Chapter 1
The owner of the Old Stones Café, Mrs. Richards, a venerable lady 70 years of age, has been working at the family café for most of her working life. Situated on a hill overlooking the old stone circles, and not too far from an army base, her clientele ranged from mildly curious tourists to bedraggled army personnel looking for something that wasn't from the canteen.
In her 52 years of working at the café, she could never have expected to one day find herself gaping at the sight of a woolly mammoth grazing near the stone circles from her café window.
Whilst at first glance it looked like an elephant, though an elephant wandering around the fields of Dartmoor would still be incredibly outlandish, it was much hairier than any elephant she had ever seen on the telly or in the zoo.
"Is it just me, or is that a ruddy mammoth down there?" An officer in a military police uniform asked rather too calmly, as though through the power of grit and stiff upper lips, the situation would hopefully sort itself out without too much input from his end.
Mrs. Richards couldn't help but feel relieved that someone else asked the question. She was starting to have doubts about the stability of her mind. "No," she managed to croak out, "it's not just you, young man."
The mammoth raised its trunk and from the distance, the people in the café could hear a little 'toot' from the previously thought-to-have-been-extinct beast.
The military police officer took a long swig from his cup, downing his builder's tea in one go. When he finished, he was disappointed to find that the mammoth was still there, lazing about on a cold Dartmoor morn. "Someone should probably call this in, right?" He asked, the implication that it was someone else who should call this lingered in the air, though if anyone did notice, they pretended not to.
When it was clear everyone was satisfied with keeping an eye on the mammoth, the military police officer sighed deeply and looked for his CO's number on his phone, his mind trying to think of a way to describe the situation to his superior that wouldn't immediately get him thrown in a padded cell.
Perhaps he could say that a wild elephant was loose on the moors near the base. Yes, that sounded much saner and more sensible to his mind. Who knows, it might just be an abnormally hairy elephant.
Ian Jones, zoologist, lecturer at Plymouth University, and proud father of two, looked at an impossibility as well as a man of his position and education could be expected to.
With his jaws on the ground, he stared at the mammoth calmly chewing through some hay for a solid ten minutes.
When military officers politely knocked on his door early in the morning, asking him to come with them for an urgent matter, he was so curious about why the military would specifically request his presence he immediately accepted. The fact that he would have to cancel his morning lectures was pure coincidence.
After being asked (told) to sign the Official Secrets Act by some faceless men in black and promptly guided into the back of an unmarked van, Ian's curiosity and anticipation only grew as the vehicle hurtled along the highway towards his mysterious destination.
As no one bothered to explain anything, his imagination started to run away from him, and filled his head with fantastical scenarios. Perhaps the Russians were making a play for Britain by releasing a particularly nasty invasive species that could destroy Britain's fragile ecosystem. Perhaps they found a particularly stubborn infestation of badgers underneath the army base.
As bizarre as the theories were, he could honestly say that none of them came close to "mammoth wandering on Britain's soil".
It wasn't the last of the world shattering surprises though.
After confirming that yes, it was indeed a mammoth, and no, not an elephant that was victim to a very cruel joke, Dr Jones was shuffled off to a large tent that sat in the middle of where the centre of the stone circle would normally be.
The discovery and containment of the mammoth by a squad of bewildered army and police personnel was soon followed by the discovery of a shimmering portal in the middle of the ancient stone circle.
Any person with an inkling of sci-fi tropes could tell that it was a portal. As he jostled with what looked like fifty other middle-aged men and women to take a closer look at the anomaly, to Ian's eyes, it reminded him awfully of the portal from the TV series Primeval. He idly wondered if a triceratops was going to stomp through the portal next.
It was lucky for everyone involved that there was a flimsy plastic cordon and a stony looking soldier standing guard in front of the shimmering portal, or else the tentful of academic professionals would start brawling over who would get to go through the portal first.
An army officer with very large bags under his eyes marched into the tent, followed by a couple of junior officers carrying large sheaths of paper.
"Sit down, please, sit down-I SAID SIT THE FUCK DOWN NOW!" The officer bellowed at the room full of overly curious academics.
Satisfied that the middle-aged menaces were properly cowed into their seats, he gave a nod to his junior officers, who then started to hand out the leaflets.
"Thank you all for coming, my name is Brigadier-General Lowe, the commanding officer of this site. Each of you was invited here on the account of your specialties. Believe you me, we will be in dire need of your collective expertise for the foreseeable future." The Brigadier General took a deep breath before plunging on, "As many of you have seen outside with our woolly friend, and as you can see right in front of you, we have a situation on our hands."
A situation on our hands indeed, thought Ian as he reached over to receive a handout from an officer.
"The..." here the Brigadier General looked uncomfortable, as if the following words physically discomforted him, "the mammoth" he managed to spat out, "was first seen a week ago by the owner and clientele of a nearby café. As some of you may have seen on the way here, the entire area has since been under lock down."
"The Prime Minister has been notified of the events here, and he has ordered us to ensure that the portal doesn't represent a threat to national security."
"The exact nature of the portal is unknown. We do not know whether it is a link to our ancient past, or a gateway to another world. External scans return with conflicting data, and we are awaiting approval to launch a drone through the gate." Here, the Brigadier General looked at the assembled men and women in the eye with a stern expression on his face. "It is your job to assess whether or not the portal represents a threat to the nation."
"As each of you have signed the Official Secrets Act, I do not need to tell you what the consequences are for leaking information about this program. You may not tell your family, nor your friends, nor your partners."
"All relevant information regarding the project is on the handout. Are there any questions?"
There was a moment of silence, and the Brigadier for a second looked relieved, before Ian and fifty other men and women exploded in a cacophony of noise and questions.
A makeshift base formed around the stone circle as days turned into weeks. Ian poured hours and hours into analysing data from the mammoth; fur density, blood samples, genetic similarity to existing mammoth samples, x-rays and faeces analysis. It was the stuff of dreams.
Ian wasn't the only one having a grand old time with his research. As the external scanning proved inconclusive, approval was made to send a wired drone through the portal, and the results that came back awed everybody.
Video from the drone showed snowy white forests filled with known and unknown fauna and flora; from common evergreens to trees with snowy white bark and blood red leaves, to what looked like large herds of bison grazing in the distance.
Hopley, an anthropologist of 40 years, nearly gave the drone operator a heart attack when he suddenly shouted in the poor man's ear to zoom in on the bark of the mysterious white trees. As the drone operator reluctantly acquiesced to Hopley's demand, though not without throwing the old man a dirty look, Hopley began to hop in excitement as his suspicions was proven correct; what looked like random scratching on the bark from a distance looked more like a carefully carved laughing face up close.
It was the definitive sign of intelligent life on the other side of the portal.
Hopley, the other anthropologists, as well as the historians, all gathered together to excitedly discuss the implications of the tree face carving.
There were currently two main theories in the camp regarding the nature of the portal; the first theory was that the portal was a bridge connecting the present day to the distant past, roughly before Dogger Land was covered by the sea. If this was the case, then the portal would be deemed a temporal threat to the country and all efforts would be expended to shut it down. The second theory was that the portal connected the stone circle to another entirely different world, which still carries some security concerns though not at the level of a paradox causing the universe to collapse.
So far, the evidence leaned towards the alternative world theory, though it was still entirely possible that the portal was connected to the past. With how much was lost to history, unknown fauna and flora wasn't definitive proof of another world.
The scientific instruments of the drone indicated an air mixture and gravity that was identical to Earth's, which only created further excitement and debate amongst the academics the nature of the world on the other side.
The greatest source of excitement came from the realisation that with human friendly conditions, getting approval to launch human expeditions across the portal would be a lot easier.
After the academics analysed the video and scientific data, everyone agreed that the only way to resolve the nature of the portal was to wait for night-time to analyse the constellations.
As night-time fell, Ian and the other researchers waited anxiously in the main tent for the drone to tilt the camera upwards. The astronomers and astrophysicists were ready with their digital star charts and computer models of the night sky to start comparing the data.
As the night sky began to fill up with stars and constellations, the whole room waited in anticipation for the verdict.
The star and space experts murmured as they scratched their heads trying to match up the night sky to the appropriate timeline. Hours of note comparisons and quiet discussions flowed like glaciers. Ian was about to call it a night when one of the astronomers stood up. The murmurings of the tent immediately silenced.
She coughed into her fist, "We have not been able to match the constellations to any period of history or any of the star charts available to us. Nor were there any recognisable planets visible in the night sky. We conclude that this portal leads to another world."
All the assorted researchers, all from different fields and backgrounds, were all united in their celebration of the confirmation of a new world.
Edward Samuel Miliband, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was sleeping soundly in his bed with his wife Justine at 10 Downing Street.
Two months into his first term, Ed was determined to turn the country around from decay and stagnation. The damage that Cameron and his ilk had done to the country with their idiot policies was thankfully limited by their short time in office, though it was still not easily undone.
So much of his effort was needed to get Britain back on track that the weird happenings in Dartmoor barely constituted a blip on his radar, and quite frankly, he was rather happy for it to stay that way. He was all for Britain leading the way in science, but not if it means wiping out half the world from an intern mucking around with temporal paradoxes or something.
Ah...wonderous blissful ignorance.
Ed was suddenly startled from his sleep by an obnoxiously loud ringing of the telephone on his bedside table. He groaned as pleasant dreams of sustainable economic recovery and climate change policies slowly slipped away from his mind.
The phone rang a few more times before Justine murmured a threat to his manhood under her breath if he didn't pick the phone up and deal with whatever the callers wanted right now.
Vowing swift and petty revenge on the idiot who decided to place the phone in his bedroom, Ed picked up the phone with a snarl, "What are you calling at this ungodly hour for, man?"
Through the fogs in his mind, the words "portal" and "new world" somehow filtered through. He sat up immediately, the tiredness and fogginess melting away as the caller excitedly explained the situation.
Scientific anomalies that threatened to unravel the space-time continuum were one thing, but the possibilities of being the first nation in history to sign trade deals with civilisations from another world was quite another.
AN:
In case there was any confusion, Milibanter in this universe winning the election against the Pig F*cker causes an interdimensional rift in Britain, linking it to Westeros.
No, I won't be taking any further questions.