The Acolytes of Crane "Updated Edition" (20 page)

I realized after writing it, I
had misspelled some words. I was in a hurry, but I figured he would get the
point. To ensure that Liam read it before his father did, I would call upon
Migalt. But, for now, I was in a hurry, and I had left my mark, with very clear
instructions. It was time to rush.

I knew that I didn’t have time,
and there was more begging to do.

Next stop was Mariah Espinosa’s
house. It was going to be a tough transition for her, but I had a powerful
sense of confidence. Just before I arrived at her house, I telepathically sent
a message to Migalt:

Migalt, this is Theodore. I need
you to bring Dan and Lincoln to County Hearth. Be there in twenty minutes.

Migalt quickly returned over my
nanocom, ‘Do I dare to assume you and your team are ready and should I notify
Zane to prepare for extraction?’

‘Yes, this is the only way. I
will be ready, just have them there. Also, have Nezatron track me and take
whatever action he deems necessary to ensure my safety. I am standing in the
bushes outside of a prospective team member’s house’

Nezatron said, ‘I am on it,
Theodore.’

I threw pebbles at Mariah’s
window. After about five bangs on the window, the white drapes fluttered back
and forth, and there she stood, beautiful. She pushed open the window. Her face
and silky white nightgown shimmered in the moonlight. I signaled for her to
come outside.

I had to read her lips. She
asked, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ She angrily shut the window and flipped the
light switch to ‘on.’ I stood behind the cypress bushes next to her porch and
waited. She was eating up the clock.

I began to worry whether Mariah
was ever going to come along or not. Nonetheless, I had to wait as long as I
could. The door creaked outward, and I didn’t wait to see if it was Mariah
before I jumped between the bush and the porch. I inched my head up over the
top stair to look at her and almost startled her.

‘What are you doing at my house,
Theodore? My dad would kill us both if he knew there was a boy standing
outside.’

‘I am sorry. I just need you to
come with me to County Hearth. I will explain everything when we get there.’ I
sped my words by her, and yanked at her arm to run. To my surprise, she
followed me, with no resistance—she had her reasons. We bolted down the street.
The Hearth was about four hundred yards away, and she stopped.

‘You have to tell me now. I am
not running any further.’

‘Listen, I need you to come with
me. When Jack bullied you outside of the rink the other day, we didn’t think
twice to help you, and I need you to do the same for me now. Please! Let’s go!’
I pleaded. 

She complied, and we ran. Once we
arrived, there was no one else around. I kept glancing around, to her
consternation. Where were the other boys? My heart sank as I wondered if my
mission would ever lift off, and I would be stuck with an irate girl who had
been my fantasy for so long. I might as well have written off my hopes for her
forever.

‘Okay, what is this about? I must
know, Theodore, or I will have to go home. Is this about you and me?’ she
asked.

‘Mariah, what I am about to tell
you will be difficult for you to believe, but you must trust me.’ I looked at
my watch, ‘In about five minutes you will see things that will amaze you, maybe
even frighten you, you will think your eyes are playing tricks on you, but you
must believe me when I tell you, this is a dream. We are in a dream right now.
I want you to come with me to a faraway place,’ I spoke irrationally and
quickly.

‘If this is a dream, then why do
my legs hurt from running so far?’

‘Okay, it isn’t a dream. What am
I saying? I am sorry, but it will seem like one. This is difficult for me too.
This guy Zane has asked me, of all people, to save the multiverse and I am
begging you to stand by me in this fight. That is as simple as I can make it. I
know it seems crazy, but this is what I live for now, it is our duty to go into
space to fight this war. You must come with me. I have nothing now. They killed
my grandparents!’

‘What! Your grandparents! This is
crazy. Where are we going to go, Theodore, are we going to fly away in a
spaceship and zip off into space? This is weird. Your grandparents are dead.
How am I supposed to believe that? I am going to stay here just to show you
that this is ridiculous. I will even agree to go with you. There, I said it. I
will go with you,’ she said. She stood with arms crossed, waiting for something
to happen.

‘Are you done bickering?’ a
male’s voice rang out behind us. It was, to my ultimate astonishment, Liam,
‘Well are you? Let’s get this party started. If this is all true, and we really
have this new purpose, I am going to kiss you, Theodore. If it isn’t, remember
what I do to grapes, well, you will pay for waking me up this early for a
joke.’

‘I cannot believe he dragged you
into this too, Liam. We are not supposed to believe—oh my God. What is that?’
Mariah yelled, with her hands over her mouth.

From the dark of the sky flew two
dark and shadowy masses that appeared with Lincoln and Dan in grasp.

‘Woo-hoo, that is what I am
talking about!’ Lincoln yelled.

‘That was flipping awesome,’ Dan
said with his classic style.

‘Everyone, listen to me, please,’
I said. Everyone looked stunned by the presence of two giant Bromels standing
before us. Migalt was one of them, and I did not know the other. ‘Migalt, I
need you guys to watch over us while we wait for the extraction.’

Migalt looked at me as if I was
funny and said, ‘I believe we have it under control, Theodore. The rest of you,
please wait to be taken to the ship.’ He peered at me. ‘One of the conditions
was that the four agree to go with you. Otherwise your team will be
ineffective. Strength of heart and conviction of valor are the key constitution
of a team. Did they all consent and with informed knowledge of what lies
ahead?’

I was sweating now. How could I
be so incompetent at this kind of thing? I had many months to prepare, yet…

Suddenly, blasts roared out of
the sky and scattered explosions around us.

‘No time!’ shouted Migalt. ‘Leave
now!’

In a wild burst of blinding
light, the first group—Dan, Lincoln, and the other Bromel—left. The second
huddle—Mariah, Liam, and I—stood in awe and fright. These two, who were the
most unwilling and freshly recruited accomplices, pleaded to me not to go.
Guilt struck my heart like a dagger. The instructions were to bring willing
individuals, but I felt in that moment they were acting out of their fear of
the unknown. I held my amulet in hand, and it turned from a cool blue to
burning hot.

We all gaped at a fiery, huge
object in the darkness that magically appeared out of nowhere. A Dacturon
battleship had just revealed itself with four blasts from its cannons.

As Mariah and Liam ducked for
cover, Migalt agilely stuck out his spear into the direction of the warship,
and the incoming fire bounced off the tip of the spear into wild, random
bursts. One of the blasts exploded a hole into the side of a semi trailer in
the parking lot, spewing out shards of metal and glass.

My entire body was now tingling
with vehemence. Glancing to my side, I saw the shocked faces on Liam and Mariah
as they appeared to be vaporizing before my eyes. I looked down at my torso and
arms; every cell in my body appeared to be growing translucent. I turned my
head to view Migalt, as he soared toward the invading vessel with majestic
spear drawn and intent to destroy. I screamed, ‘No!’

“My thoughts were absent. The
teleport was complete.”

“The Uriel was five hundred and
thirty-five feet from end-to-end, with a wing span of seven hundred and twenty
feet—nearly the length of two football fields joined end to end. There were
panels sporadically placed upon inside walls within the body of the ship to
simulate distant stars with luminous white speckles, as if we were watching the
giant view screen on the command bridge in
Star Trek
.”

It was like the
Spruce Goose
with an iridescent radiance from its faux star glow, fitted with futuristic
weaponry, and built on a sleek contemporary design. The great engineers of
today’s Earth would probably have heart attacks—out of joy—after seeing that
beautiful machine.

The two groups were now banded
together in the nerve center of the ship, the Chamber of Rafal. Dan, Lincoln,
and Liam were accepting their new surroundings with open arms. But not Mariah.

I hugged Mariah, because she
seemed distraught and regretful.

‘Theodore, my parents told me
they were getting a divorce tonight,’ she said. Immediately, I thought,
where
did that come from?

‘What? I’m so sorry. I hope I
haven’t made things worse,’ I said. No wonder she agreed to run with me this
evening on the spur of the moment. Who wouldn’t, after hearing the same day
about the divorce of your beloved parents? There was nothing I could do to console
her. I could not tell what she was more concerned about, the divorce or being
whisked away to a strange spaceship. She was immediately transferred to a
special bay to be debriefed by Zane himself. I was worried that Zane would
deport her back to Earth, because she wasn’t entirely willing, as my orders
required. Then without the required five, my entire team and myself could have
been deemed unfit for the mission and regretfully returned to our home world.

My last visit to the Uriel was
brief and left me with no time for exploration. I wanted to put in a request
for a tour. I didn’t want to leave anything by the wayside.

The Uriel, our new home, was now
situated close by an incredible, breath-taking gigantic space formation called
the Cliff of Divinity. It was several light-years tall, much like the Pillars
of Creation. It was like a Niagara Falls of interstellar debris flowing into a
dark abyss. The flow was a lava lamp-like unification of purple and black. The
translucent violet was produced by the light emitted from neighboring stars
outside the gravitational pull of the cliff.

We left the chamber to be
introduced to our quarters. We walked through hallways that visually seemed to
have a transparent wall on the interior side of the ship, re-creating the
deepness of space. It was just imagery collected from cameras situated outside
the walls of the ship to relieve the feeling of containment, and replace that
anxiety with an overwhelming sense of vastness. The other boys were thoroughly
impressed.

‘Dude, those Bromels were
intense. I can see why they are Zane’s bodyguards. They could probably kick
some serious butt!’  Dan said, as he stopped to immerse himself in the infinite
black space presented on the wall.

Liam playfully kicked my foot,
tripping me. I turned to chase him, and he put me in a headlock, wildly
grinding his knuckles into my scalp.

‘Say uncle-say uncle,’ Liam said
jokingly.

‘Uncle, Uncle! C’mon goofis! You
are going to make me go bald if you keep doing that,’ I said, as I ran ahead to
avoid our frisky scuffle.

‘Thanks, Ted,’ Liam said.

‘For what?’ I asked.

‘For this. If you didn’t bring me
here, I’d be stuck on the third rock down from the sun in the Milky Way!’ he
said, and continued down the hallway.

I laughed, running after him with
my lips pursed, and I shouted, ‘You owe me a kiss!’

I could feel the presence of
Dietons. They flowed around us, and in the center of our group, the formation
of a body rose up from the ground. Level-by-level, the body began to take
shape. The robotic man-thing standing beside us introduced himself as Nezatron.
I recognized him immediately from my first encounter on the Uriel, shortly
after I had been saved from a certain death at Taylors Falls. The others in my
group gazed on in wonder.

‘I am Nezatron. Theodore has met
me before. As you can see, I am made entirely from Dietons. I am from Sephera;
therefore, I am Sepheran. I will be guiding most of your training on this ship.
Welcome to the Uriel. It is the name of this ship. You will be sequestered to
your sleeping quarters until notified. Don’t touch anything,’ Nezatron said.

Nezatron, as I remembered him
from before, was robotic in nature. However, he was now of human form. The
facade that he disguised himself with was of a man with platinum hair, slicked
back; bright blue-green eyes, like the ocean near a coral reef; and
about-average height—standing about six feet.

His voice was similar to before,
but more human-like, yet still monotonous. It was the first time I actually
saw—with my own eyes—the formation of Dietons.  It was a sight to remember.

There was astounding warmth
radiating from within my body. It was a feeling of inner serenity that pushed
outward from the center of my chest, leaving a tingling sensation at the
outermost nerve endings of my body. The quality of the air within the vessel
was pristine. I breathed deeply and cleanly.

I rummaged through my sleeping
quarters, exploring what was known and unknown. It seemed designed for the
comforts of an individual, but there was one important thing missing—a bed. A
button on the wall intrigued me. Pressing it, I felt a flow of Dietons again,
and then I heard Nezatron:

‘Lie down. Do it. You can trust
me; after all, we have been through a lot. C’mon, lie back.’

I leaned backward slowly, and I
felt my body braced by an invisible pressure. I lay completely back, comforted
by the softest feeling I could ever imagine. It felt as if I were lying on a
nimbus cloud, or millions of bubbles.

Nezatron said proudly, ‘What you
lie upon is actually millions of Dietons. These Dietons were equipped with
microscopic platforms. There are enough to encompass your entire body. No
matter which way you move, the Dietons will adjust to give you systematic
support at essential points of your body. In other words, they will give you complete
comfort while you sleep.’

I rolled around. Nezatron was
correct. The Dietons adjusted to my movements and provided an extremely
comfortable platform for sleeping. Although, if any human watched me test that
technology, they might think I was blithefully possessed by the way I was
levitating about my room.

I learned that Dietons could not
be observed with the naked eye until they worked together intensely to form an
object. It was when they bound together their attachments with finality such that
they created an image. The bed that I was toying with presented itself as a
light grey transparent sheet of Dietons with slightly visible edges.

Nezatron was the most interesting
form of Dietonical mass. He referred to himself as Sepheran, so I realized that
when Dietons formed Nezatron, he was considered Sepheran. If the Dietons formed
an inanimate object, that however was not considered a Sepheran, since that
identity was only given to beings that had formed a new sentient soul. Nezatron
certainly qualified. Although he appeared human, and executed flawless
mannerisms that wouldn’t cause any by-stander any cause for alarm, he was still
essentially robotic in nature. Despite that, he was definitely his own person,
with his own soul. That was weird.

After the tours of our rooms,
Nezatron led us five to a huge conference room in the middle of the ship. It
had sunken wide steps that appeared as a circle, with its bottom-most platform
right in the center. He beckoned for us to step down to the eye of the circle,
and we did. We looked at the cavernous ceiling; it was a glass dome that,
again, afforded us a wide view of outer space.

Suddenly, from a holographic
projector on the ceiling appeared the image of Zane. We were engaged in a sort
of hologram conference call. He said, ‘Attention! Please draw near. My name is
Zane, and this is my ship, the Uriel. We are at war. My creators, the
Dacturons, which I have long ago disavowed, have chosen a path of destruction. 
Urilian involvement in their lives angers them, and they choose war as the
solution. It is my duty to raise awareness of this growing threat. My belief is
that we all must involve ourselves in this fight. You will represent Earth,
compliments of Theodore. We ran the database of Earth’s entire population, and
with our findings, we now know that he is the only one capable of delivering us
from this threat. He has risked his life to get you here, and lost everything,
because of Dacturon greed and jealousy. Did you tell them about the death of
your grandparents, caused by our enemies, just last night?’

‘Just Mariah,’ I said, with my
head bowed down, and my body slouched.

All the other teenagers—even
Mariah once again—conveyed shock at the news. They couldn’t cry; it was too
unreal for them. But there was no doubting the chagrin on their faces. They
were also still not fully recovered from their sudden departure from Earth. It
would take several weeks for them to adapt to the new reality, if ever.

‘It is okay, bud. I am here for
you. We all are,’ Liam said, and the others comforted me as well.

‘What are Urilians?’ Dan asked.

Zane continued, and said,
‘Urilians are basically anyone who opposes the Dacturons under my rule. This
war is between the Urilian resistance and the Dacturons. You are here, because
you willingly accepted this fate. If for any reason saving the lives of
billions isn’t a cause you are interested in pursuing, then I will send you
back to Earth. This mission isn’t for anyone who has doubts of what they are
capable of doing. Your doubts might certainly lead to the deaths of others.
Every decision you make from here to the end of this conflict will have an effect
on the outcome.’

‘Why did you guys let this
happen? I mean, Ted’s grandparents are dead. I mean, I don’t know what
happened, or who did it, but it sounds like something real bad happened.
Couldn’t you have stopped that?’ Liam asked angrily. I stood spellbound,
wanting the answers even more badly than Liam did.

‘Liam, my power is finite. You
might have been told that I was infinitely powerful and can destroy anyone or
anything that isn’t in line with my law. It is true that I have strength, but
my power has limitations,’ he said.

‘You can say that again, dude,’
Lincoln growled. ‘You definitely have more power than we do, yet Ted has lost
everything that was important to him.’

Zane turned to Lincoln and said,
‘I understand. I am angry too at what I could not prevent. Join me. If you
don’t have anything to fight for, you do now. The deaths of Theodore’s
grandparents will not be in vain.’

He looked around the room to let
his remarks sink in. Satisfied, he said, ‘You will refer to me as Zane. You may
not call me Lord, or dude. I am only an Omnian with the ability to do
miraculous things, so please spare me any worship. You will train diligently,
as I have schooled Bromels for hundreds of years. The Bromels are the brilliant
angelic beings that were vital in your escape to the Uriel.’

Dan brightened up, ‘Yeah, those
things were super rad!’

‘I can see your attention spans
are in short supply, so I will try to move it along. We will use technology
unfamiliar to your world. Make no mistake, the enemy wants us dead. We must
respond with the correct measures. War is hell, so you may find us training
with motives and tactics that may lie below your base instincts. You, in fact,
may from time to time experience doubt,’ Zane said. He seemed troubled. ‘But
you must have faith in me and know that because you have sacrificed for me, I
will sacrifice for you. War isn’t forgiving, loving, or humane. War is
disgusting. It is something I am not proud of, but we are cornered more now
than ever.’

He pointed to outside, to the
crystal clear dome where we could see stars twinkling. ‘Right now, outside of
the confines of this ship, wait ten Dacturon destroyers. They don’t advance nor
withdraw, so we have to figure out what they’re up to. Undefined purpose,
however, does not erase their ability to raid this ship. Although it would be
improbable that they would succeed in boarding us, it isn’t impossible.’

‘So we are trapped on this ship,
with a threat outside?’ Liam asked.

Zane answered, ‘Yes. Remember,
the evil of the enemy is limitless. They are not hobbled by niceties, nor are
they gentlemen of war. They are willing to do anything, with no regard to what
is just. In contrast, your actions will need to be within the highest attention
to morals and integrity. You will listen to Theodore and accept his orders,
because that is his gift. His ability lies in his understanding of leadership.’

He gazed at us. ‘Any questions?
It’s important that you clear up everything, right now. That is mandatory even
before we can start.’

Lincoln cleared his throat. I
knew he would be the first to ask.

‘Just two words,’ he said. “Why
Earth?’