by Mark Kraver
Reeze’s eyes widened. “Whoa, wait a minute. They aren’t doing anything to me.”
“Okay, suit yourself. You can lie there all day if you like, or you can suit up and see Lord Yahweh resurrect.”
Reeze flailed for a few seconds, groaning under the crushing gravity before becoming completely exhausted. She stopped and caught her breath before asking, “What color is the suit?”
Zenith rolled her eyes at her two comrades but didn’t answer.
“Okay,” Reeze sighed. “But if they’re dressing me, I only want the female to do it.”
Zenith winked at her two helpers, who looked at one another, bemused by the petite moony’s comment.
“They are both females,” Zenith said.
“Oh, good,” Reeze sighed with relief.
“At least I think they are,” Zenith joked, walking out of the landing bay to consult a computer panel and leaving Reeze alone with the two androgynous robed Elohim.
After a bit of struggle and a few embarrassing stares, Reeze lay on the floor in a loose-fitting gray jumpsuit. It wasn’t what she had expected. Fully-integrated suit? It felt more like a cargo bag, she thought. The two Elohim stood side by side and bowed their heads as if to apologize.
With a look of you’re kidding me, Reeze asked,” Now what?”
Zenith walked back into the landing bay. The robed Elohim bowed their heads again and departed in the direction of the gravilator tubes.
“Feel better?” Zenith asked, seeing Reeze still on the ground, exhausted but dressed in her disengaged gravity suit. The look on Reeze’s face made a giggle rise in Zenith’s throat, but she managed to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
“How is this obtuse thing supposed to work?” Reeze gasped.
Zenith turned to see her comrades smiling as their gravilator doors shut. Elohim were not without humor or emotions, they just chose to use them sparingly.
“Here, let me help you with your suit,” she said, grabbing two dials in what would be Reeze’s breast area and twisting them both in opposite directions.
“Hey, what are you—?”
An audible sucking sound commenced, and the suit began to shrink all over Reeze’s body. The arms and legs shrunk to fit her long lean limbs and torso first, with the butt and crotch snapping tight last. In the beginning, it felt like a giant wedgie suffocating her, but eventually loosened when she moved her body parts around and tried to stand. Zenith extended her arm and hoisted Reeze to her feet.
“Now, do you feel better?”
Actually, she did. It felt good to have both feet firmly touching the ground. She stood on the landing pad and felt perfectly natural. Like she was standing on the moon.
“The suit will adjust the gravity over time, so you will eventually develop the muscularity to go without, though few do.”
“Why didn’t they fit my suit like this in the first place?” Reeze asked. A sheepish look flashed across Zenith face. “Oh, I get it. They were playing with the new pet monkey. How long will it take?”
“Take to what?”
“To get use to the gravity on this station?”
“Unknown. Hurry, it is time to go see our lord resurrect.”
“Wait,” Reeze said.
“What is it now? Do not like the color of your suit?”
“Well, yeah, the color is hideous, but, no. Where’s the zipper?”
“Zipper?”
“Yeah, you know, if you gotta to go…”
“We are going. To see our Lord, resurrect.”
“No, you know—pee, and…” she said, gesturing urgently around her hips.
“Oh, do you have to micturate and/or defecate?”
Reeze nodded, “Uh, yeah.”
“Then proceed. The suit will digest your wastes in leg pouches as it does for all your bodily wastes.”
Reeze looked puzzled.
“Specially modified strains of bacteria live inside the organic matrix of your suit. They are constantly processing your wastes: urine, feces, sweat, exfoliated epithelial cells and such. It cuts down on the time it takes to normally maintain one's body. Quite convenient, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, yeah. Timing is everything to you. Right now, it’s time to pee.” She stood still, a look of concentration on her face, before shaking her head in frustration. “Can you turn around? At least for my first time?”
Zenith groaned but obliged, turning to gaze at the moon until she heard Reeze say, “Okay, I’m good.”
Turning back around, she saw Reeze looking down at her larger than life breasts.
“And what’s this about?” Reeze asked, cupping her chest with her hands.
“You do not know your own anatomy? Those are called your breasts, of course.”
“Of course, but mine aren’t—” she indicated the size difference with her hands.
“It is a convenient place for control systems, power supplies and the like. They are disguised to appear like anatomical features. They can be placed anywhere, if you’d like. Would you prefer they be placed onto your posterior? Maybe your buttock? Or possibly a hump on your back?”
Reeze craned her neck to look at her petite shoulders and then her little butt and decided her current build would suffice. Besides, she speculated, it may feel funny to sit on an enlarged posterior.
“Would you prefer a robe to cover—”
Reeze interrupted, “No, God no, there are enough spooks floating around here already. Do your males wear gravity suits with breasts like this, too?” she asked, thinking about the strange looks she had seen from the two androgynous Elohim who just dressed her in this suit.
“Of course. Yours is a standard female issued suit, like all the others aboard. The male suit breasts do look slightly different.”
“Do you wear one of these suits, too?” she asked.
Zenith was silent. She had not expected to be sharing such personal information with a sapient, let alone one she had just met. She waved her hand down the front of her robe, and then pulled it open.
Reeze was surprised. Zenith’s gravity suit, if it was a gravity suit, looked like zebra skin.
“Hey, why doesn't mine look as nova as yours?”
Zenith sighed and pursed her lips, considering her response. After a moment, she glanced up in exasperation then tapped her right breast and began twisting it one way and then the other.
Reeze squealed. Zenith’s suit was scrolling through an array of colors and patterns.
“Yours can do this too. But check it out later,” Zenith said. “We don’t have time for this right now. Numen is expecting us. Do you need more time to excrete?”
“Nope. I’m done. Let’s go,” she said, with a satisfied glance at her new breast controls.
They walked into an antigravity-powered gravilator tube, one of many linking all the various parts of the station together like long hollow spaghetti noodles. Upon stepping into the tube, Reeze was astonished to feel her body momentarily free floating in midair before being sucked down the long winding tube. Nausea swept through her dizzied head; she was feeling she could no longer resist the sensation of regurgitation rising inside her stomach when they abruptly stopped. Reeze stood close behind Zenith as they stepped out of the gravilator tube and onto a solid gold platform connecting them with an emerald command deck. Reeze looked back at the gravilator and wondered, what would have happened if I had vomited inside the tubing?
“It would make a mess, of course,” Zenith said, sensing her thoughts and walking into the busy emerald glow of the station’s spherical control bridge.
Inside the command center of the transplant ship, several robed Elohim sat around consoles looking at all manner of radiant instrument panels. Standing at the center of the room was Numen, Lord Yahweh’s personal seraph, clad in his usual gold colored skin.
Without the courtesy of even a simple greeting, Numen said, “Let us begin.”
Before everyone’s eyes the forward wall became transparent, revealing a v
ivid picture of the dark side of the Earth. The planet looked completely dark, except for small dots of twinkling light at graviton base stations in Morocco, Namibia, Israel, Madagascar, and Nepal.
“Initiate the solar array,” Numen ordered.
The Earth remained dark, but slowly the coastlines of the major continents started to appear. Browns and some greens became more apparent along the equator, while white dominated everywhere else, until the entire continent of Africa was distinguishable from space. Eventually, the surface of the planet could be seen as if it were daylight. For the first time in the history of the planet, light as bright as the sun shone down upon every inch of the Earth’s surface, illuminating the entire planet at once.
“We are ready,” Zenith proudly announced.
“Zaar,” Numen asked, stepping closer to one of the robed Elohim technicians. “What is the position of the Halo?”
“Zero point six six six astronomical units,” Zaar reported.
Reese stood just inside the glow of the command bridge, quietly observing. The one called Zaar was a male, she guessed by his name. Who would name a girl Zaar, she thought to herself. Something about his demeanor made him seemed more masculine. He looked third in command, under Numen and Zenith. As she spent more time in their presence, Reeze was starting to sense subtle distinctions between the Elohim and fancied half to be male and half female.
Numen looked around the room with satisfaction. Then he frowned his artificial eyebrows and looked at Zenith and her companion. Walking out the doorway, he didn’t say a word aloud but instead telepathically asked Zenith, “Are you sure about this?”
She responded without moving her lips, “We will see.”
The three walked away from the emerald command center and started down a long corridor. Reeze felt as though gravity was changing as she moved along the winding path, making it difficult to get traction, but her suit acclimated to the changes quickly and automatically. After traveling a minute or so, they entered a darkened room where a small red light looked like a creature waiting in the night. The slow rhythmic pulsating glow on the faceplate of the pod spoke of the hibernation chamber wake-up cycle.
With a startling pop and hissing sound, the casing opened, and the overhead lights calmly electrified the room. Young Yahweh arose from his cocoon sanctuary, his golden suit’s graviton emitters activated, lifting his limp body into the vertical position. Hovering with his head hung low, lethargic and dazed from lying dormant for over a thousand years, he tilted his head and was glad to see Numen standing in the room this time he resurrected.
Numen waved his hand over a nearby control panel’s floating spheres to produce a small canister of nutrient solution that clanked into a dispensary. With a gesture of care, Numen slid the canister into an opening in Yahweh’s small backpack. His body felt the seismic discharge of nutrients moving throughout his circulatory system.
It was a necessary act, Zenith knew. She watched as Numen waited patiently and then removed the canister from his backpack to place it into his master’s hands. Yahweh grasped the canister, paused a moment to regain his composure, and then drank it thirstily. With a gasp, a wave of relief flowed over Yahweh’s face.
“He’s just a kid,” Reeze said, before thinking.
Yahweh’s eyes flickered in Reeze’s direction but he declined to respond. He felt an instant wave of affection for the young girl, reminding him of his little sister, Nina.
Both Reeze and Zenith were shocked to see how young their Lord appeared. He looked like he was a teenager, just a couple of years older than Reeze.
“My Lord, the Halo is on course to rendezvous with this new station,” Numen said, bowing his head. “We are ready to initiate lunar propulsion.”
Yahweh gained his composure and lifted his head to look upon the people in the room. He looked at Numen first and asked with a scratchy voice about this unknown lunar propulsion, “The exodus?”
“On schedule.”
“Excellent,” he said. Next, his eyes fell on his thousand-year-old daughter Zenith for the first time and he smiled. “You look like your mother.”
Zenith bowed her head and said nothing, but her thoughts deceived her.
Yahweh felt the awkward moment and asked, “Who is your sapient friend?”
“Oh, this is Reeze. She is a moony. Her tribe mined the raw elements that built this station,” she said, eager to divert the uncomfortable feelings she was having about meeting her younger father for the first time. “She is of the line of Logan.”
Reeze was caught off guard, preoccupied with other thoughts. She wasn’t sure she liked being identified as a Logan since she had no idea what it meant.
“What is a Logan?” Reeze asked.
Yahweh smiled, winked and reached for his earlobe with his shaky hand. “Conrad and Logan had a child together. How marvelous. It was fitting for one who delivered a superior child to have a replacement sapient. Logan was Zenith’s human mother, so that makes you two distant relatives.”
Reeze stared at Zenith, “You knew this the whole time, and never mentioned it? I thought you were using me as your pet monkey.”
Zenith remained silent. The awkward mood was stifling. Yahweh felt the need to take charge. “Numen, have you noticed my daughter also looks just like—”
Boom! The station was rocked with a seismic shockwave that could be felt throughout the ship.
“What?” Yahweh shouted both physically and telepathically.
“It wasn’t an impact,” exclaimed Zenith looking around the room.
“No, it was an explosion,” Numen summarized as a multitude of attending cherubim appeared and filled the room. “Protect Lord Yahweh at all cost.”
Each of the little cute baby-faced cherubim went into protect mode and immediately turned into snarling little beasts looking for danger everywhere. Numen fled the room, telling Zenith telepathically, “Bring the girl.”
Reeze gave her new aunt an odd crooked little smile as Zenith took her by the arm and led her behind Numen. They rushed onto the control bridge to see an instrument console destroyed, and the dismembered body of an Elohim operator lying dead on the floor, his white robe awash in bright red blood. Shock was still indelibly marked on the command staff faces.
From every corner of the room cherubim descended upon the Elohim’s bloody corpse and began buzzing over him like bees. Out of their mouth came a clear liquid that encased the victim in a gooey gelatinous substance that solidified into a hard-crystalline transparent cocoon.
“What happened?” Reeze asked Zenith.
“That was what I was going to ask you, niece.”
“Damage report,” Numen asked.
“The main guidance console is destroyed. Without it we cannot jettison the moon nor unite with the Halo on time,” the blood-splashed Elohim called Zaar reported.
“You wicked little girl. What have you been up to?” snarled Zenith, reading her mind.
“Yes, what is happening here?” Yahweh asked, walking onto the bridge to observe the damage for himself. Everyone bowed their heads and diverted their eyes in respect.
Yahweh was embarrassed by the display of reverence and said, “Report.”
“An explosive has been detonated inside the guidance console. Preliminary diagnostics points to someone or something—” Zaar began. He paused and looked around the room for any unfamiliar cherubim and then lowered his eyes to continue reading the damage report aloud, “—placing a microdot explosive charge in line with the navigational sequence. When the program reached the microdot subroutine, it detonated.” He nodded his head toward his friend lying dead on the floor. “He was just standing too close when it happened.”
“Who would do such a despicable thing?” Yahweh asked, noticing Zaar quickly looking up at him, and then cowering his eyes away. Yahweh, feeling self-conscious, looked down at his suit to make sure nothing was inappropriately showing, before asking, “Can it be fixed?”
“Certainly, but not in time for our current
planned trajectory to rendezvous with the Halo,” reported Numen.
“Well then, repair it, and plan a new trajectory,” Yahweh said winging-it before frowning at the dead encapsulated remains of one of his children. He knelt and placed one hand on the cocoon. “One day we will journey together,” he whispered.
“Repair is not as easy as it would seem,” Zenith cut in. “We do not have the time to rebuild the key component for navigation. The solar limiter demands we leave as planned or—”
“The red giant cometh,” Yahweh said, as if remembering a bad dream.
“Precisely,” Zenith answered, feeling more empowered and looking disdainfully at Reeze.
“I am sorry master. I have failed you at the last final moment,” Numen said, listing the possible solutions out loud. “I have repaired your ship, and we can escape through the Halo. Or maybe the planet could be moved into a geosynchronous orbit behind Jupiter, or to the nearest star. But the three-body problem of the Centauri star system…”
Yahweh shook his head. “Nonsense, there is always another way.” He noted everyone still diverting their eyes from him and breathed out slowly. “Look at me,” he said, his voice still gentle and weak from hibernation. Nobody moved. He glared around the room. “I said look at me,” he shouted with his hoarse throat. “I am not a God.” He pointed to the bloody encapsulated remains of one of their brothers lying on the floor and his tone lowered again. “We are not Gods”
Slowly, everyone on the command deck raised their heads and looked upon their mythical Lord for the very first time.
“You are all my children. I can no more leave you behind than I can let the red giant devour this planet, and that means everyone,” Yahweh said, swinging his head around to look at Reeze. “We need to concentrate on how to resolve this mess. I want a full report within the hour,” he commanded, leaving the room.
“This way,” Numen said, following Yahweh. He was escorting Reeze by the arm, leaving Zenith to take up the rear.
They walked down the hallway and back into Yahweh’s pod room. With a wave of Numen’s hand, the far wall opened into a comfortable suite with all the amenities of home. He informed his master telepathically that this was his new living quarters. “Ra and El,” Numen added silently, “are being protected by their seraph Ba in a pod purgatory antechamber next door.”
