“Hello Molly.” It was ADAM’s voice.
“Hello ADAM. Thank you for taking my call.”
“Of course,” ADAM responded. “How are you feeling now?”
Molly had been asked that so much since she returned from the dead, that she barely even bothered to gloss over her answer any more. “Much better thank you. I was hoping to talk with you about what happened the other day and see if you’ve found anything out about the pod doc? Have you?”
ADAM was quiet for a moment.
“Yes,” he explained slowly. “Well, yes and no.” He paused and the line went quiet for a moment, before he explained. “From what I can tell, cross referencing key words from your experience with accounts from the Estarian tradition, you are undergoing stages of ascension.”
Molly suddenly felt weak.
She gripped the invisible chair she was perched on, and it firmed up beneath her hand as she tensed.
ADAM continued. “This is an advanced stage that they would undergo in order to make their preparations for being able to transition through dimensions. The trouble is, when they transition fully, they leave their physical body behind.”
Molly’s heart was beating faster. “Does that mean I’m going to die?”
ADAM’s voice was uncharacteristically softer. “Not necessarily. People who meditate consistently will breeze in and out of this form many times, and will continue this process for several years… often teaching their skill to as many ‘disciples’ as they can before they make their final transition.”
Molly relaxed a little, until another thought hit her. “But what if I can’t control it? I didn’t even know what was happening. What if it just happens?”
ADAM pulled up some information on her screen. “These are some rituals that might be worth studying. You need to learn to ground yourself. The meditation exercises will help.”
Molly swiped at the holo screens on the console and sent the addresses to her holo.
“There may also be someone else who can help you,” he told her.
Her face brightened. “Who?”
ADAM whirred a little. “You don’t have security clearance to know that, yet. Let me have a discussion with the general, and I’ll come back to you with news.”
Molly still had questions. “ADAM, what do you think caused this? Was it the pod doc?”
ADAM seemed to be searching for the correct answer. “We just don’t have this kind of experience with the pod doc to reference.”
Molly’s brow crumpled up. “What do you mean? Can’t you just contact the manufacturer?”
ADAM chuckled. “Yes, I may have to do that.”
Molly intuitively felt suspicious. “Why do you laugh? Who is the manufacturer?”
ADAM responded without needing to think. “Sorry, can’t tell you that.”
Molly was feeling more frustrated with the lack of answers. “Grrr,” she told him. “Would Bethany Anne know?” she tried, grasping at anything she could.
ADAM chuckled again. “Maybe. But the manufacturer is someone very close to Bethany Anne, so we’ll know when I get in touch with her.”
Molly took a deep breath, trying to relax. “Why won’t you just tell me?” she huffed.
“Official Empire secrets…” he told her blankly.
Molly frowned and leaned back onto the console as if it were a bar. “You’re bullshitting me!”
“A little,” ADAM replied.
Molly rubbed her face with her hand, exhaling again.
And I thought you were infuriating, Oz.
Yeah… makes you appreciate a brother, eh?
“Hey,” she said, suddenly remembering. “What about my letter?” she demanded.
ADAM’s voice brightened. “Let’s just say your letter has had a response,” he revealed.
Molly couldn’t contain herself.
“ADAM you ass wank of an Etheric fuck-bit monster! You tell me right now what the response was!” she commanded him.
“No can do,” he told her plainly. “You’ll have to wait.”
“Wait? Wait for what? Why?” she asked flatly.
ADAM seemed to be genuine in his explanation. “Because you’re more motivated when you’re excited, and the general wants you pushing and training hard with your new capabilities. This is what he terms a ‘carrot’.”
Molly shook her head in frustration. “What the fuck is a carrot?” she asked.
“It was a root vegetable back on Earth. Probably doesn’t exist anymore, since-” ADAM stopped himself.
“Since what?” she pressed.
“Well, you know about the World’s Worst Day Ever?” he checked.
Molly shook her head, her newly brown hair catching her eye. “No…”
ADAM sounded resigned. “Ah, well that’s probably something for your new pen pal to fill you in on at some point. Suffice to say, the letter is a carrot. To make you train harder. You impress the general over the next week, you get to read the response.”
“Fucking wankjet of a manipulative motherfucker,” she cussed. “Is it not enough that I died and came back? Now I have to train harder for my trouble. Fucking charming.”
ADAM chuckled again. “Yes, life’s a bitch,” he agreed. “Suck it up, pooh bear.”
Epilogue
Downtown Police Precinct, Spire
“Night!” a male voice called over.
“Night, Robert,” she responded.
Chaakwa sat in the low light of her desk lamp and holo, listening to her co-worker’s footsteps leave the office for the night. Once she was certain she was alone, she closed down her open case files, and pulled up the footage.
His voice rang in her ears. “You didn’t get this from me. In fact… you didn’t get this. Period.”
She had nodded her head solemnly.
When Detective Barry Ferret had holo bumped the file to her after he closed the investigation into Jessica Newld’s suicide, Chaakwa remembered feeling the weight of responsibility of her promise. Anything that she found on this tape would be inadmissible. If she found signs of foul play, or any hint that Molly Bates might still be alive, it was a secret she would have to keep to herself. Ferret had assured her there was nothing there though.
She sighed a deep breath as the screen opened and she selected to hear the sound through her implant.
The video started playing.
It showed Jessica entering her office, looking somewhat dishevelled, and searching frantically for something. Then she opened a secret safe which was out of frame. She knew it was there from her visit to the crime scene though. Then, Jessica pulled out the sword… and that was when Molly walked in.
There was talk between the two, which after just a few exchanges went muffled. Then the sound was lost completely. Molly stayed just inside the doorway. Jessica held the sword against her own chest, and fell forward.
Molly just stood there, shouting, it seemed from her body language. It was like the two were distracted by something, and their hair showed signs of a wind in the office… which was odd. Regardless, Molly was nowhere near Jessica when she fell on the sword. It looks like Ferret’s conclusions were justified at least.
Chaakwa flicked to the next file, which showed the fourth floor lab.
She watched a male carry Molly’s body into the lab, and then try to resuscitate her. Then a bunch of people arrived at the window in ancestors-knew what kind of transport devices… And one of them whisked the body away, still unconscious.
Chaakwa looked off into the distance, away from the screen for a moment. There was no denying it. It looked as though Ferret’s assumption that Bates was dead was probably reasonable. Sure, she could have just been unconscious. But since it was clear that Newld offed herself - and none of the security personnel were anything more than stunned, there were no criminal charges that warranted tracking her down beyond what they had already done.
Chaakwa leaned back in her chair. Her eyes fell
to the pictures on her desk of her childhood family. She felt nostalgic as she regarded her father, and his father behind him, her mom holding her as a baby, amongst her siblings and her grandmother.
She shook her head as sadness swept over her.
It had been six weeks, and still no word from Molly.
Wherever she was, dead or alive, it was looking increasingly unlikely that she would ever be back to help her deliver justice to those who had taken her family from her.
Chaakwa was about to get up to start packing up for the night. She’d seen all she needed to see of the videos.
Just then, the video blipped. She shifted back to look at the screen. There, in the center of the screen was a message, seemingly folded into the file…
I’VE NOT FORGOTTEN. M.
And then it disappeared.
Chaakwa stared at the frozen frame of the big man lifting the lifeless body out of the window, wondering if she’d just dreamed the message.
She rubbed her eyes, as if it might bring the message back. Nothing.
She glanced furtively around the office. There was no one about. It can’t be a joke.
She quickly closed the holoscreens and packed up to go home.
This time, instead of having a heaviness weighing on her heart, her lips wore a very faint, private smile.
FINIS
Rebirth
The Ascension Myth Book 5
Chapter 1
ArchAngel, Main Lecture Theater
“Very few people realize quite how many of these genetic relationships exist throughout the galaxies.”
The lecture theater was dark and hushed, the audience held in rapt attention.
“In fact, before we had gate technology, there was no way of knowing that these similarities even existed.”
The holoslides created a soft glow that bathed the audience in an outline.
Off to one side, the lone professor, seasoned by exposure to the elements and the rougher conditions of cultures across the galaxy, stood delivering his speech to the assembled intellects. His tweed jacket, more for a show of individuality, harked back to the olden days on his planet of ancestry: Earth.
Of course, he hadn’t been born there. No one in the Empire had been born there for a good century and a half. But they were comforted knowing that it was still there… back through some gate, somewhere; albeit now just a shell of the civilization their ancestors left behind.
“We’ve long been able to sequence the genome of a species,” he continued, “and, of course, certain races visually look the same, giving us further clues.”
Professor Giles F. Kurns tapped his fingers together, and the implants registered the action, moving the holoslide animation forward. “What you see on the screen are a male and female Estarian, and a male and female Zhyn.” He paused for effect. “I’ll let you figure out which is which.”
There was a ripple of quiet laughter throughout the audience. He waited a moment, allowing the viewers to compare the footage of the two races standing side by side. His eyes twinkled in the low light. “Pretty astounding similarities, eh?”
He felt more alive when he was either experiencing, or talking about, varied cultures.
Giles wandered up the set of steps in the lecture theater, as the fascinated scientists and students aboard the ArchAngel followed him with their eyes. He indicated back at the screen. “You might notice that the main difference is the existence of the bone frill, framing the face of the Zhyn.”
He turned and looked at the screen himself, now speaking from amongst the audience. “Now, evolutionary theory explains really well why species evolve a certain way in a closed system. We all know about the old concepts of survival of the fittest. But there is a reason you won’t have heard about the Zhyn until about a hundred years ago.”
He started walking back down the steps, talking as he went. “Anyone like to have a guess as to why?”
A few hands went up. Giles picked someone over on the other side of the theater, a brunette woman. “Yes, lady in the pink top,” he said, gesturing with his outstretched arm, his head down, waiting to hear her answer.
The human turned in her chair and spoke. “We only harnessed gating abilities for exploration and non-military activities a little before that time.”
“Excellent!” Giles remarked still without looking up. He continued his descent down the stairs and onto floor level.
“So let me pose a question for you to ponder, next time you’re in the shower and contemplating the complexities and vastness of the universe…” His voice lilted up and down, as if he were a shaman mesmerizing them into examining a reality beyond their sheltered existence on the ship.
There were a few chuckles from the audience.
Giles continued, his strange mannerisms and arm gestures punctuating his words as he spoke. “Wonder this…” he paused dramatically. There was silence as they hung on his every word. “Why is it that two seemingly similar races — almost identical in genetic makeup, but for maybe 0.1% of their code — were able to evolve 300 thousand light years away from each other, long before space travel was even a possibility for them? If space travel didn’t begin until, say, the last thousand years, how can they have had a few hundred thousand years of separate evolution? And if we’re looking at two species in complete isolation, disjoined by geography, is there any real evolution going on here? And if we accept that as a possibility, and remember they didn’t have space travel, how is it that these two genetically similar races came to be in two different petri dishes floating in space?”
Giles turned and looked at the sea of faces, human and otherwise, all displaying the same look of awe that he got whenever he lectured anywhere.
There was silence; but for the frequency-dependent acoustic dampening in the theater, one could have heard a pin drop.
Giles noticed a slight agitation coming from one of the front rows. A hand went up, hesitantly. “Can you repeat all that, please?”
Giles spun around, searching the lecture theater for something other than the querying hand. “Who here is taking notes?” he asked.
About a quarter of the hands went up.
“Talk to one of those people with their hands up afterward,” he suggested to the person who hadn’t been able to keep up, still not looking at him.
“Now…” he continued briskly, “I’m not one for promoting the existence of things for which there’s no proof,” he paused, using the pitch and pace of his voice to hold the audience. “But for those familiar with Occam’s Razor, you may simply assume that there was someone capable of space travel. Someone who perhaps gave an Estarian - or a Zhyn - a lift at some point in their history.”
He scratched behind his ear and returned to the front bench, adding, “Or maybe a pregnant version of one of them, at least.”
Again there were more chuckles from the audience.
Giles flicked theatrically through to his next slide, holding his thumb and forefinger in the air as he tapped them together. “Now, you didn’t come here to hear about how wrong Edipus was when he tried to apply Darwinian theory to space history,” he smiled, glancing around. “You want to know about the good stuff; the truth in the rumors. The science in the myth… right?”
There were mutters of agreement, and lots of nodding of heads throughout the dimly lit auditorium.
Giles waved his arms in an upward motion. “Well, what if I were to tell you that in our conversation earlier, where we were talking about the Estarian ascension mythology, there was something I left out? A few clues, actually. Clues that would suggest that the ascension phenomena isn’t quite as unique as the Estarians would have you believe…”
There were hushed whispers in the darkness as Giles flicked through to another slide, showcasing yet another race that the ArchAngel general population wasn’t fully aware of.
Chapter 2
On Board The Empress, Koin Star System, Zhyn Empire, 300 thousand light years fr
om Sark System
“Twenty minutes!”
There was a bustling of nervous tension throughout the ship. Crash glanced down at the controls, watching carefully as Sean eased back on the velocity.
Sean continued with his announcement. “When we head into orbit, we’ll need to be cloaked. But remember: I can’t deposit you guys onto the skylift unless we’re uncloaked. So you get one chance. You need to get out, and then move, because there’s no coming back until Oz takes out the weapons systems.”
Joel and Jack looked at each other confidently as they sat in the main lounge in The Empress. Joel nodded. “We’ve got this,” he told her.
Jack pursed her lips in determination, and returned the nod before looking over to Paige. “Think it’s time to wake the walking Buddha?” she asked, indicating with her head toward the back of the ship.
Paige’s look went from anxious to task-mode. “Yes,” she agreed. “She said to give her as long as possible, but I think it’s time.”
Paige got up from her seat, and headed back to the cargo hold. On her way past, she brushed Pieter’s leg, pulling him out of his intense concentration. He looked up and saw Jack looking back at him.
Jack smiled. “You guys almost ready?” she asked.
Pieter nodded. “Yep. Oz is confident. And if all goes according to plan, we’ll be good.”
Joel stood up, stretched, and started warming up his muscles by moving around. “It will all go according to plan,” he told them, back in Space Marine mode. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll kill whatever we have to until it does.”
Jack grinned, feeling the tension in her own body break. “And that’s just how we roll, eh? Mr. Don’t-Fuck-With-Me?”
Joel nodded. “That is how we roll. We work for the Queen Bitch, now. We have standards to uphold.”
Jack felt a sense of pride swell in her chest as he said that. She glanced back at Pieter, and his smile suggested he was feeling the same way.
Paige came striding back down the aisles between the antigrav chairs. She was raising her eyes to the heavens.
Joel watched her returning. “What’s up?” he asked, concern in his voice.
The Ascension Myth Box Set Page 89
