoes and even had her own flier.

All this happened almost a year ago now.

Gretel too had changed since then; she had gained weight from all the good and seemingly unlimited food and after she was introduced to Virtu Reality she was addicted to it.

Lora tried to get her into Union school and a young adult class, but Gretel did not like school. She didn’t really like anyone telling her to do things.

It was a Wednesday almost exactly a year since she had arrived; she had herself hooked into Dream Maker and enjoyed the carefree life of a simulated princess. Just as she wanted to join her Avatar friends at a party, the virtual world flickered out of existence and she found herself on the Dream Maker couch and her sister standing by the GalNet terminal, Lora’s finger still resting on the shut-down sensor. “Gretel, we need to talk.”

Gretel blinked. “Could that not wait till later? I was invited to a Bubble tree party.”

“No it can’t wait. Because I know the horrors and conditions back at Nilfeheim, I let you do whatever you like but I can’t have you stay in Virtu for the rest of your life. I see you didn’t go to school again. How do you plan to become a Union Citizen and get work?”

Gretel sat up and glared at her sister. “I don’t want to learn useless things about other planets and I never want to work again.” She cupped her breasts. “I can get anything I want with these.”

“This is not Nilfeheim, Gretel. The Union will provide you with any opportunity and with endless chances to become whatever you want to be, but the Assembly decided long ago that every individual has to work for it. Free loading is simply unfair to all the others that do work.”

Gretel clenched her fist. “All I want is revenge and kill Volund, kill that blonde Ragnarsson bitch and make every Olafson pay for what they have done to father and the others and for every Hemstaad who had to work like a slave.

I want to be Isegrim’s wife and become a Lady of the clan and make them all do whatever I say. That is what I want, not learn useless things and become the Lowman slave for another clan chief you call employer.”

Lora slowly nodded. “I understand that better than you think, little sister. I too had dreams of revenge, but here I am free. I am a woman and equal to men.

All this I have earned on my own. I need not to ask anyone for anything. This freedom and my new life is more important to me than to brood over revenge. Revenge that would take me back to that cold world of ours with little chance of success.” Lora sighed. “You chose whatever destiny and path you want. I gave you a chance to do the same as I did. Now I am going to sell this house. I have signed a marriage contract with Heinz, my fiancee and we move together. I want kids now and a family of my own.

You may change your mind and get on the track of becoming a citizen and a way to support yourself and I will help you with that, or by Sunday you need to find your own way and do whatever you like.”

“I will return to Nilfeheim, but not before showing you how grateful I am for what you have done. Let me show you what the Union Post office delivered this morning. You see I did not reject all schooling and learned quite a lot from GalNet shows.”

Gretel revealed a thin spray bottle and released a faint cloud of liquid mist right into her sisters face. “It’s quite illegal so I was told and the Shaill call it Will Bender. It was very expensive and I had to use much of your Credit savings, but it is the next best thing to those fabled Psionics and just as effective.”

Gretel laughed as she stared in the suddenly blank expression of her sisters face. “This stuff will make me the queen of Nilfeheim.