by Mark Kraver
“On the contrary, my plan was a complete success. My only goal was to save you, master,” Numen said, bowing his head with fist to breast. He was followed in turn by the older Reeze, and then the Throne with his hands held up against the sides of his horned head.
Yahweh wept.
Nothing but sadness for their master’s fallen daughters flowed throughout the connectome. Neither Nadira nor Lanochee could imagine what such a loss would feel like; they simply squeezed one another’s hands in silence.
Chapter 89
Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, 1874-1963, Earth
Library of Souls
Daughter
Yahweh stood in the City Center Spaceport on Omega Prime oblivious to all the Elohim and human survivors of the Z-pod invasion gawking at their new Creator and savior. His mind was preoccupied with thoughts of Zenith and Headmaster Zenn. He missed them both dearly, and was beginning to wonder if he should dare go back in time to save them. He looked up at the looming statue of Gog posing under the massive glass dome and smiled. He never noticed before, but Gog was always depicted wearing eyewear.
“Goggles,” Yahweh laughed to himself, “that’s funny.”
“Soon they will demand you be displayed here. How will you be depicted?” Numen asked, walking up behind him, breaking the silence while reading his master’s thoughts. “Master, you’ve been reminiscing about the past?” he asked, catching up his memory gaps.
“I’ve been reviewing over and over in my mind how it all ended. What I could have done differently to help prevent—” Yahweh stopped and wiped his eyes. “Why didn’t they stay in the ship like I told them? I was supposed to bring them to Heaven, not Hell,” he added, starting to sob again.
“Don’t look back, master. Everyone has their cross to bear. They stayed in the ship the first time and regretted it for years, Zenith for literally centuries.”
“What about those weapons? Where did they find them?”
“I made them. After the first timeline failure, when we were defeated, and you died, my plan became simple: to save you at all cost.”
“Numen,” he said, shaking his head with sorrow and regret at what cost they all had to pay for his success.
“I hid the weapons—which were awesome—inside the ship with a tracker, to track Numen. When he saw that Z-pod had indeed invaded Omega Prime, he sent out a telepathic burst signal.”
“Yes, I remember that unexplainable signal confused us both. All this timeline crisscrossing, what a mess.”
“The signal was sent to your ship to open the secret weapons cache for Zenith and Reeze; it also provided them directions to find the old Numen at the seraph station—so they could help in the Z-pod/zombie battle for your life.”
“Yes, but now he, my first—,” he paused, unable to say the word, and simply finished with “is dead.”
Numen placed his mechanical arm on his master’s shoulder to stimulate comfort.
Yahweh shifted his piercing eyes with a question. “Numen, where were you a few minutes ago? My sensors lost your connection for about ten minutes? Is there a malfunction?” he asked trying to look over his shoulder to touch his backpack when he noticed something about Numen was different. “Why do you look different to me? What have you done to your arms and legs?”
His personal seraph did look different; bulkier, with larger, stronger looking arms and legs.
“Me? I’ve have been putting on some weight. Didn’t think you’d notice.”
“Numen?” Yahweh frowned at his buff physique. “When, where, and what have you been doing today?”
Numen realized he had not calculated the universal timelines as accurately as needed to disguise his covert departure, and now was compelled to answer his master’s question. “When is a relative question. Where is somewhere blue and red. Did you know they renamed the planet Shamayim to Heaven? So, the people of Earth did go to Heaven,” he said, trying to divert the subject.
“Numen?”
“And as to what I was doing, well, you will have to see for yourself,” he said. Numen held out his new golden arm in the direction of the younger Reeze, Nina and a young girl with long flowing blonde hair who were running towards them. The three were laughing, each wearing a gravity suit displaying a zebra pattern.
“Hello Reeze, Nina,” Yahweh said, smiling broadly. “And who is this?”
The young human girl took a step closer. “Hello father,” she said.
Yahweh sucked in his breath, “Zenith?”
“Ghostly singularity,” Reeze shouted, with Nina quick to echo her exclamation.
Zenith smiled, blew her bangs from her eyes and said, “You know my brain is still superior,” sparking laughter from the girls and Yahweh.
Numen recognized a report was needed. “About ten minutes ago, your time, Blue Reeze and I—”
Yahweh held up a hand to stop Numen. “Blue Reeze? The older Reeze? She went with you?” he said looking around the pavilion for her.
“Ah, yes. The two are now distinguished by colors. The older Reeze—Blue Reeze—and I brought Zenn’s body back to the blue universe, for medical attention. She wanted to stay and spend time with her family on Blue Heaven.”
“To repopulate the universe,” the younger giggled.
Yahweh nodded with approval, pleasantly studying his new daughter.
“While we were there, I could not help but notice all of these hibernating blank sapient bodies in need of a brain, so…”
“Now we have a new little sister,” Nina laughed.
“Instead of a stuffy old aunt,” Reeze added, prompting a punch in the arm from Zenith.
“Who’s the little sister?” Zenith growled. “I’ll show you who’s stuffy.” Zenith slapped her breast and dialed up a vibrating red leopard pattern to kill for, as Reeze and Nina screamed and ran away laughing.
“Numen how long were you really gone today?” Yahweh asked, chuckling as he watched the girls dart around the statue garden in their gravity-assisted suits, a cherub following close behind each of them.
Numen paused and calculated every known excuse he could manufacture before deciding to tell his master the truth. He even contemplated diverting the subject with the complete accounting of Gog/Armilus’ memory deciphering of deceit and treachery, but knew it was only delaying the inevitable and that Yahweh should know all the truths regarding the missing time. Numen announced, “Six hundred, sixty-six years.”
Yahweh was speechless. The only thing he could do was stare. His mind was trying to understand what he had heard, but the reality was astounding. “I beg your pardon. What did you say?”
Numen had planned on not telling his master any of this, but now he was compelled to report. “This was the amount of time it took for the last Earth-born Elohim to pass onto Eos.”
“But, Zenith?”
“Hibernation. As far as she knew, she was brought to the blue universe, received a full body transplant, and came home. She never knew anything about the Empyrean Wars, the Xenomorph Guild Rebellion, or the Phantom Plague of Ecstasy. I have a lengthy report on each and more if you would like…”
“I guess this answers my question about what would you do with your own spaceship,” Yahweh said, waving his hand to indicate he didn’t want to hear any more at this moment in time.
“Very well.” Numen looked up at the statue of Gog. “You, as did Gog, understood the damage that could be done if inter-universal time travel was known at large. Elohim of every class would move back and forth between the universes. Zigzagging from one temporal dimensional reality to another. Interjecting moral with immoral choices across the spectrum of universes would be sheer historical pandemonium. This knowledge did indeed affect intelligent minds with high ambitions. One of your children named Taj, tried to escape death by retreating into a seraph in the shape of a large arachnid that could also fly through space like a starship. Elohim escapi
ng into a seraph is now deemed a crime against Eos by the Blue Universe Nasi. So, I kept a watchful eye on them until the last, which didn’t end well for all of them, quite sad. It’s all included in my report on the Phantom Plague of Ecstasy.”
“How did he do it? How did he come back?” Yahweh said, looking up at the goggled statue, all his thoughts came back to Gog.
“I presume you are referring to Armilus’ re-assemblement in the red universe? The simplest explanation is that he put his own self back together. Gog inside Armilus from another universe, crossing into past or future timelines to come back to that particular time to continue himself in another universe.”
“That could only mean Gog is now echoing around the universes with complete freedom—like Eos. Ultimate freedom may have been his plan all along,” Yahweh sighed.
“This could spell trouble for all the known and unknown universes’ past, present and future timelines,” Numen postulated.
Shaking his head in disbelief, Yahweh looked at his companion’s new battle-enhanced gravity suit and modified limbs. “You have seen and done a great many things on your vigil?”
“Indeed, I have a few upgrades. The blue flourishes. Potentially trillions of your genetic descendants will exist and are waiting for their Lord’s resurrection to forgive all their sins.”
Numen held up his golden hand and projected a 3D animated portrait of a very pregnant Blue Reeze and her family standing in front of a bright color-corrected red vehicle with an inanimate life size doll sporting sunglasses sitting in the pilot seat. To Reeze’s right stood a bearded man outfitted in miner’s garb and a turban over his uncut hair, wrapped in layers that made his head look larger than it actually was. To her left stood what appeared to look like nine daughters—three sets of triplets—and an Elohim older boy sporting a turban with the opposite effect; his was tighter and simpler, making his large head appear somewhat smaller. Reeze and her husband wore a pair of the blue universe sunglasses, but her daughters wore a traditional blue band of makeup from ear to ear across their faces. The Elohim boy wore no eyewear either and simply smiled while tugging on his earlobe. In the background, Yahweh could just make out several silhouettes that looked like flying naked babies. Everyone in the animation looked happy. Sitting in front of them was a large, half-meter tall fluffy pet that looked like the cross between a white rabbit, a kangaroo, and an anteater.
“This is Blue Reeze’s family,” Numen commented on the projected amination. “Husband, daughters and superior son, Jesus. With a little manipulation of your genetic code, your descendants no longer need wear corrective lenses to see the normal spectrum of light inside the blue universe.”
Yahweh’s grin was one of astonishment and joy. “That is amazing. I am so happy for her,” he said. He pointed to the photo. “But what’s that thing?”
“The Tesla?”
“That little guy is a Tesla? What in the name of Eos is a Tesla?”
“Oh, you mean the animal,” Numen immediately corrected his report. “You remember the little Truscan borer Reeze wanted to make into a pet from the planet Shamayim? Using them and the other surviving indigenous life forms as a base model for biodiversity, the blue Elohim have used the Earth’s genetic plant cornucopia and animal zoo to create compatible flora and fauna across a whole host of habitable star systems.”
“She got her pet borer, after all,” he said, winking and tugging on his earlobe.
“Living in a low gravity forest on the balloon moon of Kinrose, she is now serving her second term as Prime Pole in the Blue Heaven Nasi by unanimous consent.”
Yahweh broke out into another enormous smile.
“You never answered my question,” Numen asked.
“What?”
“How do you want to be depicted?” he said, nodding to the statues of past Creators.
“Unknown,” he said, smiling. “I’ll let you worry about that. You’ll be by my side. 50:50 remember?”
Numen was now the one who was speechless. Processing his master’s last words in a near infinite loop gave him a strange input into all of his system functions. He couldn’t put a definition onto what was happening throughout his circuitry, so he stored the input under the filename ‘Emotion’ for further analysis during down time.
Numen interrupted his computerized ecstasy by opening his hand to reveal three pure iridium infinity rings.
Yahweh eyed them with curiosity. “What are these three rings for?”
“Actually, there are five. I already gave one to Blue Reeze before I left. I thought it would be an appropriate symbol to represent your lineage, The House of Yahweh. The others are for you, your sister Nina and young Reeze.”
“And the fifth?” Yahweh asked, picking one up to look at its profound simplicity before slipping it on his little finger.
“You didn’t want to leave out your daughter Zenith, did you? She now has a full functional human body with exceptionally long telomeres and is capable of procreation. She may want to have children one day,” Numen summarized examining one of the rings closely between his golden fingertips. “The infinity symbol is really just two undisturbed spheres connected by time gradient gravity in space, forever.”
“Yes, of course,” Yahweh said, referring both to the idea of Zenith having children and to the meaning of the infinity symbol, as he watched his children playing under the giant glass domes of the Creator Gardens. “But you also mentioned going to a red place,” Yahweh questioned. “I assume you meant the red universe?”
“That was in reference to your genesis in the red universe. Many of the animal humanoid ungulate surrogates were quite good at gestating Elohim through to full-term vaginal birth. Especially the ones that looked like cows and rhinoceros. They could become the new norm for Elohim reproduction of the future, if not for most of them having a very limited intelligence quotient. Consequently, many of the superior fetuses had complained of being bored while waiting for birth, prompting their early deliveries into bubble incubators where they could begin their education immediately.”
“Numen, you really do think of everything.”
Nadira and Lanochee embraced inside the BrainNet Connectome, feeling comforted by the successful culmination of their master’s great adventure:
“You may not have loved as Ra and El once did, but you have loved, and will be loved, forever,” Nadira said to Yahweh, smothering her face in Lanochee’s tunic and fingering the infinity ring on his little finger.
“I feel an overwhelming peace that I was not seeking, and now I feel I cannot live without,” Lanochee said, looking down at her in his arms.
“This story that has unfolded before you are now your own,” Yahweh said. “Lanochee, it is true you are a direct descendant from this adventure. Your genome comes from…”
“Zenith?” Nadira asked.
Yahweh smiled warmly. “She lived a long life, and I love her to this very day. I can still see her in your eyes,” he said to Lanochee.
“Nadira, this is also your story. You are the direct descendant of Logan and Conrad’s son, David.”
Nadira twisted to look into Lanochee’s eyes with her crooked little smile, showing him the infinity ring on her little finger, and added with excitement, “And Reeze!”
Yahweh and Numen left the girls holding up their hands, admiring their new infinity rings and watching academy cadets walking to and from classes scattered around the city. As they moved away, Yahweh caught a little of their banter: “Wonder what he would say if I told him I was his headmaster?” Zenith said, exploding into giggling laughter at the handsome young superior cadet walking past.
Reeze burst out laughing, “Ghostly singularity!”
“Master don’t be disappointed in your daughter,” Numen said quickly. “It is the three-brain problem. I think she is integrating her older conscious brain with her new primitive gut, and bacterial brains very well.”
Yahweh’s only answer was a tug on his earlobe.
Yahweh and Numen walked past
saluting crowds of Elohim and humans without saying a word as they approached the academy. Before they entered, Numen said, “They will need to appoint a new headmaster. Zenith’s mission is complete, and she is clearly not in the right frame of mind to be teaching these young cadets anything of importance.”
Yahweh remained silent. They walked past the classrooms where he learned the wonders of the universe, the laboratories where he manipulated matter and energy, and the dormitories where he lived without the comfort of his family. Blast marks on the walls left behind from the red Throne army still streaked the corridors leading to the galacticNet. Yahweh paused before entering the room where his adventure had begun, remembering it as though it was yesterday, but now time had become a convoluted dimension not to be trusted.
“It seems the Z-pod were interested in the galacticNet,” Numen said, noticing all the ink stains on the walls and flooring before they walked inside.
Yahweh looked around the room and his eyes settled on the chair that he had been sitting in when Headmaster Zenn told him of the rescue mission—it was almost impossible to believe that was only yesterday. The back of the chair was missing from a blast that must have ended a Z-pod’s life. Exhaling his breath with pent-up anxiety, he sat slowly down and looked at the ink-encrusted controls with a blank stare, remembering the strange visions from Eos he saw here the last time he was on the net.
Numen waved his hand over the floating spheres of the compact accelerator/collider instrument panel that produced the colored quarks vibrating with the language of Eos over the galacticNet. “Everything seems in order,” he said. “This was the last set of data searched.”
Yahweh felt an irresistible automatic force move through his body, compelling him to stare into the four-dimensional data stream. Holding his hands out, he hovered them for several moments over the floating spheres as if each finger was thinking about where it should go. Once an image formed in his mind, he moved both his hands simultaneously with different sides of his brain to descend deeply into the infinite knowledge stored within the galacticNet and into information not yet discovered. His unconscious head fell into an abyss where nothing else mattered to him anywhere. His soul felt locked inside a bubble, traveling parsecs in and between space-time.
