~*~
The assessors filed out of the observation room on a tide of excited murmurs. Rindell rose and collected his tablet only to make wary eye contact with the Prime Counsel. From his high-backed swivel chair, the chief assessor narrowed his gaze, frowned and then nodded once to Rindell’s chair in a silent command for him to return to his seat. He complied with a frustrated sigh, laying his tablet across his lap.
“So, Rindell,” the Counsel formed a steeple with his fingers, studying their tips as he pressed them together and then released them. Pressed and released. “What do we think about Proof Number Seven?”
“Apart from the fact that he appears to have been a top-tier religious zealot and an obvious terrorist?”
“Yes.”
Rindell knew exactly what the Prime Counsel was fishing for; they had danced this dance many times before. However, this time Rindell was suddenly and inexplicably reluctant to concede to the tired old script.
“Well, to be honest, sir…” Rindell took a breath. “I really don’t want to believe a single word of what he says.”
The Prime shifted in his chair and considered Rindell with a calculated stare before speaking again.
“Interesting. And yet, you obviously recognized the language he spoke at the end of the interview?”
“Yes. Italian.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“That it was Italian? Or that I understood it?” He paused. “Sir.”
The Counsel shook his head and mumbled disparagingly. Rindell absorbed his boss’s ire with silent subjection.
The Prime Counsel finally waved a finger disgustedly at the closed door. “I’m more disappointed that none of those little pups even picked up on it,” he snorted. “No, I suppose I’m not surprised. But certainly disappointed.”
Rindell nodded and shrugged. “They’re young and it is a dead language.”
“Hmm.” The Prime eyed Rindell before continuing. “So, I suppose all of your covert research into their fantastic and ridiculous cultures has actually paid off then, hasn’t it?”
Rindell sat silently, ignoring the veiled accusation while deflecting his superior’s sour tone.
The Counsel eventually pointed a long finger at Rindell. “We’ll come back to your unauthorized recreational studies later. Now, you say you don’t believe him. Why?”
Rindell shrugged. “I said I didn’t want to believe him. It doesn’t make any sense considering what we know of their political and religious histories.”
Rindell took a breath, gazed at the floor and frowned.
“But I suppose I do. I do believe him.”
“Why?” The Prime Counsel interlaced his fingers and brought his clasped hands to this chin.
“Well, the Christian/Judeo/Islamic triangle has been the core of this world’s conflict since the beginning of their recorded history while--.”
“All mythologies! And as meaningless as any other theo-political relationship that we’ve run across anywhere else in this desolate wasteland of a universe.” The Counsel interrupted.
“Meaningless, sir? Meaningless to the countless souls that have perished because of conflicting political theologies?”
“No, Rindell. Meaningless to our cause. Our endeavor.”
Rindell tilted his head and silently concede the argument.
“Look at them, man! Every time it’s the same model: Egocentric mythologies, prideful empowerment and violent imperial campaigns. And it always ends, inevitably, in self-righteous justification and global annihilation. All in the name of Religion.
“It’s fantasy, Rindell.” The Counsel allowed his words to echo throughout the room. “They’ve created these elaborate histories and it is not our job to determine which of these fairy tales is correct or who is the most righteous according to their convenient and contrived doctrine. We cannot choose sides because none of them even come close to the truth.
“We are here to do one thing, Rindell. Just one.”
The Prime Counsel frowned intensely before finally continuing.
“And you know what that one thing is, don’t you, Senior Assessor Rindell?”
Rindell nodded and the Prime Counsel pursed his lips, clearly awaiting Rindell’s verbal response.
“To find Purpose.” Rindell finally said. “And failing that, the Source. The Origin.”
Now the Counsel nodded. “That’s correct. Purpose: A worthy and viable civilization that hasn’t destroyed itself from within. A version of Man that hasn’t allowed hubris to consume itself. That’s the only reason we bother reconstituting them from their own ashes in the first place.”
The Prime folded his hands on top of his head as he continued:
“We’ve been searching for the Origin for eons, Rindell. Literally, eons. So, what makes this particular collection of egotistic adolescents any different from all the others? Why should we think they’ve actually found It?”
Rindell carefully pondered his response and then simply spoke from the heart.
“Faith, sir. They believe.”
“Bah! They can’t even agree on simple human morality, let alone the true nature of what they perceive as God. Throughout their entire history, these paranoid fools have created as many religions as they have languages. And they’re all as useless—as dead—as that sluggish, pedestrian Italian.”
The Prime Counsel shook his head in exasperation. “Vatican City,” He spat the words and shook his head in disgust. “The Pope? A terrorist? Honestly! It goes against everything they have ever created.”
“That is what he said, sir,” Rindell responded softly.
They sat in thick silence for a moment before the chief spoke again.
“How long have you been with us, Rindell?”
“Six generations, sir.”
The Prime arched his brow. “This is my twenty-first. If you can believe that.” The elder shook his head. “So you can just imagine how many cases I’ve heard. And during those times, I cannot recall a single, solitary shred of proof for the existence of God. In any form.” He leaned forward and narrowed his gaze. “Or on any world.”
Rindell cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. He had sat through his chief’s rants before.
The Prime readjusted himself in his seat. “Our ancestor’s ancestors attempted to find God too, and they failed—embarrassingly. The universe is simply too large and our numbers so few. And yet, they still persisted, didn’t they?
“If you want my opinion, their efforts were arrogant and inelegant,” he shook his head.
“They even seeded the cosmos, Rindell. Misting droplets of our genetic code throughout the void; in hope that it might cling to some viable rock and eventually evolve into a like-minded species that just might share in our obsessive search for the Origin.
“And so now here we are, you and I: Tasked with tending our impetuous ancestors’ dying gardens. Distilling and decanting ancient souls from the dust of dying worlds.”
The Counsel furrowed his brow and clenched his jaw before continuing.
“In all of my travels I had hoped—yes, even prayed—that something would come of these quests. That we’d actually come across a civilization spawned—not from our own myriad branched tree—but from something completely unrelated. Truly alien. Incontrovertible evidence of a design beyond us; an Architect with a sense of variety, not irony.”
The Prime Counsel fell back into his chair and sighed. “Instead, there’s been nothing but redundant slices of ourselves, Rindell—derivative after derivative. Cousins that are trillions of quanta apart, yet still incontrovertibly related.” He waved a thick hand at the ceiling. “There’s no one out here but us, my friend. There is no God.”
Rindell chewed his lip and stared at the floor. He puzzled over the numerous beings he’d deposed over the many generations—activists, fanatics, philosophers and poets—from this world, as well as all the others before. Were they really so different from one another—the faith-blinded terrorist or the des
perate, hopeful apostle?
He considered his own role in all of this and it made him wonder:
Which am I?
The Prime Counsel quickly rose and walked toward the exit without a word. The door snapped open as he approached; he paused halfway across the threshold. He stood quite still, his rigid frame filling the wide space between the smooth jambs. He addressed Rindell without turning.
“You still have those archaic books in your possession? Those ridiculous fairy-tales from their diseased past?”
Rindell dry swallowed his fear before answering in a carefully measured tone.
“Yes, sir.”
“May I ask why?”
“The archivist wanted to ensure that his cross-references matched those of the actuary. He said I could keep them while they reconciled their research.”
“Again. Why?”
Rindell simply stared at the back of his superior’s head, formulating his response. The Prime Counsel remained motionless.
Rindell finally answered, his voice sounding weaker than he had hoped: “I find the ideas within challenging. The authors are…”
“Misguided at best; delusional and insane at worse. There’s no ontological value. It’s foolish cultural fiction.”
“Sir?”
“I trust that those books and whatever other contraband you might have in your possession will find it’s way to the recyclers before we jump the Crease?”
Rindell clenched his teeth, his glare burned intensely into the back of the Prime’s head.
“This world has had its chance, Rindell.”
The Counsel now turned to him. “We bounce soon. You have until then to dispose of the lies, or you too will become a permanent part of their past.”
The silence hung solidly between them.
“Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
With that the Prime Counsel exited the room and disappeared down the hall.
~*~
Rindell sat in the external observation bubble, protected by the ionized plasma field. He gazed down upon the hazy dome of the condemned planet. He watched with impotent sadness as the massive piebald continents crumbled and broke apart, spreading across the turbulent hemisphere like so many fractured mirrors. The blue-green waters of the world’s oceans churned frothy white as rapidly shrinking glacial floes dumped gouts of polar ice-melt into the widening fissures that formed behind the sliding landmasses. Towering chrome tinted clouds coalesced in the upper atmosphere; birthing giant, swirling hurricanes as the young planet superheated under the intentionally focused singularity created by the antimatter quantum spinners.
The ship’s deck shuddered beneath his feet as the Inquistion released the Baal Ashtoreth from its containment field. Four other captured craft, each from a different era of the planet’s short history, drifted past the bubble as they also slid from their moorings and spiraled into a fatal descent back toward Terra as she prepared to die. The flotsam of doomed craft was evidence of yet another worlds failed attempt to prove its worthiness.
Rindell reached into his pocket, pulled out the crumpled strip of paper that he had torn from a contraband book and, not for the first time, contemplated the prophetic words printed there:
Thou art God.
It came from an ancient Terran novel entitled Stranger in a Strange Land. He discovered it, ages ago, tucked away among the crew’s personal affects on one of the first forsaken spacecraft they had reconnoitered.
He glanced out the viewport and frowned in contrition; his penitent gaze settled again on what he now was certain was the last viable planet in this system. He shivered from a chill of persistent guilt as he watched Earth roll through the final seizures of her mortality.
Once again, Rindell would be a reluctant witness to the execution of another world—another iteration of mankind.
The view outside of the plasma bubble suddenly shimmered as the fabric of space-time bent protectively around the ship in preparation for the bounce through the Crease. The Earth below began to swell at its edges and then abruptly flashed a brilliant neon tangerine for a millisecond before expanding into a piercing fiery white bloom as the planet went null-nova. The convex surface of the view bubble instantly thickened and polarized against the blinding flare of global fission.
The Inquisition quaked beneath Rindell’s feet as it creased out of the dead system.
Thou Art God, indeed.
Rindell wadded the piece of paper into a tight ball and then placed it in his mouth. He closed his eyes against remorseful tears and chewed methodically before swallowing the ancient, bittersweet words.
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