Ro’s Reminiscing: Thxx’s Story

By Lotta Bangs

My books are rather cerebral and require the reader to concentrate and be able to think about what they’re reading. There are no thrills a minute, no desperate chase scenes or space battles as yet, though there will be a little one in the future, and no immediate gratification.

The heroine Ro has no great dashing adventures, but she ponders deeply about her Universe and its problems and after being let down by Beey, she takes charge of her life and accomplishes things in a way that’s never been done before, finding solutions to problems she hadn’t yet recognized as such and eventually founding Galen which offers hope and a new start for every race in the Universe.

This book details Ro’s beginning. We see her motives and how her original plans were derailed and made into something far better and bigger by her finding Zeke. We also see Ro at death’s door while her friends search desperately to locate her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lotta Bangs
• Release date: Jan 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301109531

Lotta Bangs

I’m Aussie, way over 35, thankfully and very happily divorced, and have a wonderful daughter who very occasionally beta-reads for me. A few years ago we had 13 cats; we just lost another, so now only one of those remains. We have added 6 more over the years, including the sweet feral ragdoll which is my Facebook avatar. I generally prefer female cats, but have also had some magnificent males. I couldn’t live without cats, just wish their lives were longer. I’m having a lot of problems adjusting to social media which doesn’t leave me enough time for writing and editing, so I won’t be expanding my web presence any time soon. If you want to know about NEW RELEASES and SPECIALS you will need to FRIEND ME ON FACEBOOK. I have announced coupons to get a new release free here, but apparently nobody reads author biographies. Of course my books are what you are really interested in. Originally, I wrote a long continuous story, starting at Reacquaintance, told from Ro’s POV. Then when Ro disappeared for a year or so, I had to use Taj to fill in the gaps, and she proved so feisty and interesting, that I added in her back story, starting with Getting to Galen and continuing in The Deep End. After Thxx’s Story, the various POVs continue in the same stream. I had to break up my huge tomes into installments that could be published separately as I finished editing them. I’m afraid my writing was quite stuffy at first, with convoluted 12- to 15-line sentences, turgid half-page paragraphs, and a lot of pompous pontification and personal political opinion which the story didn’t need. I had to rip out a lot before I could publish. I think the books are greatly improved now. I was giving away my books for free for most of a year, hoping to develop a fan base quickly, but learned that people don’t value what is free. Though over 20K copies have been downloaded, very few seem to have been read, and even fewer have been reviewed. I was unlucky to attract an ill-wisher who thought it amusing to devalue every one of my few 5-star reviews. Perhaps that put off others from reviewing. Certainly, without good reviews, few readers cared to buy my books, so if you have enjoyed them, I really would appreciate a short review. With the next book, The Power of Art, I will be doubling all my prices, so they’ll never be cheaper than they are now. I believe that I am the only person writing Utopian books today, though mine are nothing like the political satires of yesteryear. My books are based on the power of love to bring out the best in everybody, to develop their souls and help them to evolve into higher beings. Ro started Galen, and she, Taj and their men lead their people to make Galen a true Utopia which reaches out to the stars. Cat lovers will adore Brinna, my sentient sabretooth, though we have intelligent dogs and dinosaurs too. Though you couldn’t call my series a space opera, I do have a space battle planned, probably the cutest ever written, but that is still a way off. I really will have to buckle down and get more books edited and published so I can write some more.

Book preview

Prelude

I removed the pain barrier for a moment and immediately couldn’t breathe. I reset it immediately.

That had been a little premature. With my chopped up nose, torn mouth, throat and face, I wouldn’t have been able to breathe at all if the suit hadn’t held all my damaged parts together inside and out.

And my poor lacerated feet!

So Edie couldn’t eavesdrop further, I had instructed the part of Maggie in my skullcap to disconnect completely from her network. I’d thought that had already been the case, but evidently not, as Edie had been able to access and read my journal.

And I had ’pathed my request for a little healing to him in the language Zeke had invented as a baby.

Dearest Zeke had repaired the internal pelvic damage, but if he’d done much more, Edie may have noticed and attacked me again. He’d been so shocked and worried, eager to heal me completely, but knew better than to argue when I had decided on a course of action.

This was all necessary to teach Maggie the treachery and evil humans were capable of when they hadn’t been taught proper behavioural boundaries or guidelines.

Edie couldn’t help her jealousy of me after Maggie had imposed her own love of Langdon onto her. But I sure hadn’t expected Edie would go so far. She was a very clever, resourceful little bitch.

Nobody else knew about this private Retreat. This one was under Siberia. It was pretty much like my others—a deep natural cavern system, stalactites and stalagmites mostly removed, walls strengthened and sealed with galenite. There were enough furnishings and all the modcons necessary so I could hide away here comfortably.

I would stay until I healed enough to at least be able to speak again.

Taj could handle Galen while I recovered.

Now stop with the self-pity girl, and do something constructive. I need to focus back on my memories. Back on healing myself.

I had created entire worlds and evolved their creatures to sentience by myself—something no other Creator had done in living memory or written history. I could certainly handle this.

Zeke and Taj had each sent me a great wave of love, which felt wonderful. So my aura now had colour again and had grown past the one inch mark. And that was great progress. I must build it up further until I have streaming tendrils again, so I can connect to them and to Langdon.

I had already covered all the people I had loved on this world. I would gain no further aura growth from repeating that. So I should go back further, to the beginning of my life and remember every single person I had ever loved or been loved by.

Yes. I shall sit here, bathing my soul in the memory of that wash of love and caring. In fact I will make a recording of these memories as a gift for Zeke. I don’t think I have told him much of my Creator life or of how he was conceived. He may not even know who his father had been.

I was momentarily lost in a recent memory of visiting Loosha in Nursery. My daughter has developed so beautifully. She is gorgeous and generous, loving and perfect. I am very proud of her.

My mother believed all children were naturally like that. It was a rare concept where I’d been born, because there very few children grew up to be nice adults.

Most Creator parents only procreated out of duty to continue the race and then mostly ignored their child until he or she had passed the Test. Then it became safe to become attached to one’s child.

The simple joys of parenthood and family life were lost on these parents and offspring. The family bonds were very weak. If they developed at all.

My mother had been in charge of a crèche, caring for and loving children like my daughter. And all those children had grown to be markedly nicer, better people than the Creator norm.

Okay Thxx, focus.

Chapter 82

Thxx’s Childhood

There was no murder, war, crime or aberration in the world I made for Zeke and me. Instead, there was a huge amount of love, caring, co-operation and consideration. And that was a great change from all the previous worlds I had experienced.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember my early lives, nor the worlds on which I evolved. I believe there must have been a great many of them. But those memories were stolen, lost, thrown out, or just left behind when I was born a Creator.

Our people, the self-styled Creators, believed ours was the ultimate, most highly evolved life form. The one to which all others aspired to evolve into. But then, they would think that, having never met anyone more highly evolved than themselves.

I hope eventually, after I have passed my Test, to have the option of regaining my pre-Creator memories. I would like to know who I had been; otherwise how can I properly know who I am now?

* * *

I was conceived in the biologically normal way, with a mother and a father. And that was most abnormal at the time.

My mother was considered atavistic for actually gestating me in her own body.

Although Creators are primates, our overdeveloped brains and enormous craniums had long ago made normal vaginal birth an impossibility. So to ensure continued advantageous cranial and brain development, external mechanical gestation became the norm. And the unused reproductive organs were allowed to atrophy.

You can imagine the joy felt by those women who had always resented the imposition, dangers, and indignities of their reproductive duties. Now they had as much freedom as the men had always enjoyed. They probably overreacted as they happily delegated the job of caring for their children to the lesser servant races.

Meanwhile they took up more interesting, satisfying and personally fulfilling pursuits. They probably never noticed how selfish they became after many millennia of thinking more about themselves than about anyone else.

However, not all the women thought artificial gestation and the development of ever bigger brains were of such a great benefit to the race. These mourned the loss of something precious.

Necessity forced them to use the replicators. But they visited the machines often, or at least occasionally, to commune with their developing children. They happily kept the century or so of child-rearing duties and considered that very fulfilling, not burdensome at all.

A century or two was such a very minute part of an immortal’s life when seen in perspective. While the satisfaction gained by a child’s success at the all-important Test was everlasting.

Of course, if the child failed, the feeling of loss was also everlasting. Those who failed never returned.

Perhaps it was mostly this unfortunately high-probability prospect which caused most adult Creators to distance themselves from their offspring until the fateful Test was passed.

Why become attached to a child that may never become an adult? Why subject oneself to such great loss and bereavement? Much easier to stay aloof and learn to love the child after it has become an adult. Then you can be properly proud of his or her attainment.

Both my parents believed parental nurturing had been a crucial factor in their own successful rites of passage to full Creator status. They were prepared to go one better for their child. So they spent centuries thoroughly researching different methods of birthing and raising children before they conceived me.

Mum was named Xara, with the X pronounced the Greek or Russian way, like the Scottish CH in loch, or the soft, breathy Arabic sound often written as KH.

Xara took a rather menial job, usually held by one of the servant race, as a childcare attendant. She enjoyed this work enormously, as it gave her the chance to try out many of her theories.

Xara ended up running the crèche, gathering a large servant-race staff whom she trained in her methods. To free her own time for working directly with the children Xara delegated most administrative duties to her competent staff. This also prepared them for her semi-retirement during later pregnancy.

Fortunately for Mum and me, both she and Yorrl—pronounced as in yawl with the addition of a softly rolled r-sound—were extremely talented even for their gifted race. They shared a wide range of Creator powers and the ability to think innovatively.

So, while Mum carried me in utero in the normal primate fashion, I wasn’t actually ‘born’. Xara’s body could never have handled labour or delivery. However, with my parents’ healing skills, there was no need for anything as gross as a Caesarean section.

Instead, both of them kept a close watch on my intra-uterine development. They conversed with me telepathically the whole time. And they assured me of their love and support, teaching me many skills I would need later.

When they decided I was ready, I was ’ported directly from the womb into Dad’s waiting arms. My umbilical cord was still attached at both ends and threaded correctly through the birth canal and the slightly dilated cervix. The placenta was then carefully detached. Each connection was cut and sealed, and the whole afterbirth ’ported out after me.

Actually, when you really analyze it, apart from the ability to think innovatively and come up with the plan, all it took for me to be created and delivered this way, were the abilities to heal and to ’port. And every Creator has those.

Even with the gestation period’s lasting 42 months, only the last 15 months would have been really uncomfortable for. There too, ‘porting would have helped lighten the load of my skull’s great weight. And being able to ’port oxygen directly into her lungs or red blood cells would have alleviated the breathlessness a large pregnancy can cause.

I don’t know if I were breastfed or not—it was never mentioned, and I didn’t know to ask—but if I had been, it would only have been for a few short months, in private before Xara returned to work.

Even with the skills I had been taught in utero, I was still a baby. My incompletely formed brain would continue to develop over the next six years. After that time I would be able to retain clear memories of everything, not just vague impressions.

I was named Thxx, which is not as formidable as it looks, and is actually a very soft pretty name which can never be spoken loudly or shouted. The TH is pronounced softly as in breath, and the extended XX is very long and breathy, pronounced as the CH in loch.

Everybody else I met had been conceived externally and grown in a mechanical womb.

Mother was also unconventionally affectionate, with me and with Dad. She liked to hold and cuddle me, to kiss the top of my head and sometimes my forehead. She often told me she loved me. Xara was gentle and beautiful, and always smelled nice.

She was able to return to work a few months after the birth, taking me in with her. Xara’s was probably the only job on the planet where she could keep her child close.

She was wildly over-qualified for the job. But Xara’s attitude was that anyone working with children could never have enough qualifications. And indeed, her little charges all eventually grew up to be very nice people, with a wider range of interests than the norm. This had to be because she had exposed them to a variety of subjects and ideas.

They became my closest Creator friends. My crèche mates still revere my mother as the greatest influence on their lives.

Most of them stayed in Crèche permanently for up to twenty-five years, only rarely if ever being visited for a few minutes by a parent. When they reached 25, they moved to their family homes and were tended largely by servants who took them to and from school. They rarely if ever saw their busy parents.

My father was a bit gruff and distant at first, and didn’t believe a man should play games with a child. I had to climb onto his lap and tickle him to distract him from his very important work as an interstellar communicator, and get him to spend time with me. But we eventually became very close.

Chapter 83

Early Precocity

I enjoyed sitting there on his lap and once tried to impress Dad by showing off the skill I had learned as I observed him. I contacted a man who hadn’t visited us in a very long time.

Yorrl had treated him with great friendliness and the man had brought me a tame bird on that visit. So I thought dad would like to hear from him again. I have never seen Yorrl so shocked or frightened.

He took over the conversation after only moments, and laughed, pretending that he had been playing a joke to please his daughter. Allowing the man to think it was his child who was suddenly able to communicate mind-to-mind over vast interstellar distances. When of course it really had been Yorrl transferring my message that I had enjoyed his gift and still played with the bird.

I could tell Yorrl was frightened because his clenched fists had whitened at the knuckles. After he had closed the conversation with another little message of thanks and goodbye from me, Dad held me close and sort of shivered, his heart racing.

When he calmed Dad made me promise never to reveal that gift to any Creator male ever again. I never did figure out the reason for that.

He might have explained further except that I distracted him again. In fact he nearly had a stroke when I demonstrated more talents I had picked up from other people, including some interesting ones from that particular man.

Dad told me I was very clever, but I should never let anyone know that I could access and copy talents they weren’t even using. He also warned me to practise them only when I was certain not to be observed.

* * *

Yorrl didn’t really know how to show his love for us, but he appreciated the easy way Xara did it, and gradually loosened up. He adored Xara. Whenever she came into the room his eyes always lit up, then followed her with a soft mushy look in them that was never there for anyone else. He developed a different soft look for me too over the years.

He and Xara had a series of significant looks they used to signal warnings of a bad mood or amorous intent among other things. But they never cuddled within my sight.

Those looks, a few little touches, and the glow in their eyes after they had spent some private time together, convinced me that they had a full physical relationship. But it was not something either ever discussed with me. And it was a very long time before I realized just how rare such a relationship was among Creators.

It was only when I was much older that I understood how unique my birth and childhood nurturing had been. None of my non-Crèche school friends had received parental cuddles or any other physical displays of affection.

They thought my family bizarrely oddball in a nice, interesting sort of way. And they politely excused my eccentric behaviour and weird radical ideas as idiosyncrasies resulting from my unorthodox upbringing.

Physical love, sex, and emotional displays of affection were somehow unfashionable at the time. They were considered animal-like behaviour and not worthy of higher spiritual beings.

I had enjoyed being loved and cuddled, so disregarded their patronization and loved them all anyway.

Even people raised to be coldly logical and dispassionate, soon warm to simple friendliness and a welcoming smile. And if they left me feeling cordial, they were often pleasant to the next person they met. I taught them all to feel affection for and be nice to each other, without their even noticing.

And while they dismissed my ideas and thought me odd, I was always at the centre of a large admiring crowd. That proved to me that they all craved the love and loving they had missed out on.

My historical studies revealed that family love had played an important part in the early development of the primitive races from which we had evolved. So I made this period my major and minored in primitive written languages.

* * *

There were several ways in which our people could achieve eminence. One of the easiest but slowest, was to build a world, people it, and raise the beings to a high spiritual state. Many Creators made this their life’s work, trying to bring their people up to Creator status. Achieving this on a smaller scale was part of the Test which would determine our future.

A Creator’s prestige and power depended solely on the number, and especially the quality of the souls under his control, and nearly all of the powerful Creators were male.

Another way to achieve importance was to steal souls or swindle others out of the souls they had worked hard to produce. The naïve cadets trying to pass their Test were especially susceptible to this. Destroying the cadet’s life in the process seems to have been a large part of the ‘fun’.

Nobody criticized this method nor appeared to think less of the men who had achieved prominence in this way. The man I had contacted was such a person, and Yorrl had shown him respect.

The Creators’ own developmental level was almost irrelevant. We were presumed to be the pinnacle of physical and spiritual evolution, so we supposedly couldn’t rise any higher.

Strangely, the Creators had no precise way to measure degrees of spiritual development. Yet they saw no incongruity in claiming to have more of it than anyone else.

I should probably explain that the major reason the Creators claimed to be so spiritual, was that many of them disdained the encumbrance of physical bodies.

And if you had to walk around holding up that great mass of bone around your lauded brain, you’d feel burdened too. They lived, worked and travelled mostly in their spirit forms, remaking their bodies anew each time they needed one.

This ability to retain consciousness and maintain unity without a physical body or the need of periodic body death is what made Creators immortal.

The spirit state was also very handy for travelling. You could ’port anywhere for which you had the co-ordinates in an instant. Or just head a certain distance in a particular direction, reorient yourself, check out the neighbourhood and head for anything else of interest.

Of course, only physically mature Creators, including us cadets, could do all this, not babies or young children.

Chapter 84

School

The most frequent discussion topic throughout my school years was the relative merit of the various ways to govern and guide the beings we would create.

Most, including all the guys, favoured variations of the remote, omniscient, omnipotent god. One who passed down orders and punished dissenters with thunderbolts from on high, to scare the rest into obedience and speedier evolution.

Fantasizing may be fun but one can’t build a life on it. None of these guys even bothered to work at developing their inherent potential powers. When I wondered aloud how they planned to shoot down thunderbolts without such a power, everyone thought I was trying to be funny.

When I also commented that omniscience required quite a bit of learning and none of them was doing well at school, they called me a swot.

It worried me that none of our teachings gave any indication of what we were to aim for. A ‘high spiritual state’ could be interpreted to mean many things, yet nobody ever defined, interpreted or discussed it.

My questions were brushed aside. I was told this was ‘too obvious to bother with’ and that nobody else needed to talk about it.

That had the expected effect of preventing anyone else’s proving their ignorance. Personally, I didn’t believe that even our instructors knew the answer, which may be why they had become instructors.

None of us had ever met the Creators of our own world. The most pre-eminent of our race, they had raised their beings up to their own level. There were statues and images of them everywhere, but the method they had used was a trade secret.

They socialized only with an elite group, and didn’t seem to be involved in the actual running of their world.

So without thinking it through, I assumed they also played the god role, completely forgetting that I had been raised godless.

None of the adult Creators or Instructors ever revealed or discussed the methods by which they had managed to pass their Test, not even my parents. We cadets were apparently expected to work things out for ourselves.

Though, I hadn’t realized until now, that I had never actually asked Xara or Yorrl this question.

Our planet had the largest number of cadets, but there were several others which had small groups. And there were half a dozen further planets which had only single cadets in this generation group.

We didn’t meet the rest until well after we were grown into our adult talents.

Even then each group seemed to keep to themselves most of the time and not mix easily. I made a point of getting to know all their names and loved them as much as the people in our own group.

One couple were unique—a boy and girl accidentally conceived together and gestated in the same replicator because nobody had noticed at first that there were two of them. By the time someone did notice, it was too dangerous to separate them.

There had been some fear that the girl would have been a freemartin as happened to the female calf twinned with a male.

Fortunately, before they could be terminated, somebody intelligent checked on primate twinning history and discovered that this fault did not occur in primates. So they were allowed to live.

I found them fascinating because, although they also had received no nurturing or affection from their parents, they loved each other. And they also tried to spread love as I did. Orma and Karrteh became my very good friends.

When it came time to choose a partner, I picked Beey—pronounced Bee followed by a distinct Y-sound. He was the male who had shown the most appreciation of me, and aroused in me the strongest feelings of love. I wanted to keep love in my life always. Beey had been one of my mother’s little charges so I had known him all my life and thought I knew him very well.

I had also considered Karrteh, because he already understood about love, but he loved his sister so much I didn’t like the idea of getting between them. If we had an argument they might both gang up on me.

Also I had only known him a very short time, so he was largely an unknown quantity. And Karrteh had made no declarations of affection towards me.

People were already starting to pair up. I couldn’t wait too long or Beey, the best male of our group, would be snapped up by someone else. And if Karrteh proved to have no interest in me except as a friend, I might have to settle for whoever was left at that time.

* * *

There were many ways to learn, acquire instruction and gain expertise at something. The easiest and most popular method was to pick up knowledge and skills from How-to recordings. These were recordings from the actual minds of people past and present who had developed a skill or been expert in some area.

This was good as far as it went, which for me wasn’t far enough. I like to know the answers to all the whys, and what will happen if I do this? And how many other ways are there to do this? And how do they affect the result? And what other skills could work with this one to do something else? And none of these questions can be answered by one recording.

When I pick up a skill by taking a recording, I like to get the same skill from a minimum 20 people of both sexes and a variety of builds, in different civilizations, from different worlds. Then I get at least another 20 from related area skills. And I work a while practising different aspects of the skill.

By that time, the skill really is my own and I am the expert. I couldn’t be comfortable using a skill gained from a single recording, yet many people do.

Few other people apart from the twins, were interested in reading old books and computer archives, but I found these endlessly fascinating.

I picked up speed-reading and taught it to both of them as it was such a useful skill. I spent months at a time reading through the old libraries, collecting recipes for foods, toiletries and herbal remedies. I also gathered How-tos and written instructions for crafts that nobody used anymore.

The archives had records of ancient, long-gone civilizations where many things had been done quite differently, with the How-tos for them. There were many wonderful forgotten varieties of crafts, art, music, musical instruments and handicrafts. And there were martial arts, yoga-like whole-being regimens, strict mind-body and purely physical discipline techniques.

And there was so much dance in styles no longer used, simply because they weren’t suitable for the weak, top-heavy Creator body. However, they were simply marvellous on the more graceful servant-race form. So I simply changed to that shape and mastered all of them.

Then I passed on the skills to anyone interested, starting a classical revival which greatly enriched our culture. Classical ballet and operatic training were two skills I loved and soon excelled in but could only do in the more primitive body form.

However the piano and harp could be handled easily by the long-fingered Creator body. I worked hard to master these too, as just knowing how wasn’t sufficient to develop true expertise. Many hours of regular practice were required too.

That only made them more challenging. The practice could be done mentally at any time and place by visualization. It didn’t always require the presence of the instrument or the making of loud noise.

Chapter 85

Planetary Excursions

Then there was practical application on excursion. After acquiring many skills we ’ported directly to another world, remade our bodies to match those of the resident race, and lived several years as one of them.

I did this one so often and for so long, that I had to use a time trick I have among my gifts to stretch my time on the planet I was on in relation to the rest of the universe. Thus I could spend 10 years on the planet and allow only 10 minutes, days, or just one second to elapse outside that planet. As time differed on each planet, nobody else noticed when one world got slightly out of synch.

Nobody else in my Creator generation seemed to enjoy planetary excursions at all, until I told some of the girls that the primitive guys actually enjoyed having sex. Then all the girls stayed on planet longer, learning, trying out, and perfecting this new skill.

Often they fell in love and lived years with a supposedly primitive male. It was a revelation for them to be loved like this. And it was what I had looked for and always wanted in my life.

When they finally understood what I had been talking about, the girls all agreed with me, that we were being cheated out of something important, interesting and fun.

Each of them had noticed, as had I, that we suffered no diminution in brainpower or talents when embodied as a primitive type. And the primitive bodies were much more comfortable and