The Panagaeans

It was still daytime, but the sky was overcast so there was no way to tell what time it was, much less which direction was north or south. In one direction, the blacktop snaked upward into some trees, in the other direction it dropped down behind lumpy hills and disappeared.

I heard what sounded like a chainsaw, but it was impossible to tell where it came from. This had been happening more often lately. Now I had to choose which way to go, my phone was dead and I had no one to blame but myself.

Well, I kind of blamed Sam even though I should have been keeping an eye on the gas gauge and less on the hills. Sam was supposed to be navigating but instead he was gaping around like a landed fish at the scenery. Before we knew it we were in a dead spot with no signal and a dead battery to boot. And now there was that infernal racket, which had been cropping up all over the place the past few weeks.

“Well, I guess there’s nothing for it but to hoof it,” I said. “We’ll just have to find a gas station.” Sam nodded and we got out of the car and I locked the doors.

I didn’t like leaving it here in the middle of nowhere, but what else could I do? A big old El Dorado painted sky blue with shiny chrome hubs was an attractive sight anywhere but out here in the boondocks who knows what hillbilly scavenger might come along and decide she was ripe for stripping?

“Sonofabitch,” I blurted out and Sam turned to look at me. I felt a twinge of guilt. I know he thought I was mad at him. I was but that SOB wasn’t meant for him, it was just a curse at the overall situation. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “We’ll find somewhere to get gas.” He looked relieved and we started walking.

I didn’t want to go toward the noise, but since there was no way to tell where it was coming from I just started uphill toward the forest. High ground was what we wanted, to see if we could spot a gas station or maybe even a town. It was also where I thought the sun was, which should be to the west and the direction home.

Sam followed me, breathing harder as the strain on our legs increased. It didn’t look like much of a hill, but the road steadily climbed and when I looked back the El Dorado had shrunk to the size of a toy car. Then I lost sight of it as we entered the woods.

It was cooler in the shade, but the sweat still rolled off my back and soaked my pants’ waist. I glanced back and Sam’s shirt was dark under the arms and he was wiping his head with a handkerchief. He saw me looking at him and grinned and gave a thumb’s up.

He was a good kid and I felt bad about making him feel bad. It was like Mom always told me, he took things harder coming from me because I was his big brother. That and the fact that he couldn’t talk made me feel especially responsible for him. So, I did my best to keep a rein on my temper, which I tended to lose a little too quickly.

“What the hell is that?” Sam shrugged his shoulders, but I could tell the sound was bothering him, too. His hearing was extra sharp—maybe it was compensation for his lack of speech—so unpleasant sounds were doubly annoying to him. And this high-pitched whine was definitely annoying.

It was the same noise we’d heard on newscasts for the past month. It was showing up all over the country and no one seemed to know what was causing it. Scientists speculated it was due to an unusually intense cicada outbreak or some other insect emerging from hibernation because of the intense heat.

The problem with that theory was that no one had been able to pinpoint where the noises were coming from. Anytime people went to where they thought the noise was, it stopped. It was like trying to find where a rainbow ended—once you got there it disappeared.

The noise was deafening now, so much so that when I saw crows burst from the trees I could barely hear their caws even though there were hundreds of them. They scattered in all directions and were gone when we stepped into a clearing. Then the noise stopped, and it was silent save for a stray crow call in the distance.

My eyes were adjusting to the glare after the shade of the forest when all hell broke loose. What seemed at first glance like hummocks of grass rose from the ground. Sam and I were standing on the shoulder of the road and before we knew it a phalanx of tiny haystacks was heading straight for us.

“Holy shit!” I yelled as the point of the wedge flew into me. I staggered backwards and hit the ground hard. Sam, always quicker on his feet than me, stepped sideways, and landed a roundhouse right on the thing that leveled me. It rolled away but the rest of the scrum piled on and before we knew it Sam and I were pinned to the ground, arms and legs held tight by dozens of tiny vice-grip hands.

And hands they were, because the moment I caught my breath I was looking up at unmistakably human faces. Small faces but human nonetheless. But though they were small, they were not the faces of children—these were men holding us down, as evidenced by their varied facial hair. Some had long scraggly beards and others neatly trimmed goatees but each one had some sort of chin dressing.

I tried to move but it was no use; I wasn’t going anywhere. “Who the hell are you?” I managed to gasp. “Let us up or you’re gonna be sorry.” There was a snort of derision and a sturdy-looking little fellow detached himself from the group holding my right arm.

“We’re gonna be sorry? I think you’ve got the situation backwards,” he said in a mocking tone. Even though he was standing over me he was so short I could see his bristly nostril hairs vibrating. “I will give you this,” he said. “You two came up on us so quietly we didn’t have a chance to get away. Even our scouts didn’t hear you until it was too late.”

The little man cocked his head back and let loose an ear-piercing screech. There was a rush of wings and a huge crow flew up and settled on his arm. To my astonishment they began cawing at each other. It was clear they were having a conversation, or, to judge from the animated bobbing of their heads, more like an argument.

This went on for a minute or two until the man angrily gestured and the crow flew away, squawking furiously as it went. As soon as it reached the tree-line a cloud of crows rose up to meet it and they headed west with the big crow in the lead.

The little man turned back to me. “Well, he wasn’t happy about it, but he understood we can’t have any more surprises like you two sprung on us.” “We didn’t mean to surprise you,” I replied. “We were just trying to find some place to get some gas for our car.” “Ah, your precious gas,” he sneered. “What would you do without it? Oh, that’s right, you’d have to walk like the rest of creation.”

He gestured and the little people hoisted us on their shoulders and carried us across the clearing. I was so close to the ground my head skimmed the grass. We headed toward a huge oak and just when I thought we were going to stop at its base the trunk opened, and we entered a black void.

I was terrified but amazed when I realized we were being carried down steps under the tree. It was pitch-black and all I could hear was my own heavy breathing and the clomping footsteps of the little people. I counted and at 30 steps we stopped and moved forward. It started to get lighter until we emerged into an open space where the little men lowered us to the floor.

I raised my head and caught my breath. We were in the middle of what looked like a mini NASA ground control station. There were panels of blinking lights and TV screens with knobs and switches. Sitting on swivel chairs in front of this mass of high-tech gear were scores of white-jacketed little people, men and women, busily twisting and flicking the instruments, occasionally talking into headsets or taking swigs from tiny coffee mugs.

I glanced at Sam and his mouth was hanging wide open. I completely understood. Who’d have thought when we left the house that morning to joyride in the hills that we’d wind up in an underground labyrinth populated by munchkin scientists? Yeah, my mind was officially blown.

“Surprised?” asked the bossy little fellow who’d abducted us. I looked over at him with his long beard, stubby legs and scowl and I suddenly had a vision of an angry Keebler elf. I giggled, as I’m apt to do when stressed. Wrong move. With disconcerting swiftness, he pounced onto my chest and knocked my head to the floor. “Laugh at me, will you?” Through stars I managed to croak, “I wasn’t laughing at you, I just thought of something funny.” A trace of a grin crossed his face and to my surprise he stepped off of me. “You can get up now.”

Standing, I got a better idea of the room’s dimensions. My head scraped the ceiling while Sam, who was a couple of inches taller than me, had to hunch. It was small-scale construction but with an impressive attention to detail. It was built to last.

“I guess you’re wondering what this is,” our guide/kidnapper said. “Sure, it’s not often you get shanghaied by a bunch of dwarves and hauled into an underground lair that looks like a set from Goldfinger,” I replied. I’d barely finished speaking when my little friend darted over and kicked me in the shin so hard I thought I heard my tibia snap.

“Freakin’ A,” I yelped. “What the hell did you do that for?” “We’re not dwarves,” he growled. “Dwarves are fictional characters dreamed up by your ignorant ancestors to make our ancestors appear humorous and harmless. We are Pangaeans and you will refer to us as such.”

“My apologies,” I said rubbing my throbbing shinbone. That little bastard kicked like a mule, but I got the message. From now on it was nothing but the utmost respect for him and his horde of hobbits. I mean, Pangaeans.

“You were going to explain what this is,” I said in as humble a manner as I was capable of. He eyed me and again I thought I saw a glimmer of a smile. “What you are seeing is the command and control center of a worldwide network monitoring the health of Pangaea. From here we can check the vital signs of the planet and, like a doctor diagnosing a patient, determine what remedies are needed to counter the disease. Come, follow me.”

We walked over to one of the control panels where a little lady, or Pangaeanette, sat fiddling with a couple of knobs while staring intently at a map with blinking lights scattered over it. She glanced up at me with a look of disdain and resumed her work.

Our guide pointed to the map. “This shows signals emanating from your microwave towers. Once we identify an especially harmful concentration we take measures to eliminate them. Observe.” I leaned down to look more closely at the map, and I realized it depicted the metro region, with the telltale shape of Loon Lake to the right and the long curve of the Pacific coast on the left.

The lady at the panel tweaked the knobs and the blinking lights began to draw closer to each other until they converged. The combined mass of light began to pulse, then she reached to her left and flipped a switch. The light disappeared, then a new map appeared on the screen and the knob tinkering resumed.

I looked at Sam and we both shrugged. “Pretty cool,” I said, “but what did we just see?” “You just witnessed cell coverage for a million people being shut down. It will be restored eventually by your telecom companies but for a while at least the atmosphere will be free of your poisonous microwaves.”

I’m usually not the swiftest boat in the water but it dawned on me that if what I was hearing and seeing was true, then this was the cause of the cell phone outages experienced all over the world for the past few months. This underground bunker was the epicenter of the mayhem.

“Why do you want to cut off our cell phones? What harm are they doing to you? Don’t you realize people need their phones to survive?” I was steamed. I mean, take away my gun, my beer, even my Amazon Prime membership, but my phone? That was un-American. My iron-toed adversary regarded me coolly then, without a word, beckoned us to follow him.

We left the control room and walked down a well-lit corridor until we reached a door. Our guide clapped his hands and it opened. We stepped into what appeared to be an auditorium, with rows of little seats arranged in a horseshoe around a stage. He pointed to the open space of the horseshoe and said, “Sit there—you won’t fit in the seats.”

Sam and I plopped to the floor, which was quite comfortably carpeted with moss. Our host climbed onto the stage and looked down at us. “What you are about to see will, if you have open minds, forever change the way you see the world around you. If it does, then you will have a decision to make—whether or not to act. Some people who have learned what you are about to learn have acted through art, politics or science to try and effect change. Others have chosen to keep silent, afraid that others would think them mad or, God forbid, opposed to progress.”

“You,” he pointed at me, are a paradox. “On the one hand you appear to possess many of mankind’s most unattractive qualities. You are addicted to the technologies that have brought our planet to the brink of destruction. Your cars and phones are just symptoms of the arrogance that places your well-being over that of the rest of God’s creation.” I was about to object, but a glance down at his pointy elf boot quelled that thought.

He continued. “However, I sense in you something different than the run-of-the-mill humans we see every day heedlessly careening down roads or staring into their cellphones. You have an aura of one who is sensitive to the world around you. Dare I say that you have an appreciation of the wonder that is life on Pangaea?” It seemed like a good time to agree now that he was finally saying something nice about me. “I very much do appreciate life on Pangaea, or Earth as I like to call it.” There it was—a full-fledged smile from my little amigo.

He raised his hand and yelled, “Roll it!” The room got dark, the stage curtains pulled back, and without any coming attractions or turn off your cellphone preliminaries the movie began. And what a movie it was. I am sure you’ll see it soon, if I have anything to say about it. The Pangaeans gave me a copy and I am negotiating with MGM, Sony and DreamWorks to air it beginning Labor Day. DreamWorks has the edge so far, because I figure the guy who directed ET, Goonies, and Gremlins will understand how important this movie is.

Okay, just a teaser. You know that story about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden? Well, turns out it was true except the version we have doesn’t include the Pangaeans. Our ancestors wrote them out of the script because they didn’t want us to know there were other creatures, small in stature but big in heart and brain, sharing paradise at the dawn of time. The Pangaeans, realizing that they would wind up on the extinction list if they stuck around waiting for our forefathers to come to their senses, made tracks for the forests and they’ve lived there ever since, trying to keep Pangaea alive despite all the screw-ups we humans have inflicted on this blue gem we call Earth.

I hope that gets your attention. The only thing I asked was that the film add a small part for Sam and me. Spatalukoya (at least that’s how I sounded out his name), our Pangaean friend, agreed to our modest request—he really turned out to be a good guy. I shouldn’t spoil it but now the ending features us as we leave the forest with a copy of the film. Here’s how it reads in the script—it will be much cooler on the big screen.

They made their way through the crowd of Pangaeans and back down the hill toward the El Dorado. As they approached it, a flock of crows flew directly over their heads. One them landed on the hood of the car and looked back at them. It squawked and bobbed its head and then flew westward toward the setting sun.