INDULGENT SPIRIT
by Tom Leonard
Words like 'she' and 'her' are intended to represent all genders.
CHAPTER 6: RENEWAL AND DISASTER
6.1 The Triumvirate
Rick Stent withdrew her candidacy for a co-presidency since she felt unable to
accommodate Admiral Nimisch's alt right views. Over twenty million votes were
cast within the next hundred Kepler days, and Chi Kit, Drew Rainbow, and Nam
Nimisch were duly elected co-presidents of the People's Republic of Katrina. A
parliament with 600 inter-species members and no party whips was also elected
How long the triumvirate would survive the competing egos of the three
co-presidents was another business.
The triumvirate was sworn in 110 Kepler days after the Rainbows' return to
Katrina. This was 150 Kepler days, or three million Strontian years, after time-
compression was first introduced, with another Strontian decade ticking by every
43.2 Kepler seconds.
The officials in the Control Complex hadn't received any discernible
communications from Torus during the previous few Kepler weeks and thought
they'd lost contact with any sentient creatures still living there. Chi Kit was
instructed by parliament to reset the Harris-Easterner device in a way that would
remove time compression. Chi agreed to return Torus to Kepler time during the
160th day of that Kepler year (AD 300,033) and at the beginning of Anno 3.2
million on Torus. This proved to be a difficult task as somebody had drenched the
top of the machine with hard-setting glue, but Chi succeeded in resetting the two
important dials, with the help of a spanner, a chisel and a small hammer.
Admiral Nimisch wanted to teleport a small task force to the original migration
region. He was irritated that a task force hadn't been sent earlier, largely due to
distractions caused by the election campaign, but he had second thoughts when
Lieutenant Iota Iyola showed him a screen image of Mount Sinus erupting
sideways ten miles to the west of the site of the former city of Xan, and
spewing volcanic ash across the countryside and lava down the valleys.
Iota explained that such Plinian eruptions occurred every thousand Strontian
years or so on Torus, and that subsequent chain reactions sometimes caused
molten lava to burst through cracks in the planet crust from the Wallstrom layer
beneath. Iota advised Nimisch that the last communication she'd received from
Torus, some 100,000 Strontian years previously, was from the homo sornicus
mayor of Sussville, a small city on the northern shore of the circular ocean
Pacifica. Nimisch thought that it would be a good idea to divert the task force
there.
In the meantime, Kyle and Jordan orchestrated a variety of social interactions
between the Atums and other species on Katrina. The Zebrids were keen on
spiritual debates; they valued their saviour, the son of the God and
Goddess of Life, much more highly than the Divine Ophelia, and believed that the
souls of the dead lived alongside the living. The homo humans wanted to
integrate with the Atums with a view to developing more husband and wife
relationships and to breeding more Humatums (as inspired by their co-
president Drew's much heralded pregnancy). The talking horses and antelopes
wanted to develop more interspecies sports programs, including baseball, water
polo, soccer, and gymnastics. And the Zazins put interspecies psychology, child
education, and mental health issues high on their agenda.
Admiral Nimisch disbanded the Walrusian guards and introduced legislation
requiring all Walrusians over fourteen to attend evening re-education classes on
interpersonal relationships. One MP, an assertive Talking Wallaby, suggested that
Nimisch should attend the classes too, but the humorous macropod was called to
order by the Speaker, a tough-minded Eaglid, who evicted him from the chamber
for three days.
At Jordan Rainbow MP's unforgivably nepotistic suggestion, the Walrusian guards
were replaced by several battalions of interspecies 'Territorials', all volunteers
under the command of Brigadier Kyle Rainbow. As one of their designated duties,
the Territorials would be helping the Novogrian special police (now under the
supervision of Superintendent Kim Catworthy and about to go all-accepting) to
maintain the peace on Katrina.
6.2 Return to the Distant Future
On the tenth day of the co-presidency, President Chi Kit and Brigadier Kyle
Rainbow put on protective spacesuits with platinum helmets and heat-resistant
visors. Thus attired, they gave Drew, Jordan, and Rip clumsy hugs, live on
Teleview. Jordan relished the camera opportunity; she was wearing her fluffy wool
outfit and favourite pearl necklace.
"You'll be wearing black lace tonight, darling," said Rip, giving Jordan a saucy
pinch, and she felt insecure at the prospect.
Chi and Kyle promptly teleported from the chamber in the Command Complex to
the summit of what remained of Divinity Mound (located on the 'Xan plateau' in
the original migration region). Their remit was to 'return to the distant future', to
complete a preliminary investigation, and then to beat a hasty back to Katrina.
Chi and Kyle were in for some horrific surprises. A split second after they
materialised on the spot intended, a big hairy insect bounded up and sent Kyle
crashing into the slimy mud. Chi pulled out her laser pistol, and scorched the
insect through its bulbous eye. Thereupon, a massive wasp reptile pushed Chi to
the ground and was inserting its mould-encrusted stinger into are tonsils when
she blew its head away with a well-directed foot grenade.
A miscellany of fearsome creatures immediately fled in sheer panic across the
volcanic ash, as the molten lava streamed towards them. A mammoth giraffe fell
into the quagmire and writhed in sizzling agony to its death.
" Fuck off, evolution!" howled Chi, pressing her return button. It
jammed.
A giant serpent came at Kyle, and tore off the back of her spacesuit
with its fangs. So she pressed her return button, knowing that, as Chi
was within ten metres, she would be automatically teleported back to
Katrina too. Chi's head was in the serpent's jaws when she vanished
into thin air and narrowly avoided being decapitated.
6.3. The Hanging Gardens of Id
Chi and Kyle were in sorry states when they reappeared in the
teleportation chamber on Katrina, but Iota Iyola and Kim
Catworthy hurried in to help them out of their space suits, the doctor
on duty on the bridge patched them up, and Captain Korchnoi rushed
in with two tumblers of all-healing Suckdrink. However, there is no
peace for the virtuous, quite apart from the wicked. Kyle was in the
midst of explaining what had just happened on Torus, when the
amber alert emergency siren sounded throughout the space station.
"Security alert, security alert; there are two alien intruders in the
Hanging Gardens of Id," shrieked a shrill voice. "They've just
teleported here from Torus. The special police and a platoon of the
Territorials are on their way. Please beware of any alien creature you
meet. It could be dangerous."
"Ophelia wept!" swore Kyle. "They could be giant snakes or large,
hairy insects."
"Why don't you lie down, dear?" suggested the wizened psychiatric
staff nurse, sticking a long thin needle into Kyle's thigh.
"I need some of that poison too," howled Chi, "I can see serpents
coming up my nostrils."
"In that case, I'll give you some stem cells to stop your cock dropping off,"
promised the nurse. "Whoops! I forgot to give any to Mr. Rainbow."
Glad for an excuse to get away, Police Superintendent Kim Catworthy
took a flying leap into the internal teleportation chamber, speedily
followed by Drew, Rip, and Jordan, and within five femtoseconds they
were on the recently renovated fourth tier of the beautifully colourful
hanging gardens.
Known as the Ninth Wonder of the Universes, the fluorescently-lit
hanging gardens had been constructed, several millenia previously,
with seven tiers, each the size of the vast Botanical Gardens. They
provided a popular retreat where industrious creatures could take
time out to meditate and explore their ids.
When the four companions explored the Meadow of Thankfulness,
they discovered several interspecies couples in the rose-maple
bushes, an Atum love triple swimming in the fish pond, and a Tavar
mystic smoking her pipe. Kim asked the mystic whether he'd seen
any alien creatures.
"Maybe I'm imagining things," she replied, scratching her goatee, "but
I do believe I saw two Angels of Heaven in the seventh tier tea
garden."
"Any snakes or large hairy insects?" asked Kim, as any competent
police officer would.
"Not as far as I can remember," replied the mystic, clearing her
nostrils a touch noisily, "but there may be some in the first tier
playground."
While climbing the spiral Staircase of Nature, the four companions
saw scores of Territorials and Novogrian police constables scouring
the bushes and searching the undergrowth on the fifth and sixth
tiers. But when they reached the seventh tier, it was largely empty.
The Pelicanid tea lady told them that her cafe had already been
searched by special police. However, while they were wandering back
to the staircase, Jordan saw some leaves rustling in the biodiversity
thicket.
The four self-important Katrinians walked stealthily towards the
thicket, and there, cowering in the undergrowth, were two alien
creatures with elongated heads, flat chests, and impressive pairs
of angel's wings sprouting from their shoulder blades. They were
clad only in skimpy loin cloths, and were jabbering together in a strange
tongue, somewhat resembling ancient Sirusian.
Kim put out a request on her mobile for a Turing cryptanalysis
modum, and a Novogrian police sergeant appeared several minutes
later with one she kept in her chest pouch for such eventualities. Kyle
encouraged the aliens to take swigs out of her bottle of fizzy orange,
and, suitably refreshed, they were soon conversing in what sounded
to Rip like good plain English.
"Greetings!" ventured Drew, thinking that the aliens were genetic
mutations. "I am a president of this all-accepting, interspecies
community. Please identify yourself! Where are you from?"
"I'm Sall Sallius and he's Crisp Crispus and we're Angatums," the first creature
shyly replied. "It says in our Scriptures that we evolved from Atums
like you. We're also descended from some half-human folk who became
extinct about 100,000 years ago. We come from Torus, from the
underground bunker city of Sussville on the northern coast of
Pacifica."
"And why are you here?" asked Jordan, imagining how good she'd
look with wings of her own.
"Because we saw your brave spacemen through our giant telescope
and sort of followed them here," replied Crisp. "The Dissection Cylinder is
spewing torrents of steam into the ionosphere, and the magma is collapsing
back into the Wallstrom layer below us. There are only seven thousand of us left.
Our planet is beginning to change its orbit from elliptic back to saddle-multiliptic.
We're scared! Torus is turning back into a donut. Please help us!"
"I'll call a meeting of Ophidian straightaway," promised President Drew Rainbow.
"Please rest assured that we'll assist the Angatums in every way possible. We
give all asylum seekers the highest possible respect, and we're ethical enough to
not even countenance sending them to a distant moon."
"You might also help us to move the 771 Sealed Disks of of the
Universes," suggested Sall. "They record all the thoughts of all the
creatures who have lived in the 771 now extinct universes."
"Almighty God plans to put the Holy Disks to good purpose come the
Day of Denumerable Judgements," added Crisp.
"We'll do all we can," Drew primly replied.
6.4 Flying Saucer to the Rescue
On being appraised of the dire situation in Sussville, Captain Korchov
arranged for the flying saucer Gundyin to be taken out of mothballs
and moved into the departure bay. He also re-opened the Asylum
Seekers' Teleport Lounge; it had been used for cold storage during
the decades since the evacuation of Planet Corot 8A in the Milky Way,
shortly before the massive rocky planet was consumed by the Corot
Sunstar. The lounge could accommodate a thousand human-sized asylum
seekers at a time, though only two hundred very tall Corotians.
Retired Battlefleet Admiral Nam Nimitz offered to fly the Gundyin to
Sussville to assist in the evacuation process. The departure time
was set for 2 pm on Fifth-Day afternoon (there are ten days in a
Katrinian week ending with the Sabbath on Tenth-Day).
On Fourth-Day evening, President Drew Rainbow went to the Sacred
Chapel of the Divine Creator, to pray to whatever God that might exist for
the success of the rescue mission. When Drew entered the chapel, the
fluorescent pink prism was emitting its usual humming sounds. When Drew
fell to her knees, she thought that she was on a power trip to Heaven. But when
she prayed for the safety of the seven thousand Angatums on Torus, she was in
for a big surprise.
"I am the Divine Creator Spirit," shrieked a voice. "You shouldn't try
to rescue those silly do-gooding mutations. They are without taint of
evil, and are therefore not part of my evolutionary process. They
should be destroyed."
"How could you?" exclaimed Drew. "You're not at all divine. I don't
believe that you're the Creator Spirit at all."
"I am the Divine Ophelia!" yelled the voice. "If you try to save the
Angatums, then I will take revenge on you. I will destroy you all!"
Losing her cool, Drew pulled the lectern off the pulpit, and threw it
crashing into the pink prism, where it broke into tiny splinters that
killed thousands of highly intelligent festoonettes as they scampered
across the floor.
Unperturbed by Ophelia's dire warning, Admiral Nam Nimisch and
Brigadier Kyle Rainbow boarded the flying saucer Gundyin the next
afternoon with Sall, Crisp, and the wily puminid Kim Catworthy in
the passenger seats in the cockpit, and three platoons of experienced
Territorials in the hold. The Angatums needed to wrap their wings
tightly around their bodies in order to fit into their seats.
The orbit of Katrina around the Pi Sun was marginally smaller than
the orbit of Torus, which was now deviating along an oscillating
curve away from the elliptic. As the Gunyin approached Torus, the
planet suddenly moved much more quickly than anticipated towards
the path of the flying saucer. Massive plumes of steam over 1000
kilometres wide were gushing out of Pacifica and Adversica,
from opposite ends of the Dissection Cylinder.
Nam Nimisch took skilful avoidance action, and the Gunyin veered
over the planet's North Pole, dived towards Pacifica, and performed
an elegant ninety degree turn into a circular orbit around the
equator. "Fuck you, Ophelia!" screamed the Admiral, in triumph.
"Go and die from your pox."
As the Gunyin approached the 180th meridian, the enormous plume
of steam coming out of Pacifica came into full view. Kim judged that
it was at least 1500 kilometres south of the underground city
of Sussville.
As the flying saucer approached the spaceport five kilometres
north-east of Sussville, Kyle confirmed her arrangements with
the teleportation facilitators on Katrina, and at the spaceport, for
the evacuation of the 7000 Angatums. Unfortunately, it was
technically impossible to teleport the civilians directly from the
underground city to the space station (that was still orbiting the
Pi Sun).
When the Gunyin landed on the saucer disk, the Angatums were
scrambling onto the runway as it melted beneath them, but they
vanished, hundreds at a time, when they were teleported to
Katrina. Kim was growing more and more confident that everybody
would survive when the lava from the Wallstrom layer began to flow
through the cracks in the runway. Most of the remaining Angatums
died horrific deaths, and Kim's tears drenched the fur on her face.
When the Mayor and Mayoress of Sussville boarded the Gunyin,
they left two hundred winged corpses behind them.
"The Holy Disks of the Universes are still in our limo," declared
the Mayor, her chain of office glistening in the gloom. "We'll need
all 771 of them on Judgement Day."
"Leave them to rot," snarled Kim Catworthy. "God's judgement
isn't worth a shit anymore."
The Gunyin sped through the ionosphere and performed a single
orbit, As it did, Mount Egga exploded and poured rocks and debris
into space. Admiral Nimisch avoided utter catastrophe by taking her
spacecraft out of orbit and setting immediate course for Katrina.
"God is retaliating!" shrieked the Mayoress, flapping her wings, as a
rock the size of a small island narrowly missed the cockpit.
"Nature is retaliating," yelled Kyle, "but nature will soon be gone."
Then Kim saw a picture in front of her right eye of the Zebridian
saviour.
"Peace to the talking animals," declared the Saviour. "This could be our time."
Kyle saw a picture in front of her left eye of the female Messiah of the Winged
Unicorns.
"Let's get the fuck out of here," howled the Messiah.
6.5 Astronomic Catastrophe
All of the Angatum asylum seekers were sent to live in comfortable tents on the beautiful sixth and seventh tiers of the Hanging Gardens of Id. Little did they know that a special cell of the mind police had 'wired' the seventh tier tea gardens and that all conversations there were analysed by the giant word processor in the Mind Control Centre. The mind police worked in a world of their own, though they collaborated occasionally with the Novogrian special police..
However, Sall and Crisp received extra-special treatment. They got to stay in Rick Stent's palace suite, which Rick also shared with her three Atum wives and their new parrot.
Rick, now Minister for Education, enjoyed her games of Kriegspiel chess with the angelic Crisp, and these were usually umpired by President Chi Kit. The two players competed while only being given clues about the positions of the pieces on the hidden board. This is too much like real life, thought Chi.
Kim Catworthy organised a discussion camp for politically motivated talking animals on the second tier of the hanging gardens.
The participants included pumanids, zebrids, talking pelicanids, wily red foxes, white otters, and talking parrot-hawks. They debated the possibility of declaring a semi- independent 'Fifth Corner State' in a sub-cube of their very own, and worshipped their and the Zebrid's Saviour in the Ascension Chapel in the courtyard below.
One night, President Drew Rainbow was sleeping in the side bedroom, while her husband Rick and partner Kyle were playing Final Fantasy 4001, when the divine Ophelia appeared to her in a dream.
"Your have disobeyed me by preserving the lives of the Angatums," declared Ophelia, flashing her dark green eyes. "You therefore will, with probability 0.65, be struck by a jagged piece of Torus when it breaks up. If you survive, then you should repopulate Planet Manifold in the Kappa solar system, but don't even go near the Gentoo on Petreus since I wish to preserve them for my own divine purpose."
"What does our Saviour think about all this?" asked a rabbit.
"She isn't even divine!" shrieked Ophelia. "He's a figment of your imagination."
"He's there when we need him," said a koala. "We can call on her holy name."
"No she isn't!" howled Ophelia. "It's me who decides whether to save you or not."
"Get stuffed!" howled a big polar bear, baring its teeth.
Drew suddenly awoke. Sall, the young Angatum woman, was touching her pubes up with her pinkies. Drew tickled Sall's tits, only for handsome Crisp to remove her loincloth and leap, well-hung and butt-naked onto Drew's perfectly flat chest.
"Lick my vulvas, Crisp," demanded Drew, and the male Angatum obliged, nose down and bottoms up. Thereupon Crisp discovered something she wasn't supposed to find, and felt utterly shocked.
A couple of days later Captain Karoly Korchov was serving cognac to her convivial colleagues and intoxicated koala, when Lieutenant Iota Iyola rushed into the bridge. shrieking, "Torus is breaking up, Captain, and a jagged piece the size of a mountain is hurtling towards us!"
"Red alert!" howled Korchnoi, changing course with an adept turn of the Aldrin wheel that moved Katrina into an orbit closer to the piercing rays of the Pi Sun.
"The entire planet has disintegrated," shrieked Iota, as the sirens screeched, "and there's a mass of debris coming in our direction."
"Raise heat shields!" yelled Korchov, flipping the Aldrin wheel through ninety degrees and heading straight for the Pi Sun. But a shard from Torus pursued Katrina for over ten million kilometres, before it took off her Sixth Corner, sending the Bayes Cube and Hard Labour Trianguloid to posterity. Thirty Bayesian statisticians and assorted scientists, and two hundred thousand convicts, including 115 former Zazin councillors, were propelled through the Pearly Gates of Heaven and into the yawning hell below. The Living Incarnate Sunny Z1 survived, but only because she was away in Mercy Hospital receiving treatment for a collapsed lung.
"Seal the damage with the Sixth Corner protectors!" Lieutenant Iyola calmly commanded, in the knowledge that the moveable protectors were themselves heat resistant. Most of the creatures on the interior of the space station survived, for the moment at least. However several homo erectus firefighters died when an old people's home was destroyed, frazzling three hundred senior citizens to their hellish deaths.
A massive female head with flowing fair hair, flashing green eyes, and the look of a goddess bobbed out from behind the Pi Sun. "Serves you right, confounded heretics!" screamed the head, before retreating into a tight orbit around Planet Juniper.
"Hold on for your lives!" yelled Korchov, pulling the wheel back into the vertical, and Katrina rose in an arc, clearing the Pi Sun by at least eight million kilometres. While the heat shields turned to charcoal, minimal further damage was inflicted on the rest of the infrastructure.
"Let's head for the Kappa solar system," suggested Lieutenant Iyola. "We could take refuge with the Gentoo."
"We certainly need to find a different place," replied Korchov, "preferably without any damned bluddy goddesses."
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