Children of Light: Book 1

By Triece Bartlett

Book 1 of the "Children of..." Trilogy. The Civil Disturbances on the Earth caused destruction and chaos. The humans who remained called on Running Tree to help heal and rebuild a world that would not harm the Earth. Running Tree knew they would need help. He sent a ship from the Moon Base to go find another planet that could sustain human life, and perhaps, other children of the universe that might help them. Would the crew of Zeus survive? Would they find they help Earth needed in the Andromeda Galaxy? Hobarth had hope they would.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781365406195

Book preview

Children of Light

(Book 1)

by

Triece Berger Bartlett

As told by Terrain Basali, a Cetian and keeper of The Book

Copyright  To Triece Berger, 1992

marked 2007 for editing

marked 2011 for editing

marked for editing 2022

Chapter 1

To the Moon

Far away, the Earth had been chewed up and spit out and put back together.  The humans were of one mind again.  They reached for the stars.  Don’t be afraid when they come.  They may be simple, but they do try hard, and they do have love, but they also have hate.  Let me tell you, from the beginning about the moon that surrounds their planet and the men and woman that began the reach for the stars.  I will create scenes and use their words so you can hear them and know them.  Let me tell you about the ones that started it all, and their stories so when you meet them, you will know them.  Let me take you to the moon and start in the middle of a conversation the men are having about living on the moon.  You must know how they feel and what they have been through to get to this point.  They will tell you, now.

This abysmal space station should have never been built.

C'mon Greko, it es a rreal adbansment.  Wuld dyu rathar hab  The Cibil Disturbances hab continu-ed?

No, of course not.  But Manuel, they weren't happening where I lived.  Were you part of all that ten years ago?  I mean, are you old enough to remember, and is this, living in this space station, is it any better than five years ago in South America or rather South Continent?  Is this any better?  Well?

If Manuel won't tell you, I will.  Africa, or West Continent, was hell.  You were too young to remember, Greko, but it was unspeakable.  The only reason why Manuel doesn't want to talk about it is because he lost his whole family and was tortured at the age of ten.

It's strange to me Mani.  It's strange to think that people would stand up and fight against progress.

"Little ones, progress did not cause the Civil Disturbances.  Humans, in many Countries on Earth, for many years, had resisted government mandates that were considered progressive by some, and archaic and damaging by others. A Country called the United States and another called Russia were doing what many had only dreamed of:  they trashed their nuclear weapons, stopped considering profit above the planet or human care,  slowed down, and, in a sense,  were going back in time, just when many countries were beginning to catch up with their way of life.  The new philosophy or approach to life had started in the East, in Countries called Japan and China.  The center of the wave came from a place called Tibet.  The Idea spread to the United States and Russia.  A few other countries followed the lead of what became known as the Tibet Idea.  The rest of the world governments were angry since they were just beginning to catch up to the lifestyle of waste.  They became even more adamant in their shallow goals, and pressed the people even harder to exploit the Earth, and each other.  Much of the Earth’s populace agreed with the Tibet Idea, and Civil Wars broke out across the planet.  Many people died.  An Atomic bomb was exploded in a Country called Africa, destroying most of the remaining rain forest there and drying parts of a great river called the Nile.  The blast was so strong that parts of the Earth fell into the oceans. Tidal waves and major earthquakes were felt all over the Earth, and a new island, approximately the size of another island called Australia, sprung up in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (but many Humans believed that was also due in part to the Hydrogen bomb that missed the rest of the rain forest in a place called South America and landed in the Atlantic Ocean, causing beaches around the world to be littered with dead fish). Such Civil Disturbances took place for eight years obliterating entire families.  Entire cultures were lost.  The survivors were stunned.  Japan and Russia recovered best and helped others recover from the devastation and shock.  Russia thought of the Earth Council.  The head of the Council was an old Native American, believed to be of the Hope Tribe, who seemed to have always been on Earth.  Running Tree was the head of the Council.  The Russian emissary who found him among the hills of North America described him best in the history books as: A tall dark man with long silver hair, sun-dried skin, deep set sky blue eyes, a cauliflower nose, huge brown lips that rarely moved, and large hands.  He was a large man, altogether, with an immense quiet soul.  His face often wore an expression full of thoughtful sorrow.  He rarely spoke, but when he did, his bass whisper seemed to float from the core of the earth and your own heart at the same time, then echo on the wind for days.  His parents had named him well :  Running Tree:  an ancient tree with roots travelling deep in the Earth and tall branches that spoke to the stars, but was made human by some magical deity to run amongst men and whisper deep truths.  Running Tree was able to combine the best of the old world and the new world to the joy of the survivors.  The space station was deemed necessary for the growth and care of the Earth, but the human stories and words will help you understand better than my words."

Well, you still haven't answered my question. Which was worst? The space station or the Civil Disturbances?

Greko, it's like this... They are both rotten, but in different ways.  The Civil Disturbances were hell at the time, but if something didn't happen, we would all be dead, and there would be no Earth and no station.  We would not have made the advancements we needed to build a space station.  But too bad we couldn't have done it all without The Civil Disturbances.  Now, the space station is great for a lot of reasons too, but for us it is a nightmare in too many ways.  Because, basically, we are test subjects, we are mice not men.  We can't be men because we have no women.  Then again we can't be mice because all the mice we are testing are males too.  Isn't it neat how they did that?  The only thing female up here are some of the plants, especially the food crop.

So, what are you saying, Mani?  Should we get sensual with our food?

No Greko, go one step further.  Let's get sexual with our food!

Funny, Har, Har.

I'm serious.  Angelo, tell Greko.

He's serious.

Some of the other guys want to watch the mice and do what they do. Do the mice get sexual with their food or each other? I guess you can tell what Mani prefers.

Dangman!  Come on! I'd rather be celibate than choose either!

I guess that is another option.  We all knew what we were getting in to.  There are always many options.

The bored scientists, alone and lonely, on the space station began creating crude male droids for a time.  When they ran into snags, they would give up immediately.  Their robots were in much better shape than the droids, and their light speed mechanism was set after two years.  Everything was going fairly according to plan.  Every year the men would request women, and every year none were sent.  The men grew apathetic about their work.  They would start something and never finish.  They spent most of their time playing baseball, or watching space, or throwing notes in bottles into the vast void before them, or re-reading news from Earth.

After five years, Celia was sent for an all-purpose reason to the twenty men residing in the space station on the other side of the Earth's moon.  Their request for female companionship was finally filled, but The Council only sent one woman with supplies.  She flew the last flight to the space station before Mission Z would arrive.  She stayed as a gift and her own personal sacrifice.  At first the men didn't think she would be enough for them, but they soon found that they were wrong.  After five years of exploring options, they found pure joy with Celia.  She was a great astronaut, scientist, cook, explorer, lover, and friend.  She was a curvaceous Latin from South Continent.  She was half Brazilian South and half Souix North.

Before her solo flight to the moon space station with two prototype robots from Earth and supplies for the men, she tried to learn the various languages she would encounter on the space station.  Making love with a mechanically voiced translator was not her style and was so impersonal. She was not only thoughtful, but beautiful.  Her dark skin, dark eyes, long lashes, long dark brown hair, and her sinuous muscles were only topped by her bright and almost mocking smile, and the way she raised one eyebrow whenever she asked someone a rhetorical question.  She was fiery, yet cool.  She knew her business, and even helped in perfecting some portions of the droid.  She got the men back to missions to be accomplished, and assisted and inspired when necessary.

The men were so happy to have Celia on the Moon, they had not bothered to ask why she had come.  None had asked why or how a solitary woman came to be at a space station full of men. No one asked if she missed the Earth.  No one wondered how she could be so selfless, and loving, and wonderful.  If they would have asked, she would have told them.  She hid nothing from them if they asked.  Since they could trust her so explicitly, they never fought over her, and they accepted their gift from The Council (at first they thought they might have to send her back because they were afraid that they might get violent over her).  Celia soon dissuaded them from such talk, and proved her worth beyond their imaginations.  She had a sexual appetite that only twenty men could possibly satisfy.

Chapter 2

Celia’s Story

Running Tree, why has the Counsel chosen me?  Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited to be the chosen one for Mission W, but I am a criminal.  Are you sure you want a criminal assigned to one of your most important and precarious missions?  Are you sure this is not some kind of mistake that you will pull away from me at the last minute like a ripe piece of pineapple dripping with sweetness that I will never be able to taste, but the memory will haunt me all my life?  You would not wound me so. Would you?  I am frightened that this is a sleeping picture in my mind, and that when I awake; the honor would only be a cloud full of sunshine that passes my soul and illuminates another.  I know you do not wish to speak often, but you are the only Council that would wake my mind to reality.  Please tell? 

Her pleading echoed in the Great Hall.  The tall, dark figure of Running Tree glided towards her like the wind.  She looked up at the towering man with the long grey hair and sober expression and deep steel eyes.  He touched her shoulder with his huge hand and bent over her left shoulder and whispered in her ear one word that had filled her dreams and was the soul of her heart, but she had never thought of the word in that way until she heard it spoken from the depths of the Earth and echoed on the wind as Running Tree conveyed the word:  Weinnggss.  Wings.  The word made no sense and all sense at once to Celia.  She then knew that this was no passing illusion, but a bright and shining reality.  The tears ran down her face like an orphan child's when she realizes that she has finally found a home and that someone actually cares for her and loves her deeply with their whole heart, and that it is possible for someone to love them, and that this can never be taken from them, and that there are still more orphans left who will never know this essential truth.  The tears were warm and long traveled from a five year old girl, who now, at twenty, finally released the tears of all those years, and held on tight to the long robes of the ancient man who had given her Wings.  Her fear was gone.  She was ready to leave for the space station on the designated date which was only a week away.  What a birthday present.

She was more than lucky to be picked at all for Mission W out of all the qualified women who tested for the mission and passed.  They were all beautiful women.  Most were extremely intelligent.  Celia had hated the testing.  She loved the tests.  She just hated having to see all her competitors and how well or poor they did.  Even though her competition was astounding, and the mission was dangerous, Celia had to be picked!  She couldn't stay on Earth any longer!

Her family, all her family (even distant relatives) had been killed in the Civil Disturbance in Brazil.  It was the third year of the Civil War all over the planet.  Few countries survived the devastation, but even some of the peaceful countries were touched by the atrocities created by the massive Disturbances.  She was only five in the third year of the Disturbances when she lost her family.  She remembered searching through the pieces of what was once her family's home, desperately trying to recover anything -perhaps her favorite doll- but instead she found pieces of her mother and father and brother and sister; an arm here; an eye or ear there.

She decided to run away from home that day because she had a fight with her older sister, who was eight, at the time.  She had hitched a ride on a Peoples Protection truck and told them she was an orphan and that she had relatives living on the ocean.  She played by the ocean until it grew dark.  All day her mind was full of thoughts of the death of her family.  She was wishing that they were dead because she had been punished because of the fight with her sister when (in her young eyes) it was all her sister's fault.  But as it grew cold on the beach, she longed for the comfort of her mother's arms.  It was only thirty miles back to town from the beach and about ten more miles to her parent’s home.  She started walking.  That's when she saw the beautiful lights in the sky.  The town was being sprinkled with bombs.  She thought they were beautiful and didn't understand the meaning they brought to the town.  She had seen other towns in the distance alight with bombs and thought that the stars were falling to make the people happy again.  The sound had startled her, but she figured that may be the way the stars talked.  A Peoples Protection truck and ambulance came by and picked Celia up and took her back to town.  As she approached the town, she saw the devastation and didn't