The Prophesy: Book 4 - Armageddon

Chapter 14 - Scorched Earth

 

The magical Atlanteans not busy with recovering the last Goblins and not required to maintain Thebes' magical security were divided into six task forces. Each task force had to port to Thebes' tessaract 32, levels 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 their respective biosphere segment. Task force number one was assigned to Africa and was directed by Yamato; Ian led task force two, assigned to South America, mainly the Amazon-Orinoco basin; the third task force, led by Enron, was to recover everything that had been left behind in the South Pacific, including whatever could be recovered from Australia's Outback; a fourth group, led by Annabelle, was tasked with recovering what could be in North America, and to keep an eye on local Orcs to see if some could join their brethren in stasis for recovery; team number five had to deal with oceanic ecosystems and was headed by Samson; and finally team six was tasked to handle Asia. Harold had thought to handle it, but everyone told him in no uncertain terms he was better to be free keeping an eye on the overall picture then on the nitty-gritty of these tasks. After some haggling, the leadership was given to Silver Moon.

"Let us see. The area covered by these assignments may seem to be unfair," began Paschal, "but overall, they are about equal. For instance, a good part of Asia is radioactive and therefore unrecoverable. Europe has only spots that are worthy of recovery. The Oceanic team has only some rare areas to recover, as per the survey done by the Spiders, mostly along volcanic lines, where fumaroles supply energy for life; the rest of the seafloor is rather barren, and we can compress the biomass diversity into rather limited subsystems. Corals are sparse, and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia has been severely damaged by the Cataclysm. Most of it is so radioactive it is useless. Other atolls are small, and easily recovered. Your big issue is that the spots worthy of recovery are spread far and wide. The high-density recovery will occur in the African and Amazonian Equatorial belt. North America has suffered immensely of the Orc war, and most of it is desertic by now. Annabelle, if you do find Orcs, they may be in terrible shape. Knowing their social structure, the surviving ones will be the most ferocious, so be weary."

"I know, Paschal."

Harp stood up, and took the floor.

"The goal is to leave nothing worthy for the Soul-eaters, should our precognitive predictions prove to be right. Take out everything straight to the bedrock. We want this planet to look like a radioactive Mars."

"What about the atmosphere?" Dunbar asked.

"And the seawater?" completed Williams.

"As for the atmosphere, I am inclined to recover as much oxygen and nitrogen as possible. The advantage of gases is they are compressible, and the volume of the atmosphere once liquefied is not that much. For the sea, we do need to stock up on fresh water, and the current dry spell due to the ice age is not helping us."

"There, Harp, I disagree."

"Oh? Why is that, Thorsten?"

"See, when ice forms, it is generally because it first passed through an evaporation process that left the salt behind, with snow being composed of fresh water. Ice sheets, and we know they are growing by the square mile as every day passes, are fresh water reserves. Second, they are relatively devoid of radiation, if only because the evaporation process also leaves behind radioactive elements. We could recover the uppermost layer of ice and melt it back to stock up on water."

"I see. Well, Thorsten, since you know these things, your task is to recover as much of the seawater in its desalinated form as possible. Sub-segments 20 of all tessaracts was kept free for high-volume in bulk stuff. They are also gravity-neutral, which means the water you put there will weight nothing. Do not be surprised if it forms a sphere due to the surface tension. And sub-segment 21 of tessaracts 9 and 11 are designed to hold high-pressure gases, in the order of one gigabar. That should let you recover the entire atmosphere of the planet and compress it in these volumes. I suggest you recover the ice first, because depressurising the planet will lead to a higher rate of evaporation. Only solid ice will survive. Please wait until we are done recovering as much as we can of the biomass before proceeding."

"What is the expected timetable?" asked Dunbar.

"Four months before we are done recovering the biosphere," said Harold, as he took a big pile of files and handled them out to each team Commander. Once this was done he sat back down and Paschal took over.

"You have your assignments. You have your departure time with your orders. Everyone is trained to transfer the porting to a receiver for final materialisation in the tessaract, so all you have to do is send the data stream. The reason the departures are staged is to prevent collisions between Cohorts in Thebes. Within your assignment kit, you will find a complete list of sites to port, their central coordinates, their shape with proper coordinates, the list of assigned Legions to accompany you and constitute your Cohorts, and the contact information for the receptor Legions in Thebes. For each site, there is an entrance point and an exit point, with waypoints both within the area to port and between the areas. All headings are magnetic, adjusted to local magnetic declination. Any questions?"

"No, Paschal," replied everyone involved.

Sitar took the stand.

"Enron, leave immediately for the Australian continent. It should be near prime there when you reach it. The assigned Cohort is number five, a mixed-species Cohort composed of inter-species Legions number 500 to 599. All have porting capabilities, but I want you to fly to your staging area. As soon as you enter your assigned segment, start porting stuff to Thebes. Your focal Cohort in Metropolis is Cohort number six, composed of Legions 600 to 699. That means at takeoff, there will be a minimum 1,100,000 Atlanteans taking to the air, either as passengers on Pegasuses or Dragons, or as one or the other of these flying species. Be very attentive to ground control instructions, especially to timing, heading and altitude assignments. Any question?"

None were forthcoming, so Harp stood up.

"The porting will be very tiring and stressing. To prevent any mistake, it is organised in such a way that two focus on navigation at all time, two focus on porting, two check on weather. Each Dragon will carry 24 passengers, or four porting teams of six; the number is identical for the Pegasuses. Each porting should take ten minutes per square mile. As soon as a port is over, the next sextet takes over. The port front should progress at six miles per hour. Once you reach your staging point, a Centurie spreads along a line 100 wide according to the flight plan. That means each line will involve 100 carriers, and 2,400 port member teams. On every hour, on the hour, the lead wing climbs out of the way, rotates, and heads behind the lines, to rest. Each line is a wing, and there are seven wings per flight, for a total of 700 carriers, and 16,800 Mages per flight. Note I said Centurie! There will be 100 of those involved! You are numerous enough to port without stop for twelve hours, from sunup to sundown. Not everyone will be porting along a line, depending on what square mile they are overflying."

Enron then walked in front of the others.

"These numbers tell you the size of the operation. One last thing needs to be said. You will notice that it is the lowest line that ports stuff, and no one else. As you progress along the port path, you drop 1,000 feet every hour, until you reach the port altitude, set at 50,000 feet. The one leaving the port altitude climbs up to 56,000 feet, rotates, and inserts itself behind the others. Each port team is one mile away from the other at the same altitude, arranged in a V. The wing team aligns their port path to cover and abuts their area adjacently so nothing is missed. The spacing between lines is set at six miles, so you have time to climb up or glide down to the next altitude. Altitudes are set ASL, because topography is too variable. So when it says 50,000 feet, it is 50,000 feet above sea level. This is vital, given the weather will not be nice. This operation goes on, whatever the conditions. We selected high-flying paths because the weather is more stable in the stratosphere, and you will be less subject to the pyrotechnics of the Earth. We have very little time left. There are to be no night ports."

Paschal again took the stand.

"If you do the maths, you will notice a front line is porting something like 510,400 square miles per day. It may seem a lot, but if we ported everything, it would take us slightly over a year to do it using a single line. Even using six lines organised by region, as we are, it still will take us slightly over two months. Luckily, we will not be porting everything, but we still need to fly over everything! So this task will take 63 days, leaving us two months to recover the atmosphere and the water."

Harold stood up.

"The Kingdom is putting every single reserve to the task. Do not fail! The meeting is now adjourned. Take your stations."

As everyone was leaving, Paschal noticed Harold wanted to talk to him.

"Yes Dad?"

"What is the status concerning the Spiders?"

"The train carrying the orichalque from Colibri's homeland arrived a week ago and the mineral is now processed. The Spiders underwent revision and are now in storage. Those that did the undersea survey are all back, and we have finished decontaminating everything recovered by them. They too are now in storage. The war Spiders are now in storage as well. Those that needed to be retrofitted to become maintenance Spiders are almost all fixed and stored as well."

"Have you found more orichalque deposits?"

"There are some, deep below the planetary crust. We will not bother recovering it, unless it suddenly pops to the surface, which should be possible only after the planet fractures."

"Have we managed to locate the triggering event?"

"The comet? Yes, but it seems to be rather small. Its tail is the only sign of its presence. I cannot imagine how this should be enough to cause the mayhem we foresaw."

"All right, it is too bad we do not have a telescope, we might be able to figure out what is happening up there."

"I know. I have been looking at the issue. I may be able to make a portable one, which is better then nothing."

***

Scraping the earth of anything viable began in earnest. As a line of Atlanteans progressed slowly along their assigned path, strips of the surface would vanish, some wider then others. The surface of the planet gradually took the appearance of a pockmarked globe covered in bloody Band-Aids as the oxidised substrate came into view. The areas left intact were the glows, the glasses, and generally, all radioactive areas.

The method favoured moving from east to west in order to gain as much daylight time as possible. Northern winter shortened the time available for those handling Asia and North America, but those doing the southern hemisphere benefited of longer, if shortening windows of operations. Day in, day out, the recoverable surface of the globe found its new resting place in the proper layer of the tessaract. Day in day out, the Earth resembled more and more to Mars. Day in day out, layer after layer of ice was moved by Thorsten to Thebes, revealing how much ocean water had already been imprisoned in the ice sheets. It also revealed how much the ice had scraped the Earth's surface, pushing in front of it the nuclear wastes left behind by the Cataclysm. Long moraines were left covered in ice. This was to prevent their deadly contents from getting blown by the wind and reinserted into the biosphere.

Samson's team, even if it had the greatest area to cover, was progressing rapidly. The abyssal depths were almost sterile and quite a few square miles had next to no life to recover; as for coastal waters, they had been severely contaminated, and even if the Atlanteans had decided to recover the Trilobites and their environment, that amounted to at most a few million square miles.

The team led by Ian made sure to progress quickly along their line of travel, and rapidly reached the Goblin ship.

"Do me a favour, Ian?"

"What can I do for you, Viola?"

"Skip the valley here. We need the stream to be clear of debris, and the removal of vegetal cover would dramatically increase the erosion. The dam would clog rapidly and we still have a few days left to finish porting the last Goblins to the stasis chambers in Thebes."

"That is a valid reason. I will signal the skip to Paschal so he can reschedule our work here."

"We will be available to help once this is done."

"Good. How many days do you need to finish?"

"Fifteen days."

"Okay."

Things continued on schedule otherwise. For once the weather seemed to cooperate, and there were no major volcanic eruptions. A dozen or so minor earthquakes occurred, mostly in the deep north and south, as the ice was removed, triggering a gradual rise in the continental shelf.

At half-mark, Viola signalled his team had finished dismantling as much as they could of the Goblin spaceship, and they were joining the team led by Ian.

«I am going to the spaceship to set the antimatter disruptor in place. Hold station until I am done!" replied Paschal.

Paschal picked up the disruptor, a small electromagnet, and brought the diminutive contraption to the reactor room.

"How does this work?" asked Viola as he eyed the strange sphere.

"The sphere contains a magnetic bottle, a three-dimensional Mobius strip under absolute void. As space expands, it continuously creates matter-antimatter particles; the Mobius bottle traps the antimatter particles in one phase, and the matter particles in the opposite phase. It can pack quite a lot of energy in a very small volume that way. To release energy, you need to gradually shift the phase of a pair of particles until they are in perfect phase, preferably orthogonal to the other streams. They are then ejected outside of the bottle without disrupting it and collide, freeing energy according to E = mc2. I do not know at what speed this particular Mobius bottle accretes mass, but it has been laying idle for a damn long while, so it should pack a nice bang. It was used to power the spaceship's main engines."

"How do you plan to use this to our advantage?"

"Well, as I said, the Mobius bottle is magnetic. Applying a powerful orthogonal field to its current form should release all antimatter and matter streams violently, creating an instant nuclear reaction. I plan to install the electromagnet tore so its field is perpendicular to the streams. When I suddenly feed it with about 500 megagauss from the dam, believe me, this area will be converted into dust, spaceship, mountain and vally included."

"What will be the final impact?"

"That is difficult to say: the scenarios go from ejection of the planet into outer space to a very hot and short trip to the Sun, from a stop of the rotation of the planet to a sudden doubling of its speed. But, actually, who cares? When it gets triggered, we will be off this wet piece of mud, and the Soul-eaters will be trying to find something to eat."

"What determines the outcome?"

"The mass, and the timing, what happens with the Moon and how the sequence of events get triggered."

"Have you given thought to the overall timetable?"

"Oh yes! It has been bugging me for years. What has been the most difficult to understand is the Soul-eater's Prophesy. Gabriel said all things would come to their conclusion on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year."

"Is Ian's seventh birthday not due in two months? That would fit the seventh year part."

"Viola, you are a genius! Let me finish this installation and you come with me to Thebes. Timor, you will begin porting the vegetation cover in half an hour. Once done, report to Ian. Take over Viola's units until he comes back from Thebes."

"That should take 30 minutes to do."

"And what about my units?" asked Alaric.

"Report to Ian immediately. You are no longer needed here."

Once the disruptor was installed and locked by Magic, Paschal and Viola ported to Thebes, bringing Rockhook with them.

"Hey Dad!" said Viola as the three walked into his office.

"Hey, Viola, Paschal, Rockhook. Welcome! What makes you so giddy today?"

"I am finished with the transport of the Goblins."

"Good! What else can you tell me about this?"

Paschal took over. "They are now in the process of getting their genetic map adjusted by inserting the immune system code held by Rockhook. It is a cell-by-cell process, so it takes time. The first ones should be out of the re-sequencing phase shortly, and then it is a month to educate their immune system to common diseases. Rockhook will have his skeleton team back with him. We are also planning to use that period to update their memories so they are not taken by surprise."

"What about implementing females for them?"

"It is still under study. The genome is there, but it is blocked in so many ways it is proving a difficult task to release these bits. And I am aware that the order of release is vital; releasing a protein in the wrong order may result in the death of the new life. Even if we did release the female locks, that would not change the need for incubators in the short run. And we have no knowledge of what was the factor driving to sexual differentiation in the Goblins. It may be thermal, or related to food supply, who knows? In fact, I have found that Goblins may well differentiate after birth, not during incubation. More intriguing still, there may be more then two sexes. Nature will never stop amazing me. I suspect that the original Goblins may have been tetraploids!"

"Tetraploids?"

"Four chromosome pairs rather then the Earth standard of one chromosome pair for each chromosome, or haploids. We are haploids. We have plants that follow that tetraploid method, such as wheat, but not a single case of animal life form."

"I see."

"If you can see anything, light my lantern. The more we look into the Goblin mystery, the more we discover. I really, really wish I could talk to those that set this course of action to understand their motives and how they did it."

"You seem to say that the current situation is artificial in origin."

"Yes, it looks like it, Dad. It is as artificial as the tetraploidy of the wheat, produced by artificial selection."

"Would tetraploidy present any evolutionary advantage?"

"A greater resistance to mutations, but as a counterpart, a much slower capacity to genetically evolve and mutate to adapt to radical environmental change. That would let me believe they come from a planet with high radiation levels but low global changes."

"I will look into the Atlantean Archives for such a planet."

"Do not bother Dad, ask Alexander and Jefferson to do it. You need to keep an eye on the timetable. I think Viola has cracked the enigma of the Gabriel Prophesy."

"You have?" Harold questioned.

"Yes."

"Viola, I know you are Brother to Paschal here, but do not take his bad habit of making me pull the truth out!"

"Pissy, Dad?"

"No, anxious!"

"Okay. Well, Ian's birthday is in two months. It fits to everyone's need to rush things and finish before then to recover the biosphere. Was any special event associated with Ian's birth?"

"Apart from the entire Wolf population in the area coming to his cradle and sniffing him? Apart from the Wolf Bitch Samantha settling in to act as milk Nanny, apart from the birth of Silver Moon nearly on the same night, apart from the bright comet flying by, and apart from the Elvin Seer telling everyone that the One everyone was waiting for had been born? I see nothing, no."

"Is that all?" said Viola ironically.

"Dad forgot to mention that the comet came to pass between the Earth and the Moon, and that its path placed its origin in the Wolf Constellation. And he forgot to mention that the Kantar Prophesy gives Ian the Wolf Constellation as symbol, and places a comet on his zodiacal sign."

"There are enough signs in all this to indicate Ian is the nexus of every Prophesy involved here."

"So, seven years after the birth of Ian, something big happens that triggers the cascade of events which lead to the destruction of the Soul-eater trap seven months and seven days afterward?"

"That is about it, Dad."

"What event?"

"You assume that it will be a single event. It may be a train of events."

"Viola is right. We have an idea of the final results, but how things will work out is still very much in the dark, even two months away from it."

"Anyway, Dad, the important thing for now is we have a more precise timetable. Things turn sour in two months. How? We have no idea."

"Okay, boys. I agree. Get back to work. With these numbers, I will be counting days until Ian's seventh birthday."

"Do not go paranoid on us!" Viola said.

"Do I need to?"

"Not really."

***

Paschal was staying in his laboratory almost continuously. The grid that covered the Earth's surface was diminishing by the hour, showing the progress of each porting team. He was satisfied by the progress, but still, something kept nagging at his mind. Annabelle had found many Orc nests, all empty, or, if not empty, filled with dead Orcs. She had ported out of them as much Orc art as she could find, and he now had enough examples of nest plans to understand that under the label Orc there was many different cultures. Unfortunately, the Orcs did not have much use for written records, and a good slice of their culture had vanished with the death of their last North American representative.

His Human/Atlantean culture recovery plan had been a success, and now, his bio-vectors, as he named those special time travel machines dedicated to recovering the genetic evolutionary tree were coming back home, having hit the birth of life on the planet, some 3.75 billion years earlier. So much needed to be understood from these data streams he would have his biological team set to work on it for a hundred years and they would still be short on even scratching the surface. And there was the nagging feeling there might be life lurking on Mars, and on satellites of Jupiter, Saturn and even Uranus, as the Ancients had hinted, but he felt sad. He knew he would not have the occasion to study them unless he managed to find a way to send out a stream of bio-vectors when they were leaving Earth. Would they have time for that or would Ian, or even Sitar, consider it too risky? Even he would not put their escape at risk for that data.

Rockhook walked silently around Thebes, wondering what were the current events but he did not dare to question the Royals. He had noticed the absence of just about everyone except the King himself, so he figured some big project was underway. Entire Armies seemed to be on the move, as he saw them head to a tessaract or another for what he assumed to be training sessions of some sort. As much as he wanted to follow them and see what they were up to, he did not want to be in their way so he took refuge in the tessaract level holding the Pterodactyls. At some point, he had assisted, alone and fascinated, at one of their virtual migrations, a sight he was not likely to forget any time soon. On another day, he found the Museum of Architecture, and explored, totally fascinated, its huge space, finding the Parthenon, fully restored to its original beauty and colour, as per the intervention of the time-travel machines. He fell in love with the Louvre, and the Amboise Castle, and lost himself in the beauty of the endless gardens reproduced from across time itself; the gardens of Babylon made him cry, a very rare occasion for the rather stoic Goblin. The Alhambra kept him captive for weeks, as he listened to the song of water cascading through its numerous canals both hidden and visible.

As he was walking another garden with a very strange design, he realised this one was not Atlantean or Human of origin. It took him some work to figure out this garden had a feeling of déjà-vu, and reminded him of a specific place. After much belly scratching, Rockhook realised it was the recreation of his first home on his home planet, just before he had to lead his people into exile. How could that be? Yet, there was something wrong with the reconstruction, and he could not put his fingers on it. As he was looking at it, he remembered all the gardens he had visited had a name. Where would that name be in this vast expense of greenery?

After following a long-winded path he found an engraved stone, and began reading it:

'The Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden was built for the benefit of the Human Guinea Pigs used by the Soul-eaters, so the Humans could roam freely and get the impression of freedom between being used during genetic experiments in order to create chattel for their needs. The plans were designed so that it lay in the fork separating two powerful rivers that acted as invisible Prison bars. The original plans were not of Soul-eater origin but form an as yet unidentified source. The laboratory buildings were all underground, well hidden from prying eyes and the potential intervention of Humans or of allies, should they have realised the true nature of their environment.'

The shock to Rockhook was considerable. He kneeled in front of the stone and began crying his heart out. The enemy, the Soul-eaters as the Atlanteans had called them, had stolen the jewel of his land and perverted its use! He was so shocked he never noticed Harold, Sitar, Paschal and Williams pop to his side. His distress rang across the telepathic continuum, all but halting the teleporting of the planet's surface. As the others waited for things to calm down, so they could resume their task, Harold kneeled beside the Goblin and hugged him gently.

"Rockhook?" asked Harold.

After several gentle calls by the Monarch, the Goblin removed his hands from his face, revealing a tear-stained face.

"They perverted my home "

"Your home?"

"This was the Garden of Ishtar, my Lord, the back yard of my home before we were forced into exile by the Enemy. It covered about twice the size of this place, but the design is identical. The laboratories were used to create new plants, new food sources for our people. Never did we use them for animal research. It was illegal and punished severely to do so. They copied the position of the laboratories, and probably went so far as to steal the material and pervert its use. I feel sick, my Lord."

"We understand."

"No you do not! We are guilty of what happened to the Humans here. Had we destroyed the laboratories on my homeland, the Enemy might never have gained access to its technology!"

"Maybe the knowledge was misused, but it was misused by the Enemy, Rockhook. No Human will ever blame you for this!"

"They do not need to, I do!"

"Anyway, Rockhook," said Sitar, "had they not been able to start their research, the proto-Humans might well have ended up dead rather then have managed to not only survive, but gain intellectual power that ultimately led to the escape of a certain number of them to the wild, and the repeated Angel wars that let us pervert the Soul-eaters' research by contaminating their carefully selected breeding stock. It was fortunate the Humans got just enough genetic handling to break the yoke and let us implement the toxic Atlantean genes in their genetic pool. With that implant, we were able to hide from the Soul-eaters and survive until today. You inadvertently set in motion the Soul-eater genome project and it led to their demise, so far."

"Sitar is right," added Paschal. "The genetic map I collected through history shows the arrival of the Soul-eaters, their first, not so well-planned I might add, genetic manipulations, and then, just as they were near success, the escape of a good part of their breeding stock into nature and the contamination of the control groups by the experimental groups. Then Atlanteans came along and added insult to injury by systematically inserting their genomes in the Human genome as a hidden poison, that was only triggered when a Soul-eater tried some specific things with the Humans."

"The poisoning was blamed on mismanagement and led to the second Angel war, and the result was that the Humans recovered their illusory freedom; the Soul-eaters kept trying to push the Humans to war, and succeeded more often then not, but never to the point of total annihilation. Even the Cataclysm, which they helped foster, did not succeed, and helped us Atlanteans to emerge from the genetic back noise," explained Williams, completing a rough sketch of the history of the planet.

"By the time the Soul-eaters realised we were here, it was too late, they had decimated their ranks to such a degree they could only pull skirmishes with us. And we continued disseminating our genes in the Human gene pool, with the fall of the Baby Moon forcing us out of our cocoon and into the general Human population, the spread increased exponentially. Everything went out of control for the Soul-eaters, and they tried to trigger, repeatedly I might add, global extermination wars. They even tried antimatter on their own, a last baroud88 ("Baroud: French, meaning last, desperate battle."), but it backfired, killing most of their leadership in the process and forcing one of the dissident leaders, Lucifer, to find refuge in a Black Dragon husk. The last Soul-eaters retired and went into hibernation, leaving their frozen husks under the very unsteady eyes of a Guardian, Gabriel. Merlin, which you know as Harp, had been fighting them ever since he had gained his magic, and managed, by a stroke of luck, to find their resting place while Gabriel was festering yet another religious war so he could feed. He killed them all, and Gabriel never figured it out until a few years ago, when he met Harp, who told him he was the last free-roaming entity of his type he knew of. Gabriel had been the Guardian of a Necropolis since the even before the Crusades!"

"That is one strange story, Pharaoh Horus. But you said Harp mentioned at the time that he knew of, which means there are others?"

"Oh, if you call Lucifer's state free-roaming and there is another one, stuck in a volcanic lake at the border of the Kingdom, unable to do anything but swim in it, losing strength as each day passes," Paschal said.

"So, you see, in a way, you helped the Humans and us," concluded Harold.

"Let us go have lunch, Rockhook, and take a swim in the Royal Baths. I just told Greywolf to bring his family to the pool. I have not had the time to talk to him lately and I hear the Runt is a sight to behold."

***

The Royal baths were a discovery for Greywolf's Pups, now adult. They had always taken to the rivers, lakes and streams found in the tessaracts, but the Royal Baths were altogether another thing. Huge enough to easily accommodate Equines, there were segments dedicated to the needs of Canines, Elves, Fairies, and even Trolls. The water was warm in the upper basins, and became progressively cooler as it cascaded down from one basin to the next. Fancy filters removed floating hair from the water as it passed from pool to pool. Yet, the strangest of all pools was the boiling water pool, a giant cooking pot as one Elf called it, strictly reserved for Dragons or those that could shift shape into that form. It was currently occupied by a couple of Red Dragons busy soaking heat after a patrol. Their team members, comprised of a Coyote, a Wolf, a Unicorn, and an Elf Mage, were also enjoying their own baths, in their respective pools. Other members of the Kingdom were also enjoying one a soak, another a stay in the steam bath, or a dip into the Epsom salts water.

The arrival of Harold with Rockhook and a few close members of the Royal family did not go unnoticed, but everyone knew this was not the place to talk shop, unless something critical needed be dealt with.

Greywolf made his way into the Baths area, followed by Felicia and their Pups. The appearance of the Runt stopped all conversations and everyone watched in awe the gigantic Wolf walk on the tiles leading to the stairs of a medium-warm pool. The clicking of his toenails on the ceramic tiles was deafening in the silence that descended on the swimming area. Harold had yet to see the Runt since his last visit to Felicia, and he was astounded by the change in the Wolf. Behind him came Greywolf, whose impressive size now looked diminutive compared to the Runt's; walking beside him, on his left, was Felicia, and on his right, Ness, whose smirk told Harold the reason why the Runt had grown so over standard Wolf size. Behind them were the litter Brothers and Sisters of the giant Wolf, along with a Mage that looked familiar to Harold.

Harold invited the new group to join them in the water with a move of the hand. The Wolves and the Mage gladly obliged. The Runt carefully inserted himself in the water, making the pool overflow into the lower ones. Once everyone had settled in, Harold first took in Greywolf.

"I see you are finally fit. You look great, Greywolf."

«Thank you my Lord. I have been informed this is a new body, and that the old one was sent to the nearest volcano for disposal once my memories had been transferred. I like this body a lot. No more war scars, no more pains due to age...»

"So I have been told by Paschal. And you, Felicia, how are things going?"

«I feel good my Lord. I am learning Magic so I can bond with a Dragon.»

"Good. I hope you will be ready for the next hatch."

«I will do my best, my Lord. Magic is not as simple as the Ancients thought it was.»

"And you are the Runt?" asked Harold as he eyed the giant Wolf. "I am lucky you were not that size when you slammed in me not so long ago. I would have ended up a pancake."

A howl of laughter sent shivers down the back of Rockhook, but the lack of alarm from the others told him nothing was wrong.

«This is true, my Lord. I have already bonded with a Dragon and can now shift shape. Ness played a trick on me when he fed me Dragon growth hormones!»

"I figured something like that had occurred."

"You ordered he be ready for Magic as quickly as possible. I saw to it," replied Ness.

"And ready he is," said the mysterious figure that had come in with the group. "Harp is busy with some other issues and asked me to train within my limited capacity our friend the Runt."

"You seem familiar, but I am unable to place a name "

"Angostini, my Lord. I was with the Magical units that went with you to overthrow the United Kingdoms' Usurper."

"Ah, yes, the young Apprentice Mage that accompanied my Sons on the west coast. I should have ticked on it. Sorry."

"It is okay, my Lord. You do have a lot to remember."

Rockhook could not follow the exchange, his telepathic range not covering the bandwidth required, but he could feel some distant thoughts, as the range flowed around his own narrow bandwidth. His perplexed look did not escape Harold, and the King figured out the issue quickly.

«Convert to bipedal form, so we can exchange with Rockhook. He is lost.»

"Certainly, my Lord.»

Even if Rockhook had seen shape shifts with the others, he was always taken aback if one occurred in his presence. He saw the giant Wolf change to an impressive, massive Human, and another smaller Wolf change to Human form as well. He now understood that the Humans that seemed to be carrying a permanent winter coat were in fact Canines. They were quite numerous, he realised.

"Rockhook, let me introduce you to Greywolf," said Harold.

"We met during the Ritual of Recognition, my Lord. It is nice to see you again, Greywolf."

"You certainly met his family then?"

"Yes, but I was not sure. For me all Wolves look alike: dangerous! But I did not realise until now that Greywolf was a shape shifter. When we met, he was in Human form. And this giant was in Wolf form. I had a wrong idea about their relationship, I guess."

"What kind of idea?"

"I do not wish to insult anyone, but I thought Greywolf was their Tamer."

The amount of laughter this blunder produced took Rockhook by surprise.

"They are even wilder then wild Wolves, my friend. Unfortunately, not all Wolves are shape-shifters, but we are working on a solution to this issue."

"How so?"

"In the same way we are rewriting your people's genetic material to include a powerful immune system, we are in the process of planning a re-sequencing of all Atlanteans so they all have the capacity to acquire genetic mappings and shift shape."

"All?"

Harold changed to resemble Rockhook to the last wrinkle and then back.

"All."

"What happened when you changed shape to match mine?"

"Well, it is only the body that changes appearance. Everything else stays the same, including acquired immunity, and genetic maps. With practice, you can flow from one shape to another in mid-run. The best at that are Ian and Harp."

"Do not be modest Dad, you are coming along nicely. You need only practice a bit more some of the most exotic shapes, like the Dolphin or the Panther."

Harold blushed at Paschal's comment, but nonetheless continued his explanations.

"It is interesting to see that size has nothing to do with this capacity. We maintain our identity and our awareness. I could convert to a Bee and still be fully aware of my nature. It is interesting to do these changes because we then realise that reality is not always what it seems from our standard form."

"What do you mean?"

"In Bee form, I can locate the position of the Sun at all times during the day due to polarised ultraviolet sensitivity of the multifaceted eyes. When I change to Dragon, these same facetted eyes can detect infrared; and when I take on the bipedal Dragon form, much like Ness now, I have a wide range of vision that goes from far infrared to far ultraviolet. If I take Wolf form, colour vanishes to be replaced by a very acute nocturnal vision, a sense of smell that lets me track a prey from miles away, and acute tri-dimensional hearing. I can change to Bat form and use ultrasound to move in pitch black environments, and then dive into water, convert to Dolphin and use the same echolocation to find my way into deep water where no light ever reaches."

Rockhook looked at the King with awe.

"As for you, I noticed your people had binocular vision, a range of sensitivity covering mostly the reddish and infrared hues, and that you had good night vision. Your planet therefore was more then likely radically different from ours, much hotter and wetter, with a thick cloud cover that explains the darker skies. It might even be closer to the Sun, driving the cloud cover to greater thickness."

"I cannot reply to these speculations, Lord Harold. I have only a vague memory of the conditions of our native planet, even after the chromosomal memory reactivation the Ritual of Recognition induced. Maybe our people were less centred on Astronomy, and only came to care about it in the years that preceded our exile."

"It would make sense this was the case. If the only star you ever see is the primary, and then it is only foggy at best, Astronomy would hold no interest for your people."

"Dad, we may be able to locate their original star system from the history logs of Atlantis Two, which we are now in the process of decoding. It is difficult, given the ideographic nature of the writing and the lack of cross-reference to hieroglyphs. We only know that the hieroglyphs were derived, in part, from Atlantean writing. We are not even sure if the symbols kept their significance across time. Yamato had been busy looking into the issue, but with the current task taking priority, that took the back burner."

"That is one thing I wanted to ask you, Lord Harold. I see a lot of work being done, but its reason and its nature totally escapes me."

"I thought you knew? I am glad Paschal mentioned Yamato's workload for it prompted a question from you, Rockhook. Let us see. We are currently porting the biosphere to tessaracts, trying to rescue as much of it as possible before things turn sour. We expect the Moon to get shattered and to fall on the surface of the Earth. By this event, the Soul-eater trap will be released since it is driven by thr presence of a power source at the Moon-Earth Lagrange point. The collapse of the Moon will in effect suppress the Lagrange point. It is done carefully. Most radioactive areas are left behind, except those containing Trilobites. They feed on radioactive elements, and we may one day need them to decontaminate some samples."

"Is that all?"

"No, by far. The sea bottom is also being ported. Some areas are like the surface. They are contaminated beyond recovery. Other areas just do not contain any life. Finally, we are recovering as much fresh water as we can, and we also recover saline water for sea life. The salinity of the oceans was at eight percent when the ice age began, but it has been increasing as more water gets locked in glaciers and ice shelves. The result is a gradual disappearance of oceanic life. We also noticed the number of salt flats near the seas is increasing. We focussed on free-roaming animal life forms and the bottom dwellers. The reason is simple. Saline water is denser and sinks. The result is that the ocean is getting not only shallower, but the bottom is getting saltier. We moved as much of the life in the halieutic layer, that is, the first 200 feet. Deep sea Fishes are also recovered, but their numbers is limited."

"That must be a complicated task."

"It is. But we are on schedule. The last stage will be the recovery of the atmosphere. It has to wait, because depressurisation will lead to ebullition of liquid water and, on the Equator, should the ice reach this far, a process of sublimation, that is, the conversion of solid ice to gaseous water vapour."

"Will you recover the water vapour these processes will free?"

"If we have the time, but it is unlikely we will."

"How can I help?"

"Just keep me company, Rockhook. Spending endless days in the laboratory can get boring, especially with a bunch of arse lickers more intent on pleasing me then holding a serious discussion!"

"Sure, Paschal, I see no objection."

"And it will stop you from getting depressed. Inactivity is depressing," added Sitar.

***

Days continued on, with Alexander, Jefferson, Sven and Rockhook keeping company to one or more Royals. The youngsters were also quite busy playing pranks on anyone they could catch off-guard. Rockhook was their favourite target, but the Goblin accepted their tricks with humour.

The first team to return from its task was Annabelle's. As the group glided into Thebes, their arrival could not be missed and constituted a turning point in the Ark and Eden projects. Annabelle's report was gloomy, and made public for all to know.

In short, they had found no surviving Orc colony, the ice was now much further south then in the Kingdom, the Kingdom itself was now void of any vegetation or animal life except in Thebes itself. The entire North American continent was covered either in ice, volcanic ash and lava, or bare rock, or too radioactive to sustain life. They had not met with Thorsten or seen his work, but since they had been ahead of his Nordic wave, it came as no real surprise.

The next to report was Ian. He had done as much as he could, moving south to north, and had met the zone edge marking Annabelle's work. In fact they realised they were two days behind her.

Yamato came in next, followed, within three hours of each other, by Enron and by Samson's waves. Enron had crossed path on his return trip with Thorsten's de-icing wave. According to Thorsten, he expected to finish recovering the fresh water locked in the mountain ranges of the extreme South Pacific islands and the Antarctic ice shelf within a week.

"That means within a week we start the compressors and pump the atmosphere into these canisters?" asked Alexander.

"No, we need to activate Thebes, and that will take some time. Even with all its current level of activity, it is still in deep hibernation."

"Will that be done quickly?"

"I have no idea. And it is only Dad that can do it. So, until Dad remembers how to activate Thebes, we are stuck."

"It is stupid. If Dad died during a hunting accident, we would be stuck!"

"Not really, Alexander. I am sure it would fall on Ian's shoulder, then yours. This system is bright enough to acknowledge change of leadership. After all, I designed this to be resilient," replied Paschal as Harp nodded.

"Me? Are you nuts?"

"Not at all Alexander. You are second in line, followed by Paschal, Sitar and Harp. It is a question of first genetics, then adoption sequence. If we continue with this, you have Viola, Banjo, Cello, Piano and Violin. Then it is Enron, Timor, and others. I do not think it is necessary to track these things any time soon."

"And I am sure the heraldic Genealogy specialists are having a field day tracking everything up, pulling their hairs out at the thought of one day being governed by Timor. It would come as a shock to some snob arses!" said Enron.

"But they are stuck. The laws of inheritance date from before the demise of Atlantis One." added Annabelle.

"Laws are written to be broken," said Violin.

"So are necks, little Sister. I will uphold your right to govern should the need arise with my own two bare hands!" answered Timor, as he cracked his huge fingers together. Iridia laughed from inside the thick fur coat.

"He has had some practice with a couple of Ministers from the Fairy government, which did not appreciate our deciding to mate once these events were finished. My promised makes a fine Prince Consort and has strength to match, even in his Fairy form."

"And I do not particularly like comments diminishing Iridia's intellect for choosing someone out of her own kind as partner. Some comments were verging on avowed insurrection and sedition. I put an end to it the Atlantean way: dead is best in these circumstances."

"We agree wholeheartedly, Timor. What did you do with the cold cuts?" asked Sitar.

"They were appetisers for my Dragon form. I went hunting after I crunched their cookie! That way, no lost proteins!"

"If I have issues with my own people, can I ask you for help?" asked Rockhook.

"Certainly."

***

The next week passed slowly. Everyone was growing impatient with the progress of the de-icing, but no one thought it was a good idea to interfere with Thorsten's part in the biosphere project. Strangely, as the ice cover was being removed, the weather kept getting colder and colder.

"I wonder why this is?" asked Harold, one day.

"The albedo is increasing, Dad. As Thorsten removes the ice cover, creating an almost perfect mirror, the Sun's rays are reflected into space and the surface heat is dropping. It will reach -90° Fahrenheit tonight, and it should continue to drop even more as the CO2 in the atmosphere takes solid form as dry ice. Most of the methane has already been removed of the atmosphere by the residual bacterial life, the ice, and permafrost."

"That is interesting, Paschal. How do you expect the temperature to evolve as we depressurise the planet?"

"It will drop considerably. It will never reach the temperature of space, but it will get pretty close. After all, however hard we try, we will not be able to remove every molecule of gas around this dirty ball. Nor would it be beneficial to do so. Some gases, such as radon, are toxic, and we do have quite a lot of radioactive gases around."

"Do you have an idea of the sequence?"

"If you are talking about the fractioning of the atmosphere by refrigeration, it should follow these steps: H20, at 212° Fahrenheit, CO2, at -109° Fahrenheit, then the residual CH4, at -257.8° Fahrenheit, then O2 at -297.31° Fahrenheit, then N2 at -321° Fahrenheit, then H2, at -423.2° Fahrenheit. These are the main components of the atmosphere. He2 and Rn2 are too rare to contribute significantly to the cascade. Note that, with the exception of water and methane, both of which have hydrogen bonds, the lower the molecular mass the lower the temperature must drop to liquefy. Note the molecular mass of H2O, at 18, CO2, at 44, CH4 at 16, Oxygen at 32, nitrogen at 28 and then hydrogen at 2. Actually, we will not bother recovering H2. We will have more then enough in store in the form of water. The hydrogen bond is very strong in hydrogen gas itself, as can be demonstrated by its boiling temperature compared to helium's -452.5° Fahrenheit, or 4.2° Kelvin. Zero Kelvin is absolute zero, where no molecule can move. Space's overall temperature is 2.72° Kelvin. As it expands, it nears null entropy asymptotically. I hope you know what an asymptote is?" Paschal asked as he saw Jefferson's bright eyes follow his explanation with undivided attention.

"Getting near something without ever reaching it?" suggested Jefferson, not too sure about himself.

"Right."

"I do not get the hydrogen bond thing?" asked Jefferson, who had been listening in on Paschal's explanations.

"Well, hydrogen atoms tend to bond between themselves even when they are attached to another atom. Thus, in H20, the two hydrogen atoms try to tie up to other hydrogen atoms, creating a tension, a bond. It creates surface tension, and explains why a glob of water in zero gravity becomes spherical. Methane has the same behaviour once its temperature becomes low enough to become liquid. Notice that the carbon atom has four hydrogen atoms tied to it, and that these atoms have fewer propensities to interact with other external hydrogen atoms because they have one right next door. It is like when you go play. Why bother going to the second den when you have playmates right in the same den as you? So, in the macromolecular level, methane has a lower liquefaction temperature then water, but still a lot higher then if there were no hydrogen bonds. It is still damn cold, if you want my opinion!"

"Does this mean the bigger the yard, the less important the hydrogen bond becomes?"

"You could say that. H20, CH4, C2H6, which boils at about -127° Fahrenheit, C3H8 at -44° Fahrenheit, and so forth have progressively higher vaporisation temperatures. Anyway, go read the organic Chemistry book I just ported on your desk, little Brother."

"It is so much more fun to talk to you."

"Maybe, buy I have to check on how much water we have recovered so far. Thorsten is due either tomorrow or the next day. Do you want to come with me?"

"Sure!"

As Jefferson and Ian walked with him to the tessaracts, Paschal continued explaining things to Jefferson.

"See, the tessaracts we use for bulk have a very high compression ratio, in the order of a million to one per dimension. Now, the total volume of water on the planet is estimated at 310,181,760 cubic miles. Some of it we already recovered for the Eden and Ark tessaracts, but there was still a lot left, mostly in ice and the oceans. Now, the compression ratio, visible here on this logarithm scale, tells us that one apparent cubic mile in the tessaract equals to 1x1018 cubic miles. See this: it says 1:7, or 1 to 1 million. We could store 3,223,916,197 times the ocean's total volume in just one of these tessaract segments. We will not bother storing all the oceans' water, so the volume will be much less. And if you took notice, there are eleven of these controls, each responsible for one aspect of magical space. The only other control activated in this case is gravity. It is neutral; otherwise this concentration of mass would destabilise the Earth's rotation and orbit. We have enough troubles to deal with already without adding to them. Ah, here we are. These counters indicate the current occupied uncompressed volume, and below, the occupied compressed space. We are at 250,250,000 cubic miles uncompressed, which, compressed, occupies 2.5x10-10 cubic miles or 0.0000000025% of the total available volume in this tessaract layer alone. Thorsten must be scratching the crannies."

"Why so much space?"

"First, it is not that much. This section of the tessaract is a cubic mile, no more. The goal is to rescue life across the universe, not only on Earth, Jefferson. As we do our work, we will recover more life forms, and in the end, some might even find Thebes crowded! Tessaracts are mostly empty, even with all we have put in them, but they will fill up! They are so huge one species may never really find the end of one. Most are also void of gases, meaning they have currently no atmosphere. When we move the Earth's atmosphere, we will liquefy it, not because we lack space, but so we can use it. Were it left in gas form, we might find an atom of gas every cubic mile in the end, a state not very useful for us."

"I noticed the logarithm scale is not at its maximum?" asked Ian, as he looked at it.

"No, it is not. Compression puts some stress on a dimension and requires some energy. We decided that this compression level was enough."

"What if we run out of space?"

"We increase the compression ratio. We can still push it to 9.9, which is nearly one hundred million to one. It is not useful for now."

"Will we need to empty the tessaract to do so?"

"No, Ian. It is during decompression that a tessaract must be emptied. Everything inside a tessaract segment is at the same compression ratio, and therefore, increasing their compression factor keeps their relationship the same. As we decompress, they will expand in real space and therefore must be spread out. If we did not do this, first the tessaract might blow up, but, worse, so could Thebes."

"That is a scary thought! What would happen if there was a mechanical failure?"

"A nightmare. But actually, Ian, the tessaracts are anchored in Magic itself and are using the nature of space-time to do their work. Space is fibrous, and it is this condition we use to our advantage."

"I do not get it "

"Oh, well, let us take an analogy. You have worn felt boots, right?"

"Yes, for a few minutes, before I had red feet. Mom says I am allergic to wool."

"Oh, okay. You are allergic to clothes, not wool. But it is funny for a Wolf to be allergic to wool."

"Not funny! Each time I eat a Sheep, I get red in the face!"

"That is the blood, little Brother, not the allergy. But, anyway, back to my explanation. Remember the texture? Felt is compressed wool, and its resistance to wear and tear is due to the fibrous nature of wool. The volume occupied by the wool before it was made into felt was easily 1,000 to one. This is the same principle if not the same process. We are felting space-time in tessaracts."

"Wow!

"This is nuts!"

Paschal could not help but laugh at Jefferson's last comment. Nuts, indeed!