Tauman’s skin tingled in the morning wind as his human flesh reformed from directed energies. He stood at the first moments of an earth sunrise, senses ablaze in its colorful caresses. He mentally tugged at an approaching cloud cover which threatened his view, hurling it far over the horizon. Silver sparkles flickered through the gusty spring dawn, a touch of fantasy to enhance this sol-earth system’s turning, Tauman’s offering to this persistent planet.
For Earth had cut its yearly solar arc some twelve billion times now. And after so many ages. Tauman felt the fading warmth of home, the illuminated face of an ancient Terra growing cold in the light of a reddening sun.
She’s late he thought. How can so few moments seem so endless? Could she have finally attempted to cross the void between galaxies? Tauman brushed the fear from his mind. Pausing there in the disc of the rising sun, he focused on a rather intricate problem in stellar physics.
It was a matter of delicate timing that would bring joy to his tardy lover.
Suddenly a swirl of sparkling butterflies darted down at him at incredible speed. The swarm turned upwards, slowed gracefully. From the swarm a shimmering form slowly condensed before him., a smiling silver goddess stepping lightly onto the earth.
"You’re late," he said a microsecond before her eyes met his, melting away the frozen loneliness of so much time and distance.
"I was deflected from my calculated temporal coordinate by the aberrant gravitational flux of this star. Why did you pick such a—", she stopped speaking abruptly , her eyes bright with understanding. She whispered into the mind of her lover.
It’s the surprise for this meeting…and a reason among the countless that I love you.
His thoughts answered.
Embrace me, Thera. There are novas to be felt. Sol will soon envelope and vaporize this earth humankind has deserted.
Moments passed for Tauman and Thera , their gentle touching erasing the years of separation. Their moments passed, our lifetimes. As their bodies touched and their minds merged, they loved as children.
They became aware adults in the bodies of children, frolicking fleshy nine-year olds. In huge leaps they bounded through the tall grasses of the hillside, pausing in a sloping meadow to embrace, to touch, to surrender to each other.
A giggling wheel of merged body and mind they rolled over and over across the dew crowned grasses. A swath of flowers unfurled from the flattened grasses in their zigzagging pathway through this special morning.
At the edge of a lake, they waded and skipped stones. Tauman skipped one six thousand times, so naturally Thera skipped hers six thousand and one. The water sprayed their laughter, rippled smiles. The lake splashed cool on their bodies, and the joy of their union enveloped them like a warm blanket.
When the now adult humanoid pair awoke in each others arms on the mossy bank, an adult Tauman asked "Have you ventured far outside the galaxy? You were considering such a trek through the void when we last met."
"How nice to hear voices, sounds everywhere in an atmosphere." said Thera, her eyes distant, her voice from far away , "Yes,Tauman, I’ve made a start. For a long time I swam among the fringe stars of the outer arm, staring out into that deep nothingness. It’s one of my few fears, that chasm between the islands of stars. My dives into its depths have been brief, but my strength is growing as I understand the reasons for my fear."
"Its not fear from lack of ability, Thera, that I all too readily know. Your translocator powers surpass mine, your control excellent. But please do not confuse my understanding with approval., I fear for your safety. A personal space-time translocation of intergalactic distance has never been attempted."
Thera paused, then spoke. "My fear is of myself, for my thoughts are all that light the way through such distant emptiness. One feels alone there, a loneliness in an abyss far darker than the interstellar night. I need the strength of knowing that I am enough, that I can exist and learn though swallowed by empty intergalactic space. And one day I shall appear in the fields of yet unseen stars, bask in their alien radiations, and sense the energy flow of new galaxies as well as I know the spiraling disc of our own Milky Way."
Tauman felt the strength of her dream in her words. "Perhaps with your help I could journey with you, There are things yet undreamed to learn about the creation of mass-energy, the life cycles of stars.
Once my research took me to the new stars of a globular cluster. One highly erratic young star’s gravitational field attracted my instrument’s attention. I left the ship and personally translocated into the star. Just as I reached its center, the star suddenly collapsed. Its outer atmosphere condensed toward me at incredible speed. I had never encountered such disruptive forces in a young star before, so it caught me off guard…"
Thera pinched him playfully. "There, caught you off guard again!"
"Not the first time", admitted Tauman. "Well back in the contracting energy sphere, I saw that a stellar explosion was imminent, and was just about to translocate when the core exploded."
Gravity clouded Thera’s attentive eyes.
"The premier blast wave didn’t penetrate my personal shields but my individual atoms were dispersed throughout the sector for over a century. I was finally able to reintegrate my physical structure on the planet of a nearby star. Fortunately these clusters are crowded with forming suns, blazing protostars kicking off a lot of free energy. Otherwise I would have had to settle for a nonphysical existence, and the sorrow of never touching you again."
Thera nestled warmly in Tauman’s arms, eyes wet with love. They held each other tightly, an embrace of love that had not died in a stellar cataclysm, nor perished at the edges of the intergalactic void.
As they stared out into that black sea of nothing, they felt life in each breath; standing there in the disc of the sun, the winds caressing, their minds gently touching.
We are they whispered, and they loved as a growing one.
Still merged their mind flew into a nearby flowering tree. Tauman tugged his essence free of hers and entered the body of a pollen grain. Thera settled into the structure of a female flower, a fertile cavity awaiting love’s union.
Tauman of the pollen nucleus sensed Thera’s need as she felt his growing approach within her outer tubules. Soon the pollen tube of Tauman’s adopted body branched into the nuclear envelope, deep within the flower that was Thera. And a seed was born of their chromosomatic fusion.
The one grew. Tauman and Thera’s combined essence struggled to push through the soft earth
into which their seed had fallen. Their roots soaked up the cool rains which still washed the ancient face of Earth. Together they raised leafy arms upward, gratefully feeding on Sol’s red-orange offering. Time was lost in their growing.
Beside a mature tree, seven meters tall and heavily burdened with blossoms, two silver humans materialized, smiled, and again embraced.
"Time grows short," said Tauman staring into the reddening disc of Sol. "Soon there must be a parting, even as this earth passes into cosmic vapor."
"Tauman," said Thera softly. "You have offered me company on my journey. But what of your research ? Your studies on the creation of mass-energy are needed science."
Tauman smiled. "My intentions are to sacrifice neither myself nor my work. Think of the models I might construct from the vantage point of comparative data. These stars of separate galaxies have evolved differently in their own unique space-time. Totally controlled translocator ability could open up passage at will through such unexplored suns. It could provide insights of magnitude similar to the biological leaps man made in planetary exploration. The study of alien ecosystems expanded our definition of life. Can these alien stars do less for astrophysics?"
Thera smiled a face full of love. "Then let us go. So passes this green Earth."
Seconds later two silver humans locked arms and began to spin in the very face of erupting Sol. We are they thought as their silver surfaces mirrored fire from a sun gone mad, as their bodies and mind focused the mad energies into a beam of pure force. They touched the weak points in the distorting space around the exploding star. With purpose and grace the pulsating duo pinwheeled through the stressed space and its girating radiation fields.
As a wave of solar brimstone rushed to extinguish the wheel of life that was Tauman and Thera, they hurled forth their ray of concentrated energy, a beaming ionic scapel that punched a nanosecond exit into a nexus of decimated space. Riding the wave front of crackling forces, the pair slipped nimbly into that tiny space between moments.
The surprise! thought Tauman quickly. Look back!
Thera’s mental eyes caught a last glimpse of the space-time now so far behind them.
There in the full glory of the exploding sun, energies took shape, and her mind reeled at flaming words the size of stars:
"I am 46, a retired organic environmental chemist. I am a musicisian (keyboards and sax) and co-wrote the music and lyrics on an album of original music (The Lou Jones Band - 'You Are The Star" ) released in 1982. I have loved Science Fiction and the blues for as long as I can remember. I'm working on tunes for a new music genre I call Science Fiction Blues."
E-mail: RDow666@aol.com
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