Tales of Reign

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Tales of Reign Page 22

by M E Wise


  I laid down the holo device and stood naked before the expanse of the Mor’h system. The sun filled the array with pale light through the solar lenses. “Come back to bed,” mumbled Dae sleepily. I followed her request and laid down to rest.

  Mother. The word of God to babes. The word of God. God is life. Life is god.

  Sovereign Chapter 8

  The Rootknot

  “You don’t hide things as well as you think you do.” Dae spoke with a mouthful of fruit. She had lowered the solar shade enough to lay tanning in full view of the sun. All of her person, so decadent to me. “But you do?” I questioned laying about, not too far away on pillows from the bed. “Of course! I’m a woman!” She stressed. “Women are burdened with so much, you know.” She rolled to her stomach and continued picking at what could closely be described as an orange. “We have to feel our way through the world; life for that matter. And we aren’t allowed to cherry pick how we feel it or when that feeling comes.”

  “You make it sound like it’s possession!” I mocked. She threw a peel at me.

  “No. We are in control but that doesn’t mean it isn’t boiling under the surface. Men aren’t so greatly removed from this. Women have the upper hand because we know this.” She said most assured. “We know that any given time, what we feel is going to happen. Something is going to bring it all to the surface and we won’t be able to hide it. Only the truly narcissistic women fight it all the time!” She joked. “I envy them. Cold bitches.” She smiled.

  “And?” I settled in for something typically impressive from Dae’s worldview. “You may be different. Some man fused together by different things; but you are as readable as any man I’ve come to know. You hid something from me but you slipped.” She became very serious. “When we linked during the message to my mother, you let slip something deeply hidden.” I fidgeted as she continued. “It wasn’t the first time. You have done it in my dreams; at least I think so while you slept. And at the peak of sex!” She smiled eating a bite of fruit.

  “And you kept this a secret?” I questioned innocently.

  “You weren’t my husband then!” She added. “I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first. It seemed so raw and so surreal. During the message I felt this intense heartbeat. It surrounded me.” She sat up in her two-piece underwear. “I felt you succumbing to it. Surrendering in it. I felt you wrecked by it.” She became doe eyed. “I felt your fear, their fear and your mother slipping away from you.” The reveal sent my head down. I couldn’t look at her. “You feel at fault. Ashamed and alien to everything around you but I know that to be completely false!”

  She slid over to me and I still couldn’t look at her. “I know something else you don’t.” I took a deep breath. I braced for something prolific. I could easily link with her, ignoring her boundaries and find this for myself in my element. But I didn’t, this was an even stage. “I found your origins in the Cresche.” I repelled. “Why keep this from me?”

  “Shush, listen.” She calmed me. I trust her completely as I always have. “A codex was carefully organized of the Halfer experiments. The array were first labs before they were modified to be links in a cage. The Mor’h were looking into finding a common sentient ancestor no matter how distant. They understood the issue of animal to plant sequencing in their bioinformatics. They still looked for a common gene, something of a first sequence in all of DNA.”

  I sat studious. “They began searching and studying to discover if they could accelerate the search by tampering with the strands. They introduced Mor’h genes into the DNA of humans; knowing this would be heuristic if any result were to occur. The hybridization however was not in their control. The biological maturity and sustained existence was.” She took a deep breath. “As nasty as it sounds they needed to observe the change and in their own way felt a limited existence would be easier. I’m guessing years of controlled breeding and cloning cycles had lost their empathetic adaptations if they ever possessed them.”

  “The arrogance of it still!” I balked. “They created a death cycle just to control an experiment!” Dae acknowledged my growing angst but took my hand.

  “But nature had a different idea. Some tampered genes moved forward in the reproductive habits of human beings. What they wanted to see happen was occurring but not at their behest. They let the entire ordeal become generational.” She pulled out her tablet. She brought up a picture of the last wall in the Great Chain of Being. “The Halfers as we call them, carried that gene and it randomized as any trait would. So did the death sequence.”

  “I know some of this but what did this have to do with me.” I asked honestly. “Everything!” She laughed.

  “You my dear husband are nature’s one true success in all of this. You are a completely new sustainable sentient species. More human than Mor’h. More Mor’h than they had ever evolved to be. You are what occurred when nature encountered forced bifurcation of the trees from ancient ancestors across the galaxy!” She stared hard into my face. “You are evolution pure and simple. Nature was forced to work over-time but here you are new to the universe and can propagate a lineage beyond man and Mor’h.”

  “Propagate?” I questioned resoundingly. Dae touched her stomach. “Are you with child?” I jolted. “No!” She laughed, “not yet. But it isn’t impossible.”

  “Is that your medical opinion Doc?” I smiled. “Yes my beautiful husband. We can literally sire the future of life as we know it.” She rolled over in my arms and we stared at the sun setting on De Braga as we hurled around to face Mor’h slowly once more. The size of the moon allowed for both to share the same sky. A powerful metaphor for the reality Dae and I share. “They called the strange sequence of events the Rootknot.”

  

  The honeymoon was over and we had stayed well over a week on De Braga. Dae and I took a day to reacquaint ourselves with true gravity and the return to routine. I left her to her studies and her Ladies eagerly waiting for their self-imposed matriarch to arrive. They literally were waiting at the landing pad for her with gifts. Ben waved at a distance and offered me no such reception. Although the next day Ben exhaustedly begged me for dirty details on the nuptials.

  My first order of business was to have a private counsel with S’lei. I messaged her and linked for complete confidence the message was directly received. “We must meet at the domicile.” Is all that I exchanged and she concurred. I arrived escorted by Ben and he proceeded to the spaceport after leaving me to my meeting. I entered the domicile and a pitch of fragrant permeation filled my sinuses. A Tah’l was here already and I linked to sense the room. “It is only I.” S’lei said nodding into the room from a spare bedroom. “It is good to share your presence again Reign.” She sincerely greeted.

  “Always S’lei.” I moved deeper into the room. I peeked around for her usual escorts.

  S’lei placed her hands to her chest. “I have sent my Lo’Nar away on errand.” She sat on the stairs into the center of the rest area. I circled and sat on the sofa across from her. We sat for a good minute. I got the feeling she didn’t know the social protocol of such a meeting. I knew we wouldn’t have a great deal of time to discuss this in tongue. So I linked openly. I felt her relief.

  S’lei and the Tah’l all share a very powerful link. It hits like a migraine when they are anxious and this time was no different in that regard. Visions of Lo’Mor’h and Tah’l symbolically divided toed lines. The strange symbol appearing everywhere filled the link and there was a calming sensation. There was great support for it. The divide was a small angry persistent group. Isolationists!

  Sori frighteningly filled the shadows and again raised the sense of danger in the sharing. I completely understood now their fear of them, even extinct. I garnered the splinter group saw myself and humankind much like the Sori. A means to an end. I let slip my own misconceptions and predilections of my current life. She sensed them purely as life growing naturally. She was not threatened. Obviously S’lei was not of this group.


  “Ours is a difficult time.” She spoke. The link faded. “Some of our kind fear our end is near. Other’s embrace it.” S’lei reached into her robes and pulled free some colored sticks like chalk but oilier. She stood and walked to the wall. “Seasons change.” She smudged one color and then another. “Some seasons see the beginning of things and some the end.” She stepped back her hands smudged with color. The symbol was a translation of all the ones we had seen around the Cresche and randomly about. The one at our wedding obviously placed for some greater symbolism.

  “This symbol was first shared by Wan Sah in her wake as she expired. Then again in her waking rise.” S’lei turned to face me. “At first it was unclear. Such an unexpected link from a Lo’Mor’h, a death call.” She paused looking for words. “Then her eyes told true, she had seen herself whole in another. Her waiting host.” S’lei smiled at me.

  “I meant no harm.” I offered sincerely. “It was curiosity…”

  “Curiosity that began many things. Many things before you knew a single season Reign.” She laughed oddly. “You are not faulted for her telling. She shared something beautiful even to the Tah’l. She saw roots from Earth and Mor’h climbing for the sky in a single stem. That stem had two leaves. And to the sky three rays of light. The future of Mor’h, humankind and you Reign.”

  “Was it some sort of premonition?” I asked oddly. Supernatural elements in their history were always short-lived.

  “In a sense but nothing unnatural. Her roots reached to understand her place in this new garden. She shared what she felt. The Mor’h could do with that what they would.” S’lei quieted.

  I too could sense approaching links. For me the sensation was like cold on my neck or an injection into my blood. The doors opened to reveal Ben, the Lo’Nar and Q’ua Z. “Yo bro I found your other brother from another compost heap!” Chastised Ben. Q’ua Z paid him no attention. “You should come see the Cresche, Qz.” I invited.

  “It is not my rooting.” Q’ua Z responded coldly. I tried to link but he swiftly closed any chance of sharing. He stood there stiff and as rigid as ever. It always unsettled me how lifeless he could appear. Empty until forced to deal with my human manners. His steadfast rejection today had me completely on guard.

  “Have you taken care of your business Ben?” Ben stood next to Qz sizing him up. “That’s an affirmative.” He explained sternly mocking Q’ua Z’s mechanical appearance.

  “Thank you for stopping by S’lei!” I escorted her forward. “I think we will all be leaving. Things to do and such.” I said in an earthly way.

  Q’ua Z walked over to investigate the wall drawing and noticed the colors on S’lei’s hands. He reached out slowly then recoiled his motion. I could almost see the want to make a fist. He slipped some spoiled sharing but it wasn’t enough for me to make much of it. A sense of struggle maybe. “Yes. Reign we are all busy in this new season. Finding our roots and tending to the soil.” Qz phrased forcefully. His language better than some but delivered like his nature.

  We all left the domicile together. Hardly unified though. As the Aries lifted higher and higher I watched S’lei and her Lo’Nar poetically take a different path than Qz in opposite ways. “Something is brewing Reign!” Called Ben backward from the controls. “Someone has an at-ti-ti-tude!” Ben made light of what he knew was difficult to understand. Q’ua Z had been with me my entire life as teacher, disciplinarian and brother figure. Whatever was causing this shift, he was not only unwilling to discuss it but at the cost of our vacuous relationship, maintain his silence.

  

  After my honeymoon with Dae I remembered the conversation of homesickness. The last two days held so many things to discuss and I was unsure as to how to approach them with my wife; the title had changed more than just our introductions, and the rest of our council. There wasn’t an easy way to approach Ben with these events given the life and death experiences he literally survived so I thought I would have him join me in the spire lab. Once there I could show him the array which I had before and he bored quickly of; but this time share with him my linking discovery.

  Ben arrived at the top floor with a bounce in his step. “Hey bro!” He looked about. “I’m here for duty bossman!” Ironically I was in the apse that we discovered his newly animated body in. The question of who and why someone did this is still unanswered. Dae and I have learned to accept that Ben was back and as he avoided our inquiries every time saying how good it was to be alive, we left it alone.

  “Here bro!” I quipped back. It did feel good to entertain the banter. I was achieving some success with it too.

  “You finally going to share some wedding night tall tales about zero gravity and the effect it has on…” he paused as he noticed what I was looking at. Ben approached calm and quiet. Green Acres was of my own experience and that made linking with the surrounding devices and array there easier. “Is that a live feed?” He questioned happily. “It is.” I answered. “This took some time to work out the right techniques and such but I have it somewhat down.”

  “Is this you?” He insinuated. “You able to make long distance calls out of your head!” He joked.

  “Not quite.” I adjusted the link for holo clarity. “It’s not me necessarily. I thought about how the Mor’h use their sharing for almost all interfaces. Why not use the same linking with their computer systems and equipment?” I showed him the control orbs. “I link with some subconscious information and the device does the work.”

  “Does this work with all devices?” He was intrigued. “No not all. The array was for monitoring as well as their current designation.” The answer was complete enough for him it appeared. “So you can just think your way anywhere?”

  This question was going to require some other way of explaining it. “Don’t get touchy but I’m going to get in your head!” The link with Ben was very different than it was before his incident. He was more alive and even more content than before if that were possible. Ben was whole. I envied him somewhat. To be so assured and renewed must be liberating! “Be careful in my noggin!” He quipped aloud. “That’s my money-maker!” I just smiled and continued.

  “I see it and now you see it.” I shared with him the essence of how the search works by showing him an early childhood memory of mine. “Little Reign!” He laughed. I broke the link. “Now do you see how it works.”

  “I think I get it.” Ben looked hard at the screen. “Show me where we were at Green Acres.” I cycled through some digital feeds and found the dock we stayed at while there. Ben seemed very relieved to see it. I panned what had to be a dock camera around and caught the young Halfer girl Dae and I had met on several occasions hop scotching on the terminal floor. And something caught my eye about the sketch on the floor. “What is it?” Ben hadn’t noticed. I synced the image to the holo feed and began cleaning it up. “But how?” My shock was obvious.

  Two squares lead to three single squares and then again two leading to a circle at the end. In that circle was the symbol Wan Sah had shared in her wake. The very symbol S’lei had just drew for me yesterday. “This can’t be possible?” I panned the camera again and it was no mistake. “That’s that drawing everywhere isn’t it.” Ben now understood my change in attentions.

  I began switching to probes that delivered fare back and forth around Green Acres many adapted living enclosures. The video quality was higher. There were more of the same scattered around inside and out, but different more professional and detailed. One larger circle with the stem and rays inside, two roots outside and two small circles on each end. The letters for Tri-Utopia underneath. “Someone had to give them this information!” I blurted. “But who?”

  “They finally have something uniting them Reign!” Ben seemed elated. “They needed this Reign.” Ben smiled at the link. “I spent so much time with them, as one of them. The Halfers never found welcome even on the edge of space. For them to hold onto this is special bro!”

  “I want to share your optimism
Ben but I don’t want them beholden to a false idol that could cause them more harm than good.” I explained.

  “Isn’t that super arrogant!” Ben attested. “You give hope and take it away!”

  “No Ben, I brand them pariahs!” The probe passed by a menacing object in the distance. “Look!”

  The image grew and grew. I tried to route the link to a vantage we could see the entirety of it, and ominously the looming vessel was caught in the feed of a hydroponics dome. “That’s a fucking OG Cruiser Reign!” Cursed Ben. Smaller scout ships flew in patterns around the area. The Halfers went about their lives but under constant surveillance. Green Acres had become a military controlled populace.

  Ben started working controls but was making no headway. “Find Big Jim!” He complained, asking the machine to do something it couldn’t. “I can help with that.” I took control of the console and linked with the device, at this distance it was a strain. “A low quality monitor became the focus on the backside of some oblivious onlooker. I gladly separated from the link. Big Jim had his back to us. “Hey Jim, your ass is showing!” Ben blurted out. Big Jim’s pants had sagged revealing some cleavage. Big Jim turned around startled.

 

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