We were herded into a freight transport and brought to an abandoned milling warehouse complex. It was run down, and expansive. The loading dock was on the South side, and as we approached from air we could see the building on the complex stretch out for as far as the eye could see. Everything including the paint was derelict.

We were herded off the transport the same way we were herded onto it, by oppressive dictators for guards. But it was the reality we had come to know. Men, women, children… none were spared humility, or treated any different.

The hallway we were siphoned into was dark, musky and damp. Most of the lights were burned out, the rest were flickering or dim. A steady stream of ‘peasants’ as we were called, were filtering up and down the hallway in a single line. As new transports arrived, the passengers were unloaded and the next set of bodies were loaded back up.

The transports were coming from all over. They carried all shapes and sizes of people, but the demeanor was the same. All of us were humble, frail, and refused to make eye contact for fear of the repercussions of meeting eyes with the wrong class.

One of the other passengers in front of me said that the oracle was seeing everyone, and once you saw her, you would never see her again. I felt like it was some kind of play on words, like after I spoke with her I would go blind or something like that, but then an eleven year olds mind is full of such creativity.

I was a small girl, with blonde shoulder length hair. My face and clothes looked as though they hadn’t seen soap in a very long time. But then again, so did every one else.

As we approached the end of the hallway, it ended at a single door, made of old army green locker doors that were welded together. It appeared heavy, and thick. There were guards situated outside of the door, and at regular intervals down the hallway.

When we got to the end of the hall, there was a line outside the door, and about 15 people in front of me. It wasn’t long before it was my turn to enter the room.

One of the guards signaled me to enter after the other peasant had left. The door closed firmly behind me.

It was a large room, divided in two segments by a false wall. On the right side of the room, by the entrance, was an ‘L’ shaped desk, covered in random papers, over random sizes and colours. Some of them had drawings and others had words on them. The entire surface of the desk was littered with these notes, they didn’t seem to be in any kind of recognizable order.

The left part of the room was lightly larger, it has a plastic sheet hanging from the ceiling, a chalk board on a stand with rollers, and the board flipped over so you could write on the other side. There was also a floor lamp, with a cool green tone in the far corner, but must puzzling was the large leather dentist chair in the center.

The oracle was a short woman, appeared to be in her 50’s, with dark hair. Her skin was medium in tone, and she was talking animatedly, and not making any sense.

She sifted through the sea of random notes on her desk looking for something before she absentmindedly muttered a recognizable sentence louder then the others. It appeared to be directed at me.

“They draw.”

I looked at her in that innocent inquiring way only a child can portray so well. “Who?” asked.

“The earthlings.” She said matter of factly, stopping for a moment to look at me. “Your people…” she continued. “Some of them draw, others write.” She motioned to the hundreds of shreds of paper on her desk, and pasted on the walls around the office-like area.

I continued to stand by the doorway, staying out of her busied search for a note on her desk. It was as though she was looking for one of the last pieces of a large puzzle, to complete the picture.

She took a breath, and stopped and looked at me. Calming, and crossing her wrists in front of her.

“Tell me child…” she started

“What is new with your planet?”

Her question confused me, it was very vague, but yet so direct.

I remembered years ago, before the fall or leadership and everything as we knew it. We used to have schools, and recess, and these wonderful things called desserts.

I wanted to answer her as truthfully as I could, but I wasn’t sure where to start.

She stood there, so patiently, as if time itself did not matter. It was such a contrast to her frantic searching only moments before.

My eyes wandered around the room, I saw pictures from various people of various ages. I saw a picture of lava, another person had drawn an earthquake. Another one stood out, blue squiggly lines with the word “WARMING” in the center in red crayon.

I remembered discussing world events in school. Global warming, carbon credits and this thing many years ago called El Nino.

I began to speak, taking a breath, but I was stopped, as the woman returned to searching her desk.

“Nothing!” she stated very bluntly.

“Pardon?” I asked confused.

“Nothing, my child.” She picked up a piece of chalk from her desk and shimmied into the other portion of the room.

I followed her, standing with my back against the wall.

She reached for the chalk board, turned around and handed me the chalk.

“Come.” She said simply.

She referred to something called temporal time, and asked me if I knew what she meant.

I drew a long sweeping line on the board, like a diagram for long wave radio signals.

She nodded, and asked me if I knew what relative time was.

In the center of the sweeping line I drew a line of Vertical hash marks, closely positioned to each other.

She smiled, very excited and seemingly shocked that I intelligent to grasp the concept.

The oracle took the chalk from my hand and told me to sit down. I took a seat in the leather examination chair, it was well worn, but comfortable.

She turned the chalk board over and there was an identical picture of the diagram I had drawn on the other side… only this one had a long curved line passing over the top of the ‘long wave radio’ lines.

Hunched over, her face close to the board, she pointed with the chalk to a point were the temporal and relative lines intersected, and stated simply “I came from here”.

“But, I was here before. I have always been here.” She said, throwing a glance over her shoulder.

Admittedly I was confused again, she began speaking in fragmented thoughts, concentrating on the lines of chalk on the dark board.

“At random intervals… you see it is all random… you can never tell once you are in the fabric of time, just what point you are going to come out…” she rambled to herself, but was really explaining to me.

“I was here…” she pointed to the previous intersection of lines, and then the next “… and here…” and moved slowly to the next “… and here.” The woman appeared like she was calculating, piecing things together as her chalk touched each point on the board.

“The events occurs but the earth never ages.” She nodded to herself, now staring at a spot on the floor. “It is the same every time.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, growing worried to hear the answer.

She stood up straight, and turned to look at me again. “Earth, is in a holding pattern.”

“Why would it be… in…” I trailed off, not wanting to complete the thought.

Her disposition and tone changed for what she was about to say, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and tears well in my eyes. The dire urgency in her voice was foreboding and disturbing.

“He’s coming.”