72 The Queen of Olo

Her Royal Majesty Debolorah Olostema, Queen of Olo.

While orbiting the blue planet, Flash happened to pick up the Ololian book. Thumbing through the last (or most recent) section of the book, an image caught his eye. He paged back to look more closely, and there was an update on the colorful little planet. Buffy and Skip had taken up residence in the crystal castle, and had chosen royal names. They ruled the planet with a sense of playfulness, reveling in the joy, not only of their enchanting world, but also in the liberation of their hearts and minds.

Flash only smiled. A part of him had been liberated as well.

The book continued to write itself while in Flash’s possession. Pages appeared, where He read tales of those who inhabited the glass towers, the creatures that lived in the silver lakes, in the caverns and on the rainbow plains.

The white whales hadn’t been the only subterranean inhabitants of Olo. Many more were awakened during Olo’s renewal, and so every living thing on the planet was freed.

Flash longed to be back there. He longed for such a home. Yet, he felt that his permanent presence there could jeopardize the health of that paradise. Man had done so much harm to the earth in such a short time, he decided to love Olo from afar.

The whales would eventually return on their migration. The atmosphere of Olo was their breeding grounds. The new calves would play just at the edge of space until they were mature enough to break free of that bubble and follow the pod into the unknown reaches of space. Here, they also learned the ancient song their ancestors knew, a song Flash would never forget. It came to him in his own recurring dream of being swallowed up into his grandfather’s painting. At times a hint of that song came to him in his waking hours… through the vibration of his ship… through his own heartbeat… but he always shook himself back to the tiny, sterile confines of his ship.

He looked down again on the living planet below him and it filled him with a longing for home.

The more Flash looked down at the surface of the planet below him, the more familiar it seemed. The land masses to the north and south of the equator were nothing like the continents of earth, and yet it seemed he had seen them before. How could that be possible? It couldn’t. Unless he had seen them in a dream. He was perplexed, and all the more determined to go down for a visit.

The ship’s computer had been compiling a satellite map of the the entire planet, and Flash called up the image onto his screen.

Flash “parked” the mother ship in orbit and made preparations to enter the pod. He ran through his checklist, making sure everything was in working order, and that all seals were secure. As he was pressurizing the pod, an alarm chirped. He turned to face the computer screen. A match had been found for this planet in the database.

There, superimposed on his own satellite maps, were the names of the north and south land masses.

To the north was Laurasia, and Gondwana lay to the south. The heading over the map read Pangea.

He stared at the map in wonder. He had learned that the most unlikely things often turned out to be true, and in this case, he did not doubt the information.

He looked closely at the map in front of him, and tried to make out what would become the familiar continents of earth.

So it seemed Flash had found his way home. Sort of. It wasn’t a question of where, it was a question of when.

Flash passed through the hatch into the TNI2, and sealed the door that separated the smaller ship from his living quarters in the mother ship. He looked up from the cockpit and gazed at the view below him. The two supercontinents were connected by a land bridge near the equator, and to the east lay the Tethys Sea. If this was indeed Earth, Flash estimated this to be the Triassic period, a world in which he would not be born for at least 200 million years.

Surely this could not be the Earth! For one thing, the living moon was only about 100,000 miles away. And oh yes… It was living!

Flash just sat for a while, not only taking in the view below him, but also happy to be aboard the TNI2. He loved this little ship, and it offered a much needed change from the mother ship. The mother ship provided safety, and all that he needed to survive in space. The pod offered the promise of adventure, and possibly passage to the outdoors.

From his stationary vantage point, he could not see the moon. Still, he planned to study it. But now to the task at hand.

He released the moorings and initiated separation. He fell away from his home, rolled the ship, and was soon skimming the thin upper atmosphere. Brilliant stars faded as the black sky brightened. Shadows became less harsh within the envelope of air as he dropped into it. The landscape rose toward him as Flash sped through clouds. Light from the star, or the sun, as Flash had come to think of it, reflected off the shimmering sea, and Flash could see his chosen landing site… The isthmus that bridged the continents. He decelerated and flew above the rain forest canopy until the trees dissipated, opening to a rocky plateau bordered by sand beach.

Flash Meridian’s ship came to rest on a flat rock which gave him a clear view in every direction. White capped waves crashed on the open sea, and were broken by a rock reef. By the time they reached the beach, they lapped gently against the sand leaving a line of seaweed and foam to dry in the sun.

Flash longed to run along the water’s edge, to bury his toes in the wet sand and to feel the sun on his skin. Before any of this could happen, however, he sent probes out from the TNI2 to test the safety of the atmosphere. As the onboard computers did their work, he stared out the windows, lost in the beauty of this dreamlike place.

The rock on which the ship was perched dropped off on one side in a sheer cliff to the beach. On the other side, a gentle slope stretched out, becoming dunes in the distance, and hugging the rock to form a gentle path down to the water. Pure white clouds hung in the blue sky.

71 The Blue Planet

The blue planet and its blue moon grew as Flash approached them. He tracked the cloud patterns and mapped the surface. He also gathered data on surface temperatures, in deciding where to touch down.

For so long, he had been floating through space in the biosphere of the tiny mother ship. The thought of a planet like Earth filled him with joy. He looked at the blue dot on his screen and superimposed on it all of his memories and dreams. The very thought of filling his lungs with free atmosphere filled him with nostalgia. Of sitting in the shade of a tree, stepping out into a rainstorm or viewing the heavens from under the canopy of air. Things he had once, in another world, taken for granted, he now craved.

He wanted a new beginning, or at least another attempt to appreciate those things that used to be so familiar as to be overlooked. He dreamed of landing on this planet and finding there the things he once dismissed. His parents. The way the ground naturally gave way to vegetation. How clouds could blot out stars and even galaxies. How gravity held him down.

Of course he expected this world to contain things unlike any he had seen before. Perhaps they would be things that were once on earth… before man… before any of the major events that resulted in mass extinctions. But he also hoped to find something familiar.

Even ancient man left messages of things that once were. Including images depicting beings coming from space… From other worlds… Just as he was doing now.

He pulled the Ololian book down from its place on the shelf and opened the last pages. There, he saw not only an image of his chosen planet and its vibrant moon, but also a picture of himself looking at the image in the book. If only the book could tell him the next chapter now! But that was not the way it worked.

70 I Am In The Universe

Flash Meridian understood that he was traveling at great speed, yet he felt as though he were sitting perfectly still. His speed was nothing when set against the size of the objects and systems he could see from here. Because of this, he felt his real journey took place within. He traveled to the center of himself, examining, exploring and questioning all he knew, all he assumed, and all he had taken for granted.

He observed the heavenly view outside of his ship, and realized that while he was in the universe, the universe was in his body. He and the universe were one.

Quantum mechanics taught him that he, as the observer, played a huge role in how reality is understood. Yet if truth only worked according to how his brain perceived it, why should he be here at all, searching for newer and more accurate descriptions of reality?

Back on Earth, he had always assumed that life was about working to pay the bills. Now, his reality was the opposite of that.

There was no doubt that the view was awesome. Infinitely huge and indescribably beautiful. But he couldn’t touch it. He knew it was time to find an hospitable planet.

The ship’s sensors allowed the computer to feed Flash the choices, and in no time, data filled the screen. He looked for someplace warmer than the ice planet… with land, unlike the ocean planet, and less volatile than Olo.

He narrowed down the choices, and selected one based on all the criteria, including proximity. Still, it would take a while, but just having a destination brought Flash out of his introspection.

The ship adjusted its course, and he brought a visual to the screen. There, orbiting a distant star, he could barely make out the speck of a far away planet. There were other planets sharing this star, but only one was in the habitable zone, where water can exist in liquid form. This earth sized planet also had a watery moon. Both were wrapped in bubbles of oxygen rich atmosphere.

Weeks passed, and the distance between Flash Meridian and his destination closed. The star it encircled grew gradually brighter, and Flash watched the phases of the tiny blue sphere as it traversed its ancient journey through its solar system. The moon that danced in its pull seemed like a child clinging to its apron strings, a miniature version of the parent planet.

Already, Flash felt a strong connection to it, and felt that his choice had been somehow predetermined, and not just a random selection from billions upon billions of options. Factoring into this feeling, no doubt, was its appearance. Vast stretches of rich blue ocean were juxtaposed against continents of every shade of green and brown. The whole of it was wrapped in a lace of cloud, resembling Flash’s own dear home.

As the Mother Ship approached, Flash was able to make out great mountain ranges, vast deserts, sweeping forests and plains. Its poles appeared to be encased in ice.

Josh Rice (Krate Azimuth), Jeremy Chase (Ash Lander) and Tim Young (Flash Meridian) reunited on the happy occasion of Jeremy’s wedding to Plamena Zhivkova Staeva.

69 Cosmos

Looking out through light years of space to planets and stars visible in this particular corner of the universe, Flash realized as never before that he was not a visitor here. Not really. The atoms that formed his very body originated here. Animated stardust. He was bits of this, come back to look at the universe that helped him to become real.

On Earth, he had always thought of space as being “out there”. All of man’s history had unfolded within the fragile bubble of a tiny planet. As wonderful and intimate as Earth was, out here, his perspective on it had changed.

Everything was changing. Some things changed quicker than others. Galaxies spread out like lawns of summer grass. Earth floated like a soap bubble blown by a child. Floating beautifully in a sparkling dance until it can no longer sustain itself.

To Flash, this was not a sad thought, but made his home and his very life all the more precious. This would never happen again. This view and himself. Everything would change. It would be spectacular, but this moment Flash found himself in was unique.

He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know the source of the music. It didn’t matter.

He lived in this moment and saw it as the point of a pencil on a page. The story had not been completed, so he was content to ride the rising and falling, the curling graphite line that scratched his life onto the paper of the cosmos.

From early childhood, Flash had been taught that everything was still here. Everything that ever was, still was… Expanding out like ripples, further and further into the universe. Looking up from Earth to the glow of stars was to look back in time. The twinkle he saw had traveled so many light years that the light that reached him may have been from a star that had long since been extinguished. The further out you looked, the further back in time you saw.

He thought again of his life as a story written on the pages of time.

When you reach the end of a book, the first chapter still sits at the at the beginning where you left it. If you turn back enough pages, you can still see it there where you left it to follow the words, allowing the story to unfold.

Traveling in the direction of the expansion, you would go back through time. If he went against the flow, would he then see the future?

Flash Meridian’s mind raced as he gazed out at the immensity of the universe, contemplating its characteristics and their ramifications. It was too vast for him to comprehend, and he again felt like a grain of sand trying to comprehend the totality of all the beaches in the world. He moved with it, even as he moved through it. One thing he knew. It was beautiful.

Looking at the spray of heavenly bodies that shimmered like bubbles in a bottomless sea, it was impossible to choose one to visit. To pick one would mean rejecting all the others. And yet without the intimacy of a visit he would never truly know any of them. Not in a tangible way. Not in a human way. And so he was conflicted.

On the path of life, we constantly make choices. We choose one option over another, hoping we are doing the right or best thing. Big choices that decide a career, a life mate, a philosophy. And small things like what to eat or how to spend an afternoon. But the cumulative effect is us. Who we are. And so Flash felt he must make a decision.

That twisting path of life’s decisions over time certainly feels like a winding road! Unexpected events seem to throw us off track, and we are forced to regroup. Disappointments and opportunities lead us to major life changes. We seem to lose our way.

But then we look in our rear view mirror, and see a straight path. Those rejected scenarios were never really options at all. They were never meant to be. There was only one journey that would result in you or me.

68 Murmur

As always, the mother ship clicked and beeped.  Its various components calculated, circulated, navigated, and transmitted.  He had become familiar with all of the subtle sounds emanating from the equipment.  With no human companions sharing his journey, the ship itself provided a conversation of sorts. The clicking of the K. D. head was like a metronome which kept time for a symphony of tones that not only informed Flash about the operation of the ship, it entertained him as well. At times it sang him lullabies, and at other times it warned him of impending danger.

Gradually Flash became aware of something different. A new sound whispered within the familiar heartbeat of the ship. A murmur so subtle that to become aware of it was to realize that one had been hearing it for some time.

  Short bursts of static breathed within the mechanical song. When he focused his attention on it, it would disappear, but when he was concentrating on something else, he would become aware of it.  Like silent eyes staring from a blackened window or a star so faint you had to look to one side to see it at all, he knew it was there.  An echo of an echo, a dream within a dream.

  The tiny ship bulleted through frictionless space, and Flash Meridian was haunted by the ghostly sound within his metallic cocoon.

While reading, he would often find himself staring blankly at the wall listening for it. It always seemed to recede as though trying to taunt him.

He was less concerned than curious.

  He passed through several periods of sleeping and waking before there was a noticeable change.

  The sound had become more obvious, and it reminded Flash of something… But what?  It’s character was different than the other sounds he heard. It was mechanical and yet organic at the same time.  Almost like…  the sound was like…  bits of voices from an AM transistor radio that is not tuned to a station.

Time passed, though Flash’s perception of time changed dramatically when he was between planets. Out where there is no day and no night, it wasn’t dark. The blackness of the backdrop was illuminated like a Christmas display. Some of these twinkling lights were actually galaxies that were hundreds of thousands of light years across. Billions of them hung there in apparent nothingness. Billions upon billions more were clouded from his view by space dust.

He sped along at a relative snail’s pace, insignificant in comparison to the heavenly bodies surrounding him. He was significant for the life force that animated him and allowed him to see and feel small.

With this vague and obsolete passage of time, the new sound within his ship grew.

Flash enjoyed sailing the uncharted expanse of space. Everything he could ask for was his for the taking. He was never interrupted, never disturbed. This was both a blessing and a curse. He craved companionship.

He and the K.D. head played games of strategy and skill, and this helped to keep his mind sharp. He came to see the automaton as a living individual, and he came to love her ever-changing facial expressions and her heartbeat of mechanical clicks.

The more he interacted with the flashing, elongated sphere, the more of his own nuance was incorporated into the software. He was aware of this phenomenon, yet he found comfort in it none the less.

The system contained a vast amount of human history in the form of music, literature, science, art and culture.

What had once seemed an almost limitless inventory, he now saw as one shallow exhalation of a fragile, distant planet. It was beautiful, like one glint of sunlight off of a droplet of seawater in the history of a vast ocean. Here and gone again in the blink of an eye.

Sad? Perhaps. But precious and rare.

He now represented all Earthlings on his voyage into the unknown.

The sound grew more and more pronounced, and Flash was, at last, able to track it to a speaker above the control panel. It did not come from his ship at all, but was transmitted from elsewhere.

He fine tuned the receiver until the transmission was clear. It was music. Organized sound pulsed through the cockpit, and Flash smiled. He was not alone.

67 Tailored

Flash relaxed, knowing that he once again had everything that he needed. Beyond the scope of physical needs, he had encountered kindness at every stop along his journey.

Before leaving Earth, he had envisioned the universe as empty, cold and hostile.  He wasn’t sure whether he would encounter life anywhere, though he did find it unlikely that in all this space, only Earth would be inhabited. 

Not only was there life, there was kind, generous and protective life. And he had barely scratched the surface.

  His mind went back to conversations he had had with Ash Lander about the limitless possibilities of infinite space.

  As he gazed out at the star studded black curtain, he did not feel “out there” at all.  The universe was his home.  Sure, he was from Earth, but Earth was so far away.  He didn’t even know in what direction he would find it, if it were even visible from here.

He missed his friends, Ash and K.D.  He had not intended to make this journey alone.  But plans change. He had come to accept that.  This proved to be a valuable tool out here in uncharted space.

The table of elements offered him anything he wished for. It could assemble a gold ring, diamonds or designer clothing just as easily as it could prepare him supper. But what good were those things?  He had no one to impress. And so he asked for his favorite things. A latte and a biscotti, and he sat back once again and buried his toes in the soft black pelt on the floor.

The aroma of pure, rich coffee filled the cockpit, and Flash reached for the Ololian book.

Every time he opened it, it seemed different. He read details that he had not noticed before, and so he never grew tired of it.

 

The book, like the entire universe, held messages of hope and possibility. How could Buffy and Skip have misinterpreted it?  Or could the message somehow be tailored to the reader?

 

Flash Meridian bobbed along for a while at the surface of the ocean. He watched the antics of the whales while he gathered his thoughts.  Whales had become significant in his life lately, beginning with the ones that burst out of Olo’s crust, and then in the mysterious caves of the ice age planet. Now here he was again, surrounded by them.

There was something else here that Flash was enjoying. The sunlight was intense, and he longed to open the windows and breathe the warm fresh air.  The waves rolled over the ship in foaming crests and gentle swells, so he absorbed the rays through the glass. The rocking motion of the ship was relaxing, and his mind wandered off. 

His priority remained finding plant material that could be disassembled and used to replenish the table of elements.

His computer scanned the sea floor. He was looking for shallow water where photosynthesis could occur.

The pod of whales moved on and the sea became calm.

 

When an alarm beeped, he couldn’t be sure whether it had awakened him from sleep or not.  It alerted him to a smooth sea floor below, and Flash dove again beneath the water.

  A sand bar stretched as far as he could see, and he glided along above its barren expanse.

  The water refracted the light, projecting it in ribbons across the sand and through the cockpit.

Then something else came into view. It was the mer creature from the spires, though Flash did not recognize him at first. He looked like a green cloud. As he came closer, he resembled a submerged island, and finally, someone carrying a large quantity of foliage toward him.

He stopped in front of the TNI2, and held the swaying bundle of seaweed out before him like an offering.

Flash was grateful and remotely opened the deck of the rear storage compartment.  The creature placed the stalks into the compartment and swam up to Flash’s window. Flash and the sea person were only inches from each other, and once again looked into one others’ eyes.

How could Flash say thank you?  He longed to communicate, but all he could think to do was to place his palm against the glass. The creature did the same, placing his palm against Flash’s, separated by a pane of invisible glass.  His fingers were much longer than Flash’s, and the suction cups at his fingertips adhered to the window.

  “Thank you,” he said. The creature only stared back with huge, unblinking eyes.

That he understood the request at all was so amazing that Flash could only believe that he understood this message as well.

When the cups eventually released and the creature swam away again, Flash pointed the ship upward and accelerated.

The ship burst out of the sea and rose into the air, climbing higher and higher.

By the time he docked the pod onto the mother ship, most of the seaweed had been digested and incorporated into the life support system. The table of elements was replenished with pure separated molecules of every kind known to man. 

65 Spires

Waves of multi-colored light streamed through the windows of the ship.

Flash could make out something that looked like a peak of coral reef in the distance, so he dove deeper, heading toward it.

The purple spires loomed and Flash searched for seaweed. The submerged mountain peak was littered with sea stars.

The forms were reminiscent of Olo’s towering features. They were beautiful, but he could see no signs of plant life.

As Flash scrutinized the watery terrain, something impacted his ship, violently jostling it. A long appendage reached across the window, attaching itself with suction cups. He glanced around and surmised that a huge cephalopod had the TNI2 in its grasp.

He could not propel the ship out of its grip.

How long might it hold him before it realized the ship was inedible? Then it occurred to Flash that octopi feed on crabs, clams and snails. In other words, they are adept at breaking through hard shells to get at the meat inside. A creature of this size might be able to breach the fuselage of the ship with its enormous beak, so he decided to take action. He simply activated the force field, stunning the animal. It recoiled, releasing the ship, and slunk away, camouflaging itself within the reef to recover.

“Sorry about that,” Flash said softly, mindful of the fact that he was a guest here.

He continued on his quest for large seaweeds, but kept watch on the area for other predators that could pose a threat.

Something was moving among the tall formations, not wanting to be seen. He couldn’t tell exactly what it was. It was about the size of a porpoise or other small whale, but more fishlike.

He rounded a pillar, following it.

The creature he saw there was humanoid from mid-torso up, with a few obvious differences. Its skin was green, and there was definitely something fishy about his face… his large unblinking eyes, ear flaps on the sides of his head and gills on his neck. His fingertips widened into suction cups like a tree frog. From the waist down, it looked like a fish.

Its huge round eyes gave it an expression of perpetual surprise. Flash and the creature locked eyes, and Flash wished he could communicate with it.

It seemed as curious about Flash as he was about it, and he was glad it did not swim away.

He turned his computer screen toward it, displaying images of seaweed.

The creature looked wide eyed at the monitor and then turned and swam away. Flash watched as it disappeared into the distance, and then ascended from the sea floor. He rose from deep blue into lighter water when his sonar picked up something approaching his ship. It was actually a signal he had seen not too long before. Soon, he was surrounded by a pod of whales that rose with him to the surface.

64 Rainbow

Flash examined the earthenware vessel. It was simple, functional and beautiful.  It was glazed with natural minerals and appeared to be fired at an extremely high temperature.  This was a perfectly functional container. Part of it’s beauty came from imperfections in the glaze. Solidified drips were captured permanently by fire, and in one spot, sharp edges were left by a bubble that exploded in the intense heat. 

The object raised more questions than answers for Flash.

Who had made this?  And when?  How long had it been encapsulated in the ancient ice, and how did it get there?  Was anyone left from the race that created it?

It was hard for Flash to picture a kiln, burning red hot on that frozen planet. There were trees for fuel. He held the evidence in his hand, and reveled in the mystery. 

The depletion of elements due to the gift of lettuce was a serious issue, and needed to be dealt with as soon as possible.  Flash no longer had the luxury of a joyride through space, but desperately needed to find a planet with plant life. 

The table of elements had been designed as a closed system, where nothing left, but was continuously complete and rearranged. Restoring balance was critical for his survival. 

He set a course for another blue sphere orbiting a star ahead of him, and began scanning it for signs of life. It was surrounded by a delicate bubble of atmosphere, and below that, a planet-wide ocean of salt water. 

Finally, his spacecraft plunged into the sea. A great splash of shining water burst in the air, and the TNI2 was immersed in the bubbling brine. 

The bubbles quickly rose back to the surface and the view cleared. Shafts of dancing light pierced the water, and Flash found himself floating through a liquid rainbow.