Chapter 5

I had just introduced Thomas Diaz to Adele Hess, as she had already met everyone else while on Mars, one place the young go getter had yet to visit.

“I’m the youngest here, but I’m called Rama in the brotherhood,” he proudly explained to her.

“Nice to meet you Rama, I’m Hera,” Adele introduced.

“That’s the last of them, if you see someone you don’t recognize, it probably means that you know them, just not the body they are wearing,” I reminded her.

“Got it. Now show me the AI and the probe pilots,” she requested.

“Go ahead, Thomas. I’ve got a few things to take care of,” I told him, and he took her by the hand leading her away to the AI department, his favorite place.

“Wait until you meet Probulon, he’s the AI that runs our probes,” he told her as he excitedly drove her away in his little Arcimoto.

I turned, and paused. Something felt very wrong on Earth. I conjured several of my selves equidistant around the circumference of Earth. By conjuring a Me at the equator in Brazil, DRC, Indonesia, and Jarvis Island in the Pacific, I could get a better sense of what was happening, and where it was coming from.

I could feel a strange harmonic in the fabric of space. It took only a few moments to identify it coming from the moon. There was a physical click, audible only to my senses, and the fabric of space shuddered.

My power could easily determine that whatever was happening extended from the moon, down to, and thru, the entire planet. It extended out only a few hundred kilometers above the surface of the Earth at the sides of the projected cone, but it reached towards the sun past my 6.4 million kilometer ability to sense, though its strength dropped off significantly with distance, it was strongest where it seemed to erupt from the surface of the moon.

My power scanned deeper, into the moon, following the clearly defined field as I became aware of more things happening. I could hear horns blaring. Everywhere there were cars stopped. My power flicked out, and I found nearly 8000 aircraft in flight, but engines all off. I scanned further and discovered that no engines were running anywhere. Only electric vehicles were still self powered.

I concentrated, and grabbed onto the airplanes, and started slowly lowering them to the earth. There wasn’t much I could do for the ten million car accidents, they were all ready over. It was a careful juggle, needing me to conjure a few hundred more Mes so I could handle all the aircraft.

There were a few crashes from planes taking off, but there were no fires, and few injuries. Fires everywhere had simply gone out.

At home Nora looked as I turned on the TV, a warning broadcast was blaring, and I turned the volume down. I set planes down at airports, fields, and other safe places around the world. They may not have reached their destination, but at least they were alive. I quickly counted the total people I had saved. Someone had just tried to murder more than 2 million people.

Another flick told me that even more were in danger. On my planet. I was getting possessive and angry.

With the planes down, I was free to investigate. I conjured under cloak the MX1 on the dark side of the moon. I carefully brought it to a stop above a new machine planted there on the surface, and the ship parked next to it. I had not scanned the moon in a while, but I recognized the ship. It resisted my attempts to probe it with my power, but it contained a familiar pearl buried inside it.

I uncloaked, and with the most power I could generate, broadcast a message at the ship below, “Scout 412, you are in violation of Sol system regulations, and are committing an act of mass murder and destruction. You have 30 seconds to respond before I open fire.”

“I’m here as a Federation Scout, you can’t hurt me,” came the voice only reply.

I fired a weapon putting a hole all the way thru his ship, and a half kilometer into the moon beneath him. “I can and will hurt you, if you do not immediately cease operation of whatever device you are using.”

“You can’t fire on me, it is an act of war!”

I fired a second time, leaving another 10cm wide hole in his ship. Then I responded, “You are killing innocent sentient beings, who are under the protection of the Federation as a non space faring and protected species. You are committing mass murder and an act of war. You will stop, or my next shot will go thru you.”

“Hunter! Stupid dirt loving monster. Federation destroy you hurting Scout.”

I fired again, taking off one of his tentacles, and adding a third thru and thru hole. His ship was bubbling liquid into space from six places. With his ship no longer blocking me from using my power freely, I stored him. Then I stored the structure next to the ship, and the effect immediately stopped. The Kempu shield was still active, so I couldn’t store the ship, but I carefully went thru grabbing every loose item not tied down by the shield. It didn’t block my power from manipulating objects in the ship, just anything metal connected to it was infused in a field that my power could neither penetrate nor manipulate.

I moved my MX1 away from the moon, and stored it. The whole thing had only taken fifteen minutes. The person on the TV was trying to describe what was happening, playing videos taken of airplanes being slowly lowered, some pilots having the clarity of mind to deploy the landing gear, others not.

My power flicked out in New York to the United Nations building. I located the office of the Secretary General, and conjured myself, in the star clad form of Poseidon.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Guardian. Have arrested mad being responsible for 15 minutes of madness. Turn him to you for holding,” I said, using a speaker to transmit my voice, while another me spoke into a microphone. It made the voice sound mechanically produced.

“Who are you?” he asked again, so I repeated in Portuguese.

“We don’t have facilities for that,” he said.

I conjured Scout 412 in a standard land vehicle for his species. I removed everything from it except the translator, life support, and the ability to move around via manual controls.