STARWEB 1-5

by M. Modak

  *******

  “It’s a good time to get out of Politics,” Drahca said as he looked lovingly into Emyeu’s eyes one evening, “We have done our part and now we should let others take the lead.”

  Their four children were all sitting around the water table nodding at their dad’s comment. Each one was in their prime and they were all highly accomplished in their fields of study.

  “We’re all in agreement then,” Emyeu said.

  Just then the house robot, Jack, approached the living area and said in a deep smooth voice, “We have a visitor from the world Serwin with a personal request for the president.”

  Drahca looked a little annoyed as he spoke, “We have channels for diplomats to get in contact with Emyeu. Please ask them to contact the administration for an appointment.”

  “Of coarse sir, and I have followed strict protocol in this matter, but sir it is the King himself at the front door. Given your past actions I thought you might reconsider.”

  “King Flowgan is here!” Mia, their youngest daughter said excitedly.

  “Isn’t there only one king of Serwin?” Jack asked sincerely.

  “What does it matter if he’s a king or a shop keeper? Mom is the president of the United Worlds of the Galaxy. Tell him to take a number.”

  “Yes Trannar,” Jack said to the oldest son.

  Emyeu looked at Drahca and asked, “How does he feel honey?”

  “He’s calm but anxious about something.” Mia said before any of her older brothers or sister could, “I think he has a proposal for you.”

  “I’m still a courteous human and now that our future has been decided I don’t mind having a little company. If things get too complicated we will just adjourn for another day. Besides, I have shop keepers over all the time Trannar.” She walked to the door and showed the king in, asked him if he’d like some tea. After getting his preferences she went into the kitchen and prepared it herself as Drahca and the children chatted politely with him.

  When she sat down King Flowgan became noticeably anxious. Emyeu didn’t have the innate gift her husband or her children had but she had learned from them when a person was giving off the most basic emotions. He was very nervous.

  The King nodded as he took the cup of tea, sipped it and smiled. After a moment he said, “I am most humbled that you have invited me into your home and on the eve of your big announcement.”

  “You will be the first to know King Flowgan, I am retiring,” Emyeu said as she notice a look of relief pass over him.

  “I am so happy for you Madam President. You have served us all with grace and shrewdness. Your whole family looks very lovely tonight, and patient.” He nodded at his own words as he looked at everyone in the room. He continued, “I am here on behalf of my people. We have all been inspired by the Grand husband’s account of his home world, in his book, and what you have done for the galaxy. Madam President we decided to modify our world, Serwin into a sister planet of TOL.”

  Everyone looked at each other in astonishment. Proclaiming your planet as a nature reserve was one thing, what had happened on TOL, what its inhabitants did there took many thousands of years of intense care and education to achieve. They held their comments as they could tell that he had more to say.

  “As you know our world was the first to self-define the planet as a living thing deserving communication and rights. Those declarations led to the first global reserve in the galaxy. We wish to take it to the next level. Effective today I have resigned my Kingship and I am offering it to you Grand Drahca. Our world needs someone with strong leadership and vision. A person who can lead the long-term goals we have set for our planet. Before you say no let me tell you that you will, of coarse, have everything provided. A chateau fit for a Blue dragon is being built into the mountain side at the Cliffs of Remembering overlooking the ocean, much like you have here.” He pulled out a card and placed it on the water table. A real time hologram of the construction site shimmered with the image of the completed chateau. The trees on the mountain swayed in time with the incoming tide. The sound of the ocean could be heard faintly in the background as if calling to Drahca, “I wait for my new king.”

  The Pyramid Chateau resembled a Starcruiser class spaceship of his own design. It held a large blue sphere in place of its capstone. It seemed as if the great ship had been caught in mid transition. It looked huge, wonderful and somehow, natural alongside the rugged mountains and blue waters. The ocean and the mountains stood as constant fixtures, reminders that what they intended to achieve should last for eons.

  He continued, “This duty won’t be like The Presidency of the United Worlds. Serwin moves at a slow pace. We are an agrarian society. Until we learned of TOL, we mostly lived simple, though comfortable farming lives as host to tourist looking to get away from the automated lifestyles the rest of the worlds have chosen. We have a dream that one day the people, including the animals and plants will come to an understanding, deeper than our imagination will allow. On that day a new way of living will be discovered. We want to be natural humans, well mostly natural, we want our lives to be free and we want to achieve something our galaxy has never heard of until you came alone. We choose Conscious Naturalism.”

  Drahca was speechless. Every word the King had spoken was from his heart. There was something in that vision that reminded him of his home world and he longed to see that one more time. Emyeu poured the king another cup of hot tea and said, “We accept.”

  “Hey, wait,” Trannar said but stopped as he noticed his dad nodding to the King.

  “I don’t want to be a King or anything, but the idea of a people choosing, on their own, to truly become one with their world and take full stewardship of Elohim’s gift, inspires me deeply.”

  “Great!” Emyeu said with tears flowing down her cheeks, “It’s time you had my full support, just like you have given me all these years. I want to see your dream come true King Flowgan. My love and I will serve your people with all our mind, heart and strength.

  Chapter 17 Medloh

  Blazer pushed hard against the large, outer door. It protested with a creek, as it slowly swung open. Hundreds of years of direct exposure to the sun had warped the door’s hinges. That and the rare use had turned the door’s once low groan into a high pitch screech of metal on metal. The sound quickly dissipated as the atmosphere from within the exit chamber exhausted into the vacuum of space. He and three other humans emerged from the dank cave to receive the usual shipment of supplies, sent here by their benevolent captors.

  Blazer thought, this will be a long day.

  The bulky, environmental suits chafed against their skin as they bounced slowly up the trail. The suits were now over 150years old and stunk badly. When they first arrived on Medloh and saw these four suits, several plans of escape were tossed around. They involved taking some unsuspecting captain from a delivery ship, kill him and fly away. However, after the first fifty years passed that idea died.

  Other plans included catching the scouting robot that was sent here periodically to check up on them. If they could remove the robot’s transmitter, they hoped to use it to trick a passing spacecraft into thinking they needed help. But, as the judge had said on the day they were sentenced, the robot always blew up shortly after landing. Until now, they never saw or felt a living thing other than their fellow inmates.

  Blazer and the other youths remained quiet as they felt each other’s mutual injured feelings. The last few nights had been a brutal battle for survival against the others. The incidents had become more frequent over the past decade. Many of the old ones had finally gone insane. They made request for things that didn’t exist on the moon. Then they punished the youngest for not being able to retrieve what they wanted. The sane ones did nothing to stop it. They ignored the younger one’s plight, glad it wasn’t them suffering, and stuck to their usual inappropriate demands and show of power.

  The rest of the group always pushed retrieving the supplies onto them. Nobody liked
being on the surface because the sun’s radiation burned their skin. And, it was a difficult task to carry the large containers out of the crater, where they always waited, and into the cave. But the trips outside got them away from the others and for that moment, they were free. He almost felt sad that it came only once a year.

  It was hard to see up the hill but behind them, away from the sun where the mountains disappeared into the blackness of space, the imagination ran wild. He smiled as he saw gazers dotted the moon spraying jets of cold water vapor miles into the sky. The streams of water bent as they reached the edge of the moons gravitational field and trailed off into the horizon.

  For Blazer, life here was the sum of all nightmares. The price had been paid, a thousand times, for the crimes he had committed against the innocent on TOL. Blazer jerked his head away from the dark sky as he felt intense surprise coming from the others. They had just crested the small hill before him and found a large, blue sphere hovering above the sparkling red crater.

  As they approached, they could hear it humming. Looking through the scratched lens that covered their faceplates, they saw a light shining through one teardrop shaped window positioned high up on the ship. A wide field of energy shimmered around it defecting the radiation, cosmic rays and tiny dust particles, which were striking their suits and penetrating their skin.

  “Stop right there,” a deep robotic voice spoke in their native language from inside the suits.

  Waves of emotion came from beyond the ship’s reflective window. It felt welcoming. Prison had taught Blazer to condition himself to feel nothing or anger. He could hide his true self so deep within the layers of hate and sadness he experienced that he sometimes forgot who he really was. He was now confused; he had forgotten that emotion, joy, and the response coming from his heart was almost painful.

  The voice continued, “You have served your full sentence of 150 years and now you’re to enter a rehabilitation program before you’re allowed to go free. Return to the others; tell them what I’ve said. Those who agree to the rehabilitation program will be allowed to board this ship where they will be transported to a new world. Once there, you will be allowed to begin a new life.”

  The four young exiles gasped, and without a word turned and ran as fast as their suits would allow, heading back to the caves that had been their hated homes for so long. Blazer was the first to the cave’s door. He was the youngest of the exiles and had always been forced to do the menial work, along with the five others who were usually with him. When he was a dragon pup, he had joined the Red Dragon clan after decades of living alone. His mother had been a part of that Clan. She had gotten pregnant again, he had been her fifth and that was considered four too many. She had laid his egg deep in a cave and never returned. The mentors, which all the other orphans on TOL grew up with, were not available for his kind. Without a past, he was not allowed into the community.

  The Red Dragon Clan had taken him in when no one else would. Back then, he truly felt that everything he was doing, the kidnappings and killings, were for the betterment of his brother and sister dragons. It was their way. It was different now that he was human and the death of their dear leader, the Great Red Dragon had come. And, now that Sleven had been on another world for so long, all the young ones had privately come to different conclusions about life than what they were taught. He now knew that, although everybody had abandoned him back on TOL, what he had done to the innocent creatures there neither helped his brothers and sisters nor did it correct any wrongs that he had suffered. He had just made more orphans.

  Learning to read the Orcelan Galactic Standard language had brought him perspectives on life he never knew existed. He had read Spiritual and Religious texts, historical documents, fantastic novels and had seen thousands of holograms of artwork from around the galaxy. The items were sent with the supplies, every few years, which he had to retrieve. The task always gave him a first look into the containers and he quietly took what would soon be destroyed by the others if he didn’t save it. He also found many different letters from people who lived all around the galaxy. The letters were written in hundreds of different tongues then they were stored in the glowing tablets. The tablets automatically translated the text to the Orcelan Galactic Standard language. Most of the literature commented on the modern interpretations of original texts he had already read, but over the years, he had come to his own conclusions about their meanings.

  He had gotten away with all his studying under the guise of learning the weakness of their captors. The others would even consult him when certain details of the latest plan for galactic domination needed tactical information about the people the wished to subvert. He always told them what they wanted to hear. When he was free, he decided he would become a great artist, the greatest this galaxy has ever seen.

  The broadened perspective of life he had gained from reading had affected him. He started to feel the hurt he had given all those creatures inside the Plateau of the Crimson Dragons. Sometimes he would wonder what tiny changes in life’s overall pattern could have been if he would have understood all this at a much younger age.

  The older ones never thought of anyone else but themselves. They considered everyone and everything beneath them, separated by an invisible boundary only they could see. Now that the others didn’t have anyone else to vent their anger on or demonstrate the extremes of their dominate philosophy, he and his friends had become their prey. The guilt he felt for what he had done to all life was at times so overwhelming that he would have to sneak away and find a remote tunnel hours from the rest of the group. Then he would cry for days at a time.

  In his heart, he was no longer a Red Dragon.

  He stopped and signaled to the three others before they opened the door. He put his communicator on the local channel and spoke directly to the three others, “We all know what the rest of them,” he turned his head to face the door, “are going to do when we get back.”

  The woman standing next to him, Serlenya said, “There going to steal the first spaceship they can, find Sleven’s location, destroy anything that gets in their way and kill anyone they can until they dominate this galaxy.”

  “Exactly!” Adgeal said.

  “What are you thinking Blaze?” Grusaw asked in a knowing tone.

  “Let’s go get Nalena and Enla then let’s get out of here. The four stood there in silence as the thought of getting away from the rest of the exiles took root in their imagination.

  “Okay, we need to be quick so only one of us will have time to take off the suit, go and get the others and return here. They all looked at Blazer. He shook his head and said, “I’ll do it,” as he pulled open the door and started in.

  Adgeal said, “you’re the quietest, they won’t be able to here you.”

  “I know,” he said as he pursed his lips.

  Once the others were in and the door closed, he quickly took off the suit and put it in the shadows. The mouth of the cave was huge; it had always reminded him of the top entrance down into the plateau caves back on TOL. The passageway narrowed into a small opening that led to a bridge, which crossed a great expanse. Above him were several other metal catwalks and stone stairs that took him past the great room where the older group of exiles gathered.

  They were all in there now. He would have to pass it to reach his friends.

  The rocks were smooth with a dull green or red light that came from patches on the walls and ceiling. They had been functioning for 150years. Everything looked the same down here. He had often gotten lost in the maze of tunnels long ago but now he knew his way blindfolded.

  He passed his finger across the scratched surface of a nearby rock. In the early years, he and a few others had drawn pictures of trees and flowers here. But, when the older ones found out what they had been doing they were beaten and ridiculed for years. Since then, he had read about many art forms created on countless worlds. The histories of all those worlds fascinated him. The first changes in the people’s concepts fr
om a divine nature, which took the guise of small gods, to a one, all powerful, all knowing and all loving God who lived inside and united all things, had strengthened their relationships. Groups of these believers formed religious covens and taught the ways of peace. Many even believed in nonviolence as a way to force change. Nevertheless, in nearly all cases, by the time the second and third generation of believers took power, they altered the meaning of their forbearer’s writings. They invariably did it to suit their economic, political or social ends; and it had started a new kind of war. Battles over the interpretation of the simplest writings, rituals or sayings often took away from the glory of the overall message. Through Life we are all one. He remembered that Lavar had called Elohim God. Further research found that the traces of that name went back to the beginning of time.