by Mark Kraver
“How long?” Yahweh telepathically communicated to Numen. The look Numen received from his master’s face was filed away in his memory banks under the category ‘Dissatisfaction,’ and instantly correlated with the discomfort of being in a cramped hibernation pod for the first time.
“You hibernated through space-time for zero point six-six-six antons, or thirteen hundred thirty-two years,” Numen replied. Numen tilted his head and simulated a smile at Yahweh; he referenced from his vast quantum molecular database that mothers used this gesture to express compassion and affection, and he wanted to reassure his master everything was alright. Except for Numen’s gold colored skin and simulated facial features, a casual observer would not suspect him as being non-human.
“Okay,” Yahweh whispered. More than a millennium had passed in hibernation, and he knew it was inevitable, but the loss of his father, mother, and sister to old age while he travelled to this distant corner of the galaxy bothered him more than he had expected. He wanted to talk with them, right now, to tell them he had emerged from the Halo safe—but that was impossible. He murmured his little sister’s name as his body shuttered with grief: “Nina.”
His surrogate family was human, and he was Elohim. The Elohim, the oldest known sentient beings in this universe, came to the galaxy as explorers and colonists, but more important, as Creators. They had started as pilgrim refugees from a now-extinct sector of the universe; they were forced to flee their original home because of the regional ‘little bang’ recycling process that renews small sections of the universe at six hundred, sixty-six billion-year intervals.
Yahweh straightened up and looked at Numen, willing the image of his family to fade from his thoughts. “I still cannot believe they sent me, of all people, into the game,” he said, his voice recovered from stagnant hibernation. “I am to rescue Ra and El?”
“This is where the Nasi of Helios programmed me to tell you about our mission to rescue the Creators,” Numen said, “but you ordered me to tell you before we left. Do you not remember?”
“Of course, I remember,” Yahweh said. “I’m just complaining. Think about it: just yesterday, I was a graduating senior in the academy, and now I am supposed to be a pioneer with my own seraph on a secret mission?”
“Putting it that way, it does sound suspicious. Maybe you were sent to fail?”
Yahweh frowned as a phrase surfaced in his mind.
“Watch your back,” he said.
“Excuse me?” Numen asked.
”Watch your back. That was what Headmaster Zenn and Prime Prole Braniff whispered to me before we left.”
“Interesting,” Numen said while computing a response.
“Why do I need to rescue the most successful Creators in the galaxy in the first place? If they were in trouble, wouldn't an armada be sent instead of me? I don’t get it.”
“Unknown,” Numen said.
They moved across the cabin and began to scan the solar system. The sights before them were unlike anything Yahweh had seen and his melancholy began to fade.
“Looks good,” Numen said, pointing to the four-dimensional screen projecting from the ship’s smooth interior. He began to run through the data.
“Eight planets. Millions of large asteroid/planetesimal leftovers. Three planets are gas giants. That fifth one from the star is a whopper. I bet it can suck up the comets. Look, that red spot is a magnificent cyclonic storm. The consequence of a slow planetary collision. A planet-size moon has been absorbed by the gas giant and now orbits inside its atmosphere.”
Yahweh glanced at Numen with amusement; the seraph was like a child with a new toy.
“The fourth planet has evidence of extinct rudimentary life forms,” Numen continued. “Topography suggests past oceans, but there is no liquid water, a thin poisonous carbon dioxide atmosphere, minimal magnetosphere and a solid core. It is a dead planet. Wait—check it out. The edge of the polar ice cap…”
“Mitochondrial plasts,” Yahweh said, becoming more interested.
“I hate plasts,” Numen said. “Mitochondrial-life-wannabes that just infect everything. Where do they all come from?”
Yahweh looked at Numen. “But you have a mitochondrial-core in your central processing circuitry.”
“Master, even though my core is secure from outside contamination, and your mitochondria are protected inside your body’s cellular membranes, it is still a potential threat.”
“Not from this distance,” Yahweh said, momentarily disturbed at his seraph’s ability to ‘hate’ anything.
“But wait,” said Numen, his voice edgy with excitement. “The third planet. Look at all the life forms there. No civilizations and no pollution. Hominids—and hominin.”
“How many life forms?” asked Yahweh.
Numen took a split second to compute. “Maybe trillions of quadrillions,” he said.
“Hominin?”
“No, you inquired of the number of lifeforms, so I —”
“Give me the hominin and species count, not individual lifeforms.”
Numen paused again. “A rough estimate of hominin species from this distance,” he said, “is approximately eight. Maybe more when the planet rotates through a complete cycle. The exact count will not be possible until more data is collected.”
“Outstanding. But no signs of civilization?” Yahweh asked.
“Correct.”
“No transmissions?”
“None.”
“No orbiting platforms?”
“Affirmative.”
“Hmm, are there any Elohim? Are they all primitives?” Yahweh asked, waving his hand over floating spheres in his glowing instrument panel.
“Insufficient data.”
“You think we should visit and put the fear of god into them?” Yahweh asked with a wink, tugging on his earlobe. Numen processed his master’s gesture; it meant he was being playful. Nevertheless, he was obligated to answer honestly.
“Master,” Numen said, “before we impersonate a deity—and reminding you that function is not in my programming—I want to resolve how we shall share the spoils derived from this system. That is, those not already claimed by Ra and El, of course.”
Yahweh gave Numen a curious look. Numen’s response seemed both businesslike and cheeky—as if he had a secret up his golden sleeve. Yahweh decided to ignore it.
“We’ll talk about it later.” he shrugged.
“Sixty-forty?” Numen pressed.
“Ah, no,” Yahweh said, annoyed. Then he wondered: was Numen being serious?
“Seventy-thirty?” Numen negotiated further.
Was he being serious, or just chatty with pent-up calculations after sitting a millennium, waiting for the command to resurrect him, Yahweh thought. He remembered Dexter, the chief Seraphim Station engineer suggesting his new companion my attempt a hard shutdown just to rid his untested mitochondria-core of all the conflicting algorithms inside its memory processor. He studied Numen from the corner of his eye. Numen was not your ordinary seraph. He had human characteristics as part of his standard design components, but he was different; he had been special ordered to fit Yahweh’s unique needs and wishes.
Yahweh remembered being separated from his human family after his first year of life, but unlike most of his peers, the official separation was not the end of their relationship. His parents were different from other Elohim’s children’s parents in that they worked at the Academy where he and the other Elohim students were attending. His father was a caretaker engineer, and his mother was a neophyte nurse at the academy. Yahweh was exposed to them regularly; he loved his family very much and he was influenced by his father’s sense of humor more than he cared to admit.
Thus, when his departure for this rescue mission was imminent and it was time to be paired with his own lifelong seraph, Yahweh wanted special modifications made to give the seraph traits of his beloved family—particularly, he requested humor be imprinted in a prototype personality neural engram, modeled after his
father’s unique patterns.
Now Yahweh wondered if that had been such a good idea.
“This galactic sector and all its civilizations were developed by Ra and El over the past million antons. They have the best claim, of course,” Numen said, changing the subject. “I am getting signals from two planetary emergency beacons, but no communications from Ra or El.”
“What? They must be turned off or blocked somehow.” Something caught Yahweh’s eye. “What’s with this asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planets? Is that familiar?”
Numen delayed Yahweh’s question. “Master, I don’t like this. There is no sign of El, Ra or their seraphim on their usual channels.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions. They’re here somewhere,” Yahweh muttered. How could El and Ra be absent from their networks, he wondered. Maybe they’re hibernating on low power? “Boost the power to get a clearer signal, and scan that asteroid belt while you look for them. And check out that star.”
With a slight sorting of his master’s requests as to the order he was to report, Numen responded, “The asteroid belt between planets four and five is rich in all elements except iridium. This comet we are passing by has some interesting properties —”
Numen paused, looking more closely at an anomalous solar reading. “Utt-oh,” he said, “the stellar count suggests a short lifetime for this star.”
Yahweh watched the solar-limiter count down until it reached six point six-six antons, then sighed.
“Not good,” Numen said, continuing to scan the sensors. “This star is on the verge of burning helium which will balloon it into a red giant soon. The third planet will have to be moved to Heaven.” He glanced over his shoulder to a screen that showed the blue-green planet orbiting the star and calculated it would be a doomed planet if all went wrong.
“I knew it was too good to be true,” Yahweh grumbled. “Well-developed hominin on a habitable planet. I wonder if El and Ra knew this? I hope those hominin are evolved. They’ll need to be if they want to survive.” Something else caught his eye. “Would you look at that? I wonder what those spots on that star means?”
“Stars don’t have spots,” Numen said, recalibrating.
“This one does,” Yahweh said. “It’s almost as if part of the star’s photosphere is missing.”
“Salamandrian black holes or maybe magnetic bottle transporters?” Numen suggested.
“No way, that would mean—”
“Master, I think you ought to—”
“Ought to what? Increase your cut?”
“That would be nice, but the scans of that asteroid belt show a pattern of alphabiotic signatures,” Numen reported.
“Wha—” Yahweh looked at Numen, confused for a moment. Then he understood. “Bots!” he yelled, exploding from his seat to scan for signatures himself.
“It looks like they have been mining the asteroid belt for a long time,” Numen said.
“That’s because the asteroid belt used to be a planet, I’m sure. Bots use planet smashers. Those solar spots are coronal magnetic bottle implants to power the smashers.” Yahweh rechecked another screen to confirm this disturbing find. He was correct; they had flown right into a nest of alphabiotic signatures.
“They haven’t yet had time to smash planets three and four,” Numen speculated. “They siphoned the oceans of planet four into space to sterilize the water and extract minerals before mining. Logic indicates planet three is next.”
“Nope, scramble, and head for the sidelines. The moon of that third planet is generating a protector grid. See it? Polar-based and covering the entire planet. Why didn’t the authorities on Helios know about this?”
“Master, Bot approaching 102.9 mark five.”
“Full reflectors. How did they get so close?” Yahweh shouted as a sonic blast rocked their ship.
“Direct hit. Bots must have been in the tail of that comet,” Numen shouted over the buzzing circuitry. “One more hit like that and the reflector will be offline.”
“Set course 223.6,” Yahweh ordered.
“But, Master—” Numen protested.
“Do it. Get us under that grid, NOW!”
Their sleek spacecraft took a sharp, sudden turn, narrowly avoiding being blasted by a Bot boson torpedo, and headed straight for the moon of the third planet.
“Master, we ought to escape to the Halo.”
“Too late, full speed ahead. That grid is our only hope. Get ready to launch the pulsar.”
Numen flew their crippled ship straight for the third planet. “Almost there,” he said. “Five more seconds. Entering the first layer of the grid now.”
“Launch pulsar.”
With a flash, the pulsar filled the heavens behind the ship with intense light energy. Four attacking Bot ships were destroyed without a trace. “Master,” Numen said calmly, “reflectors are damaged by the backwash of the pulsar interacting with the grid.”
“How bad?” Yahweh yelled, struggling to keep the ship under control.
“Ah, awfully bad?” Numen said, trying to redefine ‘bad’ for his master’s quantification. He amplified his voice to be heard over the crackling ship’s consoles before defaulting to telepathy. “Reflectors are still at minimal level.”
A harsh zing reverberated around the cabin as the reflector array took another direct hit. Their tiny ship sliced through the inner edge of the protector grid with a much larger Bot craft behind and closing fast. Through the four-dimensional viewer, Yahweh and Numen watched with relief as the pursuing craft hit the inner layer of the grid and broke apart in a silent, massive fireball.
Their silent celebration was short lived. “Navigation is out,” Numen exclaimed. “We are on an inertial trajectory into the planet’s atmosphere.”
“Okay, hang on. Give me port thrusters,” Yahweh said, regaining his composure.
“Negative response.”
“Aft thrusters?”
“Negative response.”
“Stop saying that! Any thrusters?”
Numen looked at Yahweh and shook his head. His lips squeezed shut, and his ocular relays opened wide to accept as much input as possible.
“Great,” Yahweh sighed.
They plunged into the planet’s outer atmosphere glowing red-hot like a dying meteor.
“Can you raise Ra or El?” Yahweh shouted.
“Ionospheric static.”
“Try up linking as much data as you can before impact,” Yahweh shouted, nodding his head at the forward display screen. “We’d better hit land, or we’ll be underwater for a very long time.”
“Exiting ionosphere,” Numen reported. “I’ve got a fix on El and Ra, but they are at separate coordinates.”
“Separate coordinates?”
“Their ship was damaged, and Ra separated El’s life pod before impact.”
“Flaps!” yelled Yahweh, as the surface of the planet raced towards them. “They’re no help. Antigravs at max.”
“It won’t be enough.”
“It’s all we’ve got. Divert all power to antigravs, or we’re getting wet.”
“It won’t be enough.”
“Stop saying that. Blow the brace packs, divert all systems to the antigravs,” Yahweh shouted.
“We won’t have any power for guidance if it comes back online.”
“Do it!”
As the outer hull of their tiny ship became an antigravity blur, the bracing packs blew, and the ship’s interior filled with foam that solidified and secured the two travelers at their consoles. Slicing through the thickening atmosphere toward the blue-green planet below, the two would-be rescuers fate was now an uncertainty.
Chapter 3
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, Earth
Library of Souls
NA-moo
The men paused their hunt to watch the shooting star pierce the atmosphere and explode into the nearby
riverbank. They looked at one another, wondering if the cold day thunder was the voice of a God, but they had little time to investigate. The village needed meat to survive the long cold winter.
The native people were called the NA-moo, a branch of the wider clan of Calos, who inhabited the peninsula. They were well adapted to the winter’s chill, protected by animal skins and furs. The fiercest hunters wore capes of wild-turkey feathers, which they used to trick predators into thinking they were bigger than they appeared by spreading their arms and flaring the garment. This was very helpful when surprised by a saber-toothed cat.
The hunters set a fire to maneuver a massive beast into their kill zone. The wounded mastodon roared trying to retreat from the flames, but the chilled riverbank blocked its escape. One brave hunter after another rushed out of the smoke, launching stone-tipped spears into the trapped beast’s underbelly, forcing it into the cold shallow water of the river’s edge.
The NA-moo campsite was too far away to hear the agonizing beast, but not too far to hear the blast from the falling star. Astonished and frightened by the massive thunderclap, the villagers erupted like a kicked-over ant bed. Women ran for their young and hid them inside circular, palm-thatched huts or under the nearby palmetto brushes.
The ship’s impact shook the ground for miles around. Trees were smashed; others were uprooted and thrown across the river. The resulting crater smoldered with steam as ground water seeped in around the shiny hot rock from the sky.
It was a small planet compared to others orbiting a similar-sized star. Good thing, because if the planet were any larger, the gravitational forces would be too heavy for most Elohim without gravity suits. The planet was in the closing millennium of an Ice Age, with glaciers giving way to evergreen and deciduous hardwood forests, flooded coastal grasslands, and rivers gushing into distant seas.
Inside the ship, the bracing packs disintegrated. The two rescuers shook off the abrupt landing by leveling their bodies with graviton emitters embedded inside their suits like large fish scales. The ship was badly damaged.
