- Oct 9, 2005
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Can I proceed ahead to the next chapter?
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??.of all things, experience sculpts men the most. We are what we have undergone and this wasn?t any more different for our savior Cherin, as he prepared on that terrible day, to undertake the first of the steps towards the abyss as the price of our deliverance...
It should be a matter of record of how the experience changed Cherin the man into Cherin the Savior. It is our right to know his thoughts through those desperate moments, his hopes even as he lost everything and everyone close to him through that trial of fire.
The thirty first standard day of solar cycle: 2245AD. So what happened from this terrible moment really? And how did it invoke the divinity in one man, Cherin Veld, our redeemer who shepherded us from eternal dusk to dawn.
This question has many meanings as it has answers. Ask it to his faithful and they shall celebrate it as the beginning of his ascension. Ask this to his vanquished enemies: the soviets and they shall mourn it as the cataclysm that destroyed their realm. Ask me, his closest follower and then I can only say it all began with the tendermost part of him dying forever?.?
... Perth Dost: The journey from darkness to daylight.
For Dr Cherin Veld, the guiding hand of destiny came in form of an old warrior, a rebel captain visiting the space station Veld called home. The warrior, a former admiral of the Solar state, managed to dock his spaceship at the colony hanger without alerting the authorities to his true identity or intention of visit.
There were none to bother him as his hooded form made way through the shadows of the titanium corridors, through the rows of living capsules intent on reaching towards the one inhabited by the doctor.
As always the dull humming of the station?s oxidizers served as a backdrop to their meeting, ever an oppressive reminder of the varied mechanisms it took to keep them alive so far from Earth.
Veld?s wife watched as the two men conversed with each other, her brown eyes filled with foreboding, the visitor?s arrival meant bad tidings.
So far, so long, her family had managed to stay out of trouble by living in a remote asteroid colony, four billion miles from Earth. With a baby on the way, their home was made of just a couple: a husband, a wife and all the love in the universe between them.
The visitor meant a danger to all that. She knew the captain has come to take her beloved Cherin away forever.
?For a moment, Bonn, I feared this was a Soviet trick to get me?.!? said Dr Cherin Veld, his tall, thin frame still busy securing the hatch door behind the robed figure of his guest.
?Tricks?? exclaimed Captain Ruben Stuart Bonn wryly, ??Since when did our enemy need tricks? Tricks are for little men like you and me, Cherin, not for the soviet with his thousand ship fleets to exterminate us?.?
Cherin paused and asked in a low voice. ?Was it that bad??
?Worse! We fought sharks barehanded and lived, son?.? wheezed Bonn settling himself into a chair in the cozy confines of the living module. A warm yellow glow bathed the insides, lending a golden halo to the white ceiling and the light brown panels of synthetic wood walls.
Cherin mulled over Bonn?s words, they were truth that much he knew. The past few years had been very hard on the rebellion as it fought against the tyranny of the Solar Union.
The Supreme Soviet Solar Union, to the precise. The state that won the so called cold war using overwhelming technological might alone. The state that made the West and the rest of the world submit to its ruthless will using threats of orbital bombardment while itself remaining safe from retaliation.
It stretched across the breadth of the solar system comprising of Earth, the Martian colony, the Jovian satellites and numerous bases scattered throughout intersystem space. It preferred only one way to maintain order: brutality. It knew only one form to impose its will on humanity: brute force exemplified by its immense armed forces stretching across land, air and space.
Only at one point of time in the past was the authority of the state truly challenged; the rise of the Smelter insurrection. Led by Cherin?s father, the late Hawat Selvan, the rebellion comprised largely of renegade asteroid miners, stolen warships and their allies across colonies scattered throughout the system.
Seizing Soviet assets in deep space, smuggling weapons and personnel between Earth and the colonies, even raiding the citadel of Soviet power itself, the militarized Earth moon. For a while it seemed as if the rebellion had adapted itself to become an effective counterforce against soviet stranglehold of orbital bombardment, but soon disaster followed.
The catastrophe began with the capture and death of Selvan Veld. Next came, the brutal Soviet tactic of reprisals against the families of suspected rebels. After the initial euphoria of revolution, the morale turned to one of fear as the state excelled in making examples, examples of traitors.
Soon the rebellion was to be doomed to a few dozen ships, scattered through the system, hiding amongst the asteroids and the exterior planetoids, hoping not to be caught. Of course, there were plenty of places to hide, but nevertheless it was a dangerous game.
With the hatch sealed, Cherin made his way back to the living capsule towards the liquor cabinet on the wall.
Mulling over their situation, in a fit of despondence, he said ?..What did we have to win this war, Bonn? Ships? The soviet has them in thousands. Men? All of humanity grovels at their feet! What did we have to win this war except?.?
Bonn completed it for him. ??The will to be free, lad and guts, plenty of it!?
?Is that enough?? questioned Cherin, his mind full of doubts. Doubts about the path they have been lead on.
?It was enough for your father?? answered Bonn, his voice betraying a grim determination.
Cherin shook his head. He said ?My father was a different man??
?Not anymore different from you?.?
?I could never be my father ?.? replied Cherin..
?No one expects you to, but you do have the gift he had, something we need more than ever.?
Gift!
The word made Cherin grimace. He knew it will all come to this eventually: the ?gift? he shared with his father. The final piece of the puzzle just dropped into place, just another domino in the events long suspected.
While the world knew the late Selvan Veld to be a masterful strategist, few knew about his abilities as a prescient being and even fewer knew the full extent of his powers using his mind achieve the farthest frontiers of awareness.
The key was a temporal expansion of the mind, made possible with the neurochemicals of the twenty third century, the secrets of which were known only to a few. The potential existed in very few men to probe deep within themselves the depths of endemic ancestral memories to the yet not realized prescient visions of the future. Selvan Veld was one such man, and Cherin, his son had inherited that gift from him.
A gift and how much so! Cherin, while still not awakened to the ancestral memories of his slain father was very much aware of the path ahead of him.
The path of sacrifice!
As he saw it in his vision, the path as envisaged by his father stretched from its conception at the beginning of the rebellion to the point of freedom for humanity. It was a successive progression of prescient visions, all tied by unknown permutations of events yet to happen.
It was a vision to be followed by Cherin, the course that had been revealed to him in bits and pieces, yet shrouded in parts. He knew what it entailed; he knew the price to be paid by its traveler, the price paid by his father: the trial of fire.
His father paid for it with his life, what shall he pay for it?
Everything!
That was the answer his prescience gave him and that he was inclined to trust.
?You seem unhappy with your talent?.? said Bonn, noticing the expression on Cherin?s face.
?Not unhappy with my ability than with what I foreseen.? said Cherin.
?And what is that you foresee, son??
?Death! ?
Bonn took a deep breath. ?That?s not surprising, its all I seen too.??
Cherin shook his head. ?No, this is different, worse, what I seen was beyond comprehension; I sensed ?genocide, destruction of entire nations, death in a scale never before??
Bonn replied. ?That?s impossible! The Soviet isn?t mad enough to turn on the people already pacified.?
Cherin shrugged ?I don?t understand it either, but its what I seen in my vision and revealed to you.?
?What else did you see??
?I saw something like an?eye, a great eye opening in the sky! It?s what I saw, but cannot make sense of ??
?An eye!? exclaimed Bonn excitedly, ?Go on, what else??
Cherin sighed ?I don?t know, Bonn. Many times I wonder if I?m on the right track, what if I had strayed away from the path? What if I had made a mistake somewhere??
Bonn shook his head. ?No, you are on the right track, I?m sure of that?.?
?How??
Your father spoke of the eye too! It was the sign of our liberation, that?s what he told us just before his death??
Cherin swallowed. So it was true after all. The death and destruction he had seen was about to happen. He had secretly hoped to be wrong, secretly hoped that the ?gift? of prescience within him was actually flawed, that he was just another ordinary human out of the thirty billion souls scattered across the system.
It wasn?t to be!
His wife stood on the corridor, her brown eyes, red with tears silently boiled within her.
His poor wife, Cherin just couldn't stop himself from staring into those eyes, those haunting eyes, so full of love for him. It was to be their last moments together, she knew that too.
He shuddered involuntary; the walls of the living capsule seemed to close around him. The pressure forced in him the awareness of his position in the timeline chosen.
He sensed himself as trapped in a web of possible actions, a maze he must purse through in order to reach his objective: freedom for mankind as ordained by his father. The maze required clarity in choices made, forcing him to avoid ambiguous paths, always forging ahead with ruthless precision.
The path of sacrifice! What did it made give up now?
Everything he loved so far, his wife, the unborn child, the place they called home for the past decade.
He marveled at the intricacies of the forces acting on him to move along on that one single course. At one side was the pressure to join the insurrection, the other side was the requirement of not alerting the Soviet to rebellion?s presence on this space station, a main hub secretly serving as a base for the families of rebels.
If the couple disappeared altogether, the Soviet would be sure to suspect the asteroid base as a colony for rebels, a situation to be avoided at all costs. The only solution for him was to abandon his wife, his unborn child as it lay unawakened in his wife?s womb, to leave them behind in this station forever.
His disappearance would be covered up later, a circumstance of an ?unfortunate accident? as it would be explained later to the authorities.
The path of sacrifice, the very first step had proven to be so expensive! Cherin only knew too well the price it entailed further. The trial of fire had just begun!
Cherin turned towards Bonn, who by now was sprawled over the sofa. The old captain, although three fourth of a century old, still had plenty of fight left in him. Limbs like tree trunks, platinum hair strung in pleats, the holstered blaster held steady across the thighs, Bonn was the very image of a Viking returning from tales of yore.
Bonn said. ?Just before your father?s capture, he passed on to us, information about a contact in the highest levels of the Soviet Government?..?
?A Soviet traitor!? exclaimed Cherin in surprise.
?Yes, a high ranked one too, we suspect. He betrayed to us everything from flight paths to the technology we needed to survive out there in the void?.?
?So who was he then??
?No one ever knew, except perhaps your father, there was a frequency to contact him from our side, but he disappeared after your father?s death and we hoped he hadn?t been captured.?
?And now??
?He contacted us again, just a day ago. We received a transmission on the frequency; the signal was a short repeating tone giving location of a co ordinate just outside Uranus.?
Cherin nodded. ?You and I are going together??
Bonn replied ?Yes, the rebellion needs you more than ever, its time you become one of us. Your father! He would have been so proud.?
Cherin nodded his head. He understood what needs to be done; the action towards which where that maze lay open on that course.
The trial of fire, it?s begun!
?What if it is a trap?? asked Cherin.
Bonn shrugged, ?We must trust this lead this one time. If there is a chance of this man being still operational out there, its best to follow it.?
Cherin understood the significance of this event, if the Soviet traitor was still alive, it could mean a powerful asset for the insurrection, a chance too important to pass up on.
Was this an opening in the maze he must pass through? Was this event predestined in the path ordained by his father? Cherin wondered, finding the answers arising from the deepest layers of his consciousness, from his instinctual throes as the subconscious mind struggled to separate meaning out of patterns forming reality.
?Is this how the nightmare begins?? wondered Cherin again as Bonn got up from the sofa to address the couple.
Bonn began ?I have to keep this short, we dare not wait too long at this hanger, a random check on my ship could blow my cover??
Bonn turned towards Cherin?s wife. ?I know you resent me for taking Cherin away. I wish I could do more than say sorry??
She acknowledged his words with a nod, bowing her neck in a silent sorrow. She always knew this moment would come, their moment of separation for his journey into the great void beyond.
She had tried hard to prepare herself for this circumstance; she alone knew the effort it expended upon her. But yet at the moment of her trial, the young woman found her strength drained from within.
Bonn said. ?I will get ahead to the ship?? He pointed to Cherin. ?You join me as soon as you can. The less we wait here the better. ?
?Yes, you go ahead?I will need a moment alone with my wife as I say goodbye...? replied Cherin.
The young doctor watched the captain leave closing the hatchdoor behind his giant frame, there was no point securing it now, he had to leave too.
He turned towards his wife. ?I have to go now, you need not wait for me to come? home. But perhaps I will return someday??
?Hope? Don?t give me hope, it will be all the worse ?? replied his wife as she rushed to embrace him,
The massive reservoir of tears she had held back in herself gave way. The cry came silently, the cool streams of tears moistened his sleeves.
He hugged her tighter and whispered in her ears ??if I ever return, I will come find you. I promise I will!?
She looked upwards, a sudden moment of anger flashed in her eyes. ?Damn your destiny?.? she exclaimed.??damn your family, this universe, everything!
?
So Cherin kissed his wife goodbye and made for the door. In ways it represented an end to many things; the end of what was his family, the finish of an entire phase of his life. In many ways, it represented beginnings too, the start of his journey into the reality beyond to greatness, the first steps to his martyrdom, his road to ascension as a deity amongst his peers.
So even as Cherin walked out of the doors of the place he called home, he was aware it would be for the last time ever. There was no going back now for his trial of fire has just begun.
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