local settlement date 36,018
Now. You are getting it.
King Namor Zujahrah
35 championship game
The day had come.
Twelve years Estan had lived with a soccer ball.
Their team, SL36 Angels, had made it to the finals three years running. They had lost the final each time but always won the hearts of the fans.
This final was at Salt Lake 36 Beast and Angel Stadium. A stadium like no other.
Anyone who could see magic knew it was in the building and they knew which team it was working.
Even when they were down two goals at half time, they had obviously dominated the play. The ball seemed to always bounce out from the post or cross bar.
The gate stayed closed at that end of the field for the whole game. After half time, the teams, as was the old world tradition, changed sides. And Estan made the first goal for his team. He took a pass over his head, bounced it over the opponents head with his knee and ran around him to kick the ball out of the air as it was falling for the second time and met the ball so perfectly that it was impossible for the guard at the gate to dive to it.
Just before the games end, Estan scored his second goal and fourth for his team.
There was extreme celebration. It was the first time a team from Angel Island had finished the winners of the world soccer championship.
"A game is a form of expression. A language of motion. It is a magic that brings many worlds together. The fear of torture and brutal murder are no longer the groundwork of rules. Rules have become the frames for our games. Games where to play is to dance in the theater of life. Take part in it, the it that is around us and in us. Love it and celebrate one another."
Namor handed the coveted trophy to his son's team. Then he went out with Barbaralba to the streets to watch the people celebrate. They watched children running and arguing, kicking balls, riding bicycles, teasing shop owners, being chased away or given treats by shop owners. They watched old men sitting talking sports, women, politics or philosophy and playing board games. They watched old women talking about other women and their insufferable men. They watched young men and women charming one another.
Technology had changed very fast. There was a little more luxury and entertainment for everyone and even the royal family had managed to let go of the castle to be part of the new world. There was a merging of the species as one creature. A creature a little more awake and aware of one another.
"You look very happy. Drave King."
"I am. I am happy that a King is a pointless title and that I can be a Drave and love a Drave and I can see that our fears are no longer of the Law makers. That we have found both the animal and the angel in us. We can evolve again, Barbaralba. There is no constructed lie to hold us back. And."
"And what."
"There are so many fish in the ocean."
With the advent of an electromagnetic solar powered train between the 36 salt lakes and a line to Queens Town, the town of King Namor's Bridge, Barbaralba and Namor spent most of their time in the still small city of Barbaralba's birth. A journey that once took at least 18 days was now done in the time it took to make an evening meal. So after the celebrations of the soccer fans, Barbaralba and Namor left for the coast.
Janyah lived with the man that was father to her child. He taught old world mechanics at the University of Salt Lake 36. He also had a small business that designed and sold bicycles. Bicycles were a favorite transportation for many of all ages.
Janyah took an interest in old world musical instruments. Another new world revolution.
The Old King focused much of his time on energy, specializing on easy to build solar systems. The most popular was the design that used sand. Every village on the coast of Barbancor had there roofs covered with solar panels. Many toys for children, and men, were powered by energy won from the sun.
An expedition voyage had been made around Barbancor. It was estimated that more than 60% of the land mass of Barbancor was under kilometers of ice. Enough ice to raise the ocean to over most of the inhabited land. It was understood to be a significant situation.
A good part of Castle City had been removed from the perfectly round mountain. It was obviously space technology and most likely the engine of the Star Ship. It was acting as the island's irrigation machine.
The libraries had contained countless patents from fish to fusion. How to make a fish was not in the patent books but how anything not a thing alive could be made, was in the books. How to breed and cross breed, how to organize DNA and RNA and almost every detail how to manipulate the environment to make almost any environment.
There were also patents on human behavior and law and structures of hierarchies.
What was missing was how it all fit together. How the beast-angel evolved beyond the laws and the patents. That was left open to those who chose to take on the challenge.
"I don't know."
"What don't you know, my Drave King."
"I think we, the we we were when we left the planet we came from, left too soon or too fast. Or we left them too little. Or wanted too much of what we didn't need. What wasn't good for us."
Namor felt Barbaralba looking at him.
"The Old King has started on computers. He needs them for the space boat to reenter and land. Too many calculations to rely on space boat captains. It's a different world away from the world of air and water."
"I like much of both."
"He said in ten years we could have computers doing, assisting or making things work. With the knowledge of the world at everyone's finger tips. This world and the old world. The knowledge of the last planet can be pressed into the space of a river fish. It's all recordable in binary code. Off and on in electronically recorded virtual some other kind of reality."
Namor looked stunned for a moment while he hung in his temporary probability computing mind.
"What puzzles you."
"Why did we bury our past. What was the sense of the royalty and the priest lie."
"That question likely goes a long way back. Without slaves, luxury has no meaning. It is a child's game played by board and simple minded short sighted adults."
"It's a mad plundering of planet after planet to collect metal. What is that. Worship of metal and life is blotted out and when the planet is dead go to the next to collect more metal. There wasn't even any metal on this planet. We crashed it into the planet. And we could have crashed in much more. I'm certain of that. We only sent in what we needed. So there is no sense in it. Unless metal is a very seldom thing out in the universe."
"I can't imagine it has too much to do with metal. Maybe we are seeing thirty thousand years as a long time. Perhaps it was just a lesson we needed to live through so that it became part of our instinct to know to value what matter to flesh gods. If the dinosaur stories are true, our way of seeing and being is very new. We are still children. We have simply made a childish mistake believing in hierarchies of life. But now we have the philosopher king who has made it clear to us that we are many yet one and we will make the trip, Drave King."
"I've known you forever, Barbaralba. I can see the birth of the universe in your eyes. It has already been a long journey. And we have been lovers in a time long gone and also still here."
"Let us be, here now and watch my belly grow with our next child."
"You don't want to go to another star system and create another paradise."
"Not in this life. In this life I want to live under this sun and these moons by this ocean.
"Then I will stay as well."
They rowed a boat out to meet Russam and his helper on the floating island. From the floating island they could see the sails of Barbaralba, the ship, returning from Barbancor. An albatross hanging in the sky. And Namor was certain he could see the dark space ship. Defying their resent thirty thousand years of ignorance with its mere existence. Ultimately mocking their royalty and priest law games.
"I would like to see it once, the ship we came here on."
"I'm certain the thing will be the next big tourist destination."
Namor laughed and let himself fall into the water behind Barbaralba.
"Six fish, Russam. Do you think I'm still fit for it."
"I have never and never will bet against you. You are the master of fish and kings."
"Magic is the master of all, dear Russam. I am her servant."
"I think she is yours. But perhaps it is the same. Let us see if I have any left in me."
Russam jumped in the water to see if he could shoot one fish after almost forty years. He came up laughing when he had. He caught, by shooting, six fish then left the ocean to Barbaralba to do the same without breathing.
She did it twice to demonstrate that it was a simple task.
That evening they happened upon a soup kitchen with an old world style country band calling themselves ‘the Tax collector Assassins'. Their freedom of speech was somewhat lost to the noise. But no one cared. The taxes had gone with the tyranny. Angel Island had been built into a paradise with a third of castle city. Seeds and plants were shipped to Barbancor. Building material shipped.
Still there was enough material to build floating islands. To export different ecological systems to the many barren metal islands.
After a few moons, Namor had learned to relax and watch Barbaralba's stomach grow. He decided to build a small hotel outside the village just far enough not to hear it. Many came to help him. When the twin girls came, Barbaralba and Namor had little time for teaching jobs and theater.
Janyah, her man and their baby boy move to the new Barbaralba Inn and soup kitchen. Janyah's man traveled back and forth to Salt Lake 36 on the train most days. Sometimes Zauqir and Orthia came to visit and play with the children.
Peace had taken its toll and was demanding more attention than war.
Namor took more time to write. To make his point for clarity and freedom of choice for a intelligent social creature in a universe of laws of physics and laws of survival.
He wrote letters to the various cities. His story was a gentle reminder that there was still a long way to go to fight the war of ignorance. He praised the excitement with sport and business trade. He warned of the dangers of losing a view of the world with over obsession for every new trend.
Namor wanted people to understand that there was a world beyond entertainment and commerce. He praised the brilliance of the performers of sport, theater and businesses of all description and he was certain something was waiting for them to obtain it. That as a species, space creature, their journey had just begone.
When his writing started to consume him, Barbaralba came to tear him away.
"Namor, quit your bloody writing and give me and the girls your attention."
Namor left his bloody writing and went with Barbaralba and the girls to the beach to make a fire and fry some fish. They were too young to understand his stories but they liked hearing his voice and watching the fire dancing on his face.
"When I was a little boy, I lived in a big castle. A castle that reached to the sky. It was full of Kings and Queens served by beautiful Draves.
One day the little boy found magic in the eyes of a Drave. She was an angel. He saw that. She had come to take him out of his sleep. A sleep that had fallen on the Kings and Queens before they landed on the planet that they made into in their new paradise.
The boy became a King and followed the Drave and a tradesman to the start of the war against war. The arrows flew and the resistance grew.
Then suddenly, one war ended to start another. Hundreds of years of technology busted into the world. And we built guns to prove our might. We took down our castle to save ourselves. We destroyed the temples and the seat of God.
We thought we were about to settle down to a life of relaxing and doing as little as possible when we discovered our forests were burning and the ice was melting and filling up the ocean.
But now we are intelligent creatures and are ready to take on the responsibility of being the care takers of the planet paradise and we will face our challenge with courage."
"Is that the end of the story."
"It's just the start. But they are both asleep."
"Look, a falling star."
"Stars don't fall. They explode."
"I know that, Drave King."
"Okay, Barbaralba. You tell me a story."
Namor lay his head on Barbaralba's lap and watched her lips move as she told him about a Drave fisher girl who left her fishing village to go to the big fabled city of Kings and Queens to find her mother.
She told of a King she had found crawling out of a black hole. A king that kept finding his way to her and longed for her love. She told how she held it from him but did not hide it to see if he would follow her to her world.
She told much more but Namor knew the story and sank into a half sleep and heard Barbaralba's voice mixed with her breathing and the sounds of the fire and the ocean licking the sand. And the sounds mixed in with the smells. Hell was lost in the distance and heaven held him as part of the things that were.
Barbaralba smiled and touched his face.
chapter 36
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