The Landing Day

By J. P. Rizo

Richard Cadmen, professor of Holistoric Reconstruction, Third Year, guided his class through the sandy trail leading to the beach. Now and then he had to stop, annoyed, to reprehend the lingerers who were picking little shell pieces. 

“Focus, gentlemen. We are not on a beach day with grandma. Henry, where the hell are your shoes? By God! This is not a holiday! Mind the hats, would you? Those are worth more than your empty heads.”

Some young people raised their pointy hats and shook off the sand while descending the steep cliff over the beach. It took them a minute to be in the presence of placid waves, forming a circle around Cadmen. Here and there, some weathered concrete and metal structures protruded from under the sea.

“In case you haven’t noticed, we just arrived at beach Omaha. Someone, please refresh my memory. What’s the target date of this exam?”

“It’s June 6, 1944, sir,” a student said after a long and awkward silence.   

“Tres bien. What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you’re scared. All right, first, make sure the hats are scanning in the proper time range. You have five minutes to go over the notes and support images. Only five minutes! Then, we are going to split. Those who worked the Germans are going to take this side, near the cliff,” shouted Cadmen, pointing to his left. “The Allies… is best for you to stay close to the water. Nobody can leave their spots once the projections have begun because I’ll be recording all for evaluation. And remember,” the teacher signaled the little sphere on the tip of his long hat. “Today you’ll be using Truesight 6.0 Chronolents. You know what that means, right? Very well. No excuses then. Let’s do this and perhaps with Clio’s help you’ll all graduate. 

The historian raised his eyebrows and touched the interface on his inner forearm. He introduced his own data and sent multiple authorization signals to allow his class to operate the devices. The students placed the bizarre wizard hats over their heads and the small crystal balls came to life with an ominous blue glare. Cadmen, thanks to the chronolent’s program, received each neuronal reading and their respective levels of synchronization. That was essential for safety measures. He allowed barely five minutes for them to check their notations and pictures of the event.   

“Eh… Joseph, are you in charge of the ships?” The teacher stared at a frightened young man with his shirt of squares and a military haircut.

“That’s right, I mean, positive. At your orders, sir,” he muttered, doing the salute with the wrong hand.

“That’s all well, at ease, soldier. Everybody to positions! Joseph, are you ready? Yes? In that case, would you be so kind to look at the horizon?”

The boy sided the hat’s wing to shadow his face. In the air, he drew with his fingers and a beam of light sprouted from the bulb over his head. The flashings trembled at an inconceivable speed until it portrayed three dimensions of an incredible old ship far over the sea, a citadel of cannons and radar towers. Young Joseph held his hand to the distance and dozens of other boats materialized their silhouettes.

“Stupendous! Keep them there. Now, let the air forces come!”

A bunch of young ladies, with their witch’s hats and loose hair, raised their hands to the heavens in an excessive theatrical manner. Millions of silver threads were fired up on their way to weave swarm of bombers between the clouds.

“Quickly, now or never, you damn Nazis! Defend the beach!” 

Seated in front of the cliff, the rest of the participants summoned from their memories and with the chronolent’s power: the entire defensive system that received the Allies that stormy morning. The crossed beams of the steel hedgehogs emerged from the suddenly agitated waters. The wired traps were re-established. Some light traces touched the top of the cliffs and from the earth peeped out the bold heads of bunkers and camouflaged machine-gun nests. A forest of artillery opened fire against the flocks of airships. The luminous orbs went crazy, multiplying million of floating pixels in the air with Richard Cadmen in the middle of that maddening psychedelic orchestra.

“It is time! Land the marines! Now!”    

Other candidates for the title of Rebuilder joined Joseph to help the landing forces. Fast boat formations appeared a hundred and fifty feet from shore, and they threw down their gates for the soldiers to run. From the high, the machine gun’s fire and the artillery rained over them in a blizzard of ash and metal. In seconds chaos reigned. Bloody waves and blacked holes in the sand splattered with severed members. Cadmen perceived the horrific sounds of voices coming from so far in the past. Projections fluctuated and started to vanish little by little. At last, only remained an unknown and shaky soldier, that before disappearing looked shocked at the lonely beach around him.

“What the hell happened? The Americans were about to take the beach,” Cadmen was gesticulating in anger, but nobody had recovered enough to face him.

“Professor, can we try again?” Joseph was drying the sweat from his forehead. “One more chance. We didn’t expect those… types of images.”

“A rebuilder must be immune to the horrors of the past. By Herodotus! You are almost finishing your last year. I will grant you another try due to the complexity of the exercises. That’s it all.”

“And what if we left the World War exercise aside, professor?”

“What? No, Joseph, that is unacceptable. Are you mad? This is your final exam. There is a fixed date on the calendar. We already made the trip over here. What do you want to do?”

“That’s the thing. We don’t have to move. We can rebuild right here,” he finished with a subtle smile.

“Hmm, I don’t even dare to know what you all up to. You know me. I admire boldness. I hate those old professors petrified to their highchairs. But let me remind you that to pass this major you’ll need a reconstruction near the millennium. Are we clear on that?”

Joseph nodded without uttering a word. The young historians corrected the adjustments in their forearm interface and ran to form two diagonal lines in front of the beach. Cadmen checked the statistics and noticed they had all replaced the previous target date and powered the chronolents’s reach to the max. The polychromatic lasers shone like tiny stars from their conic hats. The luminous dance was trying to revive something so remote that all their energy could only trace, very slowly, one reality on top of the other.

Cadmen was worried. The brain stress sensors were surpassing the recommended threshold. The chronolent’s energy source was switching to feed directly from the neuron synapsis of their bearers. They were trying to dig the scaffolds of events that were too ancient even for the best equipment. Only the most intense team effort could fill the tracks detected by the lens.

Most of the apprentices were already suffering from fevers. While their eyes were closed the entire beach was transfiguring as a proper act of witchcraft. The sand turned rocky and dark; the vegetation grew between the stones and a wall of fog blocked the sight of the sea. Cadmen was about to stop the exercise when an unknown voice interrupted him. Some of the students were talking to no one in a strange and guttural language. All of them with trembling white knuckles, whispering something in an urgent tone.               

Then, the keel of a wooden boat pierced through the mist. It crossed the waters in complete silence, gifted with the inherent threat of sharks. Cadmen remained absorbed in the presence of a younger raising sun whose light was revealing the most realistic details of a ship that appear to fly over the waves like a raven’s feather. But in the inner shadows, beneath the one mast and the dark sail were insinuated the crude faces of those tired by the journey.  

The boat touched land right between the young rebuilders welcoming party. These were like statues, channeling every neuronal spark to sustain the events from two thousand years before. The saltwater splashed, and the oars came onboard. The crew members swarmed for an instant and then jumped ashore. Cadmen dared to take a couple of steps to better appreciate the warriors lined with furs, outworn shields on the back, and thin blond hairs dripping from hornless helmets. The northerners passed among the ghostly historians and went beyond the reach of the chronolents.   

Cadmen, excited, turned and step away from the in-trance students. He reached the irregular husk of the Drakkar, without noticing the subtle changes around him. The surface of every object had lost the typical cartoon shine of projections. The wooden planks had a sharp texture and the twang of a bell arrived clearly from inland. 

The small figure of a child peered from the rail and climbed the bracken carved on the bow. His deep blue eyes follow the movement of the wind in a raven’s vane. The little one took a short bow from his shoulder and eyed the ringing bells. Tears escaped his fierce stare.  

The professor noticed a little too late that he was scratching the damp wood of the Drakkar. The boy swiped his face and swiftly strained the bow. Cadmen saw the blue eye perfectly still over the iron tip. 

“Hey, wait! No! Turn it off, off!”        

Right at that second, the sun blinked, and it all began to fade. Cadmen fell backward and watched the forms of the boat fraying and resisting to go away. Immediately, he felt the stinging salt over the wound. From his cheek, blood was dripping while he stayed in the sudden stillness of the beach. He followed the course of his cut while the others remained asleep.

In awakening, his students found Cadmen slouched over something at his feet… a rare and lonely flower nailed to a dune.

“Professor, that appears to be a feather plume used in the confection of arrows during the 9th century A.D in Scandinavia,” Joseph recited without believing his own words.

“It appears so, yes, it appears so…” These were the same words Cadmen couldn’t stop repeating for some time until the amazing fact they had approved the exam was pretty obvious to everyone.   

J.P. Rizo studied creative writing at “Onelio Jorge Cardoso” Literary Center, Habana, Cuba and graduated in History from Habana University. He received several mentions in science fiction and fantasy contests, such as the mention in the cuban “David” 2021 award, finalist in the V Contest of the Venezuelan Digital Magazine NOVUM  and he has published speculative fiction short stories in the spanish magazine MiNatura #172 and #174.