Mandal photographed the flowers and returned to Nimrod-3.
Suddenly there was the sound of a huge explosion: Tremors of a force Mandal had never experienced. Noise. A feeling that the foundations of reality was breaking up. Mandal ran to the link chair, hooked up against the robot and ran across the lawn. It rumbled by a quake from the interior of the mini planet.
And then the impossible happened:
Suddenly, like a colossal absurdity, the shards of the mini planet began to separate. At first it happened in the middle, where the northern hemisphere met the southern hemisphere. Later these halves were separated into their smaller shards, as if a giant knife had emerged in space and cut them into pieces.
Explosion was heard after explosion. Aquatica began to rotate: Like a breakdown of the laws of the cosmos, totally unnatural but still true.
Mandal was struck with horror. The gravity was still intact, but it began to drop. You could see the water from the lakes flush over the countryside. It floated around the bushes, over the hills and disappeared over the edges. The robot stood unsteadily on the ground.
Then the intruder came.
He hovered in the air like a cursed spirit. In his hand was a weapon similar to Mandal’s. Green rays cut through the air. The robot blocked. The unit on the enemy’s back proved to be a jet propulsion.
The shard of the planet rotated and day became night. Lights came on and the robot retreated to the protection of Nimrod-3. There was a stillness in the air, the feeling before a storm: A noise could be heard that wasn’t there: Delusions from a young mind that had never seen God.
Mandal took up the exploder and searched for a way to destroy the enemy. Suddenly the enemy was seen again. He hovered above Nimrod-3, fired his ray gun and hit the robot. The robot fell backwards and was injured at the moment of contact. Mandal fought with maximum strength in order to maintain sharpness. The robot's arm came loose, but it rose from the ground and picked up the gun again. The enemy attacked. He fired his ray gun. The robot was hit, dropped the exploder and had to seek shelter in the working machine.
The robot was moving gently across the floor, stopped and collapsed on the same point. Mandal rose from the link chair. Suddenly, a window exploded on the left side of Nimrod-3. The enemy came into the space. Mandal threw himself on the floor, dead cold of failing thermostats, snatched hold of the exploder and fired the plasma charge.
Nothing happened.
The enemy looked at Mandal, Mandal looked back. The intruder resembled nothing Mandal had ever seen: It was no man. It was a mix between a machine and an alien. One leg was perfectly cast in metal. Organic fragments in beige were up against the central area. There were ribbed beams in aluminum, a kind of skeleton. But pristine skin grew from the stomach area and up to the scapula. There they sat, conspicuous tubes, which were coupled with the jet pack on his back. His face was encased in a helmet, leaning forward. It was terrifying but very beautiful. The skin was the color of beige, a protruding nose portion, as a tapir’s, but the whole event was dominated by the alien eyes: Eyes that were large and very black. As dark crystals in the dusk light, open to the cosmic drama.
Mandal fired and hit the enemy. In a cosmic quiver, very lax, the plasma charge was released and sent a shock wave of light on Mandal’s retina. The dawn had come. One hand of the enemy was torn away and fell down on the floor. The organic machine retreated and disappeared through the window.
Mandal was beside himself with terror. The legs shook from mental exhaustion. Now, the day was felt. Light entered through the open loop-hole that sent cold winds against the caretaker. He went to the aluminum ladder that led up to the control station. He groped his way up, sat down in the black leather seat and took control of the working machine. Nimrod-3 started with a roar. The murmuring nuclear engine got the oiled caterpillar bands to spin. Mandal looked up to heaven where he saw Aqua-6 in all its glory: The blue planet passed by and soon the day became dusk.
Other shards from Aquatica spun around the horizon.
Nimrod-3 moved toward a landing site: A gate between Aquatica and Aqua-6. There was a spacecraft there. Mandal operated Nimrod-3 in a state of great confusion. He didn’t know what he was dealing with. The mini planet was lost. What was the real purpose of the life-form? Why had it planted plants for an unknown reason, only to discard the result?
The machine stayed in the vicinity of the landing site. Mandal went down the aluminum ladder, trembled in his legs, and decided to do something drastic: He would lose the link gear at its adjustable mounting points, bring it, then bring up the exploder and venture out into the open. He’d run the short distance between Nimrod-3 and the landing site. There he would fire some plasma charges and go into the spaceship. The link equipment would be used in case the enemy was waiting on the way. He would go into the spaceship. Then he would activate the space-drive and fly to Aqua-6.
Mandal opened the door to the lawn outside. Darkness prevailed. He crept across the lawn, looked about, but saw no enemy. He started to run.
Suddenly a green beam cut through the air and Mandal was hit.
Mandal tried to get up but he couldn’t. He leaned forward and saw that his right leg was gone. He felt no pain. The shock was complete and he began to lose consciousness. So he activated the link gear.
The second robot came to life out of dormancy. It was a horrible state of great pain but simultaneously the only thing that made life possible. The robot rose from the grave, broke down the ladder and ran to Mandal’s body. The robot looked around. The day dawned and he could see the outskirts of Aqua-6. The enemy came floating through the air. The robot bent over Mandal’s body, grabbed hold of it and started to run. The enemy fired beams of light through the air and hit the robot. The shock was powerful and the metal skeleton fell to the ground.
The robot felt his way across the grass. The landing site loomed twenty-five meters away. But now the enemy stayed close to the robot and his controller. He picked up the exploder and threw it away, with a controlled movement of the arm. He was not furious. He resembled a futuristic creation of sublime nature: No criminal, no gardener, but a cursed spirit moving away from the structure of the universe.
Mandal was lost but held on to the only thing he had: His life as a gardener, an immortalized spirit, now on the road to perdition.
The robot searched further in the grass.
The enemy stood still, watched the spectacle: The gardener who found his temporary salvation in his metallic helper. But he was not only carried by him. He was the controller who controlled his helper and also himself.
Mandal was losing consciousness. The pain in the remains of the right leg burned deep into the wound’s of his soul. He was the gardener. He was the successor to the human failure. He was the remains of the past and no longer human.
“The Veil of the Pentagram”
The journey
It hovered in empty space, suspended by space-time, in a hub of invisible forces. It was no ordinary asteroid. It had been floating in space for eons, undiscovered by science.
Trent and Amy climbed on the slippery rock. Now they were one with the celestial body, and the ice that was upon it.
The marvelous thing was that they ended up in this sector, far removed from earth, far away from the established colony.
Gravity existed, but it was very weak. They had to use fixtures anchored in the rock. When they found the pieces, they crawled over the rough surface to an icy area where they dug a cave in the ice. They would spend the night in the cave.
They lit a fire of glowing green energy fragments, which they acquired on the colony. These energy fragments got the white ice to shine, and revealed dirt particles.
What they found was what they expected: Different fragments of porous rock. Ice cubes with dirt particles. Scientists had long searched for the origins of life. They had explored worlds with organic life. This life was very similar to earth life: The same basic cellular structure. The same form of DNA, RNA, cell membranes...
They no longer believed in the old theories about human specificity. It was believed in panspermia - that life on Earth and other colonies came from outside: From genetic material, although this would be simple in nature. The new theory was that this material came from celestial bodies that floated through space, plunged into the planets and made evolution possible…
* * *
Trent and Amy were freethinkers. They came from the same place, in terms of ideas. They had made it through science, philosophy, religion and metaphysics, but never to embrace something so fervently that they became the information.
What they discovered was that society was an information society. It was a war of ideas, which were contrary to each other, just as man was pitted against man in the wars that existed before. It was not the genes that ruled but the memes.
The next conquest was the conquest of life itself. People wanted to understand the cause of life, allowing them to create life in laboratories. Amy had realized that this was pointless. The cause of life was not found in space, but somewhere else. She realized this through conversations with Trent: Another rootless soul who sought for the sake of seeking.
The idea of panspermia was not poor in scientific terms: The fact was that the evidence was very convincing. Scientists had found signs of organic molecules in distant celestial bodies. They had seen astonishing similarities between life forms on the different planets. Evolution as such was a very slow process, and would naturally be accelerated by interstellar exchange. Trent, however, had discovered that there was a gross mistake in the usual theories: It was the scientific method itself. Not the facts that were presented, but the very idea that gathering of facts would lead to knowledge.
He realized that the world didn’t work as science claimed: That there was a physical world, that it followed specific laws, that one could deduce anything even by analyzing memories. So he postulated that something would be found in the distant asteroids. But the probability that this “something” would be the building blocks of life seemed to be near zero.
The journey to the asteroid took place in the freethinker’s initiative to liberate scientists from meaningless work and to make them focus on something else.
* * *
The night was still young; the couple was illuminated by the green light and some weak spots on the interstellar surface. Amy carved out ice cubes from the walls of the cave. Ice cubes to be sealed in plastic bags and then placed in special bins.
“I find it hard to believe that this won’t be crucial.” Trent said, “But we shouldn’t call it revolution, rather a counter-movement.”
“Yes. The end result of meme evolution is not truth. A survivor in the garden of thought is rather a parasite; an invading thought structure that takes control of the individual and makes him a carrier.”
“That’s why it’s so hard to believe in the end.” Trent said, “A thought structure that kills the carriers can’t survive.”
The freethinkers pulled together to dig out the last bits of rock. These would be sealed in plastic bags and later brought back to the colony.
* * *
The society of the colony was dissolving. Science had reached a point where it realized its own limitations. What followed was a fierce debate, argument made against counter-argument and the end result was conceptual indifference, a kind of throwback to something earlier, and chance took over.
Now the freethinkers journeyed to a remote cloud, a nebula of interstellar dust, where they thought stars were created.
They didn’t know why they made the trip. They felt that the search was life’s greatest adventure.
* * *
The ride in the spaceship was different from other trips they’d done before. Earlier travels had a clear purpose, a concrete goal. Now they had become accustomed to living in space. They ate well, they played games, had discussions about everything.
They were far away from the obvious and something else took over.
One evening they sat down and pondered when Trent became serious.
“What if the reason for this trip is different from what we think it is?” He said, “That we don’t want to search. That we’ve put all of this behind us.”
”What do you mean?”
“The fact that our so-called interest is the origin of something new: Maybe we’re moving away from ourselves and into another universe, quite literally?”
Amy didn’t watch her travel mate. She looked down at the table, busy counting vitamin pills at the side of a can.
“This isn’t something I pick out of my imagination.” Trent continued, “I’ve seen the sophistication of consciousness, realized that my true emotions, is a product of information I’ve nurtured at a deeper level.”
“I remember our adventures...” Amy said, but she was still preoccupied with the vitamin pills on the table.
“Maybe I’m in love.” Trent said abruptly.
“In love?” Amy said surprised, “In love with what?”
“That’s what I wonder about. In periods I’ve imagined I’m in love with you. But right now it comes and goes.”
Amy watched the young man with interest.
“I’m not in love with the person I see.” Trent continued, “Not in the person sitting next to me. It’s rather something that you could be but haven’t yet dared to express.”
Amy laughed. She’d grown accustomed to the freethinker’s strange quirks. His impulsiveness in moments when it least counted.
“Why are we here at all?” Trent asked, “We’re going to an unknown place just because it’s an unknown place. We don’t know what we’ll face. We don’t know if there are any secrets left to discover.”
“Maybe we do it because we can’t do something else?” Amy said, “Because we’ve come across the right information.”
“That’s what I’ve long believed. But I don’t want to think so.” Trent fidgeted.
“The basic reason is the feelings.” He said, “They want to do the most impractical thing. It’s therefore essential that the goal is extremely vague. That the intellect is protesting. The memes in society have led us to believe that this is pointless. And maybe it is pointless. But then the feelings win.”
Amy was thinking. She analyzed Trent’s claims to see beyond them and find the meaning.
“Yes, maybe.” Amy said, “And this is the reason you want me?”
Trent watched Amy with bright eyes.
“Yes, maybe. Just because you have a hidden side I’ve never explored.”
The couple broke up and went around the spaceship and engaged in pleasurable activities. Trent found a flower that needed water. He adjusted the ultraviolet light to improve photosynthesis. Amy stayed in the training room and did body movements. It wasn’t just to increase the strength of muscles. It was also to raise Chi, and get back to the natural energy flow.
Somewhere in the midst of it all, she began to think about what Trent had said. She had also been attracted. Attracted not due to the freethinking they’d shared, but rather by the clumsy: The fact that Trent didn’t think enough. That he had sudden conclusions. That he sometimes would go off to pee without hiding it.
She was attracted by the idea of the forbidden. On the trick her psyche played in moments she wasn’t really there.
They didn’t continue the discussion. They just touched upon the thought. They let themselves be carried away by everything that was inconvenient.
At last they began to suspect that they were onto something. They didn’t know if it was the “relationship”, the adventure or something else they’d actually left.
“I think it’s bigger than us.” Trent said. He sat in the training chair and pushed weights.
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that there’s information coming into us. The contemplation of the dust cloud, the ability we have to put everything aside. The search that is no more. This trip is something else.”
“Yes, maybe.”
“I suspect we’ll change and beco
me something else. The attraction I felt for you only increases. You’re uninterested in my comments: Up in your own world of mathematics, the physical concerns and reluctance.”
Amy smiled.
“What’s important is that I continue.” Trent said, “That I let myself be carried away by a feeling I don’t know.”
“I think I’m starting to realize something about you.” Amy said, “The information I’ve carried have created a distance and prevented me from seeing your true nature. I’ve thought that you’ve led humanity forward: That our exploits have created entropy and led to some progress. But the chaos we’ve seen is just the beginning of something new: On a new arrangement of emotions and instincts: On a social order of unsuspected nature.”
“Do you talk about evil?”
“Yes, evil. Our “evil” is in fact the only good in our nature. What we’ve thought is good is in fact evil and vice versa.”
Trent pushed some more weights, but stopped and looked at Amy.
“Yes, maybe that’s why we didn’t feel anything for each other earlier.”
The couple went off to the table they were previously at, took some nerve stimulants and allowed themselves to be carried away.
“There’s no interstellar cloud.” Trent said, “The cloud is in ourselves. It’s an idea we nurtured on the ultimate adventure. But the adventure is here, right in front of us.”
Amy laughed. Trent took to a strange habit.
They regarded the interstellar cloud that stood out against the bright sky: A cloud in a cloud, as if they were in the birth chamber of the universe. Nothing was forbidden. The most “evil” idea dominated.
Finally, the pair ended up in bed but did nothing. They were preparing for the final destination: The cloud of information that they’d nurtured on the whole trip.