LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME

by Roger Storkamp

  Sera’s modulated voice returned. “I recognize that similar situation, but neither you nor the fabled King Solomon had any intentions of cutting the child in half.”

  “Half a child to save thousands. Trust your computer side to calculate the odds.” I kissed Cleopatra’s head and pulled her sunbonnet over her face. She didn’t need to see what was about to happen, nor did I.

  Eyes in the half human, half machine blinked, and its head jerked. It took one step forward, and Dad inched the blade lower. She retracted and Dad held the blade steady.

  She swung her face from side to side, eyes bulged and vapor escaped her nostrils. “Go.” She drew a deep breath and exhaled smoke. “Get out. The whole bunch of you, and good riddance. Other options are available.” She levitated toward the lighted dome, faced us, and shouted, “You can keep this bubble of scrap metal attached to your silly comet like a wart on its nose. I won’t need it.” Her voice turned haughty. “My body doesn’t require gravity, and without the hindrance I can accelerate to a quarter the speed of light.” Her apparition glanced back displaying a sardonic smile. I shall return.

  Sera disappeared through the dome of the sphere we had just inherited without bothering to use the revolving door. I doubted we’d experienced her actual physical presence, or she’d have taken Cleopatra by force. Stunned, the five families milled about, clinging to fixed furniture or my father’s rooted plants, some already lofting toward the dome.

  I scanned the pentagon shaped rooftops and decided this synthetic habitat must be sealed and off limits except to recycle the metal, a scarce commodity aboard Haley’s Comet. I privately chuckled, as I literally Christened Space Mission with a new title and purpose for its existence.

  Our sun dimmed and extinguished. A guiding ray of light peeked through the portal in the blackened sky. Dad clutched Mom, Cleopatra, and me and sprung his legs. We drifted toward the light, his machete trailing behind us.

  Within the hour, Cleopatra and I walked through my parents’ living room, not out to a balcony but rather the Swiss Robinson Family tree house I had envisioned as a child. Albert stood looking out from his parent’s apartment waving with both hands. Cleopatra waddled across the fenced catwalk toward him. He scooped her into his arms and reached out to me. Through the door to a thatched hut on a separate branch, I spied Princess Lea’s image, Jimmy alongside gawking. Whether a gift or a trap, I didn’t care.

  EPILOGUE

  St. Cloud, Minnesota

  Marty Haggart

  May 5, 3155

  My final semester at St. Cloud International University prior to graduation included a residency related to either of my two majors, pagan religions and space travel. Father wanted me to fulfill the three-month requirement at the University of Somalia, and Mother preferred I would choose the Vatican.

  Ariel and I had other obligations. Through four years of nearly daily correspondence—transmission time required less than a year since Haley’s Comet headed back toward Earth—she and I collaborated to develop a practical theology for the residents of Ariel’s habitat. I chose the Brazilian Amazon as my laboratory to complete my degree and to develop a blend of Pagan and modern religions.

  To encourage my parents to accept my decision, I compared the topic of my research with the pagan symbols Mother wanted to restore on St. Mary’s Cathedral, and I suggested the aborted mission supported my father’s views on human space travel. Mother’s goal to rebuild the her church after the Great Lakes tectonic earthquake of 3150 occurred in her lifetime, whereas Ariel’s and my goal could take thirty generations of mothers’ and daughters’ letter writing.

  Since that silly two-messages-a-year restriction had been lifted, schoolchildren here and on the comet exchanged talking holograms on a regular basis. Ariel and I restricted ourselves to written communication with an occasional hologram of Cleopatra as she moved beyond the toddler stage of development. However, Ariel did send the full mockup of her and Albert exchanging vows.

  I had returned from South America, where I researched the Kuikuru Indians of the Amazon, in time for the rededication of St. Mary’s Cathedral at St. Cloud. Mother, promoted to senior parish pastor, was ecstatic, but I was preoccupied with religion and culture of the Kuikuru as applied to Ariel’s society. The Kuikuru had remained remarkably unchanged since being discovered over a thousand years ago, almost as if they lived in a time warp. Perhaps they had. The Brazilian government all but isolated the tribe, allowing only food and medical support. Individual Indians were invited into the mainstream of Brazilian life, but few chose to accept the offer. I wondered how many of Ariel’s people would rejoin earthbound society if the option were available. Time—a thousand years—would tell.

  The cathedral’s dedication interrupted my concentration on preparing my dissertation, a document required by the university and eagerly awaited by Ariel. I had already sent her DNA sequences of a sampling of the natives who cooperated; most refusing my request on the basis their spirits would be stolen. Since then, I wondered about the copy of my memory Ariel received and Seraphim, her avatar, confiscated. Although it helped satisfy the droid’s mandate to establish a human presence on Earth’s nearest star, I continued to feel violated. Yet, it seemed a small price to pay for Ariel and Cleopatra’s freedom.

  According to Albert’s calculation, Ariel’s avatar and the first fourteen years of my memory should be half way to Proxima Centuari by now, covering a distance equal to a journey back to Earth at a quarter of the speed of light. I had never admitted to Ariel or anyone else about my recurring nightmare where Seraphim returned to pluck more of my memory.

  During the dedication speeches at the restored cathedral, I sat in the pew alongside my father who had been acting strange. He had hinted at a surprise that he and Mother prepared as a graduation present, but certainly, they would not deliver it during Mother’s ceremony. I was badly mistaken.

  After I had dozed through the droning of half a dozen speakers, I glanced up just as Ariel had replaced the mayor of St. Cloud at the podium. I had barely entered REM level sleep, and had to squint to distinguish her hologram from the image of Ariel included in my dream. I caught my parents’ gleeful—nearly sexual—expressions, quite like when they used to send me off to the movies on a Saturday afternoon. Obviously, over the past two years, they had conspired with Ariel to present me with a congratulatory message, and have her publicly announce it by way of her tele-presence. I felt pleased and astounded at the advances in hologram technology since I had returned from the jungle. She could have actually been present at the podium.

  I touched the back of Father’s hand to express my appreciation, but it felt rigid and cold. All sound and movement in the cathedral ceased. Even the flames on the candles didn’t flicker. I peered up into my father’s face and panicked that he had died, until he mouthed, “Oh my God.”

  My mother apparently regarded the physical form at the pulpit as Ariel’s normal hologram, her smile reeking of pleasure with her two-pronged accomplishment, the cathedral’s restoration and arranging my surprise visitor. Her expression morphed into one of horror as the apparition began to preach a hodgepodge of pagan Kuikuru theology muddled with Catholic doctrine. I had yet to propose any of my research to Ariel, and I was astounded with the accuracy of her information.

  God does not exist, but the universe taught humans many arts and crafts. However, it no longer intervenes in human affairs.

  Spirits are associated with a variety of animals and a few trees, but are ill disposed toward people and therefore dangerous.

  The shaman/priest is a supernatural practitioner who presumes to reach God through the use of religious paraphernalia.

  Religious ceremonies consist of musicians who play instruments, usually an organ, and sing songs. The most important ceremony is the Feast of a Dead Savior.

  Illness is supernaturally caused. A priest anoints the body when medical science and medicinal plants gathered from the forest fail.

  The death of a person occasions a
community funerary rite. Displayed in a reusable casket, the corpse is paraded down the aisle and then it’s taken away and burned.

  The village of the dead exists in the sky, and the journey to it involves hazards and obstacles that the soul must avoid or surmount, if it is to reach its destination. Once in the village of the dead, a recently arrived soul is nurtured and brought back to health. It then continues to live there forever, enjoying a life not unlike that on earth but easier and more pleasant.

  Throughout her final concept about the village of the dead, the creature that resembled Ariel’s image focused its gaze on me, as if I were about to embark on such a journey. I had chewed some psychedelic herbs the Kuikuru shaman had given me as a farewell gift, and perhaps this intruder existed only in my imagination. I blinked, hoping to eradicate the entire scene, but it would not give way.

  My father’s touch felt warm, not cold as it had moments ago. I returned my attention to the creature who began expounding personal and private experiences from my childhood, some of them I had repressed as too embarrassing to admit to myself, let alone make them public. Not even my conscious self could have so accurately revealed what it spewed out to the entire congregation.

  Ariel’s avatar, I concluded, had access to my childhood memories! Ariel would never embarrass me.

  An uncontrollable urge to approach the droid overwhelmed me, and I glided toward the pulpit where it stood, arms outstretched. Glancing back, I felt a need tell my father not to worry, but I didn’t know about what. He had stooped with his back to me, his focus on the pew where I had been sitting. Suddenly, he became animated, screaming for my mother. She rose from the ornate chair alongside the altar and met him at the communion rail, her eyes filled with tears, his arms cradling my lifeless form.

  I melded into Seraphim’s body, not Ariel’s hologram, and pleaded, take me out of here. I cannot bear to watch my parents grieve.

  We, Marty and Seraphim, are off to the stars. First stop, Haley’s Comet, in less than four years.

  THE BEGINNING

  For his three previous novels, Roger created a society here on Planet Earth, Bovine, Minnesota, a town without a zip code where real characters reside. JUST THELMA, ’NEATH A CRESCENT MOON, and MISS WEST reflect the attitudes, values, and foibles of the people who helped mold his personality.

  THELMA’S QUILT

  Set in mid Twentieth Century on a farm in Minnesota, a mother dies, leaving her teenaged daughter, Thelma, to keep house for a family of six adult men and one adopted child. The young boy and the old uncle find sanctuary on top of a windmill and inside the cupola roof of the barn. Three of Thelma’s brothers marry, her uncle dies and when the youth turns nineteen, he is forced to return to his father’s farm. Thelma fills the void with a runaway teenage girl. Complications from shattered relationships, new social ties and normal events of farm life create constant challenges. When all seems well, the catastrophe occurs.

  ’NEATH A CRESCENT MOON

  Matt Gerhard prepares for death. Mary, his wife of forty-five years and Dory, his sister who is a Catholic nun, attend at his bedside. His other sister, Sam, who died in the Hinckley, Minnesota, fire of 1894 and his daughter, Rose, who died of influenza following the pandemic of 1917, tweak his conscience. He devises a strategy to have a forty-year excommunication from the Catholic Church lifted yet salvage his dignity. He needs assistance from his estranged son, Earl, an emotionally damaged veteran of The Great War and Earl’s army buddy, Marvin, who collected the bodies of fallen soldiers.

  MISS WEST

  When Thelma’s adopted brother commits suicide and Earl’s daughter emigrates to Israel, Sonja West becomes involved with her two friends in ways she had only dared to fantasize. Casual friendships intensify, and a wedge is driven between Sonja and her long time companion, Mildred. Can Sonja maintain three intimate relationships? If not, whose friendship will she be forced to sacrifice?

  WHAT IS A HOBO NOVEL?

  A HoboNovel reveals her most intimate secrets when in a relationship, but she anticipates the reader’s disloyalty when her narrative ends. She resents being sandwiched between other conquests on her reader’s trophy shelf. Being shuffled from hand to hand inflates her ego and enhances her reputation. She willingly shares her pleasures with strangers, and is unfazed if abandoned in a public place. Her charms will entice an unsuspecting future reader between her covers. She is the Lady-of-the-Road. For more information, go to www.HoboNovel.com.