by Mark Kraver
God of God © Copyright 2018 Mark P. Kraver
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recorded, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from both the copyright owner and the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of this work should be mailed to [email protected]
ISBN: 9781728931661
Shari Shallard, Copy Editor
Library of Congress Control Number: 1-7050921541
This book is dedicated to my wife Nita.
She is my bird, my butterfly, my flower.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Nita, Scott, Gregg, Jenny and Phillip Kraver
Laura and Chris Panayotti
Shari Shallard, Sarah Duquette, Sienna LaRene, James Roper, Dave Singh
God of God
Part 1
Genesis
Chapter 1
“In the beginning Elohim created heaven and earth.”
Genesis 1:1, Tanakh, 666 BC
Library of Souls
Obituary Chamber Space Station
Talk to the dead? Just the thought made her tremble. Would it hurt? Would it haunt her dreams? Or could it change her life?
She stood before the porthole that separated her from the infinity of deep, dark space. The window glare reflected her face, accentuating her bald head. She moved her fingers across her nose and cheek and up over her temple to rub her earlobe.
She wondered if she was still beautiful. Or had her journeys aged her, leaving her youthful appearance behind in some distant part of the universe?
Moving closer to the window, her reflection disappeared and she could see the blackness of space outlining the hull of the station’s spiraling arms. She turned to peer through bands of green laser light crisscrossing the center of the station's misty crypt. There, she knew, her journey was supposed to begin. She sighed.
Her mentor was lying enshrined within a golden coffin hovering in the middle of the obituary chamber. The sight of the suspended crypt comforted her, tranquilizing her thoughts with its hypnotic shimmer. Forcing her muscles to relax, she closed her eyes to concentrate, to imagine her thoughts as a beam shooting straight to the core where he waited.
“Creator Yahweh, you are here?” she asked silently.
“I am, but I am not,” he answered inside her mind. “You speak my life-name, yet now my only role is that of a storyteller in the infinite expanse of time-out-of-time.”
“Always the never-ending storyteller, to me,” she said.
She eased her thoughts and tried to focus for the moment on the significance of her being here, of being immersed in the stories of Yahweh’s life’s work. This obituary chamber was tucked away in the void of space, light years away from her estranged home, Helios, and its dying star, Heaven. Tilting her head to one side, a crooked little smile emerged.
“Master, remember at the beginning of my anton of life, you held me in your arms and told me the history of our people? How the Elohim seeded dust nebula to form solar systems that would one day support life?”
“Your curiosity endeared you to me, my little Nadira. You asked if it was like making chocolate chip cookies. It was wonderful. In all I have known and done as a Creator in the tangle of time, I remember that feisty youngling and her thoughts of making cookies. The memory still warms my heart.”
“I was naive, foolish perhaps?”
“No, Nadira, you were no fool. Your comparison was most apt. It is rare to grasp the reality of being a Creator. Many preach the mystery, but few understand it, even fewer live it, and almost none understand what must follow.”
Nadira’s eyes sparkled as emerald jewels that looked out of place on her grim face. His voice overwhelmed her. It was both the sound of sweet, cherished memories and a harsh gong, tolling his departure from this life—and his escape into that mysterious next.
Walking through the laser light of the misty obituary chamber she was awakened to the bold, engraved, illuminated runes inscribed on the walls, floors and ceiling. Runes that told the history of Yahweh, the galaxies, the universe, and the people of the Elohim.
“You once told me that death was life’s greatest adventure,” she said, feeling a slight change in air pressure.
“Moving on to the next with Eos is all we have to look forward to in life and death, my little Nadira.”
“Eos? Are you with God?” she waited, but Yahweh didn’t answer. After a moment of silent reflection, she spoke again, “Death is a curious concept, our greatest unknown. What will happen when we discover the answer?”
“A question everyone wonders, and a journey all must take. You should not worry about this. Space-time has never been an obstacle to our people, and death will not be one either. Trust me, young woman. On the other hand, romantic love is a very different journey—a path all should travel at least once.”
Nadira stopped moving, surprised by Yahweh’s sudden shift. “Romantic love? That is a journey of a different sort,” she said frowning.
Romance was a subject she had little time for and even less experience with. Every male, and every female for that matter, reacted unfavorably with her chemistry. The only love she had ever felt for anyone, outside her own human surrogate parents, was for her Creator.
Nadira’s mind flashed to another vague memory of the past with her master—she could see his laughing face and feel warm contentment blanketing her—and she felt a sense of helpless longing for such memories in the future. She had no more family left, and now she was losing him too. All were lost to time. Time, the killer beast that drives all life toward death’s great adventure.
Yahweh chuckled. He always knew her thoughts and worries, even before she became aware of them herself. His amusement disrupted her thoughts. “What great adventure will you experience now?” she asked. “Are you living and loving as you wish me to do?”
“Great adventure?” whispered a voice from somewhere in the mist.
Nadira turned. “Who’s there?” she said aloud. “Who violates my privacy?”
“Hail your pardon,” said a voice, floating across the room. “I also hoped to pay my respects, alone.”
Nadira ran her eyes and mind around the shrouded room until the voice became a man with streaks of laser light dancing over his body. He walked around the bend in the chamber’s nautilus structure with a stride of arrogance, importance. On his collars were the tiny symbols of infinity that proclaimed him to be of her house, the House of Yahweh.
She instinctively touched her infinity ring on her little finger, tracing the iridium looping symbol nervously with her thumb. She looked at his hand and saw the same ring.
“Father,” the man said aloud. “I am welcome?”
“Throughout eternity, my son,” Nadira felt inside her mind.
The stranger moved past Nadira and knelt at the foot of Yahweh’s crypt. She could see the man’s face clearly in the golden surface of the coffin; he had the look of her people, with high cheekbones and the same flawless smooth scalp.
She watched as he bowed his head and folded his hands in respect. He began to speak wordlessly to Yahweh as his thoughts, she realized with some discomfort, began entering her mind.
“You, Lord, are my sachem and I shall not want,” he said. “You covered me with emerald mists, carried me to still waters, and forged my soul. You made me see righteous for the sake of all that is good. As you journey into the great unknown, you will fear not. Prepare a dwelling for me, so when we journey together again, all will be pure.”
After a silent moment passed, the stranger rose and looked to the far end of the obituary chamber. His eyes seemed to scan the entire room’s glowing
library of runes before finally meeting hers.
“Once again,” he said aloud, “I hail your pardon.” He bowed his head and turned to leave.
Embarrassed by her momentary jealousy, Nadira stumbled over her next words, “He—he was my Creator, too. I also loved him.”
The man stood still for a long moment, then, to her delight, faced her again. Did she see on his cheek a tear? Does he cry? she wondered. She watched, awe-struck, as the tear fell onto his purple collar like a melting ice crystal.
Locked on her bright eyes, his face erupted into a smile and she felt the sunshine of childhood. He rested his right fist onto his left breast in a salute, saying, “I am El'azar Lanochee, Nasi of Helios.”
She could feel her reserve began to dissolve. “Your thoughts were beautiful,” she said. “A prayer?”
“I’ve been without the comfort of my master for longer than I care to remember,” he said. “Being here is difficult for me.”
“Then, I hail your pardon, El'azar Lanochee, Nasi of Helios.”
“Please,” he said kindly, “just Lanochee. My responsibilities of Helios are far away.”
She put her right fist to her chest. “Lanochee, I am Ramla Nadira of the Koos.”
His eyes flickered in recognition of her name, and Nadira found a rare sense of pleasure in that recognition. The Koos was a region between the universes that defied explanation, a border between physical reality and something unknowable. Nadira knew that from childhood this man would have heard stories of the Koos. Lanochee’s unspoken questions echoed through her mind. Is it myth? Reality? Do we have words to describe it? Is it where Eos lives? But she just smiled.
Yahweh’s voice sounded inside her head, “His lineage is from my first adventure.”
Aroused by hearing Yahweh within, intermingling with the external voice of Lanochee, Nadira clasped her hands together with pleasure. “How marvelous. Show me your place within this library.”
The stranger nodded. He was surprised by her attention; after all, her lineage also began with Yahweh and she had an intense poise and beauty that made him feel inferior. He quickly contemplated where to begin. Focusing on his own history might appear too intimate or arrogant, particularly standing here in this space with Yahweh—the most influential Elohim in the universe for over thirty-million antons. Lanochee glanced at the crypt. What would the first Homo superior have given for a life like Yahweh’s, he thought. To have near immortality? To hibernate for millennia while traveling the universe?
His master’s voice interrupted these thoughts.
“The beginning, my son. Show her my first adventure.”
Lanochee began walking around the antechamber, considering how to begin the saga he himself had never witnessed. The runes, the stories were everywhere.
And then he knew.
He moved back to the golden coffin glistening in the mist and dropped again to his knees at the base of the majestic tomb. His hands hovered, moving slowly back and forth as if smoothing out a map, just inches above sparkling runes carved into the floor.
“Here is where it began,” he said.
The simplicity of his statement belied the gravity of what he was about to do: to enter the prior existence of someone else’s life. Witnessing one's past lifetime was the most personal and transparent journey one could make with another. He looked up at Nadira, acknowledging the voyage he was about to take and seeking affirmation that she would join him. Nadira looked back, her eyes steady but unreadable; each was unable or unwilling to break the stare until Lanochee blinked and looked down.
When Lanochee touched his hand to the gleaming runes, his body arched in a shivering tremor. Nadira flinched at the sight of unfamiliar forces entering Lanochee’s body and stepped backwards in fear. Behind her, the BrainNet Connectome, Yahweh’s extraordinary system for cataloguing and sharing memories of the dead, seemed to come alive; interconnecting veins of light began fanning down its glowing corridors. Nadira could feel the air pulsing like a living organism. Lanochee’s mind, she knew, was being propelled into the past, merging memories with what and who had come before them.
She was both captivated and terrified by the swirling thoughts screaming through the stranger’s mind. Love for her Creator was infinite, but Nadira could no longer see herself merging her mind with this interloper. She did not know this man, and she had no wish to know him. She would have to learn Yahweh’s story another way, another time.
Turning to flee, Yahweh’s voice stopped her.
“My little Nadira, please stay and learn, share my most beautiful memories,” he said. “I would give it all to be able to relive this part of my life again and again. In my history, you will find more than you ever dared to dream.”
Nadira exhaled. She felt his earnestness, his longing to see it all again.
“And,” Yahweh continued, “you never learned to love. My time has passed, but for you, it is not too late. Open your heart that it may be filled.”
Nadira almost smiled. Was he referring to the romantic love he spoke of earlier? “Is this regret?” she asked. “You, of all people, feel regret?”
Yahweh didn’t answer her question. Instead, he posed another: “Will you stay and learn? Or will you leave and lose? “
Looking down the misty corridor of the obituary chamber, Nadira knew she felt more comfortable with the present than with her future. She was looking for a change in her life. If she left this place now without experiencing the adventure, would regret haunt her dreams forever?
“Adventure is life,” she said, parroting a past lesson. “I can ask for nothing more.”
Her anxious eyes fell on Lanochee kneeling with his eyes close motionless, entranced by the new memories pumping into his unconscious mind and waiting for her.
Nadira took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, allowing her heart rate to slow. The man looked beautiful, and his beauty moved her. She slid her hands over her hips, the skintight gravity suit cool and silky to the touch, breathed again and went to her knees. Next to the stranger, she studied his profile for a few seconds before raising her soft hand to his face. Her fingertip lingered for a long second before tracing a line from his jaw to his shoulder and down his arm, and then she placed her hand on his.
A sudden jolt of adrenaline surged throughout her body. Nadira’s skin flushed with erected senses as a kaleidoscope of light and a cacophony of disparate sounds filled her mind. Strange, swirling winds began buffeting her body.
Moving inside her mind from consciousness into her Creator’s BrainNet Connectome, she felt as though she was falling from the top of a high mountain—but then she landed with the gentleness of a feather. Dizziness instantly subsided and she found herself somewhere else, in a different world, a sensation she would never have imagined. She realized Lanochee was standing beside her and, to her pleasant surprise, their hands remained entwined.
They held onto each other, transfixed by Yahweh’s memories. As they watched, deep space was erupting into a chaotic torrent of swirling clouds—a hurricane so fierce it was ripping space-time apart. Solar system-wide lightning bolts flashed as a spaceship emerged from the eye of the storm and flew in a graceful arc towards the nearby star.
Nadira recognized the gigantic dark-matter ‘Halo’ graviton transporter; such storms had long allowed movement between distant points in the universe. It was by this artificial portal between the universes that the Elohim had invaded most of the known galaxies.
Once Yahweh’s spacecraft cleared the gravity well of the Halo, great cyclonic gates seemed to close behind his ship and the sounds inside Nadira’s head diminished. She had used a Halo transporter many times in her life, but this was entirely different; she was experiencing this familiar scene through the recorded memories of another. This was now young Yahweh’s great adventure.
Chapter 2
Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.
George S. Patton, 1885-1945, Earth
Library of Souls
The Solar S
ystem
Yahweh lay frozen inside his rectangular hibernation pod, wearing a skin-tight golden gravity suit and small backpack. Travelers in hibernation can move at incredible speeds through space-time and survive long periods of time dilation without aging; on this, Yahweh’s first journey, he hadn’t moved from his pod in over a thousand years.
Numen, the ship’s pilot, had the distinction of being young Yahweh’s biomechanical seraph. He controlled the ship and oversaw the wake-up sequence for his master’s resurrection. As they exited the dark-matter Halo, a signal alerted Numen to begin the process of bringing his master back into consciousness.
Hibernation recovery was more mental than physical. The body was maintained in peak condition by the pod without loss of brain functions and with only a few nutritional concerns. Time dilation during hibernation passed with a blink of the eye. One second you were here, the next you were there. Thus, when one awoke, only the faintest memory of hibernation existed.
Following a quick series of flashing lights, the pod popped open with a loud hissing sound. Yahweh’s mind and body came together as he sat up and straightened his cramped legs. He tried to stand, still hanging his head with exhaustion, but settled for leaning against the display panel next to his pod. He lifted his chin enough to look dreamily around the spacious cabin and was glad to see his personal seraph still functioning.
Numen waved his hand over the floating spheres that materialized from his seamless metallic control panel. A small canister of nutrition clanked into a receptacle near his knee. With the attention of a well-practiced caretaker, Numen slid the canister into an opening in his master’s backpack. Yahweh moaned as an erotic wave of adenosine triphosphate flowed throughout his body. After a moment, Numen removed the canister and placed it into Yahweh’s hand. Remembering how his hands worked, he drank of it, making it his body and blood, and he was resurrected.
