“Forty-nine thousand,” he answered. “There’s no other air traffic up this high.”
“That was really smooth. We got up here pretty fast.”
He nodded. “Course set and locked, we are now traveling at mach plus point three, with the outside temperature a balmy minus 70 degrees.”
Their chairs slid away from the consoles as Rion swiveled toward Serena, standing up. “The pilot has just turned off the fasten seatbelt sign. All passengers may now wander freely about the cabin.”
Serena stood up.
“We’ll be up here for a couple of hours. Would you like something to drink?”
“Some of that blue drink would be nice.”
“Sure.”
She followed Rion into the main cabin. It was unusually quiet for a flight; only a barely noticeable hum from the engines that moved them at several hundred miles per hour through the atmosphere that was well below zero. Rion removed a tall sealed flask from the wet bar. He poured two drinks into the customary square beveled glasses and handed Serena one. They sat on a comfortable sofa and through holographic windows looked out at the Earth’s lights, moving slowly by, far below.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” she said.
“Oh?” he said taking his spot on the couch.
“Your culture, it’s very complex, yet, simple. That dichotomy is really interesting.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“That’s why you like design, you pay attention to the details. Function alone isn’t enough.”
Rion nodded. “That’s how it is in nature,” he began. “If function alone was all there was we’d only have one species of tree, or one genus of insect. Life is all about the simplicity of the details. Henry Ford used to say that his customers could have any color car they wished, as long as it was black. Ford was all too Human.”
“That’s the other interesting thing about your culture. Even though you respect the other races, the Humans, you still have this cultural delineation.” She stopped short of calling it ‘racist’.
He nodded taking a drink from his glass. “You’re right, we do; and we maintain that delineation on purpose, partially to preserve our culture. We may have co-mingled with the other races, but our culture is who we are, Serena. It is the sole thing we try to keep pure. It’s the one tool that has allowed us to advance and survive longer than anyone else. Other races have come and gone, because the cultures they built were irrational, self-centered, indolent, undisciplined. If you corrupt the culture, you destroy the race.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit arrogant, though? Your people are not perfect, right?”
“We’re far from ‘perfect’, Serena. Nature is far from perfect. Volcanoes still erupt and destroy. Hurricanes and earthquakes still happen; yet afterward, everything recovers and is just as, if not more, stronger and more beautiful than it was before. Our own war nearly destroyed all that we had achieved; all that we had become. But we have hopefully learned from our mistakes. We made disciplined changes to our culture and we continued to build and achieve, hopefully sans those elements of our culture that were self-destructive. Our culture has evolved, become much stronger than it was before. The Seven refused to make those changes; it will eventually force them into extinction. But it may have been too little too late; as few as we are now, my people may not be around long enough to keep what we have learned going.”
“It sounds all very Darwinian, survival of the fittest.” She frowned.
“But that’s Nature, Hon. It is what it is. You can’t change it. We try to teach the important elements of our culture to others; but we leave it up to the Humans as to whether or not they want to accept what we offer. Slowly over time your people are indeed learning what we have.”
“So, it’s like there’s a kind of ongoing struggle going on, only it’s between cultures?” she asked.
“What you’re seeing in your own people Serena, are the effects of the war between the Sentinels and the Seven. Parts of the planet’s population are cultured, technologically advanced and well civilized; other parts are base, vulgar, selfish, even savage; sometimes all of this within the very same city. One part of Human civilization wants to advance and learn and grow while the other is being lured into idleness and robbed of knowledge through a deliberately poisoned culture. The physical war between ourselves and the Seven has been over for millennia, but they still remain hell-bent on destroying your civilization at every turn.”
“So you’re saying it’s like some global chess game with yourselves and the Seven playing God with the lives of everyone on Earth.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” he agreed. “But we’re the good guys, remember. You saw part of this game of chess unfold with the missile crisis.”
“Huh? How so?”
“Our security company is a shill for the Sentinels. We deliberately maintain security contracts with elements within the Pentagon and within other governments’ military establishments. It was the Seven who used your nation’s own electoral process to install a president who is a leader of their own making. They used him. Told him what to do. He unwittingly allied with elements in the Chinese government, to launch a nuclear strike against your own nation. It was we who saw what the Seven we’re doing. The Seven had sabotaged America’s defense shield. We restored it.”
“I can’t believe I’m even hearing this.”
“It wasn’t the first time they’ve tried something like this. And it won’t be the last.”
“That’s probably why they want you dead, Rion,” she quipped.
“Probably,” he nodded with a smirk.
“I had no idea anything so sinister could even exist. Deliberately poisoning someone’s culture; committing genocide for no other reason than you think yourself superior. It makes my blood boil.”
“Mine too, Angel. That’s why we do what we do.”
“It’s like we’re fighting an enemy we can’t even see; one we don’t realize even exists.”
“And it’s been that way for millennia, Serena. The Seven’s most potent weapon has always been to poison the culture, to take away man’s inherent skills for survival. You need only to reduce him to an ignorant dependent slave through his culture and you win the war, no matter the size of the population.
“Our goal has always been to educate and drive man’s desire to survive on his own. We’ve not always been successful in that. Knowledge is not always enough. One’s culture will almost always determine if you survive or die. Building a culture of dependence only leads to a life of misery and an eventual death sentence of not just the individual, but the people as a whole as well.
“In Nature, an organism must be able to survive on its own. Propping it up artificially only leads to eventual disaster. And that’s immoral, no matter how well intentioned one is trying to be.”
“So if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish he’ll feed himself for a lifetime.”
“Precisely,” Rion nodded. “But just teaching is not enough; he has also got to want to survive,” he added. “Knowing is still not the same as doing.
“Right now there are peoples and governments all over the globe all living in varying degrees of understanding of what we have given to Humanity over the centuries. America is but one of the more successful of these; and whether or not its peoples survive will be the decision of the culture they ultimately choose to embrace, not because of its genetics.”
Serena thought about what Rion was saying. “I don’t like that paradigm, ‘survival of the fittest’,” Serena admitted. “People should help one another.”
“We do, absolutely. But only to a point. It is unwise to attempt to rewrite Nature, Serena. I don’t like the paradigm any more than you do, but it is what works for survival. I don’t like the fact that animals eat each other, but that is the reality. The ones who survive are the ones with the more advanced culture. Wolves hunt in packs with complex leadership. Buffalo herds ga
ther in a circle to defend themselves from prairie hunters. Fish swim in schools to confuse predators. It is how we have all been designed.”
“Designed?” she repeated. “So you believe in God?”
“Absolutely, but, probably not in the same way you were raised to think.”
“The gods believing in God?” she chuckled.
“We all came from somewhere. Humanity continues to cling to primitive religions as if God were some kind of horrid monster who demands blood if you break some rule. That isn’t how we see God. God isn’t like anything we will ever be able to fully know or understand. We don’t attempt to bring God down to our understanding. We attempt to only see glimpses of who God is in what we ourselves are, what we have been given to be able to see in the Universe.”
“Made in the image of the Creator,” Serena added.
“Exactly. God’s genetic fingerprint, if you will, is all over us. And not just people but everything in Nature, and throughout the Universe as well.
“You believe in intelligent design then? I’m a little surprised by that, I think.”
“Why?”
“You have all of this knowledge. Science and religion never mix well.”
“They mix perfectly, if you’re not trying to believe in something that doesn’t exist, or isn’t really true.”
“How do you believe in science? Isn’t it supposed to be all facts and numbers?”
“There are theories in science. Things we don’t quite understand at the moment. But we believe they exist. We form beliefs, conjectures. And then design ways to discover what we believe to be beyond the edges of our knowledge. That’s how science works.
“Where we get ourselves into trouble is when someone’s pet theory becomes dogma; accepted by others as science fact when it’s really just a theory. Sometimes we just cannot let go of the fact that our theory wasn’t reality. Humanity excels at that, unfortunately.” Rion frowned.
“Dominion Signs had an article about a famous scientist who is now telling people that he can prove God exists.”
“That’s interesting. I hadn’t seen that. I guess Humanity is slowly realizing that the more you know, the more you realize how intricately complex the Universe really is.”
“The scientist was saying just that; that the Universe is just too complex to have evolved alone, by itself.”
“He’s right. If you really look at how people are made, it’s like the cells of your body run according to a very complex and precise genetic program. That code, that program, is written through an arrangement of atoms so precise that if even one false instruction is executed, the entire organism can fail and die. That genetic code is too complex; it didn’t just happen by some random accident. The Universe is a very inhospitable place, Serena. It doesn’t lend itself to manufacturing complex sentience, no matter how much time you give it.”
Serena found Rion’s view of God intriguing. “So do you worship God? What do your people do?”
“Worship,” Rion paused, “is a very personal thing within our people. And we try to keep it that way. But that’s how most of the ancient faiths began; someone imposing their view of God on others and then demanding that their view was exclusively genuine while everyone else’s was not. One of the primary tenets of our people is that we will not impose our personal views or understandings of God onto others.”
“So you don’t have churches or synagogues like we have?”
“Congregations tend to eventually impose the views of a handful onto the views of the many. Your civilizations are rife with that. We have an ancient saying, ‘Congregations are too lazy to look for God.’ Well, it loses a bit in the translation, but that’s the general idea.”
“I’ve wondered about that. Too many people just blindly accept whatever someone in church tells us to believe,” she offered honestly. “We don’t spend enough time really investigating our own faiths. Interesting. I’m probably just as guilty of that.”
Rion finished his glass, looking at Serena, her face awash in thought. “I hope I haven’t offended you,” he offered. “I think this is the first time we’ve ever actually talked about faith.”
“Oh. No, not at all,” Serena insisted. “I was just thinking about everything that you’ve been saying. The culture is just really different than anything I’ve ever been exposed to. It’s a lot to think about.”
“I’m sorry, Serena,” Rion apologized. “I know all of this can be a little overwhelming. ‘No more will I teach you today,’” he offered in a perfect Yoda impression.
Serena smirked, “You are such a geek.”
Rion was glad he could get her to smile. “Hey, I’m getting hungry. What would you like to eat?”
* * * * *
Dressed in his well-fitted black and red highlighted command uniform, The demigod First General walked to the head of the command bridge of his supercarrier, well aloft at just above sixty-thousand feet. Surrounded by his halfblood staff, he exuded confidence, and supreme authority. He had entered the bridge at the request of his First Officer. Passive radar was now tracking something that was moving well above the commercial ceiling and at well past mach for its altitude. Still, active radar was having a difficult time even seeing the plane, or whatever it was.
“Report.” The First General ordered, watching the dot move across the screen slowly, heading for his airspace.
“Still unknown at this point, Frist General. It does not appear to be a missile.” The First Officer reported.
“Visual.”
A massive screen flickered to life with the projection of a gold colored plane moving smoothly aloft.”
“Those are Reflex engines.” A senior lieutenant offered studying the plane with others on the command bridge.
“A Sentinel vessel?” the First General raised his brow.
“For what purpose?” A middle-aged commander entered their conversation, her empathy reaching out to feel what she could, but the plane was still a little too distant.
“The gods often still travel using their vessels, First General,” the First Officer advised.
“Indeed. But who?” he agreed.
“The vessel’s trajectory suggests it may have originated from Austin or San Antonio, First General,” someone added.
“The Pierson Tower?” his First Officer connected the dots quickly. “Then that could mean—”
“There are two people aboard the vessel,” the female commander assured now.
“Steele.” The First General mused aloud. “How interesting.”
“Then the newblood woman must be aboard as well.”
“A grand opportunity, First General,” another adviser offered moving up close from behind him, his red robes and hood covering his face. His voice low and smooth.
“I agree. But where could they be going?”
“The youth is—confused. He seeks the counsel of the elders about the woman.” The adviser in red asserted.
“Is he now?” the First General calculated his next move considering the events that had just presented themselves.
“He must not be allowed to reach his destination,” the adviser pronounced.
“Agreed. Wait until they have passed beneath us. Then scramble the Raptors.”
22
W hat’s on the menu?” Serena asked.
“Anything you like—well, as long as it’s vegan.” He smirked.
“But—we didn’t bring anything.”
“Hon, there are some things about the culture of the Ra you are going to need to get used to. Food and shelter, other basic necessities, are not things we have to worry about.”
“How do you not worry about something like food?”
Serena was sure she smelled something in the cabin now; something wonderful. “That smells—” she took a deeper breath, savoring the smell of basmati rice and curry. Rion got up from their couch and offered her a seat at a table that was right behind her.
Her eyes drew wide with wonder as she saw the finely set table wi
th various serving dishes of things that smelled like Indian cuisine.
“Where? Rion! Where did all of this just come from?” She watched him take a seat at the table. The steaming hot foods were filling the cabin with their wonderful smells. She sat down opposite him looking at all of it, enough to feed way more than just the two of them.
“We create things, Angel. Anything we want.”
“How?”
“Like this—”
Serena watched as a small dish of something that looked like spring rolls faded quickly into existence.
She just blinked at the new dish in front of her.
“Wow.” She looked up at Rion. “Just like that?”
He nodded.
“I felt what you were doing over the continuum,” she reached for one of the still steaming rolls.”
“Careful, they’re hot.”
He was right, the roll was hot. She quickly dropped it onto her plate licking her finger.
“Where does all of this come from?”
“Energy, mostly.”
“Rion, those are some serious physics if your people are creating things out of nothing.”
“Well, it’s not exactly out of nothing. Our knowledge is built on something we call Reflex. The manipulation of things on a subatomic level.”
“You’re creating atoms then.” She picked up the now cooling roll and took a small bite from it. “Oh my goodness,” Serena muffled, her mouth full of the most amazing flavor.
“Is it alright?” Rion watched her savor the flavors and then swallow.
“It’s fabulous!”
Rion smiled. “I’m glad you like it. You should try the dip for them.”
“Your people, Rion you have technology beyond anything we could ever comprehend. You could solve world hunger with knowledge like this.”
“And only trade one problem for another.”
Serena munched while musing what he had just said. “You’re talking about population.”
He nodded. “Humans breed exceptionally quickly, Serena. Much more quickly than the Ra. Instant overpopulation, just add unlimited food.”
Interra (Awakened Series Book 5) Page 22