Second Genesis Book 5

By Steve Howard

Chapter 25 Namor and The Old Priest enjoy some philosophy and fantasy time on the trip from Gadavida to Anamata. When they make port at the homeland, things are already different. The news of Barbaralba and Namor spreads over both islands quickly with the help of telephone lines. Namor and the crew have a little press conference, first on Eden, a little fun; then they plan on their visit to the new bridge and Bridgetown.

Chapter 26 takes us over King Namor Bridge and along Canal 36 to Salt Lake 36. There the Old King and Lexus await the returning heroes and guests. The Snow Queen and the Old King are reunited after 2,000 years. Free trade is declared and signed by the High Priest of Gadavida and King Namor. They are now alliances for the war efforts that have mostly been on hold for the two years it took Barbaralba and Namor to travel up and down two Barbancorian rivers. They have 36 new metal ships loaded for war.

Chapter 27 has Barbaralba’s navy back to Barbancor. A short visit in Gadavida City to bring the news of the new alliance. Then with 36 Gadavidian ships and those of Castle City Island, off to attack and subdue Sun Temple. It was a short battle and after some time in the city of Havatara, the navy attacked Lacuna. Wiped out their navy then took a small peninsula to set up camp.

Chapter 28 establishes Barbaralba Town. There is continual building in the new town and some at the new library in Lacuna. The locals are gradually getting accustomed to the invaders. Preparations for the march to the Seat of God are completed and with the information and maps from the runners, the scouts, the army is prepared to leave with 36 wagons. A long trek up the trail to the holy city.

Chapter 29 is the long trek to the Seat of God. Camp is set up and the first move is to bury a small aggress for the dark mountain city. After settling in and watching over the city, Artemis, an ancient woman from the Earth born folk, appears at the Seat of God and makes a discovery that decides the course of the last major war effort.
“What does she discover.”
She has been carving stone for 2,000 years on the Art History Island she shares with a friend.
“That does not answer the question.”

Chapter 30 has the soldiers of both armies return from the last battle. The end of resistance to the move toward the space age. It will take some time. Lexus and Sallandrah have brought books for the Lacuna Library. Zauqir has made wine trade negotiations. The Seat of God is finished.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Howard
• Release date: Feb 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215332092

Steve Howard

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada 1960. Moved to London, Ontario, Canada in 1967. Started playing hockey and piano. Went to Sir Wilfred Laurier High School and played the trumpet.Studied Architectural Technology at Fanshawe College of Applied Arts and Sciences. Started playing guitar and writing a little. On a trip to the mountains in 1982 with a friend I decided, or was awakened to the knowledge that I was going to pursue writing. Graduated 1984 and moved to Toronto.Moved to Saarbrücken, Germany in 1993.Have traveled many places in North, Middle and South America and Europe.Besides reading and writing also work on photography and music.

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Second Genesis

Book 5

Steve Howard 773U5

PUBLISHED BY:

Steve Howard 773U5 on Smashwords

Second Genesis

Copyright © 2022 by Steve Howard 773U5

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Table of Content

25 _ road to castle city

26 _ metal ships

27 _ back to barbancor

28 _ establishing barbaralba town

29 _ to the seat of god

30 _ back to barbaralba town

book 05

I have always done what I wanted. I had no other choice.

25 road to castle city

local settlement date 35,995

The mightiest weapon of all is the word.

King Namor Zujahrah

By dawn, the high priest’s ship had taken them beyond the horizon. Namor had slept only moments at a time since they had left Gadavida. He still was not ready to sleep. Alone he stood at the front of the ship and watched the water.

He heard, or felt someone approaching him and thought Barbaralba had come. But it was the high priest.

King Namor. May I join you for a moment.

The priest looked tired but happy. Gentle. He embraced the horizon with his glance.

It is a wonder being here on this unknown planet.

Yes, that it is. This is for you.

Namor took the book. It was an exceptionally beautiful copy.

This has been copied by hand by priests since before the beginning of time. Up until I met you it made no sense to me. Now I have learned there is a space ship. We must have brought the original on the space ship. We still have it because it is God’s word.

God is the protagonist in the book.

Yes, of course. But the book was written. The book is God. In our beginning were these words. It is our meaning. It is our language. It has preserved our language. It is your story. You are the one to come. You are the helper that speaks the simple truth. You are the chosen one partly because you cannot believe such a thing. What chose you is of little importance. You have brought the message when it was necessary that the story become real.

With that, the high priest, still smiling, turned and left Namor with his book. Written before time. He was certain by tyrants for tyrants from a tyrannical age. He leafed through a few pages admiring the print and the little drawn embellishments.

Barbaralba came and took his hand so that he had to close the book.

Did the Old Priest give you a book.

Yes. I have God. In the word. This is the book I read with the Old Priest.

If you can take time from your studies, I would like The Drave King, in the flesh.

It was neither order nor request. The word was spoken such that it would become their story.

It was the first time in a long time that they had a room of their own. It ended up being a resurrecting sleep into the late afternoon. When they awoke, the ship was no longer moving across the water. The crew had gathered the sails and anchored in a small cove of one of the metal islands.

Other than gentle lapping on the side of the ship, there was little sound. The ship crew went about their work quietly.

The Old Priest greeted Barbaralba and Namor when they came on deck.

This is a good place to collect shell fish.

I want to help.

Barbaralba took up her weapons and requested the use of a spear and a sword. Namor wanted to see what a metal island looked like.

I want to see the island.

Allow me to show you.

Rowboats set out and the island was reached quickly. There was a sandy beach. The sand was purple black and was hot under the feet.

On the rock were bits of moss and small plants. Birds, bugs and flies were the lords of the little island.

The soil was like none Namor had seen in all their travels. He was certain that the island had been dropped there. The rock dug into, the metal ripped out and taken away. Leaving a ring of rock rubble around a hole that was almost as big as the island. The island was a ring of rock rubble with a salt lake taking up most of the area of the inner island. The salt lake was warmed in the dark rock by the sun.

Around the protected still salt lake was a thick ring of salt.

It made Barbaralba thirsty looking at the big bowl of salt water. Sallandrah walked into it with no hesitation. The other visitors from Snow City and Havatara followed her into the thick water. Barbaralba flopped down on her back. The water was so full of salt that one could lay on it without sinking. Without swimming.

Will you do me the honour, King Namor, of joining me for a smoke, while we enjoy watching angels sitting on the water.

On an island that we dropped from the sky.

The priest nodded. Not quite certain what Namor meant.

A few pieces of driftwood that a storm had blown over the ring of rock made a comfortable place to sit in the shade of the high priest’s cloak.

A wonderful freedom, King Namor. Here now. Not needing to kill one another.

Namor laughed. And took the pipe offered him.

If you ask a hundred priests what God is, you would get a hundred various explanations. Same if you asked the servants or the free workers. They all believe. Believe or die. It is quite simple. No one knows what they believe.

Same in Castle City. Our resources and methods were different. We have not conducted our lives any better. We have followed different symbols and used only slightly different manipulation methods.

How will you control the masses now that this method of ours has been called into question.

Obey or die. Is there any other way, Old Priest.

The high priest laughed.

I like that. Old Priest. Better than Ezrah Jebadya High Priest of Gadavida.

Ezrah Jebadya High Priest of Gadavida, I am happy we met. I did not think so when we first met but I have changed my mind.

Not as much as you have changed my mind.

They both laughed.

You have inspired me to commit treason.

I have also committed treason, in part by following that little angel sitting on the water. That was before we decided to revoke the law. However, when the law is wrong, there is no choice.

We will update the law.

We will put our beliefs behind us and embrace knowledge.

The high priest laughed.

You ask much.

The priest laughed again.

King Namor, we have peddled a lie for thousands of generations. The ruling class controlled the masses by lying to them, ruling with fear. It was the easiest way.

Rule with terror.

We stole and plundered paradise.

The priests looked like he was a thousand generations gone before he popped back into sitting beside Namor. He looked at him and laughed again and refilled his pipe.

I have seen rule without fear in Snow City. I think they manage without because they are a small well-informed and very social community. There is no room for reckless behavior. We have to bring up our standard of awareness, wakefulness and participation. We need to touch the world we live in. In our castles we have been too far away in a fantasy and have not noticed that we are not only threatening our own survival, we have threatened the fish because of our disassociation from physical reality. Old Priest, we have been reckless in our abandon.

You, King Namor, are the character in the story they had written into the law to give the people hope and here you sit and you do not believe the story. You are what you are. The old story gave me a good life. I knew it was not true. I believed that even you were a lie. But I can see what you are. The writers must have known.

The Old Priest nodded for as long as it took to refill the pipe and hand it to King Namor.

I have landed back on the earth and have seen it for the first time. You are the salvation the book tells us of. It starts with the one. It started at the one so many generations ago in the story. It is the same story. I have taught without belief the story of the one to come. The one to take us all in.

Namor laughed at the old priest.

My theory, Old Priest. It had to be someone who is so in love that that someone sees that love is a thing that has survived death. It has to be someone who has had a glimpse of the eternal in the present. Even if we are only here for a whisper and are gone again, in a real way, we are responsible for our actions because we do not have the right to rob future generations of their chance to be here for their whisper in the universe.

Barbaralba walked by them carrying her weapons to the ocean where the priests were gathering shellfish.

Namor and the high priest followed her with their eyes to watch Barbaralba smile at them with the confidence of a fisher on her way to do what she had grown up doing.

She is a wonderful and frightening creature. You are right to love her. It would be the ugly job of any high priest to have to burn her publicly to protect the laws.

She is like a bird that is at home in the air, on the surface and below the surface of the water. Oblivious to depravity. A celebration of movement. Beast and angel. Loving and brutal.

You are blessed. I am blessed to have lived long enough to see this day.

The high priest laughed again.

They both watched Barbaralba as she speared a fish that she quickly hacked apart.

Bloody heavens.

She is baiting a shark.

Oh. Then I could assume she is not mad.

I said only that she is baiting a shark.

The Old Priest laughed. Namor laughed with him. It was comical to sit on extraterrestrial rock and watch a creature with simple metal technology bait a shark and drive her sword through the back of its head and out its belly.

Barbaralba jumped over the thrashing shark using the sword to flip over the fighting fish. Then she slid into the water and swam away to let the shark fight itself to death.

By the time it had, three priests were wading toward the shark. With spears.

That, I have never even imagined.

No need. Now we have been witnesses.

It is a theater that makes one wonder.

First the universe is raw energy, then there are the stars and the planets, then the strangest of all events: life. What comes after life: us. We are here and have yet to notice it. We are the angels that come after life takes root. How we got started, we are still working through the details. You will meet the Old King. He can explain how the universe has evolved. It is a wonderful event. More grand than we can comprehend. Enough to make one wonder. One thing we know is that we came here. We came here to this planet that likely had no life. We gave it ours. We made this world be what we wanted it to be. We had the means. We were the grand creators here but we fell into our old trance. A several thousand year sleep.

A few moons ago I did not believe in magic, King Namor, now I can see that it is running through everything. Let us take the shark to the ship and set sail for knowledge and technology. Deadly sins. But it has come time; we must listen to the serpent. For the serpent has told the truth. And it was my kind that held to the lie.

Namor swam out to