by Mark Kraver
“Follow the line to the bridge,” whispered the station, as a streaming red dashed line appeared in the floor fibers at her feet. On the walls to their right and left, a red glowing map of the station’s interior appeared. It displayed their position and a pathway to the bridge.
“How convenient, I like this place already,” Zenith replied, following the red line with Reeze.
“Two reactor cores,” Numen commented, after studying the ship’s design schematics. “It’s always good to have a backup. Interesting…”
“What is it?” Yahweh asked.
“This transplantation vessel does not rely upon the earthbound graviton base stations. It appears to be interacting directly with the core of the planet. It is designed to keep an exact planetary rotation and molten core temperature.”
“Interesting, indeed,” Yahweh agreed.
“With this technology, and other advancements I have taken the liberty to download from this sphere, I think it would be possible to reanimate a dead planet.”
“Like Hell?” Yahweh asked.
“Yes, with more engineering it should be possible to melt the core of any iron-based planet-sized rock in space by simultaneously locking onto the core and spinning the outer surface of the planet at an accelerated rate. The friction would build up between the inner and outer surfaces to create volcanoes and mantle-floating tectonic plates.”
“Amazing. Can’t wait to try that out, but now first things first.”
“Computer, blue-shift the lighting ship-wide one hundred twenty nanometers,” Numen said, and the ship shifted from red to normal lighting.
Yahweh nodded with approval, removed his eyewear and handed it to his faithful companion.
“I’ll keep them for away missions,” Numen said, sliding them into a hidden compartment in his gravity suit. Yahweh tugged on his ear and sized up the rest of his new ship. They followed the now green line in the flooring to the new command bridge, as the map of the station followed them on the walls in their peripheral vision.
“Dang, I’ll miss those nova glasses,” Reeze lamented when the stations lighting change, pulling off her glasses and stuffing them away in her suit. “I feel bad about leaving all those animals behind from Logan’s ark.”
“We have a complete genome of flora and fauna from Earth on file. They can be recreated once we get to Heaven,” Numen called out. He and Yahweh had almost caught up to Reeze and Zenith in the long hallway by accelerating the floor beneath their feet.
“Yeah, but it’s not the same.”
“Although they will be exact copies, and there will be some behavior modifications at first,” Numen added, “Eventually they will occupy the same niches in the wild as they did before the exodus.”
“Yeah, but it still won’t be the same.”
“There are still some animals living on Earth. Not all have gone extinct with the exodus. Maybe we can go back and retrieve the ones lost when we get settled,” Yahweh said, with a wink.
Reeze looked at Numen with a crooked little smile. She was used to getting her way back home on the moon, too.
“What? They are exact duplicates,” Numen protested as everyone followed the green line in the flooring.
The door slid opened to the ship’s main bridge and Zenith gasped at the sight. Reeze screamed and Yahweh froze in place. It looked like they were about to walk out into the void of outer space. Below, seen through the transparent floor, the planet Earth loomed alongside the sphere’s outer wall. Zaar sat suspended at his post along with the other command staff like an array of stationary satellites. Numen, without hesitation, walked out into the void until he noticed the others were reluctant to follow.
“There is nothing to fear. The walls are curved monitors, and the floor is quite solid,” he said, tapping his foot on the clear mat sending out pulses of vibrating green graviton waves.
“Where is the floor?” Reeze asked, looking past Numen’s feet to the planet below.
“Come now. It can’t be that difficult,” Yahweh said, taking his first cautious steps. “Zaar and company have navigated to their posts without falling.”
Zaar rotated his body in his invisible seat.” It is a bit disorienting without this,” he said, touching a clear illuminated panel on his console, shutting off the three-dimensional surround monitors and opacifying the flooring. “There is another button like this one next to the door.”
“Very funny, Zaar,” Zenith said over the snickering of the other command staff. “Like my niece would say, payback’s a bitch.”
Walking inside the hundred-meter diameter bridge, they could now see how the structure of the large spherical room was set up. The simple T-shaped layout design of complex workstations extended into the center of the chamber, allowing a complete panoramic view in every direction. Once Yahweh reached his command chair, Zaar re-initiated monitor mode and the view was spectacular.
“I need to get more familiar with this,” Zenith said, studying the projected translucent instrument panel spread out in front of her new workstation. Reeze held onto her shoulder, mesmerized, looking down at the Earth below.
“Okay, run a complete diagnostic, and make sure there aren’t any Throne tricks left behind. We leave within the hour,” Yahweh said. He looked down at his feet warily and then focused on the door off in the distance. “Numen walk with me. Time to have a talk with your old friend.”
“I have a friend?”
They walked down a long corridor with multi-colored instrument panels streaming along the walls to their left and right. Reaching out before them, a line in the flooring indicated the direction to their destination. The floor moved them along at a much faster rate than if they were walking on a planet.
“How does this station know where we are heading?” Yahweh asked.
“I told it. We are going to see Ba, I presume? He is not my friend. He’s more of an acquaintance. A colleague, really. I don’t know much more than what I’ve told you already about him.”
“Have you decoded more from the Armilus files?”
“Affirmative. Gog did not trust El.”
“Really.”
“That is why their deed crystal was split into two separate pieces and given limited authority unless both Ra and El agreed. Before Gog put his consciousness into Armilus—well, by then he was renamed ‘Rogue’ by Ra—Gog had already decided to never reveal the parallel universe Halo connection to either, unless El perished first.”
“Interesting. I wonder why?”
“Unknown.”
“Postulate,” Yahweh asked.
“Ra and El do have different personalities. While Ra is caring, she is also secretive. However, I do not think she would keep any information from her life partner, El, nor he from her. El, on the other hand, has given valuable information without conditions. Gog may not have wanted the wrong entities to know how to invade other universe?”
“Invade?”
“Hypothetically, invasion of one universe from another more superior universe would be possible through the Halo.”
“You don’t think Armilus had anything to do with seeding Earth’s solar system with Bots, do you?” Yahweh asked, reaching their destination.
“Unknown. Although there are many references to alphabiotic signatures in Armilus’ stored files, many still remain untranslated. Even if Gog’s consciousness were inside him at that point, Armilus was still programmed to serve his master, and it seems illogical that he would jeopardize his master Ra’s safety to advance his own agenda.”
“But would it seem logical that Ra—his ‘puppet,’ as Gog called her—by lacking the benefit of knowledge about the perils of the different universes was getting in his way? Slowing him down, perhaps? Maybe he had grown tired of reporting to someone he felt was inferior to him?” Yahweh paused for a moment, “He did seem independent and in command each time I confronted him.”
“As I must have seemed, while you were hibernating,” added Numen, “and I was preparing for the genesis of t
he Elohim and the exodus of the Earth to Heaven.”
“Let’s see what they have to say about this,” Yahweh said, walking into Ra and El’s pod purgatory chamber.
Numen glanced at Yahweh with his eyebrows raised, questioning, ‘They?’
The pod chamber glowed green, and El and Ra’s pods sat alone on a shared pedestal in the middle of the empty room. There was no sign of Ba anywhere. Yahweh walked straight for the two pods and was stopped by Ba’s stealthy graviton beams.
“There you are,” Yahweh said. “Report.”
“There is little to report. One moment I was guarding the pods on the Jerusalem, and the next I was still guarding the pods, but on an entirely different ship,” Ba said. “Am I defective?”
“I don’t think so. They must not have reactivated you until they transferred everything to this new station,” Yahweh said. “Numen explain to him why he is so disoriented.”
“I found the Throne of this universe had the ability to shut off seraphim and cherubim systems. From the historical records of this sphere, the seraphim and cherubim were shut off more than five hundred thousand anton ago, and the Throne have ruled ever since. Why they didn’t try to deactivate me upon our arrival, I do not know. The presence of Elohim and our planet may have complicated the situation; or something or someone else intervened.”
“Excuse me,” Ba interrupted, “but what are Throne, and where did all the Elohim go?”
“I will transmit a complete report to you later,” Numen said. “As for the Elohim, it appears they were all assassinated. Once the last bio-mechanical supervisors were deactivated, nothing stood in their way to eliminate the entire spherical population of Elohim. Those pioneering Elohim that did return to their home sphere were dispatched at that time.”
“The Throne mentioned a certain he who told them not to deactivate you,” Yahweh said, remembering the Throne’s conversation about the matter.
Numen shook his head with uncertainty. “Armilus perhaps?” he speculated.
“That brings me back to the subject,” Yahweh said. “What do you know about Armilus, ah, Rogue, and his relationship with El?”
“El is my master, not Rogue’s,” Ba said.
“Was,” Yahweh smiled.
Ba nodded. “Was my master. I will have to say Armilus was complicated. I calculated he had his own agenda. Ra gave him latitude.”
“Latitude?”
“Armilus would be gone for many antons at a time, especially when we were in transit between destinations inside a Halo. He had his own ship.”
“Preposterous, what does a seraph do with his own ship?” asked Yahweh.
“Remember, he was no ordinary seraph,” Numen reminded his master. “We found his ship under a glacier in Iceland. It was used, along with Ra’s and El’s ship, to repair our starship, and to construct Jerusalem station. He must have had the navigational guidance to slip between universes inside his personal programming.”
“His navigational sphere we used to escape the red giant. I wonder if sending us to this red universe was his plan all along,” Yahweh mused.
“He was playing chess,” Numen said, “and we were playing checkers.”
“Ba, you’ve known him the longest. Do you think he had a hidden agenda?”
“Unknown,” said Ba. “However, he did have the uncanny ability to rendezvous with us at our destinations. Often it appeared he had already been there for a time in advance.”
“Interesting. He never mentioned other universes? Nothing about where he had been or what he was doing?” Yahweh asked.
“Negative. This is the first input I have of another universe,” Ba said, answering his new master’s interrogation.
“I see no need to interrupt their sleep. Ra and El need not worry over life’s tribulation,” Yahweh said. “Come Numen, it’s time to go to Heaven.”
Walking out of the pod chamber, the line on the floor propelled them to the command bridge.
“A seraph with his own starship. Unbelievable. What would you do with your own ship?” Yahweh asked.
“I have no other agenda but to serve you my master. However, if I were still trying to manage my affairs of a past lifetime, maybe I would travel and observe as much as I were able. Not having a deed over anything, it would be difficult for him to affect any change without giving away his ability to move back and forth between universes.”
“So, he had to find a pawn—a puppet—that he could manipulate, and work for him as an unaware proxy. Very clever,” Yahweh conceded, feeling used.
“You must admit, his tactics succeeded,” Numen said, entering the spacious invisible command sphere.
“All diagnostics have checked out,” Zaar reported upon their return. “No Throne ill-ware has been detected. I have informed Zenith to disengage us from the sphere’s docking ring and to initiate repulsor beams to distance the planet from the sphere’s gravity well. A Halo waits dilated and effaced.”
Yahweh nodded his head in approval.
“This may be an odd question to ask at this point in our journey, but do you know the way back to our own universe?” Yahweh asked Numen, struggling to keep his composure on the invisible pathway of the command bridge.
Numen cocked his head to the right and began to twitch with a mild seizure. “It—it seems—seems your question trig—triggered the opening of a subroutine buried inside my partitioned bit-carb. I believe it is the code to the inter-universe Halo command.”
“Okay? Interesting,” Yahweh said, examining his servant shivering with expanding new knowledge.
“It requires that I physically connect to the navigational station,” Numen said, walking through the nothingness of the command bridge without hesitation.
“Still haven’t gotten use to this,” Yahweh mumbled to himself, stopping for a second to catch his breath before following him on the invisible floor.
Numen stood next to Zaar’s navigational station, and said “You are relieved. Take my station.”
Zaar stood and looked down at the planet below.
Zenith and Reeze watched him hesitate. “What’s the matter? Not use to spacewalking?” Reeze said, with her crooked little smile.
“It does appear to be harder than it looks,” he said, waddling like a duck to his newly assigned station.
Numen held up his right hand, touched the green keys in his palm, waited for a second, then detached his left hand at the wrist. Setting his hand down as one would do a utensil, Numen inserted his severed wrist into the translucent instrument panel and engaged the machine language flo-ware commands streaming invisibly throughout the station.
“You would think he could do that wirelessly with such an advanced ship as this,” Reeze whispered.
“Hardwiring is still the fastest most reliable connection,” Zenith told her. “There must be a chance of wavelength degradation across the event horizon of the Halo.”
Zaar rotated the command module and oriented the forward viewer in the direction of the massive rotating Halo. The Halo was discharging energy into the surrounding space, as time began to decay and the station and planet felt the effects of the dark-matter gravity well.
Everyone on the command deck braced themselves with trepidation for the event horizon. The ominous swirling cyclone of dark-matter loomed directly ahead. This time the huge curved three-dimensional monitor added an unprecedented visual effect that was breathtaking. The forward end of their new station impacted the Halo with a flash of visions, swishing of ears, and a stretching of neurons into two dimensions that sent each of them into hallucinations of their past, present and future.
Numen locked a dedicated telepathic connection with his master’s mind as it flattened into a holographic projection. Yahweh’s merged thoughts appeared in his mind as past memories of his now-departed family, as they were before he left on his mission to Earth.
Chapter 83
Today is yesterday’s tomorrow.
Jacques Wiesel, 1932-2032, Earth
Library of
Souls
Can’t Go Home
Inside the telepathically-stabilized hallucination of the Halo’s event horizon, Yahweh was dreaming lucent visions of his past, crossed with intersecting timelines of present and future dimensions.
He felt himself walking from the Elohim Academy to the sapient colony where his family lived. Sunshine from the star Heaven above was collected by an intricate network of solar structures woven into every exposed surface across the planet, including plant life. He could feel the warmth of Heaven on his bald head as he walked past the antigravity park where the human children played after school, and past the market square where the cookies smelled so good. Most Elohim children, he thought, had never tasted chocolate chip cookies; but he had, and he loved them. Usually, to visit his family's’ home, he snuck past the neighbors’ windows at night undetected, but this day, he walked proudly down the middle of the main public walkway, in plain sight.
Strolling up to his parents’ home, he smiled and waved at the nosy neighbors looking out their windows, not caring if they reported him or not. Today, he didn’t care who saw him because it didn’t matter anymore. Never again will it matter. How strange it felt to be free and open. Having the freedom to do whatever he wanted to do felt hypnotic.
His parents’ home was of an average size and looked like the adjacent domiciles with one exception, a modest backyard seclusion wall erected for him and his sister to play in private. To protect him from the prying eyes of the neighborhood. All along the backyard walls were winding, climbing vines with pink, white, and jade green colored flowers cascading off their massive stems, all feeding their extra sunshine to the photovoltaic network powering the planet’s electrical infrastructure. Yahweh smiled, seeing that some flowers were missing. Picked for his pet terrapin, he assumed. It was about time for his father and mother to come home from work. Nina, his sapient little sister, would already be at home, doing her homework, he suspected. He slipped his hand under the front door flower pot, touched the biometric key fob to pop open the door, and he slipped inside.