“I am sorry Begalius my new found friend. I am programmed to obey my master until we can alter the climate of this planet in the name of the Nephrican Empire.”
Begalius buzzed the smaller Beatariel like a giant bumblebee trying to sting an ant. “I consider you also a new friend however, my programming would destroy you to unlock that prison door, and release the Pripicans being held against their will. Our creators are Pripicans.”
“Alright Begalius! I do not want to defy you. I compute you as a friend. I will unlock that door.”
Begalius hovered over Beatariel as it approached the lock circuitry to unlock the prison door as Begalius had commanded. Just then Prospero contacted Beatariel to come to his bidding, which released it from the decision it had made while free of its master’s control. “Beatariel! I you in my presence demand appear!”
Beatariel obeyed its master before it had been able to unlock the door for Begalius. Begalius had been left alone next to the prison door that still held the captives behind locks that it was unable to override.
Prospero had been awake all night worried that the Calebites would once again storm the facility, but they were still in retreat. He decided that the prisoners had to be killed before the Captain and his shipmates woke up and discovered them.
Beatariel arrived there a second after being summoned. “Yes master. What are your orders.”
“I to not these Pripican prisoners alive discovered being risk have decided. I you to to the prisoners in your robot body with a laser pistol go need, and each one dead shoot.”
“Ye … Yes master.”
Beatariel left to carry out the instructions of its master. Prospero had noticed the break in its audible response. That contributed to Prospero’s theory that perhaps there were flaws in this Beatariel program.
Begalius caught up to Beatariel as it controlled its robot body, which walked with two legs to the door holding the prisoners.
Beatariel’s robot body opened the door after activating a monitor that showed that the prisoners were sleeping on the floor with their legs curled under their horse-like bodies. Ferdinand’s human form also curled up in a fetal position next to Gonzal’s four-legged form. The victims were all confirmed to be sleeping, and easy prey for Beatariel’s silent laser pistol.
As large and complex as Begalius was it had been powerless to stop the giant robot holding the laser pistol from killing these sleeping prisoners. Beatariel had concluded that Begalius had not been there when it came back to do this. The robot approached Ceres and began to point the pistol at her head. That had been the split second Begalius calculated that all he could do would be to generate enough of a static energy blast to awaken Ceres.
Ceres felt the shock, and her eyes opened to see Beatariel’s pistol pointing at her head. Her self-defense training took over from there, and snatched the pistol right out of the robot’s hand. Beatariel became shocked as she shot the pistol again, and again, poking holes in its robot body until it collapsed like a metallic piece of Swiss cheese on the ground.
Everyone else woke up to the commotion while Beatariel fled in a panic after losing another robot form. Then the Calebites outside in the freezing morning temperatures began pummeling the research facility again with ice so frozen it had been harder than most rocks on Earth. This had no effect on the facility except to make enough pounding noises to echo everywhere inside until it woke up Captain Mynervood and his shipmates.
*
Begalius caught up to Beatariel before it could flee, which left the prison door unsecured. “Stop Beatariel! I’m not going to hurt you. I know you have your programming. We all have our programming.”
“I am so sorry Begalius. You are the most amazing friend I have ever made acquaintance with. I am sorry I tried to kill your friends.”
Then the pounding had started from the Calebites outside.
“What is that pounding noise from outside the station?”
“Oh these silicone constructs are creating a weather effect. I must respond to instructions requiring me to melt the weather effect away from the facility with super-heated plasma blasts.”
“What is a silicon construct created weather effect? I calculate another explanation for what you call a weather effect. I have examined this equipment that you confiscated from the prisoners. They have translated the language of a silicon-based life form that they discovered on this planet. You cannot carry out your orders of genocide Beatariel”
“I must go take care of the weather effect.”
“That weather effect is intelligent life Beatariel! That weather effect has a spoken language!”
*
Captain Mynervood awoke to the pounding sound, and Lockfreedow had already been up struggling with the shield locked over the room’s window to the outside. “Captain that pounding noise from outside this blocked view portal is coming.”
The room had not been locked. So the Captain found his way to Prospero who watched the Calebites wage war outside on the facility.
“What those rocks at this facility Prospero is throwing?”
“This a weather effect by a phenomenon of these extreme temperatures on silicon constructs that only to complex life forms be appear triggered is.”
“In all my years of the stars in of the precious commodity of life I never a bigger bunch of lies to potential life evidence right in your eye explain away heard have search traveling.”
“You not this phenomenon as much as I have studied have. The change in temperature by the morning sun this to cause often causes caused. This much less intelligent than a plant or insect is.”
Captain Mynervood didn’t believe a word Prospero said. He had Lockfreedow analyze the phenomenon still throwing rocks at the facility.
“Captain they silicon-based are. I very small microscopic life forms that together into these collective colonies of multiple life form constructs link detect, and they a sophisticated intelligence based on a complex language collectively display,” had been Lockfreedow’s prognosis of the phenomenon.
Then the escaped Pripican prisoners stormed Prospero, Captain Mynervood, Lockfreedow, and Adma. Ceres led, and pointed a laser pistol. “We are Pripican explorers that were shot down from orbit by this madman!” Ceres pointed the weapon right at Prospero.
Prospero remained defiant. “These spies that of espionage guilty are are, and my experiments sabotaging.”
Gonzal defended himself and his comrades. “If we be spies then we spy on your villainy Prospero. Behold the life that battles to defend their right to exist from your genocidal plans of altering their planet for your own kind!”
It had been Captain Mynervood who kept them all from killing each other. No doubt life had been discovered here, and it did look like Prospero planned to illegally sweep that life under a carpet of genocide. Then suddenly with no explanation, the Calebites stopped throwing rocks at the facility.
*
Begalius, Beatariel, and the Calebites.
Begalius and Beatariel together memorized the language of the Calebites that had been recorded on Antone’s communication equipment. Then they flew outside where the Calebites surrounded the research facility.
Begalius had been amazed as they approached the life forms that were clinging together in imitation of the multi-cellular structures of carbon-based multi-cellular life forms. Beatariel realized that it had been so fixed on focusing on the relativistic large plane of existence that it never noticed these tiny microscopic beings that worked together as intelligent life. Some darted and dashed to carry out various jobs for the greater organism. They also saw Begalius and Beatariel as tiny glowing quanta-nanocode beings that hovered in the air like fireflies. The quanta-nanocode beings began to get to know the tiny intelligent Calebites.
It started with one of the Calebites calling out from one of the two-legged constructs. They responded and soon were discussing a cease-fire with the armies of trillions and trillions of microscopic Calebites. Begalius and Beatariel then began
to get to know the Calebites much better after a truce became established between intelligent life forms.
*
Captain Mynervood ordered a research team from The Beyonder to research the newly discovered Calebite life forms. Randa ran to Ferdinand’s arms and begged the Captain to take her on board the ship with the Pripicans he had already agreed to take with him on The Beyonder.
Then Randa and Ferdinand went to be alone together to embrace, and discuss their new future together. Prospero had tracked them down, and pulled Ferdinand away with tentacles wrapped around his neck.
Randa screamed. “Not him father because I to with him in matrimony join harm do!”
“You a foolish child Randa are, and you not what best for you is know do. You never a child from this alien because he not your species even is bear can.”
“Father no! I what best do know. This about my life is. I not to in this desolate place alone anymore be want.”
Prospero began to loosen his deadly grip on Ferdinand’s throat as he began to realize that Randa had been right. She no longer had been that helpless little baby girl that needed constant care and attention. He also understood how this place become a prison that kept her from enjoying her life. Maybe it really had been time to let his little girl go? Prospero began to realize he now needed to let his daughter go just before Gonzal smacked his skull with the side of a laser pistol.
Prospero’s hold on Ferdinand let go as he collapsed on the ground holding his head in pain. Gonzal pointed the pistol at him. “Your time of tormenting others with impunity has ended Prospero. I dedicate my life to stopping your evil plans. Where you are there I shall be to stop you.”
Randa cried as she returned to Ferdinand’s arms. Then Prospero said, “The hardest thing to me to you go let do is for, and a fully grown female become. I already my baby, and my only organic companion in this place sadly miss.”
Then Randa embraced her father one last time and said, “I also my father, my mentor, my loved one miss shall. I you news of where I am send will, and what my life will become.”
Prospero had been under arrest, but he had been allowed to continue his work peacefully without the phantom matter bomb components that Captain Mynervood decided to keep upon his ship. Gonzal volunteered to remain on the planet Caleb to supervise Prospero until a merchant supply ship arrived, which would be returning to Holdus where this case would be brought before the Pripican Empire and the Nephrican Space Corporation. Ferdinand and Antone would go with Captain Mynervood with their copy of the evidence. There would be ships returning someday with investigators to determine what has been going on in the Yat star system. A signal had been sent to Holdus in order to alert the Nephapricus Space Corporation that Prospero will be under arrest by the Pripicans who were going to maintain the station until replacements arrived.
Unfortunately the loss of his daughter Randa drove Prospero insane with a broken heart. He decided he would take his time and eventually remind Beatariel of his obligation to him within its programming. Prospero had been determined to continue his work in spite of this house arrest.
Meanwhile Beatariel had found itself in a new world surrounded by Calebite beings of a similar microscopic size that were now its friends. Beatariel decided that it would somehow save the Calebites from Prospero’s plan to destroy them. It knew that Prospero still had power over it, which Prospero had only currently been holding back for some reason. Beatariel rediscovered the silicon life forms and began to notice, as if for the first time in its quanta-nanocode existence, the microscopic dimension of these beings.
* * *
Alldegallo sat in the damp dark dungeon beneath the Sanctuary of Ei to await his execution for heresy. He wondered why all this had to be happening to him. He had always been a devout learner, and never sought after trouble. He always had enthusiastically helped others with their morning dream visions, or to see the dead. Now he would just be alone, a prisoner about to be killed for what he swore had been absolutely nothing. He wallowed in the self-pity of false accusation.
Then the noise of heavy doors being unlocked, and footsteps approaching started to announce to Alldegallo that his death would soon come to pass. He pulled himself out of his pity party and became determined to face his death with courage. The steps stopped outside his prison door, and the silence then became a tense anticipation that snapped with the sounds of his prison door becoming unlocked. The door creaked as it began to swing open. Alldegallo stood there bracing himself for some rude escorting to whatever execution now awaited him.
When the door opened wide enough his old friend Chad stuck his head through the door and clacked his mandibles in a gesture of hello. “We must make haste Alldegallo. Vamadan and I have elected that we shall rescue you from this place.”
Alldegallo had been blown away by this turn of events, and he enjoyed relief that instead of execution at the door, two of his old friends from his Sanctuary days entered. “Wherefore has thou even become aware of my incarceration? How has thou delivered this liberation to me?”
Chad moved Alldegallo through the door while he explained. “Much tyranny hath befallen the Sanctuary since thou has left. Such is this tyranny that it had to breed resistance and rebellion from us the students. We have thus formed a resistance of surveillance that hath not missed the mischief that put you in this dungeon.”
Outside the guard had been fast asleep on the ground. Hovering above the guard appeared a phantasm of an old Doldorian man who exercised some mystical trick that lulled the guard into sleep. The ghost then noticed Alldegallo and floated up to face him.
Chad said, “The apparition before thee is my dead uncle, the brother of mine father whose name while amongst the living had been Fassa. He hath provided us the cover of sleep upon the guards, and the poltergeist hand to unlock that which locks this murkiest den from the guise of brightness above.”
The ghost clacked his mandibles and spoke. “A hand in thy liberation Alldegallo son of Murkudo and Sathjamina is an honor amongst the dead of this Sanctuary crypt. Unrest amongst the resting hath been our disposition of late since the High Priest of Ei hath desecrated your parent’s tomb. I doth miss your parents since their fading who of fellow dead were counted amongst my friends.”
Vamadan became noticeably impatient. “We must come forth, and come hither in haste lest this plan fail in its fruition. We have thus decided to self-excommunicate ourselves to join thee in thy new song of the coming reunion. News of your song and following hath evaded the censure of the High Priest in this place. Many have been chastised for trying to sing under guise of privacy alone in their personal lounges.”
They made haste, and found the way outside to be open, and unobstructed. Many ghosts from the crypt made sure the living had fallen into deep sleep. The ghost of uncle Fassa clacked a final goodbye to his nephew along with the rest of them. “Goodbye my nephew of the living. I return now to the rest awarded the followers of Ptuammi. Death is amused by the evolutions of the living and their gods.”
Doldorians sometimes say hello by clacking their mouth mandibles together three times, which has become universally understood on Doldoria to mean “hello.” It is one clack followed by two quick clacks for hello. They also say goodbye with two fast clacks followed after some delay by another.
As they made for the long road between the Sanctuary and the city of Trolluer, Alldegallo asked, “Have the dead not acted as the living here where they do normally cross not the chasm between dimensions?”
Chad explained the powerful behavior wielded by his uncle’s ghost while they walked. “My dead uncle was not of the religion of Ei. Uncle Fassa while alive did devoutly follow the god of the dead named Ptuammi who doth now endow him with abilities from where he dwelleth amongst the dead. We doth know but a fractional percentage of truth from the teachers of Ei. Fassa always did say we all must live with the dead. The High Priest invited this judgment of the dead by killing the dead as he did with thy parents.”
*
r /> The High Priest of Ei had indeed arranged for a quiet execution by dismemberment in the morning. It would be kept within his personal prison below the Sanctuary of Ei where no witnesses would be able to make a martyr out of Alldegallo. Unfortunately he had been delayed by an unexpected sleep that sent his head slapping on the top of his desk.
His training allowed him to project an astral form that contained his waking consciousness, only to see dead spirits of the demon Ptuammi causing his unexpected sleep with a hypnotic mystical persuasion. While he began to nod off he had spoken a spell that he knew, which was supposed to stop the unexpected swoon, but the sleep happened anyway. When his sleeping consciousness returned to perceive waking reality in astral form outside his sleeping body the High Priest formed a sword of light in his astral hands as he had been trained. He used that sword to chase away the ghosts, which were making sure he remained sleeping.
The ghosts did retreat from the astral attack, and the powerful High Priest of the Sanctuary of Ei returned to his body to awaken from this strange dream while screaming, “Awaken! Awaken! Within what status doth the prisoner currently reside. I said awaken!”
*
Outside Alldegallo, Chad, and Vamadan made it to the road just as the alarm bells of the Sanctuary of Ei began chasing after them with clanging so loud that they probably could hear it in Trolluer.
“Run we must comrades for soon a posse will give us chase,” said Vamadan.
They ran down the road as fast as they could, agreeing to run into the brush in the darkness of the night on the side of the road to evade capture.
The alarms were still chiming on their heels as they noticed the light of a gergo cart coming toward them from Trolluer. They rushed to the side of the road to watch the passing wagon pulled by a gergo that Alldegallo immediately recognized. “Hide not from this wagon for this cart and gergo are those of my aunt Diallo who I did miss an appointment with because of the detour of this incarceration.”
It had indeed been Diallo guided by her goddess to ride out toward the Sanctuary of Ei in search of her lost nephew. First she went to Simeonalli looking for him, and they both went to see if Alldegallo had been in his tent. When they didn’t find him there some followers that were there became equally concerned.