Romney Hole

A 1900 word children’s fantasy story for MG/YA readers.Written in the first person. Zach’s account traces the momentous events that befall two Yorkshire Dale farmer’s children: Zach aged 15 and his sister, Rachel, aged 13. Their favourite leisure pastime, when finished with school and farm work, is potholing in a nearby warren of tunnels and caves. These are situated high in the fells, so remote that they are unknown to the senior potholing fraternity. The result is an undisturbed playground paradise for Zach, Rachel and their friends and nearest neighbours, Bob and Allan. 

Bob and Allan are still away on their annual holiday when Zach and Rachel return from their one-week vacation in Whitby. Having caught up on outstanding chores, they plan a trip to Romney Hole, which gives entrance to their underground world. 

A preceding, long, fine spell of dry weather has reduced the level of the underground streams and rivers, and a new labyrinth is exposed. The temptation to explore cannot be resisted. A precipitous fall is narrowly averted, and during the recovery, they discover an unusual cave, illuminated with a soft, green fluorescence. They learn that the chamber is the resting place of an advanced alien energy form; in it resides the sole survivor of a colonising probe that landed on Earth twenty thousand years ago. The alien, Tarus, wishes to pass on his accumulated knowledge and power into the minds of the two young people before his energy finally dissipates. 

Tarus outlines the history of his race, the Sharnians, using laser holography, and wins their trust to the point where they agree to the memory transfer.  In so doing, Tarus will give up his existence, and the young people will acquire new and enhanced abilities which enable them to form metaphysical bonds and probes. In such a union, they become Taras' successors, the Interlect, able to project in time, space and form. 

A violent storm rocks the dales, and in the middle of the night, braving the thunder and lightning and torrential rain, Zach helps his father to move their flock of sheep to safer pastures, while Rachel sleeps through it all. The following morning, they discover that their subterranean paradise has been destroyed by the floods, and all traces of Tarus have been buried by cave collapses. 

There follows a period of discovery and acclimatisation, and with their combined minds forming the Interlect, they make a chilling prediction. Earth is set on a similar course of events to those that contributed so much to the demise and eventual destruction of Sharnian society. More and more of the complicated decision-making processes of the world's major powers are being carried out by sophisticated computers with little or no human involvement. They pledge to use the Interlect to jolt the civilised world into awareness, determined that Earth will not follow in the self-destructive footsteps of the Sharnians.