Charger the Soldier

by Lea Tassie

  Why? Because of his brilliance in mathematics, because of his powerful brain. Of course he's descended from the ordinary humanity who were allowed to evolve naturally, but who can know where his DNA came from?

  No, Reader, all that brilliance does not make him fun to talk with! Anyway, Charger doesn't talk. He acts.

  Ready for the story of Mahoud? Oh, this story happened about fifteen or sixteen thousand years ago. In the history of the universe, that's about five minutes.

  Chapter 3 Mahoud

  Visha was, in most respects, a typical twelve-year-old boy, with two pesky younger sisters. His father was a very important scientist and would often take Visha to the university on weekends, encouraged by the boy's eagerness to start sampling the higher learning planned for his future.

  This day Visha rose early from his bed, hurried to dress in his long robes of silk and hagfish fibers, and stumbled downstairs to eat a quick meal before he and his father went off for the morning. He was greeted by his two sisters, Malef and Shaquan. "When will papa take us to the workshops?" they whined.

  "Hopefully never, should fate be merciful," teased Visha.

  "Now, now, don't be so mean to your sisters, or you will be punished for arrogance," Visha's mother said. "Hurry now, eat and then wash your hands. Your father is waiting for you outside. And wear some sandals this time."

  Visha tried to be dignified, as befitted his age, but he was almost too excited to eat. Today was going to be different. His father had mentioned that they would not be going to the university as they usually did. In the normal way of things, the boy would have been disappointed because he was fascinated by his father's ongoing experiments with the clear slime exuded by hagfish as a defense mechanism.

  The Mahouds had been conducting such experiments for thousands of years and farmed hagfish in deep ponds as well as harvesting them from the ocean. They made wearable fabric from the slime but also used it as a defense themselves. They had perfected a way of enclosing the slime in a clear envelope which functioned as a complete body suit, worn by scouts who flew to other areas seeking information. The primitive, murderous tribes were terrified of Mahouds in these suits, for they appeared to be moving, quivering masses of liquid refracting light in a rainbow effect. The suits were semi-transparent and the solid body inside seemed to shift back and forth in a way that made it impossible to pinpoint an exact shape or location. The primitives knelt down, faces buried in the dirt, to worship these Mahoud explorers, who thus explored the continent in peace.

  Though Visha hoped to follow in his father's footsteps and become a scientist himself, he couldn't help being excited because his father was taking him today to see the Nine great ones. The boy could not believe his luck, for almost no one ever visited the Nine of Nines, and with good reason. These old ones were the greatest minds in existence and had little interest in the affairs of ordinary mortals. Even at twelve, Visha had learned all about the great ones from school. What he didn't know was that he had been summoned by the Nines and his father was quite concerned, though he did not let on to Visha.

  Father and son stepped onto their transport and sat down. Visha's father removed the restraints from the anti-gravity attachments on the corners and waved his hands over the front of their vehicle until a small rope-like thread of fibrous materials arose. He tipped his head forward, moved his long gray hair aside and, with his left hand, raised the end of the fiber so as to join its connector with a surgically installed link in the back of his neck. Within moments, his own electrical circuits, enhanced by the vehicle's mechanisms, created a glowing field of golden light around the two occupants, and the transport began to rise from the ground.

  Visha liked travel. Though there was no indication of motion inside the vehicle, he loved to jump up or stand as the transport dipped and swerved dramatically.

  Within moments the great city disappeared behind them and the ring of mountains appeared on the horizon. Soon they approached the temple of the Nines. The transport slowed, hovered for a moment, and gently touched down at the base of the great temple's steps. Visha and his father stepped out and Visha's father rolled up the flat transport, much as one might roll up a carpet, and placed it under his arm.

  "Si Eed, it is good to see you, my old friend," a grizzled gray-haired man said, "and this must be your boy Visha? Where is your lovely wife? Why do you always come alone?"

  Visha's father said, "Because I trust you so little around women, my old friend." They both laughed. "Excuse me, my friend, we have business in the temple," Si Eed said, and guided his son up the great steps and through a broad, open archway into the temple.

  The interior was astonishing in its purity, with white stone walls and clear glass-like floors polished to reflect the sunlight. The hallways were wide and long and the ceiling high, making Visha feel insignificant. Rooms opened off the halls on both sides but Visha knew better than to glance inside them. The main precepts everyone learned, right from birth, were peace, privacy, and respect for one another. Doorways existed, but not doors.

  Visha followed his father along the halls for quite a distance before entering a narrow pathway that led to a lower level. This pathway was rough and simple in comparison to the halls they had walked through. At the bottom, the pathway ended before a wide opening where both Visha and his father stopped and gazed politely at the ground. From deep within the room, a voice spoke.

  "Si Eed, let the boy enter, then leave us. Come forward, Visha, we command this." The tone was clear and commanding, though seemed to have a slight tremor. Young Visha turned to his father, concerned. Si Eed gave him a reassuring touch on the shoulder and urged him onward.

  When Visha looked up and stepped inside, he could see no end to the room, no matter where he looked. It was a vast space with a dirt floor and a low ceiling made of rough cut stone.

  The Nines were a shock to most who first saw them, for they were in fact, nine human bodies, both male and female, joined by the tops of their heads. They lay upon a special star-shaped platform so that their heads, which had been surgically attached to one another from youth, were all in the center of the star. They never made eye contact with anyone, for they lay on their backs always looking upward. But Visha was sure that they knew where he stood and how he looked.

  Their brains had intertwined, and it was said that this brain mass gave them incredible powers of intelligence, perhaps nine times nine more than the normal person. Altogether, there were nine groups of humans conjoined, in nine different parts of the land, one at each point of the compass, north, south, east, and west, and at the midpoints, northeast, southwest, southeast, and northwest. And one special group in the center of all, the Nine of Nines, where Visha now stood. The Nines decided everything for the people of Mahoud, also known as Atlantis, for Mahoud was the body and the Nines its mind.

  "Approach us, young one, and do not be afraid, for we have need of you," said the clear voice. "Time is becoming short. Not only have brutal primitives thrust themselves upon us and made the world too impure to bear, the earth is also destined for a vast coldness. We are too old for the journey that Mahoud must take, and nine children have been called to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. You have been chosen to guide the city from this place to a new place of peace. You are to be one of the Nine which will navigate the black skies."

  "I am sorry, great ones," Visha said, as he bowed down and hid his face in shame. "I do not understand what you are asking of me."

  "It matters not; all will be revealed when you are joined. Celebrate this day with your family, for a great honor is bestowed upon you," the speaker for the Nine said.

  The people of Mahoud were far advanced in technology and intelligence compared to the primitive humans massing on the rest of Earth and camping in their hundreds on the strip of land connecting the city-state to the continent. Many thousands of years before, the First Ones had met the Dinosauroids, and not only respected them as superior beings, but used and improved on their inventions. When th
e Dinosauroids suddenly disappeared, as if swept from Earth in a single instant, this branch of the First Ones secluded itself from the inferior and warlike primitive humans by retiring to this near-island. They also developed robotic guards, installing in each one a primitive controlling device perhaps the size of a shoebox and powering them with radioactive particles.

  The humans who lived in the villages lying before the city gates had always been dirty, vile, and primitive. They attacked other tribes merely for the pleasure of capturing very young girls and scarring them for sexual gratification. The Mahoud elders, from high atop their towers, were appalled as they watched the aggression toward the young, the weak, and the elderly.

  Lately, Mahoud patrols had discovered a new type of human far to the north. They were notably different from the local brutes, shorter, more robust, more massive in muscle, and larger in brain capacity. At first, the learned ones thought these new humans might be of some use to the cities, both as cheap labor and guards. But, alas, when the Mahoud patrols managed to capture a few specimens, it was discovered that they were extremely passive.

  These new humans were clearly more intelligent than the dirty ones, for they had a primitive language, a combination of grunts and clicks. Nevertheless, their passive nature made them unsuitable as laborers and so they were left alone. Unfortunately, the dirty ones took every opportunity to hunt and rape these passive peoples wherever they were found. Eventually the elders learned that the dirty ones had managed to wipe out all the passive new humans for at least as far north as the Mahoud patrols flew.

  The time had come to remove Mahoud completely from the twisted creatures, for the safety of all its citizens.

  >>>

  Dart speaks to Reader:

  No, the Mahouds did not simply pack their suitcases and move, leaving their beautiful buildings and wonderful country for the brutal primitives to ravage. They took the country with them.

  You say that's not possible, Reader?

  But it happened, and they used antigravity to do it. For millions of years a portion of Earth's core had been working its way to the surface and, when it neared four hundred miles from the upper mantle, the immense pressures of over-lying rock shifted rapidly, allowing a large fragment to surge toward the surface. However, the shift also broke this core piece into smaller shards which were not powerful enough by themselves to entirely penetrate Earth's shell. Thus they lay undiscovered until the Toba eruption.

  It was this Toba volcanic eruption of 70,000 BCE which ejected the small fragments of Earth's core to the surface. It must have been stupendous, though I'm glad I wasn't around to experience it. Humans had never faced such a large and extraordinary eruption, considered by later standards as a deep earthquake and the nearest to level 10 on the Richter scale ever experienced.

  Well, as the ejected fragments of the core cooled, they took on the properties of antigravity, much like placing two magnets of opposite charges in proximity to one another. The immense pressures in Earth's core determined the polarity of the planet's magnetic field but, as the core fragment was no longer subjected to pressure and heat, the cooling fragments flipped their magnetic field to become antigravity.

  No, the shards weren't discovered right away. It would have been impossible to approach the area for a long time. But eventually things cooled down enough for human exploration.

  At first only small pieces of these magic rocks were dug out of the ground. Those who found them held them to be sacred for they had the power of lifting heavy objects into the air. Releasing such a shard would cause it to rise and disappear forever, so great care was taken to secure shards to the ground by placing them between manganite stones, canceling their effect. Eventually technology was developed that could retrieve the whole core fragment and it was soon learned that the fragment could be controlled by placing dense materials near it to repel or attract the stone so that it moved in a desired direction.

  Yes, Reader, a steering system. Anyway, that was how the first human antigravity-powered drive was built for the tiny continent of Mahoud.

  >>>

  The antigravity drive took hundreds of years to perfect and many lives were lost in the process, but the small island continent of Mahoud finally transformed itself into the first sky city. As the island ripped itself from Earth's surface, debris fell everywhere. The ground shook and a great crackling filled the air, sending the primitive humans scurrying to their shamans for protection. The city rose ever upward, while the seas surged forth in boiling chaos, filling the void which Mahoud had occupied. The whole world seemed to tremble, as if awed by man's victory over the elements.

  From the eight points of the compass, the towers that stood atop the mountains ringing Mahoud began to glow. Joining their powers, the Nine of Nines created a dome of radiant golden light, powered by radioactive particles, emerging from the towers to encase the continent and people of Mahoud. Now safe in their domed flying city, the land of Mahoud began gliding above the surface of the planet, seeking a better place to live.

  For a hundred years, surrounded by clouds and invisible to the ground dwellers, Mahoud drifted above Earth in search of a more congenial location, but wherever it wandered, the humans appeared to be as vile and primitive as those they had left behind. The people began to despair of finding a new home.

  Visha and his eight compatriots had long since grown to manhood. Bound to one another by their skulls in the center of the flying state of Mahoud, they were now more than a hundred years of age, and wise beyond all their ancestors. Great were the powers of these Nine, for their minds, in concert, were strong enough to control the direction Mahoud could fly. They searched, and went on searching for many years, never finding the place of peace they were tasked to achieve.

  The Nines then turned their gaze to the blackness of space to seek a different world that they might own and control, a world where they could finally be at peace. They knew it might take many, many generations to find a new Earth, and preparations were made to live in the black sky for thousands of years.

  The Nine of Nines guided the antigravity engine, first of all to leave Earth, then to have Mahoud pulled toward the moon, then to repel the moon as they passed, and be attracted to another planet, like a gravitational slingshot. On and on, for years, Mahoud would fly to a planet, then push away from that planet and fly toward another.

  The time arrived when the flying city-state reached the last planet in our solar system, a small, cold, barren orb. They passed it by and the vastness of empty black space stretched out before them like an endless road might appear to an ant. At first the Nine of Nines were confused, for their gravity engine had nothing to grab on to, and for a while the space farer simply drifted.

  "I wonder," Visha finally said to his eight compatriots, "if we should set a course for Alpha Centauri. It is the nearest solar system to that of Earth." It had been agreed by these eight sages that Visha would act as leader when decisions were to be made. Though their brains were joined and used as one single powerful instrument to control the country, their minds could still function independently, thus affording each a small but precious measure of privacy.

  "Why not?" asked Sarama. "Earth's system is pair-bonded with Alpha Centauri; we are binary, for we orbit the center of the Milky Way side by side."

  "There would be many more planets to choose from," Kumar offered.

  Visha mused, "We have traded planets in the past, though not in recent eons. It would take us a very long time to get there, probably thousands of years. We travel so very slowly."

  They decided to aim for Alpha Centauri. After all, they had nowhere else to go.

  But their flying city was destined never to reach Alpha Centauri. One day a new planet, the tenth planet of Earth's solar system, appeared in the distance, a black orb invisible against the backdrop of inky black space, but whose presence was detected by the Nines and their instruments. Visha decided that it would be good to use this passing body as a gravitational slingshot, speeding up t
heir journey.

  Many generations of their people had lived and died during the long flight, so perhaps impatience fueled the Nine's decision, but attracting the black planet was the worst decision they could have made. They were able to grab the rogue planet with the gravity drive, but could not escape the planet's own mighty grasp. As a result, Mahoud crashed so hard into this planet that it penetrated the thin surface crust and buried itself inside the planet's hollow black belly, acting as a plug for the break. There, fortunately, it continued to generate gravity, stabilizing the planet.

  The Mahoud continent was domed and the dome held, though many people were killed by the impact. Only two of the outer towers survived and, luckily, these two towers kept the vacuum of space from rushing into the hollow world and killing everyone. Many of the Nine of Nines had died, though the group into which Visha had been blended suffered only two deaths.

  Visha knew that human nature would cause most people to instinctively look for someone to blame for the great misfortune. As leader of his Nine, it fell to him to calm the fear and panic which the survivors faced and to give everything a positive spin. With care and logic, he formulated duties for the unhurt individuals to perform, helping those with the lightest injuries to tend to those needing immediate care. He directed others to begin stabilizing the remaining two towers. The undamaged robots were immediately ordered to put out fires to prevent the wasteful consumption of needed oxygen. The water they had carried with them in travel was checked and rationed.

  Visha was thus the guiding force behind the success of the survivors. The two perished members of his Nine were surgically replaced with survivors from one of the other groups of Nine. At full capacity again, the Nine started planning, not just to survive, but to make out of their mistake a brilliant success. Like a man possessed, Visha drove the other eight minds at a frenzied pace, for he knew that death would soon claim him. He was, after all, nearly five hundred years old. Thus, he organized, delegated and responded with such vigor that, within a month of the crash, most things had been stabilized.