Transmutation by Aimee Norin
“There’s nothing we can do about it at this time,” Lori said.
“We’ll just move the com later, when we put it somewhere else,” Alexander said. “When we put it there, no one was around.”
Ruth Chafetz and her two children played in the salty Dead Sea, practicing their “standing’ in the water.
“Look, kids,” she said to them in Hebrew. ‘Stand’ in the water. It’s got so many minerals in it, it’s heavy, so you’re buoyant—it takes less of your mass to displace an equal weight of water.”
She showed the two kids. All three of them stood vertically in the water, their heads sticking clear out.
People roused. Some began to scream, but most stood and watched as the shuttle descended toward the lake and knifed into the water out in the middle, disappearing underneath.
“Stuff like that probably happened in ancient days also,” Ruth said to her kids. “Everything’s going to need re-evaluation.”
The six on Bessie watched as they flew straight at the water and slid in. They slowed underneath, but there was no appearent feeling of resistance.
Except for flight metrics, Bessie’s HUD became black and then opened to reveal a tunnel, then a chamber hewn of rock.
Oliver made a face as if confident. “Sure. I mean, no big deal, for astronauts.”
Bessie landed on the cavern floor and illuminated the area with her external lighting.
Her door opened.
The crew exited.
The walls were dark and gray, barely lit by the ship.
“The air is so stale,” Hanah remarked.
“It wouldn’t be if we stayed,” Lori said. “Bessie would clean it up.”
“You couldn’t have installed lights in here?” Oliver asked.
“If the place were ever discovered, it should look like just a cavern,” Ella said.
“What about— How do you keep the water out?” Wood asked.
“The door is like a holographic projection, but it’s non-permeable except for a shuttle,” Ella explained. “Won’t let the water from the lake through, but lets us through.”
“If they found the cavern wouldn’t they find the holographic sea-bed also?” Oliver asked.
“Maybe,” Ella said. “Maybe not.
“They’re not giving away too many secrets,” Hanah said to Wood.
“And we shouldn’t,” Ella told him with a smile.
Adrien waited, put his hands in his pockets, didn’t seem to want to proceed.
Lori looked at him with a question.
Ella stood and waited.
The three 1st Century humans developed questionings on their faces, yet remained quiet.
Adrien looked at the other two Ahleths, said nothing, walked over and reached out his arm to a blank wall. A small alcove formed. He reached inside and withdrew a small device that looked more like a Leggo toy than a com device.
The wall sealed back up.
Adrien walked back to them, holding the com, stood with them without saying anything.
“What?” Oliver asked.
“What’s the matter?” Hanah asked.
Wood looked to Lori.
Neither Lori nor Ella said anything.
Lori gave the three 1st Centuries a small wave with her hand, signaling “Wait.”
The three Ahleth’s seemed to be communicating without saying anything, as if understanding each other’s concerns.
“We have to move it, because we’re here,” Adrien said.
Ella nodded.
Lori kept still. She was the one who had caused the situation.
“If we do this,” Adrien finally said, to both Lori and Ella, his accent all but gone.
Ella finished for him. “There’s no going back.”
“But,” Lori said, “People can handle it. Not like before. I feel it.”
“They would handle it according to their own way,” Adrien said, “which may well not be what we hope for.”
“Would you be able to handle them knowing?” Lori asked Adrien.
“Forever? For the rest of time on this planet?” Adrien asked.
Lori nodded.
“Would you feel embarrassed?” Ella asked him.
“Yes, I think I would,” Adrien said. “I haven’t even told all this to my husband.”
“It’s an evolution in Earth societies,” Ella said. “Lori started it—she outed the whole thing.”
“Not all of it,” Adrien said. “But even this much that we’re talking about?” He shook his head.
“I would complain, ‘Jesus,’” Ella said. “but that was Cadence Jorgensen—”
“Jesus was Ahleth? And he was Cadence Jorgensen?” Hanah asked, astonished.
Lori looked at Hanah. “She has always been trying to help people.”
“She did that whole life to help societies prepare for people who transition?” Hanah asked. Her mouth was agape.
Ella nodded. “It was clear people wanted to transition, some were already, but there was no guidance. The technology was developing, and she felt she needed to trailblaze a bit. People were hurting. I think it was very helpful.”
“And you said, earlier, that Jorgensen is still with us, still alive? So—Jesus is still alive?” Wood asked.
Adrien glanced at Lori and Ella, who said nothing.
“Fess up!” Oliver said. “Who is Jorgensen now? Who was Jesus, man?”
Adrien handed the com in his left hand to Ella, walked into the shuttle.
“Site T, now,” Ella said, turning to follow Adrien.
CHAPTER
25
“Where is Site T,” Colonel Wood asked.
“We’ll get there,” Bessie said.
The shuttle flew southwest across acros the Sinai Peninsula.
“Bessie,” Ella said. “We should divert to Karnak for a second. Part of the power is there.”
“I enjoy working with humans,” Bessie said like HAL.
Ella smiled at them all. “That was sarcasm, I think?” Then to Bessie, “You’re digging it in that we’re human now?”
“Just teasing, what the hell,” Bessie said.
It was late afternoon, becoming evening. The sun was low in the western sky, beginning to cast a golden hue over the earth beneath them. They crossed over the Gulf of Suez in silence.
The HUD in the shuttle clearly showed them approaching Karnak in Upper Egypt.
Tours on the ground in the ancient Karnak temple stopped to gape at the flying saucer. Their faces clearly showed alarm.
A message loudly yet calmly played via Bessie’s external speakers in Arabic, English, and French: “It is okay, everyone. We are Ahleth, just here to pick up something, then we’ll leave. We’ll only be here a second. Have a nice day.”
People calmed and watched, sometime with a hand over the mouth.
Ella smirked. “Bessie was the space ship who invented Muzak, I think.”
People on the ground watched as the shuttle, the size of a house, settled over a 97-foot tall obelisk, 320-tons of solid Aswan granite.
“Karnak is amazing!” Hanah remarked. “And so golden in the sunset.”
“It’s amazing at any time.” Lori smiled at her.
The western sides of pillars in Karnak were gold; the eastern sides were turning black, in silhouette.
“You’re gonna set this thing down on the tip of Hatsepshut’s Obelisk?” Hanah asked.
“You know your Egyptology,” Lori said.
Bessie settled the shuttle down to within two inches of the top of the obelisk and held, station-keeping. A panel opened in the floor of the shuttle, and Ella reached down to the top of the granite peak.
Everyone of the 1st Centuries crowded around the panel opening to look. The point of the obelisk was right there in front of them.
Ella reached her hand beneath the shuttle into the sunlight, toward the peak of the obelisk—half gold in sunlight, half black in silhouette.
People on the ground saw the shuttle center over t
Ella’s hand hovered over the stone and turned slightly. The tip of the obelisk disappeared, revealing a small opening.
Ella withdrew what looked like a ring and stood back up inside the shuttle.
The opening in the top of the obelisk closed.
The panel in the bottom of the shuttle closed.
“Best speed to Site T, Bessie,” Ella said.
The shuttle shot north.
“A ring was in the top of that? How long? Forever?” Oliver asked.
“I guess it was the 15th Century B.C.E.” Ella said. “Maybe we should say ‘B.T.E.’ Before the Trans Era.” She glanced at Adrien.
“Inside Hatshepsut’s Obelisk,” Wood said.
Ella nodded with a glance to the other two Ahleth on board. “I put it there when I had the thing built—to keep it out of everyone’s hands. Grave robbers were raiding pharaonic burial sites, you know.”
“Hatshepsut?” Hanah asked Ella. “You?”
“It’s not that big a deal. I was just keeping the peace. The politics then were so wicked. Everyone wanted to overthrow the throne, and Thutmosis was way too aggressive for anybody’s good. War was in the offing. The priests were a pain in the tuchus, so I cooled it for a while.”
“Site T,” Bessie said.
The HUD showed them descending to the area of the Sphinx and the three great pyramids of the Giza Plateau, southwest of Cairo.
Night was beginning to fall, and Bessie’s HUD compensated, so portions in shadow glowed in blue, sometimes with outlines.
Alexander was there waiting for them, hovering over Khufu’s Great Pyramid.
“The guy has never been subtle,” Bessie said.
People on the ground could clearly be seen on Bessie’s HUD, watching them, agape.
Adrien indicated something non-verbal to Ella.
“Bessie, please announce again?” Ella said.
Bessie did.
“My God, the Sphinx,” Hanah said.
“It used to have the head of an Ahleth on it,” Lori told them. “They got it from an old scroll, not from us. We told them not to do that, and they changed it later to the head of a pharaoh.”
“Big improvement,” Ella said. “Makes the head look small, though.”
Everyone inside the shuttle watched the HUD carefully.
The screen changed to the bridge of the other shuttle.
A HUD image of Alexander nodded to them.
1st Centuries began to wave, but Ella stilled them. “Keep it serious, please.”
Ella looked to Adrien.
A quick turn took them to the south side of Khufu’s great pyramid, about two-thirds of the way up the southern face. Hovering over the Solar Boat, Bessie nudged them to within a few inches of the stone.
The personnel door opened in the side of the shuttle. Adrien stood in the doorway and reached out to nearly touch the pyramid. A small section faded. Everyone could clearly see a pathway, leading down at an angle toward the center of the pyramid. A round ball, like an orange rose from the path, of its own accord, and settled into Adrien’s left hand.
The opening in the pyramid closed, sealed, was undetectable.
The two shuttles rose and moved skyward another eight thousand feet, again on the earth’s terminator at that height, where the sun was setting, again.
“Will you dock us?” Ella asked Bessie.
“Sure,” Bessie said. “Drifting with outside winds.”
The two shuttles touched, and both their doors opened, ramps touched, formed a platform between them.
1st Centuries backed away from the openings.
“We are synched with external winds,” Bessie said. “There is no breeze.”
“It’s two miles down,” Gadin said from their ship.
“It’s just like walking to the bathroom,” Alexander told him.
“Come on,” Lori said to everyone on Alexander’s shuttle. “Get over here!”
Marie walked across the ramp to Bessie without effort.
Cory and Gadin took some effort, but they finally made it.
The ships closed and separated.
Ella began to assemble the four parts together, while Alexander led them straight up into space, out of Earth orbit, toward the waxing half moon, where they noticed their third sunrise of the day.
CHAPTER
26
“Can you get me the President?” Ella asked Bessie.
In short order, Cadence Helmsley appeared on the screen.
“Ella. How’s it going?” Cadence asked.
“Fine, Madam President. We’re all here, together: Hanah, Wood, Marie, Gadin, Cory, Lori, Oliver, Adrien, and me.”
“And Bessie and Alexander,” Alexander put in.
“Who?” Cadence asked.
“Ship A.I.s, Ella said. They’re people, too.”
“Damn tootin’,” Alexander said in his Sean Connery accent.
“Where are you?” Cadence asked.
“Over Giza,” Ella said. “346 statute miles high. We have the parts. We’ve made a stir, but we’re on our way to Gene, the mother ship, as Sci-Fi calls it.”
Gadin leaned over to Marie as if she didn’t know, and whispered, “Probably named it after Gene Roddenberry.”
Marie whispered back, “Gene named himself after the mother ship.”
“And where is that?” Cadence asked Ella.
Ella looked to Adrien and Lori.
“It’s at the Earth-Moon Lagrange 4,” Ella said.
“I don’t know where that is,” Cadence said.
“It’s—” Ella thought. “Imagine roughly an equilateral triangle with points at the earth, the moon, and another in space ahead and in the plane of the moon’s orbit of the earth.”
Cadence looked stern. “Just tell me.”
“It’s a quarter million miles that way,” Ella said, pointing up.
Gadine’s face was aghast.
“You sure you want to do this?” Ella asked Cadence.
“Is it the only way to bring— No, it’s not,” Cadence said. “I can see that.”
“Right,” Lori said.
“But—” Cadence seemed to think. “We’ve got conflicts breaking out everywhere, particularly in the Middle East. Most people want the transmuters to function, of course, but there are many who see it as playing God or interfering with God’s plan or preventing people from joining God in the next life—which they seem determined to hasten by killing people outright. We’re tracking it all over out there.”
“The solution could clear up some old concerns, Madam President,” Adrien said, “But it could also open up new ones, ones we can’t predict.”
“Life is the process of working things out,” Cadence said.
“Are you Ahleth?” Ella asked Cadence.
The president smiled, then said with Lori’s species reference: “No. Not transspecial; just trans.”
Adrien said, “This affects the entire Earth, Madam President—”
“Cadence, please.”
Adrien shook his head. “It’s best you hear your title, Madam President. To remind you and everyone of the weight of your office.”
Cadence let out some air. “Okay. Yes, I’ve talked with leaders in several countries. England is for it, France, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland—China and Japan are okay with it, even Brazil, to my surprise. But others don’t like the idea, such as Russia, anywhere in the Middle East, where the hot-bed is, India— I don’t know what is best, but it seems to me it is.”
Ella looked to Lori and Adrien. There was no response from them. “We’ll keep working on it, then, Madam President. Will advise.”
Bessie ended the call.
“So, where we going?” Oliver asked.
Bessie displayed a graphic of the area of space encompassing the earth, moon, and surrounding area as seen from overhead the north pole of Earth, looking down on the area as a map.
“The distance to the moon is about a quart
Bessie drew a line.
“Make that the base of a sort-of equilateral triangle, and that point over there, to the left—”
Bessie drew the rest of the triangle with a rough oval around the western point.’
“—is the 4th Lagrange point. A nice parking space. You put something there, and it’ll pretty much stay.”
“Wow!” Cory said. “No human has ever gone that far!”
Lori smiled at him. “Well, I wouldn’t say that.”
Ella answered him seriously. “The moon is that far, but it’s over there.”
Alexander led the way to Gene—heading straight toward the moon briefly, then arcing left toward open space—with Bessie close behind, showing them on her HUD moving map their progress.
Gadin looked worried. “It’s a long way out into nothing. We’re cool, right?”
“No,” Alexander said over the com in this thick Scottish accent. “We’ll probably all be killed.”
“Alex!” Oliver said.
“The weasel asked me another dumb question,” Alexander said.
“I’m sorry!” Gadin said, gawking nervously at the HUD.
“It’s just space, boy!” Alexander said. “That’s what we were built for.”
“Didn’t you see Apolo 13?” Gadin asked.
“They handled it,” Alexander said. “We didn’t need to help.”
“You stood there and watched?” Gadin asked.
“Humans have to learn to fly in space!” Alexander said. “And we were still in the cave closet, as it were.”
Gadin was getting a little pale.
Marie reached over and put her hand on Gadin’s chest. “Relax, honey. It’s okay. Bessie, can you give us a couch?”
A couch formed against the bulkhead.
Marie led Gadin to lie on it.
“It’s only a quarter million miles out in space?” Gadin asked Ella. “You’re a pharaoh? You know?”
“It’s mild shock,” Ella said.
“It’s probably what he felt when he got laid—last night, was it?” Cory teased Gadin.
Gadin’s eyes floated to Cory then to Adrien who knelt beside him.
“Probably just this air, here—panels open.” Gadin looked around. “There’s these little walls then the vacuum of space—sucking at us! Nothing’s out there!”
“We’re gonna disassemble Alexander,” Ella said, “and use his molecules to form a protective cloud around us, right Bessie?”