The Revolutions of Time by Jonathan Dunn (leveled readers TXT) 📖

I lost no time on preparing my efforts, for there was none to be lost, and set out immediately to remove the carpeting from the floor. Upon examination I found that it was not attached to the ground at all, but only fastened into a wooden frame at the walls that held it tightly in place. It stretched in a circular fashion around the whole of the room and into the center until it came to the stairs that led downward, so that once removed it formed a circle about thirty feet in diameter with a three foot circular hole in its center. In case I haven’t mentioned the type of the carpet yet, which I must confess that I cannot remember, I will do so here: it was not a traditional carpet, that form being apparently lost after the great wars, instead it was a silky sheet-like carpet, no more than a quarter inch thick, and in fact greatly resembling the sail of an old clipper ship, the painting on the glass that I saw earlier probably attesting to the fact that it had been designed with that appearance in mind. Like its prototype, the sail, it caught a lot of wind and acted in the same general manner.

Using the bowie knife that was built into the large frontal buckle of the anti-electron suit, which, by the way, I was still entirely wearing, I cut the carpet down its center, making two semi-circular pieces, each with a moon shaped appearance, much like a wing. I based my idea in part on the observation that the Canitaurs and Zards had apparently lost, or disregarded, the springs of my time and instead used a hammock of springy, elastic cords that spread across the face of the furniture. Simply put, they stretched elastic ropes across an empty frame, almost like a trampoline made of individual cords. This created a very comfortable springing feel, for they gave enough bounce to render the surface pliable, but not overly soft. Taking the bowie knife again, I thrust it into the couch, and cut away the cushioning to reveal the support. To my great relief, I found that it was constructed in a manner similar to the other couches that I had seen. There were about two score of the cords, each being between three and four feet long. These I unattached and laid them down in a pile.

Next, I took the four main support beams for the couch, one running along each side and two down the center in a crescent shape, with the same curve and slope as the carpet, as they were designed to contour the same wall. Then I disassembled the table and took from it two of its main beams, which were about a foot shorter than their curved counterparts. These I did not fully remove, instead loosening their screws and swiveling them to extend outwards from the table at a right angle, tightening them again afterwards so that they were secure.

Once that was accomplished, I went to the frame that had held the carpet down and took the pins and fasteners which were used to secure it. These I placed on the crescent beams from the couch, which used the same standard size. Once I had secured the carpet sections to the beams, I attached the couch’s beams, via the cords, to the long beams sticking outward from the table, running the ends of all the cords through another cord that could, upon being pulled, adjust their height by pulling or releasing, thus controlling the distance between the upper and the lower beams, and changing the amount of slack in the carpet that was stretched between them. I then removed the legs from the tabletop, leaving just it and the beams together, the carpet being attached to the beams.

Thus my plan was completed, it being, in case you hadn’t guessed, a primitive hang glider, the carpet being a sail and the beams the wings, the whole being steerable by either raising or lowering one side or the other, and the altitude being adjustable by raising or lowering the two simultaneously. I felt keen joy at my skills in air travel at that moment, and as I stepped back to admire my work, I felt that peculiar satisfaction of having made something and finding that it was good.

But that moment was short lived, for another problem quickly presented itself, namely, how would I remove the hang-glider from the tower and launch it. It was far too large to go down the stairs and needed to be propelled to a high speed or dropped from a high altitude to become airborne. Since I had no way of propelling it, I needed to launch it from the top of the tower, which provided plenty of altitude, but then the problem of how to remove it from the tower arose. For a moment I was stumped and almost admitted defeat, but then it came to me.

The tower’s only weakness was in its lack of protection against a deliberate rocking motion. If I was able to swing it back and forth fast enough by slowly gaining speed and multiplying the momentum, it would be possible to get it to lean far enough that the dome would snap off, leaving the room open to the air. This was possible, though rather unlikely. But I tried anyway.

Starting on one side I began to move from one edge to the other until a faint rocking motion could be felt. Then I increased my speed in proportion to the speed of the tower itself. It was a slow start, but the momentum began to grow, and as it did each successive sway became faster and faster. Soon it was going so fast that I began to have unstable footing, the whole tower creaking like a tree that it is blown by a heavy wind. The speed kept increasing until it reached its fastest, swooshing to and fro with all of its accumulated force.

It was then that the break happened, for on one of the thrusts the top snapped off and the upper dome was flung downwards to the ground. As soon as it was off I shoved the hang-glider with all the force I could muster towards the edge. At first it fell, but a few feet from the edge its wings caught the wind and it was brought up to a stable soar, and just at that instant I landed on it, for I had jumped right after it. I hit with a thud and felt the craft bounce downwards a little as I hit, but it soon regained its stability and sped on through the air as behind me I heard a great crashing sound.

I pulled the left wing down and the glider began to turn in that direction. Since I had launched into the opposite direction of the mainland, I needed to wheel around completely, and as such I held the wing down until I had done an about face towards the east. What I saw was a striking picture: the sun had just begun to rise, and under the influence of its soft textures the city of Nunami looked as it had before: quaint, picturesque, and inviting. But there was a great difference now, for the tower itself had completely collapsed under the momentum, and its ruins had fallen down upon the Temple of Time, demolishing it and leaving only ruins. It had also fallen on a strip of the city, taking with it several buildings and leaving only rubble. The King, Wagner, and Bernibus could just barely be seen amongst the crowds that had dashed out of doors to see what was going on, and I could tell that Bernibus was smiling at my escape as he looked at my wind sailor a thousand feet in the air. A friend who rejoices in your advancement, even at his own cost, is rare indeed.

Turning my gaze upwards, I left Nunami and its troubles behind me and looked ahead to my promised land, and though it was barren and devoid of any significant foliage, it still held something equally dear to me as landscape: safety. The wind currents were strong and my speed was about 30 miles per hour. Great expanses of grassland sped by below me like the memories of yesteryear, and within half an hour I found myself over the ocean.

There is something very refreshing about the sunrise that correlated very well with my present feeling of emancipation, for it is a symbol of the new and fresh, and of the forgetting of the troubles of the past. This was true in my case, at least, for I was soon carefree once more, secure in my freedom. As the wind rushed across my body, I was relaxed in my adopted element, air, though it was slightly difficult to keep myself firmly on the glider, as I was lying unfastened to the tabletop. Below me passed the ocean, looking generally the same as ever, though paler and less alive, like a ghost of its former self, but still close enough to bring the calm of reminiscing.

Soon even the ocean began to give way to the fast approaching mainland, and I abandoned my restive meditations to solve the problem of how to land. I had not made any contraptions for that purpose, having not thought about it in the hurry to leave my prison. I decided to use a traditional circling approach, in the same way scavenging birds descend on their prey. When I was a mile or so inland, I began to circle about in wide spirals, narrowing them as I drew closer to the ground. In this way I had slowed down enough by the time I made contact with the ground that neither I nor my craft was injured in the landing.

The terrain proved to be as desolate as it had appeared from the distance, for the main vegetation was a weakly sprouting grass that was only a few inches high, though not mowed or chewed down. Every few dozen yards there was a single stunted shrub or small tree, or in some cases a group of the same, and the spaces between these was littered with scattered rocks and occasionally a smaller, flowering plant. The topography of the land was mostly flat, though not in the sense of a plain or savanna, instead it was merely a gentle slope, so that the immediate area seemed flat, but in the distance it was seen to rise considerably. There were also a few small hills that were no more than twenty feet high across their whole length, but in the obtuse slopes of the land, even that seemed to be almost mountainous. Brown was the prevailing color of it all for as far as my eye could see, though I cannot say if that condition prevailed inland further, since I had forgotten the telescope, which would probably have proved a useful tool.

A slight wind blew from seaward, scattering the dry top soil about like a cloud of gnats, though there were very few actual insects, and no animals that I could see. The only sound that I could hear was that of the wind howling gently past my ears. I had landed in a sort of valley, which, though not at all deep, was surrounded on all sides by slight hills that prevented me from getting an extensive look at the landscape beyond. Before making any decisions as to which direction to set off, I decided to climb to the top of one of these hills to ascertain my exact situation, and although I was generally reluctant to start off into unfamiliar territory, I also wanted to put as many miles between me and the coast as possible,