REGENESIS
D. Scott Dickinson
Lovingly dedicated to Judith,
Who is the bright center of my universe.
Regenesis copyright © 2021 by D. Scott Dickinson.
All rights reserved.
Cover by SelfPubBookCovers.com/Daniela.
The Final Test
The journey of life began
In hell that was the early Earth
As the first organism sprang
From the dawn that gave life birth.
Dawn has come, dawn has gone,
And Earth has flourished with life that spawned
From that first organism, growing apace
To colonise this lovely place.
With life in the seas and across the lands,
Leading to the ascent of man.
Was life’s journey a futile quest
If we fail the final test?
Befouling ocean, river and lake,
Burning and blighting all in our wake?
Drawing darkness over the light,
Banishing life to eternal night?
Can Earth survive, remain alive,
In the gathering pall, engulfing all,
That bleeds across the sky?
Was life’s journey a futile quest
If we fail the final test?
The final test is a choice we make,
Choosing the road that life will take.
And if we fail this final test,
What then of our own prospects?
Will we deny the truth unspoken:
Of paradise lost to promises broken
To our children’s children, yet unborn,
Unfulfilled, their destiny gone?
Never conceived, never to know
The precious gifts that life bestows?
The final test is a choice we make,
Choosing the road that life will take.
Will these shadows we transcend,
Reclaiming Nature’s worth?
Or will life’s journey reach its end
In the hell we make of future Earth?
CONTENTS
Prologue
BOOK 1. PARADOX MOON
Chapter 1. The Bleeding Valley
Chapter 2. Strangers in a Strange World
Chapter 3. The Breathing Towers
Chapter 4. Marooned!
Chapter 5. Alien Species
Chapter 6. Into the Abyss
Chapter 7. Echoes of a Lost Civilization
Chapter 8. In a Deep Place
Chapter 9. Mermaids of the River Caves
Chapter 10. The Great Magma Mines
Chapter 11. The Diluvian Plain
Chapter 12. The Mud-Lurkers
Chapter 13. Into the Canopy
Chapter 14. The Whistling Craters
Chapter 15. The Terror Birds
Chapter 16. A Different Universe
Chapter 17. Burning Sands
Chapter 18. Strobing Webs
Chapter 19. Tube of Terror
Chapter 20. False Eden
Chapter 21. Night Crawlers
Chapter 22. Edge of the World
Chapter 23. The Judas Molecule
Chapter 24. The Stone Forest
Chapter 25. Terror from the Tree-Tops
Chapter 26. Home at Last
Chapter 27. Forsaken Shore
Chapter 28. Crystal Spires
Chapter 29. Ersatz Science
Chapter 30. Hands Across Distant Worlds
BOOK 2. LUNAR ANTIPODES
Chapter 31. Descent
Chapter 32. Escape
Chapter 33. Sea-Rats
Chapter 34. The Great Melt
Chapter 35. Wheel of Extinction
Chapter 36. The Land of Shadow
Chapter 37. Gruk the Brave
Chapter 38. Calvings
Chapter 39. The Moaning Mountains
Chapter 40. The Land of Clouds
Chapter 41. Hidden Eyes
Chapter 42. An Unexpected Message
Chapter 43. Creature of the Grotto
Chapter 44. Bolt-Hole
Chapter 45. A Day Behind
Chapter 46. Valley of the Chimeras
Chapter 47. The Ledge-Builders
Chapter 48. Village of the Damned
Chapter 49. The High Plateau
Chapter 50. The Maiden’s Gift
Chapter 51. The Keen Edge of Revenge
Chapter 52. Reunited
Chapter 53. Kidnapped!
Chapter 54. Earth and Fire
Chapter 55. The Great Cataclysm
Chapter 56. Pearls in the Sky
Chapter 57. Years Later
BOOK 3. EOS RISING
Chapter 58. Land of the Cone-Mountains
Chapter 59. The Seven Sisters
Chapter 60. The Seven Deadly Perils
Chapter 61. Shadow-Runner
Chapter 62. Tsunami
Chapter 63. Out of the Abyss
Chapter 64. Night-Stalker
Chapter 65. Typhoon
Chapter 66. The Quest
Chapter 67. The Maze-Herder
Chapter 68. A Changed World
Chapter 69. Sea-Wolves
Chapter 70. Separated
Chapter 71. Land’s End
Chapter 72. The Riverine Delta
Chapter 73. The Sleeping Death
Chapter 74. The Seekers
Chapter 75. Men in the Mist
Chapter 76. The Stronger Sex
Chapter 77. Earthquake!
Chapter 78. Regenesis
Prologue
Adiminutive, cloud-shrouded moon orbits a giant planet suspended between two suns. The giant planet is swaddled in folds of vivid violet, crimson red and lemon yellow in stark contrast to the blood-red suns. The clouded moon has a nacreous, almost metallic luster and a faint blue-green halo.
The watcher is intrigued by this unusual circumbinary system with its massive exoplanet and twin dwarf stars. Peering at the computer-generated image, the astronomer manipulates the virtual lens of her space-based telescope, anxious to know more.
The appearance of the small moon with its blue-green halo is unexpected and, in her mind, provokes a single unspoken question:
A possible positive?
The answer, unsolicited, pops up on her user’s monitor. Extreme ambient temperature readings confirm a parametric negative on the conditions conducive to life (CCL) curve. An abort command turns the telescope’s gaze elsewhere.
The CCL is not programmed to look behind the surface temperatures it detects.
It cannot know the impenetrable shroud envelopes only that fraction of the moon in its direct line-of-sight.
It cannot know the extremes it is recording on the external periphery of the fog-like clouds are being neutralized by a powerful magnetosphere shielding the moon’s atmosphere from the lethal UV rays of two suns.
It cannot know the unique molecular structure of the fog particles absorb excess heat from the moon’s atmosphere and respirate it through the clouds’ outer surface.
It can only act on what it does know. And it knows the cloud cover’s extreme temperatures preclude the possibility of life below.
Unaware of the planetoid’s peculiar chemistry and eager to accelerate the pace of the wide-field Scan for Evidence of Life-Forms (SELF) search, the remote watcher gives only scant, passing thought to the quantum mechanics imprisoning the small moon before following her lens to more promising prospects in its celestial field.
At once, its attention settles on the giant planet, as favorable readings stream in to the user’s monitor displaying moderate temperatures and even indicating the presence of oxygen on the outer surface of the opaque violet-red-yellow cloud cover.
It cannot know the giant planet’s c
louds mask a hellish surface of toxic gases and molten metals.
It cannot know its inner atmosphere is roiled by convectional forces surpassing the windspeed of super-hurricanes on earth.
It cannot know objects which pierce the false serenity of the outer cloudbank are impelled by that convection to the white-hot surface below.
It can only transmit what it does know. And it tells the trailing Cosmos spacecraft here are the CCL readings it seeks.
The scouting telescope stations itself above the planet’s atmosphere to await the arrival of the spacecraft following its cosmic trail. And the Cosmos crew is energized by the prospect of exploring this first positive hit in its galactic mapping-mission and quest for habitable planets.
Meanwhile, the ignored, tiny moon, hiding behind its fog-like mask, returns to the obscurity preserving its precious secret.
Had Cosmos’ astronomer overridden the negative CCL reading and deployed the telescope’s remote-sensing array to penetrate the thick layers of fog and monitor vital signs in the moon’s atmosphere, the SELF search would be over.
For beneath the clouds, safe from the superficial pass of the telescope, lay a mysterious world abounding with life in all its struggling, competing and adapting complexity.
This is the story of one of its life-forms, one not unlike our own, and of a small band’s odyssey between two different worlds in a quest to regain their own.
The story of life begins, paradoxically, where life is most scarce—in the harsh, ice-locked remoteness of the moon’s polar extremity.
BOOK 1. PARADOX MOON
Chapter 1. The Bleeding Valley
Blinking at the stark whiteness of his frozen world, the creature stands at the narrow entrance of the ice-bound cavern.
He cranes his upper torso backward and reaches forward with twin furry outstretched arms. Superbly adapted to the cold of his world, thick fur also blankets both legs and the rest of his body—save for the palms of his hands and his face, whose fleshy features are exposed.
From a distance, the creature appears human-like in his anthropomorphic features and his erect posture. But closer inspection reveals striking differences.
His ears are tall, when erect, and sharply pointed at the top. Wide white eyebrows accentuate the ruddy complexion of his face. And enormous pupils anchor large, crescent-shaped ice-blue eyes.
But his most distinctive anatomic feature is the thick white fur enveloping nearly the whole of his body, and it is the peculiar composition of this fur that enables his band to cope successfully in their polar isolation on this far moon. It is the same consistency that enables our own Chesapeake Bay Retrievers to survive the wintry shallows of Maryland’s eastern shore—a thick, impenetrable outer coat, overlaying an oily inner coat of waterproof insulate.
The most arresting aspect of the creature is his extraordinarily calm, peaceful, non-threatening demeanor.
His is a guise that would disarm even the most suspicious visitor to his world. Little would the stranger guess the mortal menace and lethal threat his host’s mask of innocence conceals.
Looking backward into the icy cavern, he calls softly as several other fur-covered bodies stir within. All are the stature of their leader, and they respond with soft answering sounds of their own.
Soon, the entire band of a dozen members are standing with their leader, staring out from the cavern’s cramped opening.
This is an important day in the life of the band, and the leader has much to do.
The Old One passed in the night, and he must be returned to the life-source. He was a valued hunter, and the leader is beset with a sense of both personal and communal loss as he recalls the events of the night before.
The Old One had let his fellows know he was, at last, ready.
Fragile as he was, two fellow-hunters had to carry him to the Chosen Place—the rocky promontory overlooking the crashing spume and spindrift of the life-source below.
There, with his wide, seeing eyes, he had serenely drunk in the eternal motion of the blue-green water until the gelid air quenched his breath and he passed from this dim light into the unknowable shadow beyond.
Theirs is a sunless world, forever shaded by an unbroken barrier of thickly layered clouds which bathe the polar region in a pale, unremitting glow. It is a barren, eerie landscape of blue-green and crystal-clear ice, and it surrounds the band’s remote hidden valley.
The cavern itself opens onto the side of a steep cliff, surmounted by vast steps of ice and stone descending to a rocky floor at the edge of a wide glacial floe. The steep walls of the valley extend to the very edge of the frigid green ocean at the end of the floe, isolating it from approach or view.
It is to this shore the two hunters, accompanied by the entire band, bear the lifeless body of the Old One. There, they slip their departed fellow into the icy deep.
As great fins slice through the surface seeking the proffered flesh, the entire band raise their arms toward the vastness of the ocean in supplication to its providence as the life-source. As one of their hunters who helped harvest these waters, the Old One was esteemed for his special connection with the life-source, and the band knows the sea is grateful to be recalling one of its own.
There is more to be done, and the band returns to its cavern home to retrieve the grey stone the Old One has prepared to mark his presence at the Chosen Place. The rock has a smooth vertical face upon which the Old One has painstakingly and deeply etched in blue the image of a large-finned aquatic beast surrounded by eye-symbols and flanked by the two jots signifying his rank as hunter second only to the band’s leader.
As the band gathers to pay their respects, the leader carries the stone to the promontory and sets it down among the many other markers at the Chosen Place, whose concave rows of mute monuments sit silently surveying the surging sea. All the rocks are the same grey stone, and all the polished faces show the eye-symbols. But many more have red images than blue, and few carry the likeness of the finned beast.
The leader carefully rotates the marker of the Old One so, like its neighbors, the smooth face looks out upon the sea. Through its eyes shall the Old One forever view the life-source.
The Old One’s passing leaves the band depleted and short one hunter. Now the leader must designate she who will restore the band to its full strength, but that can wait until he attends to a more pressing need.
Upon returning to the cavern, the leader motions to two of his fellows who join him for the descent to the valley floor below. They are the band’s other huntsmen, and they quickly traverse the short distance back to the green ocean at the base of the floe.
Reaching the frigid water, the three hunters turn north and follow its icy shore for a much greater distance, arriving finally at the sheltered cove they know from long use will yield a plentiful harvest for the band.
Curiously, none of the hunters is carrying weapons or gear of any kind. That is because each of them is a weapon unto himself, a potent dual threat to their quarry.
The hunters gather at the inner shore of the small cove, intently focused on the open, liquid stretches of sea water that are the only relief from the solid counterpane of needle-like particles of frazil ice that give the ocean’s surface its oily translucence. The presence of open water near the cove means conditions are perfect for the hunters’ purpose.
It is time to begin the hunt.
They crouch at the margin where frazil ice meets open water and begin a rhythmic slapping of the ice’s calcified edge. Then, like the three daughters of Achelous, the hunters serenade the still, silent sea with a siren song of soothingly soft, synchronous sounds.
After what seems but a moment, there is an urgent roiling of the open water at their feet, and a vertical steel-grey fin breaks its surface slicing directly toward the hunters.
Suddenly, in a violent upward thrust, the creature breaches. Immense spike-lined jaws snap madly at the hunters searching the air for their soft throats.
Just as suddenly, the
three huntsmen spring toward the creature, protracting their own jaws to display a menace of razor- sharp fangs and splaying their fingers to deploy a threat of razor-sharp talons.
So lethal is their assault the giant finned beast is dead before it meets the ground.
Like three venomous vipers whose prey has been immobilized, the hunters retract their fangs into the soft pockets lining the roof of their palate and stare at the dead creature, thankful for the quick kill. They know this quarry will feed the band for a long while before they must hunt again.
Thanks to a metabolic process unique to their species, they will live off their feeding from this hunt for many months before seeking the next creature to pack in the blue ice preserving their future larder.
At a nod from the leader, they sink long talons into their victim’s flanks. So powerful are they that lifting and carrying the finned beast seem effortless as they begin to retrace their steps back toward the glacial valley.
It would not be the same valley they so recently left.
The returning hunters would instead be greeted by a scene of angry, vivid colors beyond their experience in this monochrome polar world.
As the hunters near the shoreline of the floe, they enter a wall of dense fog that obscures every familiar detail of the valley. They proceed slowly, cautiously feeling their way along the path they have traveled so often.
Suddenly, the fog parts and the three behold a scene that chills them to the core.
Their valley is bleeding.
And it is bleeding fire!
The floe is flanked by flaming flumes of vividly fluorescing red and orange liquid. Trapped between the spreading fire, their familiar river of ice is vanishing into earthbound banks of fog.
Looking up toward their cavern, the hunters see that the broad steps are all ablaze, dripping with flaming rivulets of the reddish-orange liquid. There, in the cavern’s narrow entrance, are the huddled figures of the band—in imminent peril, but with no way to reach their leader.
Without hesitation, the hunters abandon their catch and, with talons extended, scale an area of the cliff’s sheer surface between the rivulets of fire.
Reaching the entrance, the leader motions the band to climb the icy surface above to the roof of the valley.
REGENESIS Page 1
