Little Cherine Book 12 - BPost003
I objected to us considering the unaligned Talents as a group, but insisted that each and every reality has an equal vote since they will be equally incriminated should the Council judge us guilty. I was asked why I consider it so important we are judged.
7821
“According to the way I think and all that I believe in, I consider us, the family, primarily guilty. We had taken responsibility for Fisiti so the others, whether agreeing to what we decided or not, allowed us to handle her as we saw fit. It is not the Cherinian way. Robert has insisted, from the very first days when the only Cherinians were the family and a handful of friends, that a Cherinian must not allow another Cherinian to hurt anyone. If it was true then, then it is twice as true now that the Cherinians number such a vast number of people and species. It is not so much that we owe it to you that we act according to that rule - primarily we owe it to ourselves if we wish to think of ourselves as Cherinians.
As to why we allowed ourselves to cause so many years of suffering - we abhor cruelty and the love of hurting others, whether human beings, animals or even plants. Fisiti represents the darker side of the human soul and we found it difficult having to deal with her. We set a few rules for her and then, whether deliberately or not, we ignored her as much as possible. In other words, we allowed ourselves to become like her and that is unforgivable of us. It must never happen again and my greatest fear is that we may come across many species who are like her and we must remember to continue thinking of them as human beings, however much we may abhor what they represent. We may fight them to prevent them hurting others, but we are not allowed to hurt them because of the way we feel about them.”
Having stated my point of view with my typical lack of eloquence, I was glad to see the media turn to concentrate on Solomon as he walked out. Maybe sadistically, but gladly, I let him shoulder the burden and asked that we jump to our club for a cold drink. Most of the leaders (in their own forms but shielded for the purpose of being seen as representing their species at the Council) were jumping there, so I guessed the discussion could become quite heated, but I knew I would not be singled out and would be allowed to relax and enjoy their arguments as they debate the subject.
Before the resurrected Tsofi was taken to meet his Fisiti, he was taken to a number of realities so that he could see how great are our numbers and how loving all life has made us stronger, not weaker as his own instincts had made him believe we would be. He was then taken to the house in Dar and Alice went to meet him on her own. He has learnt to speak English as we do and has been provided with a basic education as it was noted that he is intelligent enough to learn. (I mean, as we do at this time, not as we write here for you, in what feels like archaic English to us. A note, strangely, Greek has not mutated as much - perhaps you made a mistake and you should have written in Greek?)
Alice took with her diagrams and photos that show the human brain. She explained to him by showing him how our brains are wired and how Rea’s brain differed. He was not pleased to see his brain was directly under the control of the prehistoric part of our brain and was not angered by our presumption when he learnt we had changed him and Fisiti so that any children they have will be like us.
“Tsofi, the brain of Rea was not like the brain of the people of your mother’s tribe. We have got rid of the way Rea influenced you and made you be as your mother was. Is that not something you would have wanted? Would you not prefer that your children be only children of your mother’s tribe?” As she’d guessed, he was ecstatic and felt, at last, that he had truly vanquished Rea and avenged his mother by us obliterating all traces of the evil of Rea. He still believes that by his welcoming the Cherinians of his world when they appeared in his home, he’d actually succeeded in destroying Rea and we saw no reason to disillusion him.
Tsofi and Fisiti married, just a short and simple ceremony, but a nice excuse for making Fisiti feel beautiful as we dressed her in colourful clothes for the wedding (we dressed her to look beautiful according to her way of seeing beauty, not ours) and as she saw hundreds of cameras concentrating on her and was told that billions of people on our planet were watching her and sending her their best wishes she regained some of her self-confidence and began to try to understand Tsofi when he spoke of Rea and how she had wronged them.
They lived in Freddie for a few months and then Tsofi asked to meet us. He prefers the way of life and the harsher environment of Dar and wanted to know whether the two of them could live there. We bought them some land, built them a nice house and created a vegetable patch for them to feel they are growing their own food, as they were used to, and the government gave them and their children the right to live there and they moved. They have not wasted any time and Fisiti will soon be giving birth to their first child. I bet we’ll have to add more bedrooms within a few years.
7822
Dimi and Campbell have confirmed they have not found any traces of the man from the a-reality, but assured us they have a network that now stretches across the realities watching out for him and if he appears we will be notified immediately. I was amused to see that the two of them have grown quite close and now like each other. I know that Eddie is not really a ‘father figure’ and I have a feeling that Campbell is partly filling that spot. Eddie was told what I thought, but he only shrugged and said that whatever helps his son is okay with him.
We had returned in May and since the date changes on the first of that month, it became PC53. It is now October PC53 and I am overcome by the idea that my little Gina is actually, in Prime Earth time, forty two years old! I never add to that the time she spent on her own as Jina, but she still goes there to celebrate her local birthdays and they count her age according to their time - so she is much older there. I desperately want to make this a special birthday for my little girl, but I cannot think of anything we have not done a dozen times for our loved ones.
Arthur, this is Gina. You don’t know what you’ve started! I’ve spent seven months being Samantha down to her tiniest thoughts and it has taken me days to recover so that I am Gina all the time again. The truth is, none of us knew what to expect. Sam sort of half feared that I would come out of the experience adoring her as my mother to the point where I could not love her as my sister, wife and daughter. I think she does not recall those days as clearly as she thinks she does, or else they are coloured by the way she thinks she should have felt. My mother loved me as a daughter and even tended to idealise me, but she is first and foremost a Teller, daughter of Robert and wife to Cherine and all of us. It is quite funny for me (in a way) for Sam also saw me as her way of giving to the family from the heart of herself - a way of showing just how much she loves Robbie and the others. For that to be so it would surely have to mean that I am something extraordinarily special and I don’t feel that I am…Jade just sent to me that I’m not looking at it the right way, that it does not matter that much how special I feel I am, not even how special my loves feel I am, only how special Sam feels I am. That is how the value of what she was giving to her family should be judged. I guess what she says makes sense, but I’m too close to the heart of it to see clearly.
Most of the above is only incidental, what truly matters is that I have come out of the experience not only knowing Sam far more intimately than I ever have before, but my self confidence or the image of myself has soared to unbelievable heights. For someone like Sam to love me so much, that is far too wonderful for it to be as true as I’ve seen it is.
Back in Athens we found that work had piled up for all of us to deal with during our short absence, the most urgent of it requiring the attention of Robbie. When I name it ‘urgent’, I do not speak factually, but name it so because Hettie needs answers for governments, media and so on. She is careful not to allow him to be bothered by trivial matters, but sometimes what seems trivial to us is not trivial to others.
7823
I did not like the idea of having to attend dozens of meetings and spending days going through paperwork, so I rearranged a few meetings so that more than one could be held jointly and rushed through the papers to separate them into those I needed to deal with personally and those a secretary at the embassy could politely answer on my behalf. Most of the girls still answer almost every single letter or email they receive, but they also tend to receive nicer and more interesting letters than I do, often from girls facing emotional problems and asking for their advice. Because we do not appear that often as adults in public, it is rarely that an adult woman asks for our advice 
.
To outsiders, especially non-Cherinians, Candy gives the impression of being the youngest of us and genuinely a child in all ways. For that reason we were all amused when she got a letter from a woman in her forties who complained that her lover insists on her pretending she is a little girl so as to stimulate him for an evening of sex. We waited to see how she would handle it. We thought she had made the wrong decision when she agreed to meet the woman at a restaurant in Miami. Candy happily consented to us monitoring her directly from her mind, but Robbie stayed close to her as the void.
“Mrs Evans? Nice to meet you, I’m Candy Teller.”
“You have come as an adult, that was sweet of you but not necessary. Please join me for a platter of lobster and seafood and we can talk afterwards.” As Candy sat at the table she disappeared from our minds and Robbie rushed in to find them gone. Within a second or two we had jumped there, but being in our bodies did not provide us with any additional clues.
My loves asked to see the memories of those sitting close by and a few gave permission. All they’d seen was Candy sit at the table and then the two women and the table and chairs abruptly disappear. I concentrated more on trying to sense the vestiges of turbulence in the air. Teleportation does briefly leave signs, but I worried that too much time had already passed. I don’t know what drew my attention to the fact, but I privately mentioned to Robbie that I felt all is not as it seems and it is possible Candy is still sitting within the space the table should occupy. I asked that he creates a stasis bubble around it, with almost no time differential, and we saw Candy sitting at the table on her own. From the way she was looking around in puzzlement I guessed she had not sensed the passage of time since she’d disappeared. She was worried about her host and sensing us there she asked if we’d seen what had happened. Robbie let go the stasis shield and Wendy rushed to put her arms around Candy.
We’ve tried everything we can think of, but we still don’t have a clue as to who Mrs Evans really is. I do not agree with those who think it was a prank (showing off) by a new and unregistered talent but, on the other hand, I cannot go into a panic about it because I do not sense the protector in Robbie reacting. I’m wondering whether the man from the a-reality is not alone. Now there’s something for me to bash my skull over; what are his intentions, why did he appear and then disappear? Does he want something of us, is his reality in danger and he wants our help - if so, why not just say so?
I was amused when a co-guest at a chat show mentioned that if a Normal had suffered the traumatic experiences we did at the edge of the universe, that person would have needed years of psycho-analysis. He asked why are we more resilient, is it because of our having healers. I told him (and the audience) that I do not think so, at least for our family, I think it is a result of our being telepathic and able to sense the love we feel for each other. I think that Normals (still) do not want to consider telepathy as having any positive factors that make it worth having. They prefer to view it as giving us sinister advantages. A few Normals called to claim that the trip had not been as traumatic as we’d made it seem to be as we knew that Robbie combined with the sophisticated technology of the Unation could protect us from anything and everything. I’d just love to share our experiences with them in the way Gina shared my memories so that they prove what they claim by not needing therapy. Okay, I’m just being nasty, but sometimes I think that maybe having nasty thoughts is a form of therapy - for me.
During this time, teams have continued jumping to new a-realities in the hope of finding a probability stream that leads us to Arthur. Now that we are aware of how their Normals differ from ours, we do not react so strongly to what we find there and a lot of the exploration is becoming humdrum. We’ve been back on our Earth close to eight months (it is March PC53) and I’m getting itchy feet, I’d like us to explore a few new a-realities.
Robbie asked the teams, as they returned, to create a mental map of all the a-realities they have visited. Certain minds do show a talent for creating an overall map out of these maps from the teams and it surprised all of us when we found out that many of the a-realities had been visited repeatedly. It is difficult to describe how each reality or a-reality is identified. There is a feel to each one just as going to a place makes it easier for us to have a general feel for that area. It is not possible to do more than that for nothing is static, atoms and molecules constantly move and even sometimes jump to other parts of the universe. For example, our favourite room, whether it is the lounge, the bedroom or the computer room is only a blend of impressions that give us a sense of continuity because we cannot sense the myriad changes second by second. The overall impression is what is of importance and is what we think of as a locale map. Just as Lynda identifies specific realities and is then able to pass on to us such a map, another person finding his way to such a reality may have a different set of impressions for that locale because they viewed it from a different set of criteria that are of importance to them.
7824
It may sound a vague and dangerous way of travelling to specific realities but it does work for us and gradually each reality that is experienced by more than one of us does create its own general impression that becomes the ‘key’ for anyone who wants to travel there. As I mentioned, as the maps of each team were compared and ‘blended’ in certain ways, the composite maps betrayed the fact that a number of the same realities had been visited repeatedly. These were marked as being important map locales for us to jump to and from there seek out new a-realities.
The special talents I mentioned seem to convert the maps into a multi-dimensional map that resembles a universe with galaxies of realities that break down into detailed solar systems of realities and so on - I can’t help wondering, will there be a talent some day who can extend the ‘universe’ map of realities down to finer details and will their ability help us to create probability stream-maps, which is something none of us can do at this time. Such a breakthrough will dramatically alter the way we view realities and we could perhaps (theoretically) end up learning how to manipulate those reality streams that are heading towards a dead-end without forcing them to branch out into new realities or even reality streams.
However vague or nebulous our present systems are, they can be useful to us and as they evolve we’ll probably end up depending on those who are more talented in the way of accepting-extending the maps in ‘real’ ways and we’ll need their help in transversing realities more efficiently. Arthur, I am desperately trying to use only words existing at your time, but I am going to be forced to throw in a word or two now and then that is not used by you or is a mutation of a word you know, but gives an impression of what I’m trying to describe. You could replace ‘transversing’ with ‘criss-crossing’; the meaning would not be exactly the same, but it may paint a picture in your mind that helps you understand.
There is a surge in excitement as teams are suddenly coming across new realities with probabilities new to us, thanks to the basic collating and mapping we’ve achieved. There are a few geniuses I’m told who are able to visualise what we are using and create a 3D virtual map for our computers. At this stage, we do not anticipate being able to use them as maps for teleporting to new reality streams (our dream), but they may help us avoid duplicating our visits to some extent.
Our last trip (back in time) has given or shown our scientists the need for many new kinds of instruments plus they want to improve tolerances with regard to gravity, radiation and heat (they cannot, at our present level of technology, devise, even theoretically, improvements in tolerance with regard to time distortions as it would require that we succeed in creating a time-compensator machine - I’m confident we will succeed in doing so since it is possible to displace in time lepta, quarks or their antiparticles [antiquarks]). While the new equipment are being devised or invented (creating new leaps in knowledge and the possibility of new tools we have not even imagined at this time), the scientists are happy to stay in Freddie where they have all the facilities that would be available to them anywhere else while also being present to perhaps experience and study new laws of nature as we travel to new a-realities.
We followed the same teleportation system we’ve stuck to since arriving at the first of these a-realities. We jumped to an a-reality we’ve been to and once Robbie feels that FTS ‘exists’ as solidly as it does in our realities, we jump to the targeted a-reality. During our first dozen or so jumps to a-realities, my sense of excitement or disappointment rose and fell according to the feeling I had about the probability stream and whether it would lead us towards Arthur or away from him. This time, from the first to the fifth jump I saw nothing that hinted at an invitation towards excitement. The sixth one affected me the same way it affected the rest of my family - we all stared with mouths hanging open. We all feel we are not in an a-reality but neither are we back in our sets. This was also when Patrice Dagàn Venghaus made his first reappearance.
We had remained in the void as usual, for Robbie to first examine the reality for dangers to us before Freddie sent a tip into normal space. Robbie returned directly to his body without confirming it was safe for Freddie to move. Everyone gathered at the taverna, mostly because they felt Robbie.
“The Second World War started in 1936 and it is now1967. The war has been fought for over thirty one years and it does not look as if it is about to end anytime soon.”
Freddie asked, “Is it safe for us to move into normal space?”
7825
“Just the tip, until we decide what we will do, I do not want them to know of our existence.”
As Freddie protruded the tip into normal space we felt the arrival of a stranger. Before we could react he made his presence visible with his hands stretched out in a sign of peace. “My name is Patrice Dagàn Venghaus and I had good reason for travelling to your reality. May I speak?”
“Speak of your intentions first - is this your reality?”
“I am no threat Robert, I come as a supplicant. This is not my reality, but it is close enough for it to be possible for me to enter Freddie despite my not being able to do so in your realities. Allow me please to speak of realities once I have explained our problem.”
“Your problem? Is it this war we see?”
“In a manner of speaking and yet, what you see is the symptom, we need to destroy the source if we are to stop the daily deaths you’ve seen here.” We sensed the courage it took for him to look into Robbie’s eyes as he continued, but we also sensed the bitterness that gave him the courage. “I am aware of your author and the love he holds for your realities. In our realities he is the enemy - the never-ending war, the battles, deaths and mutilations you see here, they are repeated in various combinations throughout millions of alter realities because he is writing a war story. He has written seven books and twenty eight short stories, that I’ve identified. He has not allowed us the freewill he grants your people.”
Alki leant forward aggressively, “Arthur? It is not possible, you are wrong!”
Dommi was just as determined as Alki, but she did not indulge her anger. “Do you have any of his stories for us to read?”
He shook his head. “I regret I do not, not written in black on white as with yourselves. With us you have to read his stories by examining the deeds of a few, for he too has his heroes. May I explain how I came to know of our author before I continue answering questions?”
Maria placed a glass of whiskey in his hand and Robbie gestured for him to take a seat. He held the glass in both his hands, but did not take a sip until his tale was ended.
“I am a throw-away character and that is why I have independence of movement and freewill. Arthur had written a number of war books and stories before he created my reality and me and I believe he wanted to create a story different from any other he had written, but still based on the same war. He had the Nazi scientists discover a way to unleash horrific powers in certain individuals of blocked or latent paranormal abilities. He wrote of them discovering a child of half French and half German heritage and he became the star example of their genius. Arthur wrote only half his novel with me as the main character and then realised he had created a mutant too powerful for his story to be a war story, that it sounded more like a science fiction story, so he abandoned his novel and I think, according to some rules I do not fully understand yet, I should have died, wasted away with my reality so that we become nothing more than ghosts of what we were for a short time.
The flame of life burnt too brightly within me for his desertion and loss of interest to mute my need to survive, but my world seemed to come to a halt. The war gradually petered out as the drive and ambitions of all faded away. Before I realised what was happening, millions faded away and disappeared. Can your empathy make it possible for you to sense the terror I felt as I saw my world disintegrate about me? Men I had admired for their strength of character and willpower became weak, vacillating and unable to make the simplest decisions. Even worse was that they no longer cared.
I was created with terrible powers, but they are not the powers and gifts of Cherinians, not even of your Talents, for, as I mentioned, our author has not shown he loves any of us. My powers are coercive and of domination, of fire and blood. I was not meant to be the good guy, for I was meant to support and further the ambitions of my leaders - which does suggest that our author intended introducing a character with other powers to fight me. Perhaps he would not have, I do not know, perhaps he did intend for me to rule my world.
7826
I lost a lot of time and saw many fade and disappear before I realised I had to take action. I raged throughout my world and prodding and needling men and women I forced them to the need of planning and scheming to save themselves from me. I became the enemy of all mankind so as to save them.” He sat, with shoulders hunched, lost in his thoughts for a moment, and we sensed a hint of the despair eating at him.
“One man, however powerful, cannot keep alight the spirit of an entire planet so that they need and want to live. I realised I was losing the battle when an astronomer reported the disappearance of an entire galaxy. I was overwhelmed by the size of the problem and gave up. Weeks went by and life slowed to a crawl with more and more people disappearing every day. Strangely enough, plants, animals, insects, they seemed to survive more determinedly where mankind had been a threat to their existence than in the forests and jungles where man had not encroached.
As I lost hope of saving my world - so as to save myself, so did I change and become a person I was not intended to be by my author. I had no explanation for what was happening, but the more I lost the more I came to treasure what I had and each and every person, whether a German or of the enemy, I came to love. I came close to realising the truth when I decided that God had lost interest in us. I raged and hated him as vividly as any soul is capable of hating.
It felt as if my hold on life and my reality was slipping, only my rage and pain keeping me alive, but I began to have strange dreams. The dreams seemed to be more real than my life when I was awake. In my dreams the war continued and battles were won and lost and thousands died each day, their pain wounding me - for as I said, I had come to treasure each and every life.
In one such dream I saw my people conquering and as a small town surrendered, the officer in charge decided to execute all the locals. I saw the men, women and children gathered in the fields and men raised their weapons. Desperately and without knowing it was not possible, I willed myself to appear in that world. Using my powers I forced the men to lower their weapons and the officer countermanded his previous order. The intended victims, the soldiers and officers rushed to embrace, weeping at discovering their new love for each other. Just as I began to relax, pleased that I had managed to alter what was to have been, I felt as if I had been dealt a tremendous blow, half knocking me out of the reality and, as if time had unreeled and returned to the recent past, the soldiers sped in reverse to take their former positions and raising their guns they shot those they’d so recently embraced with love. I was shattered by my failure and everything spun and I found myself back in my reality.
My dream experiences did not weaken me and my hold on life within my reality. To the contrary, they seemed to strengthen me. Night after night I found myself trying to stop or prevent some atrocity of war and every time I was thrust aside, that reality reasserting itself so that it continued as if I had not existed. It took days for me to come to the conclusion that their God was forcing the return to what he’d planned. I came to the terrible conclusion that the reason my world (reality, as I later on came to think of it) was fading and turning into a ghost of what it had been was due to our God dying! Our God had to be a different God from that of other realities and He was dead and therefore our universe could not keep its hold on reality without Him. My journeys to other realities strengthened me and I used my strength to help my world, but I soon realised that I was fighting a losing battle, what was the point of helping a few million survive when the universe with all its galaxies were fading away into oblivion?
Knowing something, does not always dictate our next actions. Instead of surrendering to the inevitable I struggled to find ways to strengthen myself further. It was as if, in a way, without me having reasoned it out, I was searching to become a god so as to save my reality. Unfortunately I was ignorant of the void so I did not know I also had to strengthen my soul.
My first real step towards growing in a way that might save my reality came on the day I deliberately forced my way to an alternate reality while I was awake. It may sound stupid of me that nearly a year had to pass for me to do so, but I had never known how I did it while asleep and so had not believed it was possible to do so awake and deliberately.
Since that time, I estimate I have spent over eighty years fighting to save lives in alternate realities while also returning often to reinvigorate mine. Almost all new knowledge and growth occurred by accident. For instance, I arrived at an alternate reality in the midst of a battle and to avoid being shot or blown up I jumped wildly and found myself within a reality where the war had ended decades ago and aliens from another reality had arrived. I watched and then tried to warn them, but was ignored and even threatened. I felt little responsibility for them so I left, returning to save those realities that had split off from mine. At that time I did not realise that there is only one prime reality and thought that if a reality differed greatly from mine it originated from a different prime reality. Learning that it was otherwise was to cause me great confusion when I first arrived at one of your realities.
7827
Decades passed and now I rarely returned to my reality. I had come to understand that time did not pass in my reality while I was away, as I could return close to my time of departure, so I felt I should concentrate on finding a way to grow immeasurably stronger before returning. Although I concentrated on travelling to realities where Earth followed the same pattern of continuing war, at times I would find myself within realities that bore little resemblance to mine. A few years ago I came into a reality that differed, but was not worthy of my taking particular note of it. I was weary and needed a little time to recover so as to feel the fight was still worth fighting so I stayed. After a few weeks I became aware of an anomaly that truly frightened me.
I was seeing ghosts! They looked just like the people of that Earth, but they did not wear the same style of clothing and when, out of curiosity, I tried to sense their thoughts, I became aware that they are not of my species and come from different realities. Aliens of different realities were cooperating and planning as one! I came very close to despairing, thinking they came to conquer.
I used my powers to hide myself and stalked them, watching and listening to their thought exchanges. I did not understand much if thoughts were exchanged between those of the same species, but where they communicated with different species they seemed to use English. I was flabbergasted and did not know whether this signalled something fortuitous or not. Then, a man and woman came among them and I could sense that not only were they of the same species as I, but that they were both far superior in abilities to myself. Fearing they might sense me, I kept my distance and only faintly focussed on their thoughts. I might have tried to contact them if they had not further confused me by the fact that both of them would at intervals think of themselves as being somebody else, not the personality I was coming to know them as. I felt that if they are so different from all people of my reality then I should be careful of allowing them to become aware of me.
Because I was concentrating on their mental abilities, it took me a long time to realise what they were doing. When I did I came close to bitterly weeping. I came to the conclusion that they also came from a reality that had been abandoned by its God or else, their God had died. They had come to this reality in the hope of this reality strengthening them so that they return to being real!
I withdrew into myself. I wanted to leave but I could not, I could not bear to. Vaguely the thought that I should learn from them kept me in that reality until I recovered and my mind was able to ask questions once more. I had not needed time to pass for me to become real in any of the realities, would others from my reality need to do as they were doing? I jumped and brought an animal that was close to fading away in my reality. It had no problem in being real and was soon as any other local of its species. I was forced to bring a human being. I still was prejudiced and the thought that the possibility the person I carry over might suffer terribly and die meant I had to avoid bringing a German. I found a Greek who was close to not existing anymore (it also seemed advisable to choose a Greek as most of the aliens seemed to be appearing in Greece). To be honest, I was surprised when I discovered that I had successfully brought him across with me. Puzzled I stared at him for, the instant he crossed to this reality, he became real - as real as anyone else.
I returned him to our reality and watched him for months. Gradually he reverted to becoming insubstantial until he was scarcely more than a ghost - as were most of the people in my reality by now. I took him across to another reality and he was absolutely real again!
I almost convinced myself that I should transfer everyone from my reality to other realities. I did not think I could save more than a fraction of the population, but I felt that even saving a few thousand would be worth it. Luckily I felt it might be prudent to return to see how the aliens had adjusted to being in a reality they do not belong to. I tried to concentrate on arriving there a few years later. When I arrived I was shocked to find thousands of aliens and when I followed those who were more real, I discovered they had brought food to feed the starving millions in war-torn India and Pakistan. I felt wounded. Neither in my reality nor within any other had I found any group of people willing to make large sacrifices to help others. I’d thought I was an aberration and unique in my need to save lives.
Returning to them was to upset my knowledge of the universe once again. I had heard the various species think and speak of themselves as all being Cherinians, but I’d thought of it as only being a name for their group. Then I met a child of my species and heard her spoken of as Cherine and from the feelings of everyone when in her presence I realised they had all named themselves in her honour. That was the most alien thing any of them could have done and I still get a cold shiver whenever I think of that day!
7828
A few days later I learnt that Cherine and others with her whom she thought of as family, were returning to their reality. I was too late to monitor them, but another group left the same day and I attached myself to them. They should have felt me, but, just like the powerful warriors the Akiards are, they were almost arrogant in their ignorance or disdain of possible dangers to them and did not keep a watch. They must have arrived within Freddie, for I was blocked from arriving with them and found myself in the vacuum of space. I managed to distort space around my body so as to keep myself alive for the few minutes I needed to jump to the closest Earth - wherever it would turn out to be. It must have been further than I’d thought, for I lost consciousness.”
“You arrived on Earth while you were unconscious? Were you aiming for a particular place you knew?”
“Consciously I only aimed for arriving at an Earth, but I suppose we all tend to include within such a picture the details of areas we think of as home, familiar or friendly. It seems the home I live in, in my world, does not exist in the reality I was in and I materialised in the middle of a street with a vehicle travelling towards me at speed. It hit me and ran over my body before the driver could stop. I was taken to a hospital where nurses took care of me until a Cherinian could be notified to heal me.
The healing had another effect on me that was totally unexpected. I’d thought of myself as being real, the only one of my home world. The healing must have affected me down to the atomic level, for the physiological reaction sent my mind into a shock that I needed two years to recover from. For two years I did not recall who I was and survived as a Normal of your realities.
I was not created to be soft and gentle. Even though I could not recall who I was, I found the softness and kindness of my fellow man disturbing and unnatural. It meant that I did not make friends and only survived because I was given a food machine and was supported by a Cherinian grant as is usual in similar cases. My recovery was, once more, a matter of chance or an accident. I was sitting by myself at a taverna by the beach, my thoughts as bitter as they always were at that time, when a family arrived. I’d seen them on television and all the other media and recognised the local Teller family. As they walked by, a picture of the Cherine I’d previously sensed came to my mind and I viciously but softly snarled at Cherine, ‘You are not mine!’
She stopped her Robert from pushing his way between us and asked, ‘Which one is, do you know?’ I shook my head that felt as if it was spinning. She asked, ‘What is your name?’ I had been given a new name and yet I heard myself answer, ‘Patrice Dagàn Venghaus.’ As I heard my voice speak my name I think I screamed and when I came to I found I was flying above the clouds at great speed. I could sense others were in pursuit so I jumped back to my reality.”
Robbie nodded. “We were told about that, but we all thought you were a local Talent. Please continue.”
“It took time for me to sort out what had happened and to feel that I am the person I am and not that pale imitation I’d been when I did not recall myself. I then had to reabsorb what I’d learnt when in that reality and I think the most important of all that I learnt was the story you Cherinians tell the Normals about Arthur. I even found copies and read his story about the Boxees.
All that I had spent over eighty years learning about those who continue the war started to make sense. There is no god who lives or dies, but as crazy and impossible as it may sound, there is an author. That was why I could not force a change, I could not force my opinion on our author, for I am but a character from his stories. At first I envied all of you Cherinians, for I thought that your author was different from mine, that he is a benevolent and loving author while mine is hard, uncaring and never loth to sacrificing lives if it serves the purpose of his story line.
I carefully returned to the first Cherinian reality I’d visited and once there I learnt how to travel to the others. I stayed away from your prime reality as I had learnt that the prime family are far more powerful than the others and I needed to learn of the ways you think before daring to confront you. I also feared that as your author has direct contact with you in the prime reality he might be able to sense me. By then I’d realised he had not intended for me to remain a viable and powerful character and I feared that if he learnt I had survived his disinterest, he might take steps to correct his earlier mistake and un-create me and my reality.
The time I spent in my own reality was a time of mixed feelings, plans that vacillated and changed with every life extinguished as if it had never been and by the dreams of the Cherinians I’d spoken to or read about. I chose to go to our Athens in the hope it would help me understand you better. I was sitting on grey rocks that overlooked the Aegean Sea when the memory of your people arriving in my string of realities and adapting yourselves so as to become real came to mind. I wondered whether it would be possible for millions or billions of Cherinians to visit my reality and instead of adapting to it, force an adaptation on our reality so that it becomes permanently real. Once my dream began to feel as if it might have some basis for being implemented according to the illogical way our realities are created and separated, I had to exile myself from my home reality so that I only return to it with an army of Cherinians willing to fight for our lives and existence.”
7829
Shelif cut in, “Why didn’t you come to us and ask? If you’d studied us as you claim, surely you must have known we would not refuse you?”
“Please be patient and hopefully you’ll understand why I had to do it this way.” He frowned. “The direct way is not always the best way - despite you surviving such directness for longer than I have lived.” Of course Alki and others just had to nod in agreement with him.
“I returned to the Cherinian realities and spent a few more years travelling from reality to reality studying not only the Cherinians, but also the other groups, and I came to the conclusion that if my set of realities come to know of you and they learn how to teleport men in large numbers, they will consider you weaklings and attack. Before I continue, I have a question to ask. What is your opinion, do you believe that if one alternate reality unravels, falls apart or fades, would the implosion of it no longer existing destroy others?”
Robbie made it obvious he was looking to me for an answer, but I am not knowledgeable, I just have a weird imagination and his question, I sensed, needed a serious answer. I called for a Unation scientist and gave ‘him’ the question.
‘He’ nodded towards Patrice, “The family did not make it clear to you, all species have been listening - we hope you do not mind.”
“I had assumed it was so.”
“As to your question, not even the Muyzith genius of more than four hundred years ago who defined alternate realities could answer you. Theoretically it does not seem likely there is a danger of that happening as it must have occurred a number of times by now - perhaps more than once for each probability stream.” That shook Patrice but us also as we imagined entire realities of life suddenly not existing anymore. Perhaps we need to be reminded sometimes that we do not stand on firm ground, just a ball of matter spinning in space and nothing is guaranteed, but I don’t have to like it.
Maybe it was only my way of trying to avoid thinking too deeply of my family and I suddenly not existing for no reason at all, but I tried to mentally visualise what he said and found it difficult to make any sense of such a visualisation. “I’m not saying that realities are strung like pearls on a string, but something about your belief does not sit easily in my mind. Let us say we have reality number four hundred and four, which splits for four hundred and five to split for four hundred and six to come into existence. Are you saying that if reality four hundred and five stops existing, four hundred and six will continue to exist without being affected by the demise of its parent?”
“Would it not make wonderful sense that if the way you picture it Samantha is how it is, our lives would be made easier and we could find the link that guides us from child reality to parent - thus speeding our search for Arthur in his prime reality?”
I stared at ‘him’ for a moment. “I would like it to be my way, we need all the help we can beg, borrow or steal.” ‘He’ took me literally and floundered until Robbie and the girls laughed. Robyn asked ‘him’ to sit with us and we waited for Patrice to continue.
“I believe that my set of realities would lose if they attack you, but they would disrupt and alter the direction of your growth. In my imagination I have seen hints of your future and it is too beautiful for me to allow that to happen. I am pleased that you began to exercise some caution after the first few realities you visited, but I worried about the first realities that now knew of or suspected your existence. As you may be considered the leader of all Cherinian realities, whether they have Cherinians already or only will in the future, so am I, thanks to our author giving me the powers he did, natural leader of my set of realities - the a-realities as you named them. I have taken the action I consider necessary and those realities that learnt about you are no longer a threat to your realities - so please be careful if you return to them.”
Robbie asked, “When did you do so?”
“Over a span of time.” He understood us better than we’d thought, for he continued. “It was not necessary for me to kill. I stole memories, destroyed documents and media and created explanations for all that you did. Patrice Dagàn Venghaus the mutant is now known to some of them, but the possibility of Cherinians existing is no longer a possibility. Robert, you failed your people as the protector, but nobody can think of all the contingencies ahead of time so there should be no guilt.
7830
Now we may come to the question, why did I not make my presence and need known? Because you needed to grow stronger if you were to save my world and reality. I learnt that you intended travelling to the reality where the governments of Earth foolishly believed the aliens and enslaved their people by destroying the spirit that makes them Men. I quickly returned there and stole a cloth for bringing to you so that you do not fall for the lies of the aliens. I later learnt that you intended returning in time close to the creation of one of my realities and I tried to join you in Freddie, but I was blocked from entering and reasoned that you were correct to do so, the less unknown factors you have to deal with during such a journey, the safer you would be. It is still felt to be a pity by me as I had hoped that by coming with I might learn something about how a universe is created and save my own with that knowledge.
There is a puzzle that may lead to new truths if we find the answer to it. When you first enter an a-reality you are not real enough to interact and need to spend time there - I presume that breathing the air is part of the process of making you real to that reality as you absorb the most tenuous parts of it. Yet, from the first time I entered one of your realities I had no problems and to the contrary, each time I come to yours and return to my realities, I find myself even more effective back home. Does anyone have a clue as to the reason it works this way for me?”
Ashia betrayed her excitement to our minds as she saw a reason so we kept quiet, waiting for her to re-examine (as she likes to do, considering it prudent of her) what her intuition had shown her. “I think it could be that Arthur first considered creating you - for us we call it ‘assuming’ - for our realities, but then became fascinated by the idea of placing you in a reality where he has not assumed such paranormal talents for anyone.”
Patrice liked the idea so I hated having to add a qualifier to her idea. “Ashia, it is a brilliant deduction but don’t take it as fact until we find out that Arthur is their author. To be honest, I cannot see him writing books of war plus it is not likely he can influence realities not belonging to his reality by writing stories.” As I spoke, cautioning Ashia, I felt something was trying to make itself known to my mind but I could not grab it. It will make itself known if I do not push too hard so I’ll have to wait.
Cassie was quick to jump in and turn my caution on its head. “Arthur has wondered whether there is an author who is writing of him and his reality. What if it is that author who is writing the war stories and influenced by the story Arthur is writing he wanted to try and add a Talent to his story. He would have probably borrowed from Arthur his ideas as I doubt he knows much about writing science fiction or fantasy. That would mean Patrice is partly of our realities.” That girl may make me feel like growling at times, but there are times (like then) when I just feel myself explode with love for her. Patrice decided he loves her theory but cannot fully believe it, as he is still convinced that Arthur is his author.
Dommi asked Patrice, “If we ask Arthur and he denies being your author, will you believe him?”
“I’ll want to.”
His reply put a damper on our mood and he quietly sipped at his drink that was no longer cold. He asked Robbie, “Would you ask him?”
“Sam?”
“Sure. I suggest Patrice first eats something while we nibble on some fruit and then we can speak to Arthur.” Sorry Arthur, but when I can, I prefer to chat with you on the main computer as I don’t feel we’re chatting if Athene types out for me what I say. Patrice has watched and read as I typed all he told us (and how you changed my words) and is waiting with us for your answer: are you his author also?
(
I hope you enjoy reading this story of fantasy, adventure and love - and should some of it be true for our reality, I hope you will love our Cherine.
- posted: 4th Aug, 2020
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