The three continued to make some more small talk around the campfire as the afternoon wore on, but there was a feeling of unease. Samuel knew he was going to wind up in a dangerous situation sooner or later, and probably sooner. And on top of that, he was worried for the two ladies - he didn't intend for them to get dragged into this, but they didn't seem like the types he stood a chance of talking out of it, and if they were gonna be like that it'd be safer to have them all working on the same plan. And they seemed as concerned for him as he was for them, too...
"Well," he said, standing up, a little stiffly, "think I oughta take a look around...I don't know if they're in the area, but no sense takin' any-"
"Shhh!" Nikki hissed, suddenly. "Listen!"
The two young adults fell silent. "Hey, yeah," Erica whispered. She could hear it, she just hadn't been paying attention. She felt a little embarassed that the little girl was better at all of this survival stuff than she was, but at least she had Nikki here to help her.
Samuel had to work harder to catch it, but he could just make out the sound of rough, raucous voices, not right nearby but not as far as he'd like. "That's them," he said, keeping his voice low. "'s it sound like they're lookin' for us?"
Erica shook her head. "Nope. They're trying to find some treasure, I think...if we can surprise them, it'd probably be safer..."
He nodded. "If you gals really insist on this, you go ahead and stun 'em and Cutler and I'll try'n take care of 'em from there."
Erica nodded, thought for a moment, then sighed. She pulled the dress over her head and left it in a pile on the ground. Samuel did his best not to stare, but he couldn't hide his surprise. "U-um, E-Erica," he stammered, "y-you, uh..."
"Don't want it getting caught in the bushes," she said, blushing a bit under her fur. "Nikki, I guess you wouldn't listen if I told you to stay put?"
"Nuh-uh!" the little skunk-girl said, only just managing to keep her voice down. "I don't want you to get hurt, either a' you!"
"Okay," Erica sighed. "Then what I want you to do is, I'll attack from whichever direction most of 'em are facing, so I can hit their eyes, and you attack from the side where they're not looking. That way we don't hit each other, and they have two directions to pay attention to. Soon as we're done, we run off into the brush." Nikki nodded.
They started to make their way towards the voices, trying to be as quiet about it as possible, while Samuel went to go get his dog. Erica turned to him. "S-Samuel," she said, "stay safe...'kay?" He nodded and smiled slightly. "Thanks," he said. "I'll sure try."
This was a very weird assignment.
Jon had never actually read 2001 before - she'd caught the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie on TV one time some years ago, but never actually finished it, either. Maybe it was just that she was young and impatient (as compared with herself now, at the sagacious age of seventeen,) but it was just too sedate to hold her interest, at least the part she'd watched.
Not completely to her surprise, she found she was enjoying the book much better; it actually explained what was going on, and it was pretty engaging, too. The author painted an evocative picture of proto-humanity - ape-things of animal crudity, not truly capable of what most would call higher thought, and yet not entirely devoid of what would become recognizeably human traits, either - some early foreshadowings of human reason and sentiment...and less inspiring but equally recognizable things like pointless, xenophobic violence, too.
The bigger question, though, was ricocheting this way and that throughout Jon's brain as she attempted to pay attention to the story and consider it as relating to the assignment: did she know!?
It was crazy to think that. There was no reason her teacher should have any idea about the stone or its potential, if she had even seen it. Yet the nature of the assignment and the way she worded it...it seemed impossible that it could be anything other than an oblique message to the slug-girl.
But if that were true, then...what was the message? Moon-Watcher in the book was not a truly exceptional specimen, merely a healthy, fortunate ape that proved to be more amenable than most others to the experimentation of the mysterious forces behind the alien monolith. A suitable subject in the right place at the right time to be handed the future of the entire world...
Maybe that was the message. Jon knew, to be sure, that she was no Chosen One of improbable wisdom and talent from the pages of some potboiler fantasy novel. Indeed, her biggest accomplishment thus far had been the result of one stupid, thoughtless mistake. And even though Brittany seemed to think that her receiving the stone was somehow or other the way things were supposed to work out, that she was its rightful keeper, it was through no special merit of hers, was it? She was just some guy who found himself in the right set of circumstances to be handed the keys to reality...
...to do what with them? That was where Moon-Watcher's part in the story had left off: "Now he was master of the world, and he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something." What would she do? Was that the teacher's real question?
She really didn't know. Thus far Jon had been focused entirely on waiting out these five remaining months and finding the optimal wish to return everything as close to normal as she could manage and still avoid screwing people's lives up worse. Really, she didn't think she wanted to be "master of the world" - perhaps he could have used the stone's power to spice up his own life a little, but he had pretty much liked the world the way it was.
But if what Brittany said was true, then this change was simply the natural course of things. The world passed through its own phases in the course of history, and in that case trying simply to bring back things as they were...it would be like trying to hold back the tide. Perhaps, if she was in this place at this time, with this power, perhaps it fell to her to guide this inexorable but blind force of nature to give the new world a shape that would provide room for further growth and advancement. Like the forces behind the monolith, observing and experimenting to give ape-creatures the nudge they needed to begin to realize their potential, she could use the stone and its power to make sure the new world was a good one.
Or was that over-selling it? After all, how much difference was there, really, between Brittany's world and hers? Magic had existed then, but it didn't seem to make so great a difference that the Briton girl couldn't recognize this world as fundamentally like her own. What had even changed? Science had gone from its humble beginnings in ancient times and its coming into flower in the Mediterranean and Middle East to become the driving force of human development, she supposed, philosophy had made its own strides too, but people...were people really all that different than they had been in Brittany's time?
Maybe scale wasn't the point. Maybe the world didn't have to change radically. Maybe something like magic might be of more use now that the scientific world's analytic mindset was honed and ready to take on just such a new and mysterious force and learn how to truly harness it. Maybe all that was needed was that little nudge, to prevent stagnation, to change the world just enough that humanity could move closer to realizing its potential again...
Jon gasped as she realized she'd been sitting there daydreaming about shaping the future of the world, and had gotten next to nothing done on her assignment. Groaning and grumbling to herself, she set about trying to get something written.
