Chapter eighteen
No Title Yet
Marsha and I had begun habitually reading from her miniature, gold Bible. Originally it was something we would do to help her bond with the mother she had never had a chance to know in life. We spent at least an hour each day, taking turns reading to each other aloud from the book. Sometimes when it was her turn to read it seemed her countenance would change into that of an older woman. The transformation was so complete that I often couldn’t tell if it was imaginary or real. “It’s my mother’s spirit;” she would say when we spoke of the phenomenon. “I can feel her when she comes. But she never forces herself; she always waits for me to invite her to come in.”
When speaking of the trinket the specter never called it the Bible, instead she always called it “the Great Book” and when she read from it she seemed to be reciting the words from memory. Sometimes I could feel her words burning themselves into my soul like a laser engraving them in stone. The blue angel continued to haunt my dreams, filling my head with night visions that instilled new insights into the things we read from the Great Book. Revelations of mysteries old and new filled my mind. Some were easy to understand, but some seemed nearly incomprehensible. In one dream the angel had told me said, “Don’t be anxious if you find it hard to understand these things; your mind is being renewed. When you need to you will know.”
I spent much of my spare time reviewing a variety of religious writings that were archived in the museum. Some of the books included including The Analects, which is collection of Confucius' teachings thought to have been recorded by his students. These are considered the only sayings that can safely be attributed to him. I also read the Bhagavad Gita, which describes the Hindu path to spiritual wisdom that can be achieved through three practices: karma, bhakti and jnana, which simply means action, devotion and knowledge. I was able to peruse pages from the Koran as well; and the Talmud (A compilation of Jewish oral law and rabbinical teachings that is separate from the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament). I was fascinated to find myself reading about ancient space wars described in the Tao-te-ching and the Upanishads and Veda (The sacred scripture of Hinduism).
The more I read, the more I realized that all these teachings had a great deal in common with one another and I wondered how they had been used to bring so much suffering and division into the world. The spirit or essence behind all of these major religion teachings seemed to be “as much as it is in your power live a happy and peaceful life without harming others.” The message of the founding teachers was one of Peace, Love, and Goodwill to all, yet it was obvious to me that the original message had somehow been corrupted to one of Strife, Fear and Contention. I became committed more than ever to the belief that all men are equally connected to one creator who is the father of all. If the mystery of godliness was in knowing that I was connected to a self-conscious, eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent creator, than the mystery of iniquity was the delusion that anything could exist in in the same universe which was separated from him.
Meanwhile, the war continued to surge forward all around me as if pushed along by the wave form of an unstoppable, destroying tsunami. The downward spiral of events started for us with an unexpected act of terrorism by Olsen. Fueled by his anger at the United Nations for refusing to support his cause, and fearful of losing his already questionable status as a meaningful world power figure, Olsen bombed MTON. This senseless act provoked the wrath of NATO, who had been collecting important geophysical data and gathering valuable intelligence for the CIA from the satellite. Although the American public was never told about the loss of an immense amount of dollars that had been pumped into the NASA project, they were set on notice to prepare for a military action intended to defend our country against a possible terrorist attack from an unnamed enemy.
The bombing of MTON also incurred instant retaliation from the Reptoids, who saw in it a threat to their now tenuous control of the time tunnels and the war continued to grow hotter. For us, the worst happened when Mary and Jon were spotted by Lucius Diamond one afternoon at McDonalds. He followed them to our quarters at the Glass Museum and in a few hours Reptoid troopers arrived and began searching the premises for anything that might betray us as enemy agents. I whispered a wish to Special which prevented them from finding anything incriminating. Nevertheless our existence here was no longer secret and we remained under suspicion and surveillance from then on. They might have arrested us anyway; but M&M used her high political position to send them on their way.
“I guess that is what you would call a close encounter of the worst kind,” Jon said. “If we are going to do anything to make a difference here we need to do it fast.”
“What can we do,” asked Mary? “It looks like the Reptoids are winning this war. Olsen and his army are growing weaker every day.”
Ki and Lieutenant Weir had just entered the room and overhearing our discussion Weir remarked, “You could join our little mission tonight. We are pretty shorthanded now and can use all the manpower we can muster.”
“What do you have planned, Spunky,” I asked Ki.
“We’re going to blow up a few mines. If nothing else it will stop work for a while and we won’t be harming any people. The property we will be blowing up actually belongs to the Martians anyway.”
“Won’t they be guarding the mines,” I asked?
“Not likely,” said Weir. “It’s never been tried before so there should be no reason for the Reps to place guard there. Of course that will change after tonight.”
“We are just going to plant the explosives tonight and blow them all at once just before the men enter the fields in the morning. That way the miners will not incur blame because they can all be accounted for.”
“Who will they blame, then?”
“Probably the Rangers, now that they know about us.”
After spending a few moments consulting with Sorenson and Hendricks I decided to put it to a vote and we all agreed that the idea had enough merit to pursue. “Okay,” I said. “We’re in.”
The original plan was to split up into teams of two. That way we could blow the maximum number of Helium 3 deposits currently being mined. Jon teamed up with Weir, whom he had become fond of and I went with Spunky. The others paired up as they saw fit. It seemed like a pretty simple plan except for one thing. The Rangers were wrong. The mines had in fact been placed under surveillance since the bombing of MTON. It didn’t prevent our operation, but it did make made it a whole lot more difficult. Once we discovered that guards were watching the mines, Ki asked Sorenson and Hendricks to help revise our strategy.
“We need to rethink the two-man teams,” Hendricks said. “And we are going to need to provide a distraction large enough divert the guards away from the mines long enough for an explosive team to get in and out; We will all have to be precise and work very quickly.”