Earth on Target (Survival Amidst the Stars)

by Angel Bright

  I teleported myself to the fifth-floor corridor, which was covered with a fluffy gray carpet. At the end was a transparent double door with a white curtain behind it. It was a pleasure to walk on the soft carpet. Beyond the door, I found myself in a wide reception area with several white luxury armchairs and sofas isolated in cozy nooks. The area radiated coziness and tranquility. Three visitors and a secretary, the former dressed in silvery florid costumes, were in front of a huge double door. Two assistant secretaries were simulating work in front of white computers. When I appeared, all jumped to their feet, but I froze them in their places.

  Upon my entering in the office of the Policitor, I found myself in a state of unscrupulous impudence. I saw an enormous desk with small armchairs in front. In one of the armchairs, a visitor sat awkwardly in the same type of silvery florid suit. Behind the desk and on the pedestal was His Policitor Honor, Lasanet Karr. Everything around had been created in a grand scale to suggest we were mere dust praying before the majesty of His Excellency. A furious, disparaging gaze met me. The ring-covered hand reached for the security-alarm button. I waited for him to be disturbed and outraged by the disobedience.

  “They will not come,” I said.

  The Policitor shuddered, and on his left side, one of the crossed spears from the wall flew at me. I stopped its flight toward me and let it hang in the air. The Policitor rose and waved his arms around his body. Strips of dark energy fluttered at his sides. When the darkness thickened enough, he stretched his hands forward and sent a concentrated beam of dark arrows over me. I activated my protective field, which reflected the energy attack. In turn, I pushed his spear against him. Inches away from him, the tip of the spear twisted and clanged to the floor.

  He spread his fingers at me, and I had the opportunity to apply another attraction. I lifted my fists in front of me, with one of the crystal rings with grates. I felt a growing weight on my hands, and in the next moment, two rings of energy blasted forth and hit the creature in the chest. I immediately applied the learned combination of illusions and real energy shocks with neural beats accompanied by bangs and spectacular lights. A violet glow arched up around him from his knees. This bustle allowed me to shoot the “fishing net” to his feet, thereby allowing me to pin them to the floor. I quickly tightened the cells of the net to cause a shock of pain and…His Excellency disappeared. He had teleported himself, leaving behind a piece of his garment and boots. I felt the distance and direction of the teleportation and followed him. We arrived at the same time on the ocean coast, but I was not the one surprised by our proximity. I was ready and immediately covered him with my net and tightened it. Dark energy strips broke some of my net’s cells, but I got time to block its energy-charging fields. A magic spell made him immobile and let him spend his energy in the fight with the clamping threat. His naked four-toed feet covered with bluish strips as a result of the tightening of the net cells. He was tangled and as tight as a cocoon, and even his eyes became glassy by the excessive efforts.

  I caught a barely visible wave passing from his eyes to me, and my protective field blinked and shone from his side. I was interested in this dark energy and its invisible ingredient. But for now, I did not have time to think because the creature shrank inside himself. Yet my net also was crouched around him, and on the sand remained a two-centimeter-diameter gray ball. Instantly, I wrapped it with several layers of force field and teleported with him to the islet I was seeing in the distance. I was fast because I did not know his abilities. On the island, at a depth of ten meters, I created a building with a double room and applied for the first time a magical force to separate one-half of the room from the other and prevent the creature from escaping.

  For this blockade, I used considerable strength because I was afraid this higher creature would find a way to draw energy from my grates and even from the matter on which he stepped. I could not guess how fast it could be released, so I was in a hurry. I began slowly to release the grip on the fishing net. The ball was wrapped in black smoke. I held the release and began to pierce the smoke cloud with pulses of energy at different frequencies according to the range of vibrations I assumed to be compatible with its colors. I was looking for resonance, and I found a zone with the entrance into which a series of tolerable punctures passed through me. As they increased to the limit of tolerance, I stopped and created another blocking sphere with the resonant frequency around its cell. I resumed letting go of the net. The smoke swirled, and I split it up and surrounded it into sectors, ready to break it into pieces in case of an attack. I was getting ready to neutralize it if necessary.

  The smoke thickened. I kept loosening the net. Here was the moment when it thickened. Two burning eyes were staring at me.

  “Who are you?” sounded in my head.

  “And who are you?” I asked.

  He stood hunched, pressed by my net. I could not afford him more comfort.

  “So, you destroyed the equilibrium we have created,” he said.

  “Equilibrium? I found you stuck in a hole. And this was equilibrium created by you.”

  “You cannot understand…”

  “I cannot. What are you? Higher magician? Necromancer? Wizard?”

  “I give orders to worlds.”

  “So, you are great.”

  “Yes,” he said proudly.

  “It seems you were tied in a package.”

  “I will get out.”

  “Why? Do you miss the soft carpet?”

  “This is just a decor for the supplicants.”

  “You are wasting my time. Were the black ships looking for you?”

  “The Horners? They are nothing. Pests!”

  “They wanted to poison you in the hole where you crept in, together with the last people remaining alive on the planet, Great Equalizer. Does the hole where you hide go even deeper?”

  “It can.”

  “Who gives the orders?”

  “I do!”

  “No. Who commands you?”

  “No one!”

  “Who are you, and what are you?”

  “I am God, the overlord of races and systems.”

  “An overlord hiding in a hole, and his planet is burned. Why do not you fight? Why not protect your home?”

  “My home is everywhere.”

  “Yes, because you are a God.”

  “Last time, I was protecting Earth.”

  “How?”

  “I turned away all the intentions of invasion. I declared it my territory.”

  “So, you have already declared it your own. And to whom did you declare that? Who are they? Other star systems? Other greedy marauders thirsty for prey? Where can I find them? Hidden in holes like you?”

  “You can say that. They will find you.”

  “Well, some have already got a slap on the snout.”

  “I was waiting for you to take over Earth.”

  “You waited for me? And how did you find out about me?”

  “From Hasterazis. He creates living worlds. He runs experiments he calls scientific. And he always leaves one defender, for fear of dividing this ‘scientific’ experiment into halves killing each other.”

  “This defender defends his world from whom?”

  “At first, from those such as me. We followed Hasterazis and made his ideas fail. We were kidding with him. Then, we got tired, especially when he began creating masterpieces.”

  “Masterpieces? Where?”

  “There are already some beautiful worlds. Hasterazis was fascinated by luminous living creatures. Beauty! Even some of us settled permanently on these planets.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Those whom we have left. Once we were killing each other out of fear that the other one would overtake us. Now we are not approaching each other. Everyone has a protected territory and does not enter another’s.”

  “And Earth is your territory.”

  “Yes! To protect it.”

  “From whom? From someone else whom you consider neu
tral?”

  “Not really. There are also abandoned worlds.”

  “To whom, weirdly, you give modern weapons and technology? And you ‘command’ them to destroy whom? You’ve turned them into hired assassins whose targets you point out for fun. And they burn billions of living creatures. I will look for those jokers and bend them like you to make them understand what they are doing.”

  “You have already destroyed one and crippled three, but this is fixable. It made us more cautious.”

  “Aha! You have prepared your clones.”

  “No, we move into whom we choose.”

  “You parasitize.”

  “Well, all are created by us.”

  “By Hasterazis. And you have found the benefit and renew yourself. You parasitize at someone’s expense.”

  “When you grow old, you will be like us, I assure you.”

  “Have you failed to find another solution for your millennial life?”

  “Can you explain to me what is lost when a body becomes a God? A savage becomes a God. Does his life become better or worse? He acquires new abilities. New incredibly great opportunities open up for him. Ah, yes! He loses all diseases. Yes, he never gets ill. Anything else? We can also announce an audition for volunteers only. What do you think? Will we have volunteers?”

  “Where are the others? How many?”

  “We’re eleven again. With Hasterazis, we become twelve—a full pantheon. And you’re a mistake. Improvident, but you exist. Some of us tried to erase you but came back mutilated.”

  “How do I hinder them?”

  “The heaven is divided into twelve sectors, and you are the thirteenth. You are not given a sector, or Hasterazis will give you his own. Work it out between the two of you.”

  “Why? Earth is sufficient for me.”

  “It’s in my sector.”

  “It is. You’ll grant it to me.”

  “I cannot. This will be a sign of weakness, and the others will attack me.”

  “Yes. But we will be two.”

  “When the enemies are in a group, new, insurmountable qualities appear.”

  “Do they have the courage to stand in a group? It means exposing your back to someone. You hardly have such trust in each other. And we will be a group. Where can I meet them to submit my application?”

  “You cannot. They appear or speak in your head.”

  “How do I plug into your communications network?”

  “You’re already plugged in. If you do not want a contact, just close your brain.”

  “Can they hear us now?”

  “No. But if you decide to open yourself, you will feel it.”

  “Does that mean I am fighting for Earth against you?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, I’ve won the fight. You cannot bargain in a folded state.”

  “You have won nothing. I am no longer in this body.”

  “Then I destroy it.”

  “No problems.”

  “Do you want to die?”

  “I told you, I’m no longer in this body.”

  “You’re good at running.”

  “You have to be good at everything.”

  “What were these Horners with the black ships that wanted to poison you with gas?”

  “They come out of subspace, burn, plunder new technologies, and disappear. They seem to come from afar.”

  “And you cannot stop them?”

  “Why? They are ordinary robbers. They maintain the pressure on the civilizations. There is no need to interfere.”

  I watched him and did not understand how far his millennial cynicism had come. What a comfortable philosophy he had, hidden in the depths of a destroyed planet. He had created some seeming majesty and relative inaccessibility. What kind of creature was he?

  Did the real God need everyday exaltation or everyday assurances of devotion, loyalty, and obedience? What about falsity and pomposity? How important was the opinion of human-ants for him to pay them some attention? His ideals of morality, loyalty, conscience, honor, respect, affection, treachery, and betrayal should be quite different from human emotions because his life was quite different. Even God’s divine concern for individuals was inexplicable, as was the annoyance of listening to millions of prayers from his faithful followers every second. Was this annoyance not an unbearable burden?

  How long would I withstand such a load? An hour? Two?

  I rushed and defended planets and planetary systems from their deserved fate at the hands of hired assassins, with cynical Gods in the planetary depths.

  “How should I call you?” I asked. “How are you distinguished from others? If you do not, you are nobody, just one of the others.”

  “I’m Numeros. I specialize in working with societies and organizations.”

  “Without your outer appearance, you again are nobody, like everyone around us—an impersonal presence. You change your body, and you say to everyone, ‘I’m this one, Numeros! The Escaped. Star systems and federations are burning in flames caused by me, but I, Numeros, escape even through holes in burning planets.’ I am ashamed to be a God like you, Great Numeros. For me, you are Numeros the Folded One.”

  I stretched my right arm forward and up, and I began to abruptly bend my net. I had expected to find some mediator named Overlord in order to gain access to the Gods’ pedestal. I did not believe in Numeros being God because my ideas about the Gods were different, epic, grandiose, and omnipotent.

  And this impostor was shrinking more under the combination of my power fields. When he reached half his stature, he seemed to explode into a dark, smoking structure that stretched the surrounding field with a momentum of force I no longer expected and was not ready to overcome. The minimal delay as he overcame the force field layers made me stretch my left hand. Between the rings of my two hands emerged a brilliant blue arc, from which was formed the blindingly blue globe with cutting protrusions I had dreamed about. It enveloped Numeros and swung around, and everything beneath its surface disappeared. A rapidly increasing heat reached me, and I stepped back and jumped to the surface of the planet.

  At that moment, something heavy and massive fell on me, hitting me with one end as I did not turn fast enough. I fell on my face and instinctively in self-defense fired my strongest weapon—the dark power, the black hole that swallowed everything—behind my back.

  The pain was cutting. My entire left side felt crushed, and I fell right on it. I rolled right to look at the attacker: a man-tank. His front side was tenaciously digging into the rock, but his back limbs and a portion of his cylindrical body seemed to have been sucked into a giant sharpener. His body was twisting and sharpening and sinking into the absolute blackness of the magical space. Had he failed to distinguish a brother with a similar origin and fate?

  And from the ground in front of us, the brilliant globe began to emerge, white hot, frozen in some intermediate equilibrium.

  Despite the piercing pain, I managed to stretch out my arms and send the magical spell again, and the extra energy rolled the ball around its center. Black smoke erupted and was then sucked back, and the ball collapsed and disappeared. I looked around at the other unequal battle, but it was over. I gritted my teeth and teleported into the minifrigate which stood high above the planet. I appeared in the central command room. With the last of my strength, and under the worried looks of my officers, I got up and locked myself in my cabin. It was impossible to lie down, so I sat in one of the soft armchairs against the wall. I began to examine the frequencies of my damaged ribs and the rise and setting into place of their matrix locations. The extremely painful operation went on for an indefinite time because I would fall in and out of sleep. The setting into place of the last, smallest rib was the most painful, but millimeter by millimeter, I set it and fixed it in place. The procedure was done by sending bone material to the places of the fractures, and I then floated them and stuck them with electrical impulses with the frequency of the bones themselves. I did not allow bleeding and swe
lling of the damaged soft organs, but they were not so damaged because of the special hard formations that supported my energy charges. I relaxed and drifted into nightmarish visions where I faced the fearsome creatures I felt vulnerable against. But the clashes always happened near the flattened black ships. They were roaring around me, and I was alone. Yet they exploded like bright suns, and I could not see who helped me. Very close behind my back, fiery waves pounded a dark planet where dark shadows were chasing each other and crossing red swords. The visions continued and always reached my position near the burning planet. Some hands touched my flaming face, and I felt a pleasant coolness on my forehead. I wanted this moment to continue, and my mother’s hands continued to relieve me—my mother, the first babysitter, whom I had not met anymore since my childhood.

  Gradually, my senses returned, and a disturbing feeling began to rush into my waking consciousness. At first, I thought the things that were happening were impossible, and as if struck by electricity, I was startled and jumped to my feet. There were two people in my cabin: the frigate commander and a junior officer, who had a second major in medicine. I had a cool, wet towel on my forehead. The officers were more startled than I was by my quick awakening.

  “Excuse us, sir,” said the frigate commander. “You had not appeared for a long time, and we were worried because you were not in good shape when you returned. We are glad everything is fine. Seems like you have a fever.”

  “Thank you, but do not do this again, because I can hurt you if I have not become fully aware. Please leave and get back to your responsibilities.”

  After they left, I again started an energy analysis of the affected areas of the left part of my body. I was easily able to cope with my increased body temperature and inflammation caused by severe fractures. I created stimulus zones around the fractures with similar frequencies from healthy areas. Every living creature in the universe possesses an etheric matrix that aspires to restore the injured integrity of the creature that has filled the accompanying matrix, and to this we owe the healing of our wounds, broken bones, and even the growth and recovery of missing or damaged organs after appropriate activation.

  Renowned doctors have noticed that, even with a broken spine, wounds separated from the brain by this disruption successfully activated the procedure of healing these tears and fractures. And this is a complex procedure related to changing the whole functioning of whole cell chains, changing their characteristics, and changing the whole nature of individual cells, depending on the proximity and type of the damage. And the materials involved in the healing are also completely changed. This extremely complex organization is abnormally fast in some organisms, whereas in other organisms it does not begin at all.