Aquari by DD White
Chapter 9: The Coming of Aquari
Over sixty Earth years after Aquari departed Goag Ralus he finally arrived at the star Tze-Doldus in the Orion arm of Magphoreus. Aquari remained true to his intercept course with the little white dwarf star until it finally showed up in his infrared spectrum of vision. Aquari probes the skies of his journeys with infrared vision along with frequencies of the light spectrum beyond human comprehension. Before Aquari arrived he suddenly veered off course to stop at a nearby star about 100 light years away from Tze-Doldus. There, for reasons even Aquari might not know, he examined the huge water world that elliptically orbited a star that burned slightly larger than Earth’s star. It had been a natural star system that lacked many of the complex molecules and elements that are the signatures of a star system created by a Goag Ralus dust cloud.
Aquari orbited the water world several times. No intelligent life had been detected, but the seas nursed all kinds of aquatic life beneath a thick nitrogen atmosphere that warmed under the powerful sun as well as a very active molten core that also gave the planet a powerful magnetic field. No apparent reason presented itself for why Aquari stopped there to digest data on the system. Maybe it had just been on a whim, or to seek out something from some other unrelated part of Aquari’s story. Aquari often just does things like this in his constant dance of synchronicity with the cosmos.
Water worlds were usually much larger than planets like Earth, and would compare in size to smaller gas giant planets like Neptune. With life’s primary ingredient in abundance, they often thrive with life when warm enough. Eventually Aquari stopped orbiting the water world to continue the last hundred light years to the star Tze-Doldus, home of one of the last known legendary star-doors of the ancient aliens called Nephapricans.
Thus Aquari entered the star system of Tze-Doldus, which still held three planets in orbit around its concentrated gravity. Aquari wondered if Beataphoriah, the star-door’s quanta-optic-nanocode being, had something to do with the profound balance of this newer version of the Tze-Doldus star system. The star-door planet, Tze-Doldus-2, orbited in a habitable zone; cradled by the protective orbits of the two formidable gas giant planet’s, Tze-Doldus-1 and Tze-Doldus-3. Aquari retrieved memories of the old star system from the days of the second galactic age when Tze-Doldus orbited a red giant star called Tze. In those days before Tze exploded, and broke up the binary pair, the gas giant now closest to the star Tze-Doldus used to be the fifth planet from the star. The other gas giant used to be Tze-Doldus-7, and now they were all arranged in the best possible way to shield the life-giving world from most of the worse asteroid collisions likely to result from the death of a nearby star. Aquari looked forward to finding Beataphoriah to ask it about that.
As Aquari approached the star, Tze-Doldus didn’t look so good. Sunspots covered the star all over like the most unfortunate of all acne plagued adolescents, and many sunspots bubbled and festered in magnetic lines of force and plasma geysers. The overall view of the star resembled an egg covered in cracks that were just about to burst with the hatching of something. Aquari knew it wouldn’t be the first time his timing would coincide with the death of a star, and Aquari could see that Tze-Doldus was not long for this world. It seemed as if something else hammered away at it, trying to shatter it, and whatever that was, it was close to succeeding.
Aquari considered that perhaps this had been the effect on a mini-star over its lifetime of powering the star-door located on the planet Tze-Doldus-2. He didn’t think that theory computed, but he did compute that time had been running out. So Aquari approached the greenish marble between the two gas giants that had been the long lost world Tze-Doldus-2.
Aquari descended below the canopy of cloud and vegetation, which definitely reflected the handiwork of the star-door quanta-optic-nanocode being who brought this planet back to life. Tze-Doldus-2 had been alive indeed, and Aquari noted the evidence of intelligent life that covered the planet with roads, cities, and plenty of agriculture necessary to support large civilizations. Aquari has always been exhilarated by the glitter of lights that intelligent life likes to cover their planets with. The planet itself had been all a single continent that long since outgrew the atmospheric plant life. Beataphoriah must have used the atmospheric plants to nurse the planet’s infancy to the now lush green surface of a planet teeming with all kinds of life.
Aquari easily located the star-door, which stuck out of the planet’s single continent like a giant white wart. It showed itself as a perfectly circular mountain 700 miles in circumference that had been covered in a thick icy glacier. This had been the great Aungtalli Mountain, which the Aungtalli species had been named after for reasons that remain a mystery to Uranians. Many Uranians speculate that the gods created the offshoot species deep beneath this legendary mountain where the gods still dwell to this day in an underground city that Uranians call Knoxen. The Aungtalli Mountain was pretty much the only place where snow could be found, leaving the rest of the planet balmy and tropical. This mountain featured the planet’s only glacier, which capped the entire dome-like mountain, adding about 200 miles to the 100-mile diameter of the star-door. It had been a perfect 300-mile diameter white circle on the planet when viewed from space. It had long since been explained away by Uranians as evidence for all time that the gods were real and must not be provoked. The Aungtalli Mountain had been the planet’s most sacred place.
Most harsh weather seemed confined to the snowy northern mountain along with the southern ocean named ‘Inunia’ where weather could get pretty cold and some ice sheets formed at the south pole. Aquari observed that almost constant northern rains fed the planet’s many rivers, which blanketed the land like a net, flowing mostly into the southern ocean. Aquari could see how this arrangement eventually returned the soil destroyed in the nova event to again support life. Aquari noted the planet’s only desert had been a river-less area in the south where the gold-glowing soil still didn’t seem to support any life. Eventually Aquari had finished orbiting above the beautiful alien world, and prepared to indulge his favorite means of exploring planets. Aquari began combing the populated areas of the planet to find amongst the intelligent species a recently deceased corpse to inhabit.
Ploabot had just received a special delivery telegram from aunt Jabeeb in Gulfang. He had a distant aunt Jabeeb, but she didn’t live in Gulfang. There had been no return address with the letter. Ploabot heeded an inner voice that told him to just accept the telegram from the delivery worker without asking any questions. He sat in his favorite chair at home to read the letter. To his surprise it wasn’t from aunt Jabeeb. It was from Veldada, and it told him the rest of the story about the amazing prison break the other day. Up until that point Ploabot had thought Hanson had survived his rescue. It had been victorious news that poured even more energy into a grassroots movement to bring back the Ministry of Science. Now the reality delivered by that letter slapped Ploabot in the face with the fact that Hanson had died that night from a gunshot wound in the back. The letter informed Ploabot that Hanson’s body was going to be ceremoniously burned tonight at an undisclosed Gulfang location. Veldada asked in the letter for Ploabot to be with them tonight in his thoughts as they scattered Hanson’s ashes back into the hands of Urania. Ploabot let the letter drop to the ground with its way too heavy news while he began to cry for his old friend Hanson. He would definitely be there in his thoughts tonight. Hanson had been his friend.
In Gulfang, Hanson’s body had been wrapped in fuel soaked clothes, and it was being carried to a hillside in a remote forest location. Veldada picked the location out earlier from the flying saucer. Earlier that day Salmar had been repairing one of the landing gear legs that did get damaged after all when Curvfin shot the laser while the craft had been landed. This hillside would be the place for a last farewell to Hanson, their leader, colleague, and their friend. Thrandu, Nandor, and Silvanin carried the body to the pile of wood that Curvfin h
They all gathered with the setting Sun to pay last respects. Thrandu had been silent and ashamed that the mission failed. When it came to his turn to speak all he said was an apology. “Veldada, I’m sorry. Oh Veldada.
To say that I’m sorry I just gotta.
I’m sorry Veldada. Oh Veldada.
I must say I’m sorry. I just gotta.”
Before the torch that Curvfin had been anxiously holding could finally be put on the funeral pyre to set fire to Hanson’s body, Veldada said some final words. “Hanson, my love, listen if you are here.
You’ll always be to me, my dearest dear.
I know there’s no child that we can still share.
A child to join us beyond any tear.
But I cherish my memories of you.
They’ll always make us one where we were two.”
Then she started to cry, and nodded at Curvfin to send Hanson off to the great mystery of death. The great Sun of the Uranian day looked like a dot on the horizon, just winking out of sight from the forest hillside that went dark now with a rapidly ensuing Uranian night. Curvfin finally had been about to set off the blaze that he so impatiently waited to set off when suddenly daytime returned. They all looked around to find the source of the new daylight, and all beheld a two-dimensional circle of light facing them, and descending on the crowd.
Something like audible language could be heard by all of them in their heads with a male-sounding voice, but it seemed difficult to understand. “Excuse me. Please don’t light that body on fire. It would be perfect for me to animate. I am Aquari. I am a cosmic being who has come to your planet to explore and learn more about you.”
Curvfin didn’t light the fire he had been so anxious to watch, not really because Aquari had asked him not to, but more because Curvfin, like the rest of the group became paralyzed in awe at the sight of Aquari. Handirlas turned out to be the first to move, and he dug through a nearby bag to produce a camera-like device. He started taking pictures of the phenomenon.
Aquari decided not to wait for any kind of permission or response, and so he seized the moment to possess the dead body that had taken him all day long to find. Aquari had learned of the rescue from news reports he sensed in the cities. That fascination caused him to sense that someone associated with that amazing news story had died. Tracking down the renegade saucer had been easy since it left subtle warp patterns in the phantom matter that had been a by-product of the gravitational virtual particle field of the planet, which Aquari could detect. It had just been more serendipity and perfect cosmic timing as far as he had been concerned because Aquari loves the company of alien scientists. They may think crazy misinformed things, but the good side was that they do think. Aquari had been as much an explorer of this phenomenon of conscious intelligence and sentience as he had been a faster than light photonic explorer of the galaxy itself.
Handirlas photographed away while the others did not much more than change facial expressions from shock to curiosity. Then Aquari descended upon the body of Hanson to disappear in a flash of light that surrounded the body. The body then, for a second, flapped on the pile of wood like a fish out of water, and Hanson’s head of hair suddenly became atomized to stand straight up.
Then Hanson/Aquari slowly sat up and began tearing at the loose stands of fuel-soaked mummy cloth, while the rest of the Uranians there cautiously backed up a couple paces in fear of what happened. Nobody had ever witnessed the dead come back to life, and Hanson had been as dead as dead could be for hours. Aquari experienced some difficulty adapting to this alien brain. It had been one thing to intellectually appreciate their poetic language, which Aquari had memorized a much more ancient version of, it would be quite another thing to experience the brain that evolved to produce such a language. He tried to produce a sentence. “Fa go blee bo be dory da dory.
I’m a cosmic being called Aquari.” Hanson/Aquari became suddenly embarrassed by his poor choice of words. It had just been a first try.
The gathering of Uranians understood about half of that. Veldada just formed the word “Hanson,” and finally broke her paralysis to run up to Hanson and put her arms around him. “You’re alive my love. You’re alive I see.
I don’t know how, but you’ve come back to me.”
Aquari knew he could speak Uranian better than the last attempt, and he began to assimilate. This language of whistles and chirps was spoken much faster than other audible ways of speaking. The female who now held him had been an intimate girlfriend. It would be difficult for her to accept that her boyfriend was still indeed dead and gone. He searched the neural hard drive he now controlled for her name. “Veldada, you must understand one thing.
I travel space. This body I’m using,
the one you call Hanson, who’s really dead.
I’m from deep space. I’m just using his head.” He became much more satisfied with that attempt to speak than the previous attempt.
The others began to close in on the resurrection miracle. None of them seemed to really believe what Aquari told them. Thrandu seemed the least willing of all, and comforted the rejected Veldada by explaining that Hanson had experienced brain damage for being clinically dead for so long, and that it had been a miracle that he functioned as good as he did. He had no explanation for why Hanson’s hair stood straight up like an 80’s punk rocker of Earth. It had a universally comical effect of making Hanson always look surprised like a cartoon character that sees a ghost.
They brought Hanson/Aquari back to the Gulfang headquarters in the flying saucer. Hanson’s memories explained to Aquari that he had been amongst the exiled Ministry of Science who had uncovered remnants of the ancient civilization that flourished long long ago beneath the watchful care of a fully functional star-door now buried under a hundred miles of ice. Before the closure of the Ministry, Hanson had arranged for the warehouse in Gulfang to house technological wonders that the Ministry archaeologists had dug up in the southern desert. Many artifacts were as good as new, right out of the tomb where they were discovered. All over the warehouse floor were artifacts with dedicated scientists who were studiously pouring over them like Earth prospectors who had struck gold. Hanson had connections with Gulfang authorities that agreed to keep all of this a secret in exchange for exclusive rights to the benefits of what had been discovered there. Gulfang existed in the Swerite lands where there had been less loyalty to a Magite king.
Aquari became puzzled at what had become of the civilization he had once discovered recorded over 50,000 Earth years before on streams of immortal photon particles. What kind of civilization outlaws science? This race of beings should have been ages beyond the evolutionary stage of still acting like a very young civilization, which collectively sees existence through a childlike prism of superstition and religion. The Uranians had gone backwards while an offshoot species maintained supremacy over the star-door technologies. Now they were confronted with the irony of discovering the technologies of the future buried in the sands of the past. Why would Beataphoriah allow this? Once again Aquari had arrived on a world to inhabit the body of the underdog species.
Needless to say the funeral had been cancelled due to resurrection, but the gathering planned afterwards became a festive party to celebrate the return of Hanson from the dead. They figured Hanson just explained all this to himself with the fantastic traveler from space story. They figured it had been his own way of piecing together a mind damaged by hours without blood flow. It amazed the observing scientists that Hanson did so well. Even the bullet wound underwent a rapid healing that couldn’t be explained. Everyone kept taking turns for a closer look
It had been easy enough for Aquari to just be Hanson since he had full access to all of Hanson’s memories. He sampled as much of the food at the gathering as he could and even got a bit inebriated by the alcoholic beverages that had been perfected through the ages by festive Uranians. He enjoyed the food most of all, where Uranians showed the most creativity. This would be the kind of planetary exploration Aquari existed for as the reward for long tedious journeys.
As the night progressed it did seem, more and more, as if Hanson became somebody else. Hanson had never really been one to grasp the fine details of the sciences. Hanson had been good at math, but mainly employed that knowledge in his duties as the accountant and budget director of the Ministry. Hanson had been the administrator who liked to take care of all that stuff so that the experts could take care of the scientific details.
Something seemed different about Hanson when he engaged Salmar, the engineer in a conversation about the theoretical physics behind the virtual particle drive of the saucer ship. Nobody knew more about virtual particle physics than Salmar, but Hanson kept correcting him about the counter-oscillating electronic effects, and the theories about sub-atomic particles and positronic fields. It seemed to Aquari like these well-educated scientists were being kept in the dark about electricity and its effects. That part of their scientific method seemed to be still enshrined within the realm of magic. Hanson’s memories told Aquari that they had only recently discovered the underground star-door electric grid that had still been in operation on this star-door planet. The Uranians that Aquari had found himself amongst had no idea that they lived upon an ancient star-door planet that has been the home of some of the most highly advanced beings the galaxy has ever known.
Later in the evening there occurred the conversation between Hanson/Aquari and the group’s astronomer, Rodenadan, about the nature of stars and time/space. There had been no concept of a black hole yet in Uranian astrophysics, but they understood the universe to have emerged in the beginning from something like a Big Bang. Even Veldada could tell that Hanson suddenly understood things that no Uranian could know. By the end of that conversation Rodenadan believed Hanson’s claim that he had actually been a cosmic being who came here from the core of the galaxy to inhabit Hanson’s dead body for the sake of planetary exploration. Rodenadan begged Hanson to speak more with him later. Veldada refused to believe that Hanson had come from outer space. She didn’t want to believe that.
Later as they all began to retire, Hanson and Veldada were given their own room to sleep in for the night. Hanson/Aquari noticed the central-nervous system phenomenon of awkwardness so common from sentient species to sentient species. The Hanson brain’s hypothalamus triggered various hormone gland secretions that began turning his blood into a euphoric cocktail on top of his alcohol intoxication. Veldada had not been nervous at all and helped Hanson out of his clothes. She let out her ample breasts for their universal effect amongst male mammal species. She seemed to be expecting a response from Hanson.
Hanson/Aquari dug through the brain’s memories of sex from previous occurrences of it. Veldada had lain on the bed on hands and knees with her back to him in anticipation for Hanson to do something. Hanson/Aquari then recalled that a phallic erection would usually be used for this sort of thing. Veldada seemed to be wondering what took him so long. Hanson/Aquari responded by reaching around and giving her tit a robotic squeeze since that had been often universally considered intimate. Hanson/Aquari had full control of the body’s biological functions and began to divert blood flow to his penis.
Hanson/Aquari took Veldada’s position to be an invite for intercourse. He noticed female Uranians didn’t have tails, but men did. This made her ass pointing at him seem all the more like a gesture that requested intercourse. Hanson/Aquari pushed his erect penis between Veldada’s legs, searching for a moist vaginal entrance. Soon it all seemed to fit together, and he humped her. Her moans seemed to indicate that he had interpreted the situation correctly, and had been on the right track.
Aquari began to enjoy the endorphin effects on Hanson’s brain with each pelvic thrust that also produced frequent sensation effects that were sparking along Hanson’s central nervous system. It had been a long time, and sex tended to always be shrouded in difficult to understand mores and taboos, which made exploring this aspect of an alien species all the more a rare occurrence. Hanson/Aquari figured he did everything correct, and thought that he had been quite the experienced intergalactic lover.
Veldada began to enjoy the sex, but nothing else that happened that night made Hanson seem more like a completely different Uranian. She had been caught off guard when he just sprung an erection and started humping away. She had become used to at least some pecking, and a massage or something. It didn’t last very long either, and before Veldada knew it Hanson heaved an orgasm into the moist entrance between her legs.
Hanson/Aquari noticed before the symphony of sensations reached its orgasmic crescendo that Hanson’s spermatozoa were sorely depleted and crippled by free radical damage that was possibly caused by intense solar UV and gamma radiation. Aquari then realized that this planet was being pummeled by direct hits of solar flares. No wonder Hanson had been so unsuccessful at getting Veldada to lay an egg. Aquari worked a little bit of his cosmic healing magic on the spermatozoa that had been filling the erect penis shaft just before the most enjoyable of sentient life experiences happened.
Hanson/Aquari became entranced by the endorphin crescendo of his orgasm. Aquari thought that had been one of the best ways to enjoy a body, and even appreciated the highly addictive drugs that the body had produced by itself in celebration of the act. Hanson laid down next to Veldada with one arm still around her back and started drifting off to sleep. Veldada noticed that Hanson now quickly fell asleep, and she figured there had been nothing unusual about that.