Resolution

by Douglas E Roff

  “You have to be mortal form and, if you are, I’ll kill you.”

  “Good point. We’ll skip the farewell sex and go straight for just being horny. I’ll create a cosmic vibrator and then I won’t need your father or any man. Do-it-yourself sex.”

  Adam said, “This is really touching, and I’d like to listen to more family fun, but in the end, your mother, Hecate, is going to kill me. Whether or not you do it only determines how many others must die besides me. We can’t win this one, sweetie, but you can still have a happy life. And all who love us. That means something, doesn’t it?”

  “I won’t have Orsin and I won’t have you. I’ll be miserable. For eternity”

  “But not the others. Let’s think of them and their happiness too. And she’ll leave you alone eventually and you can still be with Orsin. It won’t be all that bad. Now, let’s get this over with.”

  “No, I won’t. Mother, I hate you.”

  “Well, sweetie, you should. That’s what I’m here for. Create hate and discord in the realm of ignorant insects. You’re so easy; you learned nothing on this planet. You should be thanking me. You’re Immortal; have some self-respect and act like it.”

  “I’ll tell all the other Immortals what you did.”

  “So? What are they going to do about it now? Nothing. If I want to fuck mortals, that’s my business. An experiment. They may want to try it too. It was fun.”

  “No.”

  “You go too far, Hecate. I may have to dispose of you too.”

  “Up to you mum.”

  Fionna suddenly appeared. “Not exactly. The Lord has forbidden you, Liara, from killing Adam. I am sent here to stop it on His behalf since he doesn’t like getting involved with mortal matters.”

  “Either does your kind.”

  Niona appeared. “Usually true, but not this time. We forbid you from killing Adam, and if you try, our Lord said we can kill you. So, take your fake Sari and begone. You are banished from Earth and may not interfere here again unless asked. Earth is under our protection, and so now is Hecate. Our Lord knows everything.”

  “What do I get out of this. Our Lord would not just take something away from me without giving me something in return. He knows everything is back on track, so what do I get?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Four billion human slaves. The four billion that don’t have the gene. Give them to me. I want them.”

  Adam said, “No way! That’s slavery and we won’t do that on this planet. You can’t Fionna. It would be a stain on us all.”

  Niona intervened, “Hold on, here’s the deal. Fionna and I get to choose your compensation and, in general, I would say your request is not unreasonable. It will make our job here easier with four billion fewer mouths to feed. Should accelerate the timetable to further and faster permanent success.”

  Liara nodded gleefully. “Four billion human slaves, many hunky males, this negotiation was almost too good to be true.”

  Niona continued, “Adam, you must change your appearance. You may continue to look as you do now to certain of us, but you must look like someone else to all others. You must be ‘dead’. That’s part of the deal too. If you live and humans know it, they will doubt the rest of your story. You have to look different, and we will make you a distant, but special relative who takes over for Adam St. James; someone ‘St. James enough’ to be believable and who we want to keep around. If the people of Paraiso see you, but think you are someone else, someone who is just like Adam, reminds them of Adam, that will work nicely.”

  Adam was beside himself. “You’re going to give her four billion mortals? You can’t. Take me instead; I cannot trade my life for theirs. It’s barbaric.”

  Fionna said, “Compromise then. Liara gets the four billion when they die.”

  She turned to Liara, “We will send you their essences and you can re-animate when you want. You can program/reprogram them in any way you desire. In the meantime, Adam, you must make sure that the population decreases. We are perilously close to unsustainability, at least that’s what your Lab folks and Alana say. We must stop the human population from destroying the planet and condemning us all to destruction and pain.”

  “I will do my best to stop them.”

  “No, we will. Humans without the gene will have no more babies. Ever. Then, we will allow humans with the gene to replace themselves. Within one hundred years, the population will be sustainable and Liara will have her slaves.”

  “Still doesn’t sound right. Why should she benefit from her own misdeeds?”

  “She saved your life. She gave you powers, kept you from dying in the arena. The relationship wasn’t all bad.”

  “She only did that to save her own ass. She wasn’t being generous. Besides, she created the problem in the first place.”

  “Still, this is the best deal we Immortals can craft under the circumstances. And, it gives us time to craft other solutions.”

  Liara said, “A deal is a deal. I get them.”

  “We’ll decide what you get and when. Or, if you want, we can kill you now and settle the whole matter. Our Lord has allowed us the latitude because you are a liar and cannot be trusted. Why do you need four billion slaves anyway?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  “We’ll let you know when it’s time to send you your essences. Until then, stay away, foment no troubles and leave us in peace.”

  “Gladly. But our Lord promised me one other thing. You will have no say in it, but you may be able to modify the agreement so we all get what we want.”

  “Which is?”

  “To be discussed later. Now is not the time, and I grow bored with this whole matter of mortals. Take him and the girl, I no longer want them.”

  Liara left.

  ***

  Liara was furious and would have her revenge. She would speak to her Lord and change this deal. If she couldn’t, she would re-animate human souls very slowly over time, then torture and use them exclusively for her pleasure for eternity. Pleasure; that was the lesson of Adam to Liara. Hecate was the blessing to Adam and an inconvenience to Liara. It had been an education, but now she had other uses for pure humans as they once existed on planet Earth. After all, they were the genesis, the building blocks of the genetic wonders to come.

  These novo humans would be amazing creatures, but not beings in which Liara had much interest. Her interest lay in the genetics of humans that could be molded and shaped, over time, into something she wanted. These would be powerful beings of her design and infinitely more obedient to her will.

  She smiled and left for her new Palace. She would build a new world and bring human essences back to life. Replicas of the originals, for sure, but every bit as lively and feisty, and with enough of them to experiment to her hearts content. They would mate them and produce offspring, then the fun would begin.

  Liara smiled. She received more than she expected, but less than she wanted. It was a deal, a good deal. Humanity would suffer when she was finally done, and no Immortal could stop her.

  ***

  “I’m sorry about the compromise, Adam. But the Lord commanded a compromise and this will have to be acceptable. These humans will have no memories of their past life; they will be living humans but only resembling who they were in the past. I’m sorry, but we saved you, saved Hecate and we’ve saved the world. No one dies until it is their time.”

  Adam smiled his teenage smile. “It’s good to be alive. You worked a miracle. I will be forever in your debt. We all will.”

  “But you can no longer be Adam. You will be Adam inside, but not on the outside. To most anyway. When we look at you, your wives, family and children, we will all still see Adam. We will make your other persona handsome and desirable for all womankind to want to have you. But, we will decide those matters for you.”

  “Whatever you say. I am forever grateful.”

  “Really? And how do Niona and I know that?”

  “I just said so.
You don’t believe me?”

  “Words plus action are better than just words. Don’t you agree, sis?”

  “Hecate dear, why don’t you go home and see your husband and enjoy life, while Niona and I clear up some details here with Adam. May take some time. To everyone close who loves him, Adam lives. To everyone else he is dead. We shall ‘discover’ Adam’s new distant relative and bring him home later. Now go. We have work to do.”

  Hecate left, happy and in tears, but tears of joy.

  “Now you, Mister, you belong to us.”

  “Now, now take it easy. You have that carnivorous look in your eyes.”

  “We saved your life. You owe us. You said so yourself. Installment payments begin immediately. Now, pay up!”

  Chapter 58

  It was two months before the new Adam returned to Paraiso; it was another month before he was allowed to leave the family compound. Niona and Fionna reminded him every day that it was they who had pleaded his case with the Almighty and it was they who appeared just in time to save his ass. Yes, he would be dead to all but his closest family, but he was very much alive and his work would continue. Humanity was not out of the woods yet, though if humanity’s demise was coming, it would not be at the hands of Liara the Creator or anyone other than the three species of mortals themselves. If they stayed the course, they would survive and prosper; if they fucked up, the Lord himself would end the experiment.

  The man who appeared back in Paraiso, though looking oddly familiar to all, was not Adam St. James. The Immortals, including Hecate told the story of Adam’s brave death and his designation of this man, a “close friend, but distant relation”, as his successor. They said that Adam transferred all his thoughts and memories to his successor before his death so that Adam’s work could continue. They said that the man had been secreted away to protect him, and the knowledge Adam had accumulated. Knowing that Adam’s death was imminent Adam saw to it that this man had to be protected. At first, most doubted that this man could have such knowledge, or any of Adam’s abilities but, over time, he proved himself again and again.

  And, he was so much like Adam in every way.

  Eventually they stopped calling him by his new name, which was quickly forgotten. He was instead called “Adam”, not as a slight to the man whom lived among them, but as an honor for the man they mourned and lost. Within a few years the strange man who had appeared out of nowhere with two Immortals and the rest of the St. James family from Barrows Bay and Seattle, was simply accepted as “Adam”. He even began, slowly over time, to take on the appearance of Adam St. James, but only, it was said, at dawn each day with the rising sun. Then, afterward, he would become whatever each citizen of Paraiso wanted to see. Some saw Adam; some saw another man, younger and more vibrant man whose worry lines, and the weight of the world, had not yet appeared.

  To his Immortals and his mortal wives, they saw the man they loved, and to his family the face and laugh of the boy who had been so troubled, but had overcome so much, was once again back home. He was young to most, a man in his early thirties who could still do everything that the old Adam could do, just maybe with less of an edge.

  The Lord had unfortunately struck a deal with Liara just after the two-week affair between Adam and Liara ended, that when Adam’s life ended he would be reborn in her realm, the RealVerse, as her lover and mate, along with Hecate, their daughter. In this new world, all old memories would be erased, and Liara committed to bringing Adam eternal bliss, on pain of extinction of her and her kind, if the Big Boss found out otherwise. In that case, Adam and his chosen would be freed from Liara’s bonds, and Liara and her kind would be crushed with finality.

  The Almighty said “I will be watching my chosen mortals in life and in eternity. Do not disappoint me Liara; I will have no patience for deception and false witness. Behave or be utterly destroyed.”

  Liara wished she had never made that bargain too, but it was her task to care for Adam and his chosen family members as they re-entered the RealVerse on a new planet in a new system as residents of a new City, the Eternal City of Light. The whole of their reality was not to be connected to any Universe; that is, to matter, energy and spacetime as they had been connected in their past lives. This section of reality was one in which days seemed to come and go in the regular cycle, but the actors did not age. However, there being no other reference point, or memory against which to view their new life, this version of life seemed natural and normal.

  There would be no war, no strife and no competitive species, just a single new kind of being that had the powers inherent in all four genes; some would say they lived simple lives, others that, in this reality, they were enlightened beings who simply had no need for things of no lasting value. The old cast of characters would re-emerge in this new Utopia, but with altered personalities. They would be aware of nothing other than a vague recollection of the handsome Adam St. James and knowledge of the constant companionship of his loving and devoted wife, Liara, and their beautiful teenage daughter Hecate.

  But Liara’s presence was largely an illusion, as only a tiny part of her being was projected to be something it was not; a caring wife and mother. Liara would be too busy to actually make Adam and Liara happy. Hiving off a tiny bit of her existence to maintain the façade of caring would have to do.

  Between death and re-emergence in their new corner of reality, there would be a brief instant of time in which their essences, their souls in human religious terms, would be captured and stored. Theirs would be a different existence than true Immortality, which was a constant state of animation that could be experienced on many levels and in many forms and was unchanging.

  Adam and his entourage, who all died at different times, were to be re-animated as a new class of beings; they would be Immortals similar to, but lesser than, Liara. The Almighty could create whatever form an Immortal might take, or change or extinguish them, but once created they rarely ever changed. The Almighty was seldom very interested in any creation beyond the act of creation, the launching of new life, a species or a temporal existence.

  Since there were no rules and since the understanding had always been that a junior Immortal, such as Liara, would be naturally benevolent in their realm to lesser beings, the idea that Liara would tamper with the memories of reanimated mortals was never considered. But Liara, as an ancient Immortal, truly did understand the long game. She would not directly sabotage the new Adam, still in his first life on Earth; she would let others, over time, do that for her.

  Liara had no intention of swallowing defeat, either with Adam and His experiment with Earth. She had created imperfections, tiny imbalances in the three Earth species that would never, she thought, be detected. And like the reverse of the photocopy error, the small imbalances would grow larger with time.

  When would her revenge and Earth’s final destruction occur? It was hard to say, but the genetic seed of future destruction for the Novo Species had been planted with both Adam and Hecate before Liara departed from Earth. Even under ideal conditions, there was no certainty whether Liara’s attempt to subvert Adam and the Almighty would succeed. The development of the genetics of a new species was different and unpredictable, even for an Immortal.

  What the Almighty had envisioned, as had Adam, was basic beneficial uniformity, coupled with sufficient diversity in genetic combinations to adapt infinitely. Like the genotype/phenotype distinction, the genetics of the big things were all to be the same. The small things, the hidden things, is where Liara plotted and planned to undermine the species as it developed. Like the confluence of ancient beneficial genetics expressed in modern individuals, what Liara did was the exact opposite. In both realms she created the possibility that in a rare case, maybe hundreds of thousands of years in the future, a Hitler or Stalin or Nero, an evil so hideous that science never considered it a possibility, could be born undetected and take shape.

  On the new Earth, the novo humans that gradually developed could transform into anything, ha
d magnificent mental abilities, used science and technology to advance and protect the planet and, since they wanted for little, there was little utility or desire for war or crime. There was, of course, some of both throughout future history, but not on the scale and magnitude that existed at the time of Adam’s triumph over Liara.

  Everything, every animate and inanimate thing comprising the planet, eventually came into unique balance. It was this delicate balance that Liara sought to undermine, to destroy, causing the experiment of the three species to fail.

  Liara did not live to see the outcome of her treachery.

  But Adam did.