Posts Tagged ‘genetic manipulation’
Richard Redmond – Revelation Part Nine
OBSERVATION RESUMES
When they reached the hotel, Richard tipped the cabbie generously and entered the lobby. When the doorman stepped in front of him, Richard resisted the temptation to test the powers he supposedly now had. Instead, he asked for the concierge who, recognizing Richard as a five star guest, personally showed him to one of the hotel’s best suites. Richard asked for a razor, and to have the hotel’s personal shopper sent to his room in an hour.
As soon as he was alone, he poured himself a stiff drink. After downing it in a single swallow, he picked up the phone to call Nadine. Given the time difference, she’d most likely be at the university so he called her private line there. It rang through to voicemail. So did her cell. Richard couldn’t think of anything he could say in a one-minute message that would make the least bit of sense. He was going to call the university switchboard and have her paged, but decided he’d shower first. After all, as far as his wife knew, he was still in the middle of the Central American jungle. It wasn’t like she’d be worried about him.
Going into the bathroom, he started the water in the shower, stripped down and stepped in. He leaned both hands against the wall and just let the hot, steamy water run over him for a few minutes. He was just beginning to feel something close to normal again when he heard a giggle behind him. Turning, Richard saw Alea Chantal, as naked as he was, standing provocatively in the corner. “Hey,” he exclaimed, suppressing the urge to cover himself with his hands.
Alea Chantal laughed, moved toward him. At which point Richard realized that even though she might be naked, she wasn’t wet. “Very good, Richard,” she said. “I’m simply taking advantage of the mist in the air and the way your eye processes light to create an image of myself.” Then she glanced down, smiling broadly. “But thank you for the compliment.” Richard blushed. A disembodied throat-clearing from Sarsoneth broke the moment, and Alea Chantal continued. “We promised to begin to answer your questions, Richard. When you finish your shower, grab that second drink you wanted and meet us in the grove.” She disappeared.
“Meet you in the grove,” Richard repeated. “How the hell do I do that?”
Alea Chantal’s face reappeared. “Same as before, silly. Only this time, you don’t have to wait for Faloneth to knock you out. Just make yourself comfortable and we’ll do the rest.” She blinked out again.
Richard soaped up, scrubbed down and rinsed off. Stepping out of the shower, he towelled himself dry and put on the hotel-provided bathrobe. As he returned to the suite’s living room, there was a knock on the door. He opened it to find the personal shopper, who he invited in. It only took a few minutes for her to take his measurements and to make a list of the clothes and personal articles Richard wanted. He also asked her to book him on the first available flight back to the US.
After she left, Richard went back to the bar and opened the fridge. There was a decent selection of beer from a number of British and European brewers. He reached for a German brand. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Alea Chantal’s voice complained. “We’re in London. It’s got to be a Guinness.”
Richard picked up the black and gold can. “You do know Guinness is Irish, right?” When Alea Chantal didn’t answer, he shrugged and popped the can open. After taking a swallow, he picked up the phone and tried calling Nadine again, and again got no answer. He still didn’t want to worry her by leaving a message with a London telephone number. Instead, he called Thomas Jackson, his colleague and best friend. Jackson didn’t answer either, but Richard left him the number at the hotel and asked him to call as soon as he could. Richard knew his friend well enough to know that he’d be more curious than worried. Then he walked to the sofa and made himself comfortable. He was just about to ask what to do next when the room faded out and the now-familiar grove took its place.
“Welcome back, Richard,” Alea Chantal said cheerily. Richard noticed that she was holding what seemed to be his can of beer. She saw the direction of his glance. “What? A girl can’t enjoy a good beverage?” she protested. Taking a long pull at the Guinness, she added. “God that tastes good. Not that I don’t appreciate the scotch you usually drink Richard, but there’s just nothin’ like a good stout f’r a gal raised in the pubs, y’know?” She took another swallow, belched; looked sheepish.
“Indeed. The sophistication of your palate is beyond question, my dear. Not to mention that you are French, not English.” Richard turned toward the second voice and saw Sarsoneth for the first time. The man was considerably older than Alea Chantal. She appeared to be in her early twenties. Richard would have guessed Sarsoneth was at least sixty. He was dressed in some sort of loose-fitting robe or toga or something but from what Richard could tell, he appeared to be in excellent physical condition. The most striking thing about him however, was his height. At six foot one, Richard wasn’t accustomed to having to look up to meet someone’s gaze. Sarsoneth, however, had at least six inches on him.
“In the days when we first arrived,” Sarsoneth said, picking up on Richard’s unspoken thought, “the difference was even more striking.”
“I knew it,” Richard exclaimed. “You’re aliens.”
Alea Chantal placed a hand on her hip, struck a pose, and protested, “Not me bud. I am all girl.” After a brief pause, she added, “He’s the bug-eyed monster.”
Sarsoneth sat on a boulder, gave Alea Chantal a long-suffering look, and sighed. Addressing Richard, he said, “Although ‘alien’ would be technically correct in my case, Richard, both Alea Chantal and I, at least the original, living versions of us, are, or were, your ancestors.”
Richard looked from one to the other. “You’re ghosts?”
“More like memories, Richard,” Alea Chantal chipped in. “Very, very vivid memories.”
Richard picked up a stone, threw it into the lake, watched the ripples spread out. “Pretty damn solid memories; especially since I’ve never been to this place before in my life.”
“Not only your memories, Richard; our memories as well. Indeed, the memories of all of your ancestors are available to you. Everything that happened to each of your forebears up to the moment that they passed their genetic material on to the next generation is part of what my people call the d’na’tnek.”
Richard thought about that for a few minutes. He knew a little bit about the theory that memory could be passed from one generation to another just like physical traits such as red hair or a talent for math. “What about lifting the jeep, and fixing my arm? How does that work?”
“As with the ability to access the d’na’tnek,” Sarsoneth replied,” there comes a point in the evolution of a race when they begin to be able to manipulate the power generated by the planet itself. Humanity is reaching that point. It is Awakening.”
Richard had an idea. “Okay, so you’re saying that all the stories about faith healers, or people who had visions, or witches, or whatever … they were all really some kind of mutants?”
Alea Chantal laughed. “Awakening, Richard. Or evolving, if you’d prefer a human term. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but you need to understand what’s going on and where you fit in first.”
“When my people came to Earth, Richard,” Sarsoneth continued, “we were the last, shattered remnants of a once-proud race. Too proud. Our arrogance had led us to turn on each other to our utter destruction. Even the truce that allowed a few of us to reach your planet lasted barely long enough to complete the journey.”
The grove faded out momentarily and Richard saw what was obviously a spaceship descending toward a broad plain. When it had settled to the ground, doors opened and scores of men and women – four hundred and fifty nine, a memory whispered to him – emerged from the ship. Some gathered in the meadow around the landing site while others immediately took to the air and scattered. The scene faded.
“That was over ten thousand years ago, Richard. While those of my faction, the Ethicals, sought to aid mankind’s development, those like Faloneth, the Disaffected, sought only to dominate and control. Though there are only a few left, they still do. They must be stopped before humanity fully Awakens.”
Richard considered. “What about your group? The Ethicals?”
Alea Chantal jumped in before Sarsoneth could answer. “They’re no better, Richard. Their methods are different but they want the same thing.”
“Which is?” Richard asked.
“To control humanity’s Awakening. It’s the only chance they have of rebuilding their race; by using us.”
“How many Ethicals are there? Which side is winning?”
“There are only a handful of either,” replied Alea Chantal. We’re not sure how many. But even one is too many Richard. ”
Remembering what Faloneth had been able to do to, Richard tended to agree. Still ….
He’d been leaning against a tree during most of the discussion. Now he pushed himself off. “It seems like you’ve been at each other’s throats for a long time. Humanity’s still here and the bad guys are dying off. I think I’ll just leave you all to it, and go back to my life. If one of you could just point me at my hotel room, I’ll be on my way.”
Sarsoneth started to say something about destiny and responsibility, but Alea Chantal stepped closer to Richard and put her hand on his arm. “Richard, Faloneth killed Nadine.”
Richard spun toward Alea Chantal in shock when the phone rang and he found himself back on the sofa. Dazedly, he noticed that the can of Guinness was empty.
OBSERVATION PAUSED BY REQUEST
Enquiry Response: The Member is correct. The Sarsoneth Construct is deliberately withholding information from Richard. That it is capable of such action is without precedent. One of the tasks of this Panel is to determine if this is a characteristic to be nurtured, or if it signifies an aberration requiring sterilization.
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Richard Redmond – Revelation Part Seven
OBSERVATION RESUMES
This time when he woke up in the lab, Richard was prepared for the sense of dislocation. What he wasn’t prepared for was the look in Faloneth’s eyes as she considered him, the d’ha’taan cradled in the palm of her hand. She looked – Richard searched for the right word – hungry.
After a time that seemed like eternity but was surely only a few seconds, she stood up, walked to a counter that ran the length of the wall, turned and leaned against it. She rolled the d’ha’taan in her hand again, as if considering, before she spoke. “Very informative, Richard.”
At his blank stare, she continued. “Oh, not what I learned. Quite the opposite, in fact.” She held up the blue, teardrop-shaped crystal. “Do you know what this is, Richard? How it works?”
“It looks like one of the stones my wife’s masseuse uses. Trying to help me get in touch with my feminine side, are you?” Richard quipped.
Faloneth’s smile in no way indicated that she appreciated his humor. “We shall see how much longer your impudence persists. The d’ha’taan is an amplifier. Its crystalline structure enhances my ability to walk through your mind; though, as I told you, it has never been necessary to use it on a human before. Do you know what happened when I used it, in its least intrusive configuration, on your mind, Richard?”
“We started singing old campfire songs together?”
“Nothing happened. Less than nothing. It was like gliding over a frozen lake, with all of the things I am looking for hidden in the depths below. Not even the tedious minutiae that most humans are perennially preoccupied with came clear. Why do you suppose that is, Richard?”
Richard looked at the crystal with genuine interest. It really did look like the things that those New Age spas used, claiming to be able to tune clients’ auras and such. He’d always dismissed it all as so much bunk. Perhaps, as the saying went, there was a kernel of truth even in the most outlandish ideas. He looked at Faloneth. “Nadine has accused me of being empty-headed occasionally. Maybe she was right?”
The intensity of the anger that crossed Faloneth’s face bordered on insanity and left no doubt that Richard had struck a chord with his taunting banter. The question was whether or not it would prompt her to do what they wanted. And if it did, would Richard survive?
She looked at the d’ha’taan, which glowed softly for a moment. “It is reconfigured,” she said, looking at Richard again. “In a moment, I will know who created you. I will know how it was done. It is regrettable that you will not survive the process. There are certain things that I would have enjoyed exploring further.” She stepped toward Richard, reached out to place the d’ha’taan on his forehead. In spite of himself, Richard flinched, closing his eyes.
“Look at the damn restraints, Richard!” yelled Alea Chantal. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
Richard opened his eyes, trying to crane his head to look in all directions at the same time. He saw Carlos lying on the other side of the room. He was glassy-eyed, obviously dead. The look on his face suggested it hadn’t been a pleasant way to go.
“The restraints, Richard. We don’t have much time.” The urgency in Alea Chantal’s voice helped Richard pull himself together. He looked at the clasp over his left wrist, which immediately began to open. As soon as he could get that hand free he shifted his focus to the right, then each anklet, as Alea Chantal and Sarsoneth worked through him to manipulate a power he still found it hard to believe he possessed.
As soon as the process was complete Richard leapt out of the chair. Faloneth lay to his right, crumpled on the floor but still breathing. The blue crystal, dark now and dead-looking, lay beside her.
“Richard, go out the door in front of you and turn right,” Sarsoneth said. “I was able to extract the layout of this complex from Carlos’ mind before he died. I can guide you to the exit.”
Richard didn’t have to be told twice. He was through the door and running down the corridor in an instant.
“Right again at the next juncture, Richard. You should be prepared for a number of disturbing sights beyond the next door.”
Sarsoneth didn’t elaborate and Richard wondered what a disembodied emotionless voice would consider “disturbing.” He turned right, came to the door and opened it. The sight that greeted him only confirmed his initial belief that Sarsoneth had a talent for understatement. If he hadn’t been so terrified and desperate to get out of there, he might have taken time to throw up. A row of ten small cells lined each side of the corridor, after which a second door closed off the passageway. There was a dead body in each cell. From the anguished expressions on their faces, they had died the same way that Carlos had.
The fact that he had almost certainly been instrumental in their deaths, however, wasn’t what made Richard feel sick. It was their physical condition. With one or two exceptions, they were horribly deformed. It was as if someone had taken them apart and put them back together again without much consideration of what went where.
“Faloneth’s genetic experiments, Richard. You did them a favor.” Alea Chantal’s voice was gentle in his head.
“What… what was she trying to do? What did she want?” Richard choked out as he covered the distance to the second door, trying not to look at the wrecks in the cells as he passed.
“You.”
Richard opened the second door, stepped through and quickly closed it behind him. He leaned against it for a moment. “Okay, not going to think about that right now. Where next?”
“Turn left at the end of this corridor, Richard.” Sarsoneth directed. “There will be a stairway. Two flights up there will be a door with a DNA scanner. It may take a moment, but we will convince it that you are Carlos. It should allow us to exit. I am not certain how much longer Faloneth will remain incapacitated so it would be wise to continue to move quickly.”
Richard had already reached the stairs and was pounding up them. “I’m not exactly dawdling here, you know. I saw the look in her eyes.” A thought occurred to him. “If you took me past that corridor of horrors to convince me she’s crazy, it wasn’t necessary.” He skidded to a stop at the second landing.
“That was not my intention, Richard. It was simply the most direct route to this exit. Please look toward the scanner above the door.”
Richard looked up, saw another crystal. It wasn’t shaped anything like the one Faloneth had used on him.
“Different purpose,” Sarsoneth responded to Richard’s unasked question. The crystal glowed more brightly for a moment. “I believe we can leave now. Please try the door, Richard.”
As Richard pushed the door open cautiously, he was amazed to hear familiar sounds. Stepping through, he found himself on the sidewalk of a busy city street. Pedestrians hurried by, dressed in a wide variety of business and casual attire. There was a chill in the air and most people wore light jackets of one kind or another. No one paid any attention to him.
Richard gaped at the historic landmark rising a few blocks away. “We’re in London.”
OBSERVATION PAUSED BY REQUEST
Enquiry Response: The Member is correct; the Yannoneth use of crystals, while not unique, is one of the most extensive documented. My thanks to the Member for that reference from the Universal Repository.
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Richard Redmond – Revelation Part Six
OBSERVATION RESUMES
Richard was back in the grove overlooking the lake. He leapt up from his seated position by the tree. “Alea Chantal! Sarsoneth! Where the hell are you?”
“Right here Richard.” Alea Chantal stepped into view from a shadowy spot beside a cluster of birch trees a few feet away.
“That bitch is crazier than I thought I was. She’s got a thing on my head that’s gonna suck my brain out or something. We’ve got to do something.”
Alea Chantal’s smile was barely a flicker across her face. “No more denial eh, Richard? Meeting a Disaffected will do that to you. As to ‘doing something’, we’re trying Richard. It isn’t easy. If you were in full control of the g’ru’tnok you’d at least be on an equal footing in regards to abilities. You can do everything she can do. Unfortunately, she still has a few millennia on you in terms of practice.”
“Did you say ‘millennia’?” Richard asked.
“Yeah, millennia; and for a Disaffected Yannoneth, every second of that time is filled with delusions of grandeur and plotting to take over the world.” Alea Chantal rolled her eyes. “Did you get that bit about being ‘the most powerful Yannoneth’? Every single one of them makes that claim.” She made a rude noise. “I bet even Sarsoneth could have beat her, back in the day.”
“Your confidence in me is touching, my dear,” came Sarsoneth’s voice, although his tone, as flat as ever, didn’t seem touched. “However, I must remind you, again, that we have limited time. I am finding it difficult to deflect the probe that Faloneth is using on Richard. We must continue to act with dispatch.”
“I agree,” Richard said. “I want to get as far away from that nutjob as possible. So how do I get control of this g’ru’tnok, whatever it is? Is it in the lab? What’s it look like? Is it like that d’na’whatever that Jaimie found in the temple? I didn’t see anything like that.”
“You didn’t spend much time looking either,” Alea Chantal noted, drolly. “Once you got a look at Faloneth, your eyes were pretty much glued there.”
She didn’t bother waiting for Richard to reply. “G’ru’tnok isn’t an object. It’s the energy that permeates the entire planet. It’s in and around everything.”
Richard’s scepticism kicked in. “New Age gobbledegook,” he snorted.
Alea Chantal shrugged. “Have it your way. This is all just a dream.” She began to fade out.
“Wait. Point taken. I’m trying, okay? So how does this g’ru’tnok help us? What am I supposed to do with it?”
Alea Chantal regained solidity. “You can do anything with it. With enough practice. That’s the problem. You should have had years to learn to how to manipulate it. Decades. Time to hone your skill before you ever faced a Yannoneth one on one.”
Richard pressed. “Okay, so that was Plan A and it’s out the window. What’s Plan B? You and Sarsoneth did pretty good back in the jungle, with my arm and the jeep and Carlos and all that. Why can’t we do the same thing now? I’ll empty my mind, let you drive, or possess me, or whatever the right term is. Let’s just get that thing off my head while I’ve still got a brain in my skull.”
“Faloneth is not sucking out your brain Richard,” Alea Chantal replied. “As to what we did in the jungle, that was a cakewalk compared to this. We only had Carlos to deal with. You saw how easily Faloneth kept him immobilized in the lab while she was dealing with you. He wasn’t even an afterthought.
“Whatever we do will have to be swift and it’ll have to be brutal. We won’t get a second chance. You can’t just ‘let us drive’. The d’na’tnek doesn’t work that way. Even with the unique engineering the Twelve gave you, what we’ve already done was almost impossible.”
“‘Engineering’?” Richard asked suspiciously. “Hang on. Faloneth wanted to know who ‘created’ me. Who are the Twelve? What the hell does that mean, ‘engineering’?”
Alea Chantal was uncharacteristically contrite. “I’m sorry, Richard. As Sarsoneth is fond of reminding, I sometimes have trouble focusing on the task at hand. Once we get out of this, we’ll explain it all. Just as we’ve promised. For now, just think of the Twelve as the good guys and the Yannoneth as the bad guys. Given what Faloneth is trying to do that shouldn’t be too hard, should it?”
Richard couldn’t argue with that. For now. “So we’re back to the original question. How do I escape?”
Sarsoneth spoke up. “I believe I may have the answer to that. If a feedback loop can be created in the crystalline structure of the d’ha’taan, it should overload. If we act at the exact moment that Faloneth is placing it on Richard’s forehead, while she is still in physical contact with it, we should be able to direct the overload through Faloneth’s nervous system, rendering her unconscious.”
Alea Chantal was enthusiastic. “She won’t know what hit her. Can you make it look as though it overloaded naturally? Or at least as a result of some mental trap set up by the Yannoneth that she thinks created Richard?”
“The latter would be more appropriate. This is, in fact, a technique that was used by the Disaffected themselves during the Shelter War. Faloneth will find it quite plausible that a rival would set such a trap in Richard’s mind. When she recovers.”
“Not enough energy to kill her, I suppose?”
“Unfortunately, that is correct.”
Richard was thinking about something else. “What happens if you don’t time it right?”
“Should Faloneth remove her hand before the overload is initiated, you would most likely be killed,” Sarsoneth replied matter-of-factly.
“Don’t be a woos, Richard,” Alea Chantal chimed in. “A quick-fried brain is better than the slow dissection Faloneth has planned for you any day.”
Richard didn’t have any reply to that so he ignored it. “So once she’s knocked out what do I do? Ask my good pal Carlos to unlock my cuffs and show me the door?”
Alea Chantal laughed. “Glad to see you’re getting your sense of humor back, Richard. No, silly, once Faloneth is out of the picture, that’s when we do what we did in the jungle. You focus on each of the restraints and we get busy.”
“And Carlos? The guards?”
“The discharge from the d’ha’taan will affect all minds for some distance, Richard.” Sarsoneth said. “It is only because Faloneth is Yannoneth that she must be in contact with it. In fact, the discharge may permanently damage anyone else in the room.”
“The hell with them. They killed at least one of the members of my team, maybe all of them. If they’re following this psycho bitch, they take their chances.”
“Indeed,” replied Sarsoneth. “Faloneth is removing the d’ha’taan, Richard. She must use it again for our plan to succeed.”
Everything faded again.
OBSERVATION PAUSED BY REQUEST
Enquiry Response: To the Member’s point: both human and Danaerean terminology is being used due to the unusual intermingling of the two cultures.
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Richard Redmond – Revelation Part Four
OBSERVATION RESUMES
When Richard came to, he was sitting on a wooded hill overlooking a mountain lake, with his back resting against a pine tree. He could smell the tree sap, and the scent of wildflowers that he could see dotting the slope down to the water was heavy in the air. A bird sang in a tree and he tilted his head upward, looking for it.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? Peaceful.” Richard snapped his head around toward the voice and for the first time saw Alea Chantal. She was beautiful. Long golden hair worn loosely around her shoulders; athletic but “well rounded” as his dad used to say; dressed in clothes that reminded Richard of those French Renaissance period pieces that Nadine loved, with full skirt and frilly bodice. Not too tall; Richard doubted that she’d come close to his six foot one.
Alea Chantal laughed. Not sarcastically. She curtsied. “Why thank you, good sir. ‘Tis a comely description of me that ye’ve offered and I most graciously accept it. You did not, however, answer the question. Isn’t this one of the most peaceful places you’ve ever been?” For emphasis, she made a sweeping gesture that took in the woods, the lake, and the mountain rising in the background; extended it into a pirouette than made her skirt billow out and her hair fly. She ended where she’d started, arms wrapped around herself and facing Richard.
He looked at Alea Chantal, then at the view. He sighed. Then he stood up, walking toward her. “Yes, it’s beautiful; and peaceful. It’s also completely impossible. What’s going on? Who are you? Where am I? How did I get here? A minute ago I was in Central America. This …” Richard stopped.
Alea Chantal finished his sentence. “… is France. Or at least, it’s a part of France that I knew. Once upon a time.” She sighed. “Richard, there’s so much that you need to know, and not much time to tell you. You weren’t supposed to Awaken this way. It was the d’na’nish of course. It attracted the attention of one of the Yannoneth. We don’t know which one yet. It was that woman of course. Once they homed in on what you call the artefact, it was inevitable that they’d get wind of you.”
Richard held up a hand. “Stop. Just stop. You’re not making any sense. If I’m not delirious, and I still think that’s the most likely explanation, then how the hell did I get … here?” He gestured at their surroundings.
Alea Chantal’s annoyance flared up again and was evident in her reply. “You’re not delirious Richard. You really do need to let go of that whole denial thing. There’s …”
The voice of Sarsoneth, seemingly coming from the trees overhead, broke in. “Alea Chantal. He knows. You know that he does. Let him come to acceptance in his own way.”
Alea Chantal locked gazes with Richard for a moment, seemed to find something that satisfied her. “Well. Alright then. I guess I’ve been cooped up with this Ethical (she made a motion with her head toward the trees that Richard took to indicate that she meant Sarsoneth) so long that I’ve lost the knack for subtlety. It’s not their strong suit you know.”
Listening to this byplay, Richard realized that Sarsoneth was right. He did know that whatever was happening was real. He didn’t know how or why yet, but he was damned well going to find out. Richard was used to being in control of whatever situation he was in. This sense of being carried along like a cork in a flood didn’t sit well. He spoke up. “What’s an Ethical?”
Alea Chantal made a rude noise. “The most irritating, annoying, frustrating, self-righteous…”
Sarsoneth again interrupted her. “Alea Chantal’s opinion notwithstanding, Richard, I would suggest that we have more pressing matters to deal with. You are not as safe as the appearance of this place would seem to indicate.”
“… and they interrupt a lot too,” Alea Chantal concluded. “However, he’s right. This place isn’t what it seems. You asked how you got from Central America to France, Richard. Well, the truth is you didn’t. We’re not sure where you are. You’ve been unconscious since you first spotted that Yannoneth bitch. This place, and for that matter Sarsoneth and I, are inside your head. Always have been.”
Richard stared at her. Then he walked over to a tree, tore off some bark and shook it at Alea Chantal. “Make up your damn mind. I just accepted I wasn’t delusional. Now you tell me it’s all in my head? No way. This,” and he shook the bark again, “is not my imagination.”
Alea Chantal sighed. “I’m sorry, Richard. It’s not easy to explain. But you really are in terrible danger, and we really do want to help.” She took a deep breath. “We’re in the d’na’tnek. What you might think of as genetic memory. Every memory of every ancestor in your family tree is stored here, scattered throughout the DNA that makes you who you are.”
“This doesn’t feel like a memory,” Richard countered stubbornly.
“No, the d’na’tnek is much more, and we’re using it in a way that I’m not sure even the Twelve would recognize.”
“Who?” Richard asked.
“Alea Chantal,” Sarsoneth’s cautioning voice interjected.
“I know, I know. Richard, we’ll answer all of your questions. Later. I promise. Right now, we need to get you away from the Yannoneth. To do that, we need your help. She’s going to bring you around in a few minutes. We need you to observe as much as you can. You are our eyes and ears remember. Then, when you lose consciousness again, we can bring you back here and decide what to do.”
“Why don’t you just use your magical powers like you did last time?” Richard asked.
Alea Chantal smiled ruefully at the sarcasm in his voice. “First, they’re not ‘our’ powers, Richard, they’re yours. Second, at the moment we’re kind of hiding out here while you, to all appearances, are lying peacefully in a cell or a box or something, no doubt snoring like every man I ever met. We do know that your body is not under any physical duress.
“Richard, it’s absolutely essential that Yannoneth bitch doesn’t suspect that either Sarsoneth or I exist. If that were to happen, everything the Twelve have been working toward for millennia would be undone. Humanity’s future would be over.”
Richard was going to say something about being overdramatic when everything started to fade, starting with the mountain and moving inward to where he and Alea Chantal were standing. She reached a hand out toward him as she took on a ghost-like transparency.
Sarsoneth’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Remember Richard. Observe everything. Reveal nothing. The Yannoneth must not discover your true nature or that we exist.”
OBSERVATION PAUSED BY REQUEST
Enquiry Response: Regarding the Member’s comment on Sarsoneth and Alea Chantal. Yes, I am aware that fully self-aware mental constructs are not standard operating procedure within genetic memory. This was identified in the Observation filed under the title Danaerean Prologue, which I have previously recommended for Concurrent review.
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Prologue
OBSERVATION BEGINS
SUBJECT – Danaerean System Overview
FILED BY – Gerry – Danaerean Observer
Note: report compiled from multiple sources. Editing will be ongoing.
What is Danaerea? (pronounced dan – air – ee – uh) And what is the hidden history of the universe?
Danaerea was the first world in the solar system I Observe on which life took hold. The Danaereans thought of it poetically as the Sprouting of the Seed.
As with any seed, Life didn’t simply appear in full bloom. It needed time to grow. A great deal of time. The Seed became a few simple cells; which became a few simple organisms; which became complex organisms; which became intelligent organisms. And intelligent organisms eventually became sentient organisms.
As the Danaereans evolved, they explored. The more they learned, the more in awe they were of the diversity that had sprung from the simplicity of their origins. Understanding the unity in this diversity was the key to understanding the concept that, aeons later, humanity would come to call Gaia.
Gaia – to comprehend the world and everything in it as a single interconnected and interdependent organism.
The Danaereans believed that for Gaia to exist there must also exist an underlying influence that encouraged it. In due course they identified that influence. They called it g’ru’tnok.
There is no equivalent human word. G’ru’tnok is energy. It’s relationship. It’s life. G’ru’tnok permeated Danaerea. Every atom, every molecule. Every rock, tree and animal. Every Danaerean.
As they became conscious of the awesome potential of g’ru’tnok, the Danaereans were transformed. Abilities that, when first encountered, humans would attribute to gods were theirs. To heal, to move mountains, to soar among the clouds, to travel between one place and another in the space of a thought; these things became as child’s play. Death itself came only after millennia of life, and usually at a time of their choosing. And no one was a stranger to another, for even their thoughts could be shared.
And more than their thoughts. Their experiences, their knowledge, the very record of their days. This was held within the cells of their being, in the d’na’tnek. We might think of it as genetic memory, inherited by generation from generation. Through the d’na’tnek, every Danaerean knew his or her ancestors intimately. They were literally of one flesh.
The d’na’tnek was like a living library. The knowledge of past generations could be used by the living as though they had experienced it themselves. The mistakes of one generation were seldom repeated by the next.
As a result, the world of Danaerea was paradise; the society of Danaerea utopia; the people of Danaerea filled with wisdom and grace.
When the Danaereans had achieved the harmony of Gaia they looked outward.
They knew that the g’ru’tnok was generated through the interaction of their world and its single great moon. It was to that interaction that they owed their existence.
Few other worlds were so favored. They had either no moon, and therefore no g’ru’tnok, or too many, with conflicting orbits that disrupted the flow of the nurturing force. In either circumstance barrenness was the result.
There were two exceptions.
Earth also had a single moon. When the Danaereans visited Earth it seemed like a younger version of home. Life was abundant, although not yet self aware. The Danaereans determined to watch over their cousins and to welcome them when the time came that they should reach the Awakening of their own Gaia.
Yannoneth, whose course lay between Earth and Danaerea, was circled by only two smaller companions. Although their energy was far less than that of Danaerea or Earth, still the two did not entirely cancel each other out. They had generated sufficient g’ru’tnok to entice the Seed to Sprout.
Yannoneth’s g’ru’tnok was not, however, the pure energy that flowed through Danaerea and Earth. It was stunted, twisted. And so too was the Life that it had spawned. Yannoneth was a world of violence, of anger. There was no place here for Sentience.
It distressed the Danaereans to experience Yannoneth’s pain. So they invoked the n’es’tehk, the gestalt of minds through which the knowledge of all living Danaereans and the d’na’tnek of their ancestors came together as one. They reached consensus – Yannoneth would be rehabilitated.
G’ru’tnok from Danaerea was channeled to Yannoneth to enhance and bring order to the planet’s own undisciplined energy. A colony was established. The Danaerean colonists would guide Yannoneth to Gaia. The work would span aeons. Even for the Danaereans, many generations would pass before Yannoneth’s transformation was complete.
And while they had been changing Yannoneth, the planet had in its own turn been changing them.
The colonists gradually ceased to think of themselves as Danaerean in any sense. They became, in whole measure, Yannoneth. And within them, there existed an element of the untamed, a spirit of the wild that was not content to exist at the end of a leash.
The Yannoneth came to consider the g’ru’tnok that flowed from Danaerea, though it was freely given, as just such a leash.
The Yannoneth knew that there was only one way to slip that leash. Their world must generate g’ru’tnok in greater measure. And there was only one way, one very dangerous way, to do that. The moons of Yannoneth must be aligned, their orbits harmonized.
There was irony in that there was only one source of power great enough to accomplish such a feat. Danaerea’s g’ru’tnok.
The Yannoneth knew that the Danaereans would never agree to such a taxing of Danaerean energy, even temporarily. It was a plan that had been considered when the rehabilitation of Yannoneth was undertaken. It had been discarded; the possibility of wounding the Gaia of Danaerea had been deemed too great.
The Yannoneth did not care. Their obsession with independence took precedence over reason.
They would take what they needed. If Danaerea was affected, it would recover. And if not, what of that? The Yannoneth wanted to be free; they needed to be free. Nothing else mattered.
They acted.
For a moment, for two, it seemed as though they might succeed. G’ru’tnok flowed; the moons began to bend toward new courses. But the need was too great, the drain on the Gaia of Danaerea too overwhelming. Danaerea’s great moon staggered. It hesitated ever so slightly, slowed so very little.
And began to fall.
It would take time, but for a people who thought in terms of millennia, that time would be painfully short. The result was already certain. All too soon, the paradise that was Danaerea would be no more; it had been betrayed by those it cherished most.
Yet, there were no recriminations on Danaerea. No remorse. That was not in their nature.
Once again, they invoked the n’es’tehk; they deliberated; consensus was reached.
Twelve were chosen. Into these Twelve was entrusted the d’na’tnek of all of Danaerea. The knowledge of uncountable ages, the memories of an entire race, poured into these few living vessels. Then the Twelve were sent to Earth, with a twofold geas. First, protect Earth from the Bombardment that would rain throughout the solar system when Danaerea died. Second, bestow the d’na’tnek of Danaerea onto humanity once it had reached its own Awakening to Gaia.
When the Twelve were safely departed, the entire Danaerean race bent itself to one last task. They would concentrate all of their incredible abilities on mitigating the havoc that would result as their descending moon tore Danaerea apart.
The stories of those final days are epic in themselves. The last noble acts of an ancient noble race. As the time grew shorter, a trail of rubble appeared and lengthened behind Danaerea, rubble released one piece at a time under control of the sheer will of the Danaereans. That trail remains still, forever a memorial to their existence and to their courage.
Eventually however, the time came when the g’ru’tnok failed; when the struggle was concluded with a violence that defies description. On that day, the universe became a little less.
From Earth, the Twelve felt the passing of the Gaia of Danaerea. They mourned. Then they redoubled their efforts. They knew what was coming.
Through the power of Earth’s g’ru’tnok they shielded us from the Bombardment. To those who would one day claim the name humanity, staring upward to the heavens without understanding, this time of thunder and light was pure inexplicable terror.
When the Bombardment had passed, the Twelve entered a’sa’mlek, the hibernation. They knew that humanity’s Awakening would be long in coming. We were young. And they would not interfere with our maturing.
They would wait.
The Yannoneth fared differently.
Their action had sealed the fate of not only Danaerea, but their own world as well. The flow of g’ru’tnok from Danaerea had ceased when its moon had begun to fall. Their own moons’ orbits had not been changed. Yannoneth’s g’ru’tnok alone would not be sufficient to deflect the Bombardment. When Danaerea died, Yannoneth would die as well.
But the Yannoneth did not want to die. They too invoked n’es’tehk. And they too emerged with a plan.
There were caverns deep beneath the surface of Yannoneth. They would build a Shelter, a place where ten thousand might escape the consequences of their own actions.
The Shelter was barely completed as the Bombardment began. The Ten Thousand entered. Millions more did not.
The Destruction of Yannoneth was as complete as it was brutal. The Bombardment left no part of the surface intact. The atmosphere was ripped away. The ground buckled. The seas boiled.
The Sheltered could do nothing to prevent the cataclysm above; Yannoneth’s g’ru’tnok could not create the shield that the Twelve had invoked around Earth. It was barely sufficient for the Sheltered to protect their one tiny bubble of life.
But protect it they did. When the Bombardment finally subsided, the Shelter remained. The Yannoneth survived.
While the Twelve waited and the humans evolved, the Yannoneth reflected. They knew that they alone were responsible for the destruction of two worlds. But they did not understand why.
With the clarity of hindsight, they knew that the interconnectedness of Gaia should have made it impossible for them to act in a way that endangered either Yannoneth or Danaerea. How had they so deluded themselves?
Entire new disciplines of study were created in order to pursue the question. When at last the Sheltered understood, the reason was impossible to deny and even more impossible to accept.
It was Yannoneth itself which had betrayed them. The planet’s energy, though intertwined with that of Danaerea, had not been wholly benign. In creating the Yannoneth Gaia, they had not simply tamed the wild Yannoneth biosphere. An element of its primeval violence had also been instilled in those who had come to call it home. The Yannoneth were more primitive, more aggressive, than the original Danaerean colonists.
The Sheltered could not accept this of themselves. They looked for solutions. They found only one.
The Ethical Imperative.
The Ethical Imperative required nothing less than the manipulation of Yannoneth genetic structure. They would implant a modified gene into their genetic makeup in order to reclaim the moral certainty that they had lost.
And yet again the Yannoneth would be betrayed by their own arrogance.
They had failed utterly to appreciate the power of Yannoneth’s primordial energy. The artificial EI gene simply could not counter aeons of evolution. Given enough stimulus, it was rejected by its host, taking with it the last vestiges of moral intuition. The result was a Yannoneth motivated entirely by psychopathic self interest.
These Disaffected Yannoneth cared only for their own self-gratification, their own individual supremacy. They would employ any means to achieve that end.
Strong emotion was the trigger for crossing what became known as the EI Threshold. The Yannoneth realized that they must control their emotions or succumb to racial insanity. A new philosophy came into being, centered on emotional detachment and the rigorous application of logic. Those who followed this discipline became known as the Ethicals.
The unquenchable ambition of the Disaffected eventually led to civil war in the Shelter. A war in which the Ethicals incurred as many defections as they did casualties. For how could one maintain emotional detachment during such a conflict? Many crossed the EI Threshold, and became forever the enemy.
The Disaffected however, by their very nature, were incapable of cooperation, even with each other. The ultimate individualists, they were unable to work together for long.
In the end, it was that which defeated them. The Ethical Yannoneth prevailed. But it was victory at a terrible price. Only a few hundred of the Sheltered remained.
It was clear to the survivors that neither the Ethical Imperative nor their philosophical discipline of detachment would shield them from the corrupting influence of Yannoneth’s g’ru’tnok.
There was only one course open to them.
They would go to Earth.
Humanity had not yet achieved Gaia when the Yannoneth arrived. Indeed, we were still primitive bands of nomads competing with other predators for survival.
For the Disaffected, nothing could have been more ideal. Here, they were free to engage in the ultimate realization of their megalomaniacal desire to be worshipped. With the power of Earth’s g’ru’tnok flowing through them, they became gods among men. They dispensed life and death on a whim. Their least thought, their most selfish desire, was irresistible. The myths and legends of gods and demons, and the ancient ruins of their monuments, still bear witness to the cavorting of the Disaffected Yannoneth among us.
The Ethicals remained aloof. They could not allow themselves to become involved with humanity in ways that might invoke emotional attachment. To do so was to risk the EI Threshold. The stories of wandering teachers and beings who brought wisdom to primitive peoples attest to the indelible impression of their presence.
Regardless of how the Yannoneth chose to interact with humanity, there was one purpose that united them. For their race to continue, there must be new generations. The d’na’tnek must be passed on.
The Disaffected refused to mate amongst themselves. They would not relinquish control to another in even such a necessary way.
The Ethicals would not mate at all. To them, bequeathing the flawed EI gene to future generations was unconscionable.
Each by their own tortured trail of reason concluded that humanity must therefore become the vessel for the rebirth of the Yannoneth.
Without the Awakening however, human genetic makeup was inadequate to the task. Our DNA could not retain the intact d’na’tnek of even one Yannoneth.
The Disaffected resolved this by mating with multiple partners; sometimes establishing harems and communes to facilitate the process. Fertility cults sprang up around their efforts. They kept detailed genealogical records, tracking which elements of the d’na’tnek had been passed to whom so that they could eventually, when humanity was ready, recombine those elements and recreate the whole.
The Ethicals, with their eternally flawed logic, turned to the genetic engineering practices that had created their predicament in the first place. They manipulated the genes of pairs of human beings in an attempt to force human evolution without also passing on the EI gene. They intended to create humanity in their own image, but without their artificial sense of good and evil.
The world is rife with tales of demigods and heroes whose abilities were borne of the attempts of the Ethical and the Disaffected to make humanity their surrogate hosts.
The Twelve of Danaerea were aware of the arrival of the Yannoneth, although they themselves remained concealed. Outnumbered and by now incredibly ancient even by the measure of Danaerea, they could not directly oppose the Yannoneth’s actions on earth. Nor would they have been willing to simply destroy those who were, in some sense, still their children. But neither could they allow humanity to be reduced to mere breeding vessels for a Yannoneth rebirth.
The Twelve reached out. Ever so subtly, they influenced the Yannoneth. They reinforced the revulsion the Disaffected felt for mating with each other. They disrupted the Ethicals’ genetic manipulation. They prevented the Yannoneth d’na’tnek which had already entered human genetic structure from being reinforced between generations; eventually it would be eliminated.
The process, in true Danaerean fashion, would take time. Its outcome, however, was certain. As centuries passed, the Yannoneth dwindled in number. The d’na’tnek that had been implanted in humanity became increasingly attenuated. Our evolutionary path would soon become our own once again.
Our story might end there.
Except…
A few of the Yannoneth remain. Snippets of Yannoneth d’na’tnek, here and there, still rests dormant in the genes of a handful of humans.
And the Awakening is beginning.
Facing the imminent failure of their geas, the Twelve undertook an action which was previously inconceivable.
They themselves changed us.
Not everyone. Not everywhere. Just a few. A few who were on the very precipice of Awakening in their own right. The Twelve “encouraged” them, ever so gently.
There are not many, and not all are aware of who and what they are. They must discover that for themselves.
With one exception. His is a critical role. On his shoulders rests the fate of humanity, and the success or failure of the geas of the Twelve.
The remaining Yannoneth, those who serve them, and those who unwittingly carry fragments of their d’na’tnek; must be found. They must not interfere with the coming of humanity’s Gaia, with our Awakening.
The time is now. These stories are theirs, and ours.
Observation will continue.
REPORT ends.
