by Gary Starta
* * * *
I waited for quite a bit of time in the shuttle alone. The gardeners had excused themselves to begin preparations for their onboard arboretum. I imagined this was for the purpose of producing herbal supplements.
I was sent home via taxi—paid for courtesy of the Ennead—along with a small plastic cup filled with dirt and a sprout. What was growing on in our world? Whatever it was, I’d seek out Brahms again.
When he suggested we meet some place other than his warehouse lab, I felt relief. But it was short-lived. He wanted me to accompany him on a grocery trip. With Charlize missing, he complained he had no one to take him shopping. He also whined that while he could subsist on a minimum of sleep, he had to have proper sustenance to figure out just what the Ennead might be up to. I begrudgingly agreed I would be nowhere without his assistance so I plopped my plant in a sunlit window and rang a taxi.
The ride gave me more time to ponder about what I could do as either a fulltime FBI agent or part-time goddess. I decided. The answer was little. As long as I operated within the confines of these two existences my options were limited. The law bound me to respect the legal rights of the Ennead. I had no damning evidence to convict any of them on any charge. As Isis, I might be able to battle them in some Xena-fashioned gothic resistance. But these were extremes. Bureau passiveness and omnipotent rage weren’t the answer. The middle ground made me feel nauseous, or maybe it was just the Dramamine wearing off. Regardless of how it made me felt, it was a necessary measure. Terrorism would have to suffice. I had to test waters. The investigator in me suspected the Ennead of several crimes. If depriving them of sustenance could weaken them I had to be sure. It could be used against them when I’d collected the above-mentioned damning evidence. But I couldn’t be involved. I couldn’t risk leaving even one psychic imprint behind.
My mind began to formulate a team. I thought of a private eye named Sweeney. He had worked as a terrorist for the Temple of White Knights, the hate organization which had ordered Charlize’s death sentence. But he called it quits when his conscience came back online. He couldn’t aid a group who ordered a hit on a teenager. Consequently, he joined my fight to save Charlize, as ironic as that sounds. Nevertheless, I couldn’t even be sure he would be a willing participant because of the Ennead’s mind control. But I knew money spoke volumes with Sweeney. I imagined Sweeney’s greed just might be strong enough to break any spell he was under. I struggled for a moment to think of more accomplices as the taxi passed a police station.
That’s it. Stanford Carter.
He’d just been at my door offering his assistance. He was an ex-cop. He would know how to sabotage a vitamin delivery without getting people hurt, as well as preventing Sweeney from switching teams in midstream. Between both of them they probably knew some other people who’d find the allure of money stronger than any spell. I know I had the resolve to begin challenging the Ennead but my conscience still wanted proof I was doing the right thing. I would depend on Brahms to substantiate claims that gods needed veggies.
* * * *
I approached Brahms at a designated street corner with resignation. He read me easily.
He focused his gaze on the pavement. “I take it you didn’t find Charlize.”
I rested a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, and I also didn’t find any evidence of her abduction aboard the ship either.”
He offered a weak smile. “I hate to rely on hope, Agent Diggs. Hope is so—unscientific.”
Attempting to divert his attention, I began to describe the scenario about the ship, the need for growing plants for food, the vitamin delivery and the workout equipment.
By the time we finished our cab arrived. Brahms began to rant that he should have prepared a shopping list. But I argued the fate of humanity might be more important than Wheaties or whatever the hell scientists subsisted on in this universe.
“Okay, so it would seem from what you’ve described that the Ennead require some outside stimulation. If that’s the case, the answer is quite simple.”
My eyes bored holes into him. I nodded for him to speak.
He nodded. “Sorry, lack of nutrition. It makes me catatonic. Anyway, the answer is epigenetics. The Ennead consist of cells like any other living organism, be it a genetically-enhanced being or not, it makes no difference. It’s all about gene expression or the action that prompts our coding to be read and those instructions to be performed. Sometimes there are changes to those instructions—”
“But isn’t that what our DNA does; instruct cells how to behave?”
“I can see you need a biology lesson or two, Agent Diggs. That might be the perceived answer. The underlying sequence of DNA does not change. So if we are to understand how an organism’s genes may begin to behave differently, we must look at outside influences.”
I raised a hand in question. “So by changes you mean how the Ennead might have attained physical abilities?”
“Yes. But that’s presumption. We don’t know how the Ennead really came about right now, now do we? We can’t just hypothesize. Let’s just try to analyze the Ennead’s actions by what you’ve scientifically observed.” He nodded his head like an anxious dog about to go for a ride. “Agreed?”
I nodded back, mimicking that anxious doggie.
“Non-genetic factors might be environmental. Like exercise, like taking vitamins…”
I finished his thought. “…like taking herbal supplements and vitamins in high doses.”
“It would stand to reason. Where is this going, Agent Diggs? I suspect your FBI mind is formulating a plan.”
I hushed my voice so our cabbie couldn’t hear. “It has. I plan to sabotage a delivery to the Ennead’s DC ship. I believe they will need more vitamins and herbs soon, maybe days. They’re attempting to grow herbs on their ship but I figure the plants will need some time to grow. If we can interrupt their ingestion of the vitamins for a time, I might be able to confirm if they become weakened. Like you said, this epi…excuse me, I don’t even know how to spell what you said, let alone pronounce it, but this dependence might be confirmed.”
“I have no doubt you will be able to confirm it. The fact that Charlize inhibited demon violence with her voice is proof positive. She instructed the demon’s cells to change, at least on a temporary basis. But the questions remain—how will you observe this and what will you do with this knowledge?”
I smiled as we exited the taxi. “Knowledge is power. I’ll work on that.”
Brahms began to shuffle his feet along the sidewalk like a pouting child. “I must. You must…allow me to participate in this terrorism, Agent Diggs. For Charlize’s sake…”
I hardened my eyes. “No, Dr. Brahms. You cannot. You have no experience in this. I will be relying on men who do. It’s too dangerous.”
He continued to pout, refusing to speak to me until we entered the grocery store. His change in expression was immediate upon arrival. His eyes lit up as we pointed to signs promising huge discounts. He grabbed a Buyrite carriage in haste. “We must take advantage of this, Agent Diggs. The sale is on.”
I raised a hand. “Whoa, hold on. We’re traveling by taxi, remember? We can only carry so much.”
He waved a dismissive hand and headed to the bakery section with conviction. I wondered how much a hold environmental stimuli held over us. Was it more powerful than our genetic makeup?
Yet when he arrived as his destination—with me in tow—he appeared crestfallen. “Ah, I should have made a list. I should have made a list,” he repeated mumbling.
“What’s the matter, Dr. Brahms? What does a list have to do with anything?”
“Because they don’t have the semolina I have been craving. That’s why!”
“So they are out of stock or something. It’s nobody’s fault.”
He raised a defiant eyebrow. “The hell it doesn’t. Come on, look, Agent Diggs. Tell me what you see on these shelves.”
“Okay, we have rye bread. Uh…a lot of rye bread—onion
rye, Jewish rye, rye bread with caraway seeds…”
“Yes, and do you know why, Agent Diggs?” His hands were shaking.
“Dr. Brahms, you’re scaring me.” I shook my head. “Okay, I’ll humor you. Tell me.”
“Someone imagined this. Someone shaped reality. The storekeeper just didn’t imagine that the greater metro area was in desperate need of rye bread. In huge quantities, I might add. Some shopper mentally prepped himself for this…for this perversion in the name of flour. Damn it all.”
“Human minds can affect outcomes. Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s teleological thinking. Where minds, especially irritated minds—”
“Like yours.”
“…can distort time and space around them. If a person believes his luck would always be bad, he can create that dismal reality for himself. Have you ever felt your thoughts might have affected an outcome, even when you were not connected to the paranormal?”
“I would say yes. But that’s very narcissistic.”
“Narcissism, it reminds you of gods, doesn’t it? It would be logical to conclude that narcissistic beings might be prone to this line of thinking and this way of influencing outcomes.”
“So they might have affected our world with mere thought?”
“It’s much more complex. Remember we talked about how one could control the earth via energy signatures. Well, this is similar. It’s just that I don’t know how they could accomplish this on such a grand scale. I will need time…and I know we don’t have it.” He annunciated the last words in staccato bursts.
“I am failing to see why gods need to be on Earth. That puzzles me the most, Dr. Brahms.”
“I don’t know either. The ancient Egyptians believed in a system of interlocking souls—the ka and the ba. It would seem their ultimate destination would be to unite in heaven.”
‘But,” I intervened. “What if that plan was changed? By something they couldn’t control?” My mind flashed to my dream vision. The warring ships.
“Are you saying they are paying some kind of penance, here?”
“I just hope we don’t suffer for whatever that might be.”
“I have also been spending a great deal of time trying to understand how the demons…and…my dear Charlize seemed to have disappeared. I don’t know if they are really gone. There may be certain rifts in our world due to gravitic and electromagnetic strains. It might explain why a portal might briefly open. It’s what I have been studying to manufacture a safe teleportation machine for you. So you can return to your home. I posit that these strains could transport things such as frogs from one place to another.”
I nodded. I’d heard about raining frogs.
“Yes, they are moved from one place to another because of these rifts. The demons could be here, in a transitional phase, maybe right under our noses. Or this rift might have opened a portal to another earth. But to do this on such a grand scale, making every demon, everywhere disappear…” He shook his head. “It’s nearly inconceivable on such a grand scale. But because I have a slight grasp of the subject I believe I can come to understand how this might have been done. Even radio and light waves may travel via these rifts causing an unexplained output of energy at seemingly random places and times. It might also happen in space. Folds in space might move objects great distances via shortcuts. Imagine a flat piece of paper, the corners are inches apart. But fold it, and the corners can immediately touch. I believe the same happens in space travel, in particular. Could this explain a perceived manipulation of space and time, like how the Ennead positioned a camera to record the past and how they purposely directed comets to land in our oceans? The answer is, right now, I really don’t know. But Agent Diggs, I do appreciate the opportunity to bounce ideas off of you. With Charlize missing, I’m terribly alone.”
“I understand. But now that we are bouncing ideas off one another, I do have a question. I am puzzled as to how you don’t seem affected by the visitor’s mind control.”
“So you’ve observed it as well; a kind of need to follow them. Well, that’s another theory. You see, there’s a god center in our brains, it makes us want to believe—”
“Dr. Brahms, right now I want to know why you’re not affected.”
He appeared very troubled, face wrinkled in frown lines. Then he snapped out of it and began wheeling his cart.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the produce section, please follow.”
“Why aren’t you answering me?”
“Because sometimes a scent can make you remember where you were. I remember eating some melon on that day. Ah, yes. Here it is.” He grabbed a cantaloupe and balanced it in his palm, sniffing it like a scent dog. “Okay, I was working on the teleportation machine. I had some lunch. Then I was inside the machine at the approximate time the beings arrived on our earth. I believe that’s when they took control of everyone’s mind. Upon their arrival…” He dropped the melon into his cart and mashed his hands together. “Yes, that’s it. I was somehow shielded by the machine.”
“So we’re all immune. You, because of the machine; me, because of my goddess connection and Carter because he had demon DNA coursing through him at the time of their arrival…, and of course, Charlize…”
He finished the sentence. “Because she is genetically engineered, I believe she was immune as well.”
“That would make her a target, if they knew that.” Shit. I couldn’t believe I verbalized that in front of Brahms. I couldn’t be sure The Ennead had abducted her from jail though. Nevertheless, that didn’t mean they didn’t set her up for Tut’s murder.
I still held hope Brahms knew her whereabouts. That is if he wasn’t aiding her escape. But if he wasn’t, I knew he was capable of tracking her down. I mean, if he could posit how frogs appeared to descend from the skies…
His harried attempt to explain the whereabouts of the demons convinced me he was on my side no matter. I considered allowing him to aid the terrorist mission. And yes, as an FBI agent I can’t believe I even had the balls to imagine such a crime.
“Come on, Agent Diggs,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Let’s get some avocados. You and I need some brain stamina. We have a lot more positing to do.”
“But I want some starches. Some comfort food.”
“No. I won’t allow you to visit the middle aisles. They are the keepers of all foods processed.”
I began to protest but he silenced me with what I believed to only be a thought. I guess I just became a believer in Brahms’ science.
Chapter 15
Pyramid Scheme
Local stonemasons allowed all of us on this little blue orb to finally understand the mystery. Via their generosity, The Ennead returned the favor by answering one of humanity’s longest-standing questions. How were the pyramids constructed?
Because citizens gifted in stonecutting volunteered to build a mini-pyramid to become the latest and greatest tomb of King Tut, the explanation didn’t just come via text, but by example.
We all stood agog, mouths contorted in various shapes and forms of disbelief as heavy, car-sized, mammoth blocks were spun in circles and arched into placement. In mere hours, Tut’s tomb would be complete and a funeral was scheduled for the next day with a brief mass to begin this evening. Tut would soon take up residence in close proximity to the Washington Monument, another piece of architecture reminiscent of ancient Egypt.
I invested my precious investigating time to marvel at this wonder and also keep close watch on the Ennead and their Entourage for any more odd signals. So far, they seemed prone to extreme emotions and their diet was far more healthful than the average American—in either universe. But so far, I noticed nothing else out of the ordinary considering that these gods roamed and hovered over our little planet in the same fashion they did three thousand years ago.
Nephthys conveyed sentiments of pride and honor in speeches which came in spurts. She announced the progress of the tomb building as
if a sportscaster and her words were met with resounding cheers from all in attendance. I couldn’t blame them. I was as awestruck as the next witness to this modern-day miracle. Now, I had another conundrum to consider. Where did miracles fit in? Were they magic or science? In the ensuing minutes, Nephthys had me leaning to toward the side of science. Brahms would have been leaping out of his shoes if he were here. But Brahms was in preparation, along with Carter and my sleazy PI friend Sweeney. Tonight, when Tut’s funeral mass was to begin, they would be hijacking the next delivery of vitamins and minerals to the Ennead ship Vimana.
You might imagine the mix of emotions swirling through my mind, not to mention my entire nervous system as I watched the historic feat. Each swell of pride I felt for humanity was met with resistance in the form of a twinge from my stomach. Yes, I felt pride—for us. We were necessary for the gods to exist. This was a symbiotic relationship now playing out in all its glory for modern people to witness. Human stonecutters and the not so easily categorized Entourage traded turns moving giant granite slabs of stone with the ease of children and wore the same carefree smiles one might expect to see on a group of youngsters at play. They even performed in a similar unified fashion. In that instant, there were no barriers by species.
One man would take a rod and tap a stone while a member of the Entourage would smile and nod to the cheering masses. The smiling man would signal the stones via musical instrument—to move. Non-participants were gathered in a giant ring around the construction as if we were orbiting a new planet for the first time with nothing more than our senses and sight to guide us. We drank in every moment for posterity. Each of us thought in silence the same thing. We must pass this story onto the next generation. At this moment in time, I was sure we would. I didn’t fear the Ennead were here to destroy us. And that’s when the twinge of guilt would kick in because I was planning to combat them as if they were.
