Chapter One - Twelve Gates to Paradise

Twelve Gates to Paradise: When the Gods Came Down
by Marla Vendret
Release date: Sept. 2007
Take a Mile Media

Prelude


In a time far behind our own, as humanity plodded beyond gathering nuts and berries to planting and herding in small settlements, something happened. It wasn’t ominous or frightening to the hamlets scattered around the lakes and rivers that would become known as Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. No. The change was as innocent and subtle as another star arriving in the sky – a star that never changed or rotated with the seasons. It drew curious stares, particularly when a type of aurora borealis formed around it, but through the years, the star seemed to dim, becoming less noticeable with each generation until disappearing altogether, and the strange rainbow-like lights along with it. The remaining wise women of these towns – whose number declined, as well as their importance, when shepherding replaced hunting and men stayed home year-round – told stories of this star in the sky, a star they called by the Sumerian name of dingir.
And from this one star – dingir – unique and powerful above all others, grew stories and myths about what dwelt within it, upon it, and from it. It wasn’t just a unique light in the sky; it was a supernatural being – making the star and god one in name and power. But nothing dwells alone in nature, and so nothing dwelt alone in the dingir. Nammu, the Mother of all, the great Abyss herself, alone in the universe, gave birth, not to children as humanity would do, or to animals as their herds would do. Nammu gave birth to the building blocks of everything that came afterwards: heaven (An) and earth (Ninhursag). And it was through An and Ninhursag that the sun and moon, stars and sky, water and solid ground came to be. But, just as human men, chaffing under domestic life, began rebelling against women and their power in their home, Mother’s children began rebelling against her.
Unwilling to stay under Mother’s wings, these children – collectively known as dingir-a-ne-ne – started visiting humankind in the guise of shadow creatures: bird-like reptiles that flew in the sky. Some natives welcomed the shadows over them as a sign of good fortune upon their hamlets. Others saw the shadows as an ill omen, and tried to chase away the evil fortune with their atlatl-powered spears. They believed that if they could bring down the shadowy bird-like reptile, it would become harmless; losing its power to curse the hamlets or anyone its shadow might touch.
But human myths spring up from a truth – a truth that they could never have imagined – about another planet, another race of beings, and another society desperately struggling to survive.
Thirty miles above surface, hidden in the stratopause, where the thin air, slight gravity, and semi-freezing temperatures were the most similar to their home world and easiest to adapt to their needs, Neph’lim – unaware of the legends being told about them on the planet – were undergoing their own evolution, of sorts.
Their make-shift flying city, a solar-powered plasma-built ship they called the Pavilion, had had enough. After nearly 50 years flying through space, desperately looking for a habitable planet – and almost overshooting this one – the Neph’lim had decided they would look no further. Good or bad, their ship was tired of space and so were its people. After innumerable arguments and compromises, technological break-throughs and flops, they anchored their ship above Mesopotamia and began planning their future. Within less than a dozen rotations of the sun they figured out how to use this planet’s natural resources – solar and atmospheric – to provide for power needs, water supplies, and eventually, transportation.
Living above this planet wasn’t a choice, but a necessity – they had become refugees. Their inter-planetary journey was forced upon them by a neighboring planet’s explosion that sent world-destroying asteroids their direction. With little warning, their peaceful, nature-oriented lives were sent into chaos.
Without enough time to do more than gather the bare essentials, they tore down crystal studded plasma shields from their city gates and fused them together, interlacing the walls with plasma tubing from their homes to form, what they hoped would be, a space worthy ship. Their technologies, though advanced, had been designed for Nibiru, not for space and they couldn’t be sure what would happen in the freezing cold and relatively airless outer reaches.
Crystals and crystalline fibers relied on the sun to capture energy and force it through plasma tubes to supply all the energy they needed. But what would happen in the vastness of space, well beyond the sun’s reach? How would their ship be powered then? Without any other power options, they tore down and scavenged through whole villages for any piece of available technology; reconstructing, as much as possible, tribal villages within a tall diamond-like sphere.
From the moment the warnings sounded, everyone knew there were things they would have to leave behind – painful things like pets, religious relics, and ancient scrolls. Animals would consume more food and work than they were worth, so few argued to save them. As for the ancient scrolls, most of that had been transferred to plasma data wipes ages ago, so it was mostly a matter of sacrificing the actual writings than the information. It was the middle issue that plagued them most.
Theirs was a nature-based religion, as ancient as their identity as a unified people, and as individual as their separate tribes. Transferring data was child’s play compared to the spiritually heart-breaking task of choosing between one sacred plant or another, nature or simulations of it – and even then, how can you move the sky? Suns? Moons? Stars? Artificial atmosphere could sustain some of their plants, but what about the turf that their children ran upon in the meadows, or the sacred moss upon which they meditated in the forests?
Pragmatism had to win and it did. Families and tribes settled on the essential and irreplaceable: ceremonial robes woven from the long trailing vines of the Saltwater Willow that lived deep beneath the ocean’s waves, tribal timbers gathered from the Arid Plains, and family mezuzahs collected from the roots of the sacred forest.
Generations past had collected and harvested the willowy leaves of the Saltwater Willow – a hazardous task, though the results were worth the effort and danger. Washed clean of the salt that flowed through its veins, the leaves became translucent and supple – accepting any tribal dyes as naturally as the brine that had flowed through it.
As for the Sacred Timbers, they were exceedingly rare, growing in the inhospitable and arid region of Nibiru where only those on mystic journeys dared go. It was wise women from many millennia ago who discovered the forest, its intoxicating oils and spiritual powers. And it was women who first learned how to harness its effects, entering into the spiritual realm and returning unscathed. Through time, as tribal numbers grew, each chose their own timber to use in worship – under the guidance and spiritual protection of their tribal wise women, who became known as the Gatekeepers.
The forest growing in the Arid Plain was different than other trees, and some hesitated to call it such. The mature trees were massive in height, seemingly reaching into the heavens, though perhaps it referred more to their spiritual role than actual height. Roots, if one could call them that, spread from the top of the tree, connecting and weaving into the roots of others, supporting the whole. Saplings grew from the roots downward until contacting the moss surface layer. It would press and push through the deep and thick moss until it could go no further, and then, only then, would it begin pushing its roots upwards. Sucking every drop of moisture from the air, and capturing unwary birds in its prickly grasp, no life could exist in the region without finding harmony with it.
Tiny, oil-filled, needle-like hairs covered the entire tree from the roots downward. Though birds were its most frequent victim, desert animals that wandered into its path could be found within the forest, floundering and flopping as though intoxicated. And, as the wise women discovered, those stung and caught in its hairs, dangled for hours, or with larger prey for a day or so, until seeming to sizzle and melt entirely into the tree. Only a faint and fading shadowy outline of the creature remained. That was when they understood its ultimate role for their people: creating a GateWay between the physical and spiritual realms: a GateWay into the afterlife.
Was it any wonder, then, that their biggest disputes involved the timbers? Too large to bring aboard, but too important to leave behind, each tribe had to retrieve whatever they could by whatever means they could. The task was far more difficult than any could have imagined, took far too much time, and cost far too many lives. Working in shifts, families carved out as much as they could, and tribes each chopped down a piece of their tribal timber large enough to ensure that they, too, could join their ancestors in the spiritual realm – the Nibiru forests – when they died.
Those not collecting food stuffs or timbers, worked on the ship. With severe time restraints and inadequate supplies, it was inevitable that factions and arguments would ensure. It was the final sacrifice that managed to unify them, once again. The bitter goodbyes and shared grief of leaving behind friends and family who believed that dying on the planet was a far better choice than being lost in the darkness of space where no amount of Sacred Timbers could ever carry them into the Forests of Nibiru and into the awaiting arms of their ancestors.
The launch was the easiest part – Nibiru’s gravity was strong enough to keep nature from drifting into the atmosphere … but only just – but they had taken too long to leave. Incoming asteroids grazed the outer temple – a power converter/condenser that ran the length of the ship – sending it into a tale-spin for which no amount of artificial gravity could compensate. Flung around like rag dolls, hundreds were killed, and hundreds more seriously injured.
With their healers among the dead and injured, everyone as left to tend for themselves. Many would have survived – if not for the hairline cracks in the fused outer walls, caused by the asteroids. Oxygen seeped out, sucking many chambers dry before help could arrive. The number of deaths continued to climb. Fixing the leaks – a difficult task in the best of health – ended up stealing as many lives as the lost oxygen had.
Anyone healthy enough to stand was put to work – survival demanded it. Refusing, for any reason barring deathly illness or injury, meant becoming pariah.
It took 18 years – 18 years of aimless wandering – before they came across this planet. By then, they were a changed people. With equipment needing constant repair, solar power fluctuating unreliably, food supplies dwindling to near starvation diets, and malfunctioning water recyclers poisoning them, the demands of faith had to wait until their survival was assured – but that day never seemed to come. Eighteen years gave way to a hundred, then 165.
It wasn’t enough to maintain their equipment, it needed to be improved. Repairing gave way to experiments, research, and all manner of innovation required for not just surviving, but thriving – all in the hopes of eventually settling on the planet beneath them.
Most of the oldest and wisest couldn’t hold out long enough to find a new home. Though normally a robust and long-lived people, pitifully few of the oldest native men and women remained. By the time survival was assured, and research turned towards comfort, games, and entertainment, there were few left to teach the old ways. Lacking mystic guides, GateKeepers, and sages whose accumulated wisdom and council had protected the Neph’lim way of life for thousands of rotations, the younger generations were left to re-interpret and flounder their way through plasma data wipes and spiritual remnants their parents still remembered.
And so, anchored in the stratopause over this blue and green planet with its scattered primitive peoples, over a century after arrival, the Neph’lim found themselves changing, adapting, re-evaluating – bereft of their spiritual heritage, and the reasons for their matriarchal leadership, and the ways of nature that had cocooned them in peace for millennia.


Chapter One
Rainy Season 3095

Until your mind and actions are one,
there can be no peace within or without.
The Writ §K1115

Alulim, a crafty-looking man, not more than 28 – a mere babe amongst the Neph’lim where ages of 200 were once common – twisted up his lips into some semblance of a smile. The devious look in his eyes betrayed his true intentions, but there was no one to see it, and he knew better than to show that side of himself.
He rolled his shoulders and neck, to relax his muscles, and visibly re-adjusted the expression on his face. For good measure, he touselled his long hair loose for a more youthful and carefree look. The transformation was mind-boggling. From a cynical and cold manipulator, to a pleasant and unassuming young man without the use of a mirror or mask. He touched the mottled brown-framed door – signifying Asher’s tribal colors – and watched as the door quietly and quickly divided in two, slipping scissor-like into the upper corners.
The glider bay appeared empty when he entered, but he knew where to look for the Master Glide Controller. There was a translucent control room sitting atop a ten-foot pedestal on the right hand side. As expected, Arla stood behind the octangular console, her back to him. At the swooshing sound of the closing door, she turned, giving him a ready smile.
She was one of the first he conned – a trusting woman who readily bought into his artful lies and feigned pleasantries. And having won her trust, it was a simple matter to win the trust of her match, the co-glide controller.
“Alulim!” she exclaimed through the bay echo. “I wasn’t expecting you tonight. Your glide isn’t until morning.”
He nodded and waved cheerily. “I know. Came in for a mental pep talk. Haven’t glided for awhile.”
That was just the right thing to say. She nodded empathetically. “You want me to drop a glider?”
A grateful smile – “Yeah. Could you?” – along with a woebegone expression – “Arla … would you mind if I sat in it … alone … for a bit?” – and he had her. It was pathetically easy.
She looked at him sympathetically. “I know what you mean. We’ve had a few phobics struggling to glide again … it can be a bit rough.” She touched her console. “Glider one, descend.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to –” she started to offer, but Alulim was already shaking his head.
“No … but thank you.”
“Well … I was thinking about getting a drink in Central Dining anyway. Should fifteen minutes be enough time?”
He nodded, feigning relief and a bit of mortification at his supposed weakness. “That would be great.”
The glider, invisible while in its ceiling nest, descended on two thin plasma threads, landing on the bay floor with a slight click.
“Steps descend. Hatch open,” he ordered, making a pretense of starting up the steps, until her heard the door swooshing behind her retreating steps. He didn’t hesitate, pulling his stolen screener and bag of plasma dots from beneath his tunic and stashing them in the small crevice beneath his cockpit seat. Timing was critical – he’d have to do this fast.
Jogging back to his chamber as unobtrusively as possible – dodging friendly greetings that could derail his plans – he grabbed the data disks and reader, immobiler, bot, and nebulizer he had stockpiled behind the front door, and dashed back out. Less than eight minutes later, his stash secured beneath his cockpit seat, he settled into the glider, and furrowed his brow as though anxious about tomorrow’s flight. He needed to make a good show of it. No sense risking suspicion by being overly confident, not when he was this close to his goal.
As anticipated, Arla returned early. A cautious woman with a strong sense of duty, she never left her post for very long – preferring to send her match on errands for her. She strolled over to his glider, looking up at him expectantly.
With a wan smile, he stood, making a show of regret at leaving the cockpit. “You’ve been great. This was a big help …. Really did the trick. Thanks.”
Her smile broadened. “I’m so glad. Sitting in the glider can be calming – helps some … not so much with others.”
“Tomorrow then!”
“You’ll do fine,” she called out behind his retreating figure. “Meteorology anticipates beautiful weather tomorrow.”
“Let’s hope they’re right. You know how unreliable they can be.”
She chuckled at his wry expression, before resuming her place in the control room, as he walked out.
In the early morning, just as the sun was rising over the horizon, Alulim strode into the glider bay, a slight swagger in his step and a navigator hidden beneath his tunic – a last minute addition to his supply list. This was it. Today was the day he left this ForeBearer-forsaken place forever. Never again would he have to whimper and preen as women determined the fate of all. Never again. Never again.
Topographers provided some of his most crucial information: sheer cliffs with the best possibility of ridge lift, caves for hiding the glider, and a small thriving community with easy access (that is, escape) routes. There was only one that met most of his criteria, though the cliff and caves were several days jogging distance from the village.
It wasn’t a big village, which suited him just fine, but it had river and ocean access, was unaffected by the wars and skirmishes that plagued other hamlets, and had a thriving agricultural base. With his extensive knowledge of botany – and the technology he had, er … appropriated … over the past rotation – he didn’t anticipate having any problem wooing the people.
As for language barriers, he’d let his technological marvels do the talking. They’d be so awed by his magic, they’d treat him like a god without him knowing a single word. Then, in time, the natives would learn Alulim’s tongue … and he, theirs.
With a self-satisfied smirk on his lips, he carefully aimed the glider towards a small cliff to his right. It wasn’t nearly as high as topography had indicated, but it was too late to alter his plans now.
Without wheels, the rocky terrain made landing a bit rough, but nothing more than he expected. Barring irreparable damage to the underbelly of his glider, he could use it for a quick escape if things turned out less favorably than he anticipated. With a bit of ingenuity and a lot of luck, tipping the glider over the cliff – on a windy day, preferably – was the only way he could become airborne. That was a big if, but there didn’t seem to be any other options.
The glider came to an abrupt stop; his grin fading. Something was pressing into his back. He rolled his shoulders and straightened, but it didn’t help. He sucked in a deep breath, and shifted his body, trying to find a more comfortable position. No relief. To the contrary, it was getting worse – even with the plasma shield in place, and dressed in full flight gear, an indefinable something was growing … spreading over him like an immobiler, making every movement a deliberate effort. Heaviness crushed in from all sides; he could hear himself breathing, loud gasping breaths.
Expelling air was no problem, but then he had to breathe in again, and again, and again. No one warned him about gravity and surface pressures being this strong. But then why would they?
His head was imploding, and try as he might, he couldn’t stop it flopping back against his seat, nor could he stop his arms from dropping like lead weights to his sides. Fury and fear consumed him – fury that his plan would go awry so soon, and fear that this cockpit would become his tomb.
A temporary setback, nothing more. Wait it out. Give his body time to adjust. He sucked in another rasping breath. This wasn’t going to stop him – nothing was. Not the Pavilion, not natives, and certainly not gravity! His eyes, feeling like they were about to implode, began rolling into the back of his head, blackness beginning to claim him.
The heat …. He could feel it boring through the translucent plasma shield like a magnifier. Unless he closed the hatch, the sun would cook him if the pressure didn’t kill him first.
“Caa’in ex-send,” he grunted, his voice so garbled he could only hope the console would understand. If he had air to spare, he would have sighed with relief as the hatch closed over him, blocking out the sun. As it was, he closed his eyes and prayed for another breath … and another.
Thud! Shhhhhhh. Pssst.
Alulim awoke with a start. Something was crawling on his glider. How long had he been unconscious?
“Hatch, retract!” he ordered, sitting upright, barely noticing that the pressure on his body had eased. Above him, a scat seemed to be positioning itself. He stared in confusion. What would a scat be doing on his glider?
Thud! Shhhhhhh. Pssst.
Another scat! This time landing towards the rear of his craft. Where were they coming from? Who was doing this?
Alulim looked up, vainly searching the skies. It had to be a glider … but he couldn’t remember ever hearing anything about using scats for reconnaissance efforts … or anything about reconnaissance efforts, at all!
Then it happened – his eyes widened in disbelief and horror – the scat was spewing noxious fluids! Wherever it landed, patches of the glider’s soft plasma seemed to liquefy, then dissolve. Any question about the scats’ purpose dissolved alongside it.
“Shield, retract! Shield, retract!” he screamed, fumbling out of his restraints and jumping to his feet, flinging off the scats with one wild swing of his arms. Who would do this? Who would deliberately sabotage his glider?
With the glider safe, and his adrenaline surge fading, he sank down into his seat, his eyes returning to the heavens. Not that he expected to see his attacker. It was pristine gliding conditions – the prismatic fabric would do its job perfectly, obscuring any glider from view.
The prismatic fabric – both his enemy and friend at this moment – was a technological marvel they brought with them from Nibiru. The cloth, processed from the sap of cultivated katoom plants – dug up from the meadows where it naturally grew – and magnetized, deflected light, becoming, for all intents and purposes, invisible. It was a useful product in their old world as well as this new one. When fused to the lower half of the gliders, it hid them well, except for the shadow it cast on the ground. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only drawback. Clouds, strong gusts, dawn, or dusk all limited or inactivated its properties. And right now, Alulim’s craft was vulnerable, while his attacker remained invisible.
Abruptly, Alulim dropped his gaze, searching the ground for any sight of the tell-tale shadow, but to no avail. The guilty party was gone – undoubtedly convinced that the acid-spewing scats had carried out their despicable job.
He rolled his shoulders and neck, trying to shrug off the residual pressure. At least it wasn’t as oppressive as before – at least that was good news. After the scat attack, he dearly needed something positive to focus on.
He glanced towards the sun. From its position, he must have been asleep for nearly 24 hours; more than enough time for glide control to have reported him missing. He snorted in self-derision. Obviously! The saboteur was evidence enough of that!
He inspected the area where the scats had sprayed the acid, hoping against hope that the damage hadn’t spread. It didn’t look like the acid penetrated deeper than the surface layer. He’d tossed them off in time – but that didn’t mean he was out of danger. His attacker was bound to come back and make sure the scats had accomplished their task – he knew he would. Finding a cavern big enough to conceal the glider needed to take priority. If the topographer’s information was valid, caves littered the area.
He couldn’t risk leaving the glider, but how else could he find a suitable hiding place? Hauling the glider around with him was impossible, especially in his feeble condition; a condition that he despised with every fiber of his being. Weakness was for others, not him.
“Feign!” he bellowed in frustration, shaking his fist into the bright, empty sky. Now wasn’t the time to discover that the Pavilion was deceiving its people – he needed that information moons ago! He could have prepared a countermeasure, but now it was too late. The gall of the Gathering! – pretending sympathy for the lost glider pilots … when they were involved in this vast conspiracy.
He could imagine their reasoning – in closed session meetings. By hiding evidence of survivors, they protected those who would risk their lives trying to rescue them. It also preserved the anonymity of the Neph’lim and ensured adherence to their non-interference policy. But knowing why the Gathering would hide the truth didn’t change the fact that it irked him. It irked him that he hadn’t uncovered it during the past rotation of ingratiating himself with all those in-the-know.
Alulim jabbed his hand into the nose of the cockpit, digging around for the bag of plasma dots he had stuffed their yesterday, while his eyes took in his surroundings. He needed leverage – something strong enough to dislodge the glider from its dug-in position. The treeless plain didn’t offer much in the way of resources …. Boulders! No more than two hundred feet away. He rushed over – if his loping, unsteady gate could be called rushing – holding his breath.
“YES!” he expelled in relief. A wide slanting crevice lay hidden between the boulders – and it was just big enough for the glider. At least the topographers hadn’t failed him on this.
He gently rolled the plasma dot between his gloved fingers, feeling the friction and heat of the sun soften it into a semi-fluid gel. Working it patiently, the half-inch dot thinned and narrowed, taking on the form of a thread. As it lengthened, from inches, to feet, and then yards, he wound it around his other arm until the thread became nearly invisible to the eye. He then turned to a second dot and did the same.
Clambering, less than gracefully, from his seat, he tied the thread to the magnetic clip near the right wing, and then did the same on the right side. Slipping the thread across his chest and taking a deep breath, he pulled. Nothing. The glider didn’t move so-much-as an inch.
He attached the second thread to the center of the first and spread it out as far as possible, but it wasn’t long enough to reach the boulders. He needed to get another dot.
Days later, exhausted from the exertion of hiding the glider, and then walking for miles upon miles – or so it seemed – without food or water, doggedly following the navigator to the south southwest where the hamlet was supposed to be, he saw it. And, with each step, his relief and disappointment grew. From the air, it had looked more promising, but at eye level … well, it didn’t. The central building was fairly impressive – built upon a large hill, and standing several huts taller than all the other buildings, as well as many times wider.
His eyes narrowed; his brain calculating the implication. The biggest building had to be the most important … both in purpose and rank. In that instant, he knew. Whatever the role, that would be his home – the place from which he would rule.