6 - Sci fi

Ten thousand years had passed on Earth since, and the human race had risen and fallen, an illusion of perfection, fairness and beauty. At last there was peace, and the Sect known as the Golden Lion’s had built ancient Madrassa to insure that worldwide disarmament would finally be enforced by the People’s Protector’s sect.

This brought about a new renaissance, a genius was born and aged 7 he rediscovered mathematical equations relating to Cosmic Astronomy and developed these to new unbeknown complexities and conclusions that enabled them to manipulate material into a million myriad forms.

Most beautiful of these, most treasured, was the Grand Telescope. Pure motion is the symmetry of the stars, and they looked deep into the galaxy, and found no world like their own, many planets were too close but few had moons to stabilise their orbit and most suffered terrible and continental volcanic activity which made their atmosphere noxious. The colonies on Mars and the Moon were graveyards. They had been abandoned and left with no supplies during a war thousands of years ago

Then at last they found a planet with a stable orbit in the 4th Quadrant Piquant, Grid red G 159, 0000,0000,0000,0000, the telescope was so powerful they could see the plant as if they were a satellite orbiting above it blue atmosphere, they conducted what tests they could. They could not gather any proper scientific evidence at this vast distance, the planet was 500 Light Years distant, they forecasted, they hoped, they guessed, that the likelihood of oxygen was 98% and the likelihood of life was 99.5%. It had one small moon which seemed to stabilise its orbit. They calculated it was 150 times the mass of earth, and it orbited a White Star at just the right distance

They cupped this blue pearl in their hands, this perfect, rarest crystal, a diamond snowflake, this analogous grain of sand in the palm of their hands. The Lion’s named this planet ‘Eden’. The Golden Lion Sect was entrusted with the Grand Telescope and this naming was a holy thing, a calling from God above, the Earth was heaving with people, over 20 trillion counted and still counting. Siberia was a Megalopolis that stretched from the Pacific coast to the Nile Delta. 7 trillion lived in shanty towns, working to serve the rest. They followed work like nomadic grazers in order that they could afford to buy enough algae and happy, energy pills to keep them alive for another day.

The Golden Lion’s decided that this planet must be claimed ‘for what other reason is required except that such things are there for those who reach out for them, like fresh air in the jungle of man and machine’. The wild lands were fenced now, only the mountains and the deserts of South America remained as the untamed places. If people have an ancient heart, a primitive need to feel the cold wind and smell the trees, the damp grass, come to terms with the silence, to feel a link to consequence. Eden was paradise made possible, purity to escape the poison of the ravaged overcrowded earth.

 Infinity was completed two hundred years later, and then they asked for volunteers Millions clamoured for this unknown possibility. The other sects regarded the Golden Lion’s as politically embarrassing. They were glad they were leaving, ‘be damned and go into to exile, take the poor and the criminals with you, poor people are not very good at leadership; if they had been talented in any way or shape they would not be poor, there were always more of them than was efficiently useful’. The poor were captivated by the moving pictures showing pristine nature and Cowboy films about taming the West, the waiting list was 10 ten times the allocation. The 150 million volunteers were put to sleep and stored in the hold. They dream of the second earth, Eden.

The Lion’s split themselves in two groups. Most of them were cryogenically frozen and placed into the hold. They would be the first to emerge from stasis at the continuum point, the glorious instant in their hibernating mortal coil when they would awake in the atmosphere of Eden. In order to provide a testimony a small group of Lions had been selected, they were hand-picked, carefully developed, bred and educated pupils from the Golden Lion’s academy, brainwashed or enlightened, indoctrinated with an earnest belief in paradise. A settlement was to be built in quadrant fifty seven and they would start a civilization which would maintain the ship for the endless years of light and time.

Infinity was christened with a fragment from the legend and memory of earth’s moon, a zillion kea dace litres wide, and a zillion kea dace litres high. Painted on its sides were Murals of all the ages on earth. Jupiter shrinking as infinity drinks his voluminous endless gases, jettisoning a trail, a sheet of fire a billion zeta litres high and wide. Infinity slowly began to move and its gigantic solar sails unfurled.

The lightest draught - mighty sails, a deepening, mariner, soundless in the vacuum of space. Jutting, frozen, spread-eagled fire, sparkling solar panels stretch out crucified. Smooth and dark were its vast walls, mined from quartz and obsidian, from its sides came the faint lustre of grimy starlight, its vastness obscene. Floundering in time is I – a tin can –I. Acceleration past the sight and sound of our human ears, through the folds of Orion, where the old went to die, lumping its witless carcass, swift winds sail thee through these desolate straits, where the sun shines dim and the wind is feint, Imponderable is the consequence, they are the seekers for the second earth.