by Mark Kraver
“Your level of technology does not cause us concern. The projectiles and explosives are redirected by our graviton emitters or sublimated into vapor the instant they are detected inside our proximity fields. We are capable of ensuring our, and your, safety.”
“Then why were you so testy when we scratched your ship?”
“The hull of this ship is a quantum memory construct. The number of qubits you removed contained more information than has been recorded in the history of your people.”
Logan didn’t know how to respond to that. She began moving around the cabin, marveling at the deceptive simplicity of the aliens’ craft. She ran her fingers over the inner wall and noted the lack of seams or rivet joints. A sphere popped out of the smooth surface and startled her. She recoiled her hand, the sphere disappeared and a floating monitor displaying the exterior of the ship floated in front of her hand.
Wow, she thought, how pitiful we must look to people as advanced as they appear to be. She shook her hand, and the monitor disappeared. “What was that?” she said aloud.
“Television?” Numen answered. Logan frowned, thinking it should’ve had a more sophisticated name than ‘television.’
“You communicate through this?” Numen asked, as Yahweh pointed to her headset.
“I don’t think it’s working anymore,” she said, tapping her earpiece.
Yahweh brushed his hand over a sphere that popped up out of a blank console. “What about now?”
Logan grinned with disbelief at the technology as conversations bouncing between the field and armored personnel carrier started streaming through the earpiece.
“Hello? Hello? Colonel Solomon?” Logan said. “Come in. Over.”
“Dr. Logan?” Solomon shouted. “Where are you?”
“Yes, this is Logan. I’m all right. I’m inside the ship with him and his pet robot.”
Numen rolled his artificial eyeballs.
“They mean us no harm,” she said. “I repeat, they mean us no harm. He wants a press conference.”
“What?”
“He wants to call a press conference.”
“That’s a big negative. I can’t subject civilians to a potentially dangerous situation. Have your friends, visitors—whatever you want to call them—surrender, and then we’ll see about that press conference,” Solomon said.
Logan looked at Yahweh and Numen. “Sorry Colonel,” she said, “but I can’t subject my new friends to a potentially dangerous situation either.”
The colonel groaned. “Doctor be reasonable.”
“Sorry colonel, I’ve seen too many sci-fi movies where the military wants to dissect the aliens. I think the only way out of this is a press conference. That is my final answer,” she said, pulling off her headset and turning it off. “I’m afraid we’re stuck inside here. Can you move this ship?”
With a slow shake of Yahweh’s head, Numen said, “No.”
Yahweh turned his attention to Numen. “Why did you not respond when I called you?” he asked telepathically.
Under optimal circumstances, Yahweh and Numen could communicate across distances larger than this sector of space through quantum entanglement. Yahweh placed a hand onto Numen’s shoulder and placed his other hand on the blank console. A complete schematic of Numen’s inner workings displayed across the walls of the ship.
“What is this?” Yahweh mused. Something was lodged in Numen’s side. It had torn through his outer casing and had damaged molecular pathways leading to Numen’s communications array. He pulled something from under his seraph’s armpit. “Here we are.”
“I wonder what that is,” Numen said aloud, interpreting his master thoughts. “It looks like stone. How did it get there?”
“It’s an arrowhead,” Logan said. “It’s from a spear or an arrow.”
“NA-moo, to be exact,” Numen reported. “They inhabited this region at the end of the last Ice Age. I encountered them after interacting with the indigenous people of that time.”
“How long did you say you have been here?” Logan asked.
“Six antons or approximately 11,994 of your years.”
Logan stared. What a field day historians will have, she thought.
“Another time, perhaps,” Yahweh said through Numen, reading her thoughts. “This has disrupted his communications array.”
“Can he be fixed?” she asked.
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“If the mountain cannot go to the Muhammad, then maybe Muhammad could go to the mountain,” she said.
Numen recognized the saying but wasn’t sure how to interpret it to his master.
“If you cannot go to the press because your ship is broken, then maybe Numen could go and tell everyone the story for you. This could win sympathy, or even your freedom.”
Yahweh nodded as a troubled look swept over his face. “Freedom?” he repeated with his own lips. “It is a good concept, but is it practiced on this planet? I think not. Freedom is the ability to do whatever one wants at any point in time. If I leave this ship, is this not freedom? If I help you to survive death and destruction, is this too not freedom? If I let you all perish from your dying star, is this not also freedom?”
Logan looked worried.
“Do not fear. Freedom can never exist in a civilized society. When it does, it always has a dark side. We do not want to be evil, so do not try to make us free. We want to live with you under mutually beneficial parameters. That is the only satisfactory way to live anywhere. Do you not agree?”
Logan smiled. Hearing the one called Yahweh speaking aloud for the first time was strangely reassuring, even if his message was one she knew she’d need time to wade through. “So,” she said, “what did you have in mind?”
Yahweh smiled, winked, and tugged on his earlobe. “Who said we cannot go to the mountain?”
Chapter 22
Those born to the universe simply do not have the vocabulary to describe God through words alone.
Valentine DiRoma, 1957-2057, Earth
Library of Souls
Mid-Atlantic Ocean
Ballistic blasts danced across the deep ocean swells. All over the top of the cargo ship, jihadists popped open container after container shooting off practice rounds of mortars, rockets, and cannon gunfire.
Their vessel was now far enough outside the mid-Atlantic shipping lanes not to be heard or seen by the usual traffic traveling to and from America; the spectacular test was going utterly unnoticed by the rest of the world. Plumes of water exploded around the ship as the jihadists crawled over, in, and around the top containers like hungry rodents, eager to cause maximum destruction and mayhem in the shortest amount of time possible. Then, as fast as the deafening explosions began, the drill stopped.
Over the wireless communication system, Saeed shouted, “Allah be praised, Allah is great!” The men inside the containers cheered for over a minute before Saeed broke up their celebrations with stern instructions.
“Allah is great. Secure the containers. We will be reentering the shipping lanes soon. We are a cargo vessel.” The excited response from his jubilant warriors erupted again.
Saeed typed a quick report to his superiors, confirming that they were on the final leg of their mission. He pressed Send/Receive on his encrypted satellite e-mail account and received a simple message in response:
Subject: Diversionary Mission
“Allah be praised. Jerusalem will be freed at last, God willing. You will be a prince in heaven.”
Chapter 23
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008, Earth
Library of Souls
Breathmaker
“What do you think is happening inside that thing, Colonel? It’s been over ten minutes since her last communication,” asked the lieutenant, looking at a bank of monitors. They were still sitting inside their modified armored personnel carrier outside the bullet-riddled airplane hangar which, they n
ow realized, was housing aliens from another planet.
“I don’t know, but I’ll be damned if I’m holding a press conference out here,” Solomon said, fondling the Glock 19 pistol strapped to his hip.
“Colonel Solomon? Colonel Solomon are you there? Over.” Logan’s voice was coming through the communication system.
“Yes, Dr. Logan, I hear you loud and clear, over.”
“I’m ready to come out. Please don’t shoot.”
“Attention rangers, she’s coming out. I repeat, Doctor Logan is coming out. Stand down. Do not fire unless fired upon. I repeat, do not fire unless fired upon. Okay, Dr. Logan, you can come out now. Are you bringing anyone with you?”
“That is affirmative.”
“Yes,” rejoiced Solomon, muffling the mic. He was gonna bag himself an honest-to-God alien. He smiled at his lieutenant and leaned back in his chair.
Without warning, a brilliant blue-white light flashed across the row of surveillance monitors. They couldn’t see anything inside the hangar except white. Shocked, Colonel Solomon scrambled out of the armored personnel carrier to see the vision with his own eyes.
Inside the hangar, the unexpected burst of light burned everyone’s eyes for a moment. When the after-image of the painful arc of illuminance faded from their retinas, Dr. Logan was standing outside the hangar with two other figures.
The one hovering to Logan’s left appeared to be the same apparition everyone had witnessed earlier; she was wearing a robe with her head wrapped loosely with cloth—this was, they recognized, the Virgin Mary again. On Logan’s right, hovering above the ground, appeared a being who seemed to be Jesus Christ. He too was clad in a long white robe, and he had the unmistakable long brown hair and beard captured in centuries of paintings and books. Colonel Solomon slipped quietly next to Goodheart. “What’s happening, Doctor?” he asked Logan, focusing on keeping his voice steady and calm.
Solomon’s question startled Goodheart, who was midway through biting a donut. The chunk dropped out of his gaping mouth into his coffee cup splashing more muddy colors onto his filthy sweat rung white dress shirt.
“Please, don’t come any closer,” Logan said, holding up one hand to the rifle-readied soldiers lining the perimeter of the hangar. “I’ll explain later. I need to use my rental car. We have an appointment with the press somewhere.”
“Wait a minute,” Solomon said, looking up at the majestic figures floating five feet off the ground on either side of her. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“This is not Let’s Make a Deal. Are you letting me go, or are you arresting me?”
“I’m detaining you until I can speak to my superiors,” Solomon said, with the crack of a smile at the corners of his lips. He nodded to his men to approach.
“You have your timetables, and we have ours. Do not approach the ship, and most of all, do not touch it,” she said, smiling her crooked little smile back at the cocky Army intelligence officer. She looked up at the golden figures that everyone else saw as the visage of Jesus and Mary, and asked, “Are you ready to go?”
“Wait, why? What will happen if we touch the ship?” Solomon asked.
Logan looked at Yahweh and then at Solomon. “Because the ship is not yours, and the owner said so. Good bye.”
With another flash of light brighter than the distant dying sun, Numen spread his arms like wings to envelop Logan in an invisible gravity well that lifted her off the ground. The shock on the soldiers’ faces reflected her own when she realized they weren’t taking the car. One of the soldiers fell on their knees and hid his face in reverence; the others wondered if they should do the same.
With Numen’s arms still outstretched, the trio moved across the tarmac of the abandoned runway and into the sky. Disoriented by the feeling of weightlessness, Logan struggled to keep her balance until she sat down on what felt like an invisible cushion of cool misty air.
As they cleared the treetops of the surrounding dense cabbage palm thatch, the air began to condense around them into a thick dark cloud. Enveloped by what looked like a fast-moving storm, Numen, Yahweh and Logan were able to move beyond the visual range of nosey news helicopters hovering in every direction.
Their storm cloud barreled through the Everglades, casting a shadow over the expansive grasslands, marked with small clusters of bird-filled cypress swamp and gator holes. Looking down, Logan could see a small clearing outside one of the dense tree hammocks where a herd of white-tailed deer was prancing past a sounder of wild boar, all oblivious to their presence overhead. She was gazing at an old dirt road winding alongside a swamp when a long dark streak slithered out of the swamp’s embankment and began to cross a sunny patch of the road. She wondered if that was one of the exotic pythons everybody was talking about invading south Florida.
Inside her head she could hear Numen say, “One of the many species misplaced around the world.” Logan was surprised how he knew what she was thinking and made a note to keep her thoughts at least wholesome.
Gliding past the Miccosukee Indian Reservation they caught the attention of a small group of native-Americans walking along an overgrown dirt path. Numen tapped a few of the seven emerald keys in the palm of his right hand reconfiguring the clouds graviton emitters to project the prehistoric-Seminole ancient god, Breathmaker.
“We look like an ancient spirit,” Numen said to amuse Yahweh and Logan as they headed toward Miami and the planet’s first extraterrestrial press conference.
Numen sensed that his master wished not to terrify the people of this planet more than necessary, so he changed their appearance back to the more familiar Judeo-Christian apparitions once they passed from view so not to confuse and frighten the natives any more than they already had done.
Logan felt her mind moving, spinning, expanding as she rode in the cloud with these two aliens from another world. She knew she was having an awakening of some sort; she felt as if she was in the presence of gods, or at least the next best thing. It was overwhelming, in a totally beautiful way.
Chapter 24
This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.
Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008, Earth
Library of Souls
NFL
The Goodyear blimp orbited the NFL game between the Dolphins and the Rams in the Miami stadium. The overweight copilot stretched his fat neck and yawned, rubbing his tired watery eyes. He was bored with his job, circling a football game that was way too small to see without a fancy high-powered optical camera. He felt his mind begin to fade off into a fog of stage-one sleep. His body began to loosen its grip on reality as his muscles slumped and his head fell back. Then, with a sudden snort and a jerk of the head, he woke himself up with a gasp for air that alerted his pilot.
“Hey Frank, I heard you stop breathing for a few seconds,” the pilot said. “Something wrong?”
“Yeah, I know,” Frank said, yawning again.
“Man, I hope it’s not sleep apnea. The flight surgeon will ground you for sure,” the pilot said.
“No, I don’t think it’s that, thank God. Turkey sandwich made me sleepy. I need a break.” Frank adjusted his headset and began tuning the FM radio receiver to the news.
The National Public Radio announcer began at the top of the hour:
“All is quiet in the Middle East today as the crippled oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz are towed into the port of Khasab in Oman for repairs. The US Fifth Fleet is in control of the air and the sea. Many fires are being fought in and around Tehran as the loss of life rises to over twelve hundred.
“It was eerily quiet across Israel today as Palestinian and Arab refugees passed through checkpoints across the country. Hamas has ordered a withdrawal from occupied lands in response to Israel’s recent military retaliatory strikes. The armies of the Islamic Caliphate including Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt have mobilized assistance. Israeli and American diplomats have not commented on the
unprecedented cooperation between Israel’s neighbors. It is feared that military movements in the area are a prelude to war. Economists are debating the impact this mass evacuation will have upon the Israeli economy.
Today, at the United Nations, all embassies belonging to the League of Arab States closed their doors and left the country to assist in the evacuation of their people from Israeli-occupied territories, citing disdain for the current US policies in the Middle East.
“A strange blackout in communications has been creeping through the southern hemisphere over the last twenty-four hours since it was first reported at the tip of South America. Both the Argentinean and Chilean governments are at a loss to explain the phenomenon. All forms of communications including satellites are down as the disruptive wave advances from city to city—”
The pilot of the blimp slapped his snoring copilot on the shoulder. “Do you see that?”
Off in the distance, a fast-moving dark cloud—the telltale sign of trouble—was headed straight towards their position.
Frank’s eyes shot open. He hadn’t even realized he was drifting off again. “Man, that’s pretty weird,” he said, watching the ominous cloud approach. “What’s that glow inside the cloud? Ball lightning?”
“Radar confirmed. That is the strangest storm I think I’ve ever seen,” the pilot responded. “Call the weather service and ask them what’s up.”
Watching the compact dark mass race toward them at astonishing speed on such a clear day was disconcerting. The pilot revved up the prop engines on his floating balloon beast and steered the rudders due south to avoid the impending turbulence.
