Land Of The Gods

by Abhishek .

  “As I told you Mathias, you have no idea about how I care about Earth. I was the one who really built it, picking it up from where my father left and hauling it up from disasters like the Black Death to where it is today. We, Asurians, were highly altruistic about it as my grandfather and father, both have been responsible for setting the foundations of your planet. I was altruistic too, at least till the time when I was Da Vinci. From Franklin onwards I speeded up the rate of change in your society even more. Tell me you two, don’t you think that the pace at which technology is advancing presently in your world is unimaginably fast considering the almost steady growth only a couple of decades back?”

  Ram scratched his head while I rubbed my chin. “Yes,” I agreed, looking out into the distance, “According to Moore’s law, computing power, measured in the number of transistors in a circuit, doubles every 18 months. This is an extremely fast exponential growth! In fact, recent advances in computing may result in the time-period decreasing even further!”

  “Not only that, Mathias,” Ram added. “The amount of writing proliferated around the globe in the last four years is greater than all the writing done from the time when the art of writing was first conceived!” Ram looked skeptically at Odin. “All this is because of you, I am certain. But why did you bring us to such an inflation point so fast?”

  Odin smiled. “Here, I admit, that I have acted in some self- interest. You see, in order that the Makto that we extract is useful and efficient, it must be enriched with electromagnetic waves of some higher frequency. Earlier, there was more of radio waves in your atmosphere, and that was not enough. You must already be aware of the fact that after the creation of your dimension— what you term as the Big Bang—our universe has been filled with microwaves or infrared waves that have stretched with the inflating space. But this microwave background radiation was not enough....”

  “So you accelerated our growth so that we reach the microwave phase quicker,” I completed his train of thought. “Now that microwaves are increasingly used for communication and technology, the waves in our atmosphere are enough to enrich the silicon so that you can obtain your precious Makto!” I almost sneered at him indignantly. “All this was just like an experiment! We were just guinea pigs in your experiment!”

  “It is much more than an experiment Mathias! You know it is, and I told you why. I admit, some of the advancements are due to our benefits too, but Mandagaar is my child, Mathias. My forefathers helped create it and so did I. If the pain of destroying Earth would be borne on one man, it would be me. It is just like the pangs a father feels when he is compelled to kill his son.”

  His air of sadness had now become almost palpable. I stared at him and finally understood his standpoint. Yet, my obstinacy wished to find out a way, a path that could save both planets and reverse the inevitable doom that Odin prophesied.

  After a long while, the frown on Odin’s face started to disappear, giving way to a characteristic calm and peace.

  “The Earth may well be your child,” I said looking at him askance. Then turning straight to face him, I said firmly, “But I am your grandson. The pangs you spoke of... didn’t you feel any such pang when my parents abandoned me on Earth because I wasn’t born the right way? You didn’t do anything then, did you?”

  Odin’s deep-set eye looked at me, the red light almost acting like a laser pointer on the barrel of a rifle. “How do you know that you weren’t born the right way? Who told you this?”

  “Baldr, my uncle, told me everything. We met him at a biosphere in the Himalayas... a mountain range....”

  “I know what the Himalayas are,” he broke in, curtly. “What did he say?”

  I waited a moment and noticed he didn’t know something. “Baldr said that he was amassing forces to take over Asr-Gawa, and that he needed to recruit me. He sent some Jargantaans after me too... almost got me killed.” I watched Odin shake his head disdainfully. “He also told me everything about my past, about how my parents left me for good on Earth because of the pod programme... and you did nothing!”

  “You don’t know an iota of what happened, Mathias. I will not tell you how it felt as if a fiery dagger had been plunged into my gut, the night before my son escaped, when I held you in my arms and rubbed your pink cheek for the first and last time; I do not find it within me to tell you that when my son and his wife fled with you, never to return, my soul was wrenched out of my body; I do not need to tell you that when I lost my grandson because of all the Conservative Legion protests raging around Asr-Gawa, I could have torn the city asunder and incinerated every civilian to get you back... but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because even then, Asr-Gawa’s administration was the most important for me and even now it is. But I feel that back then, I might have acted like a cowardly, acted a little selfishly... but not now. Now, I will take the decisions that I feel are correct and saving Asr-Gawa is of utmost importance.”

  “But why did my father abandon me?” By now, I had succumbed to Odin’s contagious sadness, feeling a tingling near my tear ducts and a weight pushing against my throat. “We could have lived together! I could have grown under them, instead of an orpahanage, just like a normal kid!” My voice was quivering.

  “He left you because he did not want you to die like him!” Odin exclaimed, his voice reverberating through the cavernous space. A note of despair and regret crept into his voice.

  Kapittel 80

  Vivek’s story

  Asr-Gawa

  March 17, 2017, Friday, 1910 hours EET

  “Emotions obscure objectivity,” a voice whispered in the darkness. “Succumb to your basic desires and remain chained by them forever. With every action, keep in mind the larger scheme of things.” The face of Vivek’s father emerged from the darkness. A memory cached away in a distant part of his brain, such that all other colourful aspects of the memory had been stripped away. What remained was this raw black and white dream and the unadulterated message. “Never let petty emotions stop what you have to do, Vivek.” Vivek fluttered open his eyes deliriously, still reeling from induced slumber. He looked around and saw that he was still lying in the small craft on the outside of the dome. He looked at the sky cautiously and sighed audibly as he couldn’t spot any of those drones. To his side, Hikaru was lying down, working feverishly on his laptop while Daniel and Dr Shanbhag look around as groggily as he had.

  “Did Mathias and Ram get inside?” Vivek asked.

  Everybody looked at him and somehow their taut muscles relaxed momentarily. “We think so. At least we saw them fall right into that spire,” Shanbhag replied.

  “How do we get off this dome? We need to get back into the city.” Vivek hauled himself up only to be pushed back down by Hikaru.

  “Careful, we don’t want to be spotted by any of those drones. I don’t think they’d be able to notice heat signatures, you know. I managed to tamper with their system a bit but I don’t want us taking any chances.”

  “Okay, but how the hell do we get down there in the city? We have to go to Valhalla if Mathias and Ram need us!” Vivek exclaimed. Nobody had a clue. The air was getting colder and the breeze stronger, chilling the four to their bones. Staying out here for too long could be very dangerous to them.

  “What’s that?” Daniel pointed at a small object far away on the surface of the dome. At first, they thought it was part of the structure. Slowly, they floated towards it and noticed a peculiar scene. When Hikaru and Mathias had hacked into the drones, one of them must have lost control and lodged itself into the transparent surface of the dome. All this while, it had remained there, oozing out that strange liquid from its nozzle into the dome.

  “Look at how the material covering the dome’s surface is wrinkled here. All over this region near the bird’s beak. It must be because of the corrosive effect of the solution dripping from its nozzle,” Shanbhag said. Then he smiled. “We may have found our way into the city after all folks. Just follow me and avoid the security outposts altogether. We need t
o make our way to Valhalla through alleyways.”

  “You’re sure they won’t spot us right?” the Major asked. “Because if they do...”

  “Trust me. I’ve lived here long enough.” With that, Dr Shanbhag vaulted over the edge of the craft and landed heavily on the drone, ripping the fabric of the dome.

  Kapittel 81

  Mathias’s story

  Asr-Gawa

  March 17, 2017, Friday, 1920 hours EET

  “Yes Mathias! Your father was dying! Forget about whatever Baldr said about your parents or about Asr-Gawa. I should have understood his intentions from the recent change in his demeanour,” Odin words were reduced to a mutter. He paused, looking lost; then resumed his speech in a full voice. “Your parents fled straight away to the south pole of our planet: Hel. It was the last resort and closest place where they could be safe from the death threats they faced here in Asr-Gawa. With the benefit of hindsight, I now know that I shouldn’t have sent them there,” Odin wiped his eye regretfully. “We call our south pole Hel for a reason. Its name has inspired the name ‘Hell’ in Mandaa mythology, like in the Bible and Greek mythology. When our planet was divided into these polar landmasses due to tidal effects, we attempted to try and inhabit both landmasses to prevent chaos. However, increased scientific, especially biochemical, genetic and high energy particle testing led to catastrophic accidents. Politics that got involved while trying to solve the problems and acquire land for the clans led to nuclear and chemical war. The clans decided to stop only when they realised the extent of the damage they had done. Fertile lands and rolling verdure had been transformed into barren, black soil made of ash and radioactive rocks, strewn with the carcasses of the thousands who had died fighting. Water had been turned to steam or rivers and lakes of potent poison. Trees were dark forks of death and mountains were charred lumps dotting the landscape, in front of the sky with red clouds filled with the blood of the dead and the ash that blanketed everything, a reminder of all the weapons we had used. The land was deemed unfit to inhabit and declared to be Hel or the land of the dead. This was where nobody could go to and nobody had been in a very long time. So, thinking all the dangers must have subsided after such a long time, as a large number of nuclear weapons produced only short half- life products, my son went there with his family by crossing the treacherous sea. However, danger still lurked there. You see, when you were created in the pod, we discovered that something had to be supplied to you in order to ensure that you were... human. Otherwise, children grown in the pods are exceedingly superior to us in intellect but turn out to be mere robotic entities, devoid of any emotion. My son had significant scientific ability, something well appreciated in the throes of the Pandemic, due to his pronounced pineal gland.” “What is generally called the third eye?” muttered Ram, pointing to the centre of his forehead.

  “Precisely. In us, the pineal gland is so small that it virtually has no function, but when it is pronounced, it is only known to bestow its owner extremely high intelligence, and that is all we know about it. There may be something more to it. Your father, Mathias, had a very large one. He gave his pineal gland to you and thus, you were born. When he escaped with you to Hel, he realised that the leftover radiation was enough to mutate your gland, causing you to die of cancer. By the time he found a path to Mandagaar, you were already dying, Mathias. So, when he reached Earth and admitted you to the orphanage, he gave you... his amulet,” he pointed at my blue amulet with a shaky, bony finger. “That, my boy, is what is keeping you alive. That is what kept him alive. The amulet’s power is beyond the grasp of our imagination.”

  “Beyond the grasp of your imagination? How can that be? I agree that you face an almost insurmountable challenge of the Pandemic... but we hail you as God for a reason. Does that mean that there is something greater than you all too?” My eyes widened slightly at the possibility of the existence of a race even more advanced than Asr-Gawa.

  “When we were reading Noah’s diary,” Ram added inquisitively, “We noticed how Bor, your father, had speculated that the formation of our dimension could have been an ‘act of God’. How can you, the all-powerful beings of our universe, not be atheistic?”

  Odin chuckled playfully. Inspite of his old age, his laugh still seemed rather silvery, indicating that a lot of life was still left in him. “Yes. There is something greater than us, something more powerful. Our belief in the Gods is quite different from yours though, in that we quite fully know the nature of our Gods but Mandaas don’t. For Mandaas, Gods are a spiritual and ethereal entity but for us, they are beings who, even though they are not really observable, impose their power upon us. Mandaas see hope in their Gods while we see fear and subservience. Yes Ram, my father did mention the ‘Gods’ in his diary. Before the Pandemic, we had reached the scientific ability to comprehend our place in the universe and that of all other bodies. We figured out that our universe was initially an enormous shapeless figure with membranes that enclosed the volume within. This mother universe had nine spatial dimensions, not the type of dimension where different realities exist at the same location but dimensions like length, breadth and height.”

  “Nine dimensions made it highly unstable and eventually, it cracked into two: our universe with three spatial dimensions and another with four,” I completed Odin’s explanation. “How do you know this?” Ram whispered loudly. People of a certain level of intellect often find themselves annoyed when they are unaware of something someone else knows.

  “Whatever Odin... my grandfather is saying matches with the prevalent cosmological theories about the beginning of our universe. There are a number of theories about creation or genesis. Some say that the universe was simply born out of a singularity, a point with no volume but infinite pressure and near inifinite temperature. Others say that the universe is like a cycle, that our universe grows side by side to another universe. This other universe contracts and expands into our universe and ours into another and so forth. One of the most important theories is that our universe is a higher dimensional bubble formed out of the fusion or fission of two universes with more spatial dimensions or probably the interaction of branes which are essentially celestial membrane universes.” “I have... completely lost you,” Ram’s face was a picture of befuddlement.

  “Mathias is correct, Ram,” Odin commanded the attention back to himself. “Mandaas are on the path to this monumental discovery of creation but we have already found it out. Our universe was created when a higher dimensional bubble, the mother universe, split into two sister universes with three and four dimensions respectively. This split was partly natural and partly engineered by the Gods to maintain stability.

  “This is how the Big Bang happened? You are telling us that these hypotheses are true and scientifically proven to be viable?” I stared at him like the headmaster surveying two errant boys before him.

  “Indeed, Mathias. You may have then observed that although many factors may be different in our dimensions, scientific knowledge and its development are constant and follow a certain path of progression. Think of it this way: the human race in every dimension first discovers the wheel and then the time machine. It’s just that the time at which this cycle starts is different for each. Anyways, I shall not digress.

  “Once we found out about this sister universe lurking out in the void, we tried to communicate with them. Slowly, my grandfather developed an instrument that allowed him to project himself into the other universe. Now you must understand, this sister universe, our creators, are all made of energy. When their universe was forming, the instability caused a difference in the mass-energy ratio, leading to the universe being made mostly of energy carrying particles....”

  “Such as guage bosons and quanta,” I said and noticed that Ram looked at me with irritation.

  “Precisely, as per the terms in your world. My brilliant grandfather could then see their world, although he was hardly able to grasp it physically because he was meant to perceive only three dimensions, not f
our. Yet, mathematical models developed by him were able to explain the world. Nothing was mystical to us anymore as we had almost solved the most fundamental problems of the universe.” “Then why do you fear them and call them Gods?”

  “Everything changed after a momentous incident. Remember that eons ago our universe was one with the four-dimensional one. Even after its split, there still exist linkages between the universes popping in and out of existence, exchanging matter and energy. We speculate that long ago, an abnormal incident of energy manipulation in the other universe released such large and strong amounts of their substance that some of it got transferred to our universe through these linkages. What materialised was a three-dimensional condensed manifestation of their main energy source. It was like nothing we had ever seen, a stone-like substance that held unimaginable amounts of energy chanelled into our universe from the four-dimensional one.

  “Fearing that the beings intended to use it on us, my father acquired it against my grandfather’s counsel. Tensions had already been increasing between our two worlds because of a race of scientific discovery and influence over the other world, though we knew the power of our neighbours. We were playing God with God.”

  “But... but the stone, doesn’t it violate the fact that our universe has a constant amount of energy and information if it channels it from the other universe?” Ram asked.

  “Yes. That’s the point. The brainstone being here is an abnormality and is draining energy from the other universe, directly endangering them. That is why the four-dimensional beings want it back. But my father had other ideas. He wanted to harness its power as he realised its incredible scientific potential. He also knew that the brainstone could be located by the Gods. So, he broke up the stone, which he called the brainstone, into four different pieces to mellow the signal which it sent to the other universe. All pieces have the unique ability to connect to their cousins but each piece works in a different way.” “Like the one in Noah’s staff that opened up the wormhole?” Ram asked, excited now with this new piece of knowledge. “Mathias’s amulet seems to be a lethal weapon!”