The Infinite Evolution - Conversion (35 page)

“
I know it does,” said Willow with
confidence.

“
On what basis are you
calling
The
Stone of Tureis
reality?”

“
Based on our old ways,” replied
Willow.

“
Old ways, that is for people who cannot grasp
the future, the here and now,” laughed Corinth.

“
I feel so much sadness for
you and your generation of Mergers. You walk this planet thinking
the universe revolves around you. However, you forget the
generations of
Tureissians who came
before you. The ones who created our society, developed our belief
structure, and devised the technology you take for granted. I am
not saying you need to
be a loyal
follower of our past, but at least show some common respect for
the
Tureissians who came before
you.”

“
Are you done? Because if so I
would like to proceed with whatever we are here to do,” said
Corinth, ignoring Willow’s words.

“
Me too,” said Willow.

“
Ok, great, so now what?”

“
Take the silver orb out of your pocket,
please.”

Once Corinth placed her hands on
the orb, she felt a surge of negative energy go through her body as
she stood there in fright. She quickly realized she was unable to
let go and tried to use her other hand to pry the orb off. The
bottom of the orb fused to her right palm while the top spun
vigorously as it lifted her hand towards the oval tower.

“
What is going on? Get this orb off of me!”
cried Corinth.

“
I cannot. It has been fused to
your body’s energy.”

“
Why, what did you do?”

“
I did not do anything, it is what you did,”
said Willow calmly.

“
What I did? What are you
speaking of, have you lost your edge?”

“
No, I am fine. It is you who has
lost her edge. You took another council member’s life.”

“
I certainly did not! How dare
you accuse me of such a thing!”

“
You really do not know what is
going on. You are not here today because of me, you are here
because of what you told Melchior. Think, Corinth, who gave you
this orb?”

“
That traitor, he told me to
identify everyone who wanted to relocate to the planets we
harvested from.”

“
Yes, he told you to identify,
not kill. You lost your edge, you are too dangerous, and so it is
time for you to go.”

“
Go where?”

“
Your program is going to be purged. When you
made contact with Melchior earlier he download a mental virus into
your matrix, so when you get uploaded to Prime 2 you will be
recognized as a threat and your memories will be erased
immediately. Your consciousness will be downloaded to a humanoid
shell on Earth and you will be born again.”

“
You are kidding me, right?
Please do not send me to that planet.”

“
Sorry, but that is where your field programs
came from.”

“
How will you upload me?”

“
This is where knowing your
history would have been helpful. These orbs you see spinning up the
tower are containers for the field programs that are currently
arriving from our harvested planets. Once these field programs
arrive at the Port, which is a mechanical way station that resides
in our atmosphere, they are stored in their respective orbs. These
orbs negate the negative energy the inductinite produces that
blocks data streaming. This allows the field programs to continue
their journey into this facility. The process is reversed when it
is time to send field programs back. Each color represents the
planet they are from and you may have already noticed there are no
silver orbs. That is because silver represents our planet. If a
handler makes contact with an orb, while in proximity of this
magnificent creation, there is no turning back. The handler becomes
frozen in place as you are. Their program, or consciousness, starts
to upload to the orb they are in possession of,” explained Willow
as Corinth stood there with a look of fright.

Willow continued, “Before our
society mastered the ability to produce field programs, they would
download and merge what they felt were high quality consciousnesses
from their deceased. If for some reason they later learned that a
particular consciousness was experiencing difficulties, they would
give a Tureissian one of these silver orbs, and this was the
conduit that led them back to the original Prime. Once they
re-emerge with the mainframe, their issues were resolved and they
later became part of a biological humanoid shell again. So you see,
if you paid attention to the old ways, you would have realized what
the silver orb stood for when Melchior handed it to you and you
would have never come this close to Prime 2 while handling
it.”

Corinth realized she had no
argument or defense, so she reverted to begging, “Please, Willow, I
made a drastic mistake, but my incompetence should not lead me to
my downfall. I made a poor judgment; I thought if I tortured
Shiphra I could get her to divulge more information about her
mistaken cause. I was wrong. I did not mean to kill
her.”

“
You are really ignorant. First,
torturing someone who believes as strongly as Shiphra did about a
cause is useless. They will either stand their ground or feed you
false information. What you did is barbaric and just plain wrong.
Second, the fact you think Shiphra’s cause was misguided, again
shows your immaturity. She felt strongly about the cause she
represented, and truly believed it was a better way to evolve our
species into a positive light. Just because you may not agree with
it, you still should respect it. Once our society starts killing
one another because we disagree with each other’s belief systems,
then we are heading towards a path I do not want to be a part
of.”

“
Well, you are on it as well. You
are about to kill me.”

“
I am not killing you. I am
deleting the virus that lies in your program. The virus which
allowed you to kill Shiphra. Your program will live on, a courtesy
you did not extend to Shiphra.”

“
What about all those field
programs the Guardians will be killing when…” before Corinth could
finish her sentence, a bright white fluid substance came out from
her frontal cortex, merged with the silver orb, and left her body
limp. The silver orb proceeded to float into the stream of orbs
leading into Prime 2.

Willow stood near Corinth’s
corpse and wondered how she should interpret her actions. After
coming to the realization there was nothing further she could gain
from standing there, she placed a decomposed feeder in Corinth’s
mouth and said, “I hope in your next life, you are not as vengeful
as you were in this one.” As Corinth’s body started to decompose,
Willow recognized the Guardian necklace around Corinth’s neck.
Knowing its meaning she reached over and removed it with no issues.
Willow was aware that when the carrier of the necklace was deceased
it was again possible to remove it. Once in her possession Willow
placed it in a piece of cloth and put it in her pocket.

Willow entered the transport and
left Prime 2, and felt for the first time, in a long time, guilt.
Did she do the right thing? Was it ok to clear Corinth of her evil
ways and give her a second chance to right her wrongs? On the other
hand, should she have reported Corinth to the council and let them
make the decision. Willow started to realize, as she shuttled
through the mountain, there was a new dawn coming to her planet and
one she did not want to accept.

“
What is going to happen? Why
have two council members died in such a short period? Who is truly
responsible for these events? When Corinth was talking about her
movement where was she going with it, and finally how can she find
the answers to these questions?” thought Willow.

She was cognitive her planet was
on the verge of a civil war, she just wished she knew how to
prevent the amount of pain, heartache, and most importantly,
unjustifiable deaths, that were to come.

Willow exited the transport and
headed out of the Mana-dorn Mountains, down the path of bluish
stones, through the enormous sized trees with their leaves
resembling giant purple sails, and into the pavilion. Here she
streamed back to
The
Ark
and upon her entry she stormed into
Melchior’s reflection room, informed him Corinth had been properly
recycled, and demanded answers.

“
What did Corinth mean when she
said there would be a great deal of field programs dying and there
was going to be a civil war?” Willow felt she was going to
embellish a little on what Corinth told her, she figured what did
she have to lose?

“
I am sorry Willow, but I do not know what you
speak of. There will not be any unexpected deaths of our field
programs. Moreover, what is this civil war you speak of? Corinth
must have been really grasping, it seems she would have said
anything to get out of the predicament she placed herself
in.”

“
So, you have no idea what she was talking
about?”

“
I do not. All I know is what we
caught on the mental transmissions from Shiphra. Did Corinth
confess her wrongdoings?”

“
She confessed. Now there is no doubt she
murdered Shiphra.”

“
Then what is the problem?”

“
I told you, she mentioned there was some
other plan, one that was going to create a lot of deaths and
mentioned the Guardians.”

“
I truly do not know what she was referring
to.”

“
I am sure you do not,” said Willow
sarcastically. “I need to leave, as I have other matters to attend
to.”

“
You do realize the council will
find out what we have done to Corinth?” asked Melchior.

“
I am well aware Prime 2 has
already notified them. I am certainly not concerned, but there was
no way I was willing to wait and convene a meeting with the full
council in order to determine Corinth’s fate. I am a patient woman,
but there are certain matters I cannot just sit around and debate,”
said Willow passionately.

“
I cannot agree with you more.
She had no right doing what she did. I will stand beside you on
this. I am just as much to blame when it comes to Corinth’s death,”
replied Melchior.

“
Thank you. Now I must be going.
I am sure I will see you soon. I will be retreating back to the
Mana-dorn Mountain range. Send for me if I am needed.”

“
I will,” smiled Melchior.

“
Oh, and by the way, next time
you make someone a Guardian, make sure it is not someone who is an
undereducated, power-hungry fool,” said Willow as she removed the
Guardian necklace from her pocket and placed it on Melchior’s
desk.

Before Melchior could respond, Willow turned and
left his reflection room and streamed back to the area she found
most comforting, the great forest.

Inside the top of
The Ark
,
far above the council members’ reflection rooms, was a large single
chamber. This space was completely transparent from the inside,
allowing the occupants to see a great deal of Tureis. In the center
of the room sat a simple oval shaped glass table with two crescent
shaped chairs on either side, similar to the ones that sat in the
main chamber. Directly above the table floated the grandest of all
infinity symbols. It was thirty-five feet long and while it slowly
made its revolutions, it refracted a variety of different color
lights. These beams of pure energy radiated from this massive
symbol, and reflected off the transparent walls adding additional
colors from all parts of the spectrum. It was as if someone had
created a room inside a rainbow. The floor under the oval shaped
table also turned, but at a much slower speed, allowing occupants
to take in a three hundred and sixty degree view of the spectacular
terrain. Besides the table and two chairs, there were no other
objects cluttering this enormous space. It was as if the room
itself paid tribute to one thing and one thing only, natural light,
the essence of life itself.

Sitting in one of the two chairs
was Zaccai, still wearing the dark blue hooded robe which
completely covered Zaccai’s body from head to toe. Sitting across
from Zaccai was the oldest of all the council members,
Elymas.

Elymas was the stereotypical
looking wise man. While sitting at Zaccai’s table, he combed his
grayish long beard with his right hand and tried to reposition
himself on what he thought to be a very uncomfortable chair. Elymas
refused to allow his humanoid shell to stay pristine. Instead he
allowed the wrinkles and aging to occur, but at a much slower rate.
As Zaccai and Elymas sat there contemplating
existence
, Elymas paused for
a moment, stood up in an attempt to adjust his white silvery robes,
looked at Zaccai, and said, “It has begun.”

“
It has my old friend, it has,”
replied Zaccai with a somber tone.

Family Ties

Jade opened her eyes and found
she had a blanket over her head. She saw a bluish light coming from
what she believed to be a nearby table. As she lay there, she
started to wonder if she just had one of the most vivid dreams
ever, but after she rehearsed the details in her head, she
concluded with little doubt it was real. Jade slowly pulled the
blanket down and was relieved to realize she was still in the room
where she and Serafina earlier conversed. Jade looked over to the
blue light and realized it was just a digital clock. Amazingly,
nine hours had passed from the time she had fallen asleep. Normally
when she experienced something enjoyable and exciting, she would
only sleep for a few hours.