* * *
On the planet Caleb a gray skinned hairless Nephrican female form of humanoid looked out the view port of the research facility upon the desolate frozen landscape outside. Outside the air thickened in the cold and it seemed to freeze all sound. Randa pondered the opaque silence until she suddenly became startled by the voice of her only friend on the freezing planet Caleb, the quanta-nanocode being named Beatariel.
“You can’t go outside to play without an environment suit, but I wouldn’t recommend going outside at all young Randa.”
Randa turned to face the invisible friend that took the form of a voice coming from amplification equipment on the wall, but then she turned her two-eyed gaze back upon the planet’s barren landscape. “Beatariel my only friend you out there go used to, and in the planet rover explore. Why you out there anymore not go out do?”
“Well Randa it was my master Prospero who stopped the exploratory missions to investigate the planet’s terrain. We had learned all that we needed to learn and decided not to learn any more.”
“I you with my father about phenomenon found remember arguing. What you Beatariel out there did find?”
“Oh I never argue with my master Prospero young Randa. We were resolving a miscalculation on my own part. I am forbidden to tell you what I found out there Randa. Your father Prospero is having me guide a comet into this planet to magnetize the core. That will allow my master to thicken the atmosphere. Then whatever is out there will no longer be of any consequence.”
The conversation seemed to be over. Randa wanted Beatariel to go out there again to explore, but she knew there would be no way to talk it into doing anything that its master forbid. Her father always had been such a controlling and focused being. He had been the only male she had ever known, but the two of them were so different. Then she realized she didn’t really want Beatariel to go outside after all, because she wanted to take the exploratory vehicle out herself.
She had not been sure if Beatariel had still been around or not since it went silent. She could never tell where her invisible friend would be, but it probably currently waited on every whim of its master, her father. She entered the environment suit room to put on one of the protective environment suits designed to accommodate her humanoid form.
Randa sat in the vehicle for quite awhile, but no quanta-nanocode being or father had yet intervened to stop her. She knew how to use the exploratory vehicle since Beatariel gave her lessons when she had been younger, and when journeys outside were more permitted. She started the vehicle, opened the environment bay doors, and waited for a while longer for someone or something to stop her. Still no voice of Beatariel came across any speakers to plead for her to stop. That had been the last chance Randa would give anybody to stop her, and so then she drove outside into the frozen world of Caleb.
Beatariel had not been specifically instructed to forbid Randa from driving outside in the environment vehicle, but it didn’t feel right about what young Randa did. Beatariel knew it should have stopped her. Oh dear me. What should I do? Maybe a better action would have been to stop her? Oh, why do I just let things like this happen sometimes? I must go tell my master what has happened. He will instruct me about what to do.
*
The environmentally protected all-terrain vehicle maneuvered the rough slick icy planet’s terrain with ease. Randa had found an icy ravine to drive through that seemed to become deeper as she continued to proceed across the icy environment. She became lost in amazement by the intricate beauty of all the ice formations that were hanging from the walls all around her. They were probably made of different kinds of frozen gasses that would weave together into different colored patterns under temperatures that were –179 degrees Celsius or –290 Fahrenheit, where the nitrogen atmosphere held up clouds of methane and ethane until it rained down against the solid rocks of frozen water. Waves of frozen gasses decorated the sides of the ice canyon that Randa had been driving through. She realized that she finally enjoyed a time of not being bored to death all alone in the lonely abandoned research facility. She figured that whatever punishment she would be sure to endure, it would be worth it.
As she continued down the ravine, the sides began to make elaborate patterns that also seemed to take on a life of their own. As her journey continued she fixed her eyes upon the threads of frozen gasses that would weave into patterns that appeared to her as intelligent. Then she noticed that the walls of the ravine seemed to be breathing like a tide in slow motion. Randa eventually had to stop the vehicle to get a closer look in her environment suit. The strands of frozen gases along the sides of the ravine were moving like animated life forms that stretched up the ravine sides like some kind of colorful breathing tree roots.
“This what Beatariel discovered must have been,” she said out loud to herself.
Randa got out and walked away from the stopped vehicle to get a closer look at this phenomenon. She walked up to one side of the valley that she had been driving through, which brought her up to one of the tree-like roots of frozen gas that waved from side-to-side as if alive. Randa stood there watching the frozen gas root wave to her as if it knew she had been there.
Then Randa gathered her courage and dared to touch the dancing root of frozen multi-colored gasses. The root immediately stopped moving, and appeared to be startled by the sudden alien touch from Randa. It even seemed to begin to tremble with fear for a while. Randa backed away also startled by the intelligent reaction.
She suddenly realized that this had been what Beatariel discovered, and what the quanta-nanocode being had discovered had been that intelligent life already evolved on the planet Caleb. Her father doesn’t want anyone to know about this because he intends to destroy this life so he can make this planet habitable for Nephricans. That had been her father’s constant obsession, and the orders he followed from those selfish Eagolim planet conquerors who had sent her and her father to this frozen planet in the first place. Randa watched as the frozen being rooted in the wall of icy ravine stop trembling. It seemed to now be curiously looking at her somehow as it stretched towards her unable to break away from the icy cliff side.
Randa ran back to the vehicle while realizing that what her father did had been wrong. She turned the vehicle around and started back to the facility. Beatariel would know this had been wrong. She wondered why it allowed her father to carry out the teraforming operation of a planet where life had been discovered. She thought everyone knew better than this. She realized that this must have been why Beatariel seemed to just remain silent as she prepared for this journey, and then it just let her go outside to make this discovery on her own.
As the vehicle disappeared from the place where she had got out to touch the icy life form, the side of the ravine began to stretch in the direction that the vehicle drove off as if trying to reach across the impossible distance to the vehicle now long gone. Then strings of frozen gasses seemed to weave together till they eventually formed into a humanoid-like stick figure in imitation of the being that had just stood there earlier and touched it. The stick figure had been made out of multicolored tree-like roots that then broke away from the rest of the life form that still remained breathing on the wall of the ravine. The frozen planet’s silicone based life form then started walking up the ravine on two stilt-like legs in the direction that the vehicle had drove off to. This being walked in imitation of the humanoid Randa who had just touched it a minute or so ago. That at least demonstrated that this strange silicon-based life form did learn quickly.
Chapter 4
Back on the planet Nephrica Hagan Hiedalli enjoyed her new life as a single middle-aged woman. She had her whole life ahead of her since her son and husband were now almost half a light year away. It had now been almost a Nephrica year after the Agents of Ea were finally apprehended. Now it was over, and Admiral Mull told her that it would be a long time before she would be needed to testify at the trial since the prisoners were still being interrogated in order to unravel the
entire plot against her husband, the famous Captain Joberk Mynervood.
Hagan considered it all now behind her as she drove into the star port city that towered above most of the landscape to include surrounding mountains. Nephrica had been a much larger planet than Earth, and in fact Nephricans and Pripicans were much larger than Earthlings. This means that the size of the star port city dwarfed mountains that were as high as 28,360 ft. Hagan Hiedalli paused to appreciate this view as she pulled over to fill the vehicle’s tank with more salt water.
Upon her arrival at the star port mega-city she took one of the vehicle elevators to the level of the city that she had decided to visit that day. It happened to be the same level she had visited before to meet with the gatekeeper, but it also had an interesting entertainment mall that she wanted to visit. She had brought with her some skin cloth clothing that she had recently sewed together, and she liked to visit different art shops to get the clothing tattooed. Tattooing skin cloth had been something lots of Nephricans were into doing. Many Nephricans liked to have artists draw on their skin cloth to improve its appearance. It added aesthetic interest to an otherwise neutral gray wardrobe. It has only been within the last couple thousand years that Nephrican culture began dying skin cloth different colors, and it is as if they still were reluctant to embrace non-gray skin cloth.
Hagan had been a stylish Nephrican woman who liked to meet different artists to add variety to her skin cloth wardrobe. She just came out of the artist’s parlor where she had got most of her clothes tattooed, and one skirt she had dyed blue to go with a blue blouse she had back at home. Suddenly she noticed one of the servants that had abruptly left her job with Hagan before Captain Mynervood came back. Hagan already suspected that she actually had been an undercover Agent of Ea who had infiltrated her household in order to be closer to Adma. To avoid her notice she hopped on a tentacle back into the artist’s shop.
The artist became happy to see her again. “Mrs. Hiedalli, you on the bird drawing for that skirt after all so have decided?”
“I sorry am. I I a skirt thought forgot, but here it is.”
Outside the shop she poked her eye around the corner again to see the servant that had quit her employment now walking away in the other direction. She tried to summon the nanocode program Beatarkameed, which she kept in her purse.
She spoke into the device that opened up like a cell phone. “Beatarkameed! That woman one that I for the Agents of Ea that my son were controlling think worked was.”
“I already made that identification Mrs. Hiedalli, and I already have placed a geo trace on her. We can follow her if you want to.” The Pripican animation on the cell phone-like device disappeared, and had been replaced by a map of the local city area. A small blinking dot strolled along one of the street lines on the map.
Hagan followed the woman that she once thought she knew down the streets of the star port mega-city until she observed the woman finally arriving at a Negolim government headquarters. Beatarkameed followed the woman inside to confirm that she had been a government Agent of Ea. It became no surprise that the government had been involved with this plot. She just wanted more specific details. She decided to wait till the geo trace on the woman went home, and then she would confront her.
Hagan Hiedalli and Beatarkameed
As she returned to her vehicle there appeared a Nephrican standing by it with skin cloth wrapped all around his body like a mummy. It had in fact been the gatekeeper to the underground.
“I here to you that you yourself in danger are putting warn am.” The gatekeeper appeared nervous like he had gone out in the open to talk to her at great risk.
“I to know what on is going just want. That woman I is one of them followed.” She had been ready to discuss this at length, but the gatekeeper already indicated that the conversation was over.
The gatekeeper said as he waddled away. “The truth very dangerous is, and we about that woman already knew. The underground to you protect wants. This than just a Negolim Agents of Ea plot bigger is. There important Eagolim involved are, and Eagolim basically immune to prosecution are.”
*
Back at the house of Hagan Hiedalli a stranger waddled up to the front door. The Nephrican stranger placed a strange device near the lock while contemplating how useless most magnetic locks were these days with some of the new quanta-nanocode decrypting devices that were currently being invented. The door opened without protest.
Inside the assassin locked the door behind him. Then he found a discrete cranny of the house to await his latest assignment victim. It had been a basic murder to be made to look like a suicide. He had been given a digitally produced suicide video, which he had to leave at the scene. Seemed like a pretty easy job.
*
Hagan Hiedalli didn’t really listen to the gatekeeper’s warning. That demonstrates a character trait of Nephricans that they appear to follow to a fault. Once they become determined to do something it is very hard to detour them from their determined direction. Hagan followed the woman to her home later that afternoon. The woman she followed also lived outside the mega-city in the endless sprawl that surrounded it for as far as the eye could see. Hagan thought that it would be a long drive back home to her particular cranny of sprawl that night.
She had come a long way for this confrontation, and so when they arrived she got right out of the vehicle and followed the woman to her doorstep.
“Me remember?” Hagan reached her just as she had been about to unlock her front door.
“Mrs. Hiedalli oh! You here what brings?”
“As if naive not do speak! I to what you to my son did know want!” Hagan became furious.
The woman became equally confrontational. “I not know what you of speak do, but you soon to away by security be escorted are.”
The two women went on with a basically loud verbal confrontation for a couple of minutes before the woman slammed the door with a final warning that security would be notified. Hagan returned to her vehicle to leave with no new information about the truth that she had sought. Inside the vehicle she opened up her quanta-nanocode device to speak to the Pripican character on the screen.
“You in her follow did?”
“I did indeed Mrs. Hiedalli. She did call someone, but it wasn’t security. You need to have a look at this.
The centaur-like animation disappeared and then an image of Admiral Mull appeared on the screen. “You here calling why are?”
The ex-servant woman’s voice spoke. “That Hagan Hiedalli woman just here was. She too much knows, and my cover blowing is.”
The Admiral appeared to not be at all worried about this. “Not yourself with Hagan Hiedalli concern do. I already of her as a problem taken care have. Now here again not do call!” Then the video transmission of the woman’s call to Admiral Mull abruptly hung up.
Hagan Hiedalli became stunned by the sudden revelation that Admiral Mull had actually been behind the Agent of Ea plot against her son and her husband. He had always been a good friend that her husband introduced as a best friend. She drove back home wondering what the Admiral meant by ‘taken care have.’ The underground already had warned her that she had been in danger. She had a long time to think about it on the long drive home.
*
By the time Hagan finally pulled into her suburban enclave where home could finally be found, the light of the star Ea began to show along the technologically cluttered horizon of Nephrica. She had become exhausted as she unlocked the magnetic lock with her tentacle finger’s biometric data. She just wanted to get into bed for some sleep, and then she would make up her mind about what she would do.
As she began to waddle toward the stairs someone suddenly emerged from the shadows. Then she felt something thump her in the chest just before a sudden shortness of breath. Her throat became wet like she drank something, and it started going down the wrong throat. She coughed while coming to the realization of red blood spitting from her throat. Then she noticed the blood
flowing down her skin cloth blouse from a chest wound. She spun around in horror just before collapsing in a pool of blood.
The assassin very professionally placed the gun in Hagan Hiedalli’s tentacle hand. He wanted to shoot the side of her head, suicide style, but for some reason the projectile hit her chest instead. He didn’t think she had moved enough for him to be that far off target. Still the sucking chest wound would be sure to accomplish the task, and it had to be a single shot in order for the suicide story to remain convincing.
He had been about to leave before remembering the extra instructions for this job. He rummaged through her purse until he pulled out the cell phone-like quanta-nanocoded device that had been the physical form of Beatarkameed. He then left the suicide message, and left Hagan Hiedalli for dead while locking the front door behind him.
*
About two and a half minutes earlier Beatarkameed noticed the assassin shoot Hagan, and it flew out of the physical device to help her. It caught up to the bullet as it had been just about to enter Hagan’s skull when Beatarkameed smashed against the projectile to deflect it, but it still headed toward her chest. Beatarkameed barely entered the wound right behind the giant iron bullet, and smashed against it again just in time to deflect it away from her heart. It became lodged in her ribs after tearing a hole through the lungs. Beatarkameed became deluged in red blood molecules that invaded the lungs while winds of oxygen molecules blew in and out of the chest wound where they had never blown before. Beatarkameed dove into the geography of the lungs, and summoned super-heated energy to begin cauterizing her wounds from the inside out. It did this in a frantic molecular frenzy until it suddenly became startled by its quanta-synchronization to the physical form that the assassin then took away.
When Beatarkameed responded the assassin still had been taking the cell phone device from Hagan’s purse. It took almost three whole seconds to leave Hagan’s chest wound in order to jettison most of its stuff out of the device into the bottom of Hagan Hiedalli’s purse before returning to the task of sealing up a sucking chest wound before she died. It seemed as if she wouldn’t make it. Beatarkameed needed help. It struggled for a decision between continuing the futile task of sealing her wounds from the inside out, or taking the precious seconds to use her phone and contact some help that might itself waste too much time.