“I believe—my fellow honorable ter-i-taq—Imperial Atlantida has something to share with all of us in regard to the stunning archeological find on the Ghost Moon,” another hovering screen talking head says in a measured, conciliatory tone. This time it’s Duu Valam, the Rai of Bastet, a dark-haired man of an indeterminate age, with red clay skin, sharp features, and a prominent nose.
“Archeological find? What a graceless joke. We’re drowning here,” Rai Arelik interrupts.
“Yes, we’re also getting flooded, here on the planet surface,” Rai Valam says. “But so many of my people are stationed far in space at Tammuz, which currently stands in grave danger from the alien enemy. Bastet’s Niktos Fleet is proud to serve on War-8, but we have no illusions of the outcome—judging by what has happened at Septu and Rah. My point is—if there is something that was discovered in that ancient sarcophagus on the Ghost Moon, something that can help us against this relentless alien enemy, I am eager to learn, to save lives!”
In that moment, a small side-door opens—one of several such along the wall with the Imperial Seats. Shirahtet, First Priest of Kassiopei, enters the antechamber, and all heads turn to greet his arrival.
Immediately there are whispers, because Shirahtet is carrying a familiar, large, glowing orb. It has a mother-of-pearl, matte surface, and its interior is filled with pulsing, multi-colored light. . . .
My heart skips a beat. . . .
The orb is precisely the kind that we’ve dealt with in Stage Four of the Games—it’s a quantum containment field surrounding a living pegasus.
As soon as I realize it, the very next instant I start feeling a familiar buzzing at the spot in the middle of my forehead.
It’s as if the mere act of recall—combined with tangible recognition of the pegasei presence before me—invokes a cascade of memories and the unique frequency that connects us.
In that moment I know that as soon as I bring that frequency to the forefront of my awareness—as soon as I permit myself to think it—the floodgates of communication will open once again. . . . I will be able to reach out to this particular pegasus entity, and to Arion, and to all other pegasei in the vicinity . . . and possibly further outward and beyond.
Not yet. . . .
I start to move in reflex, but immediately feel Aeson’s large hand close over mine to hold me from jumping out of my seat and doing something crazy. On the other side of the Imperator, Manala gasps.
Not yet . . . not yet.
“Ah, the wait is over,” the Imperator says loudly. “And the honorable Rai of Bastet is correct in suspecting that something significant has been discovered in the sarcophagus of my newfound Kassiopei ancestor. Yes, ter-i-taq, we have a remarkable and disturbing revelation to announce before all of the global public. And it involves the pegasei. Shirahtet, proceed.”
Shirahtet steps into the middle of the room, pausing before the elevated Throne Seats. But his attention is not on the Imperator but all the rest of us—the IEC members and the hovering remote-link screens with the foreign leaders. He holds up the pulsing light orb for all to see.
“You all know and value these quantum energy creatures—so vital to us over the centuries. In the beginning they served as our original deep space navigation markers and cosmic anchors to plot our way along the stars. Later we discovered their many uses as ideal subjects for advanced energy tech research, not to mention, prized living art possessions for the wealthy. Honorable ter-i-taq—today we learned that these pegasei have served a much darker role over the thousands of years of our civilization.”
“What darker role?” an IEC member asks.
“Unfortunately, they are what has kept the ancient passageway between Earth and Ae-Leiterra open, despite the Great Quantum Shield!” Shirahtet pronounces loudly in a voice of power. “We harvest them at the Rim, thinking they are but a symptom of the Shield’s weakness, when in fact they are the cause!”
Whispers fill the chamber.
“All the regular maintenance that must be done at the Rim every few years—all of it is the direct result of the pegasei! They are like foreign shards left inside an open wound gushing in the fabric of space-time. They keep it from closing up and healing itself—which puts us forever in danger from this accursed quantum passageway. And the worst of it is—we placed them there! It’s entirely our own fault. Our ancient ancestors decided to leave the back door open behind them, so-to-speak. Instead of breaking the link, closing us off safely from alien pursuit, they made sure it can never be closed. They lied to us and to themselves!”
“What exactly does this mean? How did our ancestors ‘place’ the pegasei?” the Oratorat of Eos-Heket asks from her smart screen linkup.
“How? They simply separated them from their own kind, like pulling apart a ball of tacky glue,” the Imperator interjects with a bitter laugh. “Except, it was done with quantum glue through a cosmic wormhole. So now the wormhole is filled with the energetic strings of their quantum residue—the pegasei living essence stretched across the universe.”
“My Sovereign Lord is eloquent in his description indeed,” Shirahtet elaborates. “Given what we now know—we surmise, this is what happened. Numerous flocks of pegasei were taken by our ancestors with them when they left Earth. They were brought here to our new world by means of the ancient cosmic passage that originated in a dangerous dimensional rift on Earth. Apparently—according to the new sources we just discovered in the ancient sarcophagus—these beings are all linked together, entangled at the quantum level. When you take even one of them to the opposite end of the universe, it’s like tying an unbreakable string from it to the others—quantum glue. The entanglement acts to create a tunnel through space-time. It’s a permanent link between here and there—our ancient home world with all its compounded dangers and its permanent dimensional rift.”
“Dimensional rift?” Imperial Executive Council Member Takhat echoes softly.
“I am so confused,” Pharikon Heru says suddenly in a rambling, extra-shaky voice, ignoring the IEC member. “You say that our blessed fool ancestors wanted to both shield us from the effects of the rift and yet keep the way to the rift open? What idiocy. Why? Tell me, Kassiopei, how much of this have you known? How much did Etamharat, your blessed Father, teach you? Because my own blessed Father told me only what Heru must do to maintain our end of the global bargain, and that is to shield the accursed Ae-Leiterra and whatever comes forth from it!”
“I knew only as much as you did,” the Imperator says to the Pharikon in a domineering tone. “This part—about keeping the rift open, is news to me as much as it is to you. The only reason we know any of it is because we just discovered our ancient Kassiopei ancestor’s confession!”
“You keep saying, dimensional rift?” the Oratorat asks. “What dimensional rift are you talking about?”
“Oh, gods of Atlantis. . . .” Over at his small screen, Areviktet Heru groans and rubs the bridge of his wrinkled, hooked nose.
The chamber fills with noise. IEC Council member voices rise; various heads of state speak out simultaneously in digitally amplified voices from their hovering screens. . . .
“Kassiopei, it’s time we shared some of our ancient burdens with our global colleagues,” the Pharikon says loudly, cutting through the clamor. His quaver is gone, and shades of his former vocal strength are there undeniably—in what once must’ve been a Logos voice. “I am old. I am tired of keeping secrets—especially at a time of planetary crisis such as this. They, our ancient enemy, have found us, and if we’re all about to perish, might as well share the burden and try to find a solution to our common problem.”
There’s a sudden lull, a pause in the room noise level.
“For once—I agree,” the Imperator replies, with a meaningful look at Shirahtet, then back at Heru.
“So, do you want to tell everyone about the dimensional rift on Earth, or should I?” Pharikon Heru pauses to cough, but continues with strength. “We can begin with the Ra Disk in New D
eshret, singing its damn song in harmony with your accursed Atlantis Grail, both of them apparently unstoppable.”
“Wait—what?” Wilem Paeh, the Crown Hereret of Vai Naat speaks up. He’s a brown-haired, light brown-skinned older monarch, staring from his smart screen linkup at all of us in the chamber from the vantage point of his opulent office.
But the Imperator ignores the question and continues in response to the Pharikon, “Ah yes, the Atlantis Grail Monument and the Ra Disk Monument. Indeed, they are two pieces of one thing—broken down components of the primary ancient ark-ship that brought our ancestors here from Earth. Vocal maintenance by Logos voices has been keeping them shielded for eons, under the extension of the Great Quantum Shield of Ae-Leiterra.”
“Your national landmark monument in Poseidon is an ark-ship? And the national landmark in New Deshret?” the Crown Hereret persists. “What kind of stunning nonsense is this?”
“Don’t forget, all the Original Colony ships were considered lost—until most of them were discovered on the Ghost Moon,” Rai Arelik interjects.
“Stunning, but not nonsense.” The Imperator chooses his words slowly. “Turns out, the entire ark-ship is keyed to a frequency that matches the unstable dimensional rift on Earth—the reason why our ancestors escaped Earth in the first place, and the reason our ancient enemy is hunting us up to this day.”
Voices fill the room in waves.
The Imperator takes a deep breath. “The Great Quantum Shield held together everything—the dimensional rift back on Earth, the ancient passageway at Ae-Leiterra, the various resonating components of the ark-ship, the Ghost Moon itself. Everything—all the dangerous, volatile pieces of the ancient past—safely isolated, locked away into their own quantum realities, or otherwise contained and neutralized—without being destroyed, because their destruction itself would bring the ancient enemy upon us.”
Romhutat Kassiopei pauses.
“And then, the Shield failed. Subtly and quietly it happened, several years ago, during a Rim maintenance mission. . . . My Imperial Father, Etamharat Kassiopei, died trying to contain it and the resulting cascade reaction. His last communication to me—relayed from his shuttle just before it succumbed to the rending forces of the black hole—was a terrible revelation. The words of his message are etched permanently into my mind.
“The pegasei keep coming in greater numbers—he told me—and the alien enemy will follow, to end our species. Without a Shield to protect us, you must do everything in your power to close the rift. Return to Earth, do it on site. If you find a modern human population on Earth, bring them to Atlantis. It will change our genetic pool, disguise it sufficiently to throw off the enemy’s means of detection of us. Modern Earth DNA infused into our own will shield us now. The enemy will conclude that we are no longer the same ancient rebels who disobeyed. After all, if they spared humanity on Earth up to this day, permitted them to go on living, it is because they thought humanity had changed—evolved into something worthy of existence.”
The Imperator grows silent, and there is a terrible, wistful expression in his dark blue eyes. It is a look I have never seen before.
“And thus, Etamharat Kassiopei died. Now you know the true underlying reason for the Earth Mission,” he says softly.
More noise and agitated voices rise in the chamber.
“But—getting back to pegasei—” The Imperator nods to Shirahtet, and his expression becomes a stone dragon mask of composure once again. “There is yet another secret revelation we discovered from the information contained in my ancestor’s sarcophagus. The pegasei are not what we think. They are not animals but sentient alien beings. Advanced and sentient. It is likely they can help us in this fight.”
This time the chamber grows silent, then once again erupts.
“What?”
“Imperial Sovereign, what are you saying?”
“What does it mean? The pegasei are—”
“Imperator, forgive me, but what nonsense!”
“Sentient aliens? No. . . . How can that be? I can’t believe it,” the Oratorat of Eos-Heket says loudly. “What proof do you have?”
“Agreed, we need proof,” First Speaker Anen Qur of Ubasti says in a cool, rational voice. “Before you present such an outlandish claim, you must demonstrate the validity—”
“Well, Kassiopei?” Pharikon Heru blasts the room with his old man’s voice. “What proof is there? What else does your archeological discovery tell you about these colorful quantum things?”
Shirahtet responds in a conciliatory manner, glancing at the Imperator, “We are still in the process of reading the new scroll records—”
But the Imperator raises his hand for silence. “Honorable ter-i-taq! I have no proof yet but I will find it shortly, I have no doubt.”
I glance at Aeson. My husband looks at me with an inflamed expression.
I nod to him.
And we both stand up.
“My Imperial Father,” Aeson says in his resonant voice. “You may not have proof, but we do.”
Everyone is staring at us. The room has grown silent and the Imperator turns to look up at his son and me from the vantage of his Throne as we stand on the upper stair of the dais, then descend together onto the main floor below.
“Aeson? What is it?” the Imperator asks without any preamble, since the time for posturing is over. “What do you know?”
Aeson merely nods at me.
I approach Shirahtet, and point to the orb with its imprisoned pegasus. “May I?”
Shirahtet glances at the Imperator, who in turn motions with his hand for us to proceed.
I take the orb into my arms, holding it gently against my chest as one holds a child, feeling its slightly warm surface, with all its potential heat underneath. My forehead buzzes fiercely with the impending blast of mind connection.
I embrace the orb in my arms, recalling the Games, only this time without any quantum harness to re-capture the liberated being inside—once I set it free.
And then I simply imagine the frequency held in my most precious corner of memory.
In my mind I sing the note that binds me to Arion, to this pegasus, to all of them. Simultaneously, I sing it out loud, using it as the keying command to dissolve the quantum containment orb.
My voice sounds clear and strong, a single pure note cutting through the air.
There is a small explosion in my arms—a bright pop accompanied by an electric shock, followed by a riot of colors—as swirling plasma energy expands in a widening light-cloud around me and then hangs still. . . .
Gasps and stifled exclamations fill the antechamber. People around me cry out in wonder. Atlanteans are used to seeing pegasei contained—either in their natural form within quantum “faraday cages” such as the orbs, or shapeshifted into animal form while bound in a quantum harness, or even escaping wildly—but not like this, stationary and gently floating nearby while completely unrestrained.
But I don’t hear any of it because there’s a corresponding explosion inside me, in the location of my forehead. At once, the familiar opening sensation overwhelms me—a thousand sights and sounds and a river of sensory input rush inside me, widening the tunnel in my mind. . . .
Struggling to regain control of the flood of data pouring into me, I allow my peripheral senses to experience and “hear” the bright pegasus being pulsing around me in a nebula. It remains nearby, surrounding me in its energy cloud, and does not leave, does not dissipate into the air—simply waits.
“Hello, friend,” I think-say at it/him/her. “Forgive me, forgive all of us for your confinement.”
I am grateful for the freedom, human Gwen Lark who is Kassiopei, replies a profound, genderless, ageless voice of the quantum being.
I don’t know its/his/her name. But I do know one name.
And so, I think-say that familiar name, calling out with all my heart.
Arion.
Chapter 85
As soon as my mind shapes the name a
nd my memory calls up the unique interior voice, Arion is there.
At the same time, Arion is here, physically present in the room.
A tiny sonic boom precedes Arion’s arrival—or better to say, expansion into the current space-time reality, displacing the air around him.
Again, people gasp. . . .
He appears in the same shapeless plasma cloud as the being I just liberated, and floats in the air before me, just a few feet away—it is the pegasei natural form. In fact, Arion’s plasma and the other pegasus’s plasma immediately begin interacting, swirling together in vapor filaments, creating intricate shapes of radial and bilateral symmetry where they overlap—which must also be their natural way of being.
And yes, I realize that he is not really a “he,” but that’s the pronoun I’ve been using to refer to Arion in my thoughts, and he is fine with it.
Gwen Lark who is Kassiopei, I greet you again, Arion says to me at once, and I feel a sudden warm inflection in my mind.
“Arion!” I think-say. “So good to see you again! I’m very sorry to have to call you suddenly like this, and in public, but my fellow humans already know about the true nature of your species.”
Yes, and now it is the right time. Arion’s calming tone of voice fills my consciousness. We have been waiting for all the elements to align, as the timeline converges upon this moment and the next which will culminate in mutual significance.
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Is it about liberating your species?”
Yes, Arion replies. It will liberate both of our species at last. Yours and mine.
“Oh!” I say, this time out loud.
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