Children of the Source (22 page)

    “I didn’t say that.
  I asked you if you would try to do this again.  Jamie seems to think he did you wrong in some other past life, and feels a need to rectify the mistake.”

    Nick’s stricken eyes stared at me.
  The great anger of Tellus seemed to fade there, and then he shook his head.  “I felt this overwhelming anger, this need to do what I did.  It has no place in our current relationship.  It doesn’t make sense to me.”

    “I’ll consider your request, Jamie.”
  Carson turned to Severin.  “Does this make sense to you?  What happened between Jamie and Nick?”

    The alien nodded.
  “We are all part of larger wholes, General Carson.  Memories of other parts of these larger wholes can come forward without making much sense at the moment.  Likes, dislikes, aptitudes, inclinations and abilities.  These come forward in many ways, and have many explanations.  Some are sent deliberately from the guiding intelligence of the greater whole. Others are sent by various parts - past and future personalities of this larger whole or Entity when a need is generated by the present personality - a warning, a hope, a possibility, a new path.  Jamie calls it essence memory.   They come in dreams, hunches, mini-experiences of coincidence, serendipity, and sometimes a smack on the butt before something more serious happens or can happen.  And all on a personal level in a way that can get the message through.”  He shook his head, serious.  “My expertise is in this area.”

    “They also include this, I assume.”
  Carson gestured to Nick.  “Hate, anger, etc.”

    Severin nodded.
  “Love, caring, too.  These are all part of the human experience.”

    “Do you consider yourselves human, Severin?”

    “Semantics, General.  One name is as good as another.  We share the same basic structure as you do.  We are simply more aware of how the Entity works, and can work with it, using its resources individually and collectively as Jamie and his people do here.  You have seen what they can do, and have used their information to benefit yourselves.  Imagine doing this yourself.”

    Carson gave a short laugh.
  “I wouldn’t want a world where there were Jamie’s without self-control and ethics.”

    “There was a time when that was so on
Adora.  The ethics part anyway,”  Astera said.  “Fortunately, those who did the terrible things were the eugenic improved men and women, and not the elite with the Sound Language.  Akenton, the eugenics master with the Sound Language, would not endanger his people with the Sound Language.  Those he kept close to use in his wars when he came to Earth.  There they died, everyone of them.”

    “Perhaps not knowing is a blessing,”
  Carson observed.

    Astera gave a thin smile.
  “Believe me, General, you would always want to know with eugenics people, especially those with the Sound Language like Jamie.”

    “Fortunately you say they were all killed off during Akenton’s War,” Derek said.

    “Fortunately,”  Astera agreed.  But I remembered a crying spider begging for release, a vacant room in the spacecraft with this essence, and the power of Nick’s thrust which carried with it a force beyond anything human.  They were not all gone.

    “You mentioned technology, Severin,” Carson said.

    “We’re willing to share knowledge that will make energy free with no pollution, requiring no renewable resources as a power source.  It uses a combination of light and sound.”

    “Do you realize what you’re saying?”
  Carson said.

    “It would change the entire character of your world, General.
  We realize that.  Great care would have to be taken to ensure it’s not abused.  But we think that can be accomplished.”  Severin  ran his right hand through his grey hair.  “It would work for both your power grids and vehicles.”

    I sensed Kodus.
  Like off to one side.  Severin noticed but continued without missing a beat, “Without worrying about energy other than the maintenance of vehicles and energy distribution lines, you’d free up a whole sector of your society.  The energy companies could be put to work rehabilitating the energy sources they had been using.”

    Carson smiled, and shook his head.
  “Our energy companies can be quite ruthless, Sevrin.”

    “We know their history.
  Since you’ve done away with your corporate sponsored democracy, where your representatives are no longer beholden to business and special interests groups for money, we hope you might find it easier.  We’ll work with your government first to see what can be done and go from there.”

    Kodus was trying to tell me something, but it was lost in a static-like confusion.
  I sensed  the interference to be manufactured from an outside source.  But hard as I might try I couldn’t get through it.  This was new to me.  I asked my Entity to clear up the problem.  Immediately I began to get snatches - images of an olive tree seen through a window.  The large tree spread its shade over one corner of the building giving welcoming comfort from the harsh summer sun.  Beneath the tree a man and woman argued.  The man was Kodus and the woman, someone familiar, but struggle as I might I couldn’t place her, so I listened to snatches of conversation.  The woman had lost a brother to Akenton and wanted revenge.   The brother had tried to use himself as a weapon to assassinate Akenton, but was detected in the last few seconds and died, killing one of Akenton’s close associates while  Akenton escaped with injuries.  This woman wanted to use herself in her brother’s place.  Kodus kept trying to convince her not to, but she would not listen.  Eventually she left.  Later Kodus learned her younger brother and sister had been mutilated by the eugenicists.  The woman managed to infiltrate a eugenics lab and blow it up along with herself and fifteen of Akenton’s best people.  Astera.  I looked at her.  How aware was she of her Entity’s history?  Was she aware that Charles and Akenton shared the same Entity? 

    How to warn Charles?
  I walked over to Charles, keeping up with the conversation between Severin and Carson.  I touched his arm, not knowing if he would be able to communicate mentally with me.  I jumped within as his clear mind opened waiting.  I gave him the information.  He accepted it quietly.  Eyes narrowing, the giant man pursed his lips, considering. 

    He strolled over to Astera, asking her to walk with him.
  I sent a portion of myself with them.  Charles said,  “You recognize me?”  They were about a hundred yards down Freemont Boulevard when he stopped and faced her.

    Astera swallowed.
  “I wanted to get as far away from you as possible.  I can’t understand why”

    “I am part of the Entity who created Akenton,” he said.
 

    Astera turned away, shaking.
  Essence memories working to the surface.  She turned back, face contorted with disgust. “What happened to that monster?”

    “When Akenton’s Entity withdrew his energy, and Akenton died, the personality was dismantled.”

    “Dismantled?”

    “Akenton left as he was with the Sound Language would be too dangerous to be allowed to roam loose on the Other side.
  He had no ethics to guide him.  In short, he had his power taken away.  Then his Entity forced him to experience all he’d done to others from their point of view.  All the pain, anguish, and terror.”  Charles paused,  running a hand over his chin.  “I carry those memories within me now.  Including what was done to the two children that caused your family to go after Akenton.  I understand this desire to snuff out Akenton.  But Akenton carries with him those experiences too, and they have changed him.  His energy signature is vastly different from your essence memories.  He would be unrecognizable to you.  Would you like to see what he is doing now?”  

    “Yes, I would.”
  Shaken, Astera nodded.

    Charles nodded.
  “Good.  Tonight, when you sleep, I will come by and we will travel to the reality where he lives and works.”

    “Works?”

    “He works with life forms that are growing into a decision making consciousness.  This requires an enormous amount of patience.  Your search for him has not borne fruit because his change has been so profound.  You were looking for an energy signature from the past that no longer exists.”

    That night in the dream state, Charles and Mary showed up, but they weren’t alone.
  Kodus, Marta, and Judith were there.  Astera arrived.  When we were oriented to each other, we followed Charles who moved sideways for want of a better word.  We emerged in a tropical world watching an human-like Being amid a group of large parrots.  A language of high human sounds in a raucous conversation erupted around us.  The brightly colored birds of blue, green, yellow, and red perched high in a great tree.  There must have been twenty-five birds in an extended family of all ages.

    Charles touched the Being.   He turned.
  The family resemblance was there, but this Being was mature and patience itself.  “How can I help you?”  The thought fed into our minds.

    “These people come from another time and place.
  They are concerned about a time in the past,”  Charles said.

    The Being studied us and shook its head.
  “Sorry.  I have no memories of you.  I know Charles, as you call him.  We share the same Source.”   The Being turned to Astera.  “I sense I offended you grievously in another time, but I have no memories of that.  I have been told I did horrendous things, but those times have been removed from me so I could go on.  From that past I have certain built in behaviors I cannot - will not do.  For that I am profoundly grateful.” 

    He turned to Astera, “If I hurt you or yours, I ask your forgiveness, and give you my pledge it will not happen again.”
  The wise eyes studied her.  “Beyond that I don’t know what I can do.”  His face brightened into a smile.  “You see my friends here ... ”

    We returned to Cheshire.
   “I expected someone far different from the man we meant,”  Astera said. 

     “He held the family essence,” Charles said.

    “We know what Akenton did.  How can these memories be removed?”  Astera frowned.  I could feel her distress.

    “What has happened
cannot be destroyed, but you can remove memories until the personality is mature enough to review and experience them,”  Kodus said.  “The memories are set aside.  Entities are capable of programming and deprogramming their personalities.  They can alter just about anything having to do with their creation, except take away their free will and their rights to experience the natural laws of the Creation.”

    “Astera,” I said, “the carnage created by Akenton was deliberate, far-reaching, and affected a whole world before it was cut short on Adora.
   Justice and compensation for these acts comes from his understanding so they aren’t repeated.”   I didn’t know if she could accept that.  Knowing what Akenton had done, it was hard for me to accept a system based on personal growth, and not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.   There are personalities that are the linchpins of movements, wars, and horrendous acts.  What happens to them?  Like Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Hitler and others who caused millions to be killed, ruined, and enslaved.  That I could not fathom.  In the scheme of things, Akenton certainly ranks up there.  I had to remember that they did not operate alone, but were catalysts for followers that committed the carnage.  I was pleased to only read about them in books.

    We broke up after that.
  None of us satisfied.   But I knew we were not done with the past.  There were elements out there that needed to be resolved.  Judith, as Marta the Queen, had surfaced once, and I knew would again.  I hoped not in front of General Carson.  And who would do it, out of mischief or a sincere desire to resurrect an ancient past.  As Severin said, the Marta Entity was Adora.  She had represented a world over thousands of years.  Something not easily forgotten.  The disaster of eugenics had lasted only a hundred years out of thousands.  It took only that long to reduce Adora to an unlivable hell and snuff out the monarchy.

    The hell of eugenics was simply being transferred to our planet.
   What lessons had been learned in Adora that could provide a solution or solutions?  How could we direct the eugenicist’s energies?  Using ethics and aiming them at genetic problems that could be solved using eugenics.  That was my gut feeling. 

    The effort to destroy Kodus, perhaps thinking I was actually Kodus.
  That we shared the same Entity made the family resemblance.  Did the assassin know the structure of the Soul or Entity, and simply decided to use me as a whipping boy?  The act wasn’t finished.  I’d already survived two attempts on my life.  Hensley being egged on by Ren.  Then Nick Ryan in his mindless attempt with the mysterious help of an unknown energy.  Finally, the crying spider that I’d yet to encounter.  Something I’d never dreamed of a couple of weeks ago.  What else, who else was out there that I didn’t know about? 

    I had no place else to go but to a source I didn’t really know, trust, or understand.
  My Entity.  A living structure with intents and interests I knew little about.  But I was Its creation for better or worse, programmed with great cunning to place me in this place at this time.  I was also the recipient of its
past
visiting me with a violence I’d never known before.  But I had certain new abilities that provided an edge.  What other abilities might be coming?  I still, above all, had to rely on my intuition, and that came from my Entity.  Back where I started.  I had to meet face to face with my Entity.