by Mark Kraver
Reaching for another small floating sphere, Numen adjusted the solar array and the planet below slowly went dark. Absolute cold reached for the planet’s surface from outer space like a giant fist.
“Within a few hours,” Numen reported, “every exposed Z-pod will freeze to death, and the rest can be tracked down by cherubim.”
The connectome sparkled with astonishment:
“All of the Elohim in the red were eradicated and now those living in the blue home universe have perished as well? That is even more incredible than the existence of other universes. Nothing will ever surprise me ever again,” Nadira said, with exhaustion,
allowing Lanochee to support her weight in his arms.
Chapter 86
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha, 563-487 BC, Earth
Library of Souls
Shamayim
The last explosion opened the ground at the Namibia Base Station wide enough for fresh air to gush into the subterranean caves that had been sealed off during the Z-pod invasion. Joop’s hands were the first seen scratching the dirt and rocks out of the way. Reeze, on her knees digging with bare hands, saw him beginning to emerge and yelled, “Papa!”
Numen and Dakar used their graviton beams along with a host of crawling cherubim to move the heavier rock out of the cave’s entrance, allowing the moonys to escape into the frigid dim light of the restored blue artificial solar array high in the sky.
Yahweh stood off to the side of a past glacier tributary that had been recaptured by the frozen tundra. He remembered how the Earth looked when he first arrived so long ago, the planet living and lush and populated with primitive humans.
When Numen and Dakar finished excavating the survivors, Hoori resumed command over the four-armed seraph’s body. All around the ground lay the crisp corpses of star-shaped mollusk outlined in ink stained sand. Their eyes bulged, looking up at the afterlife of eradication. They were ghostly figures, passing mitochondrial hosts of a chaotic era, waiting patiently to give back their stardust to nourish the expanding universe.
When all the survivors were accounted for, Hoori began communications with both Yahweh and Numen. “Thank you, my master, for saving us. However…”
“You cannot help but wonder where the other Z-pod escaped to?” finished Numen.
“Correct. The few Elohim captured from your transplant station will not sustain them for long before starvation sends them searching for more life forms. With our satellites calibrated to only allow you, your planet and station through the solar system, soon they will be forced to cannibalize themselves and be gone from this universe, forever.”
“We will stay vigilant as long as we are here. But this may be the last you will see of the creatures Helifonus zombnapod, if what you say is true,” Yahweh said. He looked across the frozen expanse as he spoke, distracted by the grief of losing his command crew children to such a horrible death. He felt more saddened than he would have expected even just months ago; since then, they had become more than just his genetic family, they had become friends. Friends he knew not where to find, and it haunted him.
“There is the matter of repopulating this universe.” Numen added telepathically, so not to include Hoori.
Yahweh had this also on his mind. “Yes, I believe that was the ultimate goal of Gog sending us to both universes. He led me here by dangling crystals in front of my face like a carrot to a donkey. Well, it’s time for the donkey to eat the carrot. We can now begin work on restoring both the blue and red universe human and Elohim populations,” he silently concluded.
Yahweh asked Reeze to pilot his spaceship to help her through the personal grief of losing friends on the command bridge. Reeze’s parents, Numen, Zenith and Hoori all settled into the cabin for the trip to explore the blue sphere world, the last center of Elohim civilization in this universe. From the crowded spaceship they looked upon the blue planet and its shining bubble moon on the four-dimensional viewer.
“Tell me about your moon,” Yahweh asked Hoori, feeling what was in everyone’s mind.
“It is called Kinrose. It once supported an active community of Homo sapiens,” he said, indicating by his tense that they had been eradicated like all the others in this universe. “I believe the flora and some of the more elusive fauna still exists.”
“A moon with trees? Nova,” exclaimed Reeze with wide eyes, clenching her mother’s arm with excitement. She remembered seeing something like that in her Halo hallucinations and was delighted to hear it said out loud.
Once the ship landed on the rocky blue planet, everyone gazed up at the massive complex of blue spheres dominating the land and skyscape—except Joop. He instinctively reached down and scraped up a handful of sparkling glider in his bare hand and let it fall, judging the gravity.
“We could not let the Z-pods reproduce in the planet’s oceans,” Hoori said, referring to the spheres.
“So, they bottled it up,” Numen added. “The spheres contain the planet’s entire water supply. Oceans of water are in these massive storage tanks and shielded from outside sensors.”
“Ghostly singularity,” Soleil exclaimed, reflecting the astonishment on her daughter and husband’s faces.
Yahweh looked at Joop soberly. “This planet and its moon will not replace your lunar homeland,” he said, “but I can guarantee you will never be forced from this place if you accept my conditions. And you will be allowed, actually encouraged, to breed freely—as long as you do not overpopulate, degrade and pollute your environment.”
Joop looked to his wife and his daughter with surprised, gleaming eyes.
Reeze squealed with laughter. “Mooma, now I can have a little sister,” she exclaimed, “or a little brother!”
“How about several of each?” Numen added, raising his artificial eyebrows.
Soleil gasped thinking about the prospects. Oscar chirped, Yikes!
“Papa, there are extensive subterranean caverns throughout the whole planet,” Reeze said. “Not to mention these spheres, the moon and all the history and technology.”
After a few seconds of contemplation, Joop nodded slowly. “It is not our home,” he said, “but Earth is not our home, either.” Looking down at the unfamiliar dirt of this foreign alien world, he kicked a few blue twinkling pebbles with his gravity-assisted boots and smiled at Soleil.
“The people of Yahweh will be held in special reverence throughout all eternity as the first new people of this universe,” Hoori said.
“Like Adam and Eve, mooma,” Reeze said, matching her mother’s crooked little smile at Yahweh who was rubbing his earlobe and reading their thoughts. “Come, let’s explore,” she said, grabbing both her parents’ hands and leading them into one of the nearby underground caverns with Oscar flying close behind.
Numen and Hoori directed Yahweh to walk in the opposite direction. Yahweh understood he was to meet Hoori’s master. Stepping into a nearby transporter tube they whisked away, high into the center of the gigantic spherical system. Yahweh’s backpack environmental sensors screamed about volatile sulfur compounds lingering in the air. A putrid smell filled their surroundings as soon as they arrived at their destination.
Floating high in the air was an ornately decorated hibernation pod. With a wave of Hoori’s hand, it dropped from the sky and settled on a platform in the center of the large circular room. Sunshine shone through the translucent walls and a single beam of light from above lit up the pod making the room glow a soft blue. When Hoori touched the pod, the hibernation cycle began to end with flashing blue and indigo lights. The pod opened with a pop and soft sucking sound as the aroma of death spilled out, revealing the true nature of Hoori’s master. Yahweh gasped as the stench stabbed his senses. Looking down at the rotted, stinking, disfigured corpse of his master, Hoori bowed his head and placed his hands together in front of his face as if praying. “Master Bayo,” he whispered, “prepared a place for me so when we mee
t again, all will be pure.”
Numen looked at Bayo’s necrotized body and then placed his hand onto Hoori shoulder. “Your master is with Eos.”
Hoori twitched with a high-speed hum before lowering his hands and looking back into the pod. With another long pause, he defragmented his quantum molecular memory, then reached out and closed the lid forever. Standing erect, Hoori rebooted his circuitry and addressed his new master, Yahweh. “Although my circuitry is biomechanical, my soul is Elohim. I hereby pledge my eternal allegiance to you and your house forever. May your genome permeate this universe to the glory of Elohim everywhere.”
“I have decided to leave Earth in orbit here in this blue place. The humans and their genetically coded zoological collection of Earth flora and fauna will be the spark that reignites the life back into this realm. My first Elohim children born to Earth will also stay to reestablish the population of Homo superior on this—what do you call this place?” he asked, forced from the stench to walk into the adjoining compartment through a large interconnecting corridor. Everywhere inside the massive connecting sphere he saw row after row of clear hibernation pods.
Hoori tilted his head and gazed upon the pods with tired eyes. “Oh yes,” he said quietly. “The human copies. We fear producing central nervous tissue in these bodies would make them too tempting of a target. We were waiting until the Z-pod infestation was completely extinct in the universe before completing our genesis plans.” he said looking back at his old master’s closed pod.
Standing next to each brainless human hibernation pod was the decapitated remains of a seraph, each one’s hands disconnected, and arms inserted into their respective pod’s control panel. Inside each clear pod dome lay a young—pre-teen—sapient body with a seraph’s head next to it. The mechanical head compartment was slide open, exposing the mitochondrial-core processor still vibrantly glistening with life. Yahweh realized how the Elohim of this blue universe had expended their last energy. A valiant, but futile last attempt to preserve life in this doomed universe was still holding onto hope for a future.
“Shamayim. We called this planet Shamayim,” Hoori finally answered the queued question.
Numen found a translation for the word in Gog’s data conversation. “Master, I believe the original Elohim name Shamayim also means Heaven.”
“Interesting. Maybe Gog named the planet and star Heaven in our universe after his original home planet?” he asked Numen telepathically.
He turned back to Hoori. “What are you to do with all of these brainless human body copies inside these pods? You, yourself cannot be transferred back into one of these?” Yahweh asked Hoori.
“One day,” Hoori hoped inside his circuitry in an infinite loop.
Yahweh walked onto the bridge of the New Jerusalem station with Numen, Zenith and Reeze the same way as always, but everything felt different, almost foreign. Like an egg that had hatched into something unexpected. Suspended at their stations sat the newest members of the command staff, deemed by their Elohim brethren to be among the most capable of New Jerusalem’s massive population to serve their master.
The musky smell of Z-pod slime still permeated the air. It triggered a memory of a smell Yahweh had noticed at the Kaaba in Mecca, all those years ago. He’d assumed it was something cooking at a roadside stand, or perhaps the product of so many sweating bodies standing in the hot sun?
Yahweh stood to address everyone on the invisible bridge. “I know each of you will be extremely capable members of my command staff,” he said. “Let us take a moment to reflect upon those lost in our journey to Heaven.” Yahweh paused, bowing his head for a quiet moment, before continuing. “Upon their remembrance, I ask you to devote the rest of your lives to one final task.”
Each of the new command staff members stood at their invisible post and, in turn, bowed and placed their fist over their hearts saying, “I live only to serve.”
“Thank you. I hereby appoint each of you to the Shamayim Nasi—to supervise the reconstruction of the human and Elohim civilizations in this blue universe.”
A long silence followed until it was broken telepathically by one of the new staff named Helena. “We will not go to Heaven?”
Yahweh recognized Helena as the mate of Alexander, his son who died in the sabotage of the navigation station before the exodus. It was fitting she should take over his position after his death journey had commenced. Deep in his soul, Yahweh felt her confusion and pain; he thought about how she and all of his other children were feeling about his announcement.
Each one of their lives had been created to achieve a single purpose: transplanting Earth to Heaven. How was he to know, or anyone to know, that their Heaven would be in an entirely different universe? How could he disappoint them by leaving them in this strange place, an eternity away from their promised home orbiting the star Heaven? It was like telling his own family all over again that he was never coming home. Especially his little sister, Nina. It was breaking his heart, but he knew it was the way forward.
Yahweh answered the solemn question, now standing tall, proud and resolute. “None of the people of Earth, Elohim included, except my daughter Zenith, will continue the journey to the Helios System of Planets around the star Heaven. I need you here.”
Reeze looked at Zenith, who held her emotions in check.
Numen took over. “Among you, you will organize your brethren into the four distinct classes of Elohim; proletariat, service, engineering and pioneering.” He left out the Creator class, with a nod to their Lord Yahweh. “All Elohim and humans alike will join together under equal partnership to elect a Prime Proletariat to lead,” he said, with another nod, this time to Reeze. “This is an extreme honor, and we know you will succeed.”
The bridge crew stood for several seconds, stunned and silent.
Yahweh felt it necessary to give them something, a task they were familiar with. “Adjust the solar array to normal balance with this blue sun and change course. Place the Earth into a trojan orbit with the planet Shamayim, and transfer all moonys to the new planet’s surface.”
On the giant curved 360-degree bridge monitor, Joop’s face appeared.
“Pappa,” Reeze sighed.
“Lord Yahweh,” Joop said, bowing his head on the main bridge monitor from the planet Shamayim with his wife standing close behind. “It saddens me that we will not be going to Heaven after all. At the same time, we could not be happier with our new home and mission.”
“It is a great responsibility to rebuild a civilization. A task I could not leave in more capable hands,” responded Yahweh.
“Thank you, my Lord. We will not fail you. We are also pleased this planet Shamayim is called Heaven in the original Elohim tongue.”
The command staff looked around the bridge of New Jerusalem at each other with raised eyebrows, shaking their heads with approval.
“I have one request,” Joop asked.
“Name it.”
“I and her mother wish Reeze to go to your Heaven with you.”
“Pappa, mooma,” Reeze gasped. Just the suggestion of leaving her family behind in another strange universe was shocking. Looking at the people standing before her, she was struck by the feeling that she had aged years. She had always acted older, more mature than her classmates back on the moon, but she knew everyone around her had attributed that to her being the only child of the moony matriarch and patriarch. But here, now, she felt like she had genuinely grown up. She had a job to do. A very important job. A job helping her Creator Yahweh and her Auntie Zenith. After all, what would they do without her? That thought made her smile.
She turned to look at Zenith, then Yahweh and Numen before facing her parents. She and her mother exchanged identical crooked little smiles, knowing this was the right thing to do.
“I will take care of your daughter as if she were my own,” Yahweh said.
“And if she were my own,” Zenith said, beginning to excrete a trace of moisture from her loving eyes.
&nb
sp; Joop bowed his head again.
“I will come back and visit when I can,” Reeze said, looking at Yahweh for confirmation.
Yahweh nodded his head, tugged on his earlobe, and smiled.
“Goodbye papa, mooma. I love you.”
“Your mother and I love you too, very much. Our little meteorite.”
Zenith allowed her niece to hold onto her arm and sob as the monitor blinked to a panoramic view of the blue Earth.
Numen sent the command staff one last telepathic message before continuing his master’s journey to Heaven: “Distinguish yourselves.”
“I’ll be back,” Yahweh said. He turned and walked off the command bridge with Numen and Zenith.
Reeze followed close behind, shuffling her feet over the invisible walkway, still not comfortable with the disorientating see-through bridge. “I’m not going to miss this crazy floor,” she said under her breath.
“That was a wise move, master,” Numen communicated telepathically once they reached the landing bay where Yahweh’s spaceship was docked, so that only he and Zenith could hear. “In olden times they called that burning your ships. Anyone knowing the Halo’s inter-universe connection could be a threat to opening uncontrolled invasions across an infinite number of timelines.”
“But what about a chain is as strong as its weakest link?” Zenith said, nodding at Reeze who was admiring the red Tesla parked next to the ship.
“I feel your concerns. But sometimes you need to have a little faith,” he said, with a wink.
“Boy, I’m really going to miss this weird little red ship,” Reeze said, rubbing the test dummy sitting in the driver’s seat on its bald head and then fixing her hair in the left side mirror.
Traveling through space inside the same vessel in which Yahweh and Numen had long ago embarked on their rescue mission, they approached the Shamayim system’s swirling, electrified Halo. In their cargo hold were the hibernation pods of Ra and El. It was time to leave the blue universe and make the triumphant return to their own green universe.
