Creation- The Auditor’s Apprentice

by Frank Stonely

  ‘I’ll be fucked!’ the general said, adjusting the focus and sensitivity controls. In the centre of the otherwise black image was a group of yellow, almost golden figures, standing next to a purple object illuminated by their body heat. ‘Got’cha! Ya mother-fuckers!’ He lowered the binoculars and examining the controls said, ‘Can these things display range?’

  ‘Juss press this button,’ the SAS officer said, reaching across and pressing the range display button.

  The general raised the binoculars to his eyes and aimed directly at the group on the plateau, ‘Take this down,’ he said to his aide. ‘Range, one thousand, five-hundred and twenty-eight metres. Bearing, ninety-four point two degrees. Elevation, thirty-eight point four degrees. Now get your ass over to the rocket launcher, their targeting system should give us the exact GPS coordinates.’

  ‘Yes, Sir! I’ll get my ass over to the rocket launcher! They won’t know what hit’em, Sir!’

  ‘No firing! I just want the coordinates.’

  ‘Yes, Sir! No firing, you just want the coordinates, Sir!’ The enthusiastic aide jumped out of the Hummer, disappearing into the mist and rain.

  ‘Good call,’ the general said, handing the binoculars back to the British officer.

  ‘We ay juss try'n ter earn us share o'de reward, General,’ he replied, turning to jog back through the rain to his Land Rover.

  On board the Solar Explorer probe all was going well, and SAP was congratulating itself as to how efficiently it had handled the power problems. It checked its systems again; the heat shield was performing excellently. With an external temperature of four-thousand eight-hundred degrees kelvin, the cargo bay was being held at a constant forty-eight degrees Celsius, well below the maximum of ninety degrees. The rate of power consumption was lower than it had anticipated and now that the Military Equipment Pod’s energy requirements seemed to have stabilised, there should be more than enough reserves to power up the remaining experiments. It did have one power issue though; there didn’t seem to be enough reserves for the return journey to Earth. According to the navigation subroutine, whilst the spacecraft had sufficient momentum to pass through the Sun and transmit its data back to the NASA ground station, the gravitational attraction would then pull the probe back into the Sun on a trajectory which would impact with the core. SAP could only assume that there were booster rockets fitted to the probe which, for some reason, its systems were unaware of. It made a note in memory location 3FA387CB to query this with NASA when it regained contact.

  Alarm P3 activated and SAP found itself running the Mission Modelling application, with an entry code instructing it to check the probe’s position against the mission plan. There was definitely a problem. The probe’s position was almost fifty kilometres short of where the mission plan predicted. It recalculated the entry angle and fired the side thruster for fifteen seconds to correct the trajectory, before adding yet another entry in the growing mission log.

  It wasn’t just the solar probe that had observed the effect of time slowing down, Daniel had noticed it too. Everything around him seemed to be moving in slow motion. He watched as Charlie took milk from Amy’s breast. His eyelids, normally blinking in an instant, could be seen to distinctly close and then reopen again. Amy looked up, ‘He’s beautiful, isn’t he?’ she said, in a voice at least a semitone lower than normal.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘Wonderful,’ she replied, gently caressing the crown of Charlie’s head.

  ‘No, Amy! Think about it. How do you really feel? How do things look around you? How does my voice sound?’

  Amy raised her hand and rotated the splayed fingers in front of her face, ‘What’s happening, Daniel? It feels like Haamiah’s lock-down.’

  Mrs. Perkins came rushing into the cavern, ‘Have you noticed it too?’ she said, as Amy strained to open and close her fist. ‘It’s got to be an effect of the approaching extraction wave. It’s getting so bright out there you have to squint to stop the glare.’

  Daniel turned to Amy, ‘Quickly! Get Charlie ready, we haven’t got much time.’ His voice was now like a baritone’s, deep and totally unrecognisable. Amy could feel her arms being resisted as she tried to dress Charlie. The effect on time seemed to be growing exponentially, but her mind was as clear as a bell and unaffected.

  Anubis ran into the cavern, each stride taking what seemed like seconds, his voice was now almost too deep to be understood. ‘Go to the drone, NOW!’ he bellowed as he made his way to the power distribution panel at the rear of the cavern. Mesmerised, the others watched as Anubis struggled to close the contactor that supplied power to the drone. Regardless of the effort he used, the lever would only move at its own sedate pace, eventually closing the switch with a dull thump that caused the lights in the cavern to momentarily flicker. Verbal communication had become impossible and Anubis just beckoned for the others to follow him as he fought his way out of the cavern. Daniel hauled Charlie up from his crib, then grasping Amy’s wrist, towed her across the cavern towards the glowing entrance.

  Fifteen minutes later they emerged onto the plateau, forced to shield their eyes against the blinding, green daylight. Anubis was holding the control panel, struggling to enter the drone’s power-up command. He turned and slowly gestured for the others to join him. But with time continually expanding, it took over an hour before Daniel, Amy and Mrs. Perkins climbed into their seats.

  The previous day, Anubis had given Amy the task of making improvised harnesses out of the seat belts taken from the Land Cruiser. These he attached to the four inclined seats, set into the upper casing of the drone. Anubis climbed into the pilot’s seat, with Tanka behind, and Amy and Daniel laying either side of him, their inclined heads almost touching.

  Amy was struggling to close her harness, the normally flexible webbing responding as though it had been woven from steel. She looked towards Daniel, who was cradling Charlie in his arms. The task seemed impossible. The more effort she used, the more the harness straps resisted her. Then, miraculously, the buckle closed itself, the straps tightening to pull her shoulders back into her seat. As Daniel turned to see who, or what, had come to their aid, Charlie was whisked out of his arms and thrust into Amy’s lap. With no finesse, Daniel found his harness being buckled, the straps pressing uncomfortably against his chest. When all four of them were secured into their seats, their rescuer stood for an instant to admire his work. The pause was just long enough for Daniel to recognise the smile on Orion’s face.

  Anubis had spent the last ten minutes watching his index finger slowly descend towards the Activation button, only to have the control panel wrenched away as Orion forced his arms through the harness straps. Daniel’s heart sank as he watched the control panel drifting away from the drone and out of their reach. Suddenly Orion’s hand appeared, plucking the panel from the air and returning it to Anubis just as his finger completed its journey.

  The panel acknowledged the command with an inaudibly low bleep before releasing a stream of electrons into the cables attached to the drone’s extension arms. Slowly the emitters started to spit out photons of purple light. As each photon had its effect their numbers increased, cascading down like water from a shower head. As the drone became bathed in purple light, time began to accelerate, releasing their restricted limbs and allowing them to communicate once more.

  ‘Shit, that was close!’ Daniel said to Anubis.

  ‘Looks like I’ve rescued your little family again, Daniel,’ Anubis replied sarcastically.

  Amy strained to look into Anubis’ face, ‘YOU! RESCUED? If it wasn’t for Director Hedrick, you’d be in fucking Purgatory by now.’

  ‘Oh, would I? So, where is your precious Director Hedrick when you need him?’ Anubis replied, ‘Is he about to appear from nowhere and rescue you. I don’t think so. He’s probably stuffing his face in the Directors’ Club while everybody else does his work for him. He’s pathetic!’

  ‘You’re the pathetic one! And, if I have my way, y
ou’ll end up in Purgatory… for ETERNITY!’

  ‘Keep that bitch under control or I’ll leave her here!’ Anubis snarled at Daniel.

  ‘Stop this!’ Tanka shouted. ‘You can fight as much as you like once we’re out of here.’

  The tension was broken by Orion’s voice. ‘We’ve been spotted,’ he said, handing Daniel a pair of binoculars. ‘Look, down there, through the mist.’ Daniel looked through the binoculars, but all he could see was the mist and rain that filled valleys. Then an opening came and he found himself looking down onto General Williams’ Hummer.

  Unencumbered by creationist essence, time had passed normally for the general. The convoy of military vehicles had been following the track carved into the mountainside by the Land Cruisers, and the SAS officer was now sketching out the route towards the plateau with an outstretched arm.

  Suddenly there was the deafening scream of jet engines and whirling rotor blades as an Apache helicopter rose, unannounced, over the edge of the precipice at the rear of the plateau. The pilot’s featureless black visor stared at the group as he hovered, fifty metres away from the drone, requesting engagement instructions from the general. The Apache’s rotors kicked up a dense cloud of dust that completely obscured the drone, forcing Amy to cover Charlie’s face.

  ‘Do not engage! Repeat. Do NOT engage!’, the general screamed into his radio. The pilot pushed his stick left to take the aircraft away from the plateau but, before the rotors could respond, Orion leapt up, grabbed the undercarriage and hurled the helicopter into the sky like a stick being tossed for a dog. The g-force was so great that the rotor blades were stripped away as the aircraft followed an arc which brought it crashing to the ground, only metres away from the general. The exploding fuel tanks blew the Hummer’s windows out, the body of the vehicle shielding the general and the SAS officer from the blast. Instinctively, they had dropped to the ground and, as they stood up again, debris was raining down all around them. The general flinched as the pilot’s helmet, still containing his severed head, bounced off the Hummer’s bonnet and onto the ground, coming to rest against his boot. ‘That mother-fucker’s just shot down my helo,’ he snarled in disbelief.

  As the echoes of the exploding Apache began to fade, the general was knocked off his feet again, this time by the shock wave coming from the muzzle of an Abrams tank parked behind what was left of his Hummer. The round flew over his head, leaving a swirling hole in the mist. There was a flash, followed seconds later by the sound of an explosion, as the shell hit the rock face immediately above the plateau. The general turned and screamed at the tank to stop firing. He grabbed his ears and staggered back as a second round left the barrel, this time landing just below the plateau, throwing rocks and boulders down the mountainside. The tank’s targeting computer twitched its barrel a few millimetres to the left and increased its elevation. This shot was going to be right on the money, the gunner thought, as his finger hovered over the fire button. Suddenly his view of the target was blocked, replaced by the general’s face staring into the gun sight, shouting obscenities.

  The cascade of rocks falling from above the cavern entrance had almost severed the drone’s power cable, causing its electrical supply to fail intermittently. The resulting twitching of time made Amy feel quite nauseous; one second it passed normally then, when the power failed, it was like living in a vat of transparent syrup. Daniel tried to release his harness in an attempt to get to the damaged cable but, each time the power failed, his body became rigid as though he was suffering from some terrible locked-in syndrome.

  As before the Gatekeeper came to their aid, silently instructing Daniel to stay in his seat with a raised hand. Daniel watched intently as unaided tools repaired the damaged cable, stripping back the outer sheath to reconnect the severed conductors.

  Once the power was restored, Amy became aware of Charlie wriggling against her once more. She looked across at Orion and mouthed the words, thank you. Pleased with the job he had done, Orion then amused himself by hurling the rocks and boulders that had fallen onto the plateau at the general’s advancing troops.

  46

  Desperate Measures

  The Military Equipment Pod in cargo bay six had begun to demand more power and, in order to comply with its imperative status, the probe’s Self Aware Processor had been shutting down the other experiments. In addition, the environmental subroutine was struggling to maintain an ambient temperature below ninety degrees centigrade. SAP checked the external temperature again; six thousand three-hundred and twenty-one point three degrees Kelvin, nothing unusual there. ‘I must update the mission team when I get back home, this environmental subroutine is totally inadequate.’ SAP stored an aide memoire in memory location 3FA387FE.

  Alarm P7 activated, and SAP found itself jumping into the Power Management utility again. It was yet another power request from the MEP. ‘This is ridiculous! At this rate there won’t be an experiment left running, and I’m getting extremely concerned about my power reserves to get home. If things don’t improve soon I’m going to shut down cargo bay six. I’m sure that’s what my controller would want me to do. If only I could speak to NASA.’

  The angels Haamiah and Rampel had been giving a presentation to the Cralawian council, outlining the proposed automation of Dark Matter distillation. This process was carried out in the Cralaw dimension, five layers above Creation, by slug-like creatures that consumed the Dark Matter and then excreted the purified product. Cralawian slugs had an IQ in excess of four hundred and Haamiah was struggling to convince them of the benefits that automation would bring. She used Creation as an example, explaining how the angels and ghosts had surrendered the production of Dark Matter to planetary drones, designed and operated by creationists, a new lifeform specifically created for the task. Production had increased by three orders of magnitude which was why the Cralawians were struggling to process the volume of Dark Matter being sent to them. The meeting had been suspended while the council went into closed session to discuss Haamiah’s proposals. As the angels waited outside the council chamber, they discussed the events unfolding on the blue planet. Being omnipresent they had witnessed the attack on the cavern and the effect the extraction wave was having on the creationists’ essence. Haamiah’s enigmatic smile dissolved as she witnessed the terror in the eyes of Director Hedrick’s apprentice. But her death would be incidental, Lucifer was their true objective.

  ‘We are becoming increasingly troubled that the extraction wave may arrive too late,’ Haamiah said, her angelic face frowning with concern. ‘It would be embarrassing for Those-On-High if Lucifer were to escape and attempt another rebellion. We suggest that the angel Rampel returns to the blue planet to ensure that this does not happen.’

  By the time the last syllable of Haamiah’s sentence had been shared with the pack, Rampel was circling high above the plateau, the freshening wind ruffling the feathers of his outstretched wings.

  Two and a half million light-years away, the one point two trillion solar masses of the Andromeda galaxy were swept away in seconds as the extraction wave passed through. In normal circumstances this would have been a successful harvest, as the percentage of enriched Dark Matter in the galaxy’s spiral arms was almost fifteen percent. But Haamiah was not prepared to risk the possibility of corrupted DNA escaping the distillation process, so the complete mass of this universe would be sacrificed and returned to the Heavenly energy pool.

  In the White House, Tom knocked lightly on the door of the family dining room, ‘Mr. President, it’s time for you and the First Lady to leave, sir.’ He knocked again, this time with more urgency. ‘Mr. President! It’s time to go!’ The heavy, brass door handle struggled to turn and it took several seconds before the door started to open. Standing before him, wearing an Uncle Sam party hat, was the president’s five year old grandson. Unaware of Tom’s presence, the First Family was sat around the dining table talking and laughing, the remains of the banquet-sized Thanksgiving meal spread out before them. Empty bott
les of champagne and fine wine filled every available space between the serving dishes. Breaking with tradition, the president and his wife were sat alongside each other with their backs to the doors. Normally at family gatherings they sat at opposite ends of the dining table, with their children and grandchildren sitting either side of them. The president put his arm around his wife’s shoulder and whispered something into her ear. She started to giggle uncontrollably, like an eighth grade school girl on her first date. He sat back in his chair, laughing out loud and then took a gulp from the cut-crystal brandy glass held precariously in his outstretched hand.

  The president’s grandson was joined by his younger sister. She was wearing a miniature, pink ball gown and peddling a toy tricycle which she rode directly into Tom’s leg. ‘Shit,’ he said under his breath, rubbing his shin vigorously to dull the pain.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ her brother asked, in a surprisingly adult voice.

  ‘I would like to speak to the president, son.’

  The youngster turned and ran across the room towards his grandfather, calling out, ‘Grandpa, Grandpa, there’s a man with a gun at the door.’ Suddenly everybody in the room was staring at Tom, who felt his face starting to flush.