Infinity (8 page)

Salocina changed again, this time into a
large strong warrior. She grabbed the bowl away from Dvora and ran fast as the
wind back to the trees where the seven sisters were still bound. Dvora returned
to the site and found her daughters bound by the living vines, but the table
and seats were gone. “More shape shifters I imagine.”

 
The vines loosened their grasp and the
sisters were free. Dvora led them back to the vessel to see how Caratrah was.
Her old body was even more shrivelled now and she opened her mouth, struggling
to breathe, uttering words as she lay there grimacing.

 
“
Why
must it end like this? I can't feel my legs or my arms. I can't feel anything
anymore. Weak, I feel so weak, I feel so weak. So now what? I can't move, I'm
too tired, too weak. Sleepy, I'm so sleepy. I just want to close my eyes
and rest. I'm so tired, my eyes are like rocks.” And with that...The Sorceress
Caratrah Shadowfire breathed her last. Dvora and her daughters watched as she
then withered and became smaller and smaller. Screams and shudders from the
sisters did not stop the process that turned Caratrah into a small pile of
black dust.

Kyn gathered up
the dust using a small electronic sweeper. Dvora said they must keep it until
they could find another sorcerer or sorceress who can bring her back again.

Outside the Bird
of Prey there was a rustling noise like that of the wind. Upon going out, Dvora
and the sisters saw that an army of all types of armed creatures surrounded the
Bird of Prey. Leading them was Salocina.

“I must have the
remains of the sorceress,” she demanded. “There is only one way to destroy it
forever and ever, and I must have the remains.”

“What happens if
we refuse?” replies Dvora.

“We will destroy
your space vessel. You and your daughters will become vagabonds on this planet.
The other creatures will not help you. There is only the darkness to turn to;
the creatures of darkness and I rule over them too. There is no other way off
of this planet.”

“Let’s giver her
what she wants, Mother,” says the eldest sister Kyn. “and let’s leave this
frightening place.” The other sisters quickly agree, being revolted and terrified
at the awesome beings before them.

While Dvora
keeps glowering at Salocina, Ophelia and Yeralai sneak into the Bird of Prey
and grab the urn Dvora put Caratrah’s remains in. They rush back outside
holding it in the air. Ophelia tosses it with all the strength she can muster
up. All eyes are on it as it sails over Dvora’s head, despite her attempt to
grab it as it flies by her. The urn lands at the feet of Salocina.

“No...no—,”
Screeches Dvora. But it is too late. Salocina snatches up the urn and shape
shifts into a mist that blows away with the wind. The rest of the beings
surrounding the vessel turn and leave; some of them fast and some slow, all of
them turning back several times to see Dvora and her daughters one more time.

“Mother...mother,”
says Kathara, “We must leave this place before they destroy our spaceship. We
have to go now. Let us go.” The sisters help Dvora to her feet. She is not used
to being so weak and is feeling more human than Quewythian.

“It’s
okay...it’s okay, my daughters,” she mumbles. “There are plenty of sorcerers
and sorceresses in the universe.”

Captain’s
Chronicles: I, Cruise, and my soul mate Millennia have been traveling the
universe together for more than two hundred of Earth’s years. Time has not
affected us quite so much as we have been caught up in warps, wormholes, novae,
and have also sling shot around stars. So far we have not yet entered any star
systems that our physiology could not handle. Radiation, gamma rays, x-rays,
and even radioactive space rock have no effect on us. Unfortunately I could not
say the same of many of the crewmembers of Infinity and some of our other
vessels. Many of our fellow space travellers have found that their bodies aged
beyond being able to endure space travel anymore.

When that happens,
after Infinity had scanned the solar system for suitable worlds, we stop by a
nearby planet and let them land. We let them keep a vessel for their own
survival and future survival, and also for their posterity, since they all now
had families. These colonists would also be part of our long string of
communication bases we were setting up along the way to Earth.

Infinity’s
sensors could pick up the heartbeats and pulse, blood pressure and brain
activity of any creature on any of the planets they were near, even before they
got to a galaxy. She also read the biorhythm and scanned all records of
personnel to find planets that were to their liking, but none of them were
earth. None of the galaxies was the Milky Way.

“Darling,” said Cruise
to Millennia, “Infinity is evolving, even as we are.”

“I wouldn’t have
believed it if you hadn’t told me, my love,” replied Millennia, “but I see now
also that she has actually grown.”

“Amazingly, she
is now five times the size of my native city on Cassiopeia,” Cruise returns the
talk. “I’m programming Infinity to find us a world to make our new base of
operations. We need to put her down, and the four remaining vessels. Infinity tells
me we have crossed a quadrant of the universe. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, my sweet,”
replies Millennia. “We are closer to our destination, and we need a place to
call home.”

“The crew has
already procreated,” Cruise smiles and looks down at Millennia’s oversized
abdomen. “So have we.”

“This one is a
girl, my love.” Millennia shifts her position. “I will call her Quadaina,
spelled with a “Q” but pronounced like a “K”. Because she will be the first
child born on Infinity after crossing a quadrant.”

Infinity scans
the present galaxy for a suitable world. She finds planets that are uninhabited
and unsuitable for life. She also finds planets with life, but the life she
discovered is so primitive and backwards that they consume each other. They
would soon become extinct. Another planet has a civilization at war with each
other. They are not a biological match for Cruise and his space family. All of
the specifications had been programmed into Infinity. All the hopes and dreams
of the crew, and now the new brood of offspring that had been born in space
have been recorded and are being considered by Infinity as she endlessly scans.

The laws of
physics and all of the elements have to be the same as Cassiopeia and the Twelve
Galaxies Cluster. All of the beauty and splendour has to be a reality.
Terraforming did not exist anymore. It had been outlawed and was now obsolete. Planets
that previously had not one iota of hope for every having life had been
miraculously terraformed into magnificent havens. However, most of those
planets turned out to have an unstable core. The trauma of the terraforming
process was too great causing eruptions and eventual decimation of the planets’
surface.

  
Of course Infinity was capable of
producing the necessary elements and biological building blocks to transform a
planet into a paradise. However, the ethical principles overweighed the
practical.

Terraforming
only worked on a planet that already had life, or had it at one time and only
ruins or traces were left. There were plenty of barren wasted planets that
could never support life, even in a million years. The universe had already provided
plenty of planets that needed no terraforming. They were far flung and it took
some time to find them.

Infinity’s ever
evolving artificial intelligence had collected billions of yottabytes of data from
their journeys through space. The technology she has captured in her data banks
from races even superior to the Twelve Galaxies Cluster in such knowledge, but
lacking in understanding was unfathomable. Infinity’s good intentions and
energy could not be wasted on barbarous and desperate attempts to bring an old
dead waste of a planet rock back to life again with no guarantee that the
process would hold.

The data banks
in Infinity’s unlimited storage held enough knowledge about the physical
conditions of Earth, “The Blue Planet”, that she could find such a world that
would be perfect for giving a new start to the remaining crewmembers and their
ever growing families, Cruise and Millennia, and also their fifty three
offspring, not including the one to come. The population of Infinity was now
three million two hundred thousand four hundred and sixty two. They needed to
find a planet soon before Infinity figuratively split apart at the seams. Of
course she didn’t have any seams.

The days and
nights were based on the biorhythm of Infinity’s population. From this Cruise learned
that twenty four to twenty five time phases equalled one day. From the
databases of Infinity, he also learned that because of the Earth’s shifting
axis, the span of time for daylight from the sun was shorter in the colder
seasons and gradually returned to longer times of light in the warmer seasons.
That was the cycle. Earth had regular cycles of days, weeks, months and years.
This knowledge and much more was obtained from Infinity’s database and taught
in the schools and even universities that were on the vessel.

They learned so
much about Earth that everyone would surely feel at home when a planet with
Earth’s specifications was finally found.

“The decision
has been made final, my dear,” said Cruise to Millennia. “Infinity has found a
planet nearly the same as Earth. Only it is bigger, but the land mass is proportionately
the same to the quantity of water. Climates are similar, vegetation is very
similar, but also exotic forms of life exist there too.”

“Yes, my love,”
replied Millennia, looking at the new world on the viewing screen and
“handling” it with the four-dimensional interactive computer holographic
projector.

“It’s not our
final dream, dear,” says Cruise. “But still a dream come true. We may now be
retracing the steps of our ancestors.”

They had barely
entered a new galaxy when Infinity’s alert had sounded and she brought the
whole galaxy on all screens on board. A four dimensional holographic image emerged.
Infinity slipped into Super Hyper Warp Drive 5 and gradually, step-by-step,
boosted speed until she was at Drive 25. They were still more than 10 million
light years away from the only solar system in the galaxy that emitted the same
type of gamma rays and radiation, as well as electromagnetic microwaves and
plasma as Earth’s sun. Since Infinity kept maintaining and upgrading herself
regularly, it was similar to the body reconstructing all of its cells over and
over. She was now able to take the thrashing Drive 25 would give her.
Travelling at 10,000 times the speed of light, they reached the New World in
eight-hours, forty-five minutes and fifty eight seconds.

Already
programmed to slow down when the proper distance from the target solar system
was achieved, Infinity slows down to normal hyper speed. The whole being of the
vessel is disrupted and even some of the super Plexiglas dividers and doors are
smashed as Infinity downshifts from Super Warp Drive 25 to Hyper drive.
Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the majority of the population was quite
alarmed to say the least. Since it was the sleeping phase called “night” on
Earth, many of Infinity’s inhabitants were rudely awakened by the sudden
reduction of speed resulting in a “warp shake”.

“What is going
on?” Inquired Commodore Yerne Adno, who was voted in by the people. He was a
half-blooded Quewythian born on Infinity eighty nine years before and
 
became the voice of the people. “Everyone
is frightened that something has gone wrong with your Infinity. More like ‘A
Turn of Nutty’ to me.” Turn of nutty was an expression derived from the old
Earth archives of a nut being turned by a wrench. The nut was also a term used
to describe a mentally unstable person. “We have never seen any skies or felt
the grass like on Earth beneath our feet and now you subject us to this.”

Cruise and Millennia
could not waste precious time arguing with politicians, so they had set up a
chain of command system, which Cruise learned from Earth’s data of how they set
up their armies.

Cruise’s
spokesperson, a female born on the vessel, the beautiful and intelligent Rhapsody
Karjoy, was more than gracious and polite towards the rather ambitious
politician. “Why, Commodore. Does a little ole’ Warp Shake send chills up and
down your spine? What, are you afraid we might go spinning hopelessly into
space?”

“Don’t mock me,
young one,” said the scowling man.

“Why I’ll have
you know,” whispered Rhapsody with widened eyes and a large smile, “We have
reached the solar system of New Earth, and will be arriving at our target
planet shortly.”

Hearing those
words, the commodore could do nothing else but fall to his knees and cry.
“Please tell me your not kidding me. You usually kid me. Please don’t be
kidding me now.”

“You heard her right
the first time, Commodore,” spoke a voice that sounded like the boom of a
canon. It came from up top of the fifty stairs that Rhapsody had just descended
after her briefing face to face with Cruise Liberty; Prince of the Twelve
Galaxies Cluster. “Our Kingdom has just expanded and now spans fifty more
galaxies where our brethren live and thrive. Let us mark this one as the fifty
first.” He lifted his hand and right in front of the commodore’s face appeared
the four dimensional image of the solar system containing Earth II. “This is
where we are now, Commodore.” Cruise points to a spot at the edge of the solar
system. “This solar system contains nine planets. Only one of them is
inhabitable. This is where we will land in a very short time.”

The Commodore is
so overwhelmed that he speaks in a stammer. “I...I do not know what to say,
your Lordship. In the eighty nine years I have been in existence on Infinity,
this is the first time I have had the privilege to gaze upon your face.”

“Yerne,”
Addressed Cruise, which surprised the Commodore that the Prince of the Twelve Galaxies
Cluster would address him by his first name, which further moved him. “I fought
for your appointment. I hope you will choose to continue the post after we land
on Earth II.”

“Your Royal
Highness,” replied the stunned ruler, “I am humbled and honoured that you would
ask. Yes, I will be very happy to serve, if the Prince deems me worthy.”

“Yerne, you are
worthy and needed,” replied Cruise. “You are our firstborn son.”