Well, hell. Suri the scientist was thinking someone or some things were interfering with our activities.
Plenty of scientists have religious beliefs. I’m still a doubter, myself. Of course, most people who practice any religion claim theirs is peaceful, and many practitioners are peaceful. There’s always a certain percentage, though, just like in any group of people, who use their beliefs in abusive ways.
I’d thought along the same lines as Suri seemed to be when I pondered certain events in my life, and I’d decided to call the interference “The God Remnant”.
The God Remnant, I reasoned, was a remnant of the idea of God which Christians absorb at a very early age. Even if we eventually reject the idea of God, the God Remnant unfortunately sticks in our brains like a burr in long cat hair. Religionists would say this is because we feel the presence of God even though we’ve rejected Him intellectually. “You may not believe in Him, but He believes in you,” is a saying I’m sure we’ve all heard. I reply I feel the presence of two plus two equals four, but I feel nothing mystical about that fact.
If you’re exposed to something - either myth or reality repeated frequently in your childhood, and the thing is often brought up, reinforced, in your adulthood, indeed, throughout your life, it becomes a part of your “knowledge” base. You have no choice in the matter. But reality means I can always count out two apples plus two apples equaling four apples. Well, in my current situation I guess I would probably be counting oranges. God, on the other hand, cannot be experienced except through mythology and belief.
Ethical and moral behavior can be taught without the help of a god or gods, devils, heaven, or hell, and the biblical promises of rewards and punishments. It’s easy enough to explain that we don’t behave this way because it hurts people. If someone did that to you, it would hurt you, so you don’t do that to them. You ‘Golden Rule’ it, so to speak. And even though the Golden Rule is in the Bible, it’s really just good old common sense.
The reality is that too many religionists use God and their religion as a weapon of control, because they feel small, vulnerable, and helpless otherwise. Some even terrify and abuse their children with their beliefs. It’s too easy to go that route, and inevitable, if you believe yourself superior because you are convinced your beliefs are ‘right’, and you think you’re superior to others who don’t believe as you do, you abuse them. No, I’m sticking with two plus two equals four, thank you very much. Anything that can be proven over and over again is reliable and undeniable. No one doubts two plus two equaling four.
After I’d died on Earth, I’d awaken in the body of some kind of hive insect.[6] Everything around me was gigantic: blades of grass, shrubbery leaves, tree limbs. I wasn’t on Earth I’d decided, because the insects used tubing while I was recovering. They had in some way made tubing, though I hadn’t had the time to explore how or where. They’d spoken some kind of language. The brain of the body I’d woken up in had formed the correct synaptic connections, and therefore, I’d comprehended their means of communication. This made sense, didn’t it? Language is a function of hearing and speech and changes the brain in ways which are more or less permanent, and don’t those have their basis in neuron function? Synapses firing? I believe so.
Anyway, the consciousness of the bug seemed to have fled, and mine, somehow, slipped in. Life resumed. The body healed, I went back to work guarding the hive, and then a couple of my hivemates kicked me off a branch into the jaws of a koolkool; a lizard with a hard beak of a mouth. The looks I saw on those guards’ faces as I fell reminded me of the looks on the faces of Deena and Elva, just before they’d killed me on Earth.
Curious, that. Do devious, evil-minded killers all get the same look at the climax of their hate-filled activities?
Afterwards, I’d awakened in the body of a cat-like mammalian creature. This beast was a shape shifter, having both an upright form and a four-legged form - something human-like, and something cat-like. It had apparently killed the beast, which I’d found lying next to me when I awoke, before I became conscious in that body. Vulture-like scavengers were feasting on us both. I’d been mortally wounded, but my soul, spirit, personality, essence, characteristics, whatever, had awakened in the dead cat-thing, resurrecting it, just as had happened with the bug.
I’d struggled to drink from a stream. Instinctively, in agony, I’d found my way through the woods to a river which was falling down a steep incline into a beautiful green valley below.
I’d run into some creatures that were short and dirty, and now that I think about it, not unlike the Mek. Those little people were sort of like a meek, primitive versions, without the wide, toothy grins. I took care of them; I employed my Earthly horticultural and agricultural education to try to increase our food supply and variety. As the cat, I hunted for them.
A silver sphere had come. They’d wanted the green crystals we’d found in our cave. I bargained with the alien blobs, using hand signals and symbols. My little friend, Ne, was overcome by fear, and maybe a protective instinct, so he chucked the spear I’d made for him and had taught him to use at one of the blobs. They’d killed us all...
... which was when I had woken up in the arena ship. Now I know the ship as the Trakennad Dor. I woke up in this construct’s body. I hadn’t known at the time and for a long while after that this body was of human design, a construction. This body had been in the middle of a match when my conscience resurrected it.
I can’t tell for sure how long I was on Trakennad Dor, but at least for many decades, I think. The construct had been sold to Spauch in 2060 A.D. by the human military and had died sometime in the ring, which was when my conscience had bounced into it. Talk about baptism by fire. I’d had to finish the fight by killing my opponent while inhabiting a recently killed and resurrected body, because at the time, no way out of the arena was available to me unless someone died. I didn’t understand this at that moment, but my opponent did. I had simply defended myself.
Decades later, Jack and his negotiation team were seized by the Rotagonians, who had decided they no longer wanted the protection and trade of humans, and they illegally sold the team to Spauch.
Kek had insisted that I talk with Jack, and Kek had come up with the idea to take all the Mek off the ship in fighter craft and cargo barges to join the crews of the Mark Burgess, the Toi G. Aguirre, the Tomas Elias Mennem, and the Dusundu Deshembe; these Sheriff Department Space Force ships were massing against the Trakennad Dor to take back Jack and his team. Some of the team hadn’t survived. Commander Lenore (Lee) Phong-Nguyen, Captain Benjamin (Pak) Pakinajasool, and Sergeant Sullivan (Sully) McTiernan had died in the arena. Sergeant Kim Jones and civilian observer Roger Abbas ibn Spralja escaped with Jack, the kin, and me.
It was then 2223 A.D. by the Christian calendar.
Now, in 2233 A.D., we’re all safe, all citizens of KekTan, protected and loved by the Mek. Klon has the Trakennad Dor and has turned the vessel into an interstellar Las Vegas, and Spauch is accounting and managerial software.
I’d often wondered if my crazy experiences had all been a test. That’s a Christian concept, too, though, that life is a test. Obviously, I’m no Christian, but the thought stayed with me. When I was a human, my coworkers killed me. When I was a bug, my hive mates killed me. When I was the cat-beast, my little wards didn’t kill me, but outsiders did. However, the Mek and humans in this time and place embraced me, and are still.
Had I passed the test, if there was a test? Surely what had happened to me couldn’t be normal, and had to have been caused and directed by someone, by something, right? This was the only question I’d wanted to ask Deena, did this happen to you, too? I’ll never reveal to her who I’d been, though, and who I am. She’s too dangerous to confide in.
Once again I wondered how long I would live, not this body, but me, my personality. What kind of creature would I inhabit next? And what, or who, was doing this to me? I’ve rejected the Christian God, but I believe something is manipulating my li
fe. I often pray, like this, Whoever you are, whatever you’re up to, please, please, please, let me stay here with Jack until he dies. Please.
Chapter Fourteen
Alien Fight Club