Chapter One: THE MOON MEETING
Greeting Angel Fireflower, mover of worlds, guardian of time streams, sweeper of time portals, and distinguished member of the first species to find and be faithful to the Lord Most High, lay on the soft sands of the Moon near the Apollo 12 launch platform, happily munching on sunlight and watching television.
He did not bother to use a television set. Eons of carefully guided evolution by the Lord of Hosts had produced a being capable of watching any form of communication waves directly. Watching TV was kind of an unusual hobby for an Angel, but then Fireflower was an unusual Angel. He was definitely a couch potato and he had the body to show for it. But this was actually an asset. Fireflower was a greeting Angel, the kind that welcomes newcomers to Technoheaven. He often welcomed in children, and many of them were still upset at finding themselves dead and separated from still flesh-bound parents. So it helped to have a lap.
Suddenly Messenger Angel Starflame came thumping down next to Fireflower. Starflame was as skinny as Fireflower was lumpy. He got that way from running about the Universe delivering messages from one Angel to another. Starflame looked at the TV waves Fireflower was watching. He nodded solemnly at the impossibilities that it was showing. "Now that's what we need! Fasterr than light radio. Think of all the running about that would save me. I could get fat like you!"
Fireflower lay back and let his eyes play over Starflame's scrawny features and giggled. (Fireflower was a notorious giggler). "You fat, Starflame? Never in a Multiverse of Eons!"
Starflame lifted his head and studied the television waves some more. Than he looked at what was left of the Apollo 12 landing site. He shook his head in disgust. "Hmmmmf! Look at that fool contraption! They can't wait to be glorified to get to Heaven. They have to come up here, still in the flesh!"
Fireflower smiled. "I think it's rather brave of them!"
Starflame folded his arms stubbornly, "Brave! Horrse featherrs! Look at all the litterr they left behind. How very much like them! Next thing you know they'll be puttin' in a McDonalds!"
Fireflower giggled.
"Hmmmmf!" snorted Starflame.
Fireflower shrugged, "Well anyway, besides criticizing Humans, what else did you come here for?"
Starflame explained, "Official business. A message. Tubal-cain wants to see you."
"Why?" Starflame grinned at his friend, "I'm not going to tell you. He wants it to be a surprise."
Fireflower cocked his head, "Just a little clue."
Starflame shook his head and looked stubborn. "Nope!"
"Oh all right then. I shall have to see what he's up to myself. Toodleloo." Fireflower lifted off from the Moon at L.E.M. module speeds. No one could say that Fireflower couldn't move quickly when he wanted to.
Fireflower went faster and faster as he soared through space. The Moon and the Earth were soon far behind them. Fireflower came close to Mars, and playfully swooped down into the dusty atmosphere. He swooped into the Mariner Valley and played slalom among the mesas. Then he swooped up again, flew low over the rusty red Martian sands like a skier skiing on water. He threw up a dust cloud hundreds of miles long. The dust cloud obscured the planet's surface, blocking the view of an orbiting probe. Down in Mission Control NASA, people howled in frustration.
Fireflower knew nothing of that. He left the pink and bleeding sky and headed outwards again. Soon Mars was but a reddish dust speck to his view. Fireflower came to Jupiter and used the gravity of the big gas world to slightly change his course. There was no reason to do this of course. He could have changed course easily by himself. Fireflower did it that way only because it was fun.
The Angel came to Saturn's golden rings and he flew in and out between them, then away again past Neptune and Pluto. He turned around and flew backwards watching them get smaller and smaller. Finally he could see them no longer and on he sped towards the farthest rim of the Milky Way.
The Milky Way has a companion galaxy. Astronomers nicknamed it "Snickers" because it is peanuts in size compared with the Milky Way. Fireflower headed for this little galaxy and soon was amongst its stars. Fireflower looped and swooped between the stars. He did not want to run into one. It is embarrassing to run through a star by accident. Once Fireflower had done it and the other Angels hadn't let him live it down for two billion years.
Finally in a Star system right in the
deepest thickest star flung piece of Snickers, the Angel came to a small blue
world. From up high enough it looked much like Earth had been in the good old
days before The Fall, when all the continents were stuck together into one giant
continent. but this wasn't Earth. This was one Human being's idea about how
Earth would
have been if
Earth were perfect. In other words, it was one Human being's idea about exactly
what Heaven was supposed to be. Fireflower soared down into its warm atmosphere,
at a spot right in the middle of the equator. An emerald jungle stretched far
into the horizon. A apatosaurus poked its head up through the canopy. Fireflower
grinned at it and perched for a minute on the dino's huge green head.
Tubal-cain made a hobby of flitting about through various time periods and collecting and preserving interesting specimens. Because it was only an animal descended from those who had become extinct millions of years before The Fall, the dino could see Fireflower. He didn't know what to do with the Angel on his head. He snorted and shook his head violently giving the Angel a fun ride. Fireflower giggled and hung on. Finally tiring of that he flew off again waving good-by at the dino as he sped onwards.
Fireflower followed a wide and lazy river
until it became a bubbling
stream and followed the stream upwards into huge
purple mountains until it became a waterfall. Rainbows danced amongst the mist,
and white birds swooped and soared and sang to one another.
Fireflower went though the waterfall. Hidden behind its wet torrents was a cave.
The Angel went into the cave. The walls were dark and wet. An eternal fire burned in a fire ring made of loose stones. The walls were decorated with running beasts, stick figures and hand prints. With the flickering of the flames they seemed to run and run forever across the walls. The Angel smiled at them. He knew they were copies of cave paintings done on Earth in France Eons ago. Somehow Tubal-cain had tracked down the original artists in one of the more primitive sections of Technoheaven, and had them redo their works here. It amazed the Angel that even that long ago, the French had had an eye for beauty.
Fireflower walked deeper into the cave. "Knock Knock," He chirped.
"Come on in!" Tubal-cain called, "I'm in the electric chamber."
"Your electric chamber? What's that!"
Tubal-cain's voice echoed in the huge cavern. "Come and see. Follow my voice."
Fireflower squeezed through a crevice that was really much too narrow for his lumpy form, went down a dark corridor lit only by eternal torch light, and got down on all fours to wiggle through an even smaller passage. "I've never been to this part of the cave before," he called to Tubal-cain.
The big Cave Man answered, "Indeed! I just added it on."
Fireflower knew what he meant. Tubal-cain's cave, like many glorified parts of Technoheaven, was a huge virtual reality chamber. Any time a person in the glorified parts of Technoheaven decided the wanted a bigger living environment, (A mansion as the nineteenth century inhabitants called it), all they had to do was request it and it was entered into the chamber. Tubal-cain had wanted a new section in his cave, had asked for it and had received it.
Fireflower wiggled through still another new corridor section, and there it was. The Angel gasped.
There was no way to sum up the style of decorating in that section of the cave. The Angel tried. Neoprimitive? Antique futuristic? Tubal-cain had ancient cave artists decorate this chamber too, but they had not restricted themselves to ancient paint. Instead they had used 1960 style glow in the dark neon colors and come up with a flickering purple ultraviolet camp fire. Lit by the ultraviolet firelight loud purple woolly mammoths, yellow gazelles, green eagles, and blue buffalo ran and danced in the flickering light. The floor was covered with wolf skins, and bear skin bean bag chairs lay around in wild abundance. Books of every size, era, subject and color lay higgledy piggledy everywhere. Stacked sideways on shelves, piled up to the ceiling in mountains and scattered on the floor in huge piles by the bean bags. There were ancient papyrus scrolls rubbing noses with CD books. There were paperbacks, leather backs, hard backs, plastic books, glass etched books and holographic crystal books. There seemed to be no order to them. Tubal-cain of course could at any time find any single one of them. That was another advantage to being glorified. One had a perfect though limited memory. Tubal-cain could forget at will and remember at will.
Tubal-cain himself was a magnificent specimen of glorified humanity. Six feet tall, muscular and bronze skinned he looked like a fur clad Adonis. His eyes were the color of a morning sky, grayish blue. His hair was long and silver growing down to his waist. He wore a robe of wolf skins neatly sewn with bone needles, and leather thongs decorated with beads cut from sapphires, emeralds, huge diamonds, pukka shells and rubies. Under that he had on a buckskin shirt decorated in gold beads with the Sun symbol of his Cro Magnon father's tribe, the Sons of Men. Around his neck he wore the bear claw necklace that was a symbol of his mother's Neanderthal tribe, the Daughters of Earth. Tubal-cain was a hybrid, one of the "Giants" that was on the Earth in that day and age so long ago. But the most wonderful thing about him was his mind. It was as strong and powerful as his body.
The Cave Man was bent down over a work table. The Angel waddled over to see what he was working on.
It was the monitor of a Computer. "I'd never believe it!" The Angel exclaimed, "You always said you wouldn't be caught twice dead with any mechanical instrument more modern than that old bronze tipped spear you invented, and here you are with a Computer!"
The Cave Man chuckled, "Well, Fireflower, one has got to move with the times."
Fireflower grinned, "What are YOU going to do with a Computer?"
The Cave Man grinned back, "Find a disk operating system for it."
"Why?" The Angel wanted to know. The Cave Man got up and headed through still another tunnel in his cave. He gestured with a long bony finger for Fireflower to follow him.
Burning with curiosity the Angel did follow. This tunnel led to an exit. Suddenly they were in bright sunlight again. From their mountain viewpoint a vast emerald valley lay below their feet. Tubal-cain took to the air and soared down the mountain until they were about half of the way down it. Here there was a mountain meadow exploding with wild flowers of every color. In the middle of the meadow grazed a flock of pegacorns. They too were of every color in the rainbow.
The Angel gasped, "Pegacorns!" Where ever did you find those? I know there are plenty of planets that have them, but you always restricted yourself to saving Earth animals. Earth never had any pegacorns!
Tubal-cain grinned like the cat who had swallowed the pterodactyl, "I made them, Fireflower. They aren’t live animals. They are glorified beings like us.
"WHAAAAAT!!!?" Fireflower was flabbergasted, "You know the rules. You can't just go 'making' soul-programs. That privilege is reserved for the Highest."
Tubal-cain nodded, "True but I have invented a new process. It is called select taping."
Now what is that?" The Angel wanted to know.
Tubal-cain lifted a finger, "What happens when a flesh being dreams or imagines something?"
Fireflower shrugged, "Everyone knows that. A dream or wish of any kind is part of his soul-program same as any other part. In fact it is a very useful part. When a being is glorified many of his dreams and wishes are used to create whatever that particular being's idea about what Heaven should be like. But they have to be real dreams dreamed by a real flesh being. A glorified being can't just create another glorified being out of thin air!"
Tubal-cain nodded, "Ah yes! But what would happen if you uploaded only the dream parts of a soul program and then edited them together and mixed them together with dreams taken from other soul programs. In other words what would happen if you made a multisource soul program?
The Angel shuddered, "I think you would have a spiritual monster on your hands. Things with three heads and ten arms and multiple brains, because no two people's dreams are exactly alike."
The Cave Man nodded, "Ah yes. That's why I had to edit these pegacorns very carefully. Now I can do that by myself for a program as unsophisticated as a dream animal, but for the soul programs of real animals, and for dreams more complex than a simple pegacorn fantasy, such as a fictional Human character, I need to do editing more complex than I can do in my head and so for that I need a sentient Computer program to help me."
The Angel gasped, "You plan to upload imaginary Humans and the soul programs of animals!?"
The Cave Man grinned, "Indeed! Haven't you always wanted to meet those characters from those science fiction shows you like so much?
Fireflower gulped, "Well. "
Tubal-cain gave the Angel a smug look, "In fact for a really dedicated sci fi fan, how could heaven be heaven without that green tinged first officer of yours?"
Fireflower grinned, bemused, and scratched his head. The possibilities were only beginning to dawn on him.
Tubal-cain went on, "And how many times have we heard it, ‘It’s not heaven without my pets! Isn’t it about time we do something about that?!
Fireflower scratched his head., "Well. I suppose you have a point. But you know, up to now, only the Most High has been allowed to upload Human soul/programs. I don't know how He is going to feel about you making artificial Humans, or uploading the soul programs of animals."
Tubal-cain shrugged," He doesn't mind us uploading Computer programs no matter how sophisticated. I'm sure you know some of the latter Computer programs were actually even more complex than Human soul programs. He never minded those."
Fireflower nodded, "True, but those programs were still Human made, not God made."
Tubal-cain shook his head, "Some of those later Computer programs were so sophisticated, only other Computer programs could write them. Some were thousands of generations away from being written by Human brains."
Fireflower nodded, "True, but I still think we ought to ask God's formal permission before we proceed with this."
OK." Tubal-cain relented, "Lets go now."
"All right," said the Angel.
The Cave Man asked, "Do you know how to get to God's throne?"
Fireflower smiled, "I do. I don't get there anywhere as often as Messenger Angels do, but I do know. Let's go."
The two floated upwards into the clear blue sky.