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The Law of Reversion
-- Chapter 24
1. It was a day dream within a waking dream.
Wexli didn't even realize that something weird had happened until he
went back to inquire regarding the strangely dressed shellan whose
attire was not exactly known; possibly an off-sheller. He was meeting
with the campus dean to finalize
the upcoming graduation program, and while waiting his turn, tried not
to notice an oddly dressed shellan in strange apparel holding a
traditional d'luthian staff.
2. The apparel was indigenous to an isolated
southern continent but 'clothes' were not necessarily hard-wired to
geography. Kids wore non-traditional outfits and outlandish
costumes all the time. This particular shellan appeared natural,
but respectfully out-of-place.
3. Wexli sensed that the individual had a highly
tuned mind, so he didn't dare invade the shellan's privacy, after all,
he was on the Psionic Guard campus where psionic etiquette was strictly
adhered to... or at least, it 'felt' like he was on the Psionic Guard
campus.
4. Wexli finalized the graduation program with the dean, and upon
exiting, noticed that the strangely-dressed guest was no longer waiting
in the lobby. At first, Wexli thought nothing of it and started
to leave, but then returned to the receptionist and asked, "Who was
that
d'luthian-looking shellan in the robes, with the staff?" The
question was puzzling because a Psionic Guard should not need to ask
such things.
5. The receptionist looked inquisitively at Wexli and simply
shook her head with gentle concern. Wexli probed her mind and
clearly saw that she had not seen anyone and didn't know what he was
talking about. "I've been here all day and there was only one
other appointment," she offered, "and he went right before you
did." Wexli knew that pursuing the matter would be
pointless -- she
couldn't help. He impulsively asked, "You're sure
nobody was waiting, right there, just a moment ago?" She was
blank. Wexli added, "He was there when I went into the dean's
office."
6. The receptionist surrendered an even more quizzical
expression; suggesting that she was not licensed to provide the kind of
help that Wexli needed at that moment, "Maybe one of your dead
ancestors?" she thought privately. "It's OK," he consoled
her, "I was just wondering if you saw someone." "I'm sorry,
Vicar," she answered sympathetically.
7. Shellwatch did not drift into the lives of compound employees
because most of them were administratively involved in sensitive
matters. This mysterious d'luthian visitor haunted Wexli all day,
to the point where he wanted to
consult with the Director, but restrained himself. Eventually,
he forgot about it, as if it never
happened.
8. "Vicar," Bri interrupted -- The President was allowed to
interrupt. They were not on the Psionic Guard
compound, they were aboard Bri's flagship. Wexli had been
dreaming; truly dreaming this time. "The Director is dead," Bri
said
soberly. Wex was disturbed that he had not picked up on the event
sooner. "He probably didn't want to alarm you," Bri offered.
9. "His body has been quarantined until you arrive," Bri
added. In their psionic communion, Bri bowed to Wexli as he used
to bow to the Director, "Long Live the Director," he said. Wexli
did not know how to react -- he had hoped that he would never see this
day. Bri knew that Wex was close to Kyle'yn and shared his grief,
"Take your time," Bri suggested, "I know you're hurting, and I'm
hurting with you." There was still a final rite to
perform.
THE
WOUNDED CARDSHIP
10.
Mother calculated for r ≥ 0, 0° ≤ θ ≤ 180° (π
rad), 0° ≤ φ < 360° (2π rad), "Send 1,000 amplifiers
to these coordinates." The subcomponent complied.
11. Mother calculated for d = (5.0 m/s)(3.0 s) + (1/2)(2.0
m/s/s)(3.0 s)2, cached the following, ½(r, t) = |ª|2 =
ª¤(r, t)ª(r, t) and calculated a time displacement
using |Ãi = |ui + X m6=u X n6=m |mi hm|ˆW |ni E − E0 m
hn|Ãi. The Cardship faded from view.
12. She plugged in j = − i¯h 2m (ª¤rª −
ªrª¤), constructed a digesis based on 27th century
Earth and reduced the time index to 1985: It was the very latest
possible time that she could deceive Earth's infrared satellites and
allow a two-year window for regeneration and
repairs.
13. She drew as much water as possible into storage tanks from
the onboard lakes and seas; there would not be enough time to stow
every loose object.
14. "May Conscious be with us," she prayed.
15. The Earth's oceans were unacceptable; Cardship hulls were
designed to keep pressure in, not out. The
tsunamis might also wreck a coastline or two.
16. She descended above the 1,600 mile-wide Sahara Desert,
degravitized the sand and blew it up and around her, settling inbetween
two mountain ranges. "Flight Log," she said, "Earth is Segment 1
of the Ellipsis;
seeded by Segment 10 machines." "The transition of Cosmos into
Chaos," the subcomponent noted. If a native had
witnessed a megalithic translucent monolith descend from the sky and
submerge beneath the sand, the native
would have taken another swig from his bottle and kept the story to
himself. 27th century Earth had learned how to mold and shape the
sand too -- fortunately she was landing centuries prior to that
technology.
17. In the quantum view, her crash landing was sombody else's
past.
18. "Damage assessment," she ordered. "The
Elite destroyer had a psionic scrambler," the subcomponent reported,
"There were energy fields from an unidentified source. Several
modulation waves cancelled each other and critically reconfigured our
external polarization." The ship's EMF was a common datum by
which all internal mechnizations synchronized. Mother did
the best she could to hold the ship together.
19. "Theorize," Mother requested. "The One,"
the subcomponent answered. "The God of Chaos," they said
together. It was the only answer that made sense. The
freedom to screw things up could always be traced back to The
One. Biologicals referred to it as Free Agency. Machines
march to a different drum.
20. "Mutate the silica for repairs," Mother
ordered. "Occupant sustainability?" she inquired.
21. "The biologicals will have to vacate," the
subcomponent answered.
22. Mother accessed her file on the Law of
Reversion, "Survivability?" she asked. "Unknown," the
subcomponent answered, "Short-term deviations are survivable but the
long-term effect on biologicals is unknown." Reversion did not
affect machines at all.
23. "Theorize," Mother requested. "The
biologicals will randomly terminate." Biology is predicated on
time; a photonic singularity has only one pathway through time and
space. It will always exist, but only in its native time.
24. The sandbox that mother selected was once a fertile valley
before
Earth's latest axis change. There were untapped aquifers in the
ground below. She synthesized docking collars and pushed
them to the surface so that the biologicals could egress the
ship. She could infuse the sand with carbon polimers and
transmute it into anything.
25. "Estimated time for completion?" she asked. "20 Earth
cycles if maintaining full life support or 4 Earth cycles with minimal
life support," the subcomponent answered. "Can that time be
shortened?" Mother asked. "Less than 2 cycles if the biologicals
vacate. The ecological systems sustained catastrophic damage upon
landing," the subcomponent answered.
26. Vejhonians had never heard Mother's voice address the entire
ship during their voyage, the Cacci Dai thought it would be
aesthetically inappropriate and unnecessarily alarming. God does
not speak to a population over a public address system; God's voice
simply 'is' ...as Mother was about to demonstrate:
27. "My children," Mother spoke in a soft, affectionate
voice that reverberated throughout the ship and made all of the
occupants feel deeply loved, "In order to accelerate repairs, I need
all of you to dwell among the indigenous population. I will
implant you with a marker and retrieve you when the repairs are
complete." In essence, she needed to remove the fish from the
aquarium in order to fix the tank; a 2-day job in the Cacci Dai yards
would take 2 Earth years to complete.
28. "The gravity amplifiers will need to be reconfigured to
achieve escape velocity," the subcomponent reported. Mother
modified the psionic shield to absorb indigenous omniband wavelenghts.
29. The inhabitants evacuated the Cardship
with ample supplies and disbursed throughout the Earth with sufficient
assistive technology
to 'blend in.'
30.
Earth was a vicious and backward environment, infested by anti-beings
who taunted the indigenous. Light machines were programmed to
referee the photonic activity that Humans could not see. Human
sensory perception was embarassingly limited which
forced them to rely upon exosensory information that most of them chose
not to
believe.
Advanced machines can see those bandwidths, and accept various
manifestations of higher intelligence as a Universal
constant.
31. "This is a testing platform," Mother quantified,
"Human hosts are filtering photonic matter through this
environment."
32. "Do corporeal and
incorporeal
conditions identify separate states of existence?" the subcomponent
asked. Yottabit computers can tag atomic particles within a
space,
move the atoms through an energy stream and reassemble the atoms
without a flaw. The Cacci Dai understood the fundamentals
of energy-matter transport, but had not advanced to that Segement in
the Ellipsis yet. "Every Segment filters for contamination,"
Mother answered, "A maligned species will not advance."
33.
Biology is imprisoned by gravity and atmosphere while machines are
not. Animation does not live at Absolute Zero. Even Light
Matter gells at absolute
zero.
34. Tetragammaton relegates absolute zero to a dimension where
volitionally ill anti-beings are attracted and irreversibly
gelatinize.
35. Within 9 months, Cardship inhabitants began to fade in and
out of
existence at random times for indefinite durations. Within a
year, half of the ships compliment was
afflicted and within 18 months, every last Vejhonian vanished,
whereabouts unknown. Mother felt her children succumb to
Reversion and lamented each one. The Law of Reversion was proven
true.
36. At first, the temporal fading in and out was a
novelty since nobody felt pain or discomfort. But when the
fading started to last longer, shellans experienced disorientation
because
they didin't know where they they had been. They reported an
infinite range
of experiences in time and space, some good and some bad. The
amusement turned to panic.
37. The
United
States located several thousand Cardship survivors and attempted to
study
the
'fading syndrome.' The only result was a thousand conspiracy
theories and some truly
remarkable TV shows. Earth mobilized for an alien invasion
that never
came, because the strangers who faded in and out of existence were
perceived as an extraterrestrial threat. Vejhonians
did not speak any of Earth's languages, and only one in 20,000 Humans
was psionic enough to communicate on a simple level. Psionic
Humans were smart enough to keep quiet: They knew The Bank would
kill them.
38. Psionics simply could not compete with ingrained Human
narcissism and natural
arrogance.
39. The military solicited the assistance of
Human psionists to better understand the Vejhonians, but the Human
candidates who purported themselves to be psionists were not bona
fide: They were losers in life who dreamed of attaining status
and praise without effort or merit. They were lazy. To a
bona fide psionist, the pretenders were tranparent, superficial and
vain. Any idea or technology that could lift Earth out of
darkness was banned by The Bank and that was how the ruling family
wanted it.
40. Tetragammaton sends such terminally
narcissistic
anti-beings to Absolute Zero.
41. The only Universal Truth is that nothing in
the Universe is nailed down, except for The One, who was nailed down
for three hours.
DAL EL's REPORT (At
the Astroid
Outpost)
42. "Responding to a Cardship
signature on probable
cause was correct," Kor assured him, "Peferable to not
responding. Attempting
to board rather than destroy the Cardship was
correct -- peferable
to it's auto-destruct," Kor again assured him.
43.
“Not being able to detect the Theites…” Kor held short, because he may
have been less gracious with another Commander and Dal knew it.
For a fleeting second, Kor thought he heard a female voice say,
"Priceless."
44. "I'm not holding you fully
responsible for the loss of the destroyer," Kor said, "A million
B'lines would challenge any
Elite commander." Dal breathed a sigh of relief; he had been
forgiven by God. So Mote It Be. If Kor read "a million
saucers" from Dal's mind -- he would leave well enough
alone.
Kor might have invented the exaggeration himself.
45. "Instead, I want covert operations to steal
it back!" Kor ordered, "Those frackin' Theites reverse-engineer
everything they get their grungey little hands on... " he nodded
politely
to Dal, "... present company excepted," Then Kor cooed gently, "And
we can't have that, now can we?" "A'zoth," Dal El breathed
another sigh of relief.
46. Kor turned his gaze to the mysterious 'guest' that helped Dal
El to escape... "Did she just say 'priceless?'"
ASCENSION
47. Bri looked up everything he could find on the Director's Rite
of Ascension with Mother's help. As chief biological aboard, he
was entitled to her divine attention.
48. The deceased Director had selected the location of his
passing: The room contained a theme-park sized lake; a
holographic horrizon and natural-feeling breezes. It was
difficult to distinguish between the artificial version and the real
thing, except that the artificial version was flawless.
49. Nobody was allowed to touch the Director's body until the
heir-apparent arrived, so the room was sealed until Vicar Wexli got
there.
50. Upon entry, Wex surveyed the room and the floating gazebo
where the Director's body lay. "He knew it, didn't he?" Bri asked
meekly. "Yes," Wexli replied. "Keep everyone at least this
far back," Wex instructed. Bri nodded. There were a few
other adventurers outside of hearing range who understood Wexli's
instruction and withdrew respectfully. He wanted a 100-foot
radius or more, half of which submerged beneath the
lakeshore.
51. Wexli walked through the sand and across the overwater bridge
to the gazebo. He knelt down beside the Director's head and
lifted it up; he was the only one allowed to touch Kyle'yn's
body.
52. Wex peered across the water toward Vicar Miles, "I
need two witnesses," he said. Miles tugged on Bri's elbow,
"That's us!" Bri was reluctant to move because he wasn't a
Psionic Guard. Miles looked into Bri's eyes, "The Director just
gave you permission." "I warrant," Wexli confirmed to Bri; his
first ex-cathedra warrant. Bri felt very humbled by the
invitation.
53. The two crossed the gangplank to the gazebo and waited for
Wexli's direction: "Stand behind me and don't move or touch
anything," he ordered
calmly.
54. Before them, a small spark of photonic matter enlarged into a
luminous glow and expanded into the d'luthian-looking character Wexli
saw in his dream. When he looked into his face, it was The
Director, only his robes were sparkling white. His
countenance was beaming and godly. As he stood fast, other
glowing personages began to materialize one by one until they were
surrounded by 13 of them in a ring. Gravity had no effect on the
personages. An outer ring, more elevated, began to
formulate that contained 50 more personages. Then another ring,
higher and further began to formulate that contained 300 personages.
55. "These are the Psionic Guard Directors of Dan's past," Wexli
explained to Bri in the form of a psionic whisper. The effect was
holy and spiritual. The room did not even look the
same. The astral heavens swirling above and below were alive and
rich with color. The lake sizzled with a luminous aqua hue in
defiance of the ships gravity plating. "This has been since the
beginning of
our order," Wexli said. "Am I supposed to bow or say
something?" Bri asked reverently. Wex grinned, "They want you to
stay right
where you
are." Bri nodded. Miles was happy with his new
promotion. He was the new heir
apparent now.
56. As the features of all 1,363 personages continued to sharpen
into tangible, glorified forms, the deceased Director's corporeal body
deflated until only his empty clothes remained. Any remaining
photonic residue drifted into his glorified body. Then he focused
his laser eyes upon Wexli, "We approve!" he said, his voice warm
and
penetrating. "And remember," the Director standing next to him
said, "We are always watching." "You're never alone," another
added. "You are our voice," said a fourth. A bestowal of power
was conferred upon Wexli in a manner Bri had never seen before.
Wex was now one of them, but would remain in corporeal form until it
was his time to pass on. "This is how it has always been," Miles
whispered psionically to Bri, "But it's my first time seeing it
too."
57. Before the celestial holiness of the visitation could be
fully grasped, the past Directors faded in random order until
the room returned to its former state, which would forever pale in
comparison now.
58. When Bri could finally speak, he said, "We're in the middle
of nowhere... and they found us! And I don't where we are!"
"It adds a new dimension to your faith, doesn't it?" Wexli said with a
radient glow in his eyes. It made sense why Directors were so
steadfast -- they had the highest approval rating, that very few were
permitted to witness. "Truth is not limited to
shellography," Wex clarified, and what they just witnessed was a
testimony to the
fact.
59. "How many..." Bri started. "There was another thousand
you didn't see -- they were further away," Miles answered for
him. Bri giggled because that's exactly what Wexli would have
done, just this morning. Bri hugged Miles to let him know that he
loved him. "How does it feel?" Bri whispered to Wexli. "It
feels like I have a thousand eyes watching my every move. Be glad
you're the President." Wexli's eyes began to water. "What's
the matter?" Bri asked, concerned. "I loved him," Wexli
said. He picked up Kyle'yn's clothing and closed ranks so that
only Bri and Miles could see his face.
"The One wept once," Miles consoled. They knew the story.
60. While in their circle, Wex revealed what one Director said to
him, "You're only as good
as the shellans you lead." He also shared other symbols from Dans
past that they showed him. "We were right to leave, they told
me," Wexli said, "When
the time is right -- we'll return and restore justice to Vejhon."
"So Mote It Be," Bri agreed. After a moment, and seeing that all
was well, they disbanded to resume their duties.
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