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something quite different. No other forerunner object since the crystal room had been found with this level completeness and complexity. It was indeed too important an object
to leave in the hands of a child, or even for that matter, a single
adult. His father searched for a way to explain his predicament
in a manner he could understand. But none easily came or
seemed adequate. He put his hand on his boys head and said,
"Son we don't know what we are dealing with here. You're going
to need to be patient. I will make sure everybody knows that it
was your discovery, I promise."
Chapter 2
    For days on end a storm upon the restless ocean with great surges had raked the coast of Baldur without mercy. Of those who
had endured it, many had called it the worst in living memory.
When finally it had passed and the skies again cleared, the citizens returned from their places of shelter to examine what fate
had delivered unto them. As they arose that morning to their
shock they discovered the extent of nature's fury. There they
found that great swaths of coastline that had lain stable for centuries had shifted in the course of one night. There too along the
sea bottom, the great dunes of silt were not spared from the havoc of the churning waves. From out of these depths many a rare
and beautiful object from a previous age were freed from their
restraining bounds, to be deposited there upon the beaches.
    There farther out upon the open ocean beyond the naked skeletons of atolls a rather mysterious object bobbed to and fro
amongst the newly arisen detritus. Delivered there from some
long ago burial there a sarcophagus calmly floated upon the sea.
Unlikely as it was that an object clad in heavy sheets of bronze
might float, it did so none the less. Its markings though dulled as
they were by the passage of time were visible. They however
would almost certainly prove unreadable to a contemporary viewer. It was true then that this was no ordinary coffin. It must surely have been designed by the forerunners to deliver up its contents intact. There tossed about within for unknown centuries, a
man had slumbered in a deathlike sleep. After long delay his moment of awakening had come.
    As is the nature of things, that all the workings of man in due
course must fall to dust, so was this the destiny of his lost age. All
but Ananda was, or possessed had passed into the darkened void
of lost memory. He alone would be their sole voice. To what context could his lone voice belong? All that was his world had been
forgotten as their time ended. By some cruel gremlin in the works
perhaps, the mechanism of his reawakening had malfunctioned.
The clock within his time capsule, like those of his people had
long since stopped ticking. It then was by no small miracle that
he alone had survived the ravages of time.
    From the depths it had risen. Beyond all its makers expectations
the sarcophagus that held safe Ananda's hibernating body had
outlasted most but not all that his great civilization had created.
Buried for millennia beneath the shifting sand his once mighty
heart, like the echo of a raindrop, beat shallowly. Though they
were perhaps not designed to do so, the seals had held back both
the corrosive action of the sea and the robber of life. Sensed faintly, from within the encrusted capsule, a meager light managed by
chance to filter downward through the darkened sea above and
the almost opaque glass of the face plate. Having slept for untold
centuries this faint glimmer of light was the first to reach the
slumbering retinas of this forlorn traveler. Shimmering faintly,
through the membrane of his encrusted and swollen eyes, this
light appeared as if a skyrocket against the backdrop of black
night. To this flash he reacted most violently. To this stimulus, he
like a caged animal would react. In possession of only base senses, he howled without witness into the emptiness of the deep
ocean chasm. For an hour or more a potent surge of adrenaline
fueled to life