Moon 514- Blaze and the White Griffon

by Drew Briney

  Somewhat skeptical, Blaze began recalling Evelia’s warning that Toka’s energy color was somewhat dark, although varying in hue and sort of cloudy unlike any other members of the crew. Someone needs to interview everyone in Unit 4, he silently considered. Until then, Blaze needed to be on good terms with Toka. Someone with that much accessible power could cause a lot of trouble if they had the desire.

  “Okay,” Blaze said. “I think the crew has a right to all of this information and I think it would be helpful for all of us to know what has happened for the past couple of centuries. You and Aria … and any other man or woman in your unit who knows anything about this … prepare a presentation for next week. I want to know everything there is to know about whatever changes have been made to our bodies. That is a direct order. That said,” Blaze continued, looking for an opportunity to instill some self interest in the hawk-eyed man, “you can feel free to make a sales pitch about your genetic cocktails to crewmen as you see fit – just don’t go too crazy okay?” He threw a smile at the scientist and hoped that the order would sit well enough with the scientist.

  It seemed it did. Toka returned the smile and offered a soft but emphatic “yes, sir” before calling out. “Aria,” he practically yelled.

  “Yes,” Aria answered as she entered from the adjoining room.

  “Our new captain has just ordered us to prepare a history of genetic manipulation among the various units. Perhaps, since you are one of the most knowledgeable people on our team, you could give him a preview of what he might expect us to share next week when the report is complete?”

  “My pleasure,” she purred with more flirtation in her voice than one could casually dismiss. Motioning him to follow her into a separate room, Aria seductively swayed her hips as she casually strutted in front of Blaze who couldn't help but notice he was experiencing that recurring feeling of primeval attraction towards the bombshell siren who was leading him into her private office.

  In contrast, Aria was feeling heavily conflicted about her overt attempts to attract the man who recently killed her one time flame: Jerron. Because of her genetic enhancements, Aria was able to voluntarily release heavy doses of pheromones into the air - a talent that, coupled with her enhanced appearance, led most any man to feel irresistibly attracted towards her. Doing so often left her feeling uncomfortably confident that men were not truly interested in her – they were nothing more than unwitting victims of subconscious biological processes.

  However, in this particular instance, Aria felt especially uncomfortable with her deliberate efforts to allure the ship’s captain. First, Jerron had been the first man that Aria believed was genuinely interested in her for who she really was – interested in her character as much as her physical presence. And then, there was her genuine attraction to Blaze – she found him both physically attractive and personally interesting because of his simplistic way of handling the situations he had been confronted with – of all of the traits she had observed from the captain, one stood out above all others: he seemed very genuine and that was a quality that Aria particularly valued in men. Not only did her attraction to Blaze leave her feeling like she was betraying the memory of her friend – whom Blaze had executed – it left her feeling keen guilt for betraying the captain of her ship to please the one man that she both loved and loathed, admired and despised: Toka. Between all of these conflicting emotions, Aria was feeling quite the wreck.

  However, above all else, Aria considered herself a very loyal person – and she owed her life, her livelihood, her successes, and her daily happiness to Toka. She wouldn’t – and couldn’t – easily forget that.

  So she poured it on. She released such large amounts of pheromones into the air, spoke with such unrelenting charm, and gently touched him with such tantalizing – though seemingly accidental – allurements that Blaze could have felt little less than totally saturated by her seduction. They spoke for hours and before long, she forgot that she was feigning anything at all. Meanwhile, Blaze became so distracted by Aria's person that he began to miss the historical details that she was explaining and that he had so freshly requested. The lure was laid; the bait was taken. But she felt guilty … and so did he.

  SHE DUG HER HANDS DEEP INTO THE EARTH, allowing moist granulations to ooze between her fingers and up her arms as they plummeted into the murky soil, feeling the contrasting moisture and sandy textures as they slithered across her skin, and relaxing as she absorbed the experience into her soul. She shuddered slightly as she consciously noticed that the energy from this earth was almost overpowering to her senses. While she found the energy emanating from this earth exhilarating, she also found it much more intense than energies native to her home moon. Occasionally, she determined that it was discomforting – like a quick electric jolt that doesn’t really hurt but leaves you feeling a titch jittery and on edge. It was this sensation that made it difficult to effectively focus on her goal – she was here to listen to the earth and in order to do that, she had to flush her mind of everything else – it had to be clear and focused solely on her goal of hearing what this planet might say when it spoke to her.

  She struggled through these jolting sensations for many minutes before hearing anything whatsoever and she distinctly understood that her failures were directly related to her inability to properly channel the overwhelming amount of energy around her. With all of this excess energy traversing throughout her body, she felt like running as fast as she could or swimming through the waters to use it up – but for now, she had to remain calm and relatively motionless.

  If this had been her home moon, she would have received a communication by now – but one had to be patient with these things – they cannot be forced. Finally, and after what felt like many hours (despite what the sun in the sky told her about the real passage of time), she felt an immense rushing sensation as energy surged through her with remarkable ease and without any conscious effort. She recognized this familiar feeling. She could rest now. She had finally succeeded.

  Evelia rejoiced in her soul as the scene continued and as the magic woman learned about the child Elayuh. Evelia absorbed the memory as if it were her own. Her feelings mirrored the magic woman’s feelings and she intuitively received the communication in the same way as the magic woman. She learned the same things and understood them from the same perspectives. Their feelings were united. Their understandings were united. In one sense, their souls were becoming one. As Evelia intuited this conclusion in the subconscious portion of her mind, the scene changed again.

  The magic woman hungrily absorbed energy until the surrounding air seemed to rush around her like a brisk wind in a canyon. She could sense that Blaze perceived this energy flow as a small breeze of wind rather than understanding it for what it really was. For being so brilliant in so many ways, this species is very naïve, she judged. Ever trying to learn about nature but nearly always failing to become one with her.

  She focused on channeling those amassed energies through the body of the frail young woman who lay before her – the woman with an unnatural poison coursing through her veins. She passively allowed her mind to concentrate on the blood flow of this woman, to visualize the path of blood throughout her body, to imagine herself as a traveling unit of red blood cells coursing throughout her veins – this had to be intuitive, unforced, and un-intellectual. This had to be kinesthetic, nothing more than a feeling, an exercise in guided intuition – but it also had to be anatomically correct and flawless – the body itself could speak these things to her if she listened well. As the magic woman released amassed energies, she guided them through the blood system of this foreign species and triumphantly – albeit slowly – observed the poison exit the body. Moments later, the infection was gone – all that was left was for the body to recover from damage left behind by the poison. This process was more difficult. This was tricky.

  She went through the same exercise that she had been through with the earth: she focused on effortlessly re-channeling those ener
gies throughout the woman’s body over and over again while she listened to what the body of this woman would say to her. She focused on passively allowing her intuition to respond to whatever the woman’s body might communicate to her. Moments later, the magic woman was changing the way the energies moved throughout the body of this strange – but similar – species who called themselves human. She changed the flow of energy to assist the young body in its own efforts of healing itself until the frail woman was stable. And she changed the flow of energies to answer the requests of the body. Soon, the young woman was largely healed. Now, she should only need a little rest, the alien concluded.

  The scene changed again … and again. Multiple efforts at healing various injuries, infections, and diseases passed through Evelia’s mind until she began to understand the process quite well. In some ways, it seemed very simple. It seemed natural, organic. It was so much easier than anything she ever would have imagined. All of the complicated things she had learned about in her biology courses now seemed overly academic – akin to looking at the cell of someone’s kidney to assess whether or not the person had beautiful hair – it was shooting way beyond the mark. Yet somehow, she intuitively felt that all of that knowledge could be useful – she just didn’t know how. After all, she was an artist, not a medical specialist.

  Healing was not all she learned that morning. Evelia saw glimpses of the magic woman’s turmoil over her expulsion from her people, her internal conflict to balance consistency in punishments with leniency for particularly complicated circumstances. Evelia experienced the battle between mercy and justice in the magic woman’s mind as she learned more about her history and her culture.

  She also learned that she had at least four more of these lengthy sessions before her experience was complete. And this last session had been overwhelming. Despite the fact that her body was deeply relaxed and sleeping soundly, her mind was active and she felt as if she was going to pass out if this session continued too much longer. Perhaps I will fall into a coma, she fleetingly worried.

  Each session was lasting longer and requiring her to plummet into greater depths of mental expansion. She was using and becoming familiar with parts of her brain that had remained relatively dormant in her species for many dozen, if not hundreds of generations. She was awakening parts of her mind that left her feeling like someone rudely torn from a deep dark sleep by a sudden burst of noonday light – it was painful despite any delightful prospects that accompanied the light.

  And the more she learned, the more she was changing. She was beginning to feel like a foreigner among her fellow crewmen. On a practical level, she was one with them; she was their peer, their leader, their comrade. But on another more fundamental level, she was becoming so different from them that she felt inexpressibly alone and distant. She saw things from a much different paradigm than they did, she evaluated life very differently than they did. She almost feared to learn more. She feared that continual change might estrange her from her newest best friend, perhaps even from her entire species.

  And she still felt like fainting.

  But she couldn’t stop either. She had seen the earth’s vision of Elayuh. The baby needed to learn these very truths that Evelia was learning. This tiny infant was the key to helping humankind find its ultimate potential and Evelia now understood that Elayuh couldn’t accomplish that goal without thoroughly learning some – or all – of these truths. Somehow, the magic woman had understood that a human needed to learn these things so that a human could teach them to Elayuh – and that these principles needed to be intuitive to Elayuh before she became of age – the age when the earth itself would teach her. Somehow, the magic woman understood that Evelia was the person who had to teach Elayuh and somehow, Evelia knew the magic woman had been correct when she chose to give this knowledge to her instead of giving it to Blaze. She only hoped that he would stay by her side as she evolved from an ordinary woman into a magic woman. She hoped that he would want to learn these things as well. And she hoped for a lot more.

  BLAZE WATCHED AS EVELIA TWISTED and turned in her sleeplike condition. Cradling the baby in his arms, he wondered what Evelia would learn this time – and wondered how she might change. He hoped that she would learn how to heal her ankle but figured that learning these skills were probably among the last things that she might learn. Then again, he was happy to carry her from time to time – that wasn’t so bad.

  For the most part, he enjoyed hearing about things Evelia was learning and he enjoyed discovering the perspectives of an alien species; his distrust of the magic woman was waning, if not entirely fading away – after all, the things she had taught Evelia had already come in handy a few times. At the same time, he didn’t feel like this was his season to dabble in magic – or whatever this was. He had his own challenges to confront. When Evelia first started learning these things, he had been struggling just to survive, to absorb drastic life changes and to meet the path fate thrust upon him.

  Now, he had the pressing burden of new responsibilities resting heavily upon his shoulders. And if that wasn’t enough, he had to balance his efforts to gain the confidence of his fellow crewmen with his efforts to discover the source of the conspiracy that nearly ended his life – a conspiracy that was deeply imbedded somewhere amidst the very crewmen he was trying to lead, perhaps the very people whose confidence he was trying to gain. And so, adding much of anything to these ever changing duties was an unwelcome thought even if those duties might seem pleasant during another season of his life.

  And so it was that even though he was interested in learning whatever Evelia might want to share with him, he really didn’t have much time for any of this in his life right now – he just hoped that Evelia would be wise enough to make good decisions as to which things she would believe and which things she should reject.

  She twitched. While they slept in separate chambers, Blaze agreed to watch Elayuh while she accessed more of the magic woman’s mind. She had suspected that this session might take longer than before and wanted to make sure that the baby was well cared for. She was right, he mused. She has been asleep for a very long time. And he had duties to take care of. He thought about calling Jazz to care for the baby again but hoped that Evelia was almost finished with this session.

  Just when he determined that it would probably be more prudent to have the young boy tend the child while Evelia finished learning whatever it was she might be learning, the young woman snapped her eyes open and scanned the room with the darting eyes of a predator. The look in her eyes startled Blaze but the expression was fleeting and it was followed by that beaming smile of enthusiasm that always warmed his heart.

  He was excited to talk to her but probably didn’t have much time. He retraced the questions that he wanted to ask her, including a more detailed explanation as to why she had assigned members of the crew into different colored teams and what she might be able to do to get into the minds of the crew members who remained in holding – what might they learn about the “Master” from their memories if they remained unwilling to answer his questions? But just as she sat up and began moving towards Blaze, the speaker on his shoulder monitor activated.

  “Captain?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have an urgent matter. We need you to meet us on deck as soon as absolutely possible.”

  “Can you tell me what it is?” Blaze pressed, hoping to have at least five minutes to visit with Evelia.

  “I’m afraid not sir. … I mean … it’s possible but I think you will prefer to see this for yourself as soon as you can.” The voice trailed. Blaze thought that the voice belonged to Vardn but he wasn’t sure. Evelia looked over at Blaze with disappointed eyes but he thought perhaps he saw something more. Was it discouragement?

  “I am sure it is nothing too serious,” he whispered in assurance.

  “I didn’t catch that sir. Could you please repeat that?” the voice in the monitor called back.

  “I will come as fast as I can,” Bla
ze answered, pursing his lips a little and returning Evelia’s look of disappointment as he passed the baby back into her arms.

  “I’m excited to see what new things you learned,” Blaze encouraged her as he gave her a parting hug and kiss on the cheek. “After I check things out on deck, I need with personnel to get updated on a few different departments of this ship,” he continued, “but after that, I will come back to see how you are doing.”

  “Thanks,” she answered with as much encouragement as she could muster. Silently, she determined to follow Blaze aboard deck.

  “Captain?” the monitor called again.

  “I’m sorry,” Blaze began to explain, “I was speaking to …”

  “Yes sir,” the monitor answered. “I’m sorry to interrupt sir. Vardn is asking permission to send an emergency alert among the crewmen with a note that you may modify the alert after you review the situation further. I’m afraid this matter is quite pressing …” Before Blaze could answer, the transmission ended.

  UNAWARE THAT EVELIA WAS QUIETLY shadowing him, Blaze entered the ship's deck and looked at the main linatech panel that projected a direct view into space. In front of their eyes loomed a huge spaceship that dwarfed their own. Several days before, Blaze had stared in awe at the gargantuan sized spaceship that he was now captain over. Naively, he noted that it was by far the largest spaceship that he had ever read about in stories - let alone in reality - and believed that mankind had probably succeeded in creating the greatest space craft in the galaxy. Now, his reality was being shaken again. Without any experience to judge from, Blaze estimated that the space craft in front of him was undoubtedly the size of a small moon - or perhaps a large one. Its odd shape was far from spherical however - from the front, it looked more like a well shaped, but flattened, diamond. From above - a viewpoint Blaze did not enjoy - it looked more like a mechanical falcon with wings protruding in front of its misshapen head and a stubby tail that was three dimensional rather than flattened. How anything that huge could ever launch through the atmosphere of a planet was beyond Blaze but it was a question that quickly passed through his mind. The question that should have passed through his mind but did not is how a ship that size could land on a planet at all - and the answer was that it couldn't - at least, it wasn’t built for that.