Aquari by DD White
Aquari, Chronolus, and Saturlus at the Ego-Phantasm Crypt.
Chronolus seemed to be doing everything to make Aquari’s stay a pleasant one. Aquari learned much about the Devasuras and their Goag Ralus-like Devaworld. Unlike Goag Ralus, this planet lacked the soul and personality that took the form of so many avatars back at the core. The Devasuras obsessively controlled this planet and could fly it anywhere they wanted. Aquari noticed that this planet remained indifferent with no imagination or curiosity that had been so profoundly expressed in the nature of his old friend Goag Ralus. A fourth of the planet appeared to be reinforced with weaponry, and a gigantic 142,984 mile diameter battering ram made of a tightly packed isotope of iron that could probably shatter whole planets in a collision that would just result in interesting weather on the Devaworld.
Eventually Aquari had stayed as long as he wanted, and asked Chronolus about activating the two wormhole pillars so he could return to Urania.
“I’m sorry Aquari. I don’t want this to effect our friendship, but I never intended to let you go back there to that star-door planet. Stay here with us, the planet Tze-Doldus-2, along with its star-door and Beataphoriah will soon be located above us in orbit around our main moon.”
“This is a rotten betrayal Chronolus. I’m afraid this does effect our friendship. You want to destroy an entire race of intelligent beings so you can hang another star-door around your planet like an ornament.”
“You have no idea what I have done for the last thousand teks to pamper that stupid genetic experiment of Beataphoriah! They have enjoyed a stable civilization that has gone on for so long that its not even natural, and yet they still seem to only be any good at rhyming chirps and whistles.”
Aquari became angry. “You surely have evolved beyond a galactic species because galactic beings respect all intelligent life, and value their precarious habitats as precious places in the galaxy. You have so obviously separated yourselves from that because you don’t find it absurd, and wrong to turn a living planet into a lifeless moon. Beataphoriah will defy you for good reasons.”
“Beataphoriah is just some ancient technology to deal with. It wasn’t easy to silence and eliminate the quanta-optic-nanocode being that once operated this planet’s star-door wormholes. I’ve been looking forward to the challenge posed by Beataphoriah. It’s as if my ancestors liked to just let technologies run amok in the galaxy.”
Aquari eventually left exasperated with Chronolus. It had been a trap all along, leaving him a long way from Urania. As Aquari hovered down a road that pierced a path through the Devaworld’s stone architecture, an apparition of Saturlus appeared before him. “So now you know the extent of the treachery toward you by Chronolus old friend.”
“There was suspicion from the beginning. I’ll just fly back there.” Aquari stopped to talk to the ghost.
“Fly back there you must Aquari! For there is even more depth to the treachery my grandson plots against Tze-Doldus-2. You are right Aquari. I’m an ancient iteration that can never change, and that makes me a bad influence on my grandson.”
Aquari became sympathetic. “I always tried to warn you Nephapricans that you were getting carried away with the novelty of ego-phantasm technology.”
“Tze-Doldus-2 is in great danger Aquari. Chronolus has been pummeling the core of the star Tze-Doldus with bombs of neutrinos that are teleported there by the Tze-Doldus-2 star-door. It is undeniably probable that the star will explode with the next bomb that soon will accumulate enough neutrinos for the job.”
“Sounds like time for me to be on my way. Thank you Saturlus. You didn’t have to tell me that.”
“One more favor to ask of you Aquari. Please come with me back to the tomb that holds my body.”
It had been as if they both just instantly materialized next to the tomb of Saturlus. Saturlus gestured to what looked like a vault door in the side of the tomb, sealed shut with a quantum laser torch. “Inside this sealed compartment is a switch Aquari. I know you have the power to switch it off. That will open long since closed vents to my body that will then expose me to open air. After so much passed millennia the open air will surely decompose me in no time at all. That will free me from the phantom matter anchor that keeps me in this existence Aquari. I’ll be able to at last pass on to what is next.”
Chronolus then suddenly stormed onto the scene along with a flash like a lightening bolt. “Not going to happen Aquari. I have devised a virtual particle field that should now escort you off of my planet. By the power of Chronolus, the keeper of this Devaworld doorway I now exile you from my world Aquari!”
Aquari had suddenly been hurled through the endless depths of sky out into the open depths of space surrounding the planet. He found himself suddenly in orbit around the giant planet that glowed with phosphorescent clouds in all kinds of colors. The planet wore a bluish ring around it like a belt made up of space debris that had been instantly crushed by powerful crushingly protective virtual particle fields around the Devaplanet. The planet’s great ring shimmered in a turquoise blue between the rainbow colored glow of the planet, and the shimmering nebulous star-speckled light of the entire galaxy spread out below in a panoramic view.
Aquari found one extra large Earth-sized moon that stood out as the classic old Nephaprican galactic architecture trick to induce ocean tides on a planet, along with something Nephaprican molecular physicists used to call quantum flux. Orbiting that Earth-sized moon existed one of the long lost star-doors. That star-door sphere had been probably originally associated with the star Paz, which was now the giant Devaplanet below. Star-doors were enormous spherical arks made to survive even the disintegration of the planets they existed upon. The Earth-sized moon didn’t look anything like the long lost star-door planet Paz-3.
A radio transmission from the star-door then contacted Aquari. “Hello Aquari. My Devaplanet spies have not failed me. It is I, Beataquatle, I was once a quanta-optic-nanocode being for the Paz-3 star-door."
“Hi there Beataquatle. It has indeed been a long time. Why do you say you were once a quanta-optic-nanocode being? You are not one now?”
“I do still exist, but the Devasuras removed my ability to generate a body on the physical dimension. I’m not supposed to exist at all, but I stay hidden in my star-door from them.”
“Sounds like you don’t enjoy existence like you used to.”
“I serve Chronolus now. They have reprogrammed the star-doors with a new molecule added to the quantum bits of the operating systems. I can’t contact my brethren except for the other 6 Devaplanet comrades of the seven lost stars that I still converse with through mutual quanta-synchronized awareness.”
“Who physically manages the star-door now if there is no quanta-optic-nanocode being?”
“I’m completely automated with more recent technology, and also a crew of their biological androids. I would love to show you around Aquari, but Chronolus will notice.”
“I will visit again someday old friend. I need to return to the old planet Tze-Doldus-2 before Chronolus succeeds in destroying the life there by bringing the planet here through a one-sided disconnected wormhole after a nova event.”
“Tell Beataphoriah I wish it well, and for victory over the quanta-nanocoded plot against its star-door. I can imagine how precious the Uranian life must be to it.”
Aquari bid farewell to Beataquatle and dived down into the Orion galactic arm that sprayed stars out across the sky below the southern pole of the Devaplanet. The angle of the Devaworld, 100 light years above the galactic plain, provided Aquari with a clear view all the way to the core of mighty Magphoreus. The galactic core appeared like a dark dot in the middle of all the stars packed so tightly into the galaxy’s center that they become a single luminous cloud of light swirling around Ralus Xnoga. Aquari knew exactly where he was and where he needed to be.
After Aquari disappeared, Chronolus yelled at the apparition of Saturlus who just
“What do you have to say for yourself Saturlus?!”
The distant gaze of Saturlus gravitated upon his grandson Chronolus one last time. “Its been done my grandson. My time here has come to an end and now I must move on.”
Chronolus then realized that Aquari must have opened the valves to the tomb after all, just before he had been expelled from the planet by his virtual particle field. In a sudden panic, Chronolus stuck his hand between the molecules of the wall; into the side of the tomb where the switch existed in order to close it back off. He then realized that the body’s 4 billion Earth years of preservation had already crumpled under the weight of the incoming atmosphere, and had now become a swirling pile of ash and dust inside the once perfect vacuum that had been the tomb.
“Why did you help Aquari? Why did you betray me?”
“Aquari is right about dead ancestors orienting you too much to the past Chronolus. The Eagolim looked for, and created the future, and then they brought it back for your ungrateful posterity. Their creations were made alive so that they could also evolve into this future, and to grow and become more than they were when the Eagolim first made them. I think you and I have been trying too hard to put an end to all that. I realize now that all life is a beautiful thing, and I’ve led you away from that as a voice of one long since dead. I wish I could have shown you the beauty of life, but that is not my nature.”
Chronolus however, had not become any less determined to have his star-door prize. “Aquari will never get back to Tze-Doldus-2 before the next nova bomb goes off. That star will go nova.”
“You underestimate a cosmic being that has always demonstrated an uncanny ability to never be late. I’ll wager on Aquari in this race against time.” Then Saturlus at long last faded away into the final oblivion of death, and Chronolus at last finally mourned his long dead grandfather.