INDULGENT
SPIRIT
Tom
Leonard
CHAPTER
1: BIG BANG 777
The
hows and whys of Universe Zero will forever remain a mystery, but the
next 777 universes were created by consecutive Big Bangs. Universe
777 came into existence when the dazzling megastar Vetor burst
through the Turing wormhole from Universe 776, sometimes referred to
as the Milky Way Universe.
Thereupon,
Vetor progressed across a new, ever expanding sub-sector of
Vorta-Space, at speeds far exceeding the speed of its own
light (while providing yet further practical refutations of Bjorn
Born’s laws of generalised, psychometrised quantum theory) and
splintering into vast galaxies as it went.
The
space station Catriona, a
fluorescent red cube similar
in volume to one of the
smaller moons of Jupiter, burst
through the Turing wormhole
a billion Planet
Keppler years
later
and criss-crossed
the same
universe at similarly high speeds.
By then, numerous planets had
materialized in Universe
777,
of which sixty had, by the presumed grace of the much blessed
Ophelia, developed
vibrant geological systems
beneath the planetary crusts and life-supporting
conditions and
weather systems in the surrounding atmosphere. They were
consequently blessed with
oceans, land masses, animals,
birds, reptiles,
and a large variety of
flora and fauna.
At
the time of Catriona’s
appearance in Universe 777, Torus
was the most advanced in
evolutionary terms of these
sixty planets. This
colourful spheroid, once
a donut-shaped torus, was by then in precise elliptical
orbit around the Frog Star.
According
to the Word of Cnat,
the evolutionary processes
and all creatures thereby evolving were
part of a
mysterious ‘Creator Spirit’
called Ophelia
who
encapsulated the
entire Vorta-Space. A
portion of the Spirit’s
brain was said in Beginning, Chapter 4, Verses 10-15 to be
omnipresent in Sacred Chapel of the Divine One on Catriona, from
where she issued subliminal instructions to her living incarnates and
followers with the purpose of improving the evolution of the species.
When
Catriona came through the wormhole, the cubic space station
was inhabited by many manner of species of intelligent talking
creatures, including a million, four-armed Zazins, fifty thousand
fiery Walrusians, tens of millions of hard-working, hi tech Atum, a
variety of homo-humans that
included two million much-abused homo sornicus
slaves, and the a hundred thousand highly spiritual
Shamans
who lived in
the Nu
Sphere near the Omni-Core.
There
was also
a ‘Noah’s Ark’ of species of animals at various stages of
evolution, and
a massive ellipsoid
containing countless billions of amoeba.
The
Atums vaguely resembled
humans. Apart from their
outcast fully-trinarys,
they
were each of one
of three officially designated genders. These
were determined by the
midfolk attending
their births.
Kyle,
Drew, and Jordan Rainbow were an officially encouraged Atum ‘love
triple’, with respective genders u-male, v-male and z-male. They were all I.T. specialists in the space station's Time and Motion department, and lived and worked together in their sparsely furnished, single-roomed unit in the 'T and M' minicube, with their pet parrot Ferris. They found their work projects to be extremely boring and thought, strictly in private, that Time and Motion primary served to regiment the movements of the corridor cleaners, restaurant staff, and retail workers, but without actually improving their efficiency.
The
Rainbows were playing a tediously long game of Monopoly
together one evening during
the Fall of AD 300,021,
when there was a loud bleep. A split second later, they heard sonic
sounds coming through
a speaker in the ceiling. It was
the voice of the Chief Automaton.
“The
Grand Council have it in mind,” announced the automaton,
“to send ten thousand Atum babies to Planet Torus during
the mass migration program next year. You
are one of our optimally selected triple
of potential parents, having been selected by the Enhanced Evolution Algorithm. Would your v-male please therefore take a pregnancy test in seven days time. If her egg is golden by then, you will receive a generous gift voucher and a free weekend for three in the First Corner resort."
"Boring!" exclaimed Jordan, putting away the Monopoly set, but Kyle brightened up a bit, and smiled. Drew found an e-book entitled Motherhood on the interstellar internet, poured herself a tonic and lemon, and began to read. Ferris leapt onto her shoulder, and chirped whenever she turned to the next page.
The
control complex of Catriona
seemed to Lieutenant
Iota Iyola
to be a world of its own, a far cry from Planet Tycho Brahe
in the Milky Way (from
where her high functioning
children and alcoholic ex-husband occasionally visited
her on inter-universe Zoom).
Iota lived in the complex with her hundred or so fellow Officers of the Flight Bridge, all worthy homo erectus
Kyusans like herself,
and with her very inquisitive, college-educated pet puma Kim Catworthy.
One morning, Iota's routine was focussing her attention on when a voice summoned her to the command room for a mini-conference. Others
attending the meeting included Iota’s
boss
Captain Vass Korchnoi, and retired Admiral Nam Nimitch, the head of the special police. Nimitch was a Novogrian and all of his officers were too. Descendants of the primeval Novrons, they were much more centre-brained than humans. Hence their powers of deduction were phenomenal.
More than 50,000 in number, the special police resided in the Nerve Centre in the Seventh Corner of Catriona. Nimitch's constables were able to move rapidly around Catriona by internal teleportation and hence to respond to his every whim.
Iota’s pet
puma Kim stayed on the bridge
admiring distant, distinctly-shaped galaxies and a green comet that
was hurtling
through the Pi-Sun system.
It's doubtlessly brimming with ingenious life-forms and novel
biochemical compounds from afar, thought Kim. Maybe I should pen an article for 'Science and Nature'.
Captain Korchnoi and Admiral Nimitch were in mid-conversation when the lieutenant entered the command room
“I
understand that the Atum
babies and their Shaman adoptive parents won’t be migrating to Torus
until late next year,” Nimitch
was saying. “In the
meantime, we’ll try to
confine the homo sapiens to their confounded
Sappy Sphere, just in case they manage to infiltrate the planet surface and try to start a revolution.”
“That
sounds perfectly reasonable, I suppose,” agreed Korchnoi, “We’ve
already teleported thousands of Atums to
the Central Migration
Region, along with similar numbers of homo sornicus slaves and Walrusian overseers."
"Excellent! The Walrusians and Novogrians are like kith and kin. We've conquered several planets in the Andromeda galaxy together."
"Yes indeed," sighed Korchnoi, "but would
you believe that the
Walrusians
are forcing
the Sornies to scatter themselves around the countryside and to build grass and mud wigwams and bog-standard tin huts to survive in? The
poor buggars have to swill the pigsties and snappit cages at crack of dawn, and plough vast tracts of land before nightfall. The Walrusians eat in style on the ham and snappit stew, while the Sornies are expected to survive on large insects and verminous rats.
What a miserable existence!.”
“But
they bring their squalor on
themselves,” objected
Nimitch. “They’re an
inferior species when all said and done.”
A teenage Zoom girl, who was struggling with the sound system, took exception to Nimitch's inappropriate choice of vocabulary.
“Y-you
sound as if you're into
s-scientific r-racism, she stammered. “We
homo sapiens would
never talk about other species like that.”
"Sure they do," retorted Nimitz. "And you sound like a holier than thou Slotskyist, just like those redneck human terrorists. Any more of your insolence and I'll arrest you on the spot!”
“Excuse
me, Captain,” said Lieutenant Iyola, as the unfortunate technician fled in terror,
“but the Living Incarnate used
the term ‘time-compression’
during last
week’s Grand Council meeting. Does that mean that we’ll be able
to time-travel again?
I’d certainly like to get
out of here at this very moment.”
“I
don’t know, Iota,” replied Korchnoi, with
a deep sigh. “There’s
rumoured to be an archaic Kalman-Bucy time machine hidden somewhere in this
space station but we’ve never been able to find it. However, our revered Living Incarnate insists
that our Creator Spirit is
able to compress time as part of some sort of natural process.”
“She's nuts!” asserted Nimitch. “Nuts, nuts, nuts,...!”
“Excuse
me for interrupting, Admiral,” blurted a teenage CNN reporter, “but you might be interested to hear that the homo sapiens activist Rip Rapper was arrested twenty minutes ago on suspicion of terrorism.
He is being held in an Ionised Convulsifier by
Central Mind Control.”
“Thank you, laddie,” responded
Nimitch, with a jovial smile. We’ll send
what’s left of him
to the next meeting of the Grand Council for sentencing by the crazy Incarnate. She'll probably send him to the Duchess of Doom's body choppers without batting a single eyelid.”
“Not that!” shrieked
the teenager, bursting
into tears, and Nimitch
laughed.
CHAPTER 2: THE GRAND COUNCIL OF CATRIONA
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