WAR IN THE HEAVENS
So it began. Many thousands of Perfect Men crossed over into the higher plane, as did the minds of the Spiritual Men allocated to the task. Intellectual Men were left behind as planned, with the intention of Spiritual Men passing constantly between planes to take orders and pass on information. A planet in the higher plane was chosen as a base, one that was far enough away from the creator’s planet as not to be noticed by the bronze men and not so far away that the journey into battle would take an excessive amount of time.
When the time came the hordes of Perfect Men, accompanied by the disembodied Spiritual Men, took flight towards the said planet. The bronze men they passed along the way looked upon them with surprise and worry and immediately fled back to their home planet. On reaching their destination they found a vast army of the bronze men awaiting them, floating gloriously around the planet with looks of resentment upon their faces; however Perfect Man outnumbered his enemy two to one. It was a representative of the Perfect Men that spoke first, in the language of the beings they were confronting (through a method of telepathy which all could hear) ‘Intelligent beings, men of great worth, we come to you now in both an act of brotherhood and hostility. We, as highly intellectual beings are here to request an audience with the creator whom you serve, the lord of all, the star maker, the man behind the curtain. We hide nothing from you; it is with malice and contempt with which we look upon your God. But know that we hold nothing against you our brothers; we are understanding that you have been tricked or forced into the servitude of this awful being and it is with open arms that we welcome you if you wish to join us. We should be fighting together, not apart. This is our offer, what say you?’. The reply was both courteous yet fully threatening ‘We understand your plight perhaps more than you know friends, yet do not insult us with such an offer. You pretend to know exactly what it is we protect here yet really you know nothing. An audience directly with him you cannot have. He is a being far too great for you to shame with your ignoble plight. I am permitted to speak for him and I tell you now to return from whence you came immediately and we shall not lay claim upon your lifeless corpses. I warn you men, if he knew you were here you would not be presented with such an easy escape’. After discussing among themselves Perfect Man’s representative retorted with ‘Do not ridicule us. If the creator is unaware of even an enemy knocking on his door he is as we thought, not a being as noble and powerful as you say. Enough of this’.
And such a battle as had never been seen before started on the edge of this magnificent planet. Thousands of Perfect Men and bronze men flew at each other in unison against the backdrop of the intense golden light radiating behind them. Perfect Men made excellent use of the powers at their disposal, but were matched with far superior powers. Perfect Men hurtled bronze men into each other with telekinesis, bronze men healed their injuries with regeneration. Perfect Men, through a lack of natural elements to manipulate, used their immense physical strength to tear the bronze men apart limb from limb, bronze men retaliated by conjuring fire out of nothing and propelling it across space as though it did not need oxygen to survive. Perfect Men tried to confuse and confound the bronze men with telepathic manipulation, bronze men paralysed Perfect Men with a mere thought. The Spiritual Men all the while commanding the Perfect Men telepathically and sending other Spiritual Men back and forth into the Earth’s realm to report and receive orders. The battle echoed the biblical war between angels in heaven when Lucifer challenged God for the throne. Such ancient nonsense did not seem so foolish here, to my eyes at least.
Once it reached the point where Perfect Man’s numbers had dwindled too greatly and even the reinforcements had been destroyed, bronze man brought the battle to a halt and looked upon what remained of his vanquished foe. Perfect Man’s number had diminished from the countless thousands strong to a mere two thousand pitifully wounded creatures. A vast sea of bodies, of both species, slowly spread out into space away from the planet; yet bronze man’s number looked the same now as at the start, with a seemingly endless supply of reinforcements being supplied from within the planet. With great fury in his eyes the same bronze man spoke out as before, his words searing painfully the minds of the remaining Perfect and Spiritual Men; ‘You are a treacherous and arrogant race of men, each and every species of you. You shall look now into the eyes of the life giver and know true punishment. You are not the first men to bite the hand that feeds it but know you shall be the last’.
Our minds were immediately filled with a shockingly painful clarity. In each of our mind’s an eye burned brightly before our sight, one which we could not turn away from no matter how hard we tried. With it came a shocking realisation in our hearts at what we had done and how foolish we had been in our endeavours. Not foolish in the way that we believed what we had done was wrong against the creator, but foolish in our believing it was possible to destroy him as we had destroyed our predecessors. Coupled with the sight the continuing voice of the bronze man rang in our ears; ‘Know it is he the life-giver whom you look at now, and hear forth his punishment’.
Chapter Eleven.
THE SCATTERING
I am writing in the first person because I am, of course, one of the Spiritual Men who observed and played a commanding role in that battle. Upon that moment a voice entered my head so clear and commanding that I immediately blocked out all the anguish and the pain in order to focus intently on it. The tone was fierce, the words themselves vanquishers of all hope. It was explained to us that mankind should never have reached this stage in committing such an offence towards his creator, and by committing such atrocity he would be doomed to a slow but eventual extinction. Each single man, woman and child would be taken and placed into his own separate universe, one which was fully devoid of any intelligent life and held no prospect of escape or happiness. He would live out the rest of his days on a habitable planet until every last person had died and mankind had become extinct forever. This was to be our punishment. After his last sentence I do not remember anything.
When I awoke I found myself in a lush jungle with springs and thick vegetation, though one with no animal life except the smallest of insects. It has been thirty years since that day and I have since lived in complete solitude, doing nothing but wandering this world in silent contemplation. Over time I have managed to produce many writings etched on thin bark and it is on such that I write this now. I have been able to give so detailed an account due to my vast knowledge of man’s history and my role played in the war. All of my connections to the higher plane were taken from me; I am now nothing but a ‘normal man’ as it were. This irony of man’s depletion back to his original stage has both taunted and humoured me throughout my days.
Looking in retrospect over these events, I believe this punishment was set upon us to put mankind in his place before his final demise. In being scattered among the cosmos we have each and every one of us been shown just how small and insignificant we are compared to the creator and his multitude of creations and have been forced to experience loneliness on perhaps the grandest scale possible. The number of universes must indeed be infinite if every man was put, like me into his own to become lord of it’s cosmos before he perishes.
I am confident that this will find its way into your hands and it will do you and your kind the greatest service, I am confident because I have a very secure method of preserving this manuscript for many a thousand years at my disposal on this planet, one which my knowledge of science has allowed me to develop. So if the creator does decide to fill this wondrous Universe with intelligent life again after my demise, you will hopefully one day excavate these writings.
In truth I write this story as much for myself as for you and your people. I write it now, long before I expect to die, so that I can organise my thoughts clearly and sanely, for the loneliness I endure will inevitably bring me to the edge of my sanity at some point, probably very soon. Once I have laid this completed document in its secure place I will wander again across the plain to make further exploration of this vast and magnificent planet. I only hope that the men who outlive me in other universes have been given as beautiful a planet as I to live out their last days on. I find it poignant that the very last man will know no more of his significance that if it were to be me right now. Perhaps it is, who can know. Or perhaps time does not flow in these separate universes in the same way one would expect it to. Know though, whoever you are, of what we as a species endured, and also of what we achieved. Learn from our mistakes so that you may not commit such atrocities. I leave you now.
So concludes the story I wrote in my second year of university; an adapted retelling of The Tower of Babel (I originally titled it Nimrod's Tower but that proved too obscure for many; even my lecturer).
ReplyDeleteI realise that it is very amateur. I did, however, receive a 1st for it when I submitted it as work; the task was to write a short story in the vein of one of a few listed authors, and I chose Olaf Stapledon (due to him probably being my favourite SF author). This is why there are no characters, why it flies through man's future at a rapid pace and why man keeps evolving and altering himself. Plus there are various other Stapledonian tropes littered within.
So I feel the story succeeds in the respect of being successfully in the vein of Stapledon (as obviously did my lecturer), if not perhaps as a riveting and engaging story.