Pip Rippon's Curated Guide - Chapter one

Pip Rippon's Curated Guide - Chapter one

This is the first part of an updated version of my Curated Guide, which I first released about fifteen months ago. It was intended as a resource to help you (and me, to be honest) understand Hellsborough and The Dark Peak. 

I try to explain a world on your doorstep. A world that you probably have no idea that exists: The unexplored parallel world of Sheffield, S6 – Hellsborough and The Dark Peak. I think that I now understand the place. When I say understand, what I mean is, that I can cope with it.

The human brain is a very complex thing. Possibly the most complex thing in the known universe, and us humans, even though we all have one, don’t really understand it. It’s the Great Unknown. Multiply our interactions with others and that we are all different – you have a different brain to me and your experiences, upbringing and well, life, are completely and utterly different to mine and everyone else’s. There are an unlimited number of variables. Hellsborough and The Dark Peak is just like that.

What is Hellsborough, and how did it get there?

Hellsborough didn't get there, it got here; and it's a bit like asking how the world got here. Once upon a time, they were both the same place.

Here's the thing, if the entirety of the Earth's history was condensed to just one year, one second would be something like 145 years. A minute would stack up to somewhere around 8,695 years, and an hour, that'd be about 521,690 years or so -- yeah, over half a million years would pass in one hour in this hypothetical experiment. That's crazy isn't it, but it's true.

You can do the maths for yourself if you like; or you can just believe me, or read more about the mythical year here.

You probably wouldn't think it, since humanity came on the scene a bit late -- not until just before twenty minutes to midnight on New Years Eve (around 23 minutes to, more or less) -- but life itself started in the middle of spring on our yearly clock. Somewhere around the vernal equinox, funny old thing. I mean, if you were Mother Earth, where else would you choose life to start but springtime?

So from mid-March until 23 minutes before midnight on December 31st, in this fantastical year in the history of the Earth, what -- on earth -- were all those species, that we fully well know that existed, do? Was every living organism just swimming, or wandering around. Were they just meandering about in their respective environments -- just breeding and sleeping. For an untold number of years; for billions of them? Seems unlikely, dunnit?

Just take the time that elapsed between the birth of the dinosaurs and their demise when that massive meteorite ploughed into current day Mexico wiping out most saurians and an estimated 75-90% of all life on the Earth at the time. The saurian empire was established around somewhere 243 - 231 million (231 ma) years ago. On our yearly calendar, that would make it December 11, or something like that. That devastating meteor made impact in 66 Ma, there or thereabouts -- around 25 December in our year: Merry Christmas Mr. Lambeosaur.

From the genesis of those great reptiles, until their demise, is just 14 days, a mere two weeks in the history of the world -- in reality, 175 million years.

Were those reptiles just fighting and feasting, fleeing and freezing? Over all those eons, over those 175 million years, did their intelligence not increase just a little bit? Maybe just by one iota; maybe? It's a thought isn't it? Because, after all that time, you'd have thought that on all those branches on the tree of life, that must have come and gone over the generations, that the feeble twig of humanity can't have been the only one to have developed intelligence? Can it? Really?

What about the insects? They've been about since the end of November (400 Ma). Is it not possible that they might, just might, have developed something that we, as humans, even though we don't understand it ourselves, could possibly be sentient. I mean, we've only had recorded history since: 31/12 23:59:21, so come on, we could at least give them some credit, couldn't we?

Us humans have only had recorded history for 3700 years, more or more a less. To imagine that every creature that ever evolved in the history of the world was universally stupid, is madness isn't it? It's a bit of a failure in thinking of our species and at the same time, really rather arrogant. That's what I reckon, anyway. All of this is just hypothesis of course, it cannot be proved one way or another; intelligence, if not recorded anywhere, is clearly imbecility, at least as far as we are concerned -- us the children of the last 39 seconds of Earth's existence.

All those saurians that passed after that fateful day, whenever it was, when all the murk was stirred up after that meteor impact, you know. Some didn't succumb. Birds, some of them at least, survived. The corvids, they survived -- or at least the ancestors of the corvids, and the intelligence of corvids is well known. Officially, you know, birds are dinosaurs, their lineage is the same. So the dinosaurs, they're not extinct -- it's just those that survived had feathers.

My research has led me to the conclusion that one of those dinosaurs, one of the avian variety that managed to survive post 66 Ma, eventually evolved into the most ancient creature of The Dark Peak. It was at this time that the murk began to form on the earth. The Murk, that dark and desolate fog that shrouds everything and suffocates the life from the planet.

If I'm correct, and I'm pretty sure I am, these angels of Dunlockslyn -- this intelligence born of the dinosaurs, a lifeform in continuous evolution for 66 million years (or 5 days, in our yearly view of the Earth), had a formative impact on the life of The Dark Peak. And why am I so confident in this statement? Because I know that the last 39 seconds -- as academia would have us believe -- is wrong. Recorded history goes back further than 3700 years. I have seen, with my own eyes, evidence of recorded intelligence that dates back around 17 million years.

Of course, these creatures of which I refer, they've lost their wings now. They live and die like we do -- albeit over what we would think as ridiculously long timespans -- their species evolves as does ours. They're no more angels than you or I now, and they remain a secretive species. These days, they are a shadow of their former selves; incredibly ancient, they hold the secrets that we seek, but they have no real interest in anything other than leisure. Can't say I blame them.

Milting. I think they've probably travelled to the stars.

But I'm getting ahead of myself: When that meteor hit back in 66, the quantum universe, it fractured.

If you know anyone else that you think might find this interesting, then please forward this email to them :)

Previously serialised here, The Legend of Loxley Bottom — The Gabbleratchets of Sophie Hinchcliffe is now available as a free ebook download in ePub and Kindle formats from Hellsborough library.

In other news, Hellsborough Chronicles book one “Dark Peak” is now available on Kindle and paperback.

If you can leave a review of Dark Peak on Amazon, I'd be more than grateful.

Hellsborough Chronicles book two “Darker Peak” is now being worked on — look out for early releases.

Cheers, until next time,

Pip :)