by Mark Kraver
Hastily erected grandstands with rock n’ roll bands singing to high heaven were alongside Bible banging preachers shooting fire out of their mouths, shaking their accusing fingers at all the sinners who need to hurry up and repent before it was too late—and to tithe, of course, in case they were left behind.
A near constant barrage of small blinking battery-powered drone aircraft drifted up from the campfires like sparks; closer and closer each one approached, until silent automated repulsor beams from the cloud deemed them too close and directed them out to sea.
Numen’s eyes blinked several times, his assessment complete, and continued explaining. “—I stopped by our crash site to make sure everything was still in order.”
Yahweh frowned.
Numen wasn’t sure how to file his master’s response, so he placed it in a subfolder of his “Dissatisfaction” file under the name ‘Skepticism,’ for later analysis.
“I did leave a capable cherub to look after you,” Numen added, in his defense.
“Oh, so you were looking out after me, indirectly.” Yahweh frowned again.
“The topography of the crash site had changed, as the Ice Age had receded. The riverbank we landed in had moved off to the East and no longer threatened to wash out your sanctuary. I piled rocks over you to simulate a small temple. I thought you would like that.”
Oddly enough, this did make Yahweh feel a little more appreciated. His frown relented.
“Then I went across the ocean to explore El’s location.”
“Curious, why El instead of Ra?”
“It was an alphabetical sort. Ra’s ship was later located in one of the most desolate regions on the planet. An area along the Red Sea now called the Hala’ib Triangle. Today, this area is disputed by two countries and only valued for its rich hydrocarbon reserves buried deep under its crust.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“Quite the contrary,” Numen said. “When Ra was active, this region was desirably landscaped with lush forests, fertile soil, plentiful rainfall, and abundant animal life. It was called Eden in those days. She had a loyal following of Homo sapiens called the Nubians and was a practicing deity. She transformed the northern continent into a mighty nation now called Egypt.”
“Egypt? No shit,” Yahweh said, tugging on his earlobe. He’d been waiting for the appropriate moment to use that newly acquired human explicative.
“Yes, I was diverted as well. Naming the region after the old Elohim name for ‘toilet’ must have reflected on her impression of the people of this region, or that the entire northern continent drained into the Nile River, which backs up, and floods each rainy season. I was not briefed on which she meant. I found El in a thriving civilization on the western slopes of what was then-called the Black Valley. It wasn’t really a valley. It was more like a below-sea-level region between the continents of Europe and Asia. Not sure why Earthlings think this landmass is two different continents, but—” Numen processed the exasperated look on his master’s face. “Sorry. I digress, again.”
Numen adjusted his approach to stay more focused. “This was approximately a half anton after our crash. El had been working with the local population of Homo sapiens to do what I was trying to do on this side of the Atlantic Ocean,” he said, “which was to educate and evolve them. El was having much better success than I. He too, was a practicing deity and had some very loyal followers. But he was very frail.”
“He wasn’t hibernating?”
“No, he knew of the alphabiotic signatures,” Numen continued, “and that the sun would soon turn into a red giant. I gave him a full report of our status; at that point my plan had yet to bear any fruit. You, of course, were in hibernation, which he appreciated the need for, but he was disappointed in our lack of progress. In my report were also some planetary observations I had made, such as air temperatures versus carbon dioxide levels and sea levels. He was much more receptive to a detailed report than—”
“Yes?” Yahweh asked, daring Numen to criticize his earlier decisions.
“—than necessary,” Numen finished, “and he was very interested in the receding Ice Age.”
“Couldn’t he see himself that the ice was receding? He still had a functioning entourage of seraph and cherubim, didn’t he?”
El’s seraph was named Baal, and the cherubim he spoke of weren’t Anti-Babel cherubim, which were by design single minded in both function and personality, but rather traditional cherubim—which were much more sophisticated, complex and personable. They had long been used to monitor and protect their assigned master, whether it be Elohim (who typically enjoyed a pet-like friendship with their respective cherubim) or humans (who pretty much didn’t realize their cherubim existed).
“Yes,” Numen answered, “but he was most interested in the ocean’s water levels.”
“Water levels?”
“As I had alluded earlier, El’s ship was located on the slopes of the Black Valley, below the rising sea level. An enormous waterfall flowed into the valley to the southwest of his ship. I followed this gushing river for a short distance, watching the occasional colossal-sized sea mammal crash down and spill its organs on the rocks below. El recognized that the entire valley would soon be inundated, thus submerging his ship under deep water.”
“That would severely limit his access to the planet’s surface,” said Yahweh.
“Correct.”
“An alternative would be to move his ship,” Yahweh summarized.
“Or at least his pod, so that’s what we did. As you know, Elohim hibernation pods are self-sufficient and portable. They are used in ships, satellites, and planetary installations. El was nearing the end of his anton of life in this universe. Under his orders, Baal—who is now called Ba—instructed his followers to build an enormous floating vessel they called an ark. All of their livestock and possessions, including El’s hibernation pod, was stored inside this ark.”
“Curious, why is Baal now called Ba?” Yahweh asked.
“I suppose it reflects on the dialect of the people who continued to follow him. I believe it is ancient Elohim convention that the more illustrious one becomes, the shorter the name.”
“It dawned on me that I never asked if you liked your name. I was torn between Numen and Fred.”
“Fred?”
“Yes, Fred. I like the way the word comes out of my mouth. When I first saw you, you didn’t look like a Fred.”
“I looked like a Numen?”
“Yes, would you like your name changed?” Yahweh smiled. “The shorter, the more illustrious. How about Num, hum? Maybe Nu? Or Na? That is as simple as Ba, don’t you think? Come now, tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
“Are you telling me this because you want to be called Ya?”
“No, of course not. My mother gave me my name in collaboration with my father, and it means a great deal to me.”
“My name was given to me by my master, and it too means a great deal to me,” said Numen. Although, once the suggestion had been made, he did begin to think about being called Nu.
Chapter 35
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, Earth
Library of Souls
Big Cypress
Landing in the dark wasn’t a problem for the Learjet pilot, it was that he had to land the retrofitted forty-million-dollar, twin-engine jet on an abandoned airfield in the middle of the Florida Everglades without an active control tower or lights. General Cathguard, head of Army Intelligence, sat shotgun in the copilot’s seat. He was there on orders from the President to get to the bottom of this alien mess.
Looking out the jet’s small side window, Cathguard received a call on his private encrypted satellite phone from his military attaché.
Over the top-secret link-up, the attaché began describing the scene unfolding further up the East Coast. “General, the beaches are too crowded to set-up the particle beam weapon. It gonna take—”
&
nbsp; Cathguard cut him off. “I don’t care what it takes,” he blurted out. “Get the armament set up and ready.”
“But Wrightsville Beach is in North Carolina,” the attaché protested.
“I don’t care where it is. Anywhere before that cloud gets into striking range of Washington,” Cathguard ordered, still looking out the copilot’s cockpit window into the eternal blackness of the Everglades.
“Don’t you think a more remote location—”
“Remote location? No, I think the more crowded the better, don’t you? If we want to expose this hoax, we need witnesses,” Cathguard growled.
“Aren’t you afraid of collateral damage?”
“Collateral damage? Jesus wouldn’t let that happen, would he?” Cathguard asked, smiling. He put the phone down.
“There it is, General,” the pilot said, pointing to the barely perceptible landing lights to the port side of the aircraft’s nose. “Big Cypress Swamp Jetport—or what’s left of it.”
“Boy, what a huge waste of money that was. Who in their right mind would think a giant commercial airport would thrive in the ass-end of Florida? Looks like they are expecting us,” Cathguard said. “Flares don’t burn forever, Major. Get this bird on the ground before NEST catches wind of this and bottles the whole place up tighter than a flea’s ass over a rain barrel.”
“NEST, sir?” the pilot asked.
“Nuclear Emergency Search Team. Department of Energy, if you can believe it. They’re in charge of all alien crash sites,” Cathguard said, rolling his eyes—he was certain there had never been a real alien crash site. Until maybe now.
“We’ll be on the ground in two minutes, General.”
The jet banked to the starboard to line up with the glowing flares, then hard to the port as the jet began to lose altitude and settled into a perfect landing in the middle of nowhere.
“Here he comes,” Colonel Solomon said, watching the radar. He switched to infrared camera monitors inside his command post.
Agent Goodheart, sitting next to him, grunted and asked, “Now the shit hits the fan?”
Colonel Solomon looked back at the airplane hangar monitor that held the alien spacecraft, then to all the equipment being unloaded from the NEST transport plane, and then to the brightly lit ambulance parked a short distance away. “You can say that again.”
The jet taxied off the long east/west runway and stopped in front of the hangar. General Cathguard was the first person out, followed closely by his most trusted staff member—another full bird colonel like Solomon, who never spoke a word and mysteriously had no name badge on his army uniform. The general already knew the hangar housed the most important discovery in history but wanted to confirm everything for himself. After all, he had commanded the famed Area 51 at Roswell, New Mexico and saw firsthand how conspiracy theories got started. He knew those Roswell stories were all just a bunch of hooey; a nuclear test surveillance balloon crash from Project Mogul, and a fake grey alien named J-rod had spun countless sci-fi stories over the years, but he knew deep in his loin this time it was real.
Colonel Solomon snapped to attention and saluted the approaching general, smartly. “General, welcome to Big Cypress.”
The general cut him off with a short wave of his hand that was a poor imitation of a returning salute and jerked his head toward the unloading transport. “Cut the shit, Colonel. I know where I am. How long have they been here?”
“You mean NEST? Not long, sir. Just got the runway lit for more transports.”
“Uh-huh. Keep them out of my way. Is there anything I need to know about this artifact before I go in and inspect it, Colonel?” Cathguard stopped inches from the colonel’s nose, expecting a resounding “No, sir!”
But instead the colonel answered, “Yes, sir.”
General Cathguard looked annoyed. “Then let’s have it so I can get to work.”
“I don’t know where to begin.”
Cathguard sighed loudly to show his exasperation. “The beginning, son. The beginning.”
Solomon nodded. “Well, sir, after the aliens left for the greater Miami area—”
“We’ve all heard what it did there. Go on.”
“We felt it was a good time to investigate the spacecraft.”
“Good. What did you find?”
The colonel looked around. “Sir,” he said, his voice slightly lower, “we had an accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
Goodheart and the colonel both flinched as the hangar lit up with a bright flash of light and an echoing of a soft puffing noise.
“And then there is that. Not sure what to make of it. It started happening about an hour after they left in the cloud, sir. It recurs every six minutes and thirty-nine seconds.”
“Where is it coming from?” the general asked, squinting his eyes to see something in the darkness.
“Not sure, but some of the men think they saw something coming out of the larger craft when a light strobed on.”
“Something? What did it look like?”
“They looked like babies, sir.”
“Babies?”
“Yes sir, naked babies.”
“Naked babies?”
“Yes sir, flying naked babies. So far, we’ve counted eighty-one. That one makes eighty-two.”
The general didn’t know what to say. He looked at the colonel to see if he was joking, but the colonel was careful not to smile or show levity.
“We wanted to take some samples of the hull to send in for analysis,” continued Colonel Solomon.
“Yes?” the general grunted, looking around the outside of the hangar for something flying.
“The ship, we think has some kind of field around it, sir. The technician who was taking the sample, well—” The colonel paused and looked toward the brightly lit army ambulance. “I think it would be better to show you, sir. Over here.”
The general marched to the ambulance with Solomon on one side and his aloof assistant on the other. As they reached the door, Cathguard said, “Corpsmen, show me your patient.”
The two medics came to attention and saluted. The one with the patient inside the ambulance had to hunch over to keep his head from bumping the ceiling as he saluted.
“At ease, show me your patient,” the general repeated.
The corpsmen inside glanced at the patient before jumping out of the back of the ambulance, making room for the general to step into the vehicle.
Cathguard bent his head as he approached the wounded soldier.
“Are you alright, son?” he asked. His voice had taken on the soft, grandfatherly tone every officer used when addressing someone who had fallen in battle under their command.
The young man was in his twenties. He had dark brown hair and brown eyes. He appeared to be Hispanic, or even Middle Eastern. He was sedated, but his swollen red eyes suggested he had been crying.
“Show me what happened,” the general gestured to the man’s bandaged right hand. “Is this it? What happened, son?”
The wounded man cried out with a blood curdling scream, “It’s gone!”
“What do you mean?” flinched the general. “What’s gone?”
The hysterical specialist screamed again louder, causing the general to withdraw for a second. The general placed a firm comforting hand on the young man’s forehead for a moment, then backed out of the ambulance slowly. On the ground, he faced the colonel and Goodheart with ringing ears.
“What happened? An explosion?”
A flash of light and a puff sound came from the hangar, causing all three to turn around and look.
“No explosion, sir,” the colonel explained. “Specialist Shoap reached up to touch the craft, and then began screaming about how his hand was missing. But obviously it’s not as you can see. And the medics say his hand is perfectly intact, nothing wrong with it.”
“What?” the general asked. He had fought in the Vietnam War, and he thought he had heard and seen it all. “He thinks his hand is
missing? Was he showing any emotional distress or instability before that?”
“No sir, he’s always been solid as a rock,” Solomon said. “Now he thinks his hand melted away when he touched the hull of the ship.”
“Hypnosis?” the general asked.
“Maybe.” Solomon shrugged.
“Why didn’t that happen to anybody when you moved it here?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Goodheart raised his finger to tell the general about how the doctor had warned them not to touch the ship but was cut off short.
“Who is this?” the general asked.
“I’m Special Agent Garth Goodheart, FBI. I dug this damn thing up and brought it here to get it out of the public eye.”
“Created quite a circus,” the general added, shaking his head. “Is it safe to look at?”
“Safe enough,” the colonel said, turning to escort the general to the hangar so the FBI agent wouldn’t tell the him they had been warned.
Chapter 36
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look, but it was gone, I cannot put my finger on it now, the child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.
David Gilmore, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, 1979, Earth
Library of Souls
Paradox
Logan was uncomfortable looking down at the amazed full moon-shaped faces surrounding beach bonfires for as far as her eyes could see. These people had waited all day to glimpse what everyone thought was Jesus Christ returning for Judgement Day. She was still trying to figure out what had happened back on that dark stretch of beach hours before. Numen and Yahweh never even flinched as bullets hit the cloud. Could they be that advanced?