Godship

by Peter Ponzo

  "You beautiful, Gordie Blend," she murmured. "I am ready."

  Tiesha closed her eyes. I wondered what she expected of me. I quickly ran from behind the divider, grabbed the clothes that were on a chair and raced to the nearest wall. It didn't dissolve and I hit my head and everything went black.

  I awoke to soft music. I was in my room, lying on the bed, naked. There was no one there. The room divider had vanished, my clothes and robe were neatly piled beside me on the bed and I had a terrific headache. I gradually got off the bed and went to a mirror to see what must surely be a large bump on my forehead. No bump was visible but there were several red welts on my neck. I looked more closely. They were love bites! I had hickeys on my neck! Shit! Was that Tiesha at work? What else did she do while I was unconscious? What would Susan think? What would David think? Tiesha was his woman. I collapsed on the bed and saw a piece of paper. It was a note from Tiesha: 'again, please' it said. Again? What again? I felt nauseous.

  Part 5.6

  David, Susan, Hydra and Gill and me: we were all at a rather large window looking out at the planet. I was glad to see that Tiesha was elsewhere.

  It had taken much longer than I imagined getting here. This planet seemed rather a small hunk of rock, fuzzy, with a hazy atmosphere.

  "Will we go down to the planet surface?" I asked.

  Without even looking at me, Susan said: "Certainly not."

  "Then how do we interact with the life forms?" I asked, feeling stupid.

  "We'll have help, angelic assistance, divine support," Gill said with a smile.

  They all laughed–except me. I assumed, from Gill's comment, that God would be doing all the work.

  David leaned forward and pointed. There was a hole in the atmosphere and it was getting larger.

  "A molecular channel," Susan said.

  "Undoubtedly," David said.

  "Sufficient for God's finger to pass," Gill said.

  Everyone chuckled, except me.

  I watched the perforation in the atmosphere enlarge, but I couldn't see anything leaving the Godship, something which might interact with whatever life form was crawling about on the planet's surface. I was about to ask for clarification when I felt a warm body leaning against me. I turned my head and saw Tiesha, her hair disheveled, her eyes blazing, smiling, smiling. She kissed my ear and whispered: "Erragon say make babies."

  I could see Susan looking out of the corner of her eye.

  "Are you wearing lilac?" Susan asked, now staring at Tiesha.

  Tiesha pulled away from me and looked baffled–then grinned.

  "Lilac," she said. "Gordie like this stink."

  "Gordie is it?" Susan frowned for just a moment, then went back to looking out the window. Was my wife ignoring me? Did she care that Tiesha was making a pass? Susan was so volatile. One day she was all lovey-dovey and sentimental. Then she could be so distant, uncaring, dismissive.

  Tiesha leaned against me and continued to whisper in my ear. I tried not to listen. She wanted to make babies? With me? I turned to face her and said in a rather loud voice: "Try Gill. He's me and he's available. I am not."

  What happened next was both swift and surprising.

  Gill spun about and placed his hands on Tiesha's shoulders. He pulled her to him and said: "Spawning. God wills it and we comply–forthwith." Then he pulled her to a wall and they both vanished.

  "Is Gill...uh, capable?" I asked. "I mean, making babies and..."

  Then David giggled, that awful laugh I first heard when he was abducted.

  "Yes, quite capable. He has all the necessary plumbing."

  Then Susan put her arms about my neck and murmured: "Oh Gordie, see what you've done? A new romance, new life springing from the bodies of Tiesha and Gill. You were so masterful, so insistent, so authoritarian–like a God." I was sure that Susan was being sarcastic–and I didn't understand why David wasn't upset when Gill took his girl.

  I could hardly believe my ears. Authoritarian? Is that what Susan said? Me? I've always been rather reserved, not confident in my abilities. That's probably why I often criticized others, to bring them down to my level. Perhaps I was now a different man. My wife was clinging to me and I couldn't be happier. She seemed content that Tiesha had gone and I wasn't.

  Part 5.7

  After what seemed like a week, David said we had another stop to make before heading back to Earth. Another life form to manipulate, more guidance, more subtle intrusions into their maturation.

  "These are rather more complex than the single-celled organisms we met on our last stop," David said. "These are actually semi-intelligent creatures, but with a rather stagnant evolutionary history."

  "They need a swift-but-godly kick in the butt," Gill said.

  We all laughed at this remark.

  "A kick in the genetic butt," I said. They laughed again, even David.

  "So what do they look like?" Susan asked. "Can we go down to see them, meet them?"

  David frowned, but Gill jumped in with: "Yes, of course we can!"

  This was going to be fun. I haven't felt so delighted in ages. I tried to imagine shaking hands with an alien, perhaps a conversation with hand gestures and facial expressions. I had images of little green men with enormous eyes and oversized heads. I looked at Susan. She was happy–so was I.

  Early the next morning, when the lights on the Godship flushed pink like a rising sun, we met in the room with the large window. There was David, Susan and Gill. We were all dressed in skin-tight silver jumpsuits.

  "Can we breathe the air," I asked.

  "No," said Gill. "We will need our energy cake with oxygen stuffing and temperature filling." Gill was grinning. He seemed inordinately happy. Somehow I expected his happiness had something to do with his new relationship with Tiesha.

  "Don't worry," said David. "God will look after our needs. We'll be warm and comfortable inside our energy shell."

  Although I imagined some sort of beam transition for our bodies, from the Godship to the surface, such as what happened when we were first abducted. It was much more mundane. The four of us climbed into a transparent sphere with an array of seats. An opening in the bottom of the ship developed and we dropped out, falling gently to the planet surface, through the hazy atmosphere. Before we touched down, the planet's gaseous envelope cleared somewhat and everything was fairly clear, but dim because of the heavy cloud cover. The surface was reddish brown. I thought it looked like rolling hills of rust.

  "Yes, it is rust," Gill said. "Iron oxide, necessary for the growth of the inhabitants."

  "What inhabitants," I asked. "I can see nothing but hills of rust, great rising piles of what looks like sand castles and the occasional pool of...of something."

  "You would call it methanol," Gill said. "Life crawled out of these ponds millions of years ago. They started there, in the ponds, as trilobites and..."

  "Life?" I asked. "What life?"

  "Look down, Gordie," Susan said. "There are dozens of them crawling about. And can you see their home, the sand castles? Aren't they clever to have built such structures?"

  Below our sphere were dozens of black beetles, running in circles about our craft. They all looked identical.

  "So these are intelligent?" I asked. "They look pretty stupid to me."

  "Gordon!" Susan bellowed. "You are so damn narrow-minded. These creatures have survived for millions of years, they have learned to reproduce, to cooperate in order to build homes, to persist in this appalling environment. Now we must help them to evolve."

  "What can we do?" I asked. "Provide a manual on how to be smarter?"

  Suddenly, a bright light enveloped us, within our sphere.

  "What the hell is that? " I asked.

  "Radiation to disinfect," Gill said. "We don't want to carry bugs to beetles." He chuckled.

  The brilliance dimmed and David grunted and stepped onto the ground through an opening that had developed on the side of our sphere. The beetles swarmed about his feet. He stooped and
picked one up. I could see that David was enveloped in a kind of film, presumably to allow him to breathe the local atmosphere. It hardly seemed suitable for breathing. Susan jumped out and examined the creature. Gill followed and so did I. I was swathed in that film, yet breathing was effortless.

  I picked up a beetle and looked at it carefully; it didn't move. It had huge watery eyes and a hard shell with small red spots.

  "What do we do now?" I asked.

  "Nothing," David said. "These beetles have been like this for a million years. There has been no incentive to evolve. No impetus to adapt. The environment is unchanging."

  "Don't you see, Gordie?" Susan said. "Without a change in environment, there is no need to adjust, to adapt...to evolve. Any novel genetic variations would die out, become extinct. Survival of the fittest–and the fittest is the original genetic configuration."

  David placed the beetle on the ground and so did I.

  "God will now do the rest," Gill said. "He will anoint these creatures and they will evolve."

  "Anoint? How will he do that?" I was confused.

  "We should get back to our Godship before the changes begin," David said. "Our trip to the surface was simply to see these marvelous creatures. Now we must return to the Godship."

  When we were back on the Godship we gathered at the large window and watched. We were again above the ionosphere and the atmosphere was so misty that there was little to see. Then the clouds of vapor suddenly dissolved and the sun, now having access to the planet surface, was creating winds that swept across the land. I could see sand castles falling. Large cracks appeared across the planet. We were too far above the planet to see the beetles, but I imagined that there was chaos in their ranks.

  "Is that the hand of God?" I asked. "Modifying the environment, introducing turmoil so that...so that..."

  "So that the beetles will be forced to adapt to the new circumstances," David said. "The inevitable genetic variations will now select those that can accommodate. A new and different race of beetles will emerge. If they are lucky, the modified beetles will be able to continue to adjust to what will be a radically changed weather pattern."

  "There will no longer be a serene planet environment," Gill said. "There will now be high winds, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. The beetles will adapt. New varieties will evolve. Some will eventually crawl back into the methanol ponds. Some will increase dramatically in size. Some will..."

  "Will grow up to be a banana-eating chimpanzee," I said.

  "Or a lizard," Susan added. "A dinosaur."

  "Or simply a bird," David said. "With, perhaps, a large brain."

  "And if they don't?" I asked. "What if they don't adapt, evolve?"

  "Then they will become extinct and the planet will be diminished," Gill said.

  I looked at Gill. He was in tears.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Part 6.1

  "You look so glum," Susan said, as we were strolling in the gardens, something that Susan had asked our hosts to generate. "The roses are lovely, the temperature is just right, there's a warm breeze and you're so gloomy."

  "I don't feel well," I said.

  "Take a pill," Susan said. "Take two." Then she giggled. That wasn't like her. Usually, when I admitted to being under the weather, she'd be sympathetic. Now it was something to laugh at.

  "You're different these days," I said. "Do you find me boring?"

  Susan stopped and bent to sniff a pink rose. The lighting in the garden was weird, sort of bluish. She was ignoring my question. As she stooped to smell the rose, I noticed an ugly welt on the back of her neck. I was about to say something, but the welt vanished. I wasn't sure I'd seen it. I must remember to look again, later. It seemed a mite alarming. If Susan was ill, had contacted some ungodly ailment, where would we find a doctor?

  That night, while I lay alone in bed, I tried to imagine how an injury could appear then disappear. There was a subdued humming that preceded the opening of a wall, so I closed my eyes as Susan came into the room. She had been with David and Tiesha. She increased the illumination a little. She was whistling. I didn't know she could whistle. She's never done that before–not as long as I knew her. She got into bed without shutting down the light source. That seemed inconsiderate, since I was presumably sleeping. After a short time I could hear her steady breathing and knew she was sleeping. These days she could fall asleep within minutes. I couldn't do that–never could.

  I turned onto my side and squinted at her neck. It was difficult to see clearly in the weak light, but the welt was definitely there, now larger than I remembered it. I expected it to disappear again, but it didn't. I guessed that, in the garden, the lighting had caused the blemish to appear to vanish. Now, with Susan asleep, it seemed to grow in size and become rather bluish in color. I thought up a slightly brighter illumination and the light increased. I reached over and was about to feel the texture of the scar when it suddenly sprouted hairs. Was I seeing things? I increased the light intensity and Susan suddenly sat upright.

  "You increased the light," she said. "That was very thoughtless of you. I was trying to sleep."

  She turned and slid out of bed. The scar on her neck was gone.

  Part 6.2

  David and Susan were alone in David's quarters. It was late night by Godship time and Gordon was asleep in his own bedroom. Tiesha was nowhere to be seen. Susan looked worried.

  "Are you sure?" David asked.

  "Pretty sure. I've been wearing high collars so he couldn’t see the implant, but I'm almost certain he's seen it. Are the antennas really necessary? They make it obvious."

  "Gilgamesh needs a means of personal interaction and that's his solution. It wouldn't be my solution, but he seems to know what he wants. He really doesn't understand why Gordon might be upset at the sight of your conduit."

  "But I can hear Gilgamesh–when he wants to talk to me," Susan said.

  "Yes, but he wants more than that. He wants access to your corticospinal tract so he can intercept and generate signals, supervise neuron activity and..."

  "Is he trying to control me–all my thoughts and movement?"

  "Something like that, but not to worry. He's simply interested in extracting as much information as possible about human behavior. He has an enormous computer memory with an unlimited capacity of petabytes. It houses physiological information from thousands of organisms across the galaxies. You're just one of many sources of information for the data banks."

  "But why is he interested in this information? What does he intend to do with the data?"

  "I'm not sure, but I think he's trying to recreate his creator–yet I'm not sure what it believes is a 'creator'. Perhaps he has details of his creator so maybe he'll know when he has similar physiological specimens on board."

  "And when he finds the...uh, correct configuration? What then?" Susan looked worried. David's clarification didn't do much to ease her concern.

  "Then our host will attempt to create a new species, similar to those that are responsible for his creation. The new species will no doubt be similar to humans–perhaps in the image of God, whatever that might mean. I think it's a noble endeavor. Yet I'm bothered by the lack of information I receive, about such a creator. Perhaps it does not have a humanoid structure. Perhaps it is simply energy. Yet, I'm confident that the Godships will, one day, find such an entity–whatever it is."

  "Then, perhaps, he'll stop roaming the galaxy collecting specimens."

  "Yes, I think so." David said, caressing Susan's cheek. "Don't fret, my dear. Our host is quite docile."

  "I hear Gilgamesh almost constantly now. He's talking about planet Earth. Is that where we're heading?"

  "Yes, my dear. We’re heading home."

  "Does Gilgamesh require more human DNA? More natives, more..."

  "No, dear Susan. He has heard from Uruk, the Godship that lies at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It shall be an exciting sojourn and we will play an important role when Uruk rises once more. I'm not sure wh
at we'll find, but I'm eager."

  They both smiled and held hands.

  "Do you know," David said, "that Godships have been visiting Earth for millennia? Indeed, the Godship Uruk was seen by the Inca who worshiped it as the water God, Paryaqaqa, and the Maya celebrated Godship comings and goings with ritual sacrifices. An even earlier visitation appeared to John. You see? Religion, in all its earthly manifestations, has been influenced by Godship appearances. Have you read Revelation in the Christian bible? The bible says that such a ship appeared to John as a new heaven, a New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it. It said 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.' It was much larger than our Gilgamesh–I believe it was shaped like a cube, twenty two kilometers on a side with walls sixty five meters thick. Latter day Godships are a good deal smaller due to the necessity of negotiating space-time anomalies such as black holes and warped geometries. Indeed, our Godships can change size and shape, as we have seen."

  David stared upward, as though deep in thought. He ran his hand through his hair, stroked his nose, then continued.

  "I've often wondered about Uruk. It's the name of the Godship now situated in the Mariana Trench, in the Pacific Ocean. It's also the name of the place where the mythic king Gilgamesh lived, in ancient Uruk. Isn't that curious? I was under the impression that I was responsible for naming our Godship, but now I see that the name was implanted in my memory by our Godship. And why is Uruk down at ten thousand meters? Why so deep? I thought it was a malfunction of its graviton engine, a loss of anti-gravity abilities, perhaps its mini-black hole cargo was lost."

  David looked weary. A chair materialized and he sat down.

  "I thought that planet Earth was now very advanced technologically. Now I'm confused as to the kinds of advances...whether they are real and whether Uruk is somehow involved."

  David suddenly jumped to his feet.