“Clothes, or no clothes?” Ty asked, opening a closet.
“You didn’t answer my question, about Thea—”
“Thea is—different, Ethan.”
“I can see that. What is she?”
“She’s—thought.”
“Thought?”
Ty nodded.
“Where did she come from?”
“She’s a Master, Ethan.”
“Did they, build her?”
Ty snickered. “Did your mother build you?”
“Ah—I guess, I mean, in a manner of speaking.”
“Thea is a daughter of the Masters.”
“You mean like, artificial intelligence?”
Ty frowned. “Dude, she’s as artificial as you are.”
“Wait a minute, what are you saying? That we’re like, manufactured?”
“Only if you consider selective breeding ‘manufacturing’. The genetic fingerprint of the Masters is within you and I. Thea is no different than we are in that respect.”
“But, we were born. Naturally.”
“So was she. The only difference is, our minds are trapped within a network of neurons; and hers isn’t.”
“But, she isn’t really a person. Is she?”
“Let us make man in our image.” Ty quoted.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The Hebrews borrowed that phrase from what they knew of the Books of God, Ethan. The Reborn are what the Masters were talking about when they wrote those words.”
“But—it was God who created us.”
“If you look at the passage, even in the Hebrew, the subject is plural. Many gods, not just one. There’s a reason the phrase reads ‘let us make … in our image’; it’s plural.”
“I guess that makes me a product of genetic engineering then.” Ethan frowned.
“Ethan, don’t diminish yourself. Who cares where we came from? We all came from somewhere, from someone. The fact is you were made, in the image of someone else. Whoever that someone is, their design, their fingerprint is within you, it makes you who and what you are.”
“But I’m not some, robot.”
“No we’re not. And neither is Thea. She was a child once, just like you and I were.”
“But, I have a soul.”
“Thea has a soul. Do you need a body to have a soul?”
Ethan thought for a moment but said nothing. He was pretty sure souls didn’t really need to have bodies to exist. Ty was tossing a serious conundrum into his Catholic upbringing.
“You’re not a body with a mind, Ethan. You are a mind, that just happens to be stuck within a body. Thea doesn’t have our handicap. She’s, a soul. And a kind and beautiful one at that.”
“I guess I still don’t exactly know what she is,” Ethan admitted.
“We’re on the precipice of the our Sixth Era. What we are is what the Masters left behind to rebuild—just before they left.”
“Left? I thought they all died off in the war?”
“That’s what everyone assumes. They don’t know Thea. She knows our whole history, and then some.”
“Where’d they go, the Masters?”
“Out there,” Ty nodded. “To be with God, the Universe that bore them.”
“Jesus.” Ethan breathed.
Ty grinned at the irony of Ethan’s expletive.
“So why is Thea still here?”
“She stayed behind.”
“She didn’t go with them? Why?”
“You should probably ask her that.”
“I don’t know that I could have done the same thing.” Ethan admitted.
“Nor I.” Ty agreed.
Ethan just stood in his thoughts for long moments. “Wow,” he said finally. “So, what’s she like?”
Ty shrugged. “Maybe you should get to know her. I think she likes you.”
“Really?”
“She doesn’t give just anyone a kiss on the cheek the first time she meet them.”
Ethan grinned.
36
T rac looked up from his concentration with several glyphs floating in the air around him within one of the large empty storage areas of the sanctuary. He’d been buried in his studies of advanced glyph architecture for weeks and seeing Kirin and Gage was a welcome excuse to give him a break from the workout. Shirtless, his skin glistening in dew and dressed in soft yoga pants, Trac dismissed the glyphs as the pair approached.
“Those look a little dangerous,” Kirin admitted to his brother as the intricate glyphs faded from existence.
Trac scoffed. “Why do you think I’m down here?” he smiled.
“Nea said you were working out.” Gage looked at the half shattered suits of glassteel armor that Trac was obviously using for some kind of target practice. To his knowledge, Kir armor was invulnerable, but looking at what Trac was doing to it, he wasn’t so sure about that now. “This looks like—combat training.”
“It is combat training. Every Kir has to go through it.”
“I thought the Kir were pacifists?”
“We are. Peace through strength, Gage. There’s a reason no one messed with the Kir. Not even the Masters withstood us during the war.”
“Pacifists don’t go to war,” Gage countered.
“They do when they want to stop it. It’s the only reason we got involved in the conflict between the Sentinels and the Seven to begin with.”
“But all you did was escalate it.”
Trac nodded. “We underestimated the Sentinels’ resolve. I don’t think we fully understood the reasons why the war happened in the first place. They were determined to win. All both sides managed to do was destroy each other and our race in the process.”
“And that doesn’t keep you from training for war?”
“The Zen master trains to fight, Gage, with the hope he never has to. No one messes with him.”
Gage nodded.
“So what are you two up to?” Trac wiped his neck with a fresh workout towel that he pulled out of nowhere.
“Gage and I want you to take us out to Mars,” Kirin offered.
“Oh? What’s out there? Besides a big red rock.”
“We don’t know exactly,” Gage admitted. “Savannah thought we should have a look. I was studying the planet itself, but then we started looking at Mars’ moons. They’re a little odd.”
“Yea,” Trac agreed. “They’re more like asteroids than moons. They’re not very big. Something like eight and fifteen miles across. Those are hardly moons.”
“Right. And their orbits are a little too perfectly aligned, both are in nicely circular equatorial orbits.”
“Yea, that does seem just a little too perfect.”
“It does.”
“Well,” Trac agreed, “you don’t need me to pilot something off-world. Take one of the executive planes. It’ll get you there and back easily enough. Besides, it’s about time the two of you started pilot training. All of us should be familiar with the transports.”
The short forward-swept wings positioned at the aft of the hull made the executive vessel look more like a long luxury missile than a plane. The sleek black hull glistened in the sunlight as the vessel lifted out of the hangar and moved quickly and smoothly up out of the canyon.
The view outside the windshield of the cockpit grew darker as their hundred-foot long plane gained a higher and higher altitude. Soon the curve of the Earth was visible as it slowly dropped from view altogether. Dressed in Kir flight suits, both Gage and Kirin sat in front of a pair of consoles within the cockpit area watching displays of systems, most of which neither of them really understood all that well. But the small craft had its own intelligences keeping watch over their vehicle as it pulled quickly away from the small blue sunlit orb now in the distance.
“I can honestly say I’ve never been off-world before.” Kirin watched as the Earth began to look more and more like a distant blue ball and the brightness of billions of stars that came more and more into focus. Ther
e were so many of them filling their view of space that spread out before them.
Gage grinned a little nervously. “Yea, that kind of makes two of us.”
Both heard a slight hum and then felt a sudden deep acceleration as the vessel’s tiny reflex cores energized feeding unknown joules of power directly into spatial engines that rocketed them away from the Earth. Both watched as inertial stabilization engaged allowing the vessel to quickly move to near light speed in a matter of moments.
“Wow,” Gage grinned at Kirin, utterly failing to look unimpressed. “I need to get out and play with these babies more often.”
Kirin nodded, feeling just as awestruck by the experience. Both could visually feel what their vessel was doing, but he visually checked their instruments as well. “At light speed, looks like we’re only about thirty minutes away.”
Gage watched some of the displays for several minutes trying to learn what some of them were displaying about the vessel and its travel through the vast empty they were now within.
“How is Kira doing?” Gage asked.
“Fine. She’s gone completely native in San Francisco. She even got a job at a coffee house.”
“Why?”
“She wants to learn and feel what it’s like to be a human.”
“To live with the animals?” Gage chuckled.
“I didn’t say it like that. You’re hardly an animal, Gage. Only a couple of us still think like that.”
“You don’t make a lot of money working at a place like that. How is she surviving?”
“She has three roommates. They all share a small apartment downtown.”
“Is she seeing anyone?”
“Not seriously. They’re all attracted to her, but she’s not attracted to any of them. Not like she was to you and Savannah.”
Gage nodded. “I wonder why she never asked any of us out?”
“Probably because her brother horned in on the two of you before she could.”
“You weren’t the only one, Kirin. Nea was ‘horning in’, as you say, on Savannah from day one as well.”
“Yea, I saw that. To be honest, that was part of the reason I never really got all that involved with Savannah. She and Nea seemed to be really hitting it off.”
“Kira didn’t want to try to ‘horn in’ on anyone?” Gage smirked.
“Kira’s not really the competitive type, Gage. She’s very reserved. And polite. She won’t get in the middle of another relationship. Even if she is attracted. The truth is, it’s part of the reason she left.”
Gage looked surprised. “Really?”
“Attraction is powerful. It was killing her being around you and Savannah all the time.”
“She didn’t like the idea of sharing?”
“I don’t mind sharing you with Savannah, Gage. But Kira’s her own person. She’s,” Kirin paused, “a bit of a monogamist. Sharing’s not her thing.”
“A monogamist, huh?” Gage chuckled. The way Kirin said it made it sound like having just one partner was something akin to being selfish, even sinful. “I see. Well, I hope she finds someone. Your sister is beautiful.”
“I would love for Kira to find a Reborn somewhere. I wish I could track one down somewhere for her to meet.”
“Maybe she should date one of the sun gods? It would go a long way to repairing our history with the Sentinels.”
“I thought of that.” Then he grinned. But it seems like they’re already taken—mostly with each other.”
Gage chuckled. “Yea, they’re—definitely a little different. Jerrod’s still single, mostly. I bet we could set them up.”
“I don’t think that’s going to work, Gage. Kira’s really picky. Besides, I don’t think she wants to become one of the Invicti. Instant evolutionary change, just have unprotected sex with one of them.”
“I don’t know, Kirin,” Gage kicked his feet up onto the console. “A Kir Invicti? That’s one helluva combination.”
“Yea, I suppose.”
“You don’t seem convinced.”
Kirin oddly said nothing.
The ship dropped suddenly to a much slower velocity. They could see both the light and dark side of the red planet as their vessel quickly rounded the globe.
“Oh, we’re coming up on Deimos already.” Gage began looking at his screens.
“That’s not even a moon. It’s just a big rock.”
Gage watched as a new screen winked into existence in front of him. “Yea? Well that ‘big rock’ just scanned us.”
“Yea. I can see that. The shields didn’t go up though. I guess the ship doesn’t consider the scan a threat.” Kirin studied the small moon and his screens carefully.
“I’m going to take us in closer.” Gage moved his hands through the manual holo-controls of the vessel.
Their plane moved elegantly a mile from the surface of the tiny asteroid-like moon.
“Not much here. Like Dust Bowl, Oklahoma,” Gage quipped.
“Well, something scanned us.” Kirin countered.
“Whatever it was, it’s well hidden. I’m on full active scan and it’s just a big rock. There’s nothing down there.”
“Let’s cruise in closer and look at Phobos then,” Kirin suggested.
It didn’t take them but a minute to move into a tighter orbit with the orange-red world. Both watched as the large asteroid came into view over the horizon of the globe.
“There it is again,” Kirin pointed.
“It’s just a brief instant scan. Not much to it.”
“It’s an ID scan then,” Kirin acknowledged.
“What does that do?”
“It’s a very narrow scan that looks for specific markers in the target.”
“Target, huh?” Gage quipped.
“Figure of speech.”
“What happens if the scan doesn’t find the markers it’s looking for?”
Kirin looked at Gage with a raised eyebrow. “Maybe we don’t want to find out.”
37
C an I walk with you?” Thea asked, suddenly out of nowhere.
“Oh! Jesus,” Ethan jumped. He could feel she’d startled him on purpose. As a new god he’d not been startled by anything in the past several weeks. But Thea’s presence and voice suddenly just came out of nowhere as he wandered the Atlantica, exploring different places. Ty had convinced him that he didn’t need to be wearing clothes on board the vessel; his family seldom did. Now with Thea standing next to him, he’d become a little embarrassed. He turned to one side slightly to hide the front of himself.
She breathed a soft giggle.
“You think this is funny.” He couldn’t help but grin at her himself; both could feel what the other was feeling.
“Don’t be shy, Ethan. I’m not wearing any clothes.”
He grinned and relaxed a bit. “Maybe you should be.” His eyes scanned her beautiful curves for a moment.
“Do you like our vessel? I can show you around if you like.”
Ethan nodded. “Sure.”
Both walked the dimly lit corridor, her shimmering skin softly touching his.
“We used to play Hide and Seek, Ty and I, all over the ship while he was growing up. He used to slug me for startling him like I did to you a minute ago.”
“He actually hit you?”
“He was six, Ethan.”
“Oh. How old were you?”
“Older. But we’d play as kids.”
“So, you can appear to be a kid?”
“In avatar, I can be whatever you like.”
“But, you don’t really have a body?”
“No. I wish you didn’t.”
Ethan chuckled. “I wish you did.”
“Do I look okay, to you?” she asked, sliding her fingers elegantly but nervously through her hair.
“Thea, you look more than okay.”
“I can be a guy if you’d prefer? Like Ty.”
“I—think I like what I see now.”
“You have purple eyes, like our famil
y.”
“They used to be pretty drab.”
“It means you’re special, Ethan.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“As you get older, you and Ty will be able to do things others can’t. Ty’s body is already changing. Yours will catch up to his soon.”
“Really? I thought that dive was pretty spectacular.” He felt her hand brush gently against his. Ethan almost instinctively took her hand softly. She wove her fingers between his, as they walked into another part of the ship that looked like it might be an engine room of some kind. They walked up to a glass railing that circled around several clear tube-like cylinders that descended into the floor and up into the ceiling above them. A soft glow radiated from them illuminating the darkened room with a warm light.
Holding Thea’s hand with his fingers locked in hers gave Ethan some warm feelings in his chest and some other very natural feelings he was trying to simmer down before they started showing up between his thighs. It was odd the intense feelings and emotional sensations Thea was bringing out in him.
“Don’t fight it,” she said softly.
“Hmmm?”
“I like what you’re feeling.”
“I like the feelings too, Thea; but, I just met you.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” She moved close to him, placing her hand on his bare chest. “Hmmm,” she sighed.
“You’re making my heart skip.”
“I like the way you feel—with your heart skipping.”
“It feels like we’re attracted. But—this doesn’t feel like the attraction I have with Ty.”
“We are, Ethan. What do I feel like to you?”
“Like this,” Ethan very gently moved his lips to the side of her neck. He could feel the intensity of her elation as he moved his lips over her soft skin to her ear.
“Ohhh—” he heard her breath. But her breath was only a reflection of what he could feel within her. Thea moved softly closer to him, “—what are you doing to me, Ethan?” she whispered, completely lost in his feelings as Ethan mingled his feelings sweetly with hers.
With Thea’s softly illuminated skin close to his, her bare breasts against his pecs, and their feelings softly entwined, he couldn’t help his swelling male. With his awakening months ago, his body had gotten more muscular, and with it his manhood. His spire was nearly the size of Ty’s now. He pulled his front back from her, feeling a little embarrassed about himself hardening so quickly against the soft skin of her thighs.
Paradisus (Awakened Book 6) Page 14