Tales of the Vuduri_Year Five

by Michael Brachman

  “That would be Hanry Ta Jihn’s name in your language.”

  “Huh?” Rei said. “Oh yeah.” He leaned back and continued reading.

  “Team A stopped the Ark Lords for the very first time. Every one of the men in Team B died. 22 in all. It was here that the troops captured the first of the Ark Lord vehicles. It was here that the Resistance truly took form. These brave men did not die in vain.”

  Yesterday, I told you the sad tale of Team B and their role in the rebellion. Tomorrow, Rome and Rei stumble across Jack Henry's headstone.

  Entry 5-030: January 30, 2017

  Jack Henry’s headstone 1

  In the short story about Lacy Henry in The Vuduri Companion, Lacy made a special request of Jack's best friend and lieutenant, Red June:

  “Jackie’s dying wish was that we use the cannon and level the place. He made me swear that after we defeated the Ark Lords, we would bury them and their vehicles and their spaceship and their weapons. Every place they’ve ever been on the Earth. He wanted to make sure that there would be no trace, not even a hint that their race was ever here. I swore to him that even if it took a thousand years, we’d erase everything, like they never existed.”

  Lacy took in a deep breath then let out a long sigh. She nodded sadly.

  “Thank you, Red,” she said. “You are a good friend and a great man.” She stopped and looked out the window. “Can I ask you for one more thing?”

  “Anything, Lacy,” Red answered.

  “Some day, when this is all over, will you take me and our son out there? To where Jackie died?”

  “Absolutely,” Red replied. “I’ll take you to his grave. We’ll make sure he has a proper headstone. The whole world will come to revere that place as where the Rebellion against the Ark Lords truly began.”

  In the novel, The Ark Lords, 600 years later, Rome and Rei are tracking Jack Henry's movements using a map and the historical records. They found an obelisk and plaque commemorating the Battle of Chicago. But Rei was after more.

  “MINIMCOM says there is another marker a half kilometer from here. Maybe it will tell us something.” Rei poked his hand out of the cloak long enough for Ursay to see where he was pointing.

  They tromped along the ground, stepping over branches and around bushes, all the while MINIMCOM was giving Rei distance and directions. Even though he knew they were in front of him, Ursay still found it peculiar to see the vegetation moving apparently all on its own. All three of them were sweating profusely. Rei and Rome, in particular, had grown accustomed to the mild weather of Deucado and this was quite a departure.

  Directly ahead of them was a huge hill, covered with scrub. Rei noted that the hill was strangely out of place from the rest of the pancake-flat glacier-smoothed ground and cornfields of Illinois.

  Tomorrow, MINIMCOM finds what Rei is after.

  Entry 5-031: January 31, 2017

  Jack Henry’s headstone 2

  Yesterday, Rome and Rei were searching for the final resting place of the hero and martyr Jack Henry. MINIMCOM thought he had located it and was directing them to the spot:

  Directly ahead of them was a huge hill, covered with scrub. Rei noted that the hill was strangely out of place from the rest of the pancake-flat glacier-smoothed ground and cornfields of Illinois.

  Rei looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Where is it?” he asked MINIMCOM.

  “At the top of the hill,” replied the starship.

  “Come on,” Rei said, “we have to get to the top.” He started up the hill which was very steep. The tangled vegetation actually made it easier to climb, providing footholds and handholds. When they reached the top, they found an artificial construction that resembled a gravestone off in the distance. All three of them took a moment to catch their breath. As they got closer, Rei could see it really was a headstone. He cleaned it off with his hand and read aloud.

  “John (Jack) Henry. 564 – 589PR. He gave his life so that all men could be free.” Rei cocked his head at the marker. “Wait a minute,” he said. “He was only 25 when he died?”

  “He was very young,” Rome said sadly then she raised her voice. “But he lived with such passion. And conviction.”

  “Still, what a life. I feel bad for the guy,” Rei said. “He was just a kid.”

  “He lived his life in a way which makes him immortal,” Ursay observed. “He was a good man. A brave man.”

  “And this is his actual grave?” Rei asked. “I guess this was before you guys started recycling bodies.”

  “I did not even know it was here,” Rome said, ignoring Rei’s gibe. “There are no historical records indicating such. I suspect this is a memorial, not his actual gravesite.”

  We know from the Jack Henry story, interleaved within The Ark Lords and Lacy's request of Red June that Jack probably was buried under the rubble. But we will never actually know.

  Entry 5-032: February 1, 2017

  The time is nigh

  Every year around this time, I compile the previous year's blog articles into a single volume and release it as an ebook then a paperback. Each year is conditioned by its volume number so you have Tales of the Vuduri: Year One, Year Two and so on. The new one will be Year Four! Can you believe it? Over 1460 blogs posts. Nearly half a million words.

  When I published it the first year, Bruce did an amazing job of rendering my vision of the early form of I-cimaci and he put one spaceship in the sky. In Year Two, he expanded the boundaries of the city and added a second spaceship and changed the primary color highlights from blue to green. Then Year Three came along and, uh oh, what color to use? We picked red. The third spaceship was easy and the virtual camera panned back and showed more of the city. So we decided to plan out the color schemes for the next two years. They look like this:

  For Year Four, I am going for a bright cyan-ish color and for Year Five, I will go with magenta. These highlight colors are used to make the titles stand out as well as the color of the spine and thus the background for the michaelbrachman.com web site.

  I don't plan on going beyond Year Five. I may keep the blog up and write few, more in depth articles but not enough to fill a volume like before. Anyway, I'd be interested in your opinion. Let me know.

  Entry 5-033: February 2, 2017

  Sleepy poisons

  We have previously discussed the effects of sleep deprivation. It goes hand in hand with why we have to sleep at all. Basically, during the day, your brain works so hard that it produces metabolic waste products that need to be removed. When you sleep, certain portions of your brain shut down and the toxins are removed. During the various phases of sleep, various portions of the brain are activated and deactivated and given a good scrubbing.

  The result is that when you wake up in the morning, you feel refreshed and your brain is ready to go again. Conversely, if you are sleep-deprived, the toxins in your brain causes the symptoms. This has been proven multiple times in animal studies where they remove some fluid from the brains of sleep-deprived animals and inject it into the brains of properly rested animals. The injection induces the same effects as if the animals were sleep deprived.

  So... What I am thinking is some sort of brain dialysis whereby you hook up your brain to a cleansing machine and it removes the toxins due to sleep deprivation. If you did that, would you ever have to sleep? I'm sure you'd have to rest but you wouldn't have to go through the whole sleep cycle.

  This would mean no more dreams. Do we need dreams? Are they just a side effect of the cleansing process? Would we be diminished if we never had them again? Some people claim to never dream. Others don't want to wake up because they are in the middle of a good dream. But do we really, really need them?

  Instead of a machine, what if you could take a pill that could cleanse the brain toxins. Then you wouldn't have to sleep and you wouldn't have to hook your brain up to tubes and wires. That might be the ultimate. Think of what you could do with those extra six hours every day. I know I sure could use them or a s
ecret eighth day, like in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. Time. Time. Time. I need more of it.

  Maybe some day.

  Entry 5-034: February 3, 2017

  The Vorasdock

  Part of the true enjoyment of writing a book like The Ark Lords was that I got to intermingle the past with the future in kind of a twin set of stories. Ignore the fact that the past, from the perspective of Rome and Rei, is 800 years in our future and their present is in the 35th century.

  In an earlier set of posts, I directly presented the rebels discovery of the Ark Lords' armory and their seizing rifles, handguns, flashlights and walkie-talkies. So when we go back to Rome and Rei's piecing together the puzzle, you already know the answer. But you get to watch them put the pieces together. Consider this exchange between Rome and Rei:

  Rei just shook his head. He couldn’t shake feeling somehow guilty. “So how did they beat them?” he asked.

  “Hanry Ta Jihn’s forces acquired a new weapon. It was called a Vorasdock.”

  “What’s a Vorasdock?” Rei asked.

  “The literal translation in your language would be fire stick,” Ursay volunteered.

  “Fire stick?” Rei cocked his head. “I know the Ark Lords were carrying flamethrowers but where would your people get them?”

  “They were not exactly my people,” Rome said. “This pre-dated the Vuduri. And they were not flamethrowers.” She pressed a few buttons on the keyboard and brought up a rough sketch.

  “This is the only known drawing of a Vorasdock,” she said. “It does not resemble what I saw in Edgar’s storage bin. However, its form factor suggests it is more like your laser rifles than something else.”

  Rei leaned forward. “That’s not a laser rifle,” he observed. “It looks like an M4 carbine.” Rome’s confused look caused Rei to offer more. “A semi-automatic rifle that fires bullets? Chemical weapons with projectiles?” Rome shook her head. Rei shrugged. “Where the hell would they have gotten those?” he asked.

  Rome looked up at the screen. “I do not know,” she said. “If you know what it is then it must have come from your people.”

  “But it didn’t,” Rei said. “You saw the weapons Keller brought. Everything had to be designed to withstand centuries. The particle beam cannons, the laser pulse rifles, the mini-nukes. Even the flamethrowers used fuel that was frozen solid for a millennium. A chemical weapon, a bullet, needs gunpowder. Do you think they made it themselves?”

  “They would not have,” Ursay said. “All such technology had been banned following the Great Dying. This came from somewhere else.”

  We know the answer but it is so delicious watching them figure it out. In case you were interested, this is what the drawing looked like:

  Entry 5-035: February 4, 2017

  The Figure Eight

  The Tevatron was a particle accelerator, located in Batavia, Illinois. Construction was started in 1968 with initial operations beginning in 1971. It was fully functional by 1979. However, the device was shut down in late 2010 due to budget cuts and the gearing up of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. It was made up of a linear accelerator and two synchrotron rings for accelerating protons and electrons to a high energy state before they are smashed together. From high above (like Google Earth), it looks just like a figure eight. This was the outline that Jack Henry's mother described to him in the 29th century and it was the very same outline that Rome and Rei discovered from one kilometer up in the sky. Here is how I described it:

  “Here, you sit down,” Rome said to Ursay. He nodded and moved into the copilot’s seat.

  “I cannot explain it. You can only see this from high in the air. I will level off about one kilometer up.”

  The ground dropped below them quickly. Looking out the windshield, all they could see were blue skies and puffy white clouds.

  “We are now at sufficient height,” MINIMCOM said. He activated his ventral cameras and projected the ground below him. He then activated the MIDAR screen in ground penetrating mode and overlaid the sounding images onto the landscape.

  Immediately, Rei saw it; two gigantic circles, just barely touching with the out-of-place hill off to the side of the larger circle. From this height, it looked more like a lazy snowman than anything else with a long, arrow-straight scarf.

  “I don’t believe it,” Rei said. “So that’s where they hid the virus. No wonder.”

  “Where?” Rome said. “All I see are those two rings.”

  MINIMCOM flashed a glowing yellow highlighter around the two rings. “The smaller circle is a kilometer in diameter. The larger one is nearly two kilometers in diameter.”

  “Those two rings,” Rei said, pointing. “That’s the Tevatron. They buried the virus inside the goddamned Tevatron.”

  The FermiLab campus still exists and it is possible that the main ring might be used again sometime in the future. Whether it does or it doesn't, I found great pleasure in resurrecting it first for Wally Grey's team who used it to create quantum black holes and later the site of the Battle of Chicago. Even after the denizens of the Post Post-apocalypse destroyed all signs of the location, they could not disguise the figure eight, seen only from the sky.

  Entry 5-036: February 5, 2017

  Kevlar-coated meat 1

  As I mentioned previously, the Ark Lords were unaware of the fact that the rebels were now armed with rifles and handguns. Jack Henry was loathe to give up that advantage. So he came up with a plan to ambush the soldiers from the future in such a way as to preempt them even attempting a counter-strike. Today and tomorrow, I'll lay out the plan for you so you can see how a bunch of farmers were able to defeat an army of spacemen:

  The soldiers who remained above focused their attention to the southeast toward the site of the smoldering remains of the third transport. None of them saw Red peering around the corner of the building. Red ducked back.

  “Jack, Jack,” Red called hoarsely into the radio. “Do you read?”

  “Go, Red,” Jack replied.

  “They’re on their way down. Six by my count. Light weapons and one flame thrower. Over.”

  “Sounds easy,” Jack replied, but he didn’t sound amused.

  “They’ve left maybe ten of them up top to stand guard.”

  “Can you take them out?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah,” Red said. “We’ll have to.”

  “OK. Good luck then. As soon as you are finished with them, come on down here and make sure none of the others leave alive. Over.”

  “I will, Jack,” Red said. “And good luck to you. Over and out.”

  Red turned to the group of men gathered behind him. “I need six of you,” Red said in a loud whisper. He quickly picked out six men. “Eddie, you lead. I want you to circle all the way around the building to the opposite side but don’t show yourself. Call me on Channel Five when you’re in position.” He flipped Eddie a radio. “As soon as you’re ready, we’ll open fire on them to get their attention. They don’t know we’re here. As soon as you hear the first shot, I want you to sneak up and get underneath their wagons. We’ll keep ‘em busy. I want you to fire your weapons at their feet. They’re not protected. Take ‘em down then take ‘em out. They’ll never expect that. Got it?”

  The men nodded and without ceremony, they took off along the side of the building then disappeared around the corner. After only a few minutes, Red’s radio came alive.

  “Ready,” came Eddie’s voice.

  Tomorrow, the battle plan is executed more or less as designed.

  Entry 5-037: February 6, 2017

  Kevlar-coated meat 2

  Yesterday, I laid out the plan for you whereby the rebels would ambush the Ark Lords as they were trying to enter Wilson Hall on the grounds of the Tevatron. The freedom fighters' plan was simple. Distract them from the front, attack them from behind and let the element of surprise be the superior weapon. Here is how it played out:

  “OK,” Red said. He turned to address the rest of his men. “On m
y go, we attack. Shoot anything that moves. Make a lot of noise. But nobody run in a straight line. Their weapons are deadly. All we need to do is grab their attention long enough for Eddie to knock ‘em down. Then we’ll finish ‘em off.”

  Red peeked out one more time. None of the enemy soldiers were looking his way.

  “Go!” he barked, waving his arm.

  The group of ten men came flying around the edge of the building, yelling as they advanced, firing their rifles. Even as they were turning, two of the shocked Ark Lord soldiers were hit in the hands. One was hit in the shin. The remaining Ark Lords leveled their laser pulse rifles at the onrushing rebels and started firing. The laser rifles were terribly effective. Three of Red’s team were killed instantly.