XI

The Day of Love

Thus did Dan so remain tied to a stake throughout the evening and into the night. The crowd of Metro City had dispersed, but were told to return at sunrise for the procession to begin to the ancient site of Mt. Olé, the summit of which was the exact location of the holocaust of Lu so long ago, and cave nearby the resting place of the Lord of Light’s ashes. Dan kept vigil alone, save for two armed Dome officials with light blasters in hand, but who were presently dozing off on the prisoner watch. 

Dan had no such luck. He hadn’t been asleep ever since he was knocked out by Johnny with the iron rod in the mirror room, and was feeling his exhaustion, mostly in his stiff, aching legs which supported his body’s weight begrudgingly. There was no use trying to get out. Even if he wanted to–– which he didn’t, as now he was quite sure his being sacrificed for those thirty-three hundred people in Domardor so at least they might hear his message was Tulu’s will, and he’d quite resigned himself to it––his arms and legs and body were so fastened against the stake by ropes, nothing but a sharp-toothed saw could loosen them. 

The night air in the edge of the city was cool and pleasant, but Dan was having a very difficult time relishing it. When he wasn’t praying for strength to endure his coming execution, he was wracking his brains trying to remember better days in Aerlan, happy days with Marie. He wondered if he himself had children, what their home looked like, where he was most fond of eating. Only essentials struck him and sunk into his consciousness, hurled at him from the depths of unconsciousness and beyond by some unknown benefactor. Dan could only recall that Aerlan was indeed a place of happiness and peace and fun. Aerlan was, so his recollections would strike him, majestic, lofty, light, cool and refreshing like a crisp autumn day, though without the odor of decaying leaves. Blue as sapphire. White as diamonds all afire. Clear as crystal. These were the color notes that Dan recalled. But, try as he might, nothing of Marie or the domesticity of Aerlan or of his royal business there, or anything of facts and figures could be called to mind. Only, as it were, sense impressions and vague sentimental nuances of the place he called home for almost eighty years, and now would never see again. 

So absorbed in this exercise of trying to call to mind his past life, he did not notice the moon rising out of the eastern sky, just peaking above the the mountaintops like a child playing peekaboo. Not that there was anything exception in this particular moonrise that should have demanded Dan’s attention. He was, after all, quite occupied, his thoughts, as it were, rather heavily bent on more grave matter than watching a routine moonrise. But had he looked up and watched the rising of the moon, he would at once have seen that this was no ordinary moon rise. The moon was a rocking cradle of a crescent, shown with the brightness of three full moon faces all together, and became bigger and bigger and bigger as it approached! 

Dan didn’t notice. He was facing westward toward the place of his execution, and would have never noticed but for the fact that it seemed the moon would be noticed. It insisted. What now felt like a flashlight beam in the corner of Dan’s left eye, made him looked eastward, thinking a guardsman was flashing him with a light for amusement. No, not a flashlight, but Tulu, descending out of the low-lying clouds on the moon, resting her majestic form on her heavenly throne. Dan blinked twice, and would have rubbed his eyes, but settled for shaking his head back and forth a few times to check his sight and senses.

As Tulu approached, Dan observed that She was not alone. A young lady stood just behind her, perhaps on a cloud. As they came close, Dan could just make out the emotion of their faces. Tulu and Marie were very happy, and both were smiling, like a mother and daughter-in-law pleased to see a son and husband returned from war. Dan could only thus make out their features, as the brightness of the moon shown with such intensity as it came nearer and nearer, that Dan was forced to squint because his eyes did not adjust as quickly as they came on. Tulu spoke. 

“My son, my son! Thou art a valiant and ready son!” She said, her voice as clear and mighty as a waterfall. 

“My Lady!” and lowered his head in honor, “I’m unworthy to be called thy son!” 

“Whatever dost thou mean?” Tulu asked, now gently as a kindly mother. 

“I’m not ready to die. I am willing. But I am not ready. Please, help me be so!” Dan said, pleading through copious tears. 

“Thou art as ready as ever a one could be, my son. Take heart. I’ve brought a visitor to thee. Thou hast but a few moments, then day shall rise upon this valley, one of only two more suns that shall be spared for the conversion of the world before I return with my Son to destroy it. Tell me, hast thou been successful in thy heralding my message?”

“Of those I was able to win from the Fallen, all but eleven have fallen away. Of those eleven, I do not know who remain. So few! So few counted among the saved! Please, Queen of Stars, is it so throughout the lands? So few are saved?” Dan asked, his face glistening in moonlight tears. 

“It is so, my son. So many are lost. All lost will it. Not my will, but theirs. So be it. Thou hast tried, and thou hast been successful thus far in even the few fishes caught. Now’s the time to reel them in, Daniel,” Tulu spoke, and, though Her subject matter was grave, she smiled through her pity for Dan to encourage him. “When thou come to Mt. Olé in procession, do not resist. Do not rebuke. Be silent. Be still. Allow what will be. It is my will, and that of my Son’s. Accept as the price of those eleven souls thy torments, thy agony, and thy isolation. Then wilt thou have a crown glorious and shining in Mundluc, a Light Princeling thou wilt be in what will soon be the newly founded realm of Light here. And, for thy Light Princess, I present thee, Marie the Generous,” and held her hand toward Dan, who looked up into the sky from his prepared pyre. 

“My Lady! My Princess! How have I thought of you, and tried to remember our happy days in Aerlan, but could not!” Dan said, all tearful and in love.

“Now’s not the hour for merriment or happy memories of another life, Dan. Now’s the hour of death. We will have days unending for making new, more merry memories, like a million Christmas mornings without repeats, and then you shall even recall Aerlan. But not now. Now you ready yourself to offer yourself as a worthy sacrifice. Are you ready, Dan?” Marie asked, still standing reverently behind the Lady of Light as she spoke.

“Yes, yes, now I am, I think. I shall make you both proud. I do this for love. Therefore, I shall not resist. I accept all the pain for love of thee, my Queen, and you, my dear Princess-to-be, and for those whose souls I must pay for,” Dan spoke and as he did so, his will was strengthened in the resolution. Yet he still pined to hold Marie’s hand again, or to speak and listen to Tulu, so beautiful and wise. 

“We shall depart, son. The sun is quick at our heels, and others there are throughout the world that we must visit this night. Look to Me and my Son’s coming Sunday at dawn,” and steadily the Lady of Light and Marie were off as they arrived, becoming smaller and smaller, and more dim every second, until only a thin, small crescent of light shone lightly in zenith of the sky. Dan could not see Tulu or Marie anymore at that distance. The low-lying clouds had moved on, and so a star-studded sky lay heavily over the desert floor like a big, black blanket. Dan closed his eyes and fell into a restful and dreamless sleep.

When Dan opened his eyes, the sun had risen on a new day, and a small but ever increasing crowd of spectators were gathering for the procession and execution on Mt. Olé later that day. Viceroy Guth had moved on to another city in the hemisphere, so Rutherford, or the man who was pretending to be him, was the master of ceremonies as it were. Johnny was there, too, just below him on the steps of the speaking trailer from which Rutherford addressed the growing crowd, and grinned from ear to ear as he spoke, surveying the crowd and then Dan on another nearby trailer.

“We gather here today to see justice done!” Rutherford said to the crowd, and waited for applause, but the crowd wasn’t as enthusiastic as yesterday. They wanted to see someone burned alive, not merely told so. Rutherford went on. “So, if you follow the gliders hauling the trailers to Mt. Olé, you will see justice done!” This incited a little more enthusiastic replies but not more sympathetic, such as “Hear, hear! Let’s get on!” or “Go, then!” and other such impatient shouts. 

The gliders were turned on and needed a few moments to warm up––such as a diesel tractor, though the internal mechanics similarities between the glider propulsion engines and combustible engines end there––so Johnny had a moment or two to head behind his glider he was piloting to have a moment with the prisoner. Dan saw Johnny come up to the trailer steps but pretended not to notice him. 

“Ah, come on! Don’t be like that. You and I are good old friends, right? Remember the days in the orphanage? The jokes I’d make? Ah, yea, that’s right, you never laughed at my jokes, did you? And, come to think of it, you never really had a nice word to say to me ever, had you?” Johnny said, now quite close in Dan’s face. Dan didn’t speak or even flinch. He just took it. “Well, it will be a real hoot and howler when your skin is melted off your bones, won’t it, little Glitter-boy,” he hissed into Dan’s ear, and as he made his way back off the trailer, Johnny turned to grin one more time at Dan, but to Dan’s shock and horror, for a split second Johnny displayed snake fangs in his head, and a winding two-pronged tongue where only a moment before he had a human one, then turned to step down. 

Dan’s body quivered with revolting disgust and horror at the sight of Johnny, but at least he started to understand that mystery. Johnny and Rutherford were dead. Fallen Lights must have assumed their form for a time to carry out their sacrifice to Ferater the Filthy. “What cunningness,” Dan thought to himself, then his body quivered again at the thought of Johnny’s snake-tongue. 

Presently the gliders and procession of Metro City were underway. The morning was crystal blue without a cloud in the sky. This accented the dome-like canopy of air overhead, which gave Dan the weird, far-fetched, yet almost quaint and charming idea that he was processing to his death, to be burnt alive to ashes, in a gigantic world-sized snow-globe. All that it needed was someone with a big enough hand to shake up the litter of snow flakes at the bottom, and the scene would be complete. 

The morning rolled on and on, as it took three hours to reach Mt. Olé by foot and by a turtle-paced glider. Rutherford’s glider and trailer were in front, Johnny’s and Dan’s just behind, with at least a third of Metro City emptied out to see the execution at the back. Dan looked out at all the crowd following him at a leisurely pace. Many had never ventured beyond the city limits, and most had never been to Mt. Olé. It was a new experience in more ways than one, but one thing was old and familiar to all. Everyone was completely indifferent and positively thrilled at the notion of someone being put to death, or, better, sacrificed, though it was doubtful that any considered to whom or what Dan was being offered. It was enough that it was a novel act, or at least a very old thing, and so practically new, that the masses cared about. The Dome religion had since the council given up on the whole notion of sacrifice, so this was a welcomed piece of nostalgic religiosity. And so many were smiling, and laughing, and giddy in one form or anther. 

Dan looked on not in the least feeling resentment or hatred for those who persecuted him but a ponderous sadness and pity, the kind that settles in one’s guts and doesn’t lighten up. He bowed his head, and prayed that, by some miracle one or two or even a handful of the congregation would be converted and so saved from the judgement of fire.

The procession finally arrived at the foot of Mt. Olé. It was afternoon now, and Dan was, surprisingly not so much concerned about being burned but was wondering how the orchestrators of this little execution ceremony had it in mind to get him and his trailer up to the top of Mt. Olé’s summit. The people were being directed to ascend the path now by Dome officials, the path being marked clearly by large boulders strewn about up the path, the ones with the strange markings Dan couldn’t decipher. But Dan, Rutherford, and Johnny remained at the foot of the mountain, with the latter apparently waiting for someone or something. Dan was going to ask, “It’s not going to be much of a execution without a body to burn, don’t you think?” but before he could get out the words, a pulsating THRA-THRA-THRA was heard off in the distance toward the City. Dan knew plenty what that could mean, having often taken courses out in aeronautics and flight simulation during his time at the Academy. It was a spirwing, a large flying vessel designed for air transport of heavy objects, which had an impressively powerful propulsion system by which wing-like blades slashed through the air creating lift, while hot air jets streamed behind for acceleration and forward movement.    

The spirwing approached very quick and agile for its shear bulk, and landed not a few yards from where the gliders were parked. Rutherford approached it, but Johnny headed toward where Dan’s trailer was hitched to the glider, and removed the rigging. Dan looked on, knowing what was going on, and knowing that the motions of these men were bringing him minute by minute closer to an agonizing death. But he just looked on with disinterest, curious to know how the rigging was going to be attached to the spirwing. “I’ve always wanted to fly,” Dan said to himself aloud. “Probably an unconscious desire remnant of memories from Aerlan, I gather. Well, now I’ll have my chance,” and chuckled to himself. 

The rigging was attached by points along each of the four sides of the trailer by Rutherford and Johnny, neither of whose face Dan was in the least desired to look upon, given what happened before. Dan just stared off into the blue haze hanging over the desert floor, or back up the mountain path, watching the people ascend like so many ants up a hill. 

The trailer made fast to the harness and to the spirwing, the spirwing never having turned off its engines. Rutherford and Johnny boarded, and all were off on the wing up to the the summit of Mt. Olé.   

Dan arose with a dizzying speed. He was forced to feel every sudden and subtle shift of movement, as he was himself held fast against that which moved, namely the stake and the trailer, and so his body couldn’t compensate for the changes. Notwithstanding the motion sickness, the speed, and the height––the last of which Dan was quite already used to, having scaled the heavens before, and indeed lived therein for a lifetime, though he couldn’t recall it all––Dan was quite enjoying himself. He could see so clearly over the desert floor and the mountainside path marked out by the Guiding boulders. His ascent was effortless as he flew higher and higher up the path. 

Soon he overtook the procession who were seemingly having a hard time with the more difficult parts up the path. Dan recalled when he had to ascend the path, too, how hard it was for him. He recalled his knocking himself out and dreaming away the day, time traveling, and exploring his father’s ship with an elderly Marie. Dan thought about all this, and about the poor souls who ascended the path, though who were completely oblivious to the meaning and history of the path they trod. The deep feeling of pity arose again in his bowels. 

Landing was not as smooth as takeoff, but not completely unpleasant. Dan was set down with a thud onto the summit floor, which reverberated through the trailer into his feet, through his body up his spine and into his teeth. The experience was not unpleasant, for it concluded the sensation of sudden movement Dan had throughout his ascending flight, and the solid, steady earth beneath him was a kind of comfort. 

Rutherford and Johnny disembarked the spirwing and unhitched the rigging from the pyre trailer, then saluted the pilot to take off, which left Dan, Rutherford and Johnny alone at the summit, awaiting the procession. Dan longed for the in-flight motion sickness. 

“Well, looks like you have about twenty minutes of spare time in which to contemplate how painful it will feel to be barbecued alive, eh, glitter-boy?” Rutherford said to Dan, though no response came to the taunt. Rutherford walked over to Dan. “That puts me in mind. His attire isn’t quite right, is it Johnny?” 

“It ain’t, sir. No sir,” Johnny said, walking over and stepping up to where Dan was still standing, and had been for so long. He was wearing the garments Tulu had clothed him in, the sparkling bright vestment of light, which now blazed with the sun. “I’ll soon have him dressed aright!” and went to tear off Dan’s clothes from beneath the rope, which would have been possible to do, as there were sufficient gaps between the rope, but as soon as Johnny attempted it, he wrung his hands back in searing pain, and a cry of agony that seemed to come from the pits of Hell. “Arrrrhhhhh!” 

“You buffoon!” shot up Rutherford at Johnny. “What you do, give yourself rope burn?”

“He, he, his shirt’s as hot as the surface of the sun! Hotter!” Johnny shouted, stepping back several feet. “It’s cursed, it’s cursed!” 

“You’re forgetting yourself, Johnny, and the Master whom you serve. You’re the cursed one. This shirt is blessed, blessed by Tulu, the Lady of Flaming Light Herself,” Dan said, but as he spoke the name of that blessed Woman, both Johnny and Rutherford fell immediately to their knees and stopped their ears. Dan would have pitied them their pain but for the knowledge that they knew precisely what they were doing, unlike so many of those who were amid the procession. 

“Never mind the dirty shirt! The fire will soon have it. Come on, lets get to the foot of the path and await the people,” Rutherford said in a hissing tone, and he and Johnny slithered off twenty yards away. Dan looked around at where he exactly was. It turns out he was where he had entered the cave in his dream, at least what he imagined it might look like in the daylight. He saw the mouth of the cave twenty yards or so the other direction from the path. His trailer and pyre was placed on what appeared to be a miniature plateau of raised rock like a naturally occurring altar, about ten feet square, and about four feet higher than the surrounding summit ground floor. This afforded Dan a considerable perspective from which to survey the scene of his execution and the spectators who would witness it. 

Soon the people of Metro City started to arrive, trickling in like hikers at the conclusion of an arduous trail. They were exhausted looking, and the mirth in their hearts and wind in their sails had been quite extinguished by the path up Mt. Olé, or else the Guides silently spoke to their better judgement and souls, and made them sober to the reality of the occasion. 

As all were seemingly present and gathered round Dan, though at a safe distance as not to be themselves burned or singed, Rutherford spoke as Johnny held what appeared to be a light blaster. 

“Today, we are gathered to see justice done! And to see this murderous fiend put to death for his crimes!” but there was no cheering now, only blank expressions of fatigue. “As is something of an unfortunate custom of civilized societies, it is permitted that the one to be put to death to speak a word or two before the sentence is carried out. I am pressed by the immemorial custom to permit this devil to do the same. Though you all are, by no means compelled to listen,” Rutherford said in a loud, commanding voice toward the crowd, and all the crowd became immediately intent upon hearing Dan speak his last, and turned toward him with interested expressions. 

Dan thought a good moment while the crowd looked at him and waited for him to speak. What would words do that he hadn’t already tried to convert these, Dan thought. The only thought that made any sense or had any relevance now in the moment of his death ran thus: 

“Today, I die. The day after tomorrow the rest of the world dies! Repent and believe and be converted!” Dan said in a soft but audible voice for all to hear, then dropped his chin on his chest and silently prayed for courage to endure the flames. The spectators did not boo; they did not shout back curses. They did not really even look at Dan or anything now in particular. There was a collective hush that went out throughout the crowd, and an impression of fear or remorse mixed with fear stole across so many faces, at least over those which were not now downcast. Rutherford saw what was happening, and also perceived the danger of Dan’s words. He spoke sharply to Johnny. 

“Now, fool! Turn your blaster on low impulse to incinerate the kindling. Do it!” Johnny complied with his superior’s commands, and shot a blast of light into a faggot of sticks which had fallen off the Sacred Tree and were gathered together for ceremonial kindling. The impulse of light and heat stuck against the bundle but fizzled out as soon as it made impact. Johnny looked dumb at the bundle of unburnt wood, then back at Rutherford who also looked incredulous. The crowd oohed and aahed and pointed.   

“Give me that blaster, you idiot!” Rutherford snarled, and cranked up the energy range on the impulse shot several degrees hotter, and aimed at the point where Johnny did before and shot another blast of light. This time, the light blast hit, then hovered there for an infinitesimal moment then dissipated into the air like a cloud of steam. 

The third of Metro City which came out to Mt. Olé to witness the execution by the ancient practice of burning at the stake would have been disappointed indeed had Dan never been aloud to speak, to sow the seeds in their souls of doubt in their own immortality and belief in something greater than themselves. As it was, Dan did speak and delivered his message Tulu gave him with such eloquence and truth, and coupled with his rather dramatic speaking platform, that the crowd was actually happy to see that the pyre was not ignited. 

Rutherford became enraged and turned the blaster on high power and shot one more blast at the bundle of twigs from the Sacred Tree. A bigger explosion of light and heat engulfed the pyre and the trailer and Dan in a cloud of light. After a moment, though, the nebula dissipated as before into a misty light then disappeared altogether, revealing Dan just standing their tied to the stake as before, looking down and praying, seemingly unaware of what was happening. 

The crowd started to turn. There swept through it an awareness increasing by every shot Rutherford tried to destroy Dan with that he was a prophet, that this was a miracle and, that the world was going to end in two days, whether they liked it or not. Many started the chant, and an untold number continued it: “LIVE, LIVE, LIVE, LIVE!” It chanted it in a loud and steady voice, “LIVE, LIVE, LIVE, LIVE!” Soon Mt. Olé was resounding with the chant to LIFE! As everyone gathered to see death, they now were chanting to see LIFE, to see this unrelenting, this glorious, this innocent and unjustly accused and condemned life live, Live LIVE! 

The chanting had its effect on Rutherford and Johnny. Just as one false miracle made them, so one true miracle unmade them. Presently Dan looked up from his prayers at the sound as the chanting grew intensely loud. Rutherford was no longer what he had appeared a minute ago, but a hideous monster of half-torn off flesh and blood streaming down a blackened charcoal colored skeleton of some kind of reptilian form, and was writhing at himself with such violence and rage that many in the crowd that beheld the heinous sight turned away for fear and disgust. Johnny was less animated but no less self-destructive. He destroyed himself easily enough by shooting himself with the blaster Rutherford had dropped in his outrage, and was presently turning into an incinerated pile of ash and dust. Rutherford’s remains lay beside the pile, himself a heap of lacerated flesh and crumbled bones. 

Dan looked on in utter amazement not untinged with gratitude that the true fiends and devils were now dead and safely far away in Hell where they belonged. The crowd discontinued the chanting and closed in upon Dan to see this murderer turned miraculous prophet up close. The evening was falling on Mt. Olé, as the sun crested down over the horizon, so far away, so distant from where Dan and the crowd were on the summit, and light which glowed with a warmth and hue so soft and gentle as to be almost tangible. Dan was quite sure it was perhaps the most beautiful sunset he had ever seen.                                     

X

The Day of Thunder

The sun had set on one more day of a dwindling week in which Tulu commissioned Dan to save as many as he could. To heed his call to abandon the false religion of the infiltrated Dome was not enough. Those who claimed fidelity to the true religion were obliged to pay homage to the source of that religion, a little tree, obscured even more so by the machinations of the Dome officials following the evil council, by which Green Gove was established to overshadow the relic of the sacred Tree by planting hundreds of others more exotic and alluring to the eye. 

After supper, the band of followers of the Academy renegade-turned-prophet came into Green Grove to where the ancient Tree was planted. 

“Not long now,” Dan said to the eleven who walked behind him. Eliot would be along shortly, so he said, after he settled the bill at Green Grove and took care of some business, before heading over to the park. The sky was ominously dark, Dan thought, like the night he first began this quest by Marie’s introduction into his life again––oh! Marie, must he remember! Dan’s heart became even heavier now upon recalling that bittersweet few days reunited with his wife, then witnessing her stolen away. He was still answering questions all the while during supper and on the walk over to Green Grove, but now Dan grew noticeably taciturn and inwardly turned. 

“Is something the matter, sir?” Mr. Pete asked in his kind and respectful way, who was walking beside Dan the whole time. 

“Oh, it’s more than I can put into words now, Pete. But look, here we are now!” The group came up on the Tree, standing humble and out of the way. A tall mysterious looking tree towered over it, with broad beautiful leaves, not a handful of yards distant. Overhead a railcar quickly approached, stopped on the platform for a second or so, then quickly sped ahead on its course at a speed. Dan noticed, but didn’t say a word. 

“What a beautiful tree!” one of the group said, a young man, dark facial hair barely visible. “It is taller than I thought!” 

“No, John. That isn’t it. That was planted by the Dome officials to eclipse the humbler source of our salvation. Look you, here,” Dan corrected, and motioned for John to look below where the real Tree was. 

“Oh, well, that is nice, too,” John said with an awkward smile then slunk in the back of the party out of view of their leader. The group now stood around the tree in a semi-circle, with Dan standing in the middle beside the Tree, and he started to address them.

“Wood from this Tree!” he began in his oratorical fashion which became him very well indeed, tapping the bark, “was hewn to make a fire of the Lord of Light-World, Lu the Illuminating! Lu was burned like a log in a stove! The Fallen ones, the Dark ones did this!” but as Dan spoke, the little crowd had grown so weary of lack of sleep and full bellies of barbecue chicken and pork-chops, they had reclined on the turf and started to doze. Dan continued for those who would try to stay alert. “The Dark ones offered Lu to their master, Ferater, as a burnt offering, not conceiving the scope of what they did. Through the Caduclui’s malefactions, the world was cleansed of the stain of blood and odor of decay, reborn into Light by all those who would swear allegiance and fealty to the Lord of Light, instead of to the Lord of Darkness. The Dome was created to facilitate this allegiance, and to promulgate the decrees and directives of the Lord of Light. Ferater’s influence was for a good while checked by the powerful stronghold of the Dome and its officials who worked the will of Lu! But time passed and a people grew weary of the traditions and truths of the Dome, and wanted change,” but as Dan spoke, he saw that only John and Mr. Pete remained awake, all the others having fallen asleep or nearly so on the soft grassy spot surrounding the sacred Tree. 

Dan let out a sigh, and, turning to Mr. Pete, he addressed him, “I suppose it’s my preaching that done it, no?”

“Oh, well, now, I think it was a stirring speech, sir, stirring!” 

“The finest of its kind,” said John, now not so sheepish. ‘The finest, Mr. Dan.” 

“Thank you both. I suppose you should probably get some rest, too, before we have to rouse the others, and start heading toward Mt. Olé.” Dan took a seat on the ground apart from the rest, and nearest the Tree. He sat in a slightly dewy earth which started to form as the warm evening air condensed on the cool blades of grass. Mr. Pete had slipped off to bed now, too, on a park bench not far from Dan, but John did not move from his spot at the back of the group. He looked at Dan intently, then at the Tree, then back at Dan. Dan was mumbling to himself.

“Say, what are you doing, Mr. Dan?” John asked, walking up to where Dan had reclined himself on the ground. 

“You don’t have to call me mister, John,” Dan said, looking up at John. “I’m practically your age, you know.” 

“You and I both know that isn’t quite right, is it?” John said, taking a seat next to Dan. “You’re old enough to be my granddaddy, though you don’t look a year older than me. So what were you doing, Dan?” 

“I was praying, John. Praying for the courage to do the will of Tulu,” Dan said, picking a dandelion and smashing its petals between his fingers. 

“What is the will of Tulu, you suppose, Dan?” John asked. 

“I don’t know. But I think I may be in serious dangers, if not death soon. I don’t know if I will be able to make it with you all to Mt. Olé,” and tossed the weed a few feet from where he and John reclined in the grass. Mr. Pete looked asleep, but was overhearing Dan and John talk from where he lay on the bench. Presently he spoke. 

“If by my life I can prevent that, sir, count on me!” Mr. Pete said, sitting up on his bench and looking affectionately at Dan. 

“If it is the will of Tulu, it can’t be prevented, nor would I will it so, Mr. Pete. But I thank you for your courage,” Dan said, and lay down and rested himself on the wet grass a little while. 

Not long after, a commotion was heard far off at the front of the park entrance, which made Dan stir from his silent prayers. He observed that John and Mr. Pete had followed the group in falling asleep, too. Lights were seen coming down the path to where they were, many lights. Soon the tumult of loud talking and boots stomping across the ground was more and more visible. It was Dome officials, weapons drawn, and Oscar Eliot at the front of the troop! Dan sat motionless and watched their approach. Finally Mr. Pete awoke, as well as the others. John woke, too, but stood off from the group behind the Tree. 

“Here, here he is,” Eliot said, walking up to the group of rebels, and pointing to Dan sitting on the ground. “Here’s your man,” and as he said so, two soldiers in Dome uniforms stepped forward, light blasters out, lights blinking and humming, but Mr. Pete popped up from the bench and sped over to stand in front of them and between Dan. 

“You’ll have to take me out of the way, before you can have him!” Mr. Pete said, now no longer soft and gentle, and stood before the armed officials like an indomitable mountainside. 

“Stand aside, old man!” one of the officials said, “Or you’ll join him on the pyre!” But Pete was resolved not to budge. A tense moment ensued, with the troop of soldiers looking about helplessly at the old man in the way of their catch, and Mr. Pete staring back at them with bright, youthful and fierce eyes. The rest of the Dan’s followers had stood aside and made way for the soldiers to pass through. John had seemingly run away at the first sight of blasters, but was but a few trees down out of sight. Dan spoke.

“Stand down, Pete. It is Tulu’s will. Stand down,” in somber tones. Pete hesitated, but slowly moved aside to all the soldiers to pass by. They grabbed Dan and hoisted him up by his collar of his shirt which was dimly sparkling in the park lights. 

“Now’s our hour, glitter boy,” one of the soldiers said, and beat Dan over the head with the stock of his blaster pistol. Dan let out a faint groan, then fell fast into unconsciousness. 

Dan awoke to a bucket of big ice chunks and water thrown into his face, which pelted violently against his skull. 

“Wakey, wakey, mister fakey!” came a voice so cruel and familiar to Dan, that he tried to look up, but disbelief mixed with horror prevented his doing so immediately. He was also still recovering from the ice chunks. “It’s time to have that chat, now, glitter-boy!” and another dowse of ice water fell on his head. Dan looked up but didn’t lift his head. He was in the mirror room, again. His hands and feet were restrained behind him and to the metal chair. He couldn’t move even if he wanted to. 

Looking up a little more, he perceived the identity of his assailant: Johnny Smith! “Impossible!” Dan thought. But there he was, John Smith, standing before him with an empty bucket in one hand and something like a rod of metal in the other, standing over Dan with a sickening grin on his face. The room was reflecting his impossible image to infinity, as Dan’s head dropped down, and he closed his eyes again, but spoke.

“You’re a dream. You’re not real. You’re dead,” Dan said, in a cold, realist tone. “My wife killed you.” 

“Wrong again, bucko!” and cracked Dan up side the head with the empty metal bucket, which sent him to the floor with a crash, his hands and feet still tightly bound. He must have lost consciousness again, because the next thing he knew he was sitting again chair upright, and Johnny was not in the mirror room anymore. 

Dan looked around. Just another interrogation room, empty except for himself. He looked at himself. Blood was all on one side of his face, flowing freely from where Jonny, or his imposter, had hit him. “Thy will be done, Tulu, thy will,” Dan mumbled, and then dropped his chin on his chest and closed his eyes again. 

Presently the glass door cracked open, revealing the form of a man Dan would have been equally startled to see as he was Johnny: it was the Commander from Central City, whom Dan knew to be Rutherford from his dream-vision, standing now before him. 

“Hello, Cadet Daniel Goodman. I trust we are meeting your expectations as an up and coming prophet for our times!” Rutherford said with a chuckle. Dan opened his eyes and looked up. It was Rutherford all right. The hat with the double SS and I, the sandy gray hair, and those black eyes glaring down at him. 

“No, you are not. I thought I’d be dead by now,” Dan said, as cold as before. 

“Oh, no, no. You are not going to get away that easy. No, we here at the Dome have something very special in store for you! We wouldn’t want to start the barbecue without you perfectly conscious, and able to feel every last skin cell on your body sizzle and burn to a crisp!” Rutherford said with snarl, and bent down to Dan’s ear as he did so to articulate every heinous syllable. “That is, of course, if you insist upon this business of spreading lies and falsehoods about the Dome and the Viceroy!” and put his hand on Dan’s shoulder. “Otherwise, it might go more pleasantly for you if you cease and desist,” and gently patted Dan on where he was holding and leaned back up, but still loomed over him.

“Why aren’t you dead, Rutherford! I killed you!” Dan said, now shooting a look up into Rutherford’s face. 

“I am, and Metro City knows it! That is why my coming back will be so winning for our cause! Dome Official slain in the line of duty miraculously raised from the dead by Viceroy Guth! The headline will run, I think,” and gave out another menacing chuckle. 

“You’re dead and I know that!” Dan shouted up at Rutherford, bound as ever. 

“Easy, now, easy! We wouldn’t want anyone else to hear you say that, would we? I was dead. That’s all you know, kid!” but as he spoke, Dan was loosening his bonds without him noticing, and was very soon free at his hands. The Commander from Central City went on. “We need a miracle or two at present, and the Dome will see it done. We also need a burnt offering, and you fit the bill, buddy boy!” and poked at Dan with his index finger in chest, which Dan with a rush of force grabbed, along with Rutherford’s hand as well, and twisted violently such that the Commander fell to his knees in whimpering pain before Dan, who was still tied to the chair at his legs. 

“Tell me, now, Commander! Who are you! I know you’re not Rutherford. I cracked his skull on the concrete. You’re an imposter!” and torqued more so, that Rutherford, or whoever he was, cried out in agony, but spoke nothing. “Very well, then say good bye to a working right arm!,” and was about to wring it to the point of snapping, when all of a sudden the glass door cracked open and Johnny, or someone who looked and sounded identical to that old villain, rushed in and bashed Dan’s head with the metal rod he wielded earlier, which sent Dan to the floor again, and made him lose consciousness. 

When Dan awoke, this time he was standing on a trailer hitched to a glider, which hovered silently above the desert floor just outside of Metro City. A multitude of citizens, Dome Academy instructors, students, and parents, and many Officials in black uniform were in attendance. Dan was stupefied at the size of the crowd. It appeared as though three-quarters of the city’s population was present. Looking about himself Dan beheld that he was tightly tied to a pole of some kind. He looked up, it was six feet above his head, and below him he stood upon a great many bundles of kindling. 

“Dome Officials, Academy Personnel, Men, Women, Children!” rang out voice from another platform hitched to another glider. It was Rutherford’s voice. “It is with great gratitude that I have here today the beneficent father and benefactor of my miraculous revitalization. His Humility and Grace, Viceroy Guth!” and Dan heard an outpouring of fanfare he’d never heard of in his life. The full ceremonial guard had quite escaped his observation before. As it rang out, he saw processing down Metro City street toward the edge of town Viceroy Guth, or whom Dan thought to be so, all in a golden-rose vestment of dazzling beauty, and an elaborately decorated head device that made his person appear eight feet tall, all in gold interwoven in floral pattern.

Viceroy Guth processed up to where Commander Rutherford was aloft a speaking platform, and, with the help of a Dome official, arose to it with a step and bowed to Rutherford. Rutherford fell to his knees, and payed homage to the Viceroy, and then arose to his feet and bowed again and addressed the crowd. 

“This is, indeed, a day on which Metro City is honored beyond its ability to be justly thankful. Viceroy Guth, Lord of the World, has come here upon hearing of my suffering death at the hands of this, this…” here Rutherford looked with disgust at his supposed murderer and went on, “This fiend from Hell! This blood-bathed devil! To work a wondrous thing! To save me from the empty oblivion that awaits us all! I’ve seen it, and there is nothing, I tell you, more after this life!” at this the crowd gave out a collective shutter, and Rutherford went on. “It is true! Believe it! That’s why we must offer this murderer in atonement for our ailments,” and the people looked about themselves, then back at Rutherford with a puzzlement openly on their faces. 

Dan was watching and listening, while also trying to loosen the rope that bound him to the wooden pole, but it wouldn’t budge. Rutherford went on. 

“A body dies if a cancerous tissue is left to fester and devour the remaining healthy flesh! All we have is this body! There is nothing else! Daniel Goodman is a cancer, and he must be cut out! No, he must be burned out! Or we all perish by his deceptions and curses against the Dome and everything it stands for, and against!” at this the crowd seem to be swayed by the medical metaphor, and became sympathetic to the the executioner’s deranged religion. “Life must go on! Even if we don’t! Metro City must go on! Humanity must go on! Even if Daniel Goodman doesn’t!” The crowd burst into a thunderclap of applause, but soon Rutherford motioned for them to quiet and let him speak again. “I want to ask the good Viceroy Guth to speak to you a few words,” and bowed low and handed the Viceroy the megaphone-like device he was speaking into. 

Viceroy Guth shimmered in the evening sun, pale pink like his own garb. Looking out over the enormous crowd, he spoke, not in a voice Dan exactly expected, if he even knew what to expect from an imposter Viceroy’s oration. 

“Friends! I’ve come down from Central City because my friend was killed by an Academy cadet and Metro City was in need of mercy and justice. It was a mercy that I raised my friend, Commander Rutherford from the grave. And it is justice that now I preside over his killer’s execution,” here the crowd clapped and hooted, but then became silent again for the Viceroy to speak. “There is an ancient practice, so long since it was employed, of burning at the stake. Such a punishment was exacted only for the most dire crimes, one such being an attack on the Viceroy or his personnel. As you are aware, Rutherford was my right hand man, and had come to Metro City to seek out and apprehend an especially dangerous enemy agent. He was successful in completing his mission with the termination of the enemy agent, but was brutally killed in the line of duty doing so by this young man before you, former Cadet Daniel Goodman,” and pointed his finger at Dan who was looking and listening attentively at his speech. “Therefore, it is my grave duty that I pronounce judgement against this Daniel Goodman as guilty of murder of a Dome official, and I sentence him to be burned at the stake until he is ash and is no more!” The crowd thundered again with deafening applause.  

As it happened, Mr. Pete and John were in attendance, though they kept a low profile. John wanted to shout out, “What about a fair trial!” or “It ain’t murder if the man lives!” but Mr. Pete, half guessing his thoughts, held him back and motioned to keep quiet. The others were gone. Eliot Oscar was also in attendance, but only looked on without feeling a thing. Dan had no idea. He thought he was alone, and looked about for anyone to come to his aid to refute the falsehoods, unveil the deceptive wool over everyone’s eyes, and cut him free from the fire wood at his back. No one came. He looked again at the hitched-up speaking platform from which Viceroy Guth and Commander Rutherford spoke. For the first time he noticed who it was who would be in the driver seat of glider that would pull his trailer: Johnny Smith! “I should have known,” Dan said to himself with a huff, and watched the sun silently sink down behind the mountain range.      

There was a time, not so long ago, when one received a happy helping of self-loathing upon entering into a department store. This effect was induced in the shopper by the displays set all around, like so many holy reminders of what one was not: you are not fit; you are not well groomed; you are not joyful (where’s your smile like that supermodel’s?); and so forth, until the marketing scheme achieved its mission, and you walked out with a pair of shoes or shirt you didn’t need so as to feel a little less worthless.  

But, as of late, I’ve noticed a trend change in the marketing scheme, much to my dismay. Perhaps you’ve noticed, too? It is the trend now in at least a few stores I have had the misfortune of stepping into to display, not Aphrodite incarnate, in light and harmonious form, borne aloft by sea mist to bring you a bottle of perfume. No, no, that just won’t do. What we are met with now is a woman nearly as round as tall, in skin-tight denim one fears is about to burst at the seams, and usually accompanied by her equally fat friends, and hanging out (who knows why) on some street corner or other urban setting.  

Now say what you like for the former, that it demoralizes woman, makes them despair of their true form or their woman-within or whatever, that it’s consumerist and promotes superficial beauty, but I say (if I may) that the former marketing approach is more in line with Christian morality, nay, that it is actually a holy and good thing altogether, and that the latter marketing ploy is evil, birthed from Hell, a stratagem of Satan himself to damn souls, if not to an eternity, at least to a natural life of misery, moral destitution, and hypertension. 

You see, whereas before the stores made you look up to some ideal beauty or image or idol of glamor, now you are encouraged to look no further than your own fat waist line. Though the former was coercive in its method, sneakily insinuating that you need that pink blouse to look good, the latter is so ugly, fat and lazy as almost to discourage purchasing anything at all—who would want to buy a pair of jeans if it made you look like that?!. One is perhaps inclined to believe that the new advertisement is not so much a marketing device as a piece of propaganda, a machine for mind control and manipulation of the social and psychological order, a way, in a word, to fashion a new proletariat for the new world order. Maybe, but I overstep my thesis by implying as much.

But the effect the new method does have without a doubt is that you have room to grow in your sin as you do in your pants. You need not self-loath anymore. That’s so 90s, with SlimFast and workout VHSs. Eat, drink, and be as heavy as a mini cow. Your kind is accepted here. The effect induced from this new method in the shopper is quite the reverse of the old, at least for the immoral shopper. She is happy with herself, either because the stores finally carry her size, or because she is pleased she’s not so fat as all that, and secretly is well-pleased with her own superiorly smaller shape. In other words, the new method makes one either gluttonous, slothful, or proud, all of which are deadly sins. 

What is true in the realm of clothing stores is also true in the area of doctrine, which preceded it, just as the soul precedes the body. Just as aesthetic relativism is sweeping the marketplace today, calling fat fashionable, so in the early 1900s, moral relativism was sweeping Europe and America—no doubt the machinations of Freemasonry, though with Enlightenment origins, if not ancient and more evil ones, like Lucifer. This new relativism would change the way people thought about God, the World, and the Self, reducing truth to a subjective experience instead of an objective thing “out there” beyond one’s own conception or opinion. But it is not my object to retell the story of philosophical relativism here, but to point out how the philosophical assumptions and reprogramming by the literati and intellectual elite of the 20th century have changed the way your mother or father or any other family member or friend thinks. 

In an unhappy instance of this, I was recently in correspondence with one I thought of goodwill who wanted to be a Catholic, but soon afterward decided against it, and instead wanted to become a schismatic. I was heavy hearted upon hearing this, and suggested this person read some G.K. Chesterton, particularly his works touching upon conversion to the Catholic Church.  Chesterton, who converted late in life, noted that, “To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think.” He was well-acquainted with the moral relativists of his day, and did verbal battle with them often. The solution to the problem of relativism, as is implied by the quote above, was to become Catholic, to give some ground and solidity to one’s convictions about God, the World, and the Self; to ground one’s thought, not on one’s own limited experience, but on the collective experience of Tradition and the Faith, or the Thing, as Chesterton lovingly refers to it. That is why one only starts to think when one becomes a Catholic, because otherwise one’s thought begins from false starting points, be it materialism (all is matter), like so many scientists do, or relativism, like everyone else does who is outside the Church. And that is just where my correspondent began, in relativism, which is why he ended in error and outside the Church and inside a sect. 

In order to have some kind of success in restoring the Church, in the sense of increasing its numbers by ushering people into the Ark of Salvation before Judgment Day, we Catholics must first recognize that people do not think anymore, they merely mix or group things together. To think is to begin with a fact, and from that fact, to connect it to another term by something in common between them both. But this is not what relativists do. They are contented with just placing things side by side, and letting the proximity of each to each replace the act of conviction, of asserting this is that. Thus, coming back to my unhappy correspondent, liturgy and valid orders were mixed up with or grouped together with Christ’s Church. And so, although the individual did not say valid orders or liturgy was the Church, the mixing together of the terms (but not connecting them!) was sufficient to convince my correspondent that the sect to which he hoped to belong was the Church. Had he stopped to give thought to the subject, connecting one fact with another fact by some middle fact between them, he wouldn’t have blundered so badly. 

I do not think it is too late for him, nor indeed anyone, to convert, especially during this holy season of Lent, when so many graces fill the air, as it were by prayers, alms, and penances offered up like sweet incense to Heaven. But I do insist that one must have a basic grasp of thought, of the right use of the intellective faculty, in order to be converted to Christ. True, Faith is first, then understanding. But there is required of us all the act of the intellect to recognize the true religion, the true Church, and then to submit to Her in obedience of Faith. Teaching others this human skill of thought is key in the battle for souls. Otherwise we few who fight for the salvation of our neighbor shadowbox figments of the imagination, and all our attempts at evangelization end in frustration and failure.      

IX

The Day of the Herald

The pale blue light gave way to a rising sun, a single shaft of light from which flowed in through the doors and illuminated Dan where he stood in the center of the crowd, now gazing about in dumb amazement, though at least not blankly. Presently their eyes began to alight on Dan, who looked back at them all, who were still fanned out in their circular formation of the court yard. He looked intently at them all, as a father might look at his children, and emotion welled up into his throat which prevented his addressing them at once. Murmurings arose amidst the circular throng of three-hundred and thirty-three men, women, and teenagers, many Dan’s earth age or slightly older or younger. There were no young children. Dan spoke through the emotion in his throat anyway.

“I know not by what force or fate has brought you here to Domardor, but know this, it is a happy chance that you’re here with me!” said Dan addressing the crowd, which had a considerable stir on them. Some asked, “Who’s this?” or “He’s…I’ve seen him before..” but Dan did not allow the murmuring to continue. He broke into it again with the rest of his allocution: “You’ve been brought here, I say, either by good for good, or by evil for evil, but know now that you are free to choose which side. Those who hear and heed my words may yet live. Those who do not, will surely die!” and upon this last syllable all of Domardor filled with the sound, such were the beautiful architectural acoustics of the structure. The crowd now stirred and murmured even more, yet more quietly, as to hear the enthralling speech. “You’ve grown lukewarm, and in your tepidity you’ve allowed evil and dark to surround you and eclipse the Light! Even now this world stands on the brink of annihilation, like as at the foot of a smoking volcano,” Dan paused, to allow the words to sink in within the minds of his audience. “Death, death! Death is at the door. Death’s knocking, though you’ve grown deaf to its knocks! Death’s…” 

“Oh! Come off it, already!” came the voice of a middle-aged man standing in the front of the formation. Dan noticed him from the crowd even before he spoke out and interrupted, by the way the man looked around while Dan spoke, instead of listening. “Who do you think you are, anyway? You ain’t a Dome official or something! That ain’t no uniform I’ve ever seen!” The man did have a point. Dan was blazing with the shimmering light of the rising sun as he spoke, and to the crowd he must have looked dazzlingly bright, like one on fire, in the dark Domardor court, where the only light allowed in was falling squarely and alone on Dan. “What you blowing on about, glitter-boy! Where’s your credentials! Huh?” Dan hadn’t thought about the fact that these people could not be compelled by reason to listen to him. They needed a sign, for the Dome held such sway over their minds, such that the ancient Guides and Creeds no longer meant anything to them. Considering this for a while, he did not speak right away, which made the middle-aged man in the front irritated and impatient, and prompted him to start to leave through the open doors. “This’s joke! The boy’s a charlatan if ever there was. I’m blowin’ this place! Who’s with me?” A time for a sign was now, Dan realized, for the man was gaining a little sect of followers who were making their way toward the door. 

Another spoke up, more young than the middle-aged man but older than Dan by a decade or so, well-dressed, presumably of higher social status by the manner of his appearance and speech. “Hold on, now. Let us hear him through to the end. These are strange circumstances I’d say, which might warrant a little credulity. Why, I don’t recall how I came to be here, nor why. All I remember is sitting, dining alone at my corner café, then setting out on my way home, then waking, as it were, here in this building listening to this young man speak. I’d say that is a justifiable circumstance to at least listen to him to catch his meaning, right?” asked the man, looking about himself in the crowd as he spoke. His small spark of reason ignited a flicker of hope in Dan, as much of the crowd signaled their approval of these words with an applause, with “Hear, hear him out!,” being the general accord. Dan took up his exhortation again.

“Death, I was saying, is upon you. In only a few days, this Domardor will be destroyed and all of Metro City and the world with it!” There were a considerable number of exclamations of dread at this, but more exclamations of incredulity were perhaps countable. “Believe it. This Saturday, those who would accompany me to Mt. Olé may live. Those who deny me and remain below shall surely perish in the great flood of fire that awaits this world!” Again, more murmuring, but divided more sharply now among the crowd, with an observable count of those who believed Dan and those who did not. 

“Who are you anyway?” one older woman asked. She struck Dan as sincere yet very slow to believe anyone who would threaten world destruction without so much as an introduction of himself. 

“A fair and reasonable question, ma’am,” Dan said, now, for the first time directing his words toward an individual. “I am Daniel Goodman. I was formerly a member of the Academy in training to be an Official of the Dome, yet Heaven intervened, and I was shown my folly. I have been sent by the Lady of Light Herself,” and here Dan motioned upward toward the vault, “to give you this message. May you believe it.” This seemed to agree with the older lady, as she asked no more, and stood there contented, though obviously uncomfortable from the standing. 

“I knew it! I knew I’ve seen you before!” another voice rang out from the crowd. A younger lady, about the age of Dan actually, who was making her way toward the front of the formation to get a better look at Dan. The sunlight was now cresting above the doorway entry, such that the light was growing less impressive. Dan sparkled less. “You’re that fugitive the Info Screens were blabbering about! You remember, right?” Here the young woman looked about herself to get approval and recognition from the crowd, “a few days ago? The announcement read, if I recall, this Daniel Goodman is a fugitive of Dome authorities. He’s crazy, and dangerous!” 

“Now this fugitive is thought to be connected with two gruesome murders at the edge of the City, according to one broadcast!” came another voice, a young man, also about Dan’s age. Dan’s heart started to beat quite fast now, and wondered how to explain all of it to the crowd. He knew it would be impossible, since the evidence against him didn’t look good, and was quickly mounting to a unanimous verdict of “Guilty!” He tried to speak all the same.

“I’m no fugitive. I was being held against my will at the Dome. I fled for my life, with my wife…” This last detail was a regrettable slip of indiscretion. 

“Your wife?” came a taunting voice from the back. “What, your imaginary girlfriend? Give me a break, this kid,” and another, “You’re just old enough to drive, and you have a wife?”

“I am married, well, was married. Marie was murdered by one of the men I had to defend myself against,” Dan said.

“Wait a second! The news report didn’t mention anything about no woman body! What you do, bury her I suppose?” came one of the voices that had spoken out before with a chuckle. This put Dan in even more of a quagmire of details and facts he was very not likely to escape from unscathed. Dan went on dauntless.

“I was married, and she was murdered!” Dan shot back, now brought down from the height of a prophet to that of a defendant. “After that, I defended myself and fled into the desert. There I was visited by Tulu, who gave me the message you have heard!” Dan’s voice had lost much of its potency and the crowd sensed it. A moment or two only intervened when the middle-aged man, who had hung around a while longer, started to make his way again toward the door, and as he walked, spoke up again.

“Not a charlatan. The boy’s mad as a hatter! Tulu! Ha! And dangerous too! I’m out of here!” and as he left a considerable number walked out behind him. The sun had now cleared the lintel of the doors, rising higher into another steel blue morning. Dan stood in fading, reflected light, almost gone, with only a third of his sheepfold left, a hundred and eleven.                

Any right-minded and good-willed person would do what Dan did next. He reflected upon his past days, most extraordinary and one might say impossible, were one not possibly able to believe in the miraculous or fantastical nature of reality. Dan was able to so believe, and did so, which he could not, without violation to his primary principles and core beliefs discount as lunacy or superstition. He believed in Tulu just as sure as he believed he had a mother, though he never met her. He believed in the Lights just as sure as he believed in the power that propelled the railcars down the lines with such speed, though such power, like the Lights, were invisible. In a word, he believed, and that prevented him from remaking his own valid memory into a fictional nightmare. He was not insane; the world was. He did not lie; the world did. He was true; the world was false. 

But the dwindled crowd wasn’t privy to such interior memories and rationale. All they knew was that they woke up unaccountably in an ancient temple staring at a fugitive, murderer, and lunatic by all accounts, who was preaching to them that the world was about to end, on the word of a private correspondence from a fabled or mythological mother of god. From the point of view of the crowd, the thing strained belief to say the least, and it was a miracle in itself that the hundred and eleven persons that did stay stayed at all! Whether because of a crushingly strong curiosity, or good-will gone mad itself, the crowd did stay and attend to what Dan had to say more. 

“I thank you for hearing me out, though I dare not hope that you believe a word of what I say, as the case against he is both compelling and damning,” Dan said, his vigor of voice somewhat restored. “I know what I say sounds crazy! And I know the facts around the events and movements of my past few days has been suspect at best, and downright culpable at worst. I understand your hesitation to believe anything I say more,” this did little to even stir the crowd, as it seemed to Dan they grew impatient and only remained to hear something of interest to their curiosity. “There’s more to my story, which actually touches upon the reason for your presence here in this place.”

“Go on! I would like to hear an explanation of that enigma!” said an anonymous voice, though Dan thought it sounded rather familiar. 

“You are, as it were, bought and paid for. You were brought here––though I know not by what craft or why it was allowed to be, either through assent or deception––that I might preach to you, but am able to now but for a price. You were ensnared and in the bonds of darkness. Now you are free and in the Light!” the last finding itself rather difficult to hit home with Dan’s audience, since, as a fact, no one was in the light just presently. Domardor had grown quite dark, the sun being too much at a severe angle to brighten the interior. 

“By what were we ensnared?” asked a voice, not hostile in tone, but wavering in belief. 

“By the Fallen Ones, the Caduclui!” responded Dan. 

“The Caduclui?” said the same voice, “The Dome teaches that’s all allegorical and figures of speech! I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been ensnared by a metaphor, let alone a simile!” this brought a little wave of snickering from the crowd, but soon died down.

“The Dome lies!” said Dan, and nothing, perhaps, had he spoke sounded so absurd as that last sentence. The bedrock and foundation of all order, truth, beauty and wisdom lies? Absurd, and not only that, asinine and grossly arrogant. 

“The Dome lies, you say?” came another, rather heated and quite hostile, “And I suppose you were given all knowledge and wisdom and prophecy and truth! Bah, not only a charlatan and lunatic but also a megalomaniac! That’s it. I’m out,” and made his way toward the doors still quite open and wide and departed. Dan saw that he was someone from the Academy, from a physics course he thought, very bright, good marks, but Dan quite forgot his name.

“I did not say so. All I know I’ve received. You’ve been deceived. And what you do know is not from the Dome as it was understood, believed, and taught a half century ago! The Caduclui have infiltrated the ranks of the Dome officials, and set them to work against the dictates of revealed truth! I know not by what to convince you of this, if reason sway you no way, but read, study, the ancient Guides and Creeds; do not take my word for it!” Dan said, addressing the crowd with all sincerity. 

“Read the ancients! And do a comparative study of what was taught to what is? In a few days before we’re destroyed as you say? Which is it? Study or make our way to Mt. Olé? Can’t be both!” came another voice, of a young woman of twenty or so, with a smart and keen look about her. 

“No hour is guaranteed. We all sit in the defendant’s chair at every moment of our lives, the verdict ever pending according to our action, yet death may come as quick as a gavel fall, and we’re powerless to plead a word more on our behalf before the coming Judge!” Dan said.

“Then what do we do, sir? Believe every word you say, though nothing recommends you, or go our own way and risk losing our lives?” returned the young lady with a keen sense. 

“Look about you. What do you see? A museum! An artifact of amusement and Sunday entertainment! Nothing more,” here Dan gestured broadly about himself, still standing in the direct middle of Domardor. “Where’s the Altar of Fire? Where’s the sweet odor of sacrifice arising heavenward? Extinguished! No more! And the Guides little more now than a polite list of recommended manners, the and ancient Creeds but the remnants of a bygone and gullible age,” the truth of what Dan spoke inspired not a few with at least consideration on their surroundings and habits of religious observance. The crowd that remained were mostly temple going people, and so they knew as well as Dan that what he said was true. Some, though, liked it that way. “The incense,” they would say, “get in my face! I’m glad they’re gone!” Others missed the sacrificial incense, but were quite happy to part with the dusty old-fashioned Guides, which put a hamper on their particular vices. Still others were quite disappointed that the incense and Guides were gone, but were satisfied with the pollution and distortion of meaning of the sacred Creeds, as this provided ample opportunity to remake the world according to their own beliefs. All these, though, of course were of a generation that preceded the Usurping Council to which Dan referred. The young who followed it had no such preferences or convictions. They were the remodeled ones, the reformed ones, the new and brighter future. The keen young lady was one such. 

“Where religious sacrifice, moral codes, and cramped creeds have ever been, in the past!” said the keen young lady. “We are now and we are the future. The past is gone and buried!” 

“This is not about the past or the future or the now, just as such distinctions about the passage of time do not bear upon claims of natural or revealed truth! Is it true or no, that is the question; not what day of the week it is––or what century!” Dan shot back, but to little avail, as the young lady with the keen look was already walking out of the wide open doors. 

One by one, the majority of those gathered around Dan left the same way, though perhaps for different reasons. Each in his or her turn expressed interest in what Dan said, and would even go so far as to believe in the merits of what he said, but would finally depart for one of his or her pet preferences, either in ceremony, morals, or beliefs. Of the three hundred and three, all but twelve departed Dan. Domardor was now quite bare and empty and dark, as it was midday now, and the large group that gathered in the night had dwindled down to a little handful of followers, each of whom stood or sat close to Dan, still circled around him, though becoming weary and tired from the long night and morning. There the group sat in the empty vastness of the court yard, though shadows crept, slithering round the pillars unseen.      

Dan sat amidst the group, answering questions as best he could about himself, about Tulu, the Lights, and even about his past life in Aerlan, the details on that score were rather sparse. And he spoke about the coming wrath and judgment to his followers. These were, as a rule, young, about his age, with one exception: the railcar conductor, the same one in fact who awoke Dan at the end of the West Red Line. Though he still wore his conductor uniform––black with white trim and an official looking cap of the same material––Dan remembered him without it. He was elderly indeed, almost eighty, which perhaps explained why he and Dan got along so well. 

“I’ve lived too long to see the truth of all you’ve said, sir, about the Dome,” he said in his humble and soft tone. “In my time, why, I’ve seen the same thing condemned, and ten years later praised. I’ve seen our religious pomp displayed with such mirth and joy and merry-making one day, and, the next, thrown down to the ground and trampled neath their feet and made to ask forgiveness for it from the ugly world! I knew that Council was rotten. I just didn’t know anyone else thought so, too,” said the conductor, whom the little group now knew to be Mr. Peter, though they all just called him Mr. Pete. He was reclining as best he could on the cold, stone floor of Domardor, though quite uncomfortable and weary as Dan could see, and most likely famished.   

“Let’s get something to eat. What would you all say to that barbecue bar and grill place just down the street from here? What’s it called?” said Dan, and another, a middle-aged woman of about forty, who was married though her husband did not appear to be one of the twelve, asked, “Grove Grill?”

“That’s it! After we convene there to have some supper, I would like to show you a very special tree in Green Grove just a little ways from there.” The twelve were rather thankful and pleased at this suggestion, and all decided to leave Domardor, and retire to the eatery for refreshment. As they got up to leave, one of the twelve suggested calling ahead, as the group was large, and accommodations would be wanting without doing so. 

“Right! Good thinking. Please do,” Dan said, and the young man, Oscar Eliot, an underclassman from the Academy actually, whom Dan knew by appearance, though not personally, went ahead of the group to the Grove Grill to make preparations. As they all filtered out into the evening, Dan was the last one to close the doors. But as he did so, he noticed movement inside, and turned to count the heads. “Eleven outside, plus Eliot who’s gone ahead. No one should be inside,” he said to himself after counting. He returned inside and had a look around, only to see no one about. “Oh well. I guess my old eyes are playing tricks on me,” he said again to himself with a chuckle, and returned toward the door to exit and followed the others to Grove Grill, but as he did so, a shadow slithered past his notice, and went ahead of him and the eleven, out into the gathering gloom of twilight.    

VIII

The Day of War

Midnight had fallen on Metro City, as Dan made his way into Temple Row. The temples silhouetted in the purple dark sky had an ominous, ghostly glow about them. People were trickling into Temple Row with Dan, though no one spoke to each other. Everyone walked along the path toward the oldest site of Temple Row, the Shrine of Domardor, the doors into which were wide open and letting a pale red-orange light flow out onto the pavement and sidewalks. Dan, alert and on his guard, went with the crowd into it.

Once inside, Dan observed a multitude of people gathering about the main space of the building, a kind of massive court yard around which were pillars arranged in a gigantic circle, about a hundred yards in diameter. Dan looked up, and was perhaps the only person in the midnight assembly to do so. The vaulted ceiling in the daylight boasted a mural of star spangled sky, all in gold illumination on a deep velvety blue sky, and in the midst of which was a maternal Tulu, bearing the Light near her breast. But now, amidst the fire glow––for that was the cause of the orange-red light––and decreasing spectrum of light, was seen only darkness in the vault. Dan returned his eyes to the earth, and looked about himself. There were, again, a motley assortment of people about the yard of Domardor, young and old and middle aged, formally attired, casual, poor dressed, but all made a peculiarly singular impression upon Dan’s mind: everyone he saw, everyone he looked at neither smiled nor frowned, neither laughed, nor cried, neither spoke nor were apparently attentive to anything, all were simply there, walking in, and standing about, as if with inhuman patience, waiting for something or somebody to arrive. The impression was, again, singular, and most disturbing to Dan. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he acted as everyone else, and assumed a blank stare and passive posture, and just stood still in the crowd.  

Presently something happened. The gigantic doors which were propped open by cinderblocks were shut in on the crowd in the court yard, with a loud clank and a locking of a big bolt. Dan became uneasy, but his uneasiness concluded in positive dismay when next the fires which had been lighting the court yard the whole time were extinguished, and a heavy pitch black settled on Domardor. The most alarming thing about it, Dan thought, was that no one took notice, seemingly, for Dan couldn’t see anyone’s face, nor feel anyone either. All he heard were steps, hundreds and hundreds of feet moving all along the stone floor, shuffling about. Dan noted, too, that the steps were loud, but diminishing in intensity every second. He did not move, for he knew not why he should nor where he should go. Though the court yard was an open area, he had no way of knowing which way to go before he ran into a pillar. 

Consumed in these distressing thoughts, and feeling quite alone and helpless, Dan nevertheless kept his composure, remembering what Tulu had spoken to him, that he would not endure any harm. Two things happened next which made Dan’s heart leap up into his throat: the first, the floor beneath him started to rumble with a tremendous violence. Not like the shaking of an earthquake but like the trembling of thunder beneath his feet. He heard––and saw!––forming below his feet, and going out creating a fire glow of cracked stone all around him, a perfect and ever widening circle. The cracks gave way and stone all around Dan caved in and collapsed, falling into a fiery abyss far below. The court yard all alight by the subterranean inferno, Dan now saw he stood in the precise middle of Domardor, encircled by row upon row of people in perfect circular formation around him. Now, hundreds of fire-lit faces looked upon Dan, though, as before, without emotion, without volition even, just staring at him. 

Dan had his opportunity, the pamphlet didn’t lie. He was known. He was now quite literally the center of attention. But what to say to a crowd without will or feeling? What was the point, Dan thought to himself, as he stared back at all the empty faces. The rumbling of the floor had soon ceased, and the steady glow of flames from below cast silent shadows of the crowd all along the perimeter of the walls of Domardor. But in and out of the silent, still shadows on the walls passed another shadow, long, winding in and slithering around the shadows of the persons of the crowd on the wall. Dan watched its form move about like this for a time, heart beating fast, though rather composed all things considered. Then he heard the shadow speak. 

“Who’s this? An enemy in our midst!” said the voice, soft like distant thunder, but sharp in tone like one enraged! Dan made no reply, not for fear exactly, though he was afraid, but because he was trying to plan his escape, and didn’t know what then just to say to the voice. “I say, who’s this!”

“Daniel Goodman! Though you know who I am and why I’ve come, don’t you, Fallen!” shot out Dan boldly. “You can’t harm me!”

“Easy now, Danny, easy! We don’t want to hurt you, oh no, we want to help you, Danny,” came the voice again, now louder as if it had come closer.

“Help me? With what I wonder? Defiling my conscience? Offending the Lights? Destroying myself?” Dan was heated now, as the voice had that effect on his spirit. 

“We know better than to think you’d fall for that sort of thing, no, no. You’re not like these, you’re so special,” and upon the last syllable, the voice sounded so snakelike Dan thought it was more hissing than voicing words. Dan fought off another shudder, and emboldened himself to speak again.

“I demand you let these people go! Give them back their minds and hearts!” Dan said, roaring like a lion now, which was immediately followed up with a most hideous and noxious cackling laugh you’ve ever heard, which made the flame in Dan die down a bit. 

“These people are ours! These as well as more besides!” hissed the voice. “Their souls are ours!” and as it spoke, the single shadow from which the voice spoke splintered or frayed into a dozen just like it, all snake-like and slithering about the crowd of shadows like snakes through blades of grass.

“Then what do you demand of me?” asked Dan. “Why have you brought me here? You know you can’t keep me!” 

“No, we cannot. But we can keep you from our prey! We’ve shown you how easy that is yesterday in the Steel Mill. Miss Luis Mayberry is quite in hand, and plays her part rather well, don’t you think? Glitter-boy?” and then cackled again more hideously. Dan was made more determined, not daunted by these taunts.

“What have you brought me here for! To show me a fool?” Dan returned, his face all aflame and glowing red.

“You’re that without our help, boy!” came the voice. Dan had an inspiration. 

“You’re bluffing, you buffoons in the shadows! If you could do something, you would’ve by now. You’re just trying to keep me from getting my message out, from fulfilling my mission to Tulu!” and at that, the shadows seemed to writhe about horribly like a worm in a bird’s beak. Dan observed them closely. 

“That’s not nice!” said the voices, hissing more loudly than before, such that their echoes resounded throughout Domardor. “And lies!” 

“Then why have you brought me here, then?” Dan responded. 

“To strike a bargain. These all you may have,” at this the serpent-shadows curled around the shadows of the crowd, “If you give yourself to us,” with an emphasis on the last word, which rang throughout the court yard, and up into the vaulted ceiling where Tulu sat enthroned upon a crescent moon.

“Three-hundred and thirty-three souls––hearts, minds, and spirits––Danny! Think on it! What chance do you have to save more? None!” hissed the shadows, slithering now back and forth as if pacing impatiently, waiting for Dan to answer. Dan just stood there in the middle of Domardor, amidst fire and shadows, without a chance to accomplish his mission. The people of Metro City were enslaved by a power quite beyond them, and, it seemed to Dan, beyond himself. Surely there must be a way out, for why would the Lady Tulu have sent Dan on such a hopeless mission? These thoughts consumed Dan as the snake-shadow creatures paced back and forth. “What will it be, Danny? Say what it will be!” 

“Alright, alright! What do you want with me?” Dan said finally. 

“We need a sacrifice for our dread Master, Ferater the Black, and you fit the bill, buddy boy!” 

“The bill? What do you mean?” Dan asked.

“Innocence!” roared the venomous voices, at once happy and hateful.

“What does he need a sacrifice for?”

“To commemorate your Light Lord’s holocaust, of course! Three-hundred and thirty-three centuries ago this Friday we influenced your ancestors to burn him alive! Now we want to do the same to you!” Dan stood there for a long while without uttering a word. He looked out on all the faces of the crowd: blank stares looking back at him from across the chasm of flame and abyss. “If it were Tulu’s will that he should undergo a like passion as Her Son, why didn’t She say so?” Dan thought. “Why would She guarantee me safety, if She wanted me to give my self over to death?” Thus pondering these deep matters, Dan took no notice of the slithering snakes again pacing for want of patience. His gaze ascended from the pitiful crowd to the vault of Domardor, where the Queen of the Stars sat overseeing all, though Dan saw not her form.   

“If this be Thy will, give me a sign, O my Undying Queen!” Dan prayed, after which the shadows writhed again, and slithered low around and in between the legs of the crowd, as if hiding in terror. Dan stood there for a moment or two, then all a sudden a great sound was heard, as if from the depths of his heart or else a thousand miles away, distant as the stars themselves, yet near at hand as a bee buzzing around your ear. The shadow serpents seemed not to hear, for they remained unmoved near the legs of their spiritual captives. Steadily the sound, like a tidal wave of silver coins rolling along the earth, sounded more distinct every second, until Dan could make out what appeared to be a melody, a trumpeting fanfare he thought it sounded much like, but different, more tuneful than a brass instrument, more solid, sturdy and forceful––if such a sound could be conceived of in the imagination of sense. The call had the singular effect of rousing Dan to a spirit of animation and courage he’d never known before, either in Aerlan or during his life here. It was a trumpet call, a battle cry and call to arms, to fight and to die! 

Dan got the impression from the sound from Heaven––since it was undoubtedly an answered prayer and confirmation of his course of action––that, were the Fallen to hear even a measure of the trumpet call, their very being would implode for fear of it and cease to exist. Perhaps it was a mercy they couldn’t hear it. As the sound subsided to a dull and distant roar, then to a far off hum, then silence once more, Dan thought it proper to make his reply now.

“Attend, Vipers!” Dan shouted, strong and determined. “You shall have your sacrifice! What do I receive in return? What are the exact terms here?” The slithering forms came out from the crowds and slunk slowly up the curvature of Domardor’s ceiling, and as they did so, Dan lost sight of the shadows going higher up, into the darkness of the vault. 

“You shall free the three-hundred and thirty-three here present to listen to you,” came the voices from the darkness above, “And after which, we shall have you to do with as we please!” Though Dan could not see, he had the distinct impression that the shadowy forms were curling around the painted bodies of the Infant Lu, and His Mother, Tulu above in the vault as they spoke.    

“You won’t interfere? You won’t influence them to evil, or twist my meaning in their minds?” Dan asked, head up-turned, shouting in the dark. 

“We won’t, we promise!” hissed the voices. 

“Your promises are as good as rotten eggs. No. I’ll have you swear an oath by which you’ll be bound forever!” Dan spoke with such authority, the snakes merely replied with a timid, “Yes.”

“Swear to the agreed upon terms, that these present three-hundred and thirty-three persons are free to follow my directions to make it to Mt. Óle this Sunday, to be saved from the coming deluge of fire, that you shall not interfere with my message to them, neither actively opposing me, or indirectly, through altering of external circumstances, e.g., impaired hearing, simulation, or distractions, etc., that, in a word, these three-hundred and thirty-three souls are free from your influence, and free therefrom forever! And, finally, that I shall be free from your bonds for the duration of a day, to preach my message to these here present,” Dan said, his authority as demonstrable as before. 

“We so swear,” came the voices  from above. 

“So swear upon your Ferater Dark Lord, that, upon the reneging of stated terms by any of your company, such terms of contract are immediately voided, and neither party subject to said terms.” 

“We so swear,” hissed the voices again.

“And that if in the event of reneging by any of your company, your torments of fire and misery thus far experienced heretofore, henceforth shall be multiplied by a million, without end unto eternity. Swear it!” The pause was lengthy, the silence audible. Finally:

“We swear to it all, Danny Boy! Now have back your bleating sheep!” Rang down the voices from above and all about Dan’s head, and suddenly the fires ceased as the chasm closed, and the doors flung open, revealing a pale blue dawn of a new day.                  

Stephen Heiner, founder of True Restoration (which proclaims itself as a “Catholic content company” found himself in some hot holy water after keyboarding what may be honestly called a hit piece. The article written back in January was originally entitled “Why the CMRI Are Not an Option for Serious Catholics,” but Heiner has since changed that hard-lined headline to the softer, almost soothing “What Serious Catholics Should Know About the CMRI.”

The article dealt with two issues Heiner has with the CMRI: the clergy allowing congregants to attend una cum masses and the granting of marriage annulments, or at least passing judgment on marriage cases. Heiner here is absolutely correct in pointing out the non-Catholic position of the CMRI on these issues. He is absolutely correct, for instance when he says, “Assistance at an una cum Mass is objective participation in the modernist Novus Ordo. There’s simply no getting around this.”

Now, for those of you who may not know what an una cum mass is, it is simply a traditional Roman rite mass in which the priest offers up the mass in unity with the reigning pontiff, and mentions him by name. Now, it is very curious for the CMRI, being a sedevacantist group, to allow its congregants to attend such masses. Setting aside the fact that it is a sin to pray with heretics, by hypothesis, there wouldn’t be a pope to name, if the Holy See was indeed empty, right? So why the mixed messages? The most probable answer to that question is sin, which tends to make one stupid.  

But what is ironic here is that Heiner, who promotes the asinine material-formal, or Cassiciacum thesis, otherwise known as sedeprivationism—the theological brainchild of the very late Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers—goes out of his way to write against the CMRI which allows people to pray with the currently reigning pope they as a congregation don’t actually believe exists. Why ironic? Because, according to the theory, there is a legally elected roman pontiff, it’s just you can’t mention him in your prayers at mass because he is only a material pope, not a formal pope, which is to say the Antichrists from Roncalli to Francis were all quite literally merely paper popes, legally designated to be pope, and would be formally, if only they abjured their Antichrist-like ways.

So, in point of fact, Heiner and Most Holy Trinity Seminary (the outfit Sanborn heads up), are not really sedevacantists at all. So, what we have here is Heiner not allowing the sedevacantist CMRI to mention a pope they don’t believe exists, while at the same time believing himself that a pope does exist, if only materially or legally, but cannot be named during the mass. This is simply a classical case of the pot calling the kettle black. Heiner will not allow Pivarunas (the pseudo-bishop heading up the CMRI) to pray with a non-existent pope, but does allow himself not to pray with a pope he does believe exists—if only materially. What bizarre and bewildering hypocrisy!

The next issue Heiner has with the CMRI is that they take it upon themselves to say who is and isn’t married, according to the marriage laws of the Church. Heiner objects to this on the grounds that the CMRI clergy have no right to exercise anything in the way of a legal function of the Church. To do that one would need jurisdiction and authority, which Heiner points out (quite rightly) the CMRI clergy do not have. Heiner concludes, “…the best our clergy can do is investigate to give someone some sense of probability, but no more than that.” 

Let me just pause on this point about probability, if only to illustrate just how far gone Heiner’s mind is, before I address the overarching hypocrisy of it all. Why would a priest be permitted to investigate the probability of a marriage contract’s validity, but not determine whether it is or is not valid? Do such entities as law or legal norms admit of probability? (Hint: No.) One really would like to know, based upon the books, whether such and such a man is guilty of murder or just manslaughter, or whether the man in question was completely innocent. Who could possibly settle for or even tolerate a ruling of  “guilty of murder—probably.” What good would it do the victim’s family? What justice would be worked in such a case as that? In a word, what would be the point in passing judgment at all if one were confined only to what was probably so? As it is with murder so it is with marriage. It is just stupid to say one can say a conclusion of fact and law is probable but cannot say it is actual. On what grounds would one say a marriage was probable, if not on the same grounds which determine its actuality, its having existed at all, whether such facts which the law provides for actually took place? But I digress.   

Now, if Heiner’s holding the prohibition on una cum masses—while holding to the material-formal thesis—is a classical case of the pot calling the kettle black, this issue about marriage annulments and lack of authority and jurisdiction is something akin to the black witch calling her cauldron black. It is simply wickedly preposterous, whatever one’s depth of understanding about the legal functions of the Church, to insist that one group cannot adjudicate marriage contracts for lack of jurisdictional authority, but another group may call its mass center a parish (a legal designation of a jurisdictional territory in the Church), open other mass centers throughout the world, operate a seminary, absolve sins in the tribunal of the confessional, and, perhaps what’s most preposterous, determine who is legally pope! So, in other words, the CMRI determining whether their congregants are adulterers is bad business but Sanborn&Co. can open sacramental shops worldwide, determine who is and is not absolved of sin, screen candidates for the priesthood (and supposedly educate and train them in canon law, sacred theology and sacred liturgical rites), and finally adjudicate who are cardinal electors and consequently who is in possession of a legitimate papal election. How could Heiner believe such rot, let alone type it out for the world to see? The most probable answer to that question is sin, which tends to make one stupid.  

Perhaps what’s most hypocritical is Heiner’s censuring the CMRI’s tolerance of una cum mass attendance with a quote from Pope Pius VI, but which may equally be applied to the Most Holy Trinity clergy: “Keep away from all intruders, whether called archbishops, bishops, or parish priests; do not hold communion with them especially in divine worship.” 

VII

The Day of the Moon

Dan continued to shield his eyes for some time even after the last of the echoing thunder ceased to be heard. The hour was late in the morning, just on the verge of dawn, Dan thought, and turning toward Metro City, he started at once––this time, with his feet on the ground. 

As he walked along in the increasing light of the morning, Dan looked back on his wondrous experience, and also reflected upon the dread fate that awaited those who would not head his message. My Son shall destroy this world, Dan remembered with a shudder what the Moonlight Lady said, Her pearly soft voice contrasting hard against the unbearable reality of the words. 

Dan thought about his mission as he walked, too. The sun was cresting the distant eastern range, and directing gleaming bright into Dan’s eyes, a welcome warmth and light from the cool and darkness of desert night. “If they do not head my words, they shall perish, one and all!” Dan said aloud, as if to the Sun Himself. As he walked along, thus absorbed by this heavy melancholy thought, Dan took no notice of the fact that, whereas before, his raiment shone with a dim brightness of a waning moonbeam, now his attire burned bright white like that of a blacksmith’s fire. As he walked, were one to look upon his approach from the City, Dan would have appeared as a second sun arising from the west. As it was, though, no one noticed, for no one was awake enough to notice his coming into the City at all. 

As Dan returned, he did not know at first which way to go, or where to begin, or what to say. But as he walked slowly down the street of the industrial district, he thought he might know where to begin. A steel mill, with thousands of workers, was just up the road on the left. The factory was in full swing with the day’s operations, pumping out hundreds of thousands of pounds of metalworks for the City and trading abroad. Thus operations necessitated a considerable work force, which Dan thought would make for a good beginning point from which to get his message spread throughout the Metro City. He resolved to go there to the factory and begin his preaching.

Coming up to the building, which was more like a little city itself than a single structure, Dan strained his neck bending his head back to look up and up as the side of the facade which rose up into a steel-blue sky above, with but a lonely cloud floating by. The door was glass, like the Cube Academy, and Dan squinted looking at it, for it shone with the brightness of reflected sunlight. He opened the door and walked in. 

The business receptionist desk was set high above the head of the woman who was working there. Dan looked around. No artwork on the walls. No pictures of persons. No color. No chair. No coffee table. Just grey blue blank walls, a desk previously alluded to, and a single door which presumably led to the factory floor. Dan approached the desk which enfolded around the secretary, who was presently on the phone, and took no notice of Dan. 

As she finished up her call, Dan took the opportunity to observe her. To his surprise, as he did so, a strange new sensation arose in his heart and mind. He could almost guess what she was thinking. “Not, thinking,” Dan thought to himself, “More like feeling out in words,” as if he could perceive her emotional and cognitive disposition like one observes hair color or skin tone. As he so observed her, she seemed perplexed by Dan’s presence, while still talking on the phone with someone else, by the sound of it, Dan thought a steel trader on the coast. 

“If that would suit your associates, I’m sure Mr. Turner and his team would accommodate. Just send us words when you’ve made your decision. Yes. Uh huh. Ba-bye now,” said the secretary into the headset telephone apparatus mounted to her skull, and looked up at Dan. “The sign says, sir, no soliciting. Turner Steel Co. is not interested in what you are selling. So please do us both a favor, and leave please,” said the secretary in neither a cold nor heated tone, but one of utter indifference and impersonality. 

“Why do you think I am here to sell something?” Dan asked, perplexed himself. 

“One look at you, I knew you weren’t a client or worker. No go on, get out of here before I have to call security,” and seemed to go back to her some papers in front of her, but looked up a few times to see if Dan were leaving. He just stood there staring down at her.

“You are right. I am not a worker or a client. But I am not here to sell you anything. I am here to solicit something, though,” Dan said in patient, soothing tones.

“That’s just it, guy! There’s no soliciting! Now get on now or I’m calling security!” Dan just looked down at her dumbly. He did not want to upset the woman, but he did want to have an opportunity to speak with the scores of workers presumably behind that very door. He tried another approach.

“Listen, lady! You can call security. See if I care. But I will not leave this building until I’ve delivered my message. All I ask is that you let me have a word with your employees for a few minutes. That’s all!” Dan said, very stern but not unkind. The woman was at first taken aback by his sudden change in temperament, but at the words for a few minutes, a change came over herself, and she became heated. 

“Listen, glitter-boy! If you think I’m going to catch it from Mr. Turner for stopping his presses for even a second, so some lunatic in sparkle pants can come deliver his message, you’re more nuts than I took you for. Now get out, or I will call security. You have ten seconds. Ten, nine, eight, seven…” Dan continued to stare dumbly down at her. “Five…four…” And, with a long sigh, he turned toward the door to leave, but looked back at the woman behind the bunker-of-a-desk, who had stopped her counting to continue shuffling papers, this time actually appearing to read them. After a second, she looked back up at Dan who had exited the building, and snorted and rolled her eyes into her head, then returned them downward to the present pressing business papers. 

Dan walked out into the blue morning with a heavy heart. How was he to save those who would not hear him even speak? How was he to get to the heart and mind of those who had their ears stopped up? Dan’s strength and agility were demonstrably near omnipotent compared to the rest of the inhabitants of Metro City, as was made known to Dan the night prior. And, according to the promise of the Lady, Dan could not know harm while he was on his mission. Dan was, in his own mind and in reality, invincible against any physical antagonist, any bodily enemy who would oppose him. Yet, and this weighed heavily on Dan’s heart, he felt impotent, weak and small now, opposed and shown up as a fool and crazy person even by a puny woman secretary of a steel-mill factory in the outskirts of the City. 

“If she stopped me from getting my message out, how am I going to get it out to fellow cadets at the Academy, or even the instructors or officials, or at the orphanage?” Dan thought aloud, utterly dismayed by the prospect. All the while feeling low, and walking down the street toward the central district, he heard railcars pacing to and fro over head, whistling high then low as they neared and passed by, and then another thought came to him: “If I can’t be heard, then I’ll be seen!” and with that began to run very quickly down the sidewalk of the street, and as railcars whizzed past, Dan started to run so fast, he quickly outpaced them. Flying along now Dan glittered with the golden beams of the morning, and looked more like a streak of light flowing through the streets of Metro City than a stunningly fast young man running to grab people’s attention, so no one noticed him. 

This fact began to dawn on Dan, and so he slackened his sprint to a human speed, then to a leisurely jog, then to slow and heavy walk, without even a noticeable change in breathing. “Great!” Dan shouted aloud. Those who were coming and going, in and out of businesses didn’t notice. “I’m faster than a speeding bullet, and still no one sees me,” and, looking around at the passersby, he continued, “What’s the good of being practically omnipotent when no one even opposes you but simply ignores you?” This defeatist train of thought plunged Dan into a deep rumination which would have rapidly devolved into a spell of despair had not a single ray of light illuminated his mind to a memory of a tree in a park which withstood a shot from a blaster. 

“Of course! Green Grove! I have to preach the Tree that saved humanity! I have to tell Metro City that they are not the meaning of the world! That that Tree is! I have to remind them what was lost, given up, sacrificed, to appease the wrath of the Light, that it was Light sacrificed to Light to expel the Darkness from the world! Which Darkness has now slowly crept back in and consumed it again,” Dan continued thus, to himself animated like he had an audience, though no one even noticed he was talking as he walked by. “How the Lady deigned to visit me, how She with a trembling lip,” here Dan began to swoon as he spoke aloud, “offered Her Son as a burnt offering to the Lord,” and began to weep, for the visitation’s memory was too fresh to allow for any other emotion. Thus he walked down the sunlit street weeping and talking to himself like a madman, himself all ablaze like a living sun walking about on the earth, but no one noticed.   

By the time Dan came to, he noticed it was evening and the sun had past down over the mountains. He had walked all day long through the streets, talking aloud, recounting the history of Light and Darkness, by what knowledge he gained living in Aerlan––for just as his bodily strength returned to him, so too did his knowledge of the Worlds and their meanings, and what his place was in it all, which excited him exceedingly. Thus so absorbed in the torrent of names, dates, sweet teachings of the Guiding Lights, and the recollection of the beautiful persons whom the Lights inspired to heroic feats and everlasting accomplishments which Dan recollected from his previous life in Aerlan, he’d quite forgotten about his bodily needs of food and drink and rest, and so decided to amend the oversight and break his fast at a diner just at the corner, all a buzz and blaze with indigo blue and neon orange lights. 

Walking up to the door, Dan looked up to see no stars, nor clouds, but the faint aspect of the Moon, shimmering silent in the sky. He stood there motionless for a moment or two too long for propriety’s sake, for as he returned his gaze to the receptionist as he walked in the door, she blurted out, “No drunkys, allowed. Go eat off your drunk somewhere else. This is a family establishment,” to which Dan, wiping the recollected emotion from his eyes, looked up at her wondering what on earth she was talking about.

“Drunkys, ma’am?” He asked, politely. 

“Well, if you ain’t drunk, mister, what’ll it be? Booth, bar, or table?” the receptionist responded, quite unresponsive to his inquiry. 

“Booth, please,” Dan said, as polite as before. She showed him to his table, to which Dan was about to protest but, remembering the forward nature of the receptionist, decided against it on account of not wishing to make a scene. After the coast was clear, he quietly slipped into a booth when she left his sight, and he seated himself and took up a menu and looked out the window. 

Outside, it would have been dark indeed but for the panoply of florescent bulbs bedecking the train-car diner which stood fast there on the corner of the street. Dan watched persons pass by through the intersection. It was getting late, yet the night was full with the comings and goings of a motley assortment of personages. Old, young, well-to-do, poor as rags, all on some kind of errand or another, and all quite oblivious to the fact that they would all be destroyed in less than a week. One such caught Dan’s attention: a young man of about twenty-four, aimlessly walking up and down the street, holding his hand out ever so often. Dan thought this was a hobo at first, but then he saw the young man’s hand wasn’t empty but holding up and handing out pamphlets to those who would take them. 

Dan ordered a burger, fries, and a cup of coffee, but found that he really didn’t have an appetite, but did have a sip or two of some black coffee. He settled his check with the receptionist who was now his cashier without a word, making his way toward to the door, he turned back to see the middle-aged woman chewing bubble gum and looking absently outside then down at her watch then outside again. Dan sighed, then went outside himself. 

The night air was brisk but comfortable, and quite enlivening to Dan’s spirits, or else it was the effect of the black coffee on his otherwise empty stomach. Whatever it was, he felt rejuvenated and ready for whatever was next in store––though, had he known what was in store for him that night, he wouldn’t have been quick to say so. He had the mind to venture to Green Grove, to pay homage to the Tree Marie had shown him, and was presently tending toward the railcar platform station to do so, when he passed by the young man holding out the pamphlets. 

“Want to take a walk on the dark-side? Take this!” said the young man, older to Dan by appearance, but significantly his junior. 

“Thanks, young man, I mean, sir. Thanks. What’s this?” Dan asked looking at the him in the glowing gaudy light of the diner. 

“Your ticket to power, my friend!” he said in an intriguing tone Dan couldn’t get out of his head for sometime after. 

“What kind of power, friend?” Dan asked, playing along. 

“Whatever you want! Whatever you can dream of! The pamphlet says how. Act now, though. It goes down tonight!” and gesturing as though that were the end of his commercial, he turned away from Dan then turned back one last time to grin, but as he did so Dan noticed the young man’s eyes did not reflect any of the orange and blue light of the diner, did not look like eyes at all, really, but two ominously sunken pits of emptiness. Dan turned, shuddered and made his way toward Green Grove, though still holding the pamphlet. 

Once in the railcar, Dan settled himself in to the seat and looked down at the pamphlet, which was no bigger than Dan’s palm, black on the front and back with no writing on it, at least none Dan noticed at first. But, as he looked at it closer, and, whether because the light changed in the railcar, or outside, the black of the pamphlet’s cover slowly gave way to words forming apparently before Dan’s eyes. It read: You Desire to be Known. You Desire to be Popular and Famous. We are Here to Help! And as Dan read the words silently to himself, the sound of crawly, scratchy voices sounded in his mind’s ear, making him shutter again. He was about the throw the pamphlet into the nearest waste receptacle and motioned to do so, but something stopped him. It wasn’t the same source as the pamphlet. This feeling was more wholesome, which encouraged him to endure whatever it was that the pamphlet had in store for him that night. 

Emboldened by this feeling of encouragement, he opened the pamphlet, though he would rather have not had he acted according to his desire, and a flood of red light streamed across his face, which emitted from the opened little pamphlet. Slowly the red light, which was pulsating and flushing in and out in intensity on the surface of the opened book started to settle itself and solidify into words of deepening and darkening red, bloody red, then into a gory purple, and finally into a deathly black. It read: You’re Wise to Choose Us. Now Help Us Help You! Come to Temple Row Tonight. We’ll Be Waiting. Then the letters dispersed back into the quivering sea of blood, and Dan closed the pamphlet with another shudder. “Temple Row?” thought Dan. “Who goes to Temple Row at this hour? They’re probably closed anyway.” Temple Row was an ancient site of numerous places of prayer and sacrifice to the different Lights, which, since the Great Council, became more or less a row of museums than places of honor and worship. These shrines were once the location of mass pilgrimages from all over the world, peoples coming offering sacrifices and praying for guidance in life and illumination from the Lights. Now, as Dan could recall from his Academy field trips there, no pilgrims, only locals from Metro City, looking on behind the red ropes and signs, at altars and artwork of a bygone era.

Since Temple Row was only a block from Green Grove, Dan decided it wouldn’t hurt anything to stop by. He reasoned, since these people were willing to help him, perhaps they were willing at least to hear him, too, so he could help them not be burned up in the tidal wave of fire in a few days. The chimes of the railcar indicated Green Grove was next, so Dan made ready to disembark. As he got up, he felt something like dust in his hand where he had been holding the pamphlet. As he looked down at his hand, he saw he did not hold a pamphlet anymore but ashes. “What in the world?” he said aloud, but his stop had come, and so he hastened out of the railcar just in time. 

Coming out onto the platform, he looked down at his hand and inspected the ashes by the moonlight. He could see the outline of his hand, and some of his palm, but no ashes, nothing that looked like anything. He brushed off his hand anyway, and went down the elevator to the ground level where he proceeded a block away toward Temple Row.  

VI

Vale of Tears

Marie’s hand remained in Dan’s for the short trip to the edge of Metro City in the railcar, which they made after having their dinner at the pizzeria and performing the necessary duties of dishwashing and garbage disposal. Late was the hour, and the City lights did not have such the effect they had further in toward the capital where the Dome buildings were located, such that from Marie and Dan’s railcar window they saw, save for a street lamp here and a lamp burning in some office building there, a pitch black beyond, and beyond that a silver moonlight sheen on the desert floor toward the mountain range still further beyond.  

“We’re coming to the end of the line, Marie,” Dan said solemnly. “We’ll have to foot it from here.” And both exiting the railcar, they made their way out onto the platform, which shone and reflected the midnight moon, and dim blue lamps about, and down onto the ground level to the sidewalk stretching toward the edge of the city limits. 

Their walk through the industrial parks was short, but laborious. Pungent fumes from factory exhaust choked them, and made their eyes water. Bits of glass, plastic chips and so much various debris cracked and crunched beneath their shoes, that it was rather like walking on a gravel road than a sidewalk. And, whereas the evening air so enjoyed by Dan just a few hours before, and a few miles in, was cool and refreshing, this industrial air was stiflingly muggy hot.

“Lovely night, dear,” Dan said, “Lovely night for a stroll through hell!” Marie didn’t respond at first, but just sighed, as if she was holding something back. “Okay, now what? What did I say?”

“Nothing Dan. It’s just, you’ll think this place Heaven on Earth after the Guides show you what Hell on Earth will be like,” said Marie, desperately grave. 

“I see, now, and I suppose, then, you’ve seen this? From the Guides?”

“No, not from the Guides. From the Lights themselves, before we crossed. I still can’t figure how you don’t remember a shred of our life in Aerlan. The majestic falls, Iceberg Peak, where we had our wedding! Crystal Falls Palace! Do you remember? The light, oh the light! Ah, what a night,” Marie went on dreamily, “How the clouds whipped up like foaming waves that threatened to crash against the high Palace walls, but then dispersed in a burst of a thousand rays of light diffused.”

“Sounds, nice, Marie. But I have no memory of all that. What did you mean by the Lights themselves?” Dan was intently listening, walking beside Marie the while. 

“The Guides were written by the Lights. The Lights in Aerlan appear more real to you than here, though not as real as they are. I received my orders directly from them, as did you, with visions to guide me on our mission. Hell on Earth was one such,” Marie said, obviously wanting to discontinue the horrid topic of conversation.

“Visions, you say? Well, when I was knocked out on the side of that mountain,” here Dan gestured in the direction they were walking, “I had something more than a dream but less than a waking moment. Is that a kind of vision, you suppose?” 

“Could be. Go on,” Marie said.

“Well, the dream, or vision, or whatever it was, was long, and full of details, but the general idea was that the Dome was trying to convince me of a falsehood, and that you had led me to a mountain cave, where I met these talking lights, and then I met my father––who, get this, was Goodman himself, the High and Good!––and he told me that there was a harvest or something, and that I had to help bring in the sheaves before they too were burnt in unquenchable fire. After that––and here it got weird––I descended from the mountain to find a sixty-year-older you and Metro City. You were running an antique shop, and by night a counter-intelligence operation and mission control center for my father’s ship! You, or rather your eighty-year-old self, said we had to try to get all who would go aboard before it was too late. Ridiculous, isn’t it,” Dan said with a self-critical chuckle. 

“No, I’d say it is accurate. Fairly accurate actually, if you know how to decipher the images. Those ideas which would have been crystalline to your mind in Aerlan are here distorted by incredulity and human imagination,” Marie said in perfect sobriety.   

“You mean to tell me I am a son of Goodman? Don’t be ridiculous,” Dan said with a snort. 

“Yes, and I am his daughter. You don’t know your history very well, or else you’ve forgotten that, too. When Goodman flew from this land to escape the flood of water, he took all his own kindred. No one else survived the deluge. So, in point of stark fact, you are a son of Goodman, insofar as you are a member of the race of men, which you are. There are no other talking animal species,” Marie replied.

“Okay, well, that explains my father. What about this business about time? What is this eighty-year-old Marie stuff I dreamt up, fixing me tea?”

“That is the truest part about it all, Danny,” said Marie, and something in the way she articulated his name, made Dan shoot up his eyes at her, as if a spark had enkindled a memory. 

“Why did you call me, Danny?” Dan asked.

“Because that is what I’ve always called you, dear,” Marie said warmly. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that, that’s what you kept calling me in my dream.”

“The part about me being eighty and calling you Danny is not a part of the vision. That was a part of your deep memory untouched by crossing over into this world from Aerlan. You see, Dan, I am eighty-years-old, though I know I don’t look it,” she said, completely calm.

“Oh, now I know this is a dream or you’re a figment of my warped imagination! Eighty, Marie. Don’t be such a…”

“I am! And you’re not much younger, kiddo. Pushing seventy-five, if memory serves,” she said very annoyed now at Dan’s incredulity. 

“But I haven’t jumped through any wormholes, and, so far as I know, neither have you!” Dan shot back, trying to justify himself.

“Don’t be such a dweeb. Wormholes? That’s ridiculous! That’s like saying one could get to tomorrow by walking through the backdoor. It’s absurd,” Marie said, snorting a little herself.

“I’d never thought about that,” Dan said.

“I’m sure the wormhole and time travel business was just your imagination trying to account for a memory you had that your reason couldn’t explain,” Marie said. As they continued to talk, they walked steadily on toward the edge of Metro City, as the lamps decreased in frequency, the streets and side alleys became ominously darker. Marie, who was walking just beside Dan, asked for a hand, which Dan gave her. 

“Okay, that makes sense. But eighty? Me seventy-five? Explain that, if you can!” Dan replied, holding her hand firmly if not affectionately.  

“In Aerlan, unlike here, there is not what has commonly been called gravity. Well, I should say there is not as much, though what is called gravity is not a quantity. So I really should say as strong…”

“Oh, do go on, Marie! Just the facts, not the theory, too,” Dan interrupted.

“Well, the fact is you are seventy-five and I am eighty, because our bodies endure better in Aerlan than here, okay?” Marie said, and went into a kind of goodnatured sulk, from which she presently came out of when Dan gripped her hand very tightly, and turned her toward an alley just off the sidewalk. “What are you doing, Dan?”

“Shhh. I saw a form in front of us, not far from the avenue’s end. I think someone’s waiting for us,” Dan said, and hiding his body behind a building, he slowly peeked around the corner with his head, and tried to observe any more movement. The light having nearly vanished, but for a single lamp burning dark blue in the midnight air. 

“Don’t worry, Dan. At least I didn’t forget my training. Let us go on. Unless they have blasters, I can handle them,” Dan thought about scoffing, but then remembered his dream-vision he had about Marie twirling around like a ballerina and annihilating a glider. That, and he also remembered the guards in critical condition.

“Wait, what training,” Dan asked, as Marie, still holding his hand, pulled him out onto the sidewalk again. 

“You didn’t think the Lights would send us on this mission without proper preparation, did you?”

“No, I guess not. So how are you prepared?” Before she had time to answer, two dark and sinister forms came out from the shadows of a building. As Marie and Dan approached, the forms filled in with details by the dark blue hazy light of the last lamp of the city. “Commander Rutherford!” Dan shouted under his breath, “And Johnny! I knew he was following me! I should have stopped and confronted him!” 

As they approached, their forms become visible to the Dome official and John smith, and one gravelly voice rang out and echoed down the empty street, “Where are you taking our star pupil, Jara?”    

“Quiet, now, Dan. Leave everything up to me,” Marie said and the two walked up toward the Dome official and John Smith. “Where’s your troop of reinforcements, Commander?” Marie said, still holding Dan’s hand, and standing about twenty feet from the commander and Smith. Dan noticed a bandage on the commander’s temple where he had planted a steel chair leg earlier that day. “Not like you to come unprepared,” Marie said.

“I think our boy will come quietly, very quietly indeed, Jara. 

“Your boy’s not the difficulty. It’s your girl,” Marie said, confident and strong. 

“Oh, I think she’s well in hand, too,” said the commander, and motioned Johnny to walk toward her, as if to apprehend her. 

“Stand back, fool. Your boss knows what I’m capable of. You don’t,” Marie said, looking dire into Johnny’s eyes, which could not really be seen, though Dan did see a grin, sickening to see, like the smile a nasty child wears when torturing a small, defenseless creature. 

“I’m no fool,” and pulled out a small, metallic black light blaster, with little illuminated lights on the side, blinking in red, blue and yellow at different rhythms and intensities. After a second wielding it, Johnny pressed something on the gun, which made a power-up charging hum, and pointed the dread thing directly at Marie. 

Before Dan knew it, Marie released his hand, and seemingly flew through the air, having leapt like a leopard with such quickness. With one leg and foot outstretched she kicked the blaster right out of Johnny’s hand, and with the other foot, twisting her torso violently fast, kicking him in the chin so hard his head flew back to his back. All Dan heard was a crack and a snap, and Marie landing on her feet, and Johnny’s body falling on the pavement, dead. 

Before she could turn on the commander to face him, Dan saw a flash of light from behind Marie, and then her face fill with pain as she looked on Dan. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep that promise, Dan,” as a flaming hole was seen forming at her stomach, slowly forming a burnt circle ever widening, until all her body was consumed in light, and vanished, revealing a snickering commander holding a light blaster standing directly behind where she had been. 

“No! My Marie! No!” Dan shouted running toward where she’d been just a moment before.

“She’s gone, boy. Now, it’s time we had our chat,” said the commander, in a cold, ruthless tone. Just as a sharp and sudden joy can bring distant memories of fond childhood to life, so too bitter pain can bring its kind. Dan’s grief had brought to memory not so much in his mind but his heart and body, the love, now gone, he once had in Aerlan, as well as the power he also wielded. With one fell fall he descended onto the commander like an avalanche, and broke his neck, back, and skull in the crash. 

Dan looked up from his ruined enemy, bleeding on the pavement. Johnny’s body lay lifeless a way off. Marie was gone, and the sight increased that which unmitigated power and rage had dampened temporarily, and Dan fell to his knees and sobbed. Presently, sounds of sirens were heard in the not so distant streets behind, and Dan, with what power he could now muster, lifted himself from his grief and fled out into the desert night, wiping the pain from his eyes. 

To Dan’s surprise, the night was not so dark. Whether it was because the moonlight or some awakened faculty of keener sight, Dan could make out all form and order of the terrain, even down to the pebbles on the desert floor. And, though his heart was heavy laden with grief, his feet were swiftly sweeping across the ground light and quick. Dan took advantage of his indefatigable and vigorous state, and proceeded toward the mountain cave in an accelerated pace.  

Again, to Dan’s astonishment, as he began to jog along, he could no longer feel his feet hitting the floor every time he stepped, but more like every three or four strides. His astonishment changed to utter disbelief when he could see he would rise several feet higher, then fall lower to the ground, with every stride taken. “Was this what it was like on Aerlan?” Dan had the inspiration, or physical recollection, to ask himself. Finally, disbelief gave way to faith as Dan threw caution and care to the wind and dashed off into a full sprint, which, in his current state of forgetfulness, may not have been advisable. After all, one need know how to land before taking flight. 

And fly he did. Not an earthly, heavy kind of flight, like with jet engines, metal wings or rocket boosters. Dan’s flight was free, like the way pollen floats free and lazily in a summer breeze, then, at an updraft is swept up into loftier currents. Just so was Dan now, skimming freely the low hanging clouds tipped by silver moonlight like a speed boat across a lake. Now, like a runway from these, taking off onto higher and higher nimbi.

Presently Dan looked down from his stratospheric  height, and lessened his speed as he did so. He could see the mountain range where he knew the Guides were, now directly below him, below several layers of clouds, as though he were looking down at a lobby floor of a high hotel stairwell, with flights of stairs intervening. The sight was dizzying to Dan, but not near so much as the feeling that befell him next. 

Falling! Dan fell with a quickness that nearly equaled the speed of his sprint, falling through floor after floor, layer after layer of moonlit cloud. As he fell, Dan looked out over the pale desert floor to see far off a glittering Metro City all alight with artificiality. To his eye, it was rising as he fell. Seeing Metro City so, he remembered Marie, the Dome, and his pain, and he half hoped his landing would be his last. 

It turned out it wasn’t his first flight, nor his last landing, and Dan, coming down like a meteorite, crashed into the earth, creating a large crater three times his own diameter, and such an explosion of noise, a small desert rodent a mile away popped its head out of a hole to investigate it.

Dan lay in the bottom of the crater, smoking from the friction caused by the crash, his white uniform and shoes clean incinerated off his body. The bandage that was on his head was burnt up, too, his head wound healed somehow, his naked body without so much as a scratch on it.

“I get it. I get it,” Dan said, speaking into the empty night air at the foot of the mountain to the cave. “I’m dreaming, right? Okay, okay. Time to wake now,” and pinched himself. To his great displeasure, the pinch felt like a crab locking onto his flesh with terrible pincers, and he presently released himself. “Well, if I ain’t dreaming, what gives! I fall, oh, I don’t know,” Dan said, looking up, “like 25,000 feet to the earth, make a crater, and burn my clothes off my back, but a pinch to the arm hurts? Wake up Dan! Wake up!”

“Only one who is asleep can wake. The living are awake. And thou, dear Daniel, art alive and awake,” came a voice sweet and melodious, yet strong like an earthquake. 

“What, who said that? Where, what?” Dan said, still standing naked in the crater. 

“Arise, my son, arise!” came the voice again, and Dan did as commanded, and crawled up out of the crater. When he got to his feet, he was standing before a beautiful woman, a veil hung down over her hair, which sparkled in gentle flecks like twinkling stars, her body shrouded in a robe of shimmering moonlit, bejeweled by the same starlight, which contrasted against her feet, unshod in noble humility. 

“Mmm, my Lady…”and kneeled low, to both shield his bare body, and show his respect. “I’m unworthy this visitation,” he said, his face nearly in the dust as he spoke. For he knew to whom he addressed himself: Tulu, Mother of the Light and Queen of the Stars.  

“It is because you think so that you are,” the Lady gently replied. “I say, arise, my son,” and as he complied with her gentle command, he felt the moonlight about his skin grow soft and tangible, as if a garment were being woven therefrom before his eyes. As he stood, where only light and pale skin were seen now a like material, shimmering on the Lady, adorned his body as well.  

“I have clothed thee in the raiment of the land whence thou hailed, that of Aerlan. A princeling thou wert thence. A princeling thou shalt be again. Thou hast come hither on a mission by me, though thou hast quite forgotten it. I have sons the same as thee, though they know it not. And daughters, too, like thy Marie, though they know it not,” said Tulu, and as she spoke the name, Dan teared up, and began to weep as she spoke, “This land will be destroyed in seven days time. ’Tis the day of the Sun. Sun’s day next my Son shall destroy this world to make way for another…” Tulu’s voice stopped and dropped low, and looking down on Dan, for she was taller than he by a whole hand, she spoke again, “Morn not now for Marie. She is well and awaits thee in my land. She sacrificed herself for thy mission, in the manner of my Son,” here fair Tulu’s voice quivered as she spoke, which had the force of a hurricane in it. “As a burnt offering to the Lord.”

“My Lady! My grief is joy compared to thine,” Dan said, and wept bitterly for Her and Her son. “I shall not morn her in thy presence again.”

“Thy mission, Daniel: preach the coming wrath in the streets of the city, where no harm shall come to thee for six days, and on the seventh, come here to the cave of Mount Olé, and await my coming with my Son on the clouds,” spoke the Lady Tulu once more, and vanished from Dan’s sight with a flash of lightning and an echoing thunderclap over the desert floor.               

VI

Co-Conspirators

When Dan became conscious again, he was sitting in a steel chair, not very comfortable, and surrounded by mirror images of himself stretching into infinity. He was dressed in a white uniform of the Academy, with a big bandage on his forehead, and scrapes on his face. The sight was the same wherever he turned, such that he started to become nauseous and had to close his eyes. The room was a cube of six glass mirrors, and save for a ceiling light and the chair Dan sat in, nothing else was in the room. 

After about a half hour sitting like this, eyes closed, nauseous, and racking his brains of all that he had been through, Dan was at a loss to explain his present state of affairs. He was thinking to himself how real it all was, the mountain cave, his father, the ship and Marie. And, though it still felt real to Dan’s memory, the memory of Marie on the mountain in bondage and beat up dashed all the previous recollections to pieces. He was now awake, and ready to face reality, whatever it was.

The truth was, Dan hadn’t a clue who his parents were, or why he was raised from memory out of mind in that ghostly white orphanage, that he wasn’t special in any remarkable way, and wouldn’t be called upon, so he believed, to be some captain of a spaceship or general in an army of rebels. True, he was more intelligent than average, which earned him a place at the Academy, but then again such wasn’t so prestigious as Johnny might imagine. Rather mundane now that Dan thought on it. In fact, Dan continued to reason, the world was rather mundane, without much to strike up even a spark of interest, let alone wonder. No wonder the Dome wanted to remake the world in its own image: the Dome had better and more interesting ideas, when a mere kid of sixteen could dream up more interesting things than what was experienced from day to day. Why, better to trash the old and bring in the new…

Just then a crack in the mirror opened up widely into a door frame and a tall, broad man, in an all black uniform, with sandy-grey hair combed back, holding a black cap with a double SS and I bar insignia, walked through. Dan’s heart began to audibly palpitate. 

“Goodman, I presume? Cadet Daniel Goodman?” said the man, in a gravelly voice. Dan was trying to suppress his anxiety. What should he say? “Yes, of course I am! We met only a day or two ago!” Dan thought, but then realized, or remembered, that was all a dream. Yet here stood before him a man exactly like the man he never met from his dream, from whom he fled for his life. “I say, your name is Daniel Goodman, correct?” inquired the man again, patiently, though with a note of a little irritation.

“Ya, yea, I mean yes, sir. My name is Cadet Daniel Goodman,” Dan responded, not a little shaky. The man stood directly in front of Dan who was seated still in the steel chair. 

“You are being detained here to answer some questions, that’s all. You are not in trouble. Do not worry. We have been tracking the movements of a dangerous intelligence agent of the enemy, one whose alias is Marie, though the Dome in Central City Command have known her by another name, Agent 546, codename, Jara. She’s been operating here for about a week or so, so we’ve been able to gather. Thank the Lights she’s in custody now,” the man said, but at the word “Lights” Dan’s eyes shot up and stared directly into the speaker’s eyes, which were seemingly avoiding his, since the man was looking all around the small, cubical room as he talked, without looking at Dan. “Jara, or Marie as she’s known to call herself around here, has been, oh, how shall we put it, unpersuaded by our form of persuasion thus far, and has not told us why she contacted you, or what she has already told you, or what she intended with you at all,” said the man, still aimlessly looking around the mirrored room, avoiding Dan.

Dan’s head was set to explode like a bomb but for the nick of time interruption at the cracking again of the mirrored room wall. 

“Sir?” said a man at the door. 

“Can’t you see I’m with the witness!” shot back Dan’s interrogator.

“Sir, it’s important. She’s gone,” said the voice, trembling. 

“Gone! You! She’s gone! A geeky little girl gone!” growled the man turning toward the door as if to leave, but looked back at Dan for a split second to say, “I’ll be right back,” and as he did so, Dan observed his eyes closely. Black as charcoal, then stepped out rapidly and closed the glass door behind him. 

“Rutherford!” Dan thought, “I’d know those eyes anywhere! But that’s impossible! I was dreaming! All of it was a dream!” Dan continued in this state of utter perplexity for well over ten minutes, turning over in his mind all the possible, reasonable causes for why this man straight out of his dream could be interrogating him now, just as he was in his dream. “Either I’m still dreaming or I never was,” reasoned Dan, though not very convinced of his own logic. 

Just then the man with the gravelly voice entered, observably agitated. “My apologies, Cadet Goodman, my apologies. It seems Agent 546 has disappeared. She’s managed to put three guards in critical condition, and has damaged or destroyed a considerable amount of Dome property in the process. I did say she was dangerous,” said the man, cold and matter-of-fact. 

As Dan was pondering these things, the man looked down now intently at Dan, his eyes now a shade or two unnaturally dark brown, but not black like before. Did Dan merely imagine they were black? 

“So, Goodman. Do you have any information for us? What was she doing with you? Where was she taking you? Do you know where her hideout is here in Metro City? We need answers, Dan, for the good of the Dome. Jara must be stopped!” said the man, who was still looking directly at Dan. “I’m not sure, sir. My head is still swimming from my own injury, and I am not sure I would make for a very helpful witness,” Dan said, not untruthfully. 

“Confound it all, man! I want answers! Where is your friend, Marie!” the man shouted down at Dan. Now Dan knew he had seen the true color of his eyes, for they were now again flaming charcoal black! Dan knew what he had to do, too. 

In one fell swift motion, Dan did several things  seemingly at once: as he bounded up on his toes, he swung the chair he’d been sitting back in round about his body and rammed the legs of it directly into the black eyed-man’s temple, sending him to the floor with a crash, then Dan swung the steel chair again behind him and let it fly into the mirror, shattering the whole wall into a hundred thousand shards of glass. Seizing his chance, he leaped over the ruin and sprinted through a much darker room to where a door was on the other side of the room. As he did so, he heard computer clicking and little lights blinking all around, and instruments of some kind aimed at where the wall had been only a second before. Passing through the door, he recognized where he was: the Academy! He was in some room he’d never been, in some section of the cubical building he didn’t even know existed. 

As he sprinted down one hall and up another, he tried to find a familiar part of the building from which to escape. Dan saw no more doors or windows as he ran, but blank, ugly grey walls with short ceilings but brightly lit to increase the stupefying effect of the colorlessness and lifelessness of the place. “What am I doing,” Dan thought to himself as he ran, “I just assaulted an official of the Dome and broke Academy property myself. Now I’m a criminal!” But these thoughts didn’t last long, as Dan now spotted around a grey corner, the familiar sights of the Academy lobby with the vaulted ceiling and all-glass facade. “No one knows who I am or where I am coming from,” Dan thought to himself, so he quickly slackened his pace to avoid suspicion, and casually turned the corner to make his way out of the Dome Academy cubical building. 

Doing so, he made his way straight up to the ten foot doors that led outside and to his freedom, when from behind he heard fast footfalls and shouts, “Stop him! Fugitive! Stop him!” Dan didn’t stop to turn around, but shot through the doors like a thunderbolt into a storm-laden sky and sheets of rain falling down. Looking about himself for a moment, he pondered his next move. Hearing a railcar overhead whiz past, he knew what he had to do. Sprinting into an alley to evade detection and capture, Dan then hunkered down to see which way his pursuers would try. After a minute or so he heard a guard say to another, “Did you see him? Which way now?” And the other, “No. I don’t know. Let’s double back. Maybe he stole into those apartments there.” 

Dan could rest at least for a second and catch his breath, then he was off to the closest railcar platform, and in search of a business directory to look up all the antique shops in Metro city.   

Riding along in the railcar Dan was scrolling through a directory he picked up at a platform kiosk, feeling uneasy to say the least. All his actions thus far rested on being taken in by a strange girl he really knew nothing about, who led him on a chase to a mountain to gather with fellow co-conspirators against the Dome, an organization with worldwide doctrinal and juridical dominion, only to be captured by officials of said organization, and, after being civilly treated, assault her hosts, smash out of her confinement, inspire him to do the same, and, once again, enter onto the chase. “Now,” Dan continued to think as he scrolled, “I’m suppose to know where she is based on a dream I had while getting knocked out following her! I must be mad or in love.”

“Wait! This is it! Bygone Years Boutique. The store front window, the long counter, everything! This is it!” Dan said aloud to himself, making a few passengers in the railcar with him look over. Dan took no notice. He was busy putting to memory the address of the shop, as Metro City flew by outside in streaks of light with trails of horizontal rain streaming along his railcar window. “Third to last stop on the West Red line. I have to make a switch next,” he thought to himself. 

Hearing the familiar chime for the platform stop ahead, Dan arose and headed down the aisle to exit, not turning to see the faces of any passengers. Had he, he would have noticed a very familiar face indeed, that of the young man, John Smith, a fellow resident of the orphanage, who arose with Dan, and exited just behind, though at a distance.

After depositing one of the electronic directories back in a kiosk, Dan made the switch onto the West Red Line, and had seated himself again in a railcar, and closed his eyes. The shop was several stops away, and he needed the rest from the stress of it all. The warm seat, coupled with the rhythms of rainfall and railcar whistling and chimes all conspired against Dan’s fortitude and vigilance, and he fell into a dreamless doze. 

Dan was awoken by a hand gently nudging him and a voice saying softly, “Young sir, sir, end of the line, sir.” Dan opened his eyes and looked up at a roundly featured elderly gentleman in a conductor’s uniform, standing beside him in the aisle. He looked at the window and saw he was in a foreign part of Metro City. 

“End of the line, sir?” Dan asked, rubbing sleepiness from his eyes.

“Why, yes sir, the end of the line, sir,” said the old man with a knowing gleam in his eye. As Dan arose to depart the empty railcar, he turned back at the sound of the conductor’s voice, “These aren’t the safest of parts of Metro, sir. Watch your back,” and then stepped out onto the wet platform, shining in the evening sunlight that started to gleam through a broken sky. 

Dan could see from his elevated position well over most of the buildings and the streets and sidewalks below, and into the distance toward the westward mountain range. As he walked along, it slowly dawned on him that he had clean forgotten the address to the boutique, his slumber supposedly wiping his short term memory clean of it. “No worries,” Dan thought, “I’ll consult another up here at one of these kiosks,” and proceeded there. As he did so, a strange, uneasy feeling came over him, deep from within, and terminating in tingling feelings all down the back of his neck. The sensation stirred him to stop and to turn his head quickly and look behind himself. Just an empty, slick platform, with a railcar speeding back down the East Red Line. “Nothing,” he said aloud. “Just some feeling brought on by that man’s warning, perhaps. Watch your back, yea, I will down there. Nothing to worry about up here,” and proceeded to walk in this confident vain across the platform.  

The air was a cool and comfortable and refreshing evening air, as was normal for rainstorms in the desert, not the hot and humid air of other climes. Dan was sauntering toward the kiosk, quite enjoying himself now and the lovely turn of weather, when his pace slowed to a stand still and stood motionless, staring like a frightened deer in headlights at the media monitors mounted to the wall of the information kiosk. Dan was looking straight at his own face being displayed on four different screens at once, with the following caption in big, bold red letters over a strip of yellow background.                  

Wanted for Reward: Cadet Daniel Goodman, Fugitive of Dome Authorities, Dangerous, Mentally Unsound, Use Cation.   

Dan tried to swallow but found he couldn’t. His eyes darted from the screens to anyone around. Luckily, no one was on the platform or around the kiosk to notice the public announcement or see him. He did not stop to grab a directory tablet. Now with a brisk pace, Dan made his way to the elevator to ground level, and, upon entering it, he looked out just at the last second to see Johnny’s face turn round the corner toward him.

“Johnny! What in the world is he doing clear out here, and at this hour of the evening?” Dan thought to himself, as the elevator made its decent, then stopped and opened its doors for him to exit out onto the city sidewalk. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the doors closed and the elevator returned up to the platform. “Johnny’s getting on the elevator!” Thinking now to himself that Johnny may be following him to turn him in for the reward, he quickened his pace down the street. “This won’t do,” he thought to himself, seeing he was in a main thoroughfare, with passersby and sidewalk traffic everywhere. The evening was busy bustling now at outdoor cafés, with people laughing and chatting over their drinks and meals. And, though no one seemed to notice Dan walking briskly by, he did not want to take any chances. Nor was he too keen on being seen by Johnny. 

He sharply turned down a side alley, not well-lit by the street lights. As he walked down the dark alley, steam emitted from just over head from a bright vent duct, which caught the warm glow of the lights behind. Passing under the vaporous discharge, Dan saw dumpsters lined up down either side of the increasingly narrow alley, and every now and again a clerk would carry out a load of garbage and hurled it into one with a thud and and a slam. Dan did not care for the startling noise, which made him jump after the first few times, and soon he became indifferent to the noise. His body was with his mind back in the past several hours trying to account for what was happening to him. Where was he going now? And how could he get there anyway with his face being broadcasted over all of Metro City! He was a fugitive with a bounty on his head.   

“Psst! Psst!” came a small mouse-like voice, which Dan didn’t even look up to notice who it was. 

“Beg from someone else. I’m as broke as you,” Dan said, still not looking in the direction of the call. 

“Jelly brains!” came the voice again. Dan’s head popped up and turned toward the familiar voice.

“Marie!” There she was, wrapped in a dingy white apron, holding a bag of garbage in front of her, and standing at the backdoor of some pizza parlor. 

“Get in here before the whole city sees you!” she commanded, and tossed the garbage into the dumpster with a thud, and motioned Dan to follow her into the building. She led Dan into the pizzeria’s backroom, where a little table and chairs were, along with shelving stocked with jars of banana peppers, artichokes, and other condiments, and big cans of tomato sauce piled one on top of another to the ceiling. Marie sat herself down at the little table with the checkered red and white tablecloth, and motioned Dan to do likewise. “Good thing I spotted you on my break,” Marie said, taking a sip of some dark soda from a transparent red cup.

Dan could hear sounds of kitchen work just beyond in the other room, and beyond that the sound of lobby music playing out over the din of diners eating and laughing and chatting. “Your break? What, you work here? I thought you were captured and just broke out, and put Academy guards in critical condition! Marie, my head hurts. I can’t keep up with all this. It is just overwhelming.” 

“I just swiped this gig tonight. You’ve heard of the night-hire programs, where businesses open their doors to the homeless for a meal for an hour or two of work, right? It’s how the city feeds them. It isn’t that hard to believe or understand Dan,” Marie said, and got up. 

“Wait, where are you going?” Dan asked, standing up, too. 

“Sit down, Dan. I thought you could use a drink, too. What’ll it be, Mountain Mist or a cold Cola?” Marie asked with a smile which eased Dan’s heart, though offered little to settle his mind. 

“What you’re having’s fine, thank you,” Dan said, and sat back down. As Dan sat there waiting for Marie’s return, thoughts about his dream came back, and he tried to make sense of the images and places and things. The antique shop, the light weapons, the spaceship, all of it, and these memories and images harshly clashed with the mundane, almost tired and homely surroundings he found himself presently reposing in. A pizza shop with greasy walls and a sticky floor. The clash would have made him chuckle but for the dread fact of the bounty on his head. 

“How long does it take to grab a fountain soda,” Dan said quietly to himself. Then, an uneasy feeling started to settle again on his head and heart. “Was Marie who she said she was? Or does she mean me harm, too?” Dan thought to himself, squirming a little in his chair. “Of all the places I could have been in the whole City, multiplied by all the moments, how could she have spotted me there in that alley, unless she knew I would be coming down it, and just at that time! This is ridiculous! She knows more than she…” Just then Marie returned with a fizzing soda in one hand and a sizzling hot pepperoni and cheese pizza, with yellow banana peppers in the other. 

“Signed you up for work, too, for dinner. Hope you don’t mind banana peppers. I love ‘em,” and put the pizza on the table and drink at Dan’s elbow. Dan didn’t notice.

“How did you know, Marie. Tell me. How?” Dan’s voice was grave and sincere, which made Marie sit down and look intently upon him. 

“I’ve always known you, Dan,” Marie said, with a soft light in her eye unmistakably affectionate. 

“What do you mean you’ve always known me? We’ve only known each other a few days.”

“You mean, you’ve only known me a few days, Dan. I knew you before I met you on that railcar that morning,” Marie said, and motioned to touch Dan’s hand, but he pulled it away. 

“Before then? How? I don’t remember you! Who are you anyway? And how do you know where I am at any moment? What’s going on, Marie!”

“When you cross over, Dan, you lose a part of yourself. It can’t be helped. That’s why it has been tradition to cross over in twos. This won’t be easy for you to understand or believe, but please, do try, dear,” Marie said, the sound of her voice, smooth and intimate.

“Understand or believe what, Marie?” 

“For starters, Dan, I’m your wife,” Marie said, with a note of sadness in her voice that pierced Dan’s heart. 

“My wife? What are you talking about! I’m a sixteen year old boy? I’m an orphan. Thanks to you, I’m a fugitive with a bounty! I’m no husband!” Dan said, starting to visibly shake and made motion to stand.

“Wait, Daniel. I have proof. You don’t believe me. How could you? Go to the Guides on the mountainside. They will explain me and our mission here. But our mission is more important than us and our marriage. You have world-crossing amnesia, a rather hard case, too. I retained enough knowledge of the Guides to revitalize my memory by them. I was taking you to them to do the same, and to gather with other operatives in the secret cave near there to receive further orders, but we were found and captured first.” Dan sat back down while Marie spoke, his shakes starting to subside. She went on, “When we first met, I said yes, not because you were handsome and charming, not because you were caring and warm, or strong and gentle at the same time. You were all these, yes, but mostly because you said you couldn’t see yourself growing old with anyone else,” Marie said, now with tears welling up in her powder blue eyes. Her beautifully dark, flowing hair was pent-up, imprisoned in a tightly wound knot, like her heart.

These words, along with the soft voice and earnest nature of Marie’s countenance and demeanor, began to have an effect on Dan, and, though his memory was silent on the matter, his heart seemed to answer Marie with tones as soft, I remember, I remember. 

“Okay. I will go to these Guides, and see if what you say is true. But promise me this,” Dan said, looking across the table into Marie’s eyes, “Promise me you won’t leave me alone again. Promise me,” and as he did so, Marie held out her hand as if to summon his, and he reached out to hers. 

“I won’t, Dan. I won’t,” and silently wept onto his hand.        

IV

A World Tottering

“Marie, you’ll never guess who I just had a chat with,” Dan began to say as he sauntered out into the open. He was adjusting and ironing out his sleeves which had suffered a wrinkle through time spent on his excursion, as he looked up to see he was speaking to the empty air. “Marie! Marie! Oh, where is that girl. Marie!” Dan didn’t get a response.

He walked a little ways toward where he remembered she had sat and watched him enter the cave. Though it was nighttime, he could see very well indeed, even better than what he remembered he could just an hour or so before. “Well, Marie did say I’d be able to see better, didn’t she. This must be what she meant,” and thought nothing more on it. And looked for evidence of Marie’s departure, whether she went back down the mountain path or elsewhere, but couldn’t find any evidence. 

Dan decided the best thing was to go down the mountain and see if she was waiting for him there. “Probably got bored just sitting there on the rocky ground. Wanted to stretch her legs probably,” Dan said, musing to himself as he himself started down the path. As he did so, turning toward the desert floor and vista beyond, Dan stood still, spellbound by the sight. Below, just beyond the foothills of the mountain range lay sprawling out a vast and intricate network of city lights, reflected by low-lying clouds or plumes of factory fog. 

“Where am I!” Dan shouted out in amazement. “What in the world, where in the world is this!” Granted the ordeal Dan had just undergone was wondrous strange, nothing prepared him for what the consequences of that ordeal had been. Had he paid attention during science class, he would have known that there are consequences to stepping into wormholes. 

He continued down the mountainside, bewildered and perplexed by the city lights and commotion which now became increasingly more audible. The sounds of the familiar railcars, and fast moving lights were seen, though now they seemed to Dan to move even faster than before, twice as fast. He could hear the low rumbling sounds of factory machinery working away in the night, throbbing and thudding. As he descended lower down the mountain he even now saw people, or what he thought were people, walking all about this way and that. As he made it into the foot hills and then desert floor itself, though, he noticed that these were not people at all but robotic bodies resembling people. 

“What is this?” he said? A whole robotic population busily at work on night shift as a cleaning corps. Hundreds of robotic forms moved this way and that and, on closer inspection, were picking up debris and wiping, washing, and scrubbing down pavements, walls, and building windows. The outskirts of Metro City, if it was Metro City, had somehow grown out sprawled all over the desert floor in the space of an hour. “Impossible!” Dan uttered to himself. “Completely impossible.” What was, was possible, though, and Dan was faced with the fact of being in a strange new city without anyone to turn to. 

As he made his way down the sidewalk, he was met head-on every so often by cleaning-bots––as they were later known to him––which were very polite and courteous. 

“Good night, sir. Good night,” one said in high-pitched, chirpy tones. Another, “Pardon, please. Pardon,” as it wizzed in front of him and swept a spot of shattered glass bottle before he stepped on it, and wizzed away just as fast. Dan was walking down the side of the street dazed and dazzled by the city commotion and lights. The only thing stranger than all the activity was that it wasn’t human. No one living could be seen as far down the street as Dan’s eyes could see, which was a considerable distance, the street being flat and illuminated as it was. 

Dan kept walking without knowing exactly where he was going, when he felt a tingling in his left hand and looked down at it. The index finger was glowing at the tip! He tried to rub it away thinking it some inflammation or something, but the glow was not of blood flow but light. There was a device stuck just under the surface of his finger flesh. 

“What in the world! How did that get there!”

“I put it there, Danny,” said a feeble and brittle voice right beside him at an open door of a store front. “Quick, now, get in here before you get questioned for being out past curfew,” and motioned for Dan to come inside. Dan just stood there staring at the stranger in the doorway. An aged woman of about eighty-five, hunched over with a care-worn face and snow-white hair. 

“Who are you and how do you know my name?” questioned Dan worriedly. “I have never seen you before in my life!” 

“You always were a slow one, eh jellyfish!” said the strange, old woman, with a light in her eye unmistakably familiar and friendly. “Seriously, though, get in now before the police-bots roll down on their rounds,” and motioned again more urgently to enter, which Dan was helpless to disobey. 

Inside the store the room was very much more darkly lit than the outside. The glass storefront window did not let light of the city in. The only source of light which the room had was softly glowing lamps underneath intricately embroidered shades placed down along a long countertop that ran three-fourths the distance of the store’s space. By the sight of the counter and display shelving, Dan thought the place must have been an antiques boutique of some kind. 

The strange woman had walked to the back of the store as Dan entered, and was returning thence by way of a silvery smooth walking stick and something in her hand. 

“Here,” she said taking hold of his hand, “this will only sting a second,” then took the device she held in one hand and Dan’s hand in the other and brought the two together slowly, but not touching. To Dan’s displeasure to say the least and surprise the glowing light in his finger tip slowly emerged from his skin as a glowing needle-thin rod about a quarter-inch long, and finally shot out and stuck to the device the old woman held.

“That’ll do ya, now,” and set the device and bloody dropped needle on the counter. 

“What was that!” shouted Dan, holding his hand in his mouth. 

“That was a beacon I placed in your finger some sixty years ago,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“What are you talking about. I said I never met you in my life,” Dan said incredulous.

“Oh, Danny. Do sit, sit,” and motioning him to have a seat in the chair nearby, she sat herself in an adjacent chair. 

“No, thank you, ma’am. I’d rather you get on with it and tell me who you are, what that was in my finger, and how you know my name!” Dan said, standing firm and noticeably flushed. “And now before I’m out of here!” 

“And where will you go, I wonder? Things have changed since last you walked these city streets, my boy,” and chuckled to herself, and sipped something from a cup at her elbow. “Have changed a lot.” 

“Well, for starters you can at least tell me what is this city!” Dan said and sat down across from her, noticing the old lady would disclose nothing of what she knew until she was darn good and ready. 

“You see, my dear Danny boy, you are in Metro City, but not the Metro City you knew,” the woman said, and just then two what Dan presumed to be police-bots with red and blue lights and sirens flashing were seen and heard wizzing by down the avenue. 

“Another break-in, I guess,” she added in a dull, bored tone, as if this were a routine sight. “That’s why I carry this,” and she raised what Dan thought was her cane. “This’l teach them ruffians a thing or two,” and shook it a little as she said it and then leaned it back against her chair and took another sip of tea. “Oh, where are my manners? Would you like some tea, then?” and without waiting for a response she spontaneously arose as fast as geriatric can, she waddled toward the backroom. 

Dan didn’t try to stop her but took the time alone to look about the room again. Clippings of newspapers were strewn about the walls in decorative frames signaling their supposed importance. Dan looked at one such just above the tea table he sat at. The clipping was of a faded picture of a class portrait, and below it ran the caption: class of 4508, from bottom left…and listed names off of the persons in the photo. To Dan’s amazement, he recognized all of them. 

“Wait a second, class of 4508! That’s my graduating class!” Dan said aloud.

“Would have been, dear Danny boy, but you didn’t graduate,” said the woman coming back in with a cup of hot something. 

“Didn’t, but will the end of this year!” Dan retorted. 

“And what year do you think this is, anyway?” the woman asked, with a knowing look in her eye.

“Why it’s 4508, of course,” he said, not really believing what he was saying. 

“No, Danny, it’s not. It’s the year 4568. You’ve been away for sometime. I’d say welcome back home, but you and I both know this place ain’t home,” she said with a sagacious and knowing tone. “I’ve not been idle, though. Still recruiting, still keeping a low profile. This antiques shop was just the thing. Thought of it about twenty years ago or so. Before then, when I could get around better––you remember how well, Danny––I was in an out of other people’s places conducting operations. Now I do everything from here, and have such a network I don’t have to be far from my tea now,” the old woman continued. Dan at this point was thinking he must have fallen in with a lunatic who happened to think he was her grandson or something. Perhaps she called every young man she came across ‘Danny Boy’. He quite forgot the needle-thin device in his finger though. 

“Well, ma’am, that sounds all very well and good and delightful I’m sure,” he said as he slowly arose from his seat without trying his tea. “But I’m afraid I really ought to be going now, how late it is and all. Goodbye now, and don’t bother showing me out, I know the way,” and was heading for the door when the old woman arose smartly––if not a little feebly––from her seat and tea, and shot out:

“Cadet Daniel Goodman, you are the biggest nitwit in the world! Sit down and have a cup of tea with your old friend Marie!”           

“I don’t believe it!” replied Dan, turning around. 

“Well, believe it, young man!” Marie said, taking another sip of her tea. “Sit down. Have some tea.” Dan did as commanded, and after a few moments trying his tea and trying to pretend he hadn’t just undergone the most bewildering ordeal one could think of, and trying not to explode with nervousness, he finally broke the long silence of the shop. 

“How old are you, again?” Dan asked.

“A lady never reveals, Danny boy, never,” she said, and emptied the contents of her cup, got up, and headed back to the back room. After a moment, however, she poked her head out and said, “You coming, slowpoke?”

Dan arose quickly and met Marie in the back-room. At first sight, all was normal. There was what was expected to be seen, a few shelves with odds and ends of antiques, a book here, an electric lamp there, even a can opener. There was the kitchenette and coffee-tea sink, and kettle and stove. The room was no more than ten by eight feet. 

“What are we doing in here? It’s a little stuffy and crowded, don’t you think?” Dan asked, standing at the entryway, watching Marie waddle past the shelves and countertop toward the extreme end of the little closet of a room. 

Marie didn’t appear to hear him, for she was doing something toward the empty wall at the end of the room, with her back to Dan. 

“If you’re crowded, my dear, perhaps you might step into here,” and with that a mechanical sliding sound, and the wall disappeared into the roof of the backroom, and beyond the wall Dan could see a winding stairway leading down into a vast cavern-sized basement, with fifty-foot ceiling from the floor. Dan’s jaw, as was becoming habit as of late, dropped. “Plenty of space within,” she said over her shoulder, and motioned Dan to follow.

As Dan entered the space, his eyes were met with glowing monitors, keyboards, and circuitry of multicolored wires feeding in and out of ports in what appeared to be a command center of operations Marie had alluded to. 

“This is where I keep my eyes on those who keep their eyes on us,” she said, rather proud of the impressive sight of sophistication and technology. 

“Wow. What is all this? I mean, what do you do with it all?” Dan asked walking down the winding stairway after Marie, and coming onto the main deck of the command center. 

“The Dome has become more intense these past decades. Distortion of history, programed civil disorder and unrest, and the engineered stupefaction of the populations not being enough, the Dome, headed up by those in Central City, have intensified their presence and influence over the world through the Neighborhood Watch program, as they call it,” Marie said, sitting her self in a plush black leather computer chair at the helm of the command center.

“Neighborhood Watch program?” Dan asked. 

“I call it, Seek and Destroy program. Because that is all they are about. Seeking out resistance, and destroying it,” Marie said. 

“What do you mean?” Dan asked.

“After sowing the seeds of truth these past several decades, an uprising of truth-seekers started asking questions. Many started to band together, and meet in secret to study and learn the old ways and beliefs. This went on for some years undetected. But recently, the Dome–-or should I say, the Cube––has focused their efforts and energies to try and eradicate the resistance to their plan to destroy everything, and in the name of the ONE, blessed be HE forever,” Marie said, noticeably drained from the discourse, and relaxed more and more in the chair. 

“‘Cube’, the ‘ONE’? I’m afraid I don’t understand, Marie,” Dan said. 

“Not everything can be explained by words, Dan,” Marie said in sober tones. “Some things you must see to understand and believe.”

“I see. So what exactly do you do here, then, again?” Dan asked, rolling a seat up next to hers from an adjoining computer station. 

“This Neighborhood Watch program enlists members of the Academy––the one you used to attend––as spies in the anti-viceroy’s secret police force. The ‘secret’ part is where I come in. I try to figure out, through my own spying and researching, who are the members of this task force, and to report on my findings to my network of resistance fighters,” she said, trailing off on the last few words, as if nodding to sleep. 

“How exciting! Where exactly do I come in to all this though? I mean, not a few hours ago we were trying to escape these Dome officials. Now you own an antique shop that doubles as a counter-intelligence command center in an oversized basement. Do I have to stay here with you in this basement for the rest of my life?” Dan asked, but to no avail, for the elderly woman Marie had nodded herself to a perfect sleep. Dan did what any decent young man would do, and fetched a blanket from the backroom up the stairway, and wrapping it snug about her chin, he too turned in and slept the day’s extraordinary adventures off in a computer chair next to his old friend.

Dan awoke to the tea kettle whistling from above in the backroom. He looked around, Marie was gone, the blanket was on him, and sunlight was pouring in from above. The ceiling was all skylight: a great dome of glass letting in daylight down below. Marie was presently seen carrying a tray of something down the winding stair, rather unsteadily. Dan got up and lent a hand. 

“It is about time you arose and smelled the coffee, Danny,” she said, with a soft maternal smile. 

“I guess I was pretty tired,” he said, and Marie sat him down to a well-prepared breakfast. Eggs and buttered toast, strips of crispy bacon, a fruit cup, orange juice, milk and coffee, a whole pot of it, with sugar and cream. 

“How delightful, Marie! I’m famished,” Dan said, quite thankful. 

“I thought you would be. Growing boys always are,” Marie replied warmly. “Now eat up and when you’ve had your breakfast, just holler, and I’ll close shop for a bit and come down here so we can continue our gab about the end of the world,” and returned upstairs. 

After a pleasant and satisfactory meal, Dan pushed his roller chair away from the makeshift breakfast table at the computer station, and slowly sipped his coffee, wheeling around the floor of the massive room. All around him there were stations with screens and mechanical ticking, beeping and suchlike sights and sounds one would expect to hear at a NASA flight command center, not the basement of an antique shop. Dan noticed, though, for the first time a narrow metal door that led out of the command center. He got up from his chair and walked over to it, the material of which appeared to be like nothing Dan had ever seen. It was metallic black, but not metal by touch, but warm and almost soft. Dan noticed also, upon closer inspection, the very same rune-like script or drawing patterns that had been on what Marie called the Guides, all carved or formed into this door. 

“What is this,” Dan asked aloud in amazement and interest. 

“That, my dear young man,” said Marie walking down the stairs, “is the door to the armory.” Dan looked back at her in excited wonderment.

“Really? You keep weapons here?” he asked. 

“You can’t fight a war without weapons, kiddo,” she replied, and now walked up to where he was standing in front of the door. “You remember how I said you’d be able to see like me after your little adventure, don’t you,” she asked, looking at him intently.

“Yes, you said I’d be able to read the Guides in the dark,” he replied. 

“Right. Try now. Try to read them. Try to see them for what they really are, and see if you can make out their meaning,” she said. Dan looked back at the door to the armory. From the top down were parallel columns and within each were units of lines, some curved, some angular, which when viewed individually formed pictures in Dan’s mind or on the door, he couldn’t distinguish. Slowly, as he looked intently upon the strange characters, thoughts or images began to form, and Dan could understand quite clearly what they meant. To his mind’s ear, this is what he heard: “One who would wield great power ought to have greater mercy.” Dan was thoughtful for several moments before saying anything. 

“I don’t think I’m ready to go in there just yet?” Dan asked, his demeanor changed now from giddiness to gravity. 

“Yes, you are now,” Marie said, then spoke in a commanding though feeble voice, “Aperfor!” and then the door opened just like the door to the command center, and she motioned for Dan to enter. 

Marie walked in to the armory just behind Dan and sat herself in a roller chair off in the corner. Dan was pacing up and down the rows of shelving in the room. Shelf upon shelf six feet high, from floor to top full of various metallic shapes and sizes. 

“What are all these things?” Dan asked, in awe by the sight of all the hardware. 

“These are our tools, Daniel. Tools of war,” Marie responded gravely, and appeared to Dan to be very tired. 

“Are you needing a nap, Marie?” 

“I need more than a nap, Dan, but first I will tell you a little about what you are gawking at.” Dan intently listened, pulling a chair up next to her in the corner. 

“These weapons are ancient, Dan. But don’t let that fool you. They aren’t fragile like me. They were forged in the days when men and the world were first plunged into blood, smoke and ruin, before the cleansing of the earth with water by the Lights. The Lights forged these weapons for your father and kindred, to defend themselves and do combat against those seduced by the fallen ones, with the hopes that at least some could be saved if the opposition were overcome long enough.”

“You mean, like a search and rescue ops, or something?” Dan asked, interrupting Marie.

“Yes, Dan, something like that. Anyway, these weapons were stored aboard your father’s vessel at the time of his departure from earth, and have remained there for all these years.”

“Uh, I think it’s time for that nap, Marie,” Dan said. Marie just looked at him coldly.

“Alright, alright. So if you’re not nodding off, what do you mean by ‘remained there’ when they are right here?” Dan asked. 

“It means, Danny, that you are on your father’s ship now. You always had jellyfish for brains.” Dan shot up, then his knees wobbled beneath him, then sat back down. 

“My father’s ship? This is his ship? I thought it was a basement!” Dan said incredulous. 

“No, Dan, you’re on board your father’s ship. The basement’s the bridge, which I have made into my intelligence command center for the time being. The vessel is large, enough for life support, food, supplies and everything else for over ten thousand men. Hundreds of such vessels the Lights built in the time of the Cleansing, but alas, only one was needed. I’m afraid only one will be needed this time, too.” Marie said faintly.

“This time? What are you talking about?” Dan asked.

“You will understand in time. Now I think I will have that nap you spoke of. I want you to go upstairs and mind the store while I get a little shut eye,” Marie said, and closed her eyes soon after.             

After an afternoon of customers trickling in and out, seeking odds and ends of bygone years, one a microscope, another a computer laptop, a third a video game player, Dan was happy to close shop and return downstairs to the exciting world of weapons, spaceships, and flights into and out of danger. 

“Marie? Marie! Marie?!” Dan shouted, having returned back to the armory, but Marie had left her place from the chair and was nowhere to be seen. “Now where did she go?” and wandered back into the control room area. 

Taking a seat at one of the computer stations, Dan looked around and waited for Marie to return. The space now made a little more sense since Dan learned of what it was: a bridge for some vast vessel. “That might explain the sky-light windows,” Dan said aloud looking up, his back thrown back against the headrest of his chair. He thought he might try to find Marie. Knowing that she didn’t leave from the upstairs, he knew she must be on the ship somewhere. “‘Ten thousand men’!” Dan thought, “Why this ship must be bigger than the Cube Academy!” 

Looking about he noticed that doors where stationed all around in a large circle, the armory but one among many. He got up and walked to another adjacent the armory, about fifteen feet along the arc. The door bore the same script as the other, though with different characters. Dan found that he was able to decipher what it said after only a moment of study, “Seek rest while ye may,” and Dan instinctively thought this was the door.

“It must be a sleeping quarters deck, I’ll bet,” Dan said. “Now, how to open this door?” Dan thought to himself. “How did Marie do it? A word. What was it?” Dan stood there in front of the door and tried to recall what Marie had said. Then it came to him. He spoke in a commanding voice, “Aperfor!” and the door shot up and revealed a great length of dimly lit corridor, and stepped inside with the door closing behind him with a loud thud and a thousand echoes ringing down and up the corridor into his ears.  

The immense length of the corridor made Dan stagger, such that he had to walk slowly and with effort and assistance from leaning against the bulkheads as he went on into the dark, the path illuminated by little theater-styled lights in the floor. As he made his way, he wondered to himself what he was looking for, for Marie, of course, but was there more? An adventure perhaps? Or was he looking for answers to questions he had hardly half-guessed? Dan didn’t know the answers to these riddles in the dark, but he was determined to push through the dark and enigmas and find whatever he was looking for.

And so he did, for a solid ten minutes. Dan stumbled through the dark, noticing on each side open doors into compartments with furnishings for sleeping and living. Bunks protruding from bulkheads, tables attached to floors, and swivel chairs arranged around, fixed to the floor as well. Dan saw all these by means of yet more little floor lights flaming out their inconsequential blue fire onto the things of the living quarters. He must have passed past a hundred such compartments, through the corridor as straight as a railway, when he heard it. A low, indistinguishable sound of voices muffled by distance. “Men’s voices!” Dan thought with terror, for so far as Marie indicated, there were not any others than he and Marie in the vessel. 

Dan had the presence of mind to evade observation, and so imminent capture and perhaps even torture and death, by leaving the lengthy corridor, and hiding himself in one of the innumerable living quarters compartments. As he did so, he could hear not only men’s voices but the familiar sound of military boots, distinguished by their heavy footfalls and steel toes clunking along the corridor’s hollow floor. Dan’s heart began to keep time with the cadence of the search party’s marching, faster and faster, until he thought it would burst out his chest, and he would die there on the floor in his father’s spaceship.

As the men’s approach grew louder, Dan could start to make out the sounds of the voices. One, more deep than the others, shot out in broken tones, “Not here. Next!” Another, less deep and more strained, “Not here, either!” The first, “Keep looking! He’s in here!” Dan began to shake. Not so much because he was terrified, though he was, but rather because he was so mad at himself for not grabbing a weapon from the armory when he had the opportunity. Now he and Marie would be captured. “Wait, Marie!” he thought, “Surely she could handle them,” then a sick feeling came over him and he remembered Marie’s elderly state. He was remembering her as she was, young, beautiful and strong like a lioness. Now she was slouched by time and an aching, old body. “She’s probably captured or dead by now,” thought Dan, in despair. 

The voices grew louder still, and Dan now took cover beneath one of the bulkhead bunks, which provided a foot and a half of space between the bottom and the floor into which he could hide undetected, he hoped. Dan tried to calm his breathing, but this task grew increasingly more difficult, as his head began to throb with an unaccountable pain. Just about his forehead and upper region of his cranium, a dull, heavy pain emanated, which ran its course more and more and terminated in his jaw bones. He could start to taste the flavor of iron and moisture in his mouth. All the while Dan was undergoing this most strange change of bodily phenomena, he could hear the deep voiced man’s approach now, but a compartment or two away. 

“They’ll look in and see I’m not here, and move on,” he thought, giving himself courage. The pain and flavor grew more distinct, and Dan could even feel moisture at his mouth, which he tried to wipe away, but felt nothing. “Further up, almost there!” came the deep voice, now but a few feet away outside in the corridor. Another, the shrill voice, even more shrill shouted, “He’s here! Here!” and a multitude of sensations bombarded Dan at once. First, the pain in his head and jaw increased with such intensity he moaned out loud, quite unable to silence himself. The dark compartment he had been hiding in brightened with a blinding blast of light, which made him blink uncontrollably. The tight space he had been stowed away under vanished and a spacious and brilliant cloudless blue sky lay overhead. The voices remained, though less deep and high than a moment before, but sounded more natural, commonplace voices. Through his blinking, a bewildering picture was forming. A squad of men in Dome Academy uniforms was approaching. Dan lay still on the solid earth with a rock at his head, covered in sun-baked blood, his face caked with the same. His lips cracked from the heat, bled into his mouth, and the pain of his jaw was raw and intense. Coming to completely, he could see soldiers carrying along somebody in white, which contrasted against their black uniforms. With a faint, broken voice, Dan spoke, a feeble arm outstretched, “Marie!” and passed out again from exhaustion and pain.