Transmutation by Aimee Norin
In the city of Jerusalem, in areas surrounding the Dome of the Rock, hand-to-hand fighting grew. People threw Molotov coctails and screamed insults. Commanders shouted to people with megaphones. Police tried to keep some people back with barricades and water canons, sometimes firing live rounds into crowds. At the perimeter, tanks rolled into position.
“Die! Get out of my way! Die!”
A man was knocked to the ground, and another man kicked the back of his head to dive his face into the dirt.
Fighting was erupting everywhere.
In Gene’s observation bay, through the center bottom of the ship, everyone could see the chaos below.
From every quarter, people stopped to gawk in fear at the gargantuan ship over the edge of the city, moving slowly towad the Dome, a mere hundred feet above buildings.
“There are multiple aircraft in the vicinity,” Gene said in her ominous voice, throughout the observation bay.
“Please take care of that,” Lori said.
Without delay, aircraft within thirty miles began to lose power and fall out of the sky. Aircraft who happened to turn back, outside the perimeter, regained their power, but aircraft who came closer lost power altogether. Pilots ejected. Planes crashed.
One plane had fired a missile at the mother ship, but the missile was re-directed into an empty hillside.
The mother ship glided silently over Jerusalem, centering over the top of the Dome of the Rock, about a hundred feet above it. The city was eclipsed, entirely in shadow.
“That’ll show ‘em,” General Beck said, I the Oval Office, watching T.V.
Tanks which had been moving closer toward the fighting ceased to roll.
The few lights used in the morning time faded.
Automobiles stopped moving, engines died.
Megaphones quit working.
People stopped their fighting to look at the massive ship overhead. Some ran. Some stared. Some began to pray.
“Stabilized,” Gene said.
In the lower observation bay, they were looking directly down past their feet over the top of the golden Dome of the Rock.
Adrien looked to Ella and Lori, then to the 1st Centuries.
“What in God’s name are we doing here?” Gadin asked.
“Exactly,” Adrien said. “This has gone on too long.”
Lori and Ella looked resolute.
All others looked worried, mystified.
“Dramatic pause,” Gene said. “Sound effects.”
People below shuttered as a deep, throbbing, graduating series of bass tones, from every direction, subtly vibrated everything beneath the ship.
“Lights,” Gene said.
Various places on the bottom side of the ship began to glow until they could be seen distinctly as lights—with emphasis on the area above the Dome.
People shouted from the ground below.
“It’s God!”
“He’s come back for the faithful!”
“Lord! Take me!”
Gene began to rotate the ship 180 degrees clockwise in the horizontal plane, putting south to north and north to south.
“Why you doing that?” Lori asked.
“It looks cool,” Gene answered.
“And it’ll make ‘em dizzy. Please don’t,” Ella ordered.
The ship stopped rotating.
All stared out the clear bottom of the observation bay at the scene below.
“What are we gonna do now?” Cory asked.
People below watched as the center of the bottom of the ship opened. An intense beam of light—thick, as if it were composed of milk—shone through the opening, straight down in a column, illuminating the Dome, turning it white and reflecting outward 360 degrees from there back up to the underside of the ship and to surrounding buildings.
In a few seconds, the beam dimmed, becoming barely noticeable—as a human figure appeared, slowly descending within it from the ship.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!” Gadin cried as he floated slowly down within the beam of light in his bathrobe. “What’s happening? Stop killing! Stop it!” His voice was oddly amplified so everyone within miles could hear him. He looked up while he descended: “What do you want of me!” He looked around himself in a panic. His heart beat very fast. His feet were completely unsupported. It appeared nothing was holding him up, yet he floated down, slowly, centered in the beam, apparently under control. “God help me!” he cried.
Gadin’s hands went out in a subconscious reflex to find some form of support, but there was none.
Just the light.
“Look!” a merchant in the street exclaimed to his family. “Look! Is it God?”
“He’s talking to God!”
“It looks like an angel!”
“Jesus!” Gadin said in exclamation. “What the f—”
Gadin stopped to look at everyone. He floated, stationary in the air, about 15 feet avove the Dome of the Rock. The whole city was spread out before him. It was daytime beyond the edge of the ship, 10 miles away. There was no wind.
The group in the Oval office watched.
General Beck’s hand dipped into a bowl or more popcorn.
People stood around Gadin in shock at the sight.
“Oh! No! Don’t fear,” Gadin said to them with his India-California accent. “It’s just me. I’m coming down to talk with you!”
“A prophet!”
“An Angel of God come to give us a message!”
“Tell the Arabs to leave us alone!”
“Tell the Jews to leave us alone!”
“Tell that Lori bitch to take her machines and leave!”
Gadin crossed his arms and looked scornfully at them. “Lori? You mean the one who’s trying to keep you alive? What are you talking about?”
The crowd pondered. “What—who are you?” someone finally asked.
“I’m Gadin Malhotra,” he said.
“Who the hell is that?” someone else asked.
“I teach computer sci at Stanford—or I was until Lori—”
“Demon America!”
“Blasphemy!”
“No! Like Lynn Conway!” Gadin shouted to them over their cries.
“You mean you’re a male to female trans person who furthered the science but who was fired from I.B.M.?”
“No! I mean a professor!”
“So are you from India?”
“Originally—”
“So are you saying that Hinduism is the best religion and that Shiva is God?”
“No! Love is the best religion!” Gadin’s brow wrinkled in apparent conflict between his nervousness and effort to understand. He felt below him with a foot, but there was no floor there.
On board the ship, Cory looked over to Lori. “A natural leader.”
Estella stood in the meat department of the market and watched it all on her iPhone 6 Plus, with a crowd of other shoppers around her.
“Why did God pick an Indian as an angel?” a lady behind Estella said.
“He’s not holy!” Estella countered.
“Well, he’s in white!”
“You get down from there!” an angry man shouted. “This is the spot where Abraham ascended into heaven!”
“That was Isaac!” someone else said.
“Jacob!”
“It was Muhammad!” several others shouted as well as they could.
“It was where Noah built the ark! My brother was an elephant on the arc!” a tourist shouted.
Someone way in the back shouted. “We can hear your voice magically from a great distance, Oh Great Gadin!”
“Uh,” Gadin said. “Speakers on the ship?”
“What religion are you?”
“Me?” Gadin asked. “I don’t know. I think Zamboni or something— No, Zarathustran—Zoroastrian! That’s what it is!”
“Are you stupid?” someone asked.
“I’m hanging up here in the air, and it’s my first time! You try it! I just went into space and wasn’t killed, and they too
“He’s trying to breed with earthlings!” someone on the ground shouted.
“Sex maniacs in space!” yelled another.
Several people whisteled at Gadin.
He yanked his robe shut.
The ladies in the store gasped.
Two of them smiled.
“This is a good program,” General Beck said.
“Would you like another ice cream?” Cadence asked him.
Putin snapped off his T.V.
“Zoro-astrian in Latin means ‘Zoro came from the stars’!” Someone near the Dome shouted.
“So Zoro is God!” The man looked to others around him for confirmation.
“Well,” Gadin said. “He fought corruption and tried to help others—”
Gadin looked up and shouted to the ship. “What do you want of me?”
“He’s praying again!” another man said. “He’s asking God for help!”
Adrien stuck his head into the opening at the bottom of the ship and shouted loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Okay. I’ll come down.”
“The Second Coming!”
“He should be so happy!”
“She should be so happy!”
Adrien appeared at the top of the beam, dressed in a white robe, just below the mother ship, and began his slow descent to stand beside Gadin in the air.
Adrien’s manner was grave, solemn.
He ‘stepped’ forward, positioning himself just ahead of Gadin, and looked slowly at people on the earth below.
When people settled down, Adrien held out his arms in a gesture of peace. When he began to speak, his voice amplified as had been Gadin’s—subtly louder, from every direction, so that all could easily hear.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said. “Fear not. It is okay. People, everywhere, we are part of you, and you are part of us. Gadin was born here on Earth, and I was reborn here on Earth. We are all humans, now.
“You all know who we Ahleth are. We bring life, and with that, all who desire, may become trans like us.” He showed them his “T” on his left temple. “Nothing is going to happen here. You are not at risk. We are peaceful. But I thought in light of things, maybe I could talk with you a little and share a few things.”
“You can’t be here! It’s blasphemy!” someone shouted from below.
Adrien shook his head. “No, no it’s not blasphemy. You see— I think some things we,” he indicated the ship above him, “have done here in millennia past have, perhaps, been a little embellished. I will explain.” Adrien took a few seconds to gather his thoughts.
“Have any of you ever tried that little experiment where you have a room with 20 people in it? One person says something to the person beside him, who passes it on, who passes it on—and by the time it gets to the other end, it’s completely different? What started out as ‘People should care more for each other’ becomes a story about who makes the rules to decide what is right or wrong. Well, in our case, mix in a few ancient sightings of one of our shuttle craft, some levitation, and a transmuter, and you have the three largest religions in this area.”
Adrien paused a second to let that soak in.
“Thousands of years ago, there were no universities in which to learn the art of reporting, of journalism, of writing—and in fact, for most people, there was no writing, most of the time.
“We—Ahleth—have tried, unsuccessfully, to come out to you here a few times, and it has always ended in disaster. If someone caught us using a transmuter—you all know what those are, now—it became resurrection, a religion with people buried in sarcophagi, like in Egypt, from where they can achieve eternal life. If we healed someone it was seen as divine. If someone saw us get into a ship, it became an ascention, again divine.
“I wanted to let you know that we have come and gone in our shuttles several times over these 100,000 years that you’ve learned we’ve been here, and you have tried to understand us within the framework of your cultural system, every time, which meant—no journalism, and certainly no understanding—unfathomed stories were told and passed down through ages until someone finally wrote them down. Those things sometimes seemed codified.”
Adrien paused a second.
“With those, you three major religions have deemed this place the ‘Holy Land,’ and when I come back what do I see? Fighting. Beatings. Hatred. Killing. Fascism—screaming at each other that life has to be a certain way because that’s what ‘god’ wants, or you shall die in the name of those mis-told stories from millennia ago.”
Someone fired a rifle at Adrien.
Gene stopped the bullet in mid-air and levitated the man about fifty feet.
Adrien, without anger, indicated the man who screamed, “Blasphemy!”
Adrien shook his head and looked up. “Gene, could you bring him here, please?”
The shooter was floated to a position right in front of Adrien.
The man appeared to be in a panic, his feet trying to find purchase, his eyes moving around.
“Sir,” Adrien asked. “Touch my hand.”
The man flailed violently trying to grab onto something.
Adrien stood calmly before the man, serene, with his right hand outstretched. “Sir, please: Hold my hand.”
“Who are you!” the man screamed.
Adrien kept his right hand out for a shake, yet brought up his left, palm out, to point at the man’s heart. His eyes half-closed.
The man began to calm.
“Sir,” Adrien said. “Please.”
Slowly the man reached over and gripped Adrien’s hand and became instantly calmer.
“Sir, my name is Adrien.”
“Adrien.”
“Yes.” Adrien looked into the man’s eyes. He put his left hand on the man’s head for a moment, then asked him, “It’s good to know you.”
The man reached up with his other hand, gripped Adrian’s right hand in both hands—then he knelt before Adrian.
“No, no,” Adrien said to him, lifting him back into a standing posture. “I’m just a man.”
“You’re God?”
“No. This,” Adrien indicated them, floating, the ship, “is technology.”
A group holding others at gun point below lowered their weapons as they watched.
Though Adrien and the man were speaking quietly, everyone could hear every word.
“You’re not an angel?” the man asked.
Adrien shook his head. “No. Feel my hand.”
The man did.
“Feel my face.”
The man did.
“It’s smooth,” said the man.
“I just shaved.”
“Why? God says we should have a beard.”
Adrien looked down a little then back at the man, shook his head. “You mean what people wrote.”
To everyone, Adrien addressed, “Has anyone ever known someone to misquote them? To misrepresent them? To say they did something they didn’t do?
“We used to inhabit this area, several thousand years ago, doing what we do. Sometimes some of our ways leaked out. Sometimes we tried to teach, to share.” He looked back at the man. “Sometimes people misunderstood us—but we should also have known better. For our part in that, I apologize.”
The man looked at Adrien in question.
Adrien indicated the ship above. “With conventions you use, you might think I’m the captain of this ship, here. I’ve been around since, I suppose, before man was man. My first officer, if you will, is a woman named Ella. When we used to inhabit this area, we were known as Athden and Efeth.”
Adrien glanced at Ella, who grimaced.
“Uh-oh,” Ella said.
“So?” the man asked.
Adrien looked to the masses around them. “So we told stories, and we learned later they’d become—
“Adam and Eve?” the man asked.
Adrien didn’t move other than to slightly tighten
Awareness went through the crowd like a wave accompanied by everything from whispers to shouts.
“Oh my God!”
“Adam and Eve!”
“They’re fiction!”
“THAT’s fiction!”
Adrien let go the man’s hand who then stood with him. They looked at the crowd together.
“Who else?” a man screamed from in front of the Western Wall.
Adrien glanced at Lori who had lowered her head.
“Lori, who you all know,” Adrien said, “Lori’s name was Lorleth.” Adrien smiled a little. “She always had her own mind, but a good one.”
“Lilleth?” the man beside Adrien asked him.
Adrien smiled.
A ripple went through the crowd.
“You kidding me?” the man asked.
Someone from below yelled, “From the Bible? She’s evil!”
Adrien responded to him. “No. She’s saved millions of lives in just the last three months—and done a thousand other good thigns for humanity since she’s been here, some 12,000 years.
“This illustrates what I’ve said. Things earlier people saw, things we talked about with them, were distorted by—not even intentionally distorted sometimes, but by misunderstanding initially, and then by the process of telling a story over and over before it ever got written down—then sometimes badly, then edited with other things in mind—until finally a belief forms that is based on those stories, not on what really happened.
“And then those stories are used as a reason to kill people.
“If ever there was a reason not to kill, this is one.”
“Do you believe in God?” someone from below asked loudly.
“I don’t know about that,” Adrien said. “I know I’m about 200,000 years old, in earth terms. I’ve seen more planets and cultures than I can count, and what I see is people, if you will. Different forms, different shapes, different species, but all people. Sometimes they’re good and make life valuable; sometimes they’re not and make life unbearable.
“That is what I see,” Adrien said. “Would you like to go back down there?” He asked the man beside him.
The man indicated okay, as if he would if Adrien wished.
Slowly, the man floated back down to where he was.