by Mark Kraver
“So, you are saying that if we were to accidentally—or on purpose, I guess—enter into an antimatter universe, we would instantly be annihilated?” Reeze asked, thinking out loud.
“And therefore, only those universes from which cherubim returned were deemed safe to enter,” Zenith said, finishing her brilliant niece’s thoughts.
Numen sorted through the fragments of Armilus’ memory that he was able to translate. “According to Gog’s records,” he reported, “he chose to explore only the red and green colored universes. Why they were deemed the only safe ones to enter is still unknown. Maybe he didn’t have enough time to explore more?”
“Amazing,” said Zenith.
“Totally,” Reeze agreed.
“That would mean there could be other possible universes with Elohim footholds, or other more powerful entities, roaming a yet-to-be discovered universe,” Yahweh postulated.
“Yes, except for the fact that Gog kept inter-universe Halo travel a complete secret, sharing it with no one except his daughter Magog. And, as of a few days ago, you. Not even Ra or El knew this secret.”
“Excuse me,” Zaar reported, zooming in on a clump of large blue spherical satellites hovering in some sort of pattern between them and the nearest star. “I’m not sure what I am looking at.”
Numen stepped closer to Zaar’s monitor. “They look like sentinel satellites. Possibly an early warning complex for this star system,” he postulated. “Maybe it is defensive.”
“If this is the mother universe of the Elohim, there may have been conflicts between this region and other parts of the universe? Other entities who can access the Halo or who may have actually invented the Halo in the first place?” asked Zenith.
Reeze verbalized the obvious question all of them were thinking: “I wonder what those blue balls will do when we are detected?”
Zaar zoomed in on the closest satellite. It appeared as a cluster of several dozen spheres connected like rotating soap bubbles.
“Any lifeforms detected on those planets?” ask Yahweh.
“Negative lifeforms,” reported Zaar.
“Then what are these satellites protecting?” he asked.
“Detecting energy output on the fourth planet,” Zaar said, projecting the enlarged image of the planet onto the massive bridge monitor.
The exposed outer surface of the planet appeared lifeless as a barren asteroid with a layer of breathable atmosphere. Fixed to its surface were enormous blue spheres coalescing into clusters that extended kilometers out into space. A few of the outer spheres were cracked open, exposing thousands of interlocking compartments. Orbiting the strange bubble planet, a smaller moon-sized glistening planetesimal floated by slowly, reflecting light as it rotated its lumpy, shiny surface in the blue starlight.
“Are these space stations or planets?” Yahweh asked. “Maybe this is where the satellites were manufactured?” He looked at the blue morphology of the planet and moon on the station’s giant, curved 3D monitor, tugging on his earlobe deep in thought.
“The larger planet has a geometric modular structure with a rocky core,” reported Numen. “Core diameter is similar in size to our Earth. At one point in time it may have been an inhabitable planet with liquid surface water, but sensors need more calibration. The smaller sphere appears to be its moon. The time gradient between normal space-time and the slower time speed at its core is not large enough to produce sufficient quantities of gravitons to attract and hold a breathable atmosphere. The shiny surface of the moon we are seeing is essentially a large bag or inflated segmented ball, I presume holding in atmosphere. Something about this universe’s blue shift is interfering with my readings, preventing a complete analysis.” He disengaged his arm from his console and reattached his left hand and held it out toward Yahweh.
Yahweh eyed the four quantum molecular chips in Numen’s palm, not understanding.
“I believe we will call this Plan-B,” Numen said.
Yahweh took the chips and gave him a strange look that Numen filed as ‘Puzzlement.’
“It is your escape route. In the event I cannot assist you in escaping from this universe, these chips are compatible with a ship’s navigational console. The application embedded within is most intuitive. It is honed-in on the green universe, more specifically, the star Heaven. Insert it into a navigational console port and enter the Halo; the chip will do the rest.”
The next look Yahweh gave Numen was filed into its own special category. It was an indescribable look bordering on admiration, pride, and possibly love.
“I suppose Plan-A will be how fast can we turn around and return to our own universe?” Yahweh said. He slid one chip into a concealed front pouch in his golden suit, then gave one each to Zenith and Reeze.
“Who’s the fourth chip for?” Reeze asked, tucking hers into her leopard skinned gravity suit.
Yahweh turned to the rest of the command crew, and his eyes settled upon the one person he had grown to trust on the command bridge the most. “Zaar, I give you this fourth chip. With it, I task you with saving as many of the crew as possible should we fail to survive.”
Stunned, Zaar bowed his head, fist to chest, and took possession of the chip. “I live to serve,” he said.
Reeze smiled at Zenith knowing how proud Zaar must feel being chosen by his Lord to protect his children from harm.
“Our inertial trajectory will swing us around that star, and return us to within maneuvering distance of the Halo in zero point six, six, six ontons,” Numen reported.
“Ontons? Aren’t those Elohim years?” Reeze asked.
“However, if we were to use our newly acquired engines on full burn and a gravity assist around that blue star, we could cut that time down by two-thirds,” Zaar calculated out loud holding up his pointer finger.
Zenith frowned. “And be detected by every sentinel satellite in the system.”
Yahweh tugged his earlobe, looking thoughtfully at the large monitor. “Why do you suppose Gog wanted us to come to this universe?” he said. “What is his plan? Let's take another look at those satellites.”
“Maybe he’s tired of holding secrets to himself,” Reeze said, her mind flitting to some of her own life’s past secrets. “Secrets eat on your soul. Maybe Gog’s soul needs to—”
Zaar cut her off abruptly. “We’ve been detected by a sentinel satellite,” he reported, showing the agitated satellite on the monitor. “I am sensing proton bursts.”
“It is hard to believe they trigger so easily. Encounters with asteroids or comets would deplete the satellite’s arsenal in short order. It must be something else,” Yahweh said.
All eyes watched as one of the satellite’s spheres began to pulse bluer and bluer until—BOOM! A sphere exploded with a brilliant purplish flash of light, sending out splintered shards directly at them and the Earth.
“Why are we being attacked?” shouted Reeze, “Aren’t you the blue universe’s Creator?”
“Good point,” Yahweh concurred, watching the shards rapidly advance toward them. “Numen, hand me the crystal.”
“It’s in your pod, master.”
“Run,” Yahweh shouted, with the proximity sensors sounding alarm.
Yahweh and Numen ran off the invisible bridge as fast as they could. Once they were in the long hallway, Numen latched onto his master’s arm, activated his graviton emitters, and exploded down the corridor. Massive deceleration outside the pod chamber left Yahweh’s head swimming as Numen left him propped against the door and went inside to retrieve the crystal.
Alarm signals rang out throughout the ship and the Earth-based graviton stations. “Prepare for impact, incoming projectiles, prepare for impact…”
Numen punched glowing keys in his palm and then waved his hand over the pod. The blue crystal slowly emerged from a pod storage chamber. Numen’s circuits were running at light-speed, and the time it took for the crystal to emerge was an eternity. “Come on, come on,” was the only thing he could compute while waitin
g. Once the crystal emerged, the seraph spun around and handed it to Yahweh.
“Okay, now what do I do?” Yahweh asked.
“Unknown.”
“I hate that answer,” he shouted. As his voice faltered, deep inside the crystal a dark blue spark appeared. Yahweh stared, feeling breathless. “What is this?”
With no warning, blue light blasted out of the crystal and broadcasted outward in every direction. Numen latched again onto Yahweh’s arm and almost instantly returned them to the command deck in a quick burst of his graviton emitters. Zaar, Zenith and Reeze seemed frozen in surprise, looking wide eyed at one another in shock.
Zaar let out a long breath and spoke first. “Whatever you just did worked. A bubble encircled the station and planet in time to divert the shards from impacting us. They seem to have bounced off something into deep space.”
Numen looked to Yahweh, his face reflecting the palpable relief in the room. “What happened?” asked Yahweh. “And don’t say unknown.”
Numen hesitated before saying, “It appears you do have dominion over this region of the blue universe, after all.”
Once again, shock waves reverberated throughout the connectome.
“Blue universe?” Nadira gasped, struggling to comprehend what she was experiencing. “The Elohim traveled from the blue and through the red to get to what—our green universe?” she asked.
“This is already the most incredible adventure I could ever imagine, and yet there is more. I do not know if I can tolerate much more,” Lanochee complained.
“And where are all the life forms in this mother universe? Surely, a place as old as this one would be teaming with life of all kinds by now,” Nadira said.
“Maybe they are here, but hidden from their sensors somehow?” Lanochee added, hoping Yahweh would enlighten them.
“This universe is an unbelievable place,” Nadira uttered.
“Unbelievable places can appear very natural if you just believe it is possible,” Yahweh said.
Chapter 85
The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change, and everyone looks up to them.
Confucius, 551-479, Earth
Library of Souls
Z-pod
Numen and Yahweh stood on the invisible walkway of the command bridge. On the massive curved display appeared a magnified image of the coalescing blue spheres fixed to the rocky planet’s surface.
“Zaar, accelerate to maximum speed, and gravity assist us around that star back to the Halo as fast as possible. Dim the solar array to minimum, we need to cool down the planet if we get close to that star,” Yahweh ordered without consulting Numen. “I already don’t like this place. Try communicating with that planet to see if anyone is there.”
“Master, do you think that is wise? They could be hostile,” cautioned Numen.
“Better we know what we are up against while we are far enough away to formulate a plan of attack.”
“I am already receiving a transmission, online,” reported Zaar.
“What? Let’s hear it,” Yahweh said, surprised.
Over the bridge com system an accented mechanical voice repeated a recorded message, “Musrevinu aetcal aiv suiraigalp douq isin…Musrevinu aetcal aiv suiraigalp douq isin…Musrevinu aetcal aiv suiraigalp douq isin…”
“Numen?” Yahweh asked.
“No known Elohim dialect. Wait. There is a reference in Gog’s data base…one moment…it is an emergency beacon for assistance—or maybe a warning.”
“Well, which is it?” Reeze asked.
“Both,” Numen answered.
Yahweh frowned, waving his hand for Zenith and Reeze to follow him and Numen off the command bridge.
“Push those engines to maximum. Prepare my ship. We need to find out why we are in this blue place before something else goes wrong. Zaar, you have command” he ordered.
Approaching the desolate planet in Yahweh’s personal spacecraft, everyone saw with greater clarity how ancient the planet appeared. The outer gigantic blue spheres were pockmarked with holes and cracks as if torn apart by giant marauding beasts. Large pieces had crashed down onto the exposed barren surface like empty egg shells spilled out of a bowl. The planet’s polished moon hung lazily on the horizon.
“Land next to those spheres, over there. We’ll start at the bottom and work our way up,” Yahweh ordered Reeze, who was piloting the craft.
“Or down,” Numen commented. “There appears to be an extensive network of chambers below the surface, as well.”
“Like my moon,” Reeze added, making a long slow circle around the landing site to get a better lay of the land. The construction visible from their aerial view showed simplistic and uniform stacks of geodesic clumps, all the way to the misty horizon. They glistened in the blue sunshine as if they were mounded soap bubbles from polluted water. The rocky planet core shone between the sphere structures like clawed canyons of molding blue cheese. Their ship sensors, although not well calibrated to the physical properties of this foreign universe, identified the exterior spherical anatomy as being composed of an odd alloy of titanium, aluminum and zirconia crystals, and each sphere was connected with a strangely formulated polyvinyl siloxane platinum seal.
“Like the moon, except with more gravity,” Zenith said, nodding at her niece’s gravity suit, now solid gold like the rest of them.
Reflections of undulating spherical walls bounced back and forth like mirrors of infinity as the ship descended, confusing Reeze’s eyes enough that Zenith helped guide her to the ground. “Use your proximity sensors,” Zenith advised her gently. “The visual monitors are ambiguous for even my eyes.”
Ancient dust blew up all around the ship as it got closer to the surface, flickering pieces of blue twinkling mica, obscuring the passengers’ view as the ship touched down. When the dust settled, the battered figure of a man-like creature stood in the forward viewing screen, waiting for them to emerge.
“Where did that come from?” shouted Reeze.
The humanoid figure stood silhouetted against the broken jumble of spheres in the distances, looking ominous. They continued staring at the ship’s exterior monitor as the last of the dust cleared away and the resolution improved, revealing what looked like a robotic-man with four arms. Two arms faced forward like usual, and two faced back as if it were looking in the opposite direction.
“Unknown,” Numen said, working his instrument panel.
“I see what you mean,” Reeze said.
“It appears to be a biomechanical being. Perhaps a seraph with an unusual assortment of appendages,” Numen reported. “Maybe an emissary.”
“Why can’t we communicate with it?” Zenith asked, checking her sensors.
“And don’t say ‘unknown,’” Reeze was quick to tell Numen who calculated for a moment before dismissing her input as irrelevant.
“I believe to solve this dilemma, I must go out and parley,” Numen said, asking for permission to exit the craft and confront the stranger face to face.
Without saying a word Yahweh nodded and told him telepathically not to take any chances.
“I believe Magog’s seraph, Chad, installed in me sufficient provisions for this encounter,” he said. He walked to the back of the cabin, waved his golden hand to dissolve the hull, and exited the craft.
They watched the monitors with anticipation as Numen approached the being without any reticence. The figure never moved, not even its eyes, as if it were dead. After several seconds of gesticulations, Numen produced the blue Deed Crystal from his sleeve and gave it to the stranger.
“Oh my God,” Yahweh muttered, surprised to see Numen had the crystal in his possession.
The four-armed being tilted its head, taking possession of the crystal in one of its massive hands. He examined it for a few seconds up close to its face, and then lowered it for one of his back hands to take control. The back arm raised the crystal to the back of its head for a few second
s before returning it to the front hand once again. Then the figure bowed its head with its front hands folded palm to palm over the crystal and touched its forehead with it, before handing it back to Numen. Numen received the crystal and turned his back to the menacing foreign creature from another universe. As Numen walked straight back toward the ship, the stranger fell immediately into step, matching behind him stride for stride.
“Wait, he’s not bringing that thing in—” Reeze started to say as both entered the spacious cabin.
“I believe this is one of those chances I told you not to take,” Yahweh communicated to his independent seraph telepathically.
“Master, may I introduce Hoori-Dakar, keepers of the last bastion of Elohim civilization in the blue universe.”
Hoori bowed his head and clasped its hands together in front of his face as if praying.
“They recognize you as the rightful Elohim Creator of this universe, and they have downloaded many pertinent facts into my partitioned Gog memory bank.”
“They?” Reeze asked, before thinking.
Silence filled the cabin as each of the crew paused to contemplate this strange biomechanical being. But before Numen could explain, Hoori turned its torso around and faced them backwards.
“Hail, mo novel overseer,” another face on the back side of Hoori’s head addressed Yahweh. “Me Dakar.”
“Hoori-Dakar is a multitasking seraph. I have told them that we were from far, far away,” Numen said.
“No shit,” Yahweh said.
“Ghostly singularity,” Reeze gasped, “he’s got eyes in the back of his head.”
Yahweh looked at Reeze and then at Numen, his eyebrows raised prompting Numen to continue reporting.
“As far as I can tell, this is the birthplace of the Elohim,” Numen continued.
