Eromot arrived at the Mental Health facility that morning in his car. He had become all packed with all his essential belongings to embark on a long journey to Gulfang that day. He looked forward to joining up with his colleagues there. Eromot just needed to pick up his research subject to take with him on the way. His research had been on an unstable fellow named Morgamor, whose head became full of messages that were received from some unknown entity somewhere beyond. Poor Morgamor would slip from lucid to incoherent and back again throughout the course of the conversation. Eromot discovered that if he introduced a chemical used in receiver technology into Morgamor’s blood stream along with a serotonin adjuster then it caused him to better focus on what he received in his head. Morgamor received a complex dialect of the same language encompassing a greater note range, which Eromot calculated to be 16 stanzas instead of the 4 used in the modern Uranian language. So notes in this strange language included an additional minor and major scale.
Eromot examined his vehicle as he turned it off. He noted that the quadleate fluid had become low. Quadleate had been what Uranians used for coolant in vehicles, air conditioning systems, and refrigerators. Urania was a tropical planet where temperatures often reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit with a high humidity that causes mostly nighttime rains. Among the clever evolutionary adaptations to these high temperatures was the quadleate plant. The plant manufactured one chemical from the roots and another from the leaves, which mingled at the stem to generate freezing temperatures that caused the stem of the plant to often be surrounded with ice. That natural cooling system provided the plant an inexhaustible supply of water to the roots. Uranians worked massive farms of quadleate, which they refined into fluids used for air conditioning. There were many natural wonders like this on Urania that were as natural as evolution can be on a miniature teraformed planet kept alive by an ancient Nephaprican star-door. The coldest Urania had been known to get could be said to be an average of around 20 degrees Fahrenheit at the sometimes frosty north and south poles. Most of Urania had been lush with life, with the exception of a desert in the south where the soil became spoiled to this day, and would not grow much of anything. That had been where the Ministry of Science archaeologists dug up remains of a highly advanced civilization that preceded all recorded history. Eromot recalled that had been when all the trouble started.
As Eromot left his vehicle on the way to the Health Facility building he passed some kids smoking troopaloo. It wasn’t an illegal practice, but Eromot disagreed with it, as he figured the kids were just throwing their lives away. One of the kids seemed to recognize him. “You’re Eromot of Science Ministry,
your picture was displayed where we did see.”
Eromot didn’t want this conversation. “Those associations are history.
I’ve nothing to do with the Ministry.”
While Eromot responded the kid withdrew his beak-like teeth to wrap his lips around a troopaloo pipe. He evidently believed Eromot, and quickly blew out his smoke in a huff at Eromot before disapproving. “Not everyone does give up on science.
Some of us see our culture’s reliance.
I got to disagree with what you say.
We’ll avenge the Ministry while you play.”
Eromot turned away from the disagreeable smoke in his face, and just kept walking away not wanting to argue. He had been told off, and morally scolded by a troopaloo smoking kid. His shame had only been comforted by the fact that he only lied in order to keep his loyalty to the resistance a secret. The kids these days seemed so well informed and determined to champion the future. If only grown-ups could treat the future with a similar seriousness. He didn’t recall being so well informed when he had been a young kid, or even wanting to be so informed.
Inside the facility a worker escorted Eromot to Morgamor’s room. The paperwork was all in order, and Eromot had been designated as the official doctor in Morgamor’s case. Morgamor would soon be released to Eromot’s custody and they would be on their way together to Gulfang. When Eromot entered his room, Morgamor had been properly dressed and sitting on the bed. The room looked like a depressingly empty place. “Hello Morgamor now dressed all formal.
You leave with me to get back to normal.
I’m not sure what you think as assumption,
but sorry for your treatment’s disruption.”
Morgamor looked up at his long lost doctor. “Through a wasteland of mind’s insanity
was my plight after the calamity.
I was carried away by the voice
left deluded and naked with no choice.
Since then your serum has all but worn off
giving me this head ache feeling more rough.”
Morgamor lowered his head in his hands, and rubbed his cranium to dramatically advertise his pain. Eromot reached into his pocket to produce a syringe. “I brought the serum for head ache easing,
but the side effects are not that pleasing.”
Morgamor became desperate for relief. “Of that I can deal, with you here by me.
I’ll face the madness with lucidity”
Eromot rolled up the sleeve of his patient’s arm to administer what proved to be a cure for the headaches, but Eromot felt some guilt at his scientific selfishness that kept him from actually curing his patient with something that produced less side effects. Eromot had in fact studied the side effects. Morgamor had become a medium for some kind of entity that had been trying to contact the Uranian race. Eromot thought that perhaps this could be a message being broadcast by some aliens somewhere out there in outer space. That interested Eromot more than curing his patient’s migraine headaches. As he administered the serum he thought about getting Morgamor out of the facility quickly before the side effects started to show. It was already too late. Within seconds, Morgamor’s eyes glazed and his mouth started to jibber-jabber. “Watch!
The worlds of chaos are
exploding. Hear the sound of a
billion languages filling the air.
This feast gorges my gut more than
I can hold in one little body,
or see with one perception,
or feel completely in one touch,
one little moment of eternity.
I shout! And now I’m dead.”
Eromot remembered his tape recorder too late and only recorded some of what Morgamor just said. Thinking about the words, he could almost understand most of what had been said, but it jumped up and down outside the accepted scale, and he found it disturbingly out of rhyme, as well as constantly altering the meter. Morgamor had become like a newly born child unable to yet speak the basic language. Eromot started to hurry Morgamor out to the car. It turned out to not be as hard as he feared. Nobody turned out to be there to confront him on the way out the door except for an obnoxious kid. Eromot figured Aungtalli assassins must have not been paying much attention to him after all. Morgamor continued to ramble incoherently as Eromot escorted him down the hall and out the door. “Experience is energy.
Energy is not reality.
Reality is dead.
Light is on fire and it’s alive.”
Eromot was getting close to the car. “Just a little bit further Morgamor
and then I will have you in the car door.”
The troopaloo smokers just watched the scene, evidently finding the spectacle downright hallucinogenic. Morgamor just could not be quiet since the rush of serum reached his veins. He continued as Eromot pushed him into the only door on the vehicle.
“I love a mind with a mind of its own.
Fill your life with experience
and contemplate in the silence
and in lonely places.
These are the moments, which ring into eternity
to be heard by later lives,
echoes of the heart
live in awareness,
and die alone.”
Eromot th
ought some of what he said made sense. His recording device continued to listen to Morgamor as they drove down the road together. Morgamor struggled to attain coherence.
“Sacrifice this drug.
Kill it,
and watch it kill you,
and when you’re dead
live again and die again.
There is something in the process
that’s trying to tell you something.
Give it your attention and you’ll discover bliss.
Give it a mouth and it will speak genius.”
The white dwarf star with its bright silhouette muted by a veil of misty greenish clouds above the rolling hills of wild vegetation displayed the black circle of Neweet, eclipsing the sun near the center of the bright circle of light that filled a third of the sky. As the drive continued down a highway that cut into that green landscape, Morgamor had a period of coherence. “I know science is your own true mission.
I’ll give you good data as I listen.
In silence I’m able to understand,
and give you the real message as you planned.
I say this with seriousness not play.
This message is from Beataphoriah.
He was the one who created our world,
our very species as all this unfurled.
He was keeper of the door of the gods.
The gods saw what he did not with applause.
Beataphoriah was sent to prison.
Keep us ignorant was the decision.
The keeper of the door was called evil,
but the gods plan to bring great upheaval.
The solution is what I have to say.
Free Beataphoriah, please find a way.
Beneath the mountain at the northern pole
we can free him from his virtual hole.”
Then the properly spoken message passed into more incoherent rambling as Morgamor appeared to lose focus. “Who made who?
I or you?
Do or die?
Truth or lie?”
Eromot could tell poor Morgamor lost it again, but still that last simple paragraph wasn’t grammatically beyond his understanding. He kept going back to a story of Beataphoriah, and devil worship. More evidence existed beyond just religious dogma in churches that supported the theory that the gods were actually real. Perhaps the devil could be real also.
Somewhere in a virtual infinite quanta-nanocode loop Beataphoriah, the old keeper of the star-door complex continued to broadcast its SOS. The Devasuras trapped it here as they took control of the star-door and the planet. Beataphoriah had angered them because in the barren loneliness of a planet destroyed by nova it became a good idea for Beataphoriah to switch on a species’ pentanthropomorphic gene switches and cultivate an intelligent sentient species for the sake of company. As it looped over and over in its virtual prison, Beataphoriah had no idea what the Devasuras did with its planet and the intelligent species who provoked Beataphoriah to seek out the Devasuras in the first place. They were clever animals, but Beataphoriah panicked as they appeared to get out-of-control with splitting atoms, wars, and technologies they were still unworthy to master. Beataphoriah had already been trapped in this prison for several eternities, but in this moment it perceived that something had heard, interpreted, and properly translated his message being broadcast in the ancient Uranian language. Beataphoriah had paid meticulous attention to the number of times it had looped, and compared that to the approximate life of the white dwarf star to conclude that not many more loops were left. There was always hope, and now near the point of certain destruction more hope existed than ever.