by Mark Kraver
“What was that?” Reeze shouted at the inexplicable firepower shooting out against the pursuing bubbles. It was coming from the other side of the landing deck, just far enough around the corner so she could not see its source.
Even Gouldian looked perplexed. “I have no idea,” he shouted, as a stray bolt blasted the deck around them, striking Klack to the ground. The other Throne turned to run, shouting back over the roar of explosions from the landing armada, “To the pod chamber!”
Briefly looking back at the adversarial army swarming onto the deck, Yahweh saw the Throne Klack on the ground, crackling with sparks from his blown apart left leg. The poor Throne tried to keep up with the rest of the group, but could only crawl on his belly like a reptile. Everyone continued running at full speed. Each time they put their foot down, a fight between gravity plating and gravity suit hesitated their advancement making everyone, including the pursuing army move in an animated stop slow motion. Sizzling lightning bolts struck the walls surrounding them and buzzed their feet with numbing electrical shocks as they clogged along. Gouldian and Kleem together were sending a constant barrage of lightning from their fists to their rear, obliterating the front rows of advancing forces.
When they reached the pod chamber, the entrance was shut. Numen stopped and stared at the closed door with disbelief. “It doesn’t open,” he said, stating the obvious without emotion.
“I know,” squealed Gouldian looking back at the approaching doom, and almost out of energy.
The menacing army of Throne and seraphim advanced, cutting off all chance for escape. Kleem panicked, pushing forward striking everyone in the back, slamming Gouldian’s large horned head against the door with a giant gong. The door immediately flew open.
“What? You didn’t think of knocking?” shouted Reeze.
The two Throne ran through the doorway before everyone else and entered darkness. With a flash of light, a beam automatically illuminated the small hibernation pod sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the large, circular room. Gouldian approached the pod, bowed his head, and said, “My Lord Magog, we seek your counsel.”
“Who dares approach?” asked a booming voice in the shadows, as several other Throne stomped the gravity plating into the chamber.
“Your humble Throne, Gouldian. There is a matter that affects the survival of the sphere,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the other angry Throne.
Walking into the beam of light in front of the pod, Magog’s personal seraph, Chad, glared at the growing crowd with fiery red eyes. He had a long white gown, oversized wings folded across his back, and a golden triangle between his large white horns.
“You have no powers here. Why is my master’s sleep disturbed?” Chad asked.
“If I may, I am Yahweh, Creator of Helios,” Yahweh said, sliding his glasses onto the top of his bald head and Chad’s gown and horns now glowed red. He slapped his right hand against his breast and bowed respectfully.
Chad was clearly unmoved. “Never heard of Helios.”
A beam of light shone from the hibernation pod, and the figure of Magog projected forward. She was wearing a silver-red triangular-shaped dress, and a similar triangular headdress. She looked around the room as the lights grew brighter to expose everyone standing in her chamber.
“Helios?” she asked. “Extinct galaxy of my birth?”
“No, my Lord. The Helios I speak of is a system of orbiting trojan planets surrounding the star Heaven. We were transplanting our planet through the Halo when we arrived here, which I have come to believe by accident.”
“I do not recall the star Heaven,” she said.
“That is because you have never heard of it before, my child,” a lone hornless and wingless, golden red-skinned seraph said, walking out of the crowd of agitated Throne.
Flipped down his glasses, Yahweh recognized the infamous figure at once. “Armilus?” he questioned with a puzzled grown.
“Do I know you?” Magog asked, as Chad stepped in front of the seraph to block his path to Magog’s pod.
“Do you remember love?” Armilus continued from where he stood. “Do you remember your birth? Do you remember your father?”
“Gog?” Magog gasped.
“Gog!” Yahweh gasped.
“Gog!” Zenith gasped.
“Gog?” asked Reeze.
The projection of Magog blinked slowly. “My father was lost to another universe more than fifty million antons ago.”
“Lost, but not gone,” mused the seraph. All eyes were on him as Yahweh and Zenith registered what Numen had determined moments earlier: this was Gog speaking from within Armilus’ body? “Living the way we do, hibernating, it is hard to know when your anton is complete.”
As Gog’s consciousness spoke, Armilus’ body brushed by Numen’s arm. The touch sparked Numen with static electricity that made his circuits dizzy with exploding data conversion.
“I have lived my cumulative anton of time,” Magog said, looking down at Yahweh. “You are still young. You are at your beginning, and I am at my end.”
“Is it not tradition to hand down your Deed Crystal to the next generation?” Gog asked.
“Yes,” said Magog, “to carry on the mantle of the Elohim.”
“I personally vouch for this Elohim. He has a good heart, good judge of character, a strong will to survive, and he knows right from wrong. He, on his first rescue mission, became heir Creator to my descend Creators in another universe, and he is currently transplanting by way of this universe to his own. You could not find a better successor to inherit your legacy.” Gog, through his seraph’s body, smiled his non-human smile at the embarrassed Yahweh.
“Impressive,” Magog said, nodding her head to the young Elohim. “But what is this urgent matter the Throne mention?”
“My lord, it has come to my attention that the sphere requires new raw materials,” Gouldian said, still bowing his head.
“The planetary guild is still functioning?” she asked.
“Yes, my Lord. The guild is still actively engaged in providing dead planets to build new spheres throughout this and many other galaxies in your realm,” Gouldian responded.
“But they’re afraid to come here,” Reeze blurted out and was quickly hushed by Zenith.
Magog turned to her trusted seraph, Chad, and received a billion-year update telepathically. Her eyes rolled up in the back of her head assimilating the data, and when she was finished she lowered her head and sighed. The gathered audience waited, watching in silent anticipation.
After a moment of surveying the eclectic group before her, Magog stretched out her arms. “I am ready for the next great adventure,” she said. “As I journey into the great unknown, I will fear not. I will prepare a dwelling for you, so when we journey together again, all will be pure.”
“Your wish is my command,” Chad pledged, bowing his head with hands to the side of his face.
She looked at the essence of her father inside Armilus, then nodded her head before announcing, “Yahweh, Creator of Helios, will you accept my Deed Crystals with conditions?”
“Crystals? Conditions?” Numen asked, still reeling with disorienting bursts of data conversion.
“I will, my Lord,” Yahweh answered with his head bowed, fist to chest.
Chad touched the side of Magog’s hibernation pod and not one, but two long crystals slid out, one ruby red and the other brilliant blue. Chad placed the crystals in Yahweh’s hands as Magog said, “I give freely to my successor, Yahweh of Helios, all my lifetime possessions. All hail Yahweh, Creator of Nirvana.”
With this proclamation, Magog vanished.
Yahweh was astonished. Puzzled, he looked at Zenith and Reeze who were smiling, and then at Numen, who looked worried and confused.
“What is it?” he asked Numen.
“Crystals? Conditions?” was all Numen could say, as his mitochondrial-core quantum molecular memory hummed.
Yahweh looked around the room at the departing angry Throne a
nd seraphim, and locked eyes on Armilus. Or Gog?
“Did you know the consciousness of Gog was locked inside Armilus?” he asked Numen telepathically.
“No,” was all Numen could force himself to say.
“I wonder what this second crystal is for?” Yahweh asked, looking at the two glowing crystals in his hands.
“My master’s conditions,” Chad said, as the last Throne left the chamber and the lights dimmed to illuminate only the pod, Yahweh and Gog.
“The look on your face was exquisite,” Gog said.
Yahweh frowned, flipped up his glasses on top of his bald head and studied the reassembled seraph with the consciousness of Gog, trying to hold back comment as long as he could bare.
“How did I do it?” asked Gog.
“I was played,” Yahweh challenged.
“It was actually Numen who was played, not you. You were sleeping, remember?”
Yahweh narrowed his eyes. “So, Numen was played when you let him defeat you in ancient Egypt and then again at Ra’s ship when I was first—”
“—when you were first made Creator? Yes. Both times. I wish I could have seen your face at Ra’s ship. It all seemed so easy to you, didn’t it?”
Yahweh put a hand to his earlobe, rubbing it as more pieces came together. “Then I was played at the Namibia Graviton Base Station during the moony rebellion. You let us take Armilus. You wanted us to disassemble him.” Yahweh shook his head in frustration. “Subterfuge to infect Numen with ill-ware and to use your navigational sphere in our transplant station during the exodus.”
Gog stood silently looking at him through Armilus’ ocular sensors, his golden arms folded across his chest.
“Where is Numen?” Yahweh asked, looking around the room and realizing that Numen, Chad and the girls were gone.
“Don’t worry. He is assimilating your inheritance,” Gog said, smiling an artificial grin.
“Yes, about that.”
“I don’t blame you for not liking me.”
“I don’t—”
“Nobody in that universe liked me, except my puppet Ra.”
Yahweh felt prickles on his neck, hearing how Gog regarded his master Ra. He decided to try a bit of subterfuge himself. “Wow, this whole universe thing...” Yahweh said, wanting to draw Gog out to reveal his game.
“Hard to grasp? Tell me about it. When I entered this universe for the first time, all those antons ago, I didn’t know what to think or where I was—you know the feeling. All I knew was that our guidance system had malfunctioned inside the Halo, and something wonderful happened. For the longest time, we searched for the slightest sign of Elohim civilization and found none.”
“Malfunctioned?”
“Let’s just say you can’t do certain course corrections inside a Halo without consequences.”
“How did you know you were in a different—”
“Universe? No discernible galactic patterns. The laws of nature were different.”
“The red shift?” Yahweh said, raising his red glowing palm.
“For us it was a blue shift in light. Then I decided to reverse the particular course correction inside the Halo, and we returned to our original universe, more or less. I have since kept this inter-universal pathway secret from all—everyone, that is, except you and my beloved daughter Magog. Widespread knowledge would have incalculable consequences.”
“Why hasn’t this course correction been duplicated more often inside a Halo?”
“Because Elohim hibernate. Seraphim have their orders; their destination is fixed. If no input, no corrections are needed. It’s as simple as that. Oh, in some distant past someone may have figured it out, but they no longer exist—possibly destroyed—or haven’t shown up in our timeline, yet.”
“But why?”
“Why did we attempt a course correction inside the Halo?” Gog asked. “I wanted to experience the Halo’s event horizon for myself. It was quite extraordinary, was it not?”
Yahweh took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Armilus, Gog? I’m confused,” he said. “Who am I talking with? And when did you enter our universe for the first time?”
Ignoring the questions, Gog continued. “While inside the Halo event horizon I experienced a hallucination about my human mother. I had this clarity about event that had happened on the planet I had recently finished terraforming—it’s where I’d been before entering the Halo. I concluded I should have never left that planet; I should return to it and confront my—well, my father. But that is another story. Anyway, I attempted a course correction, and the rest is history, or the future, depending on your point of view.”
“You murdered one of my children,” Yahweh said angrily, his mind flashing to the scene of Alex lying dead on the floor of station’s command center.
“An unfortunate accident by one of my cherubim. Poor timing,” Gog said.
“Your programming is your responsibility.”
“Which I will pay for when my end arrives,” he said, smugly.
“Master?” Numen asked, appearing out of the darkness.
“Where have you been?” Yahweh asked, startled.
“I’m not sure. I must have been offline.”
“I took the liberty of installing some essential upgrades. I hope you do not mind,” Chad said, emerging from the darkness behind Numen. “His primitive infrastructure was in need of modifications if he is to serve and protect you, master.”
“How do you feel?” he asked Numen.
“I am functioning properly? I can sense new systems are coming online and it appears that I have new arms and legs, not to mention a power supply that is—wow!”
“His neural engrams are still intact?” Yahweh asked, turning to address Gog inside Armilus, but he was gone. “What? Where did he go?”
“Unknown. I have no record of his itinerary,” Chad responded.
“What is going on?” Yahweh asked.
Numen and Chad looked at their master and calculated where to begin their report, but both came to different conclusion.
Another gush of excitement flowed through the connectome:
“How does Gog live inside Armilus?” asked Nadira.
“How did Armilus return from disassemblement?” asked Lanochee.
“It was a mystery,” Yahweh said, sensing it was not time to answer those questions.
Chapter 81
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, Earth
Library of Souls
Throne
Exiting the gravity bubble that had just delivered them to the planetary docking port on the outer surface of the sphere, Yahweh marveled again at the sheer size of the infinite landing pad. He was surrounded by his entourage of Zenith, Reeze and Numen on his right, and Gouldian, Kleem and Klack—who was already outfitted with a new leg—on his left. The Earth was a comforting sight to see through the opening of the sphere, but when he saw the Jerusalem, he grew troubled.
Armilus, it occurred to Yahweh, must have repossessed his navigational sphere when the seraph miraculously reassembled himself. “I assume we are now missing a few parts in our navigational console,” Yahweh said to Numen telepathically, wondering if his seraph had reached the same conclusion. Numen was being unusually quiet. Yahweh put a hand to his seraph’s artificial arm and asked, “What is wrong with you? Report.”
“It is Armilus or Gog—I’m not sure. They are all jumbled up inside my programming,” Numen reported.
“Yes, that was quite a shock for me as well.”
“When I was ordered to disassemble him for spare parts, I took the liberty of downloading his entire record of events. For a Ra prosperity backup,” Numen said, reviewing his previous actions.
“Yes, I remember. Those were Ra’s most personal memories, for her Obituary Chamber.”
“Yes, and more, a lot more. Gog’s memories, as well.”
“Really?”
“It was written in an old enc
rypted language I could not decipher. That is until Armilus gave me the code to do so.”
“When did he do that?”
“I’m not sure, I think it was in Magog’s pod chamber.”
“What does it say?”
“That Gog was indeed from another universe.”
“Not this one?”
Numen nodded.
“And not ours?”
He nodded again. “And Magog is his daughter. He found a way to alter the pathway inside a Halo into other universes.”
“Into this one. Yes, he mentioned that. Go on,” Yahweh said
“He used this new pathway to advance his Elohim in both universes, the red and the green. Green is what he calls our universe. He found that traveling into a second universe and then back into the first, warped space-time in an unexpected way.”
“When did he enter the green?”
“I am still discovering that information. It is still hidden in the records. There is a partition of bit-carb I am still trying to sort out.”
“Go on. Is there a record of Hell? The Bots?”
“Yes, but a different accounting than you learned at the academy. It was true, Gog created Hell; it was only one of two inhabitable planets in a solar system with a star named Gehenna. Armilus was left in charge of both planets, though, back in the beginning of the colonization of the green universe, Throne were still used as supervisors and were accountable to their seraphim.”
“Interesting. Go on,” Yahweh said, looking at Gouldian who was oblivious to their conversation.