Beginning Chapter: One ... Two ... Three ... Four ... Five ... Six ... Seven ... Eight ... Nine ... Epilogue
For a time the girls rested there in silence. Mary hogtied on the floor mat and Freeta leaning on the stake. Mary tried to roll over, but with her legs drawn so tightly behind her body it was impossible. She couldn't tip over. Finally she turned to Freeta and said,
"If your an immortal. Why are you down here too? Who's this Toby or Zark or whatever his name is?"
Freeta finally stirred. The drug was wearing off. She began to test her bonds; turning and twisting and squirming in various ways. The cords of her muscles started rippling faintly under the girlish skin; the ropes hissed and cracked as if they were being subject to great stress, but they held firm. She even tried lunging away from the stake to break it or pull it out. The stake bent momentarily, but it proved stout enough to handle the strain. Freeta dropped to her knees panting. "Still too much drug," she gasped, "and he'll be back before the rest wears off. Zark may be mad, but he's no fool". Finally she took notice of Mary.
"I'm sorry you got involved in this." she said. "What did Zark, I mean Toby, tell you?"
"He said you where not human; that you knew your creator; and he's dead".
"He's right, in part. Zark is one of the originals. He knew the creator. Most of us are descendants -- like yourself. If he undresses you'll notice he doesn't have a navel. Did he tell you of The Master?"
"Only that he came during the Ice Age; died; and that you where one of his great dreams. But that's over twenty thousand years ago isn't it?"
"Yes, it's been a long time as you measure it. It's been long even for us. And I fear that for Zark it's been too long". She tested her bonds once again.
"Mary, I will continue this story, but you must try to move over here next to me to see if we can free ourselves.
Mary began a very slow and awkward imitation of a cross between an inch worm and a sidewinder snake. Slowly she managed to shuffle towards Freeta.
"We were his helpers:" continued Mary, "to help him build his second dream. He modeled us after your ancestors, but purified the design and stripped away some of the limitations that mother nature hadn't yet solved. He made us smarter, and, since he didn't want to keep retraining us, he made us immortal".
Mary stopped a moment, "Immortal." she whispered; then continued.
"Yes, immortal. And since accidents will happen to all of us, he gave us the power of complete regeneration to restore limbs and bodies to wholeness. In short, physiologically we were the perfect research assistant. And long did we labor for The Master. He made many of us and we built a great city. We delved, researched, and built many things -- airplanes, cars, great computers and more.
"But there was a flaw in his design of us. Not only had he modeled us after your ancestors, he had actually built us from their tissues. We have much of the same DNA as you.
"We discovered that with the powers of intelligence, regeneration and immortality came the power to change the structure of our bodies at will. We did not realize what power this gave us at first, but as the years past and our numbers and accomplishments grew, some began to experiment.
"Through arts similar to what you now call meditation and zen, a few of our kind, we call ourselves the An-Grell, began to change our creator's design, to improve it as we had many other things.
"Their first accomplishment was full control of aging; they learned to age and mature their bodies; they became larger, stronger, and fertile. They could have have babies.
"With the discovery of fertility, the news and the learning spread like wildfire through the An-Grell, for the instinct to nurture and reproduce was built too deeply into our predecessor's genes for The Master to exorcise completely. Training centers and sessions where set up everywhere. The population of the city doubled in one hundred years. Now this may not seem like much to you, but the doubling produced by clone vats had been planned to take one thousand years. So, while we basked in the bliss of parenthood and family for the first time, we suffered many of the problems of rapid growth -- unrest, crime, abandoned children wandering the streets, and suicide. I was born of parents in this time. It was a glorious age.
"The leader of the new experimenters was Zidex. And as a result of this fad he was catapulted into fame and power. He told us, 'This is just the beginning of what can be accomplished.' He said, 'Given time and practice, this body we inhabit can be shaped into anything.'
"But there were others who disagreed with Zidex. `If the creator had meant for us to create babies and do these other things, he would have told us how himself. We were created to help bring about the second dream.` they said, `This wild experimentation will bring us nothing but trouble`."
"'But the master built us to experiment.' countered Zidex, 'He wants us to do things he can't do himself. Why should this be any different than the hundreds of other experiments we conduct?'"
"Zidex did create more wild things. One day he presented himself in the form of an ape; a few years later he was a giant wolf. His followers rapidly gained in proficiency as well and soon the streets of the city were populated with all manner of mammalian beasts as well as humans. Even the human shapes were distorted. Some grew long arms, some longer legs. Some grew old and withered looking, others grew even younger 'til they could barely toddle.
"Finally the crisis was brought to a head. The creator returned to the city. He spoke against the shape changers -- said they were an abomination and not part of his dream -- and that was it. The city rallied instantly against the followers of Zidex and they were cast out to fend for themselves in the wilds of the world. My parents and I were among those cast out. Zark was a leader of those that remained.
"For a while the Golden City returned to a semblance the times before Zidex's experiments and revelations. The city had never had much to do with the wilds to the south, and now it cut off relations completely. The wilds were now home to the fallen and the people of the city turned inward.
"Those cast out with Zidex scattered about the earth. They didn't stay as one because they never were one with him to start with. Some despaired entirely and suicided. Others felt contrite. They felt they'd been duped or seduced by Zidex. And, even if they could not live in the Golden City, they could live by it's codes. They ceased using their new powers altogether. They became like hermits wandering the earth looking for absolution. These were called the prophets.
"Others felt they had done wrong, but now that they were exiled they had to find a new life. And some felt they had the right no matter what the creator said. They felt there were hazards, just as there are in many other activities of life, so they should be pursued carefully, but not forbidden. The majority of this motley began to build new cities and new civilizations in the wilds.
"They grew rapidly and prospered. The frontier spirit imbued them with new love for growing things and for change. But the challenge of living and building and growing outside of the Golden City in the wilderness was tremendous. It cost the settlers much of their self-training and self-knowledge. They remained fertile, but they aged uncontrollably and died. But even though they died, they and their children grew even more skillful in manipulating the material things of the world, for the material things were here in great abundance. These outcast An-Grell were called the Mortals.
"A very few felt the creator was jealous of them; that he was withholding gifts from them. Zidex felt this way and he continued with a small band of his followers to practice and expand his arts. These were called the followers of Zidex. Later they were called witches, warlocks, and other magic creatures.
"As he practiced he made the changes faster and faster. The first transformations took years, but he learned to pick up the pace dramatically until he could make the man-wolf transmutation, his favorite, in weeks, then hours.
"Zidex and his followers delved into shapes that were further and further from that of mankind. They delved into using the powers of the brain in others ways. The ways you currently identify with witchcraft -- ESP, clairvoyance, preception.
"Zidex was always one of the most daring of this group, and finally his mind cracked. Whether he had pushed himself too far and too fast and got trapped in a change he couldn't recover from, or was seduced by an even more insane follower, we never found out.
"He attacked the creator." Freeta whispered with a shudder. She was staring off into the distance and her accent and syntax were slurring into a strange archaic form. Mary was almost beside her. After a moment Freeta continued, "The creator survived the attack, but his second dream didn't. The creator viewed the shambles of his dream and then left. He didn't say where he was going or if or when he would return. He just left. His final words were `This has cost me greatly, you have all betrayed me.`
"Then began the First War and the Great Fall. The people of the Golden city had lost their meaning in life. They had cleaved with the creator in the First Crisis, and now he had abandoned them in this. It drove them crazy. For the first time the people of the city felt a taste for revenge. Zidex had driven away the creator therefore Zidex and his followers must be destroyed.
"The Golden city prepared for war. Once again the city doubled in population as the clone banks produced an army of specially developed warriors. Then it sent this great force out to hunt and destroy.
As is always the case in war and revenge: the first to suffer where the innocent and unwary. Zidex and his true followers had fled and hid, so the cities and settlements of those who had turned from Zidex's ways long ago where the first destroyed -- the armies of the Golden City were blind to such nuances. In their madness all who were driven from the city were his followers.
"The war ended up being between the Mortals and the Golden city. For the Mortals were numerous, civilized, and ready to stand and fight. The spirit of life and mortality was in them. They had taken root in the wilderness and adapted to its ways.
"The first part of the war was brief by the terms of immortals, though it lasted many years. The forces of the Golden City reduced Mortal cities one by one and gave no quarter. Men, women, children, animals, everything was destroyed for they feared that anything left alive might be a shape changer.
"Finally the Mortals developed a taste for revenge as well. They drew upon their superior material knowledge to launch a single massive counter assault on the Golden city. They vaporized it and all the land surrounding it for a hundred miles. The blast nearly split the earth and ultimately ended the Ice Age.
"The Golden City and all it's knowledge, robots, people, and clone banks were gone: just as finally as The Master. They could never be recreated from the remains. But the clone armies and those Immortals not in the city survived, Zark was one of those. The clone warriors were outstanding fighters. They were too diffuse to be attacked by the Mortal's city-destroyer weapon, and too strong and cunning to be defeated in field combat, so they continued to reduce the Mortals, city by city.
"This part of the war lasted a millennium. All the cities of the Mortals were destroyed, and those they rebuilt were destroyed again.
"The Mortals lost everything -- they were reduced to savages, but they survived. Another ten millenia passed while the Immortals of the Golden City slowly diminished as their lives lost all meaning. The Master was no longer here, and when there were no more Mortal cities to destroy their armies dissolved and the remnants fought among themselves. The Clone Warriors, by the way, died off rapidly. What point is there in designing a fighter to live forever?
"For a while the followers of Zidex seemed to thrive in the chaos. They spread throughout the world in various forms. But without the resources of the Golden city they could not advance their art. They discovered too that fertility was a transient stage; as they advanced in their art it was lost again. So their numbers on earth have slowly diminished as well.
"Finally, recently, the Immortals ended their vendetta, and a truce was declared. Civilization is once again flowering.
"This truce came about because you humans were evolving to the point that you were creating the civilizations that the Immortals were destroying. The Immortals as a whole felt no need for revenge against the humans, and the humans were becoming so numerous they would soon overwhelm the Immortals.
"In the Great Truce, the children of the Master, Mortal and Immortal, agreed not to inflict their wounds on this emerging race; and in general we now live our lives quietly and separately from yours. But occasionally we will still intervene. It mostly comes from insanity. Zark has gone insane, and is planning on breaking the truce in some devastating way".
By now Mary had wiggled as close as she was going to get.
Beginning Chapter: One ... Two ... Three ... Four ... Five ... Six ... Seven ... Eight ... Nine ... Epilogue