We saw or learnt that each ship had a lesser child, only the Admiral ship had a child twenty times the size of others, but one twentieth the size of ‘our’ child.
7971
Robbie and Vincent, others also, such as Michael, did not like it, but I could not sit in Freddie and wait. Sheathed and protected by a stasis shield, I floated as close as I dared go to Batsy. I was using all of my empathy gift when suddenly it was as if I was Batsy and saw myself, not as a girl, a Terran, just as a warm and loving…soul. That view only flickered across my awareness and was gone. When I wondered if it had been real, Cherine and others who were sharing assured me it was. It made me feel I was justified in exercising my stubbornness, as they called it, when I insisted I had to come out.
How many times I have castigated myself for not thinking through to that extra thought that flies beyond the limits my laziness and comfort dictates. It took me nearly a week to realise that Batsy had made a move and was waiting for me to signal, in some way, my wish to…to…what? Communicate? Form some kind of relationship? I told myself I was imagining it, that Batsy is not sentient, I should treat it as I do Bitsy. I was not very good at convincing myself, so I waited for something or other to show me how to handle the situation. Taking position by Batsy for a few hours each day was no longer enough and I’m certain all the ships waiting for me must have felt impatient at seeing me float without doing anything. I decided I’ll return to the taverna since it was obvious nothing is going to happen. I jumped…and I heard screaming around me. The Batsy child could now be seen to be about the size of a twelve storey block of apartments and it was hanging in the air just above me.
The screaming was because it caused a shockwave, compressing the air as it arrived, giving everyone an earache. For hours everybody watched it nervously. Robbie thought of enclosing it within a stasis shield, but I pointed out to him that it may be communicating with its big black mama outside and we don’t want it thinking we killed little Batsy when the stasis time differential cuts off all communication. I don’t think anybody went to bed that night.
Did Batsy assume we’d invited it to enter Freddie because of my staring and efforts to communicate with it? If so, it must have decided that the other ships would not be inviting it. It was nearly lunch time when Robbie suggested we slowly move away from the other ships. Batsy and all the fragments followed us.
Allan was flushed from teasing Jess and then hugging and kissing her. He glanced at me. “I can live with the scream. That’s fine, it doesn’t cause me any problems. It’s that emoting of anguish that gets me. What caused it?”
Eleni grabbed the opportunity. “It heard you make a joke.” Perhaps we would not have laughed that much if Jess hadn’t made a big production of it, just about rolling on the floor with laughter. She made Michael laugh and that got us all going.
The truth is, Allan hit the nail on the head. The scream by itself would not have even proved that it was alive; what is taken for a scream can be caused by physical matter being placed under stress. Too much has happened for anyone to claim there is no mind directing that beautiful black sphere, so I was not trying to make that point, just that all its actions plus the scream could be explained in other ways, for example, by artificial intelligence. The anguish lays to rest all arguments; it is a living being, however we categorise its level of sentience.
The rock (monolith?) hanging almost over the taverna, a few hundred metres to one side, has been probed non-invasively in a thousand ways without it reacting. At present it is solid, right through to the core and the same network of rivers of energy show up inside it. It is not using any form of anti-gravity that can be identified and must be floating by an exercise of willpower. No electronic method of communication has been identified but, Robbie as the void was able to trace a line of energy between this rock and the parent rock outside. It has not responded by even the slightest alteration of its mental murmur and when Jade and Haven landed on it and walked around it, there was no reaction. It was weird, for there was gravity and part of their walk was, to us, hanging upside down.
For the second time we are stuck, unable to use teleportation. We dare not even try to transfer to the void. What if, the instant it is cut off, it explodes, shredding our shields? The inner shields are not as impervious as the outer shields are, but even just the flooding of FTS would destroy the world and our home as we know and love it.
7972
We argued that it must have used teleportation of some kind to enter Freddie and it has seen me and since then, many others, teleport. We presume it does see or sense us as individuals. Robbie asked everyone to leave for the World of the Sparklers as he wants to experiment and cause the singularity to move (in relation to normal space) outside of Freddie. Robbie had to accept that many would not leave, including his inner and outer family, so he gave the order for Freddie to teleport about a hundred kilometres from our position. The jump was far too small for the naked eye to identify any changes relative to stellar bodies or even the fleet, but instruments showed that we did jump as planned. The same instruments showed that there was no change at all between us and Batsy. It instantly or almost instantly teleported along with us - or could it be that it was indirectly teleported by us? We are convinced we did not, that Batsy is able to follow us or stay linked in some way so that it follows as if tied by a string to us.
We are not ready to teach it about the void - if it can follow us, even should it be capable of shielding or sheathing itself so that the void does not instantly strip it within one massive explosion and therefore killing us also. Robbie increased the size of our jumps, the final one taking us outside the galaxy. Batsy does not seem to have a problem following us, which we think proves it is able to access the image we use for jumping from our minds. There is some comfort in that, but even if we grow to total confidence in its ability to follow us anywhere, we dare not teach it to jump in time, realities and, as explained, to the void. That does severely limit us; it is, in effect, as if Freddie has been fitted with an anchor.
Last night Batsy took the initiative! It teleported back to the fleet (which instantly stopped all movements), waited for us and then jumped back to us. We’ve been wondering whether it can sense they are a flurry of activity and it is curious and wants to be there to watch. Silver Boy visited and asked to visit the rock hanging over us. He then asked Goldi to leave her body and go with him to sense what he senses for her to share with us. Goldi was too excited about doing it for Robbie to try to argue her out of doing so - not that he had a good reason.
“We do have a problem with your presence,” Empathia told Silver Boy when they returned, “if it fixates on your presence, returning to the Sparkler World could teach it how to teleport there also.”
“I do not teleport with a body, do you believe it can follow energy?”
“We don’t know.”
“Then I shall stay in Freddie until you are confident that I may transfer safely.”
I laughed. “Thank you Ambros, but it will not be necessary. The Sparklers have been jumping to and fro, some after having formed a body for a short time, without Batsy child sensing where they go…at least it has not shown it is aware or interested. We’ll have to risk it, staying here in your body for prolonged periods is not an acceptable option.” It might be a waste giving him a smile, but I smiled anyway. “I did not get much information from Goldi. Have you learnt anything from your methods of probing?”
“It is as I am, part of the larger creature outside. The disturbances it senses from outside suggest to me that it is awakening.”
“You mean it has not been awake - fully aware?”
“Sorry, I meant that the structure of its mind is altering as it wishes to interact with lifeforms it has discovered. In your terms, think of it as becoming sentient.”
Robbie showed his amazement. “Are you saying that it has been sentient all along, but in a way that was too alien for any species among us to recognise?”
“It was sentient in ways it needed to be, but not in ways that are provoked by the needs of interacting and socialising. For instance, it had no language.”
“It will now?” Claudia asked.
“Yes. I doubt your gift will be required - unless it has been learning by accessing your gift for languages. If that is the case then it will also be able to communicate in all languages, even the non-verbal ones.”
Now we don’t mind being anchored - Robbie does, as he needs to feel we can get away if there is danger. The rest of us are far too excited. To be present when a mind evolves from non-sentience or totally alien to identifiable sentience! It is like being present at a miracle. Imagine us learning to think in the way of some totally alien species; to them we would seem to be changing, becoming sapient.
7973
Batsy jumped to the fleet again so we followed, but we did not return to our previous position, which is what it seems to have expected. We moved backwards and forwards until it got the idea that we want it to stay outside the area the fleet is working in. It deserted us when it realised that ships were actually travelling to the planet and entering its atmosphere. It went as close as it could to the planet and then returned to us. For about two days it revolved around itself but then stopped. We conjectured that it mimicked the planet in the hope of finding out why it is revolving.
This is the weirdest healing of a planet ever! Even those hard at work do so with part of their attention on Batsy. This is acknowledged as being one of the most exciting moments for all species - to say that Ambros and Pambros are excited is an understatement. In their long existence they never came across anything like this. Robbie and Allan are using the existence of Batsy to claim it proves their belief in Gaea existing. We are allowing them to get away with comparing apples to tomatoes because we are enjoying seeing them so excited. Most of my loves listen and enjoy what is being said, but are very careful about all they say - they are even inhibited in bed…and it is my fault. I mentioned the possibility that the Batsy child is in Freddie so as to learn from us in which direction it must evolve its sentience and the idea that something they say or do could affect Batsy and send it evolving in a skewed direction has given them stage fright.
Arthur, we’ve been here seven months and most of us have come to the realisation that we are likely to be stuck here with the fleet for a long time, so we’ve settled into the routine each of us chooses for such lengthy stays in Freddie. I do a lot of reading, but this time not much of it is fiction - except for the odd love story J.
I can’t help thinking that Batsy must be very confused by us. Our population is not consistent, Sparklers take on bodies to enjoy a walk or because a certain kind of wild flower has blossomed and they want to smell it. They do it for the aesthetic pleasure, but also so that they can ensure their collective ‘will’ gives the same kind of flower the exact same fragrance in their World. They enjoy visiting to talk with all the species and long lasting friendships have developed, which is inevitable but makes me unhappy. Every time I see a sign of changes that erode or alter the foundation of the Sparklers, it frightens and hurts me. It is not that they are only changing superficially, from what I hear, it seems that even their instincts are being changed because of them spending so much time outside the void.
A wave of guilt hit us again and then the first word, “Killed.”
Robbie told me it was most likely monitoring me so I should answer. I’ll write as if the conversation were verbal instead of by telepathy - as I already do with many species. “We can bring back the lives, so not killed.” Its response was instant and it is lucky that everyone had already stopped working or else they would have hashed up whatever they were working on. Once it believed me, the only way I can describe what we felt from it is a flame of fierce joy. After that, it had a million questions, but then stopped (stopping and starting and stopping again and so on were characteristic of how it behaved for a couple of days, showing that emotion and childlike excitement were making it unstable so that its new sentience sometimes seemed to be in danger of flying apart like the pieces of its body had), asking us to bring back the lives it took by accident, out of ignorance. It must have tried to sense how we would do it, for it was very perturbed when it sensed Robbie die. We told it not to worry, that he is still alive and helped it sense his breathing and hearts beating. When its child reported/shared the sudden appearance of the persons it had killed, it became unstable again.
7974
Robbie had just taken his place by us when suddenly he folded over in agony, his chair collapsing with a sound like gunshot. The pain stopped immediately, but our healers reported, as they rushed to him, that capillaries and even veins and organs had burst within his body. He had suddenly been subjected to a burst of more than forty g’s. Batsy must have thought we would not mind what it did, for it immediately said, “Can make alive if make kill in accident?”
“Do not do that again! You have caused terrible pain, feel it.” I sent the pain as powerfully as I could.
We all felt it crumble and fold within itself. Then all signs of life stopped and the child landed just to the side of our taverna, crushing trees and houses, but luckily not killing anyone. Arthur, I can’t believe it, I’ve killed Batsy!
First I checked you hadn’t switched fonts and then I asked the scientists for an update. They’ve checked and just told me there is neurological activity, but they are not getting any signs of thought processes. I cannot believe that the tests for ‘brain-dead’ apply to Batsy, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Four days later: Batsy started functioning again. We do not sense any sentience, but it seems to be as it was when we first met it. It is drifting away so we are following it. It has shown no awareness of the part of itself within Freddie, but then the part (child as Sam calls it) has not shown any signs of life. I hope Batsy recovers, but if it does not become sentient, I hope it can resuscitate it’s splinter and take it back. I can’t let it stay in Freddie, any sudden stop could cause incredible damage and if the results of inertia are violent enough it could smash its way through our shields. To have that happen in the void is final death for everyone.
Eighteen days later: Batsy is showing signs of curiosity about us, it must be wondering why we are following it. Next day: Batsy tried to use its gravity power to pull Freddie to it. We managed to resist and we’ve moved back, hopefully keeping a safe distance, but close enough to irritate it. Twenty seven days later: Batsy has stopped moving. It never did move at great speed and we are debating whether it has lost interest in moving or whether something is bothering it. What if it is beginning to recall it was sentient? Could that happen?
Sixty one days later: Batsy still not moving, but I’m starting to see some life in Sam’s eyes again. For the first time since this happened she came to our bed and we had Efineh spend the night with us so that she could hold her. The day she takes a look at the diary I’ll feel she’s well on the road to recovery. Sixty three days later: Sam suddenly sheathed herself and went to float alongside Batsy. She is trying something new. Since Batsy seems to have reverted to communicating with emoting only, Sam is sending the nicer emotions, friendliness, love, happiness and so on. By doing so she is forcing her own healing.
Robbie really kept his writing to the minimum. Sorry Arthur, it was your opportunity to get some of his reminiscing about sex with us, but he forgot to write for you and only wrote for me. Give him my thanks and, if you are up to it, a nice kiss from me J lol - that’s a new one for you and him, here’s one from him
Knowing that Batsy is alive is not enough for me, I must find a way to make it self-aware again. I can sympathise with it, being self-aware really sucks sometimes, but it still is the best game in town. Arthur, I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but I’ve been using a lot of idioms and manners of speech from your time because I found a lot of old magazines on the web and I’ve been reading them, fascinated by how naïve some articles are and how cynical others are. It seems your time (in our reality) was a time of great contrasts, which, according to Robbie is a sign of immaturity (just in case you are not mature enough, yet, to understand, it means you have too much black and white and not enough shades of gray).
7975
Sorry about that. I needed to joke and tease and I’ve been giving everybody a hard time.
Can you imagine how it would have been for me if Batsy really had died? I’d be the Samantha who killed the most unique lifeform in the entire universe, a tiny planet-sized sentient lifeform. If anybody was given the opportunity to share with those who sensed it and they’d felt how much it resembled a toddler of two, I’d be their favourite most hated human being. Now I just have one teensy-weensy very tiny problem - it has rejected sentience…how do I tempt it to start all over again?
Our Bitsy came to my rescue again, not that my loves didn’t try to help, but Bitsy has hands on experience, nearly two centuries of it! Wow, when I’m through with Batsy I’ll have to spend some time with Bitsy so as to teach him a new trick - just to prove that you can teach a really old dog new tricks
I’m told I ended up with most of the sentient life of Freddie watching me as I tried to play with Batsy and made a total fool of myself. It took a couple of days before I got it to react to me. When it timidly did, I sent it my laughter as I sped around it. It must have liked the taste of my happiness, for it continued responding and then even began to initiate games we’d already played. I’ve begun to divide my day. I’ll play for a while and then demand that it settles down and listens as I tell it a story. I’ll then repeatedly ask whether it understood and when it does not respond I emote my disappointment. It might take months and months, but I know it hates feeling it disappointed me, so it is bound to try to make itself clever again.
As Robbie kept putting it, five days later (!): We went to the taverna for breakfast when Freddie called a warning and showed Batsy approaching. Before we could panic, it stopped. We sensed it emote worry and then we all heard it call, “Samantha”. I was out of there so fast I didn’t even have time to forget my breakfast. Arthur, this has been a very happy day. Very happy. Goodnight, I feel like going to a place where I will be loved insanely.
This time Batsy will be awakened to his full potential far more slowly and with less to excite his still fragile hold on the newly created paths within his mind. This experience has shaken many, from philosophers to psychologists to the common man (of any species) who clings to his superiority over all beasts as a ‘right’. There is almost something of the Gnolats in the ability of Batsy to sense there is a need for evolving in a certain direction and achieving that target within weeks. None expected its hold on self-awareness to be so fragile, all had thought that once a higher state is achieved, devolution can only be achieved over generations. Batsy is coming to represent for all of us a growing number of reasons to fear and to dream. As for me, I too have a dream and hope we can stay long enough for it to come true. I want to meet the soul of Batsy in the void.
To write of events that have been lived through, a degree of introspection is required. As I lost myself in my thoughts, Cherine entered the room and sitting on my lap hugged me. “Sam, I came so close to destroying all our dreams. You saved me - thank you.”
She squeezed me again and I kissed her. “This is wonderful, but I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“When Batsy hurt Robert, it was so uncalled for and ungrateful of Batsy after all Robert had done for it, that I flared into a rage and was about to destroy it, shatter its body into fine powder. You were in my way, I was held back for fear of destroying you also and it gave you the seconds you needed to shatter its mind so that I no longer could justify allowing my righteous rage to control me.”
Once Cherine left, I idly typed in the word into my dictionary and got the following:
Adjective: righteous
- Characterised by or proceeding from accepted standards of morality or justice
- Morally justified
See also plus list of similar words:
clean-handed, good, guiltless, innocent, just, moral, virtuous, worthy, sound, upright
I thought of how many men and women throughout the history of mankind have used that word so as to justify them giving free rein to all that is most savage and sadistic in their souls. If I were the God they believed in and in whose name they tortured, maimed and killed in the most extremely painful methods they could invent, I would give orders that not one man or woman who is self-righteous be allowed through the gates into my garden of Eden. No human being who is self-righteous can have empathy and compassion or love any other human being above their love for themselves and their self-righteousness. They all belong to Satan where, I hope, he may use their own inventions of righteousness to teach them about suffering for all of eternity.
7976
Robert: Last night was a very strange night, for Samantha came to our bed of love with her self-righteous anger and savage thoughts about the righteous roiling within her mind and heart and though such feeling are the opposite of love, they seemed to sharpen the sexual needs of all my little loves. This morning we acknowledged what Samantha brought to us and the discovery of the ways our instincts can still rule us and we agreed to study the subject and have a meeting once a week to debate the issues and how we can evolve away from such base reactions to evil. Sam immediately told us that she ‘nabs’ the right to argue in favour of keeping some of our baser instincts, as long as we are certain we can control them. Knowing her, she is going to disprove all we argue and yet she’ll show us that she does so with the hope of leading us towards Cherine of the future. She has adopted my saying that we must forever remain fully human or else any growth we achieve will actually be the opposite of growth and whenever we think we see a way to evolve in the direction we want, she insists on stringently applying those rules before allowing us to achieve or adopt such ‘growth’. I find myself constantly amazed at how many elder and wise species think of our Samantha as wiser than all of us, for I cannot help seeing her as a playful and sometimes irritating, but always love-filled, tender-hearted little girl. There you are Arthur, I’ve managed to say what I feel and I’m surprised Sam let it be a part of her diary.It seems that Batsy is capable of holding dozens of dialogues simultaneously. As information pours in, it needs to talk about the information so that it understands it. The educational scientists of more than one species agreed that we should pour into Batsy’s mind as much data as we can. Since it is likely to live for a very long time, even if it is not linked as a Cherinian, it can take its time sorting through the data and learning how to understand. The computers were told to slow down the transfer of data when they discovered that the average temperature of Batsy had risen by almost one and a half degrees Celsius. Once they tested Batsy and decided the rise in temperature was not damaging it, the computers returned to transferring data at a couple of hundred gigabytes per second. It may have been mean of me, but I prevented our computers from sending our diaries.
After writing the above I walked out to join my family in the garden and was disconcerted when I discovered they were grinning and laughing at me. Gina tried giving me a hint, ‘Remember the Muyzith’. Finally they explained it to me. Batsy already has a number of copies of our diaries - up to the early period of meeting the Muyzith, from their computers. From the Unation, they must have our diaries up to the last page! All I can hope for is that Batsy takes centuries to get around to reading the diaries. Robbie asked and the Unation told him that their computers do not pass on our diaries when they share. Phew! What a relief!
It was only natural that the day would arrive when Batsy would want to understand its own body. All the data we have was sent to it and it stopped accepting data, remaining incommunicado for two days. The first sign of life was when the child Batsy rose off the ground and suddenly disappeared. With this happening just above us, the sudden vacuum and the air rushing in to fill it gave us a sharp earache.
7977
Cameras, heat sensors and probably a trillion other monitors zoomed in on Batsy when it was realised it intended reabsorbing all the pieces it had sent out. We were told later on that Batsy gave permission for cameras and other instruments to land so that they can record the change from hard matter to liquid. Energies released were monitored, plus I don’t know what else, but we still don’t have a clue how it can make such drastic changes to its own body.
Terrans have learnt a lot about our bodies from examining and comparing our bodies to bodies of other animals. It is the same for alien species. We learn more about the limitations or special abilities of our bodies by comparing them to other species who have different abilities and limitations. So it is with Batsy. By learning how we perceive the universe, by sharing with Ambros-Pambros and learning how they see the universe as songs, it has been enabled to understand how it sees or perceives the terms of its existence within the universe, and by understanding how it differs from all other species it is able to share with us new ways and abilities that increase the complexity and fill the tapestry of life with new shapes and colours, so that beauty grows for all life.
To give a few simplified examples. It is able to manipulate gravity because gravity is a form of energy it sees - as a matter of fact, it is able to see the universe, all the way down to subatomic levels through the fluctuations of gravity, aided by light-heat pressures. Although it knew it was harming Robbie when it crushed him in a sudden gravity field (it did so thinking it was telling us it understood that it was no longer responsible for the lives it had unknowingly taken [with the people being inside the ships it only saw matter, did not sense there was life until it tested the material and sensed the pain and deaths] as it accepted that we have the power to bring back their healed bodies and lives) you could say that by crushing Robbie in tens of g’s, it was also seeing Robbie more clearly, perhaps we could say it was focussing on Robbie? I asked it whether it could also increase the light-heat pressures and though it denied having the ability, we could sense it was intrigued by the possibilities and was trying to find a way to do so. I jokingly told everyone, when we were back at the taverna, that if Batsy succeeds and is able to increase its powers of perception so as to reach levels of thousands or millions of g’s all the way down to negative gravity and it finds a way to increase light-heat pressures to extremes, both positive and negative, then it could become one more god of our universe, for it will be able to create suns, planets and galaxies. When I started wondering whether it will be able to create black and white holes and tried to speculate on what other anomalies of space and time it could create, everyone pleaded with me to stop. As I paused, willing to obey, someone just had to ask whether it would then be able to create pocket universes like Meli does. Everyone groaned as my face lit up at the new ideas that question gave me so I kept quiet.
Batsy woke us up when it arrived at a conclusion that startled it. It suddenly understood that the fleet were repairing the three planets that used to have a larger variety of life and that it is our intention to bring back those species now missing. It wanted to know why those species no longer exist and pleaded with us to move back to the fleet so that it can watch. The Herminid explained how they had decimated life and then tried to explain how and why it happened. Batsy did not succeed in understanding, but it did succeed in something else very important to its own growth as a human being. It realised that life is full of mysteries and that it cannot understand everything so it does not have the right to judge when it does not understand all the parameters that led to the action that seems to reverse the goodness of survival. Batsy does not have the concept of good and evil and none of us wish to teach it about either. The way it thinks of those things we label evil is practical, as it discourages those actions as being counter-productive or anti-survival without, at the same time, labelling anyone - not even oneself. It would be magical if we could learn to see that way.
We moved closer to the fleet and Batsy changed so as to send parts of itself to watch from closer without interfering. It stunned us when we learnt that by doing so, the multiplicity of its points of view give it a holographic picture of its surrounding and even distant stars and galaxies that are sharp and clear beyond anything we can imagine. Using hundreds of computers spread over an area to build up one picture does not approximate the effect Batsy achieves because our own limitations make it impossible for us to view a given area from multiple points of view simultaneously.
We sensed what felt like a vociferous argument among the Inguel, in their own ecological niche (should I now start calling them their ‘home niches’, since that is how they think of the areas set apart for them?). They do have their arguments now and then and seem to be less efficient at disguising the fact than most other species (the Eminixx are also not very good at disguising or blocking their emotions from other species while the Muyziths seem to be our experts at doing so).
The discussion spilt over to the taverna when they visited. They volunteered information about the causes of the argument and it led to some very interesting and exciting discussions among all the species. It seems that the discussion was sparked by something Robbie told leaders of the Unation governments. I’ll first point out a fact which is a basic cause for the knowledge of the facts that excited them so. A number of the CherInguel in Freddie come from the teams that are healing worlds and bringing back species that were killed by the fire-world.
7978
They told the others that some of the spaceships still being used existed in their original (parallel) universe. With the way they spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of years at each system they heal and then jump back in time when going to the next system, not only do they simultaneously exist at all the systems in our witness program, but generations also simultaneously exist. They then explained to the other Inguel that during the earlier period when they had no CherInguel, every time we visited them to transfer matter and then to move them to their next system, we Cherinians were sending our healers to keep their spaceships healthy. Since they also became CherInguel, they not only keep their spaceships healthy, but also rejuvenate them so that some of the spaceships, at this time, our time (which is measured according to our last visit to the teams) are now millions of years old. If the solar systems they will be healing are also already occupied by them, it means the last such solar system has CherInguel and spaceships that are tens of millions of years old. Some simple arithmetic: say each system, as an average requires their presence for two hundred thousand years of theirs (some need much less but some need longer) but they jump a lot of the years, so let’s assume they actually live through twenty thousand years per system and let us say that they heal 1,800 systems, then:
20,000 x 1,800 = 36,000,000 years old
The idea that there are, right now, Inguel and their spaceships of such a vast age, has stunned everyone. The Unation people travelling and living with us used to feel they occupied a unique niche, providing us with an example of hope, because they are over twelve million years old (true of some of the older individuals, but even the youngest seem to be over ten million years old). Now they in their turn are awed and are encouraged to believe in the future.
The heated discussion we’d sensed centred around two differing opinions. Some thought that even with healers rejuvenating spaceships, their cells cannot be healed and rejuvenated that many times (a typical spaceship lives between 400,000 to a maximum of 1,500,000 years under ideal conditions). What amuses Robbie and us is that they argued the details, but did not pay the important facts much attention; it seems that once they made the decision to drop out of the gene pool, they took eternal life for granted. We find it funny that we are so closely bonded to isi-mi and yet none of us suspected.
I am glad that the future does not arrive on time. What do I mean by that? Sometimes we are caught up in problems or even the minutiae of living day to day and the future arrives without us noticing. A part of our mind does notice, but that knowledge is not directly experienced and serves to accustom us to the shock of the changes that are portended. Then suddenly we notice and it feels as if we did not move forward by one day only.
Themi brought Craig to have some fruit at the taverna. The real purpose of the visit was to get him accustomed to being amongst people. We did warn everyone to keep away so that, apart from Robbie and Themi, he was only surrounded by children. Candy has continued visiting him almost every day, so he felt comfortable for as long as she sat next to him. Once he was back home, Themi told Candy that she will have to visit less often and not always be present when he comes out, as he does not want him to be dependant on her. We could sense from his emoting he feels shy, but his pleasure in seeing children playing and laughing was genuine. I think it is a real pity the innocent Craig of today has to face what he did and the hate many will still feel for him.
Themi told us that he hopes Craig will be strong enough to face the world within another two months. That means we have to solve the Batsy problem soon (which came about again when Batsy sent back the sliver). As far as I’m concerned, there is no solution. Batsy doesn’t think of his part in Freddie as being a spy, he is just happy that he can sense so many things to learn from, but we are worried that if it is in Freddie when we jump in time or across realities, that it will instantly know how we did it and the parent will follow, or it will return to show Batsy. Robbie cannot risk showing it where the home systems of any species are, but it already has the theoretical knowledge of everything Robbie doesn’t want it to know. I tried to think of scenarios where Batsy could prove to be a threat. For instance, it could position itself behind our moon and ‘push’ it towards Earth. Another one; it sits halfway between Earth and our sun and ‘pulls’ Earth to a fiery grave. I don’t find the scenarios as frightening as Robbie seems to, as I temper the threats with lack of motivation. Why would Batsy do anything that would cost lives when it showed a sensitivity even from the time prior to it understanding what it did. The risk is not that Batsy will want to destroy entire planets, it is that Batsy is naïve and some being could perhaps convince it that it must destroy a planet or solar system. I can only think of one answer.
Batsy almost sounded bemused when the Akiards requested permission to visit on its surface. It checked in the data it already has for temperature tolerances of the Akiard species, found the data our scientists have of their home planet and Batsy went silent. A few hours later it placed an energy shield around itself and then the shield turned opaque. For two weeks Batsy remained silent and hidden from us and many were beginning to worry. Batsy began to revolve slowly. A pink dot appeared on the shield. It grew rapidly, the edge remaining a vivid pink, but behind the outline the pink faded until it lost most of its colour, betraying the fuzziness of an atmosphere. Beneath it lay a now much larger planet of semi desert conditions. A request was its first communication. It asked for plant and animal lifeforms of the Akiard planet. We provided all that we had by allowing the Akiards to deliver the ‘packages’. Within five days we saw the plants were growing and then some of the lifeforms such as insects began to multiply. Soon it began the breeding of slightly larger animals. If the Akiards and the scientists slept during this time, it was not obvious to us. Even the fleet admirals told us they transferred most of their resources to monitoring Batsy.
7979
This morning Batsy declared itself as being ready at a certain part of itself for visitors - if they are cautious and do not harm any of the lifeforms. We insisted that only the Akiards go. This is a very emotional moment for them and Cherine told them that they should consider themselves being under ‘privacy’ for three days and then she asked Freddie to pass on the message to the fleet. All species confirmed they would honour their privacy, even though the Akiards insisted it was not necessary. There was a small delay as the Akiards gathered to become the Akiard entity and then it disappeared. We called out with joy when we saw the entity had brought back all our first Akiard kids - with their children. Akiar, Kairi with their son Armiko, came to greet Cherine and Robbie first, gave their news and only then did they and the rest of our kids come to be re-united with all those who had been their parents or friends. It is a pity that Christós and Jesus were not with us.
Akiar and his family herded me away from my loves for privacy and then Akiar spoke to me. “Samantha, would you give great joy to all your Akiard children? We have been shown what this entity has done to itself for us and it is an important moment, symbolically almost as important as visiting our home planet itself. We have been shown that once more you have given us a purpose and we will teach the entity so that it too becomes a Warrior of Love for Cherine. We ask that you project yourself as an Akiard female and join us for the first day of our visit.” I felt they should have asked Robbie and Cherine, even Candy who loved her child Simdi should have been given preference over me, but I would have hurt them if I said anything so I replied by projecting as they’d requested - telling my loves that I was doing it for the diary
We left Freddie with our bodies sheathed for space, preferring not to use a platform as we all wanted to sense the changes as we entered the atmosphere of the planet. We all wore decorative attachments that were electronic tools for the scientists and cameras for all the species. When the cameras were being installed we were told that they would only be switched on after the third day, but the Akiards insisted they switch them on immediately so that their arrival and entry for the first time at the small world be recorded. I would have felt very self conscious if I’d left Freddie in my natural form as I would have stood out. Being an Akiard also meant that I could not blush, which was a great advantage at the moment of departure. We teleported out into space and then Batsy gently took hold and drew us to itself. Even the Akiards were disturbed by the sensation we experienced. Since Batsy was using gravity to pull at us, it felt as if we were falling and travelling through thousands of kilometres of distance in space by an uncontrolled falling towards its surface is one of my least favourite experiences.
Batsy showed superb control. As we entered the atmosphere it started reversing the pull of gravity, just enough to slow our entry so that we would not burn up. With the planet being so small it had to keep the depth of atmosphere far smaller and there was far less variation in thickness of the air due to altitude, we could breathe almost from the first minutes after entering the outer fringes. We landed softly and everyone waited without moving, just in case our host had planned something. When nothing happened we began to talk, commenting on how well Batsy had handled our transportation. Then someone made a comment about how wonderful the air felt, another said it filled him with energy. I felt it too, there was a vibrancy not only to the air but to the land. It was as if energy sparkled in everything just out of sight so that only a hint could be caught at the corner of the eye. My body was filling with an impatient energy that demanded I run and leap and dance and laugh. A wild need seemed to call for the most sacred task given to anyone, a need that pulsed and made my feet shuffle in a pattern as ancient as the need; the sublime need to hunt.
The compulsion that made our feet shuffle had the lot of us circling as one organism, searching for the lives that called to be taken. Suddenly Akiar stomped his feet and yelled. Everyone froze. He had called out, “We are warriors of love, warriors of Cherine. Do not forget!”
The disruption awoke my mind again, the part that thinks instead of just obeying instincts and I felt the shock and dismay of my loves and others they were sharing with. Terrans have the same hunter instincts it seems, or else they are similar enough for I and those sharing through me to become caught up within the same beautiful compulsive need as our Akiard children. I can see we will be spending months of debates, introspection and experimentation as we and many alien species search, alongside our Akiard children, for those instincts that are common to all of us and how our Cherinian links and dream could affect us over a great span of time.
7980
A youngster, he must be from the third last generation, complained, “What hunt? I do not sense any animals.”
Akiar sniffed the air and nodded. “We need something to hunt without killing, for the memory of it.”
I called out, “Give me fifteen minutes lead.” I changed myself to resemble the deer-like creature of their home world and gazed at them for a moment, sensing their amazement as they stared back and then, my tail giving a shiver, I loped off for the nearest uphill. Unfortunately I had to abandon the equipment that fell off me. Robbie sensed I needed time to adjust to my body and told them to give me another hour and then he reminded me to change my body to a male; as a female he worried they may want to shoot me with their dart and that would really upset the Akiard girls - and the boys once they came back to their senses. I learnt to run and to jump. I learnt how to suddenly swerve, a mixture of running and leaping. The feelings of exhilaration sometimes made me forget I would soon be hunted, for life seemed too sweet for death to matter.
When I’d offered myself as their quarry, I think I’d done so with the idea of using brilliant tactics to outwit them. The problems were more than one. The surface of Batsy did not vary greatly so there were a few low risings here and there, but no substantial drifts cutting into the land, no jumble of rocks and no forests. Changing into the form of an animal inhibited my ability to strategize while accenting instinctive reactions, such as those of alarm when the wind brought me the scent of the hunters.
While the Akiards waited, they explored their surroundings and were amazed that the conditions, which to us would seem semi-arid, felt right to them and the memories of their home, Freddie, seemed far too green and lush. Akiar, his family and those who’d returned from their new home world to share in this experience, explained to the others that they were not being ungrateful, that we understand they need this kind of world and it is why Robbie spent decades looking for the right kind of planet for them to settle on.
When Robbie gave them the go-ahead, they searched for the scent and sense of life they wished to hunt and then, as they began to race towards me in a pack, Akiar reminded them that their quarry is Samantha and not an animal as I appear to be. Impatiently the younger ones shrugged off his warning as they considered it too obvious.
I was about four kilometres distance from them and they closed the space at speed, racing each other. Robbie was blocking my emoting and psychic signature so that they’d have to use their normal hunting instincts, but it did not help very much as Batsy has no other large lifeforms and it was easy for them to track the marks of my passage. By now I was also running, leaping often so as not to leave a continuous line of hoofprints and scent and as my heart sped up my body came alive so that my running became an exhilaration laced with a keen fear.
The Akiards saw me in the distance and split up into three groups, a small group continuing in a straight line after me while one group to either side raced to pass me so as to rejoin and form a half circle into which the first group would guide me. As the girls saw me being herded towards the groups ahead, they shouted to remind me I must think. Suddenly I stopped, stared all around to see exactly where they all were and then ran as fast as I could back towards the first group. With yells they forgot themselves and raced each other to see who would be the first to get me. As I reached the first of them I leaped as high as I could, landed behind the first ones, leapt again and again and raced away from them. Eight of the very youngest, still far behind the others, four males and four females, saw me running towards them and fanned out, determined not to let me jump over them, four in front and four just far enough behind that if I leapt I would land within reach.
The fever in my body as I raced made it difficult for me to recall I was Samantha, but I clung to my awareness, determined to give the youngsters a race they would remember for a long time. By now I could also sense that if they caught me it was likely they would forget themselves and kill me. I did not relish the pain I’d have to suffer (I was not capable of extrapolating any further so I did not worry as to what damage it would do to the killer and our dream of them being Cherine’s Warriors of Love).
I was running over land I’d already passed through and an image of a slight rising with a sudden drop of less than half a metre to one side gave me an idea. I raced for it and arriving at the edge I leapt down and in one fluid movement I crouched so that I could not be seen anymore by those racing after me. The boy in front was running at full speed and did not realise there was a slight drop. If it had been a cliff of even a few metres he would have had a second or two to prepare for the landing, but the unexpected drop of about forty centimetres meant he landed badly and I heard the crack as his bone snapped. Even as he screamed I changed back to my Akiard shape and rushed to hold his leg as I called out an unneeded warning to the rest.
I hope you enjoy reading this story of fantasy, adventure and love - and should some of it be true for our reality, I hope you will love our Cherine.
- posted: 14th Aug, 2020
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