The Cocoon Trilogy

by David Saperstein

  Messaging across the galaxy, telepathically, by Brigade commanders aboard a Parman driven Mothership, further confirmed the existence of a space-time continuum. “Destination Achieved” confirmation of messages from all corners of the galaxy arrived simultaneously to all Brigade commanders immediately after the new Antarean Motherships exceeded light-speed. The theories of relativity dealing with the masses of space and time, and quantum-mechanics dealing with the infinitesimal sub-atomic working of the universe, were thus merged into one smooth operating mode. The SAW theory that when light-speed is surpassed, time is a constant, became fact. Stating it another way - with the mass of the Universe as one, then place, like time, is always the same. The Universe appeared to be accessible and without boundary for the Parman-driven Antarean Motherships.

  The Antareans had never encountered intergalactic travelers in their galaxy. So now, as they planned to venture out to other galaxies, they strongly suspected they were the first beings in the Universe to do so. If this was true, it would give them an enormous advantage among the known space explorers and traders. That advantage, along with the Geriatric Brigade commanders’ communication capabilities, would give Antarean exploration of the entire Universe a unique exclusivity, or so they thought. Leaders like Spooner felt this was proof of The Master’s Grand Plan. It confirmed and strengthened their belief that they were His chosen beings, destined to implement His plan universally.

  While the gathering was in full swing, Spooner received word that all testing and shakedown of the two new inter-galactic Motherships had been successfully completed. She gave the order to proceed. The era of Antarean inter-galactic travel was launched. The two vessels vectored toward their jump-off points and on to their assigned galaxies. But were they, Antareans, Parmans and the Geriatric Brigade, the first to travel inter-galactic? That question was soon to be answered in a way none of the travelers suspected.

  CHAPTER TWELVE – OUTREACH

  The precise movements of the children during the three years they were away from Butterfly House was not clear to the Lewis’s, Margolin’s or Martindales. True, the children had kept in contact, and reported their general activities such as, “going to school,” or “working in a copper mine,” or “aiding refugees from Genocide”, but none of their guardians had physically observed them. The children, for their own reasons, wanted it that way while they learned about their home planet and its inhabitants. After attending colleges and universities, they traveled, immersing themselves in the various cultures, religions and social structures while becoming close friends with several special young people they met. As observers, they noted stark differences and discordance between peaceful, prosperous, tolerant nations, and those steeped in bigotry, hatred and brutality. They also clearly saw how humans were destroying their environment. Many places had become unlivable. Species were becoming extinct at a rapid rate. The ability of Earth to sustain life was threatened. This behavior disturbed the children, but they did not use their powers, as they might have, to interfere. Instead, the secretly vowed to find a way to help their species survive.

  The children had begun communicating with one another while still in the womb. Their embryonic brains functioned at nearly seventy percent capacity. They were able to absorb information from outside the womb in a form and language unknown to their parents. But what was happening to them stretched far beyond the place of their birth in the secretive NASA hospital wing of Building 11, in Houston. The startling truth was that, prior to birth, these children were a new race, capable of communicating with other beings that were gestating throughout the Universe.

  In-uteri, in-egg or pre-divided, communication is something that all humanoid, carbon-based fetuses can do. Once born, Earth-humans, and most living creatures, do not hold conscious memory of this capacity. But the children of Butterfly House retained memory of all their intra and inter-galactic conversations and contacts. When born, their brain usage increased to ninety percent. By the time they were fifteen, it was close to ninety-five percent. They developed and honed their communication skills, focusing them to communicate individually and as a group. In doing so, they were able to keep in touch with the thousands of life forms they had met before birth across many galaxies.

  Some beings remembered communicating with the children and after their birth, emergence or division, continued to do so, while others had to be taught once they emerged into their worlds. The children were excellent teachers. This celestial conversation went on among all of these far- flung young as they grew and developed. Those who procreated rapidly, like the Sloor, passed this ability on to their young.

  Over many years, the thousands of living beings communicating this way, had in turn, reached out to thousands more, until an inter-galactic network, growing geometrically, spanned out to the very edges of the Universe.

  Had the Antareans, the Brigade, or any other space travelers been able to eavesdrop on this inter-galactic chatter, it would have been apparent that the children of Butterfly House were leaders at the vortex of a new linking of life and future.

  And something else was happening. Many of the contacts the children made were humanoid, becoming humanoid, or possessed that potential. Evolution depended greatly on environment. But another factor surfaced as the contacts increased. Beyond the ability to communicate, many beings of a like chemical and physical base shared common genetic markings and bonds.

  The children understood why, and how, this had occurred. Their own genetic makeup had been altered artificially as a result of their parents being processed for deep-space travel by the Antareans. It had caused a reversal in their parents’ aging processes and an increase in their own intellectual and physical potential. But it also caused far reaching genetic changes. These alterations had been passed on to the children, causing a quantum evolutionary leap – an event that might not have occurred naturally for scores of millennia, if ever.

  These contacts were producing evolutionary leaps in many beings and species. True, a few were the random results of inter-planetary mating. Others, like their parents, occurred from the deep-space processing that manipulated genetic codes. But these were rare. Most rapid evolution occurred within the forces of nature when the enlightenment of the children interacted with those life forms whose one overriding purpose was to procreate and protect the species.

  A few months before their tenth birthday, five children, Melissa Messina, Beam Amato, Scott Green, and the Erhardt twins, Joshua and Eric, made a startling discovery. They were able to visit other planets with their presence by a process they called projecting. As a group, with total concentration, they could leap across space, not only with their thoughts, but with a molecular essence of themselves. They could, without leaving Cayman Brac, and the safety of Butterfly House, experience a sense of place in real-time.

  They practiced projecting for several weeks before teaching it to their peers. Many projections were made, including, as the Amato’s and Finley’s discovered, visits to the Sloor on Klane.

  The children reached beyond their galaxy to many others including what Scott Green called, “The ultimate out-of-body experience.” They continued experimenting; projecting further and further to what they felt might be the very edges of the Universe. But so far, although they suspected a limit, they had found no actual border, boundary or end. The Universe seemed to have no beginning, no end, and no limit – only infinity beyond infinity.

  Like the children of Butterfly House, many beings and species had grown in intellectual power. Most of these were not space travelers. However, that mode of travel begged the question. Were spaceships really necessary? Contact and communicating with others by projection caused all other modes to be obsolete. But its purpose, should there be one other than a new way to evolve, was not clear to the participants.

  Among the life forms, cultures and civilizations were various explanations of existence as part of a universal plan. Many had one or more religions that explained the existence of life and purpose. For tho
se who clung tenaciously to these beliefs, an afterlife had to exist. They found the idea that conscious life ended impossible to accept. But inter-galactic communication made the concept of possessing a unique or “true” religion also difficult to accept. Once the young of so many planets, systems and galaxies became aware of one another, and of their Universe teeming with life, parochial religious concepts seemed terribly irrelevant. Most agreed that they were essentially part of a common material - stardust. That single fact embodied all reasons why life, and life’s sustenance, evolved and flourished. Whether it was a Universal Grand Plan, or an accident of nature, it made no difference. Cognitive life was everywhere. Survival and procreation, driven by a genetic engine, was the common purpose. Respect for all other life was simply respect for one’s own.

  After mastering projection, and making so many inter-galactic friends, the children were drawn to physically leaving Earth. They had to venture into the Universe and touch it. Molecular visits were all well and good, but they craved contact - face to face, tentacle, antennae, skin, scale, bone, crystal, gaseous...they had to see. As Joshua Erhardt said, “There’s just one hell of a lot of life out there to meet, greet and touch in person.”

  Together, with beings from across the Universe, the children of Butterfly House established a credo that they all promised to nourish and disperse to all in their common home. It was passed from being to being; from planet to planet; system to system; galaxy to galaxy and continuously projected beyond to the vast, never-ending universe:

  “From Stardust we came.

  And to Stardust we shall return.

  The cycle is forever.

  The Universe is our home, our source.

  Eternal and infinite.

  So it is with everyone; every being; everything.

  On the journey of life, we are many, and we are one.

  We are all part of one another, and everything.

  Bonded and inseparable, we are, and we live - always.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - BEZZOLENTINE AND MANIGRA

  The Antareans used quadrants to chart stars, solar systems, planets, and major moon positions in their own galaxy. These were three-dimensional divisions, emanating from the geographic center point of the galaxy. They then used the quads for navigation and mapping. This program was applied to the galaxies they now entered. First, the program visualized a galaxy as a three dimensional shape, such as a ball, or disk, or hexagon. Then it sliced through the shape horizontally, creating several layers, like pies placed one on top of another. Each pie was divided in quarters, or quads. The size of the galaxy, and the number and concentration of stars and systems would then determine how many pies were required. The number of quads was four times the pie slices. So if a galaxy had ten pie slices, there would be forty quads.

  Once a galactic center was determined, on-board telescopic devices and computers quickly rough-mapped the galaxy. Then, as the Mothership moved through it, sensors would constantly refine the quad maps. Thus, the more time spent in a particular quad, the more accurate the navigation and mapping. As a result, there was more capability to locate and visit promising stars, planetary systems, moons and asteroids for exploration. Additionally, the more data they gathered, the more accurate were defenses against collisions with comets, meteors, solar prominences, space storms and radiation discharges.

  As the Parman Guide narrowed its ultra violet focus on a giant red star in Quad-nine, and its rate of absorption, the effect on the sleek new Antarean Mothership was a reduction from supra-light to sub-light speed. This galaxy, like all others except theirs, had no officially registered name. It was uncharted and initially identified only by number. Since it was the first, it was designated Galaxy One. More than one million light years away, the second of the new breed of Antarean Motherships was about to enter another uncharted galaxy, Galaxy Two.

  The Antarean commander of this Mothership was Duartone. He was very experienced, having captained on four intra-galactic Motherships before receiving command of this new breed of spacecraft. Beside the two Parman Guides on board, there was a crew of nine Antareans and fifteen Brigade members, led by Commander Frank Hankinson. Frank’s wife, Andrea, accompanied him. She was not a Brigade Commander. They had no children at Butterfly House.

  Before Brigade life, Frank Hankinson was retired. He had owned an independent television station in St. Louis, Missouri; he was a self-made man who had worked his way up from cub reporter to entrepreneur. When he retired, he sold the station and sought out the fabled “good life” in South Florida. Golf, swimming, sun...fun. It didn’t take long until he and Andrea were bored. Then, as so often happens, he fell ill. Retirement had nearly been a death sentence.

  So when his old friend Ben Green invited the Hankinson’s to join the Geriatric Brigade, it took Frank and Andrea about ten seconds of reflection before they said “Yes!” Frank’s decision to become a commander took five seconds more. Frank and Andrea never regretted leaving Earth.

  With the galactic center located, quad-mapping began. But first, Duartone officially named the galaxy Bezzolentine, in honor of an ancient Antarean priestly order that had codified The Master’s Grand Plan. He then activated a search instrument program the Antareans called “Finder”.

  Before the Brigade’s entry into space travel, all Antarean Finders were programmed to locate systems and planets that, within them, had an Antarean-friendly atmosphere, gravity and climate. But with Earth-humans on board, the Finder’s parameters had been changed to include planets with atmospheres of high oxygen content, water, and moderate temperature.

  The Finder focused on Bezzolentine, Quad-nine, and adjusted the ship’s course. The mapping program began to identify, then temporarily name and number systems, planets and satellite bodies within Quad-nine. Duartone took note that the Finder chose a vector toward a cluster of stars at the edge the Quad. It showed three systems that had planets potentially within Earth-human survival parameters. Another message to change course was delivered to the Parman Guide located outside the Mothership, along with the location of the starlight to be absorbed. A moment later, the Mothership’s speed increased and the huge craft was vectored toward the target.

  The next instruction from Finder was to tell the Parman Guide to concentrate on a single planetary system that revolved around a Red Giant. Duartone gave one of the Brigade members working on linkage duty with the Parman Guide, the honor of naming the giant red star and system. This man, Michael O’Connell, was originally from Boston. He had been a Boston Celtics basketball fanatic. The first “red” that came into his mind was Red Auerbach, the legendary basketball coach of the Celtics. The Finder entered the name - Bezzolentine-Auerbach-Quad-nine. Moments later, as more data was gathered and refined, another command came from the Finder to the Parman Guide outside the Mothership. The seventh planet out from the planetary system fit the Earth-human parameters and was selected for exploration. Duartone gave Commander Fred Hankinson the honor of naming the planet. Keeping in tune with the sports motif set by O’Connell, and being from St. Louis and a Cardinal baseball fan, Frank named the planet for the Hall of Fame baseball player, Stan Musial.

  A short time later, as the Mothership closed in on the planet, the Parman Guide was disengaged from propulsion. The ship slowed and the ion-drives took over for the final approach to Bezzolentine-Auerbach-Musial-Prima-Quad-nine. Prima, in the new name, signified this planet as the first to be explored in the Auerbach system of the newly named Bezzolentine Galaxy.

  Of course, a name change was possible, once determination was made about any inhabitants and/or special physical properties of the planet. If there was life, and that life had a name for their planet, system, red giant star and galaxy, those names would be respected and replace those now registered with Finder. This would hold true for all Quads in a galaxy.

  As they drew closer to planetary orbit, Duartone asked Frank Hankinson to message Antares confirming their safe arrival in Galaxy One. All identification, including naming it Bezzolen
tine, and the Finder’s choice of a planet to explore, was to be sent. But before Brigade Commander Hankinson could proceed, the ship’s universal communications console, programmed to automatically activate upon any planetary approach, received a contact from the targeted planet. Someone was welcoming Frank Hankinson by name. Then, in perfect English, the voice asked that only Brigade members descend to the planet’s surface.

  Over one-million-plus light years across the Universe from the Bezzolentine Galaxy, but in the same moment of time, Brigade Commander Betty Franklin was aboard the other new-generation Antarean Mothership assigned to inter-galactic exploration. This ship was captained by Antarean commander Shai-Noa, a veteran of hundreds of explorations in their own galaxy; know to Earth-humans as the Milky Way. Shai-Noa had been chosen by the High Council because of her vast experience with newly contacted beings and cultures.

  Once her Mothership’s Finder had roughly charted the galaxy, temporarily named Galaxy Two, Shai-Noa renamed it Manigra, in honor of the twenty-six Antareans and eight Brigade members who died three Earth-years ago when a blue dwarf star went nova. That Mothership’s Antarean Commander was named Manigra-Cha.

  Finder identified Quad-24 as containing potential Earth-like solar systems. On command, the Parman Guide turned the great ship toward a specific star and planetary system in Quad-24 and engaged. Upon approaching the star and system, the ion drive took over.

  Brigade Commander Betty Franklin named the star Sparkle Plenty, in honor of an old Dick Tracy cartoon character from her youth. Finder then zeroed in on a likely planet. Shai-Noa named the planet Marinin, in honor of the Antarean designer, Lage Marinin, whose new Mothership navigation system and enhanced ion-energy drive now guided them toward the planet.

  As the Mothership approached orbit around the oxygen/water planet, Betty Franklin, like Frank Hankinson now at Bezzolentine-Auerbach-Musial-Prima-Quad-nine, was addressed by name, in English, with a message of welcome. The voice was female and referred to the planet as Paccum. Betty connected it with pax, the Latin word for peace, and that eased her anxiety. The designation, Marinin, was dropped from the Finder’s data base and replaced with Paccum. The voice then made the same request that Frank Hankinson had received one million light years away - only Brigade members could come down to the surface of Manigra-Sparkle Plenty-Paccum-Prima-Quad-twenty four at this time.