Part Seven - “One Possible Future”
"So this is the little lady who started this big war." ~Abraham Lincoln upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe
"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." ~Robert McAfee Brown
"To be a person is to have a story to tell." ~Isak Dinesen
"The story - from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories." ~Ursula K. LeGuin
"The universe is made of stories, not atoms." ~Muriel Rukeyser
~As you can tell by the abundance of quotes, I believe storytelling to an essential tool. All of the parts that preceded this one are didactic, ultimately just 'the relation of the various concepts', all functionally in the abstract. One can easily keep an emotionally, and therefore intellectual distance from them if they prove too challenging to one's present reality because, while said reality may be unpleasant, it is still familiar.
But a story, if done well, can draw you in and get you to see a world from the inside, live in it, feel it in a way that a straight forward explanation simply cannot and by 'living' in that world, it becomes familiar and possibly even comfortable.
With that in mind, when you come out of the world depicted below, remember that what you have just read is just a rather extensive outline of how that world could actually be made into a reality. Also keep in mind that on various social networking sites, tens of millions of people are listing Hogwarts as a school that they have attended...or would have if they could have. But unlike Hogwarts, The Temple of The Pentavalent does actually exist.
And that will clearly explain why I believe storytelling to be so important to the work of The Temple. It makes that future Sisterhood real and that which becomes real in the human mind can manifest in the physical world.
Of course, 'predictive fiction' is a pretty dicey undertaking in the best of circumstances and the wise author should always take special care in undertaking such a path. However it is quite certain that 'ideologically driven wish fulfillment predictive fiction' is the special province of the mad and the obsessed. And I am willing to submit to both of those labels....up to a point.
Therefore this stories are not about how I exactly believe things would look in a world created by The Temple, but more of an interpretation of how I hope such might be. Don't think of it as a precise blueprint per se, but as something more akin to an 'atmosphere' and only one possible version at that. The actual truth of such a world will almost certainly be far more bizarre and alien then even I can imagine.
Regarding the title of this section, this literally is just one possible future. I have at least four other 'story arcs' of how this might all play out, which I shall get to after I put this volume to bed. One of them, Tales of the Vēkkan Cults, is pure Space Opera and also pure fun.
EDITOR'S NOTE: A year ago I said, "I have thrown out all of Part Seven - “One Possible Future” and also Addendum A: [Tales of the Vekkan Cults]. That's about 38,000 words out the window, which cuts the present word count roughly in half. Well, I haven't really 'thrown them out', just removed them from The Explanation. They will mostly get posted in a separate volume of Sisterhood stories, though some may simply remain unfinished. [This is not the creation of an Apocrypha, but is more akin to The Suras, in that such is a form of 'commentary' that is still relevant to, and is in fact an enhancement of, Canon.]
This is my reasoning. Part Seven as it stood had become unwieldy; too many unfinished stories, too much rewriting to do, and, as so often happens with Science Fiction, much of the science has outstripped the fiction. Instead of trying to fix the whole mess, I have chosen to restart from square one.
About three months ago I started a new novella to take its place, with a single central character whose life covers the major epochs of The Sisterhood. I realized too that this will be more effective because, unlike the original Part Seven, it is a single narrative and therefore will flow more easily. With multiple stories and characters, there is the tendency to put the book down between tales.
With the removal of the multistory Part Seven, the rational for including Tales of the Vekkan Cults was largely gone. So, it needed go as well. [That moved the 'new' Addendum B and Addendum C up to Addendum A and Addendum B] /end
All that still applies. In the interim I have been slowly, but steadily working upon the aforementioned novella, "The Last Daughter."
"The Last Daughter" - The Return
~Bryn clearly remembered her Womb Mother. Carmela Torres had now been dead longer than nearly everyone else had been alive, but she always was vivid somewhere in her daughter's memory. The way her dark eyes sparkled when she laughed...and she laughed a lot, and loudly. The elegant, angular beauty of her face, topped with a defiant bleached blonde buzz-cut that proclaimed “Dyke!” Her lean muscular body, tanned a rich brown under so many bright, hot skies. Bryn could see much of that woman when she herself looked in a mirror, even after all the profound physical and emotional changes she herself had undergone.
Wherever Bryn had traveled in her own long life, she had carried a 2D hard copy in a blast-proof frame. She had found the photo among Carmela's things after she'd died. It showed a young Carmela with her Trikmates Frieda and Rachel in their old Merrican Republic Army camo uniforms, somewhere in either SoMerrica or Afrikao, grinning broadly, with their arms draped over each others shoulders. They weren't in full combat gear, but their Military Police gorgets were visible and they had holsters with big machine pistols slung on their hips. The buildings behind them were pockmarked with bullet holes.
That framed photo was now in a pouch beneath her robes as she sat in the Viewing Lounge of Gaia One Station looking at her home world, the one she had not visited in several centuries. She sat there, motionless, looking out the viewing blister, for the entire six hours of her Quarantine Period. No one disturbed her, in part because Gaia One was largely deserted, in part because a Sister wearing the robes of a Senior High Priestess of the Cult of Ereshkigal was best left alone.
Hardly anyone passed through Gaia One anymore. Mother was now more a 'concept', not a place to visit and no Sliders made the direct connection these days. Bryn had traveled on the Paarleekeeyo, a passenger Slider, to Alta Kalifornia, the ancient Orbital on the other side of Sol from Mother.
Bryn had not bothered to stop there. She knew the place well. She had after all been part of the crew that had built the thing, had lived there for over two centuries and she estimated had roughly five million descendants presently living there. No, she was not in the mood for any of any of that, not in the mood at all.
She had taken the Ship-To-Shore Portal to the Orbital's Quarantine Transit Lounge and then crossed straight to the Portal for Gaia One. Her Priestess's robes helped facilitate that. One simply did not stand in the path of a Psychopompos.
No doubt there would be buzzing about a Senior High Priestess of the Cult of Ereshkigal breezing through the Transit Lounge, but it would likely come to nothing. All her transponder implants would read her as “Kai, High Priestess etc.” which is who she was now and had been for one and twenty four Solanums.
She was already in the Viewing Lounge when the station's Command Trikona became aware of her presence. The XO had looked in, saw her sitting silently, and wisely withdrawn without a word. They were all Old Gals themselves and 'knew the score'.
Bryn looked down upon Mother, Gaia, Terra, Earth, all names she had used at one point or another. Gaia One was in Geo-Sync directly above SoCal. She could see her birth place had changed since the last time she was here. The western half of SoCal was now a long slim island. El Lay was completely submerged. Her old home in The High Desert was north of what was called the Tulare Channel and looked too green to be desert anymore. The dry flatland called Lake Tulare in her childhood was now a bay. She remembered being told that Lake Tulare had once been the largest body of fresh water in NorAm west of the Great Lakes. Water had been especially Sacred to The Sisterhood back in those days.
Looking East, she noted that the Great Lakes were now a huge single lake - The Great Lake her Neural Nanonics told her - that drained into a very very wide continent dividing Missipi River down to Lusiana Bay. And that Florda was just a long patch of shallow water. “No one misses that, I'll wager,” she thought to herself. Even after all this time the Departure Massacres were still vivid.
None of this was really new information. Bryn had kept track of things regarding Mother. Gaia One was Mother's last orbital platform. Mother was almost totally deserted, barely a million Sisters on Her surface and about ninety percent of them Elder Solitaries who had come here to age out and die away from Civilization. Mother was near pristine, all civilization purged and removed to Alta Kalifornia for historical preservation. SoCal Island was the last outpost of Tech and even that was Spartan. Servitors were kept to a strict minimum, with a limit of one Body Servant per Sisters and not many more for general maintenance.
A soft chime sounded in her head. Via her Neural Nanonics a soft pleasant voice said, “Your Quarantine Period has ended. You may take the Portal down to the surface at any time. Thank you for your patience.” Bryn sat there motionless for a few minutes longer.
*~*
She stepped out of the Portal into the First Karaal Complex. Though the Portal access area was under an awning, the hot humid air was like a solid wall, one redolent of pungent flowering plants. The air Bryn remembered was dry and smelled faintly of sage.
Her robes were instantly oppressive and her implants automatically started to work on lowering her body temperature. But she countermanded that. Bryn wanted to enjoy the relief of getting naked and showering off her sweat. That was one of her oldest pleasures and she planned to indulge it fully. She could feel the sweat begin to gather and run down her skin beneath her robes. She smiled very very slightly.
A Sister had been waiting there for her. She now approached. Tall like Bryn - about six feet - with skin the color of milk chocolate, short snow white hair and bright yellow eyes, the latter two features once popular Geno-Cosmetic modifications that had become in time common marks of The Sisterhood. She wore a sleeveless chemise dress of a fine powder blue cotton, hemmed about a third of the way down her thighs, and simple open topped sandals. The sight of that obviously comfortable outfit intensified Bryn's desire to shed her robes.
The Sister bowed her head slightly, smiled warmly.
“Welcome, Mistress Kai. I am Deenah Hyun-Nemarra, Director of The First Karaal Project.” At the time of Bryn's birth, Director Hyun-Nemarra would have been thought in her mid to late twenties, but Bryn knew her to be four hundred and thirty six.
At that moment Bryn switched off her current ID transponders and reset her originals. Deenah's eyes widened slightly, but she recovered instantly and smiled with genuine affection. She bowed deeply, then looked Bryn steadily in the eyes.
“We are profoundly honored by your presence. We are all entirely at your disposal.”
Bryn gave her a warm smile. “Thank you, Zir Deenah. I will try not to be a bother.”
Deenah radiated Pleasure at Bryn's use of that honorific. Switching gears, she said, “I regret your old quarters are now part of the Nedo Uno active display. But a near exact equivalent is available in Nedo Tres.”
Bryn bowed her head slightly. “Today, I am merely a guest here, Zir Deenah. Nedo Tres will be perfectly fine.”
Deenah did not bother to disguise her relief. Her eyes went 'blank' for a few seconds, indicating that she was NetComming. She then refocused upon Bryn. “Everything is arranged, Mistress. If you'll please follow me, I have a ground car waiting.”
The ground car was the shape of a huge guitar pick, with a single seat at the sharp end and a row of three seats at the round end. As Bryn sat down in one of the rear seats, a restraining field wrapped itself around her waist and Deenah lifted off.
Deenah guided the ground car at a good clip, providing Bryn with relief in the form of a stiff breeze. She began to relax for the first time since debarking from the Paarleekeeyo. That was a little hour seven hours ago, but it seemed an entire Solanum.
“Everything is so green,” she thought. Until the completion of Nedo Uno, the First Karaal of her childhood had been mostly dun colored under a hard blue sky. The vertical farms had been full of greenery, but the tended to shine silver in the desert sun. The remaining farm towers now reflected the verdant colors of tropical savanna.
There were only one set of a half a dozen old style mobile homes clustered around an above ground pool, that was a reproduction of the old Queen of Heaven Retreat, the foundation community of the First Karaal. When Bryn was born there were at least a score of clusters like that, though they were all gone by the time she herself had left for good.
Around the horizon she could the grass covered mounds that marked the abandoned Nedo Cinco through Nedo Doce. That drove home in a visceral way how long she had been gone. Nedo Seis and Siete had only just been completed and ground broken for Nedo Ocho. The rest were still in the planning stage.
In the interim, they had all been built, living in, deserted and Mother had reclaimed them. Only Dos, Tres and Cuatro remained to serve living Sisters. Nedo Uno, her home for decades, was now a museum. She took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, a truly ancient technique. Deenah politely pretended not to notice.
They soon arrived at the above ground portion of Nedo Tres. Like all Nedos, it was a two story band-shell shaped structure at one end. Nedo Tres - and all others built afterward - went down ten stories, where Uno and Dos only went down seven, but otherwise they were all generally the same, a oval stadium-like mini-city dug into the earth, with waterfall opposite the above ground portion that fell all the way to a garden at the bottom. The below ground stories were all rimmed by balconied walkways, and the rooms dug into the sides.
"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." ~Robert McAfee Brown
"To be a person is to have a story to tell." ~Isak Dinesen
"The story - from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories." ~Ursula K. LeGuin
"The universe is made of stories, not atoms." ~Muriel Rukeyser
~As you can tell by the abundance of quotes, I believe storytelling to an essential tool. All of the parts that preceded this one are didactic, ultimately just 'the relation of the various concepts', all functionally in the abstract. One can easily keep an emotionally, and therefore intellectual distance from them if they prove too challenging to one's present reality because, while said reality may be unpleasant, it is still familiar.
But a story, if done well, can draw you in and get you to see a world from the inside, live in it, feel it in a way that a straight forward explanation simply cannot and by 'living' in that world, it becomes familiar and possibly even comfortable.
With that in mind, when you come out of the world depicted below, remember that what you have just read is just a rather extensive outline of how that world could actually be made into a reality. Also keep in mind that on various social networking sites, tens of millions of people are listing Hogwarts as a school that they have attended...or would have if they could have. But unlike Hogwarts, The Temple of The Pentavalent does actually exist.
And that will clearly explain why I believe storytelling to be so important to the work of The Temple. It makes that future Sisterhood real and that which becomes real in the human mind can manifest in the physical world.
Of course, 'predictive fiction' is a pretty dicey undertaking in the best of circumstances and the wise author should always take special care in undertaking such a path. However it is quite certain that 'ideologically driven wish fulfillment predictive fiction' is the special province of the mad and the obsessed. And I am willing to submit to both of those labels....up to a point.
Therefore this stories are not about how I exactly believe things would look in a world created by The Temple, but more of an interpretation of how I hope such might be. Don't think of it as a precise blueprint per se, but as something more akin to an 'atmosphere' and only one possible version at that. The actual truth of such a world will almost certainly be far more bizarre and alien then even I can imagine.
Regarding the title of this section, this literally is just one possible future. I have at least four other 'story arcs' of how this might all play out, which I shall get to after I put this volume to bed. One of them, Tales of the Vēkkan Cults, is pure Space Opera and also pure fun.
EDITOR'S NOTE: A year ago I said, "I have thrown out all of Part Seven - “One Possible Future” and also Addendum A: [Tales of the Vekkan Cults]. That's about 38,000 words out the window, which cuts the present word count roughly in half. Well, I haven't really 'thrown them out', just removed them from The Explanation. They will mostly get posted in a separate volume of Sisterhood stories, though some may simply remain unfinished. [This is not the creation of an Apocrypha, but is more akin to The Suras, in that such is a form of 'commentary' that is still relevant to, and is in fact an enhancement of, Canon.]
This is my reasoning. Part Seven as it stood had become unwieldy; too many unfinished stories, too much rewriting to do, and, as so often happens with Science Fiction, much of the science has outstripped the fiction. Instead of trying to fix the whole mess, I have chosen to restart from square one.
About three months ago I started a new novella to take its place, with a single central character whose life covers the major epochs of The Sisterhood. I realized too that this will be more effective because, unlike the original Part Seven, it is a single narrative and therefore will flow more easily. With multiple stories and characters, there is the tendency to put the book down between tales.
With the removal of the multistory Part Seven, the rational for including Tales of the Vekkan Cults was largely gone. So, it needed go as well. [That moved the 'new' Addendum B and Addendum C up to Addendum A and Addendum B] /end
All that still applies. In the interim I have been slowly, but steadily working upon the aforementioned novella, "The Last Daughter."
"The Last Daughter" - The Return
~Bryn clearly remembered her Womb Mother. Carmela Torres had now been dead longer than nearly everyone else had been alive, but she always was vivid somewhere in her daughter's memory. The way her dark eyes sparkled when she laughed...and she laughed a lot, and loudly. The elegant, angular beauty of her face, topped with a defiant bleached blonde buzz-cut that proclaimed “Dyke!” Her lean muscular body, tanned a rich brown under so many bright, hot skies. Bryn could see much of that woman when she herself looked in a mirror, even after all the profound physical and emotional changes she herself had undergone.
Wherever Bryn had traveled in her own long life, she had carried a 2D hard copy in a blast-proof frame. She had found the photo among Carmela's things after she'd died. It showed a young Carmela with her Trikmates Frieda and Rachel in their old Merrican Republic Army camo uniforms, somewhere in either SoMerrica or Afrikao, grinning broadly, with their arms draped over each others shoulders. They weren't in full combat gear, but their Military Police gorgets were visible and they had holsters with big machine pistols slung on their hips. The buildings behind them were pockmarked with bullet holes.
That framed photo was now in a pouch beneath her robes as she sat in the Viewing Lounge of Gaia One Station looking at her home world, the one she had not visited in several centuries. She sat there, motionless, looking out the viewing blister, for the entire six hours of her Quarantine Period. No one disturbed her, in part because Gaia One was largely deserted, in part because a Sister wearing the robes of a Senior High Priestess of the Cult of Ereshkigal was best left alone.
Hardly anyone passed through Gaia One anymore. Mother was now more a 'concept', not a place to visit and no Sliders made the direct connection these days. Bryn had traveled on the Paarleekeeyo, a passenger Slider, to Alta Kalifornia, the ancient Orbital on the other side of Sol from Mother.
Bryn had not bothered to stop there. She knew the place well. She had after all been part of the crew that had built the thing, had lived there for over two centuries and she estimated had roughly five million descendants presently living there. No, she was not in the mood for any of any of that, not in the mood at all.
She had taken the Ship-To-Shore Portal to the Orbital's Quarantine Transit Lounge and then crossed straight to the Portal for Gaia One. Her Priestess's robes helped facilitate that. One simply did not stand in the path of a Psychopompos.
No doubt there would be buzzing about a Senior High Priestess of the Cult of Ereshkigal breezing through the Transit Lounge, but it would likely come to nothing. All her transponder implants would read her as “Kai, High Priestess etc.” which is who she was now and had been for one and twenty four Solanums.
She was already in the Viewing Lounge when the station's Command Trikona became aware of her presence. The XO had looked in, saw her sitting silently, and wisely withdrawn without a word. They were all Old Gals themselves and 'knew the score'.
Bryn looked down upon Mother, Gaia, Terra, Earth, all names she had used at one point or another. Gaia One was in Geo-Sync directly above SoCal. She could see her birth place had changed since the last time she was here. The western half of SoCal was now a long slim island. El Lay was completely submerged. Her old home in The High Desert was north of what was called the Tulare Channel and looked too green to be desert anymore. The dry flatland called Lake Tulare in her childhood was now a bay. She remembered being told that Lake Tulare had once been the largest body of fresh water in NorAm west of the Great Lakes. Water had been especially Sacred to The Sisterhood back in those days.
Looking East, she noted that the Great Lakes were now a huge single lake - The Great Lake her Neural Nanonics told her - that drained into a very very wide continent dividing Missipi River down to Lusiana Bay. And that Florda was just a long patch of shallow water. “No one misses that, I'll wager,” she thought to herself. Even after all this time the Departure Massacres were still vivid.
None of this was really new information. Bryn had kept track of things regarding Mother. Gaia One was Mother's last orbital platform. Mother was almost totally deserted, barely a million Sisters on Her surface and about ninety percent of them Elder Solitaries who had come here to age out and die away from Civilization. Mother was near pristine, all civilization purged and removed to Alta Kalifornia for historical preservation. SoCal Island was the last outpost of Tech and even that was Spartan. Servitors were kept to a strict minimum, with a limit of one Body Servant per Sisters and not many more for general maintenance.
A soft chime sounded in her head. Via her Neural Nanonics a soft pleasant voice said, “Your Quarantine Period has ended. You may take the Portal down to the surface at any time. Thank you for your patience.” Bryn sat there motionless for a few minutes longer.
*~*
She stepped out of the Portal into the First Karaal Complex. Though the Portal access area was under an awning, the hot humid air was like a solid wall, one redolent of pungent flowering plants. The air Bryn remembered was dry and smelled faintly of sage.
Her robes were instantly oppressive and her implants automatically started to work on lowering her body temperature. But she countermanded that. Bryn wanted to enjoy the relief of getting naked and showering off her sweat. That was one of her oldest pleasures and she planned to indulge it fully. She could feel the sweat begin to gather and run down her skin beneath her robes. She smiled very very slightly.
A Sister had been waiting there for her. She now approached. Tall like Bryn - about six feet - with skin the color of milk chocolate, short snow white hair and bright yellow eyes, the latter two features once popular Geno-Cosmetic modifications that had become in time common marks of The Sisterhood. She wore a sleeveless chemise dress of a fine powder blue cotton, hemmed about a third of the way down her thighs, and simple open topped sandals. The sight of that obviously comfortable outfit intensified Bryn's desire to shed her robes.
The Sister bowed her head slightly, smiled warmly.
“Welcome, Mistress Kai. I am Deenah Hyun-Nemarra, Director of The First Karaal Project.” At the time of Bryn's birth, Director Hyun-Nemarra would have been thought in her mid to late twenties, but Bryn knew her to be four hundred and thirty six.
At that moment Bryn switched off her current ID transponders and reset her originals. Deenah's eyes widened slightly, but she recovered instantly and smiled with genuine affection. She bowed deeply, then looked Bryn steadily in the eyes.
“We are profoundly honored by your presence. We are all entirely at your disposal.”
Bryn gave her a warm smile. “Thank you, Zir Deenah. I will try not to be a bother.”
Deenah radiated Pleasure at Bryn's use of that honorific. Switching gears, she said, “I regret your old quarters are now part of the Nedo Uno active display. But a near exact equivalent is available in Nedo Tres.”
Bryn bowed her head slightly. “Today, I am merely a guest here, Zir Deenah. Nedo Tres will be perfectly fine.”
Deenah did not bother to disguise her relief. Her eyes went 'blank' for a few seconds, indicating that she was NetComming. She then refocused upon Bryn. “Everything is arranged, Mistress. If you'll please follow me, I have a ground car waiting.”
The ground car was the shape of a huge guitar pick, with a single seat at the sharp end and a row of three seats at the round end. As Bryn sat down in one of the rear seats, a restraining field wrapped itself around her waist and Deenah lifted off.
Deenah guided the ground car at a good clip, providing Bryn with relief in the form of a stiff breeze. She began to relax for the first time since debarking from the Paarleekeeyo. That was a little hour seven hours ago, but it seemed an entire Solanum.
“Everything is so green,” she thought. Until the completion of Nedo Uno, the First Karaal of her childhood had been mostly dun colored under a hard blue sky. The vertical farms had been full of greenery, but the tended to shine silver in the desert sun. The remaining farm towers now reflected the verdant colors of tropical savanna.
There were only one set of a half a dozen old style mobile homes clustered around an above ground pool, that was a reproduction of the old Queen of Heaven Retreat, the foundation community of the First Karaal. When Bryn was born there were at least a score of clusters like that, though they were all gone by the time she herself had left for good.
Around the horizon she could the grass covered mounds that marked the abandoned Nedo Cinco through Nedo Doce. That drove home in a visceral way how long she had been gone. Nedo Seis and Siete had only just been completed and ground broken for Nedo Ocho. The rest were still in the planning stage.
In the interim, they had all been built, living in, deserted and Mother had reclaimed them. Only Dos, Tres and Cuatro remained to serve living Sisters. Nedo Uno, her home for decades, was now a museum. She took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, a truly ancient technique. Deenah politely pretended not to notice.
They soon arrived at the above ground portion of Nedo Tres. Like all Nedos, it was a two story band-shell shaped structure at one end. Nedo Tres - and all others built afterward - went down ten stories, where Uno and Dos only went down seven, but otherwise they were all generally the same, a oval stadium-like mini-city dug into the earth, with waterfall opposite the above ground portion that fell all the way to a garden at the bottom. The below ground stories were all rimmed by balconied walkways, and the rooms dug into the sides.