Marwan blocked his way and said, “Hey, don’t do it!” but the Dutchman sought T-Rex’s attention more instead.

“Yoy!” yelled Jhaansen van der Jagt. Of course, Herman got frightened to death! But Bill said to Marwan casually, “T-Rex has bad hearing and eyesight.”

However, Marwan didn’t get close to being content, especially when the T-Rex came toward them to find out who or what disturbed its meal. The ground Marwan was stepping on shook hard by T-Rex’s quaking footsteps and the trees bent by the coming terror.

Marwan was so near to death’s door as the T-Rex’s jaws were right above his head. Its nostrils widened and narrowed, sniffing at Marwan. The T-Rex’s jaws polished with the blood of its prey already made Marwan thought that he was its next prey.

Suddenly, Jhaansen leaped out to shoo the T-Rex away. “Shoo!” He bellowed at the top of his voice.

Startled, the T-Rex let out a deafening roar. Strangely, it ran away haphazardly as though being intimidated by a greater force.

 “Shoo! Shoo! Runaway, you filthy beast!” Jhaansen kept on shouting with a thundering voice, causing the T-Rex to run away, growling unhappily. The supposedly mighty dinosaur ran awkwardly and slowly like a fat clown who was out of breath. Of course, Herman couldn’t help thinking how come a T-Rex ran away when a human scolded it. For the one who watched too many Jurassic Park movies, the thing he just saw didn’t make sense at all.

“Hahaha, isn’t that funny?” Jhaansen laughed out loud in satisfaction after he managed to shoo the T-Rex away from that spot.

 “Just grow up, Jhaan,” Scolded Bill. Jhaansen realized that what he did was very foolish, he stopped his action and bowed his head in shame.

“H-how come?” asked Marwan. “Isn’t the T-Rex extremely ferocious?”

“T-Rex is a scavenger beast,” Bill Adkinson explained while he moved, signaling the team to move again.

Marwan and Herman were still puzzled, but they followed Bill anyway.

When Herman pushed a stem with a broadleaf on it, he saw something more amazing than the T-Rex just now. It was a magnificent panorama.

A frog that leaped from branch to branch didn’t bother the whole team. Even several birds flying hastily, disturbed by their presence didn’t divert their attention even a little bit.

A building as big as a small mount attracted Herman’s attention. It was a megalithic building with an asymmetric tiered pyramid style. It looked like a gigantic pile of rocks that was built on the surface of an active volcano.

“Isn’t that the Gunung Padang site?” asked Marwan just to be sure.

“Yes! It’s more magnificent than the ruined one, right?” responded Made.

“Yesterday we came here at night, so we couldn’t see this site in its real condition. It turns out the site already exists in this age?” Marwan whispered in awe. “So, the claim that it was built in about 20,000 BC is right.”

“What I know, the Gunung Padang site was built in geomantic harmony for a religious purpose, that was to worship Sang Hyang or the Ruler of the World, or in short, God. But why in this age, although it was more magnificent than after it’s ruined by age, it still seemed abandoned all the same?” 

“People in this age called that building ‘The House of God’, but now it seemed like it was abandoned,” Bill explained, recollecting his memory from the first visit with Marx Reign.

“Why is that?” Marwan asked.

“I don’t know. We had no chance to investigate it further,” Bill admitted.

“I’m sure that the abandoning of that building had something to do with extinction in this era,” Marwan responded. “But don’t ask why, because I don’t have the proof yet. It’s just my assumption.”

Of course, no one responded to that one comment.

Just then, the morning sunlight formed a long shadow on their side. Marwan stared at the House of God. It was so big as though it stood right in front of him. As he turned back, the only thing he saw was sky scrapper-like tall buildings that looked like blue silhouettes, because they were far away beyond the thick of the forest.

“This House of God is facing north?” said Marwan, observing his own shadow on his right. “But, in our time, it’s facing northwest. Mount Pangrango is supposed to be far behind me, but apparently, it’s not formed yet in this age.”

Marwan started to adapt and synchronize the geographic map of the earth in his brain with the actual condition in this prehistoric age.

“You must make a geographical map for this Old World Age,” said Marwan to Made Oka.

“I don’t know. This is an impossible mission. What we got now is just a piece of a million pieces jigsaw puzzle,” Mr. Oka spoke. “All things here are astounding. They were all strange and confusing!”

“But why the whole building complex was made of stone? Wasn’t their technology very advanced?” asked Herman, comparing the buildings in the city around the House of God.

As a city hall, the House of God was located at the edge of a city square, surrounded by city buildings. The city they saw was futuristic, it was a fact so unexpected, exceeding the wildest imagination of their time about this Old World Age.

Among the cloud-reaching skyscrapers, little things were seen flying around in the air like birds. The floating things were strongly assumed as vehicles because some of them were flying low and people-like specks were seen inside those vehicles.

Professor Marwan continued his analysis. “The average age of humans in this Proto-Ancient Egypt Age reached more than a century old and for the stone is the symbol of eternity.

“Is it because stone won’t rust and doesn’t need to be replaced by iron, steel, or other metals?” asked Herman.

“That’s right!” Marwan answered. “With the technology they have, they can shape, carve, and pile up the buildings. Stone is the apex of the technology and art ever achieved by human civilizations.”

“That makes sense!” said Made Oka, satisfied. “All this time we thought all of these relics were crude slabs from the Megalithic Age.”

“That conclusion was made after we compared the mission reports from the InterTime team in Amesbury, Wiltshire. It was said that in this proto-ancient age, England was in the equator and the Stone Henge turned out to be a solar clock monument,” said Bill Adkinson, his Scottish accent made him say “Stone Henge” in a unique, yet delightful manner.

“If we climb that pyramid building someday, we shall see the rows of obelisks that the scientists thought were used as musical instruments. But instead, they were astronomical symbols. Only, in our time those stone obelisks were scrambled in disarray.

“Really! If England was once in the equator, that explained the discoveries of wood fossils that showed that age layers on the wood just like the trunks of trees growing in the tropical climate,” Herman mumbled and nodded.

“Hey! Don’t forget that our mission here is to search for Amanda!” Made Oka reminded the young man.

Conversing too deep and too long about sensations of being in a different world could drift someone off his original course.

“Oh, yes!” said Herman, patting his forehead. There were too many questions in his mind, so he was afraid they would disturb this mission. So, he decided to keep the questions and hoped to get the answers along the way.

Thus, the team continued to pursue the original goal of coming here. The city below them was very alive because from this place they could see land vehicles in dense traffic. The air vehicles swarmed the sky like bees.

Herman felt that he would be comfortable standing for hours, staring at all these wonders if Bill didn’t remind him of something more important.

“This is the rendezvous point, and it’s now time to change shifts,” said Bill, looking at the watch on his left wrist.

Not long afterward, several vehicles were coming toward them. At a glance, Herman saw that they were scooters but there were no wheels on them. The hover scooters hovered forward without touching the ground.

Now Herman started to be comfortable not asking questions because he realized he was in a different world than the one he was from.

“They come without Amanda?” asked Made Oka.

“The search team before us hasn’t found Amanda yet,” Bill explained. “But at least they have gathered more neutrino samples to recreate the Old World in ChronoTours rides.”

The two teams met, greeted, and exchanged small chats until they went their separate ways.

“Good luck,” said the replaced team leader, a woman in her late thirties.

“Thanks,” answered Bill Adkinson. Both of them shook hands before they finally parted.

Made Oka’s team went down towards the now riderless hover scooters still hovering above the ground. The group then mounted the four scooters two by two, except Bill who preferred to ride alone in front of the group as a guide. Made Oka, Marwan and Herman realized they were first-timers and sat in the back as passengers.

So this is an anti-gravity hover scooter, Herman thought. During the ride, Herman observed how to drive it. It was as simple as automatic transmission motorcycles. The hover scooter was fully featured. The monitor displayed numbers of speed and fuel indicators. The back spyglass and standard lamps were also used in this age.

The group hovered down the hill slope contours towards the city center situated on the valley they saw from the point of arrival back then. Before long, the four hover scooters in a group arrived at a park. They parked their vehicles in the special parking lot for hover scooters and the like.

The morning was about to shift to midday, but the sun was not blazing hot yet. So now was the right time to start activities.

“They’re not different from us,” said Herman as he looked around. Everything looked normal. The young and old walked along the central park pathway. A man was sitting down on a bench and a couple jogging. While the others were with their kids and dog, playing fetch the discus.

The most surprising thing was, that Herman saw that their clothes and attires were about similar to people in his own time. It wasn’t like in the sci-fi movies with the distinctively futuristic world with ultra-sophisticated technology and civilization, people wearing sparkling, metallic-colored spaceship astronaut-like suits, or even residences of alien planets. It wasn’t like Star Trek, although the city was like a planet in Star Wars.

Here, they just looked like decent and normal modern people. Even many of them wore jeans trousers. What made Herman a bit stunned as most of them had black skins like Africans or desert-dwelling Ancient Egyptians did. The unique characteristics of the Negroid race were distinctively visible to adult men and women.

Most children and adults here had black skins, curly hair, and thick lips. But several people with Caucasian and Mongoloid-Malay stereotypes were there too, so they didn’t see Herman who was half Caucasian and half Indonesian as a strange man. The diversity and even mixture of skin colors were there during this Old World, Pliocene Age.

Suddenly a toy discus flew and hit Herman. The lightweight discus made of plastic didn’t hurt when it hit Herman’s waist. The black boy, owner of that discus yelled. Herman didn’t understand what he said, but he got an impression that the boy wanted him to return the discus. The adults looked at Herman, smiling and waving their hands. Herman picked up the toy discus and threw it back to the boy, and the boy laughed and shouted. It seemed he said thank you. 

“Turns out they’re quite friendly,” said Herman, but the rest of the team have walked far away, leaving Herman. Herman caught up with them and said, “Maybe that boy is older than any of us.” Herman just assumed.

“No!” Marwan argued. “From birth until a teenager, their body biorhythm is the same as us. But, when entering young adulthood, they will stay young as immortals do,” said Marwan, patting Herman’s back to remind him that the team has moved on.

“Hey, don’t leave me behind!” Herman ran after Mr. Bill.

“Herman, don’t daydream,” Marwan called. “Let’s go inside!”

Herman heard Marwan’s call, but he was looking at the building his team entered into. This building was shaped like a gigantic tree trunk, so it was as though being harmonically blended with its surrounding nature. The building was so high, that its apex was as though invisible, covered by a cluster of thin clouds so it looked like a gigantic snow-covered tree.

Without lingering any longer, Herman rushed to catch up.