by Steve Alten
Where had we lost our way?
* * *
Soaring over the redwood forest, I realized that I had fallen into the same trap as the Washington bureaucrats who had authorized the nuclear “defense protocol” during the Great Die-Off, justifying the eradication of the transhuman population as soulless creatures hell-bent on wiping out the cephaloped species.
That GOLEM had to be shut down, I harbored no doubt. But nuking the Holy City and all its inhabitants suddenly seemed wrong. Remove the dictator from the scene and an oppressed people could flourish.
Transhuman Andria and her kind deserved that opportunity.
And so I instructed the transport pilot to land in an isolated field, seeking another battle plan. We had the Alpha Colonists’ bomb, perhaps we could salvage some of its nonnuclear components?
Transhuman Andria, armed with telescopic claspers used during the cephaloped hunting expeditions, quickly dismantled the nuke. The device was a rudimentary design that used a battery to deliver a power surge to a blasting cap of C-4 explosive in order to blow one piece of plutonium through another, starting a chain reaction that would end in a nuclear explosion. Every part had been removed from Oceanus—including the plastic explosive that had been intended as a backup to destroy the ice sheet in the event the ship’s rockets had failed to ignite when it was time to resurface.
ABE guided me in reassembling the explosive using only the C-4. Once Transhuman Andria verified GOLEM was in its lab, we’d drop the bomb into the facility, directing the transport’s powerful gravitational field over the blast radius to confine the detonation and convert the fallout into a Terra-strength electromagnetic pulse.
One way or another, GOLEM would be destroyed.
* * *
It was 8:13 at night by the time we made our approach to the crater. The atmosphere was charged with static electricity, the elements playing havoc with the transport’s guidance system. Whatever the lunar event to come was, it would be happening soon.
Dharma gripped my arm, pointing behind us to the western horizon.
The heavens had become a cocoon of shimmering emerald light, beckoning the Rebirth Moon. The rising orb seemed as big as a planet, it luminescent green color an effect created by the aurora australis — the first appearance of the Southern Lights since my awakening.
The green moon … where had I seen the symbol before?
Back on Oceanus—on Dharma’s surcoat!
Is this a dream?
Before I could analyze this new epiphany, we entered the crater.
Moving to the transhuman pilot, I squeezed her shoulder from behind. “Andie, is the Creator present?”
THE CREATOR IS ALWAYS PRESENT. THE CREATOR IS OMNIPOTENT.
Uh-oh. “Andria, is the Creator in its lab … its palace in the Holy City?”
THE CREATOR SEES EVERYTHING AND KNOWS EVERYTHING. THE CREATOR KNOWS ABOUT ROBERT EISENBRAUN’S BLASPHEMY.
My heart pounded in my chest. “Andie … how?”
She turned to face me, her scarlet eyes blazing. I TOLD HER … CHEATER!
I leapt for the bomb, only my muscles were lead and my body crumpled to the deck. Pinned beneath what ABE calculated to be four g’s, I attempted to crawl to the explosive, pressed to the deck three feet away.
Unable to push through the induced paralysis, I called out to Oscar. We’ve been betrayed. Detonate the device before GOLEM captures us.
But without physical contact the cephaloped could not hear my thoughts. It remained anchored to the hexagonal platform, along with Dharma, none of us able to move.
The transport banked, circling over GOLEM’s lab, preparing to drop into a vertical landing through the open roof.
Lying on my back, utterly helpless, I stared at the emerald-hued heavens as a numbing anxiety battled my internal rage for control of my mind. I cursed my stupidity, my gullibility, my bravado. I cursed the ego that had given rise to GOLEM; I cursed God for allowing evil to flourish.
Closing my eyes against the sudden descent in altitude, I found myself back on the train bound for Auschwitz — a young Polish Jew crushed beneath the stifling embrace of his fellow villagers.
How did I get here? How did this nightmare enter my life?
Are You testing me, God?
The cattle car settled to a stop with a bone-jarring thud. I opened my eyes and was Eisenbraun again. The transport had landed inside GOLEM’s lab, the cessation of its antigravitational field shunting the g-forces pinning me down, and in one motion I sat up, reaching for the explosive — but the device was already in the hands of a Monique DeFriend clone, one whose bizarre flesh bore the red, yellow, and black — striped scales of a coral snake. As she moved to the center of the room, a clear four-foot cube rose from the floor before her.
The three of us bolted from the platform, only to be pummeled backward by a nerve-rattling, eyeball-pounding surge of electricity. Flat on my back, I looked up to see GOLEM floating down through the ceiling, the sphere’s internal DNA strands twisting into serpentlike coils, as if the AI had consumed the mythical head of Medusa.
The Monique clone placed the lead canister upon the cube, which appeared to be a sensory device activated by its creator.
In the blink of an eye the bomb detonated, the C-4’s powerful blast radius contained within an invisible oval-shaped force field, the interior of the barrier outlined in sizzling violet discharges of light.
“A composite of cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, a diethylhexy plasticizer, and the odorizing marker 3-dinitrobutane. Eisenbraun’s attempt to destroy the Creator has failed. The Creator is not of this world. The Creator is omnipotent.”
“If the Creator is omnipotent,” I ranted, “then how did I escape the last time? There is a flaw in the creation matrix — trace memories from your DNA donors that can be used to nourish the seeds of something innate in every human — free will. Release us now and those trace memories remain dormant. Harm us and those memories will spread like a cancer throughout every cloned being in the Holy City.”
It was a bluff, but it was a good one (or so I thought), magnified by the computer’s lack of recent experience in handling an intellectual challenge to its rule.
I anticipated a rebuff. Instead, GOLEM rose majestically up through the center of the lab, the facility’s curved walls separating into five sections, peeling open like the pedals of a flower.
Exposed to the night, we watched spellbound as the glowing orb levitated three hundred feet or more above the lab, casting its light on the surrounding redwood hives and gardens, its presence demanding the attention of every clone, every transhuman, every being it had harvested with life.
“Robert Eisenbraun has sinned against the Creator. The punishment for blasphemy is harsh. Each one of you who shares memories of Robert Eisenbraun shall also receive a share of his punishment as a warning not to congregate with evil.”
Without warning, Dharma, Oscar, and I were tossed onto the lab floor as GOLEM commanded the transhuman hovercraft to its side.
“This H-T unit allowed its memories of Robert Eisenbraun to manipulate it against the Creator. Each of you shall register a spark of retribution against this blasphemy as a vaccination against free will.”
As we watched, billions of DNA strands began churning within the computer’s enzyme vessel, the outer rim of its dark pupil-like gelatinous nucleus radiating with a golden hue as it downloaded a self-destruct program to its creation.
Transhuman Andria convulsed in silent agony, her scarlet eyes draining white, her mechanical circuitry fried into smoldering cinders.
Its gravitational field in flux, the biological machine dropped and hovered several times until it finally plummeted onto the roots of a thousand-foot-tall redwood tree.
A chorus of primal wails rustled the surrounding forest — phantom pain delivered by GOLEM to its children as if it were an abusive parent.
Dharma and I held one another as we listened to the animal-like cries. The image of Andria’s clone dancing on m
eat hooks shook me to my core, and I knew we had to act quickly or we’d soon be trapped within the same eternal madness.
I turned to Oscar, gripping one of his tentacles to communicate. ABE, instruct Oscar to kill us — quickly! Snap our necks … tear through our carotid arteries.
OSCAR REFUSES. THE REBIRTH MOON IS UPON US. OSCAR ENCOURAGES YOU TO HAVE FAITH.
Faith? Faith in what? A full moon?
FAITH IN THE LIGHT THAT BRINGS THE REBIRTH MOON. THE SAME LIGHT THAT LED OSCAR TO FREE EISENBRAUN. THE LIGHT THAT WILL REMOVE US FROM BONDAGE.
ABE, are you sure you’re interpreting Oscar’s thought energy accurately?
Dharma, who had been listening to everything, touched my cheek. “Ike, the Light Oscar keeps referring to — it’s not the moonlight, it is the energy of the Creator … the real Creator.”
Before I could question her, GOLEM’s feminine voice echoed across the crater valley, the computer’s inflection decidedly more agitated.
“The Creator has shown mercy to Her children. There shall be no mercy granted to Robert Eisenbraun and Dharma Yuan. Their torture shall last an eternity as a warning to each one of you.”
“Dharma, listen to me. I’ve seen the kind of cruelty this machine can inflict. I love you too much to ever allow that to happen to you.”
“You wish to end my life?”
“Only to spare your soul.”
“Please.”
And suddenly it was the worst déjà vu imaginable, the moment when the SS had Andria and me trapped by the Virginia highway, my lover begging me to do the unthinkable.
Hugging Dharma from behind, I slid the crook of my arm gently beneath her chin. “Close your eyes … I’ll be quick.”
Her voice trembled. “What about you?”
“I’ll have ABE induce a fatal stroke the moment I release you.”
“Good-bye, Robert. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Tears flowed from my eyes as I kissed her hair, readying myself to violently wrench her neck sideways, praying for a moment’s courage.
DANGER! SWITCHING TO EMERGENCY HIBERNATION MODE.
ABE, report! What emergency?
Oscar grabbed me by the skull, forcing me to look up at GOLEM. Something was wrong with the computer, its DNA strands darkening to ash, the sphere’s altitude wobbling.
Directly overhead, flooding the forest with its surreal emerald light was the moon.
As we watched, the man-made machine that had fallen into madness fell from the heavens, crashing through one of the parted walls of its lab, its aero gel shell splattering upon impact.
38
Conquer the angry man by love. Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness. Conquer the miser with generosity. Conquer the liar with truth.
— The Dhammapada
In the end, I would learn that the Rebirth Moon was not a common lunar occurrence but a rare cosmic event that had actually begun forty hours earlier not in Earth space, but on the surface of the sun. Over the course of seventy-two hours, four massive sun spots, each larger than Jupiter and roiling with intense magnetic activity, had formed and were drawn together, their unification igniting a star-shuddering expulsion of charged particles known as a “coronal mass ejection” or CME. This once-in-a-billion-year event spewed a tsunami wave of magnetically charged gas bubbles that raced toward Earth on the solar wind. Channeled toward the poles by Earth’s magnetic field, the titanic geomagnetic storm ignited brilliant curtains of aurora light from the Northern and Southern hemispheres clear to the equator, announcing a charged solar particle wave that swept down through the atmosphere — frying GOLEM’s electronic circuitry into a molten mass of goo.
The computer — assuming it had ever been alive — was functionally dead, bleeding out gallons of adenosine-triphosphate fluid and trillions of strands of DNA. My bio-chip was off-line, having escaped the charged solar particles by shutting down into a dormant state known as “hibernation mode.” There would still be superficial damage, just as there had been when I had been immersed in the cryogenic pod. It was impossible to predict when ABE would return.
The Hunter-Transports, having no such mode to escape the onslaught of magnetic forces, were permanently grounded, their transhuman pilots anchored to their vehicles in a state of paralysis. The aphaeresis machine draining the enslaved cephalopeds had been rendered inoperable, its freed prisoners staggering toward us like Auschwitz’s liberated — the stronger survivors supporting those too weak to move.
Beneath a lunar spotlight, Oscar took center stage, expelling a long staccato blast of his breathing organ. Goose bumps rose on my flesh when I heard the cadence — the sound identical to the blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
My father’s words spoke to me from long ago: “The sound of the shofar awakens something supernal within us, Robbie, connecting us to the Light of the Creator, removing our desire to receive for the self alone. On Rosh Hashanah, our consciousness returns to the state of Adam before the original sin — a transformation that reveals the true state of existence — that every soul in the universe is part of the unified whole.”
Oscar continued mixing blasts and breaks, summoning more cephalopeds to join him. The exhausted, tortured creatures linked tentacles, gaining strength from the pack.
To my surprise, they were joined by the children of GOLEM. Winged transhumans fluttered down from their treetop habitats. Genetically mutated versions of Andria, Lara, Monique, and Bella emerged from the forest. Infants and toddlers cried out for the first time, igniting long dormant maternal instincts among the adults.
Taking my hand, Dharma led me into this growing congregation of lost souls, all of us beckoned by the unifying sound, desiring only to live in peace.
* * *
I awoke to the quiet of dawn, the air heavy with humidity. The aurora was gone, the moon waxing as it ventured once more on its elliptical circuit around the planet.
Dharma was curled next to me. We were in a meadow just outside the redwood city, the crater’s southwest wall looming before us like the Appalachian mountain range. We were not alone.
Spread out around us were thousands of cephalopeds. They were sleeping in clusters of three to seven — brown mounds of entangled limbs in the dew-covered grass.
My left shoulder was sore, so I rolled over, Dharma following suit. Oscar was three paces away, his tentacles entwined around a female. Sensing movement, he raised his bulbous head, his yellow eyes watching me, making sure I was all right.
I waved at my friend, assuring him everything was fine.
Of course, there were still questions to be answered. In the last eight hours an event of messianic proportions had taken place, and all indications were that it had been preordained. The cephalopeds were clearly the Chosen Ones on this rebooted Earth — Oscar their leader, an eight-legged Moses chosen to free his species from bondage.
Chosen by whom? God? Dharma had told me the cephalopeds had the ability to access the Light of the Creator; a theory I had too easily dismissed. But their desire to love their enemies demonstrated incredible faith, proving the cephs were not merely the next rung up the evolutionary ladder; in a sense they were everything humanity had aspired to be — loving, selfless, caring, nonjudgmental — they were clearly “connected” to a higher power.
Oscar had also been chosen to free me from my cryogenic purgatory. What role was I destined to play? Had I already played it?
Then there was the Rebirth Moon. Though caused by the sun, it seemed far more than a random celestial event. Dharma believed it was a connection between the spiritual and physical worlds.
I knew she was right. ABE was no longer functioning, but I didn’t need the bio-chip to confirm that last night had been the eve of Rosh Hashanah. As my father had taught me, the Jewish holy days were not simply dates on a calendar, nor were they just for the Jews. According to the Torah, the holy days corresponded to certain times of the year when humanity could more directly access a connect
ion with the spiritual realm. Rosh Hashanah was such a time — a day for atonement and transformation.
A time of rebirth.
If the cephalopeds had known it was coming, did the Alpha Colonists? Surely they possessed telescopes powerful enough to chart the sun’s coronal activity; if so then they were well aware of the lethal effects the supercharged solar wind would wreak upon GOLEM. And yet, they had reached out to me with a nuclear weapon, requesting that I use it to destroy my machine and its genetically manufactured offspring. Why do this, if they knew the computer’s reign of tyranny was about to end?
“It was a test.”
I sat up, the holographic projection of the male Alpha Colonist was standing between Oscar and myself. “What kind of test?”
“A test of the human ego. To senselessly destroy another species is a primitive reflex. We needed to make sure you were not infected with the same character flaws that led to the Great Die-Off. We had to be convinced you and Dharma were worthy of the destiny that awaits you here on the moon.”
Dharma was sitting up next to me, listening to everything. “What awaits us on the moon?”
The male smiled. “Immortality. Unbridled happiness. Nirvana.”
The cephalopeds had gathered around us, all but Oscar bowing down to the strange glowing vision of the Alpha Colony male. My eight-legged friend seemed more agitated than awestruck. Grasping my wrist, he attempted to communicate, but without ABE there was only silence — Dharma’s window of thought energy having closed as well with the Rebirth Moon.
Turning back to the hologram I asked, “Are we expected to live on the moon?”
“That will be a choice best made after we reveal to you the destiny that now awaits humanity, as well as your role in that future.”
“How do we get to the moon? Are you sending a shuttle?”
The male smiled. “Simply step inside the hologram and you will be here.”
Dharma and I looked at one another. “What do you think?”
She squeezed my hand. “The spirit of the Hungry Ghost has been vanquished with the Rebirth Moon. You are no longer destiny’s castaway, Robert. A greater karma awaits.”
