The Pods: Castaway Island Book 3

By Paco Jones

Continuing the Castaway Island saga, it's time to execute the plan and occupy the Pods. The original plan was to get humans accepted into the multiverse, but then Jayna and Zardoc had to spend decades on a plan to save humanity from itself when the environment rolled over.

After many serious warnings that things needed to change, Jay moved various abhorrent groups to assorted places throughout the multiverse while the Council configured a new planet for the remaining few billion humans they needed to evacuate. Unlike the old Council, this new Council, with Tar-el as chair, would not allow it to become another extinction event.

A Significant number of hyper-advanced hybrids will occupy thousands of Pods parked at various places throughout the multiverse and would be rotated through different locations over the aeons they would be aboard. The master Pod would be permanently parked at the Earth's Lagrange point designated as L2. All of the Pods residents would be occupants until it was time to repopulate the Earth, but during that time, they would all become accepted throughout the multiverse.

Mother Nature needed time to heal and with no humans trashing her, that time would be significantly shorter. In the master Pod with Steven, Zarot, Zanfur, and Ser-el, were the extreme hyper-advanced hybrids whose genetics would be the base for the new breed of humans that will move back to the surface of a seemingly new planet.

Young people taking ill-advised journeys, projects to restart a dead planet, new adventures, and new problems with new solutions. Physics, history, cosmology, and astronomy are only a few of the subjects that pass through the Pods and Castaway Island.

In the end, when her project has been successfully completed, what will Zardoc decide to do? It could be life changing all around, but that would be for the future and as Zardoc always said, the future would take care of itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paco Jones
• Release date: Oct 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370659333

Paco Jones

Dr. Paco Jones is an aging Hippie. One of his favorite sayings is: "I will always be a Hippie. It's not a changeable condition." Born in Los Angeles and raised in the San Francisco Bay area he is a true product of the 60's and is a firm subscriber to the cliché "If you can remember the 60's you weren't there." He served in the United States Navy doing a tour in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.

Book preview

The Pods

Castaway Island Book 3

by Paco Jones

text copyright 2016-2021 Paco Jones

all rights reserved

cover copyright 2016-2021 Paco Jones

all rights reserved

cover image license from Bigstockphotos.com

photo by - VHVisions

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Books by Paco Jones

These Girls Can Play (adult content)

Mile High and Beyond (adult content)

Teaching Deanna - Deanna book 1 (adult content)

Tara's Nightmare & Beyond - Deanna book 2 (adult content)

Craft Faire Love - book 1 (adult content)

The Tahoe Files - Craft Faire Love book 2 (adult content)

Jason & Alicia - A Craft Faire Love story (adult content)

Things to Come (adult content)

Irons in the Fire (adult content)

Castaway Island

Le Petite Castaway Island

Zardoc

The Pods

Return to Castaway Island

The Ghosts

It's All Over But The Shouting!

Vietnam: A Distant Memory

To all the true believers in science. Time eventually validates everything.

Acknowledgments

Any author will tell you that an effort such as this is not a solitary endeavor. If it's going to be anywhere near readable, it takes a team. I am extremely thankful for my team. I can write it, but without them, you probably wouldn't really want to read it.

I am humbly indebted to my friend, PawWriter, who proofed this effort. He added much readability to the original manuscript.

A loud shout out to my friend, Turbo. His patience and (mostly) gentle hand has helped me to become a much better writer. I strive to no longer hurt his hair. Without his kind advice, some of the maritime parts of this saga would not be as accurate.

Any errors in punctuation, grammar or spelling are truly mine and I'm sure there are some. There always is and it never ceases to amaze me that this manuscript can go through three or four sets of eyes and still has errors. It is what it is.

Also, a quiet thank you to Orblover and Strickland83 for their kind words of encouragement.

When I ask for it, encouragement has always come from my friend Robert Lubrican.

These gentlemen's kind words of advice have kept me on the straight and narrow. Okay, as straight and narrow as I get...

There are others out there in ether land that I owe a debt of thanks to as well. I'm afraid to start a list for fear I'll forget someone, but you all know who you are!

I also have to send a heart felt thank you to you, the reader. Without you, none of this would be worth the effort.

#####

In Book 1, Castaway Island, you'll find a glossary for maritime terminology. I tried to make sure that all of the terms used in the story are there.

You'll also note that at the end of that book is a Bibliography. I did not put in individual citations because, I'm sorry, I find them to be totally distracting. These are not a textbooks, they are a work of fiction; if you want the citations, the Bibliography is divided into sections.

I have to thank all of the writers at the Wikipedia pages cited. Without them, the historical and physics research done for this effort would have been excruciatingly painful. They made finding and validating the information much less tedious.

Please enjoy Book 3 in the Castaway Island saga, The Pods. I hope you will enjoy all three stories in the saga. Well, three so far - there are more stories to tell. See authors final note at the end.

Thank you!

pj

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Prologue

Chapter 1 - The Feeling Begins

Chapter 2 - The Master Pod

Chapter 3 - The Pod

Chapter 4 - The Families

Chapter 5 - Sabrina and Others

Chapter 6 - Truth is Blasphemy

Chapter 7 - The Menagerie Arrives

Chapter 8 - The Start of Orientation

Chapter 9 - How We Got Here

Chapter 10 - Pods and the Legacy of Castaway Island

Chapter 11 - Physics - Time and Gravity

Chapter 12 - The Harvesting

Chapter 13 - Gabrielle

Chapter 14 - Some Challenges

Chapter 15 - Elena Makes a Mistake

Chapter 16 - Moving Right Along

Chapter 17 - Elena Returns

Chapter 18 - The Torrea Project

Chapter 19 - Life Goes On

Chapter 20 - Elena and Gabrielle's Adventure

Chapter 21 - Elena's Place

Chapter 22 - Transitions

Chapter 23 - Fuel for the Fire

Chapter 24 - Civilizations on the Move

Chapter 25 - Zardoc Goes Home

Epilogue

About the Author

Preface

I realize I rather left everyone in a lurch at the end of Zardoc, but it was the most logical place to break up the story. The original Castaway Island was nearly 1000 pages and that is far too long. It should have been broken into at least two parts, but while I'm writing, I'm not cognizant of the length. I'm going to tell the story, and if it takes 1.2 Million characters, that's the way it's going to be (I usually don't notice the count until the end anyway because I write in chapters). I suppose I could still break the first book into two, maybe three, parts because there are logical places to do that, but that's not presently in the plan though POD (print on demand) is a possibility.

The above resulted in, Le Petite Castaway Island, a shorter versions of the original.

This book picks up where Zardoc left off and finishes the Castaway Island saga. Well, at least for now. I'm sure there are other adventures that Jayna, Makenna, Bob, Zardoc, and the crew of Castaway Island can manage to find, but that is for the future, if at all.

You'll have to read this one to find out where it's left off, but it can conceivably go either way.

Return to Castaway Island, and The Ghosts are already done and published, so it is now a five book trilogy ... Hey, if Douglas Adams can do it, so can I.

It has been a very interesting saga to write because of all the research required to make the history and sciences sound anywhere close to plausible. Remember, it is fiction, but much of the science in the story is based on what's real today and hopes for the future. The history points out obvious discrepancies with what we see and what it is purported to be. Suffice it to say, archeology seems to have its collective head where the sun don't shine.

Einstein said time travel was a possibility, so in Castaway Island, I made it real. It continues in Zardoc and again in this work, as more of the physics world gets refined. A good for instance ... during the time I was writing this saga, the discovery of gravitational waves was made. It is something that Einstein said was there in 1915, but it took until 2015 to validate their existence, having been created by the collision of two massive black holes.

Those gravitational waves find a place in Alicia's phase transition. Is it real? It can't be proven that it isn't. At least not yet.

Personally, a downside I see in science is the attitude of many that, if you can't touch it, then it's not real. Einstein said gravitational waves were possible and he also said time travel is possible, but science would not accept either until it had been touched. At least they kept looking, but like the search for exoplanets, anyone who looks into some out of the ordinary subject is laughed at and made to feel professionally inferior.

Those doing the laughing are truly the inferior intellects, while those looking are the true intellectuals because they refuse to take no-way or impossible for an answer. In science, it seems to be a large leap of faith to take on something different. Don't take that the wrong way. I don't think science people are all fuddy-duddy's, most have great imaginations or they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. I just believe that in general, they tend to shy away from anything that may somehow reflect badly on their professional status instead of taking it on, head on. It's easier just to follow the flock on the safer route.

Another way of putting it ... no balls!

What are exoplanets? How about: An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet that orbits a star other than our Sun. It's pretty straight forward.

To think that in the vastness of the cosmos that our sun is the only star with planets is the height of absurdity, but until 1995 when 51Pegasi was discovered, science pooh-pooh'd the existence of exoplanets because they hadn't seen one. Leaving the theological bullshit aside, the assumption was that since we haven't seen one, they don't exist. The standard science mind at work.

Now, thousands have been discovered and a satellite has been put in place whose main purpose is finding them. Scientists may have laughed at Geoff Marcy and others when they started looking for exoplanets, but they're not laughing anymore.

It's the same with the search for extraterrestrial life. Since we haven't officially seen or heard one, they must not exist. It's like an ant on the floor of the Amazon rain forest that has never seen a human. To the ant, humans do not exist because they've never seen one, but I believe you will find that humans do indeed exist.

To assume or to believe we are the pinnacle of intelligent life forms and no intelligent life exists anywhere else in the cosmos is the epitome of arrogant ignorance.

If you think about it, humans on the Earth are the only intelligent life forms anywhere? Seriously? Intelligent? I find that to be a highly flawed hypothesis ... humans on the Earth is the best it gets? Even a God would laugh at that notion.

Anyone who seriously looks at the theological dictates with an open and objective mind will find it to be lacking in basic credibility at best, and find it to be no more than an elaborate fairy story at the least. It was written to control the minds of the masses and given history, it has worked pretty well ... still. Only the truly enlightened toss it aside and see it for what it really is ... or isn't, as the case may be.

The Castaway Island saga is full of scientific conjecture and tales of things which have not been done as of yet. Can they be done? I don't see why not, but that is for science of the future to figure out, but in order for any of it to be discovered, science needs to stop with the laughter, take their heads out of their asses, roll up their sleeves, and get to work. There's a whole multiverse out there just waiting to be discovered.

So, keep all of that in mind as you peruse through, Castaway Island, Zardoc, and now, The Pods.

The science fiction of today is tomorrow's science fact.

History is on my side.

pj - 2018/2021

Prologue

Taking a slight step backwards in review, this whole process came about with the goal of changing human behavior so they could be accepted into the multiverse. Because of their violence, greed, and faith in false mythologies, they had been excluded from participating, but now they were beginning to discover the technology that enables them to leave their planet. Something needed to be done to prevent humans from contaminating the multiverse, so they could not be allowed outside of their solar system.

Part of the problem was the genetics, which had been poorly manipulated. Brain capacity increases had been delayed by inattention and downright laziness on the part of the original experimenters, who were working under the direction of the old Council. Having spent years analyzing the problem, then being ignored by the very group that had sent her to fix things, Zardoc was understandably pissed off ... to say the least.

The errors in genetics were not completely the fault of the original researchers because the old Council had vetoed their suggested corrections. The corrections were really brought about because they waited too long to implement some changes and were now scrambling to catch up, but the old Council had other ideas.

Zardoc's recommendations were completely ignored as well and the Council had sent her specifically to advise them on how to fix the problems only to reject all of her findings and suggested remedies. Zardoc was incredulous, but hadn't figured out the old Council had a different agenda. Being ignorant of that agenda, she continued to make her recommendations, each being rejected.

Time was of the essence because the Spanish were on their way. When they arrived, as Zardoc had predicted, they gummed up the works with their greed, disease, and perverted version of religion. In the end, it would set human development back four to five hundred years.

Zardoc was not happy with her companions working on the European effort for letting them travel. Between greed, disease and their religion, most of the indigenous peoples of the Americas did not survive. Smallpox and other diseases were rampant, killing many who did not manage to escape into the jungle where the white man would not follow them.

The missionaries murdered most of those who were left. If the local people wouldn't convert to their perverted view of religion, they were murdered in the name of the missionaries God. It would be many centuries before the truth of their so-called God was discovered, but it was too late for the indigenous peoples of the Americas ... all of them.

Zardoc was not a happy camper.

She knew the Spanish would prevent the advancement that everyone had hoped for because the Spanish were driven by unabated greed. The gold the indigenous peoples possessed caused the Spanish to go blind.

Looting and murdering the indigenous peoples, they loaded their ships with stolen gold and set sail for Spain. Many of those ships and their sailors would never see land again.

Karma?

Others diverted their course and dropped the loot somewhere else ... a place where they could come back to dig it up later. Most never made it back.

Zardoc had already successfully mutated out the greed gene. There were other serious issues, but in the Maya or Inca, greed wasn't one of them. It was very disappointing that the crew on the other side of the planet didn't use the recommended DNA switches before allowing anyone to leave the continent.

However that was only half of the present day issue she was facing. The driving issue of today is the Earth is slowly dying but eventual demise is picking up speed. A little less than three hundred years ago, the Castaway Island group first began teaching a new version of physics, and once the understanding of physics made the historical truth believable, added to it, the real version of history and human origins

Jayna Lockwood had spent twenty-five years on Castaway Island learning that Albert Einstein wasn't only correct, but he hadn't really discovered much more than a tenth of the physics possible. His work did lay the foundation for the humans on Earth to work with, but they assumed it was all there was, so anything else just couldn't be. Jayna not only learned all of those new equations, but also developed many of her own extensions to Einstein's work using the multiverse data banks. In other universes, what Earth science insists is just a wild ass theory, is a reality and has been for many aeons.

At the same time she began teaching the physics, both she and Makenna Peterson began telling humanity that if they didn't clean up their act, nature would no longer support their life forms. Now, the greedy exploitation of natural resources for the betterment of a few was slowly killing the environment. The environment everyone relied on for survival was slowly killing them. The air has become unbreathable, the water undrinkable.

They were generally ignored by anyone who could have actually done something about it and now the chickens were coming home to roost. The Earth was so polluted, the atmosphere so compromised, that it was no longer repairable in a way to preserve life. There were only two things that were going to be able to fix it ... Mother Nature and time. She had done it before and sadly, she would have to do it again.

In doing that repair, nature would dispose of humans and unfortunately many other life forms because she would no longer be able to mitigate the abuse. It wouldn't be until after the time of healing, that life could begin again, but as any learned person knows, natural evolution takes hundreds of millions of years. The God theory wasn't going to save anyone because that myth had been proven to be bunk many centuries ago.

As Jayna used to ask with extreme sarcasm, How're them prayers working for you today?

So over the past few decades Jayna and Zardoc had developed a plan, which would save the bulk of humanity, and allow the Earth to recover, but 99% of humans would never see the Earth again. If they all died as Mother Nature reset they wouldn’t be seeing it either, but being moved would give them a chance to improve elsewhere, especially if the parameters were tightly controlled.

That kind of brings us to the present, where part of the plan was being implemented as we write it. The whole process would take quite some time, but at least it was underway before the Earth directly disposed of its abusers.

I guess if you don't know the whole story I can paraphrase it here, but the stories, Castaway Island and Zardoc give you the whole story and background, which led to these processes being necessary.

-----

In the beginning, Zardoc was sent to the Earth to find out why humans had not evolved at the rate expected. After all, their DNA was being continually manipulated to mutate out bad traits in order to make them acceptable to the rest of the multiverse. The whole plan was thwarted when, as mentioned before, the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica and ruined most everything that had been done in all of the Americas up to that point.

Zardoc was the premier analyst and troubleshooter in the multiverse, so the old Council assigned her to determine what was going wrong, but as previously mentioned, vetoed all of her recommendations and decided to eradicate the species altogether. Hell, they'd done it before they could certainly do it again. Just steer another asteroid to hit the planet and wait for the Earth to heal itself. Morally, it was something Zardoc could not accept and she vehemently expressed her disdain to the Council in no uncertain terms.

No one ever stood up to the Council before and by her doing so showed the rest of the membership what a weak moral backbone the leadership possessed. She essentially told them to keep their hands off the Earth and she would go back to take care of business. She also told them she would not be asking them for approval since they had shown they really had no clue about what they were dealing with.

The bottom line is that the old Council was replaced by a new Council and the new bunch was much more progressive and pragmatic than the last bunch. Tar-el was the new chair and he and Zardoc went back a long way, both having a lot of mutual respect. Tar-el let Zardoc know that she was in charge of the Earth project and that whatever she needed would be forthcoming.

Over many centuries, Zardoc brought people to special places in the cosmos to ascertain whether they had the aptitude to learn the physics and history she had to teach in order to give humans a more realistic view of their origins and their true place in the multiverse. It was a very frustrating exercise for Zardoc because she brought many capable humans, but most were too lazy or self-important to accept what she had to offer.

One fateful day, she chose a medium sized yacht sailing out of the harbor at Cabo San Lucas with three prospective students aboard. It was just another stab in the dark, though she had read many of the brain patterns of the three and knew that at least two of them were interested in her subject matter, so she took a chance.

She patiently waited many weeks before they moved to cruise around the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific coast of Mexico. Capturing their boat, Lovely Jenny, in a portal, which looked like a huge black storm cloud, she moved them into a warp in space time, through a wormhole, to a place called Castaway Island.

Having the ability to shape shift was a distinct advantage for Zardoc as she spent the next twenty-five years as a small blue parakeet who perched on the shoulder of the human named Makenna. She was the most fearful of the group so needed something reassuring and having expressed interest in all of the birds on the island, Zardoc thought being a bird would be something readily accepted by the group and calming for Makenna.

Over time, they gave her the name Keet and eventually figured out she wasn't really a bird. After spending twenty-five years instructing them on what she needed taught to humanity, she finally showed them her true form. She had been fearful they would reject her real form, but as she later said, they accepted so many other things that would seem to be absolutely crazy in their real world, why would they reject a small blue-grey alien. They didn't and went back to teach humanity many lessons.

Over the years, many escapades brought them to the island permanently, but as Zardoc had hoped, acceptance of the physics made accepting the true history of human origins much more palatable to most. Of course, there were the theologists who thumped their book and called reality bullshit, but it was eventually shown that the bullshit was actually oozing from within the pages of their book. Let's just say that the myth lost a majority of its believers and those that were left over, were the first to be removed from the Earth in Jayna and Zardoc's plan.

There are travels, trials, laughs, and tears, in the overall history of Castaway Island, but for the most part, it was a happy time.

Oh, during their last official stay on the Earth, Bob bought a huge yacht, which he named Castaway Island. Once it disappeared through the warp and the people on the Earth understood what was going on, Castaway Island and Lovely Jenny were designated ghost boats because they came and went as they pleased, when they pleased, where they pleased, and just appeared out of and disappeared into thin air. They were the ghosts.

In order for humans to accept their true origins, they needed to go beyond the theories of physics to the reality of what Einstein's equations were actually telling them. It was a tough go because dealing with the reality of time and space meant they didn't have a full grasp of what was in the numbers Einstein had given them. If physicists didn't have a full understanding of that, what were they going to tell the people?

It was the same scenario with the history once the physics had been accepted. Once time travel was real, it was possible to talk about what really happened on the Earth thousands of years prior. Archeologists had been making it all up for decades. Some knew what they were saying was unadulterated bullshit, but were professionally unable to truthfully explain what they were seeing. To accept reality was to undermine nearly every societal norm there was. To accept that Earth's ancient peoples were both created by and continually visited by intelligent life from elsewhere blew the mythology completely out of the water, but that was the reality.

As noted before, the theologians came unglued having their books labeled as fairy tales, but it is what it is. They continued to thump on the book calling everyone who wouldn't believe a heretic, so it really wasn't long before Jayna just got tired of it and moved all of them away from the Earth so they could no longer poison the minds of humanity, especially impressionable children, with their sectarian garbage. With that done, it was on to the greedy who were trying to exploit Jay's information for their personal or corporate gain.

It had been explained straight away that all of the new physics information was for the betterment of everyone and that nobody was to hold a corner on the new information for personal gain. It was also expressed that if there were violators they would be dealt with immediately and harshly.

Both Jay and Sam proved their point repeatedly by moving most of the greedy corporate moguls to a place they had dubbed the dimension of the misfits. They were joined by criminals and other ne'er do wells. In reality, the dimension of the misfits would become a very populated place, though when taken there the guests were taken with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. If they had been brandishing weapons, they were left on the Earth and not having any animal life, their new diet consisted of roots, berries, and whatever other vegetation they could find ... a truly vegan existence.

Well, unless they ate each other and given the makeup of the growing population, that isn't out of the realm of possibility.

On some of their visits back to the Earth, Jay and Samantha had to deal with some groups who obviously didn't know who they were dealing with until it was too late. Most became residents of the misfit's dimension and after dealing with the transgressors, the island group went on with their business. The misfits could either get along or kill each other, but it didn't matter to Jayna one way or the other.

Overall, they enjoyed their time back on the Earth immensely. They all knew that it was only for limited time before they couldn't visit at all because of the healing that would be going on. They would visit one last time before it would be deemed off limits and the shield put up so that nobody could get down to the surface. Jay and Zardoc were the only two with access, and they would not be going until it was much closer to the time for repopulation.

Of course, unbeknownst to everyone except Jay, Sam, and Makenna, the work being done under the ice in Antarctica and other underground facilities hidden on the Earth continued unabated. Those sites were self-sufficient and their researchers were looking forward to the day when humans returned to take much better care of their environment.

-----

So, that brings us to where Jay and Zardoc had their final planning meeting with the Council to ensure everyone was on the same page. By this time, many of the pods were already being populated with the hyper-advanced hybrids who would be returning some day.

The pods were just that. Pods installed in larger mother ships, which were parked at Lagrange points in the orbit around the Earth and due to gravitational concerns, many were parked in other universes. There would be rotations so that everyone got a view of Earth now and again. In each pod was a group of apartments where the hybrids would live for the duration. There were mini-malls, restaurants, and essential infrastructure in place to give it a homier feel, but in the end, it was a mostly sterile environment. Individual as well as community decorations were not only welcomed but were encouraged in order to give it a more lived in feel.

The bulk of the Earth's population would be moved to a planet in a similar dimension located in a far off universe. The planet had been set up by the Council to mirror the Earth as best as possible except that it was five times as large so things were much more spread out. As a for instance, the residents of San Francisco and Los Angeles were no longer four hundred miles apart, they were more like two thousand miles apart.

In creating an Earth version two, Jay asked if the Cnfroms could be assigned to continue with Zardoc's proposed DNA switches in the same manner they were doing on Pinfotr. Tar-el thought that was an excellent idea because it would allow the human population of Uulat to eventually become accepted into the multiverse much sooner than if it were left to natural evolution, which can take multiple hundreds of millions of years. Left to their own devices, humans would undoubtedly create the same situation they were in presently. It was a matter of asking Shontarm if he had the resources available and then assigning them. Zardoc thought there should be plenty of resources on G'an-den that Shontarm could draw from.

There were no resources on Uulat such as oil or caustic chemicals, so food would eventually have to be grown naturally. As is the norm in the multiverse, farms, gardens, and orchards would be pre installed and growing when the new residents arrived. They would notice right away that when they consumed something it would be returned the next day as if it was never used. Just as it was on Castaway Island, foodstuffs would not run out which would be a welcome change just as it is for those on the pods. Small backyard vegetable gardens would flourish everywhere.

There was active debate on what to do with the residents of Uulat because they were just creating a new Earth, but they wouldn't have those things that were exploitable to destroy the environment around them. There was abundant fresh water, abundant food, and clean air to breathe. Perhaps the worst of them would finally realize what they had been doing to the Earth, but it was hoped that peer pressure would prevent them from doing the same at Uulat. If not, Jay and Sam would move them elsewhere.

No petroleum products would exist on Uulat, so all transportation would have to be electric and when they arrived, the distribution grid infrastructure would already be in place. Fortunately, over the past couple hundred years most cars and other transportation systems had been converted to electricity due to the cost of diminishing petroleum supplies and the greedy corporations controlling it. Those corporations were getting weaker as time went on because they had no product to sell. In Jay's mind, it couldn't happen to a better bunch and any that had been left to move to Uulat would find their wealth or former stature no longer had any value.

Uulat would be 100% solar, wind, geo-thermal, hydroelectric and other natural sources of energy. Jay was also investigating the pyramid array they found in the ice cavern under Antarctica. Any lubrication required for any of the mechanical devices would all be naturally manufactured. It would be a near nirvana environment, but the occupants would still have to perform tasks for their survival.

Jayna was curious to see how not having money would affect their views, but there was realistically nothing to buy. Anything they needed was already available. With the exception of all the hardships of trying to survive, Uulat would be very much like living on the Earth. One of the first things everyone was given was a packet of basic rules and regulations. There wasn't a lot. Some general things that everyone could do for everyone else were spelled out and it was expected that everyone would get along. If there were any contentious situations, they were to be brought before the local Council for resolution immediately. Immediate mediation prevented little things from being blown out of proportion by over thinking. It worked very well throughout the entire multiverse, so it could work well on Uulat once humans got their minds right.

One of the last minute changes to the plan was the dealings with those people who were still exploiting or just ignorantly wasting what little resource was left on the Earth. Jayna was in favor of leaving them to reap what they had sown, but she had been convinced that morally, it wasn't the right thing to do.

As would usually be the case, the sticky point was children. Jayna couldn't justify punishing the children for the indiscretions of their parents and it was Tar-el who ultimately came forth suggesting the ultimate solution.

The issue was those people on the Earth who were still wasting what limited resources were still available for selfish means. The worst of the worst had already been moved off to another place where they could reap the kind of results they had sown on the Earth. There were still tens of millions left, who just didn't seem to give a damn about anybody but themselves and most had children who were suffering along with everyone else, but being children, didn't fully understand that their parents were a large part of the problem.

To see the wonderment in the eyes of a child was all Jayna could see in her mind's eye. The absolute trust and love a child placed in their adult. A child would do anything in the world to please their adult, even if the adult was being an asshole. The child didn't have the concept of asshole yet, so accepted the behavior as normal. As a child is wont to do, they would try to rationalize as best they were able, and try working around it. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough data yet to truly rationalize that their adult was just an asshole and not worthy of their love and trust.

To destroy that innocence was criminal in Jayna's mind, and she didn't want to punish the young ones for their parent's actions, so she had decided to separate the children from their assholes, move the assholes to a place where they could exploit things to death, literally. She would place the children in the care of loving adults so that only the adults would end up being punished.

Tar-el convinced her that separating the children from even their abhorrent parents was, in itself, a form of punishment. It would be inadvertent and well meaning in its concept, but a form of punishment nonetheless. Was that going to be acceptable to her?

Her plan was very workable, but Tar-el had tweaked her moral conscience, so she modified the plan one last time. One of the things that Zardoc loved about Jayna was her flexibility. She was always open to change if it made sense, and Tar-el's solution to the child problem only made sense. She would be using peer pressure in an attempt to adjust the adult's way of thinking and failing that, she would deal with assholes individually.

Most of the pods were already being populated with the ultra hyper-advanced hybrids as called out in the plan and so far, the consensus was all positive. Having spent the last few years on the Earth struggling for survival with diminishing resources, the pods were a welcome change. Food, water, and fresh air, would no longer be an issue for the humans aboard the pods.

Each pod had a human coordinator who was responsible for the humans aboard that particular pod. Each human coordinator was assisted by an alien guide who was there to enable things that the human could not, such as moving things around the multiverse using portals and warps in space time. An alien science officer from an intergalactic locale and an expert in medicine, physiology, and genetics was also assigned to each pod.

The extreme hyper-advanced hybrids were going to be aboard the master pod where the alien guide, Zarot, worked with her human executive coordinator, Steven Smith, to bring highly vetted people aboard. These were going to be the master hybrids to create the base breeding stock when the Earth was habitable again.

After the harvest and the growth on G'an-den, those extreme hybrids would end up mating with the ultra hybrids creating a mutation, which would eventually capture the best of both.

The whole pod control structure was set up like a small Council so that all of the pod coordinators were answerable to the master executive, who in this case was Steven Smith. Similarly, the alien guides were all answerable to Zarot in the master pod and the science officers were answerable to Zanfur, who was the science officer in the master pod.

It was all very well organized, but even knowing they didn't need Council approval for their final plan, it had taken Jay and Zardoc a few decades to finalize all of the details and get the project underway. For Jayna, just too many variables needed to be considered before final submission.

Though the clock was always ticking, they didn't want it done fast, they wanted it done right.

Chapter 1 - The Feeling Begins

After all the many meetings, where it was decided to begin the process, the master guide, Zarot, went down to pick up Steven Smith. It would only be a short period of time before he could warp himself around the multiverse, which would be a great help in his recruiting. At interview time, he could brief the candidates, and then bring them aboard the pod for a tour and if appropriate, immediately put them through the age machine.

He already knew it would be many millennia before he would return to the Earth with his pod of master hybrids. Initially, Steven would be moving into his new home, a pod placed in one of the space faring vehicles, which had been placed in orbit around the Earth at the Lagrange point designated as L2. Once he moved and settled into his apartment, he and his alien guide would begin to bring together his team of extreme hyper-advanced hybrids. Steven's pod would be one of many thousands occupied by many of Earth's hyper-advanced hybrids and together, they would all be tasked with repopulating the Earth once it had healed itself.

Mother Nature had a humongous task to perform, but she was up to it. She'd done it before, so she could certainly do it again. It only took time and Ma Nature had all the time in the world.

Steven's group would be supplying the master genetics for the effort at repopulation because his would be some of the most advanced hybrids developed for the Earth by the geneticists on G'an-den. There would be many, but the targeted cross breeding was going to form the basis of the new human species on the Earth.

-----

Perhaps a little additional background information is in order before Steven and Zarot begin with the recruitment. When Steven began his recruitment he knew there were going to be some issues he would have to deal with, but he was sure it would all work out in the end. There was only one person who was probably going to be a major issue, but he would deal with that straight up and was already resigned to the probable outcome because she was one of the very rare religious loonies still haunting the Earth, but was there only because her genetics were excellent. There may be alternatives for her, but that would remain to be seen.

The reason for this whole project besides the dying Earth is the genetic mistakes that caused humans to evolve the way they did. The accumulation of those mistakes eventually led to the dying that was presently taking place. There were specific instructions from the geneticists on the splicing of genes that was supposed to take place but hadn't. When Zardoc went to investigate the reasons, she found the why after a lengthy study, but that's for a little later. We'll get there...

So, in the beginning...

Complex life is far too young to have originated in its present form or location. If you look at science objectively, evolution isn't a theory it's a fact. We see examples of it everywhere, but the complex genetics that make up the human species, among many others, could not have evolved in the way science tells us it did.

Within any species' genetics, the DNA string is an extremely complex molecule and it takes many aeons to effect meaningful changes. A species doesn't just jump up on two legs overnight after spending millions of years on four. It takes many millions of years to bring about those kinds of major adjustments.

Most of the higher life forms we see on the planet Earth have not had enough time to evolve naturally, especially if you consider the planet was mostly sterilized 65 million years ago. The mass removal of species has also been done selectively a few times to eliminate gross errors in mutations. More on that as we move along.

Science continually looks for a magical missing link, but there isn't one. All of the genetic mutations that were not successful were removed from the planet and taken somewhere else in the multiverse for further study. There are many examples in various dimensions of a specific universe chosen just for these projects. Throughout the multiverse, those who study genetics want to understand what went wrong with a specific selection of DNA markers that didn't mutate as expected. It's how they learn to get it right the next time.

The alternative explanation for the origins of life on Earth, put forth by theologians is laughable at best, but it seems to give the species something to grasp onto, however illogical it may be. It gives them something to believe in, though it is rooted in a faith built on many false premises.

Because there are no reference points or any inkling of the technology involved, a purposefully placed avatar has been misinterpreted by ignorance, superstition, and subversion. He was installed in an attempt to give humans some positive moral guidelines for living life, but its existence has been successfully perverted to control the thoughts of the masses through fear and misconception.

The big lie lives handsomely in religion ... just look at those who preach it.

One of the so-called divine pronouncements, which are truly nothing more than fairy stories, is that humans make up the pinnacle of life, the prime example of intelligent existence created by some nebulous all powerful entity. If studied objectively, it is a hopelessly flawed pronouncement that was compiled by a subverted clergy beginning with the First Council of Nicaea. Constantine literally forced the bishops to see things in his light and write the book in those terms. Two thirds of the available information was purposely omitted because it didn't fit within the preconceived constraints.

Still, with a preponderance of physical evidence contrary to the mythology, it has been proven highly inaccurate and wholly untrue. The facts are ignored by the faithful because they don't fit within the narrow confines of a so-called divine pronouncement. Interestingly, there are many versions of the myths, each professing to be the one and only, with implications making all the others false. In the end, the truth is they are all false and put into a single phrase, it's all bullshit.

Mythology is extremely difficult to overcome, especially when it's as overzealously ingrained into the human psyche the way it was before all the inflexible proponents were moved to Tamaca in the dark universe. It is very apparent, even to the casual observer, the most fervent believers are the weakest of mind and spirit, who are searching for or trying to cling to something they deem to be the truth. Sadly, there is a lot of coerced support, so though it is a proven fallacy, they feel safest in amongst the flock.

If most of the species knew and accepted the truth, it would invalidate nearly every belief system in existence. It would probably leave all of them listlessly grasping at anything to believe in because they are too weak of mind and spirit to believe in themselves and the truth is too fantastic to believe. Heaven forbid, the truth be known and understood.

-----

Contrary to and well beyond the mythology, the base genetics seen on the Earth are everywhere in the multiverse. Because each planet has its own requirements, the DNA is modified to fit the specific environment more closely. Thanks to Zardoc's research and developments, the scientifically applied changes only take one or two generations to manifest themselves completely, so it is a fairly easy way to modify a given species quickly. Once the changes are validated, positive changes can be proliferated out very quickly.

If allowed to progress naturally, the mutations required to manifest a species anywhere near the complexity of the so-called intelligent carbon based bipeds presently occupying the Earth, would take multiple hundreds of millions, if not billions of years. Small mutations can be inserted, but until Zardoc's process, it still took multiple generations for the results to be known for sure. There have been mistakes made and eliminated, but what the species consists of today is not wholly unique within the multiverse.

Multiverse you ask? Yes, there are billions of other universes surrounding the minute area of our existence. The Earth is less than a pinprick in the overall scheme of things and that's something else the mythology would find difficult to deal with. Hell, until the Hubble Space Telescope, humans mostly thought the entirety of our small universe was nothing much beyond the edges of the Milky Way Galaxy. Though Hubble himself noted the existence of apparent galaxies far beyond the edges of ours, one photo cemented all of that. Talk about a wakeup call.

Humans have always been told by theology and have come to believe that we are the pinnacle of creation ... the bee's knees of evolution. It's hardly the case, but that's what the mythology teaches as truth.

Considering the human animal, wouldn't it be tragically sad if it were the truth?

-----

Zarot knows there have been two young women educating much of academia in some of the alternative concepts Zardoc was trying to convey. Well, there's a lot more than just the two now, but Jayna Lockwood and Makenna Peterson are the two who started it all.

These alternative concepts build on the idea that physical evidence exists to validate a new, more accurate vision of human origins and history.

Zardoc also taught them to use portals to access warps in space time for nearly instantaneous travel anywhere in the multiverse they want to go and they have been doing it for a few hundred years. Jayna and Makenna make short excursions from their adopted home on Castaway Island to continue teaching the new information.

For those who may wonder, Castaway Island is many billion quadrillion light years from Earth, in a different dimension of a far away universe. The actual distance is far too mind boggling for the human brain to cope with, so just saying billions of light years works. With Zardoc, they have been slowly changing the perception of humans, but there is still a long ways to go.

Little by little, others are learning to recognize and use those fluctuations in space time to their advantage and one day it is hoped that Earth's occupants will be able to join the rest of the multiverse in peaceful coexistence.

The old Council was slow to turn around and come up to speed, but their actual demise and collapse was due to the efforts of a single believer and the two young human women she had recruited. The thinly veiled attempted turnaround was far too late to save them from their dissolution and after being moved aside, a new Council was appointed in its place, which is much more supportive of the efforts being made throughout the multiverse. Slowly but surely, the old guard members were weeded out by newer, more pragmatic members, who viewed the Council's function as moving everyone forward instead of trying to maintain the status quo.

-----

Speaking of moving forward, around three billion years ago, a newly built civilization needed to get off their present planet and only had a few thousand years to do it. The only other planet in the solar system that would be able to be a rescue boat was not nearly ready for any advanced civilization, so the residents of Torrea had no choice but to move back to G'an-den, their place of origin.

Zardoc and Zarot were well aware of the history surrounding the previous efforts to seed the third planet after the fourth had died suddenly. For human occupation, major changes were needed about four hundred and fifty million years ago. Because of other things going on at the time, they were going to have to wait a few million years for the necessary changes to take hold and then many other adjustments needed to be made.

After surviving an asteroid catastrophe created by the old Council, the third planet was eventually stable enough to begin working with carbon based bipeds, so there were many sent to different areas along with the various experimenters who would work on adjusting the genetics to match the environment. It went well for a time, but things seemed to be taking a lot longer than expected.

There were many that still possessed the original genetic makeup formed on the fourth planet. After many centuries of problems and failures, Zarot was assigned to report back to the Council on how the species being developed was progressing at the hands of the experimenters. She was sent as no more than a highly educated observer.

Sadly, it wasn't progressing all that well, even with all of the genetic changes the original group had planned. Having made her reports and raising red flags, Zarot was once again teamed with her mentor and friend, Zardoc.

Zarot had identified what was going on and reported it often to the Council, but there was no activity on the part of the Council, so Zardoc was reluctantly sent to see if anything could be done to fix the problems Zarot had identified. Zardoc was the Council's best, most advanced analyst and troubleshooter, whose specialty just happened to be genetic manipulations.

The Council was reluctant because they already knew what the problems were and had a separate agenda, but had to put up a good front to hide it. It didn't take Zardoc long to ascertain the problem and make her recommendations to the Council. They summarily rejected everything Zardoc suggested, deciding to eradicate the species altogether.

That was a decision, which would return to haunt the old Council because Zardoc was incensed with the decision and let them know it, in no uncertain terms. As it turned out, it was the last decision the old Council would make before being replaced, but that's a story told elsewhere.

-----

Moving backwards just a little before moving on, there is more detail involved in the evacuation of the fourth planet and the proposed move to the third, so it's probably a good idea to line it out here. It was just another fiasco created by the old Council and their philosophy of destruction, which ended up delaying the move by millions of years.

Zarot first met Zardoc during that time of turmoil when moving the inhabitants from the seeded fourth planet needed to be done because the planet was dying. It wasn't anything the inhabitants were doing badly, but a matter of astrophysics and as regularly happens throughout all of the multiverse it was a natural, though completely unexpected phenomenon. The molten core was cooling and becoming solid, which caused the magnetosphere to diminish slowly over a few thousand years.

It was suspected and then after much study, rejected, that the occupation by the species and the way the planet had been prepared for occupation was partially the cause of it becoming uninhabitable. There hadn't even been enough time to populate the planet fully before the magnetic field had diminished to a level where the original plan was no longer tenable.

There was no reason to move twice so all of the additional target species were placed in suspended animation and left in their place of origin on G'an-den. Many others worked on alternatives as quickly as possible so there would be the least impact on the species.

The magnetosphere diminished to a point its force was no longer protecting the planet from the solar winds, radiation, charged particles, and all of the other dangers found in any solar system. The planet had lost its atmosphere and hence its water. It's as simple as that. The thin atmosphere was being blown off into space, which in turn, caused some of the life sustaining water to evaporate into space or freeze so solid that it couldn't evaporate. There are still deep oceans of frozen water under the surface, but it will take some serious terraforming to turn up the heat enough to melt it into a liquid again, but an atmosphere needed to be created and maintained to keep the liquid from evaporating. Maintaining was the key, but without a magnetic field it was nigh impossible. It was a classic Catch-22 situation, but the word impossible was not in Jayna Lockwood's vocabulary.

Terraforming is a project for the distant future and the Council was considering Zarot for the task since Zardoc was no longer available.

Well, now the proverbial chickens were coming home to roost and it was far too late to make an attempt at doing anything about it, not that anything could be done while still inhabited. It couldn't be ruled out for the future even though it had never been attempted before.

Fortunately, there was some time to act, but everyone needed to leave Torrea ... soon.

A few of the experimenters searched around the multiverse for alternatives they could deal with. Even though life was teaming everywhere, there needed to be specific parameters in order for the species to survive long term. There were a number of different species, but none would be easily adaptable to any place if the base parameters were ignored. Though they could be placed in any number of locations, what they needed was a new planet where no life presently existed because the only way the experiment could be run without the possibility of outside influences was to find a one devoid of similar life forms.

What was needed was a sizeable place to develop a new species with the ultimate plan of populating the entire planet when it was mature enough. The new planet they selected was only one orbit closer to the system's star, so it may eventually work even better than the original plan.

The fourth planet was a little further from the same star and it was going to provide challenges to keep the temperatures within livable parameters. They had begun working on creating a bubble of CO² to hold in the radiation from the sun, with the hope of keeping the surface a little warmer.