by Mark Kraver
Yahweh nodded to Numen and then looked to the others. “Yes, quite satisfactory, don’t you think?” Yahweh said to everyone in the room. “What do you think, Reeze?”
“Very satisfactory,” she said, nodding her head in agreement.
Zenith was quick to interrogate. “What do you know of this sabotage, Reeze?”
“What makes you think I had anything—”
“Because I’ve been reading your thoughts,” Zenith said.
“What, reading my thoughts?”
“Yes, we’ve all been reading your thoughts,” Numen said.
“Even me,” Yahweh added, “and I must say they are very implicating.”
Reeze’s eyes shifted around the room and focused on the door.
“There will be no escape,” Numen said, reminding the girl that her thoughts were being monitored.
She felt trapped, with no more defenses. She’d had nothing to do with anyone’s death, and yet her knowledge had unwittingly blamed her. She felt helpless and weaker by the second. Maybe she could kill herself, so her thoughts would not betray her again. And yet, she hoped, she knew no more secrets.
“Killing yourself will not be an option, either,” said Yahweh, shaking his head with disappointment. “So, tell me what’s going on. Why would she rather die of a solar red giant explosion than be rescued to a new star?”
“Because of the moon,” Zenith said, with disdain.
Yahweh looked at the young, frightened human adolescent. “Does this have something to do with the lunar propulsion Numen mentioned earlier?”
“As you recall, Reeze is from the moon,” Zenith answered. “They have lived and worked under the lunar surface for over nine hundred planetary orbits around this star.”
“It is my home!” Reeze blurted out crying. “And I know you don’t want to save it. You find it easier to throw away my home into the sun for the sake of a few years early escape from this solar system.”
“Is this true?” Yahweh questioned.
“It is true. With lunar propulsion we will gain six point six-six planetary orbits,” Numen answered.
“Then why has this plan been undertaken?” Yahweh asked. “Why do we need the additional orbits?”
“Because we do not have six point six-six orbits left. We are down to our last two years, give or take,” Numen reported. “Within that time our planet will be inside the belly of the red giant. The core of the sun is on the verge of a runaway triple alpha process. It is as simple as that.”
“Knowing this you still want to sabotage the exodus?” Yahweh asked Reeze.
“I don’t even know what he’s talking about,” Reeze said. “But I know he’s not telling the truth. Lord Armilus said—”
“Lord Armilus said?” Yahweh asked with alarm. It was clear from the expressions on Numen and Zenith’s face that all three were equally astonished to hear that name.
“Thought you could read my mind, did you?” Reeze said, this time with a worried look on her youthful face. She knew her people’s plans must have gone terribly wrong to have killed a revered Elohim. “Armilus said that if you do not submit to our demands he will damage the Earth base station at Namibia.”
“That is one of our African graviton base stations that we use to maintain the rotation of the Earth,” Zenith was quick to add telepathically, reading the naive innocence inside Reeze’s thoughts.
Yahweh held up his hand to silence everyone in the room from both verbal and telepathic chatter. “And what are these demands?”
“They are simple,” Reeze said. “Do not jettison the moon. Bring our home with us to Heaven.” She looked at Zenith, her worried face reflecting the doubt she was feeling. “What did you call it? Timing?”
Zenith tried to offer a look of reassurance to the poor scared child, but Yahweh’s voice drew her eyes back to him.
“Zenith, I would like for you to take your niece to the command deck,” he said. “Show her how a solar limiter works, and while you are there, have her help clean up the mess. Especially the little droplets of blood sprayed on the walls.” Yahweh said feeling in his heart that the young lunarian was not responsible for this atrocity. He turned his back to them both and gave Numen an intense look.
When the wall to the private apartment closed behind Zenith and Reeze, Yahweh and Numen stood for a few seconds staring at each other without saying a word. Yahweh broke the silence first by saying, “Numen, we have a problem.”
Chapter 69
The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945, Earth
Library of Souls
Armilus
The last moony transportation bubble landed on the Ice Age Namibia graviton base station in the midst of a blowing blizzard. The cracks and crevices in the high glacier walls as it passed to either sides of the station looked like the faces of old men staring down with sorrow.
“Gather your belongings, and assemble inside the main dome for further instructions,” Joop announced over his throat com system. He was with the last load of refugees evacuated from the moon in the final phase of the exodus before lunar propulsion was to force the Earth out of its orbit and onward to the stars.
Men, women, and children dredged through unimaginable snow blowing across the landing pad, and into the base station's underground shelter. Mandatory strength training along with gravity belts and boots issued before departure made the exhausting journey possible. Without such preparation, most of the refugees—having lived their lives on the low-gravity moon—wouldn’t be able to walk on the planet and almost certainly would have died of exposure in the blizzard. As the last of the moon refugees entered the shelter, the doors to the massive domed superstructure sealed off with a loud boom.
Armilus appeared, hovering over everyone’s head, reflecting his graviton emitter to appear as the Angel of Mercy. Armilus’ voice rumbled out like a thunderstorm the people of the moon had never witnessed.
“I am Armilus, chief seraph to our Lord Ra, Creator of this solar system and your moon. I have come back from the dead to deliver you from evil, to forgive all of your sins, and to set you free!”
The crowd of moonys watched in disbelief, with sporadic cheering at the word ‘free.’
Armilus continued, “Today I have crippled your captors, the Elohim, and delayed their plans to jettison your moon.”
More cheers, this time louder than before.
“It is all about timing, not humanity, that interests the Elohim. The bloom is off the rose. They do not care about you or your wishes. They are self-centered bureaucrats interested in their own agenda, not your lives. Blood is thicker than water. They view all humanity as cattle for the slaughter, not as equals among the stars.”
Violent shouts of protest burst through the massive crowd. Years of pent-up frustrations, of having to watch their homeland get mined to create something that would, in turn, destroy the lives they knew, had primed them for this moment. Armilus was spinning them into a whirlwind of anger and defiance as their bottled-up lifelong fears erupted to the point of physical exhaustion. They were a hot, heaving crowd desperately grateful that someone, anyone, might deliver them.
“It is now up to you to take your fate into your own hands. It is time that you stop this senseless misjustice and take back the moon. Now, I say, before it is too late!”
A near riot erupted on the floor below.
“Fear not, fear not,” boomed out through the acoustically-perfect dome, deafening the crowd into submission. “Even now as we speak, agents loyal to me are putting forth a plan. A plan that will end with you winning back your homeland and securing its future for all eternity!”
Cheers once again spread throughout the massive crowd of zealous moonys.
“Our plan is simple, and it is already in motion. We need to occupy this graviton base; we will threaten to sabotage it, if they refuse to give you back the moon. You will be free!” Armilus shouted.
As the crowd pulsed into a rioting mosh, Armilus nodded his head to Joop who raised his arms in the air. Lightning struck the battery towers outside with a booming jolt as the moony leader yelled at the top of his lung in approval, “Freedom!”
Chapter 70
Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.
Euripides, 480-406 BC, Earth
Library of Souls
Little Meteorite
Reeze walked back into the green glow of the command deck with a great deal of trepidation. Looking at the Elohim manning their stations on the main bridge, she felt all alone on the massive space station. In so brief a time she’d been accused of colluding to commit sabotage and murder, and all she wanted was to go home to her colony on her doomed moon.
Zenith led her past the remains of the recently deceased Elohim, who peered up through the clear casing with a blank, distant stare. She felt like everyone one was looking at her as when she studied them, each quickly averted their eyes back to the green glow of their instrument panels. She felt like crying again for the poor dead Elohim but didn’t. Zenith, sensing her distress, and tried to distract the human’s thoughts by waved her hand over floating spheres on a lit instrument panel. With a flicker of light, a four-dimensional display of the sun popped up in front of them. Reeze put her hand out to touch the display. Electrical patterns sparkled from the holographic sun’s core to her fingertips.
“Wow, that’s radiant,” Reeze said.
“It’s never too late to learn. We have a complete record of this star’s life cycle. If we follow the decay gradient curve between normal space-time and the slow time at the core, you can easily see that the number of gravitons emitted surpass the number needed to hold the fusion reaction at bay.”
As Zenith launched into a lengthy dissertation on the physics of the solar limiter, Reeze looked at her newly discovered relative. She didn’t just casually look at her Auntie Zenith, she stared—studying Zenith’s lips as she enunciated her syllables, watching the tilt of her head and gestures of her slender hands when she moved the graphic representation of the sun with her mind. At least, Reeze assumed it was her mind. Maybe it was her voice; she couldn’t be sure.
Sitting this close to Zenith began to conjure up thoughts about her own people, her own history. She remembered how one of her more radical school teachers was always so keen to point out similarities between how Elohim treated moonys and how some humans had treated people of color before Judgement Day arrived a millennium ago.
Reeze had grown up with Elohim all around her, and those that she had met never interacted with her on a personal level, so she had no opinion one way or the other about the Elohim yet. She had always considered the Elohim to be gentle, caring people, and she saw how her mother worked well with their species, joining resources and skills to create extraordinary projects.
But she observed other moonys resenting the Elohim presence in their work areas and at their special events; they would talk disparagingly about the constant monitoring and the endless space station construction project. Reeze’s father was among these disenfranchised moonys. He was more critical, more adversarial to the Elohim’s actions and decisions in general about the moon.
When Reeze’s ancestors first settled on the moon, humans still exhibited the distinct racial colors that had been caused by evolution in different geographical regions of the Earth long before the genesis. Reeze had learned in school about how those differences had genetically triggered an ‘us-against-them’ response within the species. This basic genetic trait typified in every animal, especially humans, sparked basic behavior survival instinct that separated individuals into different cohorts and perpetuated millennia of strife among mankind.
But over the years, on the moon and among those who remained on Earth, these divisions began to fall away. People of all races found each other, reproduced and skin colors gradually merged into a homogeneous soft olive color. Hair and eye color were an entirely different matter altogether, with every color and texture still following family phenotypic lines. Reeze looked more like her mother, brown eyes, light brown wavy hair, the opposite of her father's steel blue eyes and straight jet-black hair.
As a young child she had learned a song about those different skin colors before the genesis, and she would sing it as she grew up. Even now it was a very relaxing song for her, and it bugged the daylights out of those Elohim scattered around the control room who were casually monitoring to her thoughts. She sang the words in her mind, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the moon. Red and yellow, black and white, they are all precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the moon.” Over and over the song streamed through her head as Zenith tried to explain the mechanics of a solar limiter to her.
“... and once the fusion of elemental carbon commences in the core, the time gradient will not produce enough gravitons, and puff,” the holographic sun expanded into a red giant star in front of everyone’s eyes. “Now, any questions?” Zenith asked.
“Yes, what if it is wrong? What if the solar limiter’s broken?” Reeze asked, with that same crooked little smile that was beginning to annoy her auntie immensely. When Zenith just rolled her eyes at her, Reeze posed a new question. “What will come of him?” she asked, pointing to the encapsulated body of the dead Elohim still lying on the floor.
“He will remain in state until we can construct an Obituary Chamber for his remains.”
“That seems rather morbid. Isn’t there a blanket we can cover him with?” asked Reeze.
“No, but here is a bucket of water and a rag to start cleaning him off the walls. It is all fun and games to you humans until someone loses an eye, or in this case, their life. The command personnel have made a special request to leave his remains where they lie. To your species it is best to have everything out-of-sight, out-of-mind. This way the crimes of your past do not haunt the thoughts of your future. For us, leaving our dead in this way gives us time to remember, to reflect upon relationships, and yes even talk to the dead.”
“What would someone say to a dead person?” Reeze asked.
“Would it surprise you that his name was Alexander? I called him Alex. He was my friend.”
“Where you a couple?”
“No, we were not mates, just friends. Half-brother. I introduced him to his mate, Helene. Would you like to talk to her? She is in another part of the station.”
Reeze frowned and shook her head.
“When she heard of this treachery, she said she will never love another.”
Reeze looked down. “That’s sad. I am sorry for her loss, but—”
“The ends justify the means?”
“No, I didn’t know—”
“Know what?”
Reeze didn’t answer.
“Curious,” Zenith asked, looking at Alex on the floor encased in his clear cocoon, “do you not speak to your dead?”
“I guess so. My mother would take us to the family cemetery sometimes. I’ve seen her cry, saying words over great granddaddy Jedd’s grave. It was just a pile of ashes on the moon’s surface with a plaque next to it.”
“You see, with all of our obvious differences, we are still alike in this respect. We understand one another’s needs. Are we not the keepers of your species, yes? We would never put you in harm’s way or threaten you with disrespect. It is simply not in our nature. Jedd knew that.”
“You knew my great granddaddy Jedd?”
“Him, your grandfather, your father, your mother. I knew all your ancestors for over a thousand years. I was at the birth of every one of them, including yours.”
“I know you were the first Elohim born to Earth, but why haven’t I seen you before now?”
“I am getting around to seeing you now. On the night you were born, I allowed a meteor to strike the moon next to your family compound. Jedd called you his little meteorite.”
“That’s what my papa calls me.”
“Your great gra
nddaddy asked me to spread a handful of his ashes inside that impact crater when he died—so I did.”
“How come I don’t recognize you?”
“Oh, you know, we all look the same, and I’ve been working harder than usual these past few years trying to finish this station. I hope we still have enough time to get out of this system,” she said, rubbing her hand over her bald head, forcing a worried smile. “I was the one who negotiated with Jedd the settlement agreements for the Namibian base station. No one was more disappointed than I when the calculations concluded we could not take the moon with us to Heaven. My mother would have been very disappointed.”
“Logan?”
Zenith smiled, remembering her sapient mother. “She was a strong woman. She had to be…” Her voice trailed-off and she bit her lip, feeling her eyes start to glisten. She could say no more about her. Zenith took a deep breath. “I know your mother,” she said, changing the subject. “She is a very brilliant woman.”
“For a human.”
“Yes, this is true. I helped her develop pink tilapia when she was a little older than you. It was all her idea. Tilapia are undesirable dirty fish with a high content of omega-6 fatty acids.”
“Aren’t tilapia toxic and inflammatory to our bodies?”
“Correct. Humans have always had a fascination with tilapia because they can survive and thrive in low-oxygen, hostile environments—desirable traits in many circumstances on Earth and on the moon. Her idea was to gene splice the alleles responsible for omega-3 fatty acid found in wild salmon caught off the coast of Alaska with the alleles in the tilapia. I felt the project was so worthwhile I assisted her personally. Her results were remarkable, and she won not only the Lunar Award, but the Earth Award for best biology project of the month.”
