The Gentle Eye

1 The Enigmatic Problem

Before I get into describing the enigmatic problem and the enigmatic person that is pursuing it, let me introduce myself. I am Laki, a humble and, as I have learned during my interactions with The Admiral and his Cosmos team, a really poor historian of the people of the planet Maraburo who have named me their global Historian.

I am now also a member of United Intergalactic Worlds Organization, an honor I probably don’t deserve. This organization brings all the worlds that the enigmatic person, Five Star Admiral Joseph Pender Elsinger, and his Cosmos team discovered as they tracked down the worlds populated by humans.

I refer to him as “The Admiral” and I am continuously humbled by his pursuit of the answers to questions that I as a historian should have asked and failed to do so. He and his team from Earth traveled the Universe to validate the theory that the population on Earth had been seeded there thousands of years ago by humans.

His team theorized that based on how the ancient pyramids of Giza were built, the base provided the locations of eight seeded planets and the top of the pyramid represented the ninth planet that did the seeding.

That theory was beyond the shadow of conventional thinking and well into the realm of the occult for the historians of Earth.

I admit that I would have been among the doubters but as a citizen of the ninth planet I am a testament to the correctness of the theory that the Admiral and his team set out to prove.

He led his team on an Esoteric Journey in search of those planets and eventually came to my planet; the ninth planet and the one that had seeded the other eight.

He found a planet that had suffered historic dementia.

I an eminent and celebrated historian of Maraburo, had no clue about the history that I had so eloquently written about. I documented the Admiral’s Esoteric Journey, and I am now going to narrate his continuing esoteric journey to answer a question that he has challenged his team with and a question that personally leaves me mystified.

That question is “WHY?.”

Why did my home planet seed the other eight planets?

WHY? Yes Why?

I learned that the Admiral had latched onto this question and decided that it was a critical one that needed answering.

He postulated that the resources required for a feat such as traveling across the universe would have weighed heavy on any population.

There had to be more than a popular social desire driving such a venture.

He theorized that there was a threat that had united my entire ancient kin.

His theory was that it had to be the threat of extinction.

This meant that the ancient people of Maraburo had knowledge of such a threat and that they took it seriously enough to commit the resources to distribute the human seed across the universe to ensure its continued existence.

He was sure it was the drive for human survival that existed on all the planets.

As I stated, I am a historian and when I learned about his theory, I was baffled about the fact that in all the documents that I had perused I never ran across any mention of such a threat.

That caused me to ask the same question. Why?

Indeed, that question frustrated me.

The Admiral asked me that question in a slightly different way.

He had asked me why the Maraburo ancients had constructed the behemoth spaceship the Kodho that had seeded the other eight planets.

He asked what had driven the scientist to design a spaceship that could reach the speed of light?

I had grown up with the Kodho orbiting the planet and had never asked those questions with the same passion that he put them to me.

I embarrassingly looked down at the floor like a delinquent student that had not done his homework and answered that I had no clue.

The thought that went through my mind was that I was negligent in doing my research. I had reached into the tree of history and had chosen to write about the low hanging events that were easily harvested.

I had not reached high enough to reach the grand history of my people.

I personally saw that as my failure.

I knew then that the Admiral because of his persistent drive would be the one that would discover the details that would be found on the highest branches of Maraburo’s historical tree.

I knew that he would keep digging until he could answer the question:

WHY?

********

The visit to Maraburo had created a question that would not leave Joe’s mind.

The use of the giant seeding spaceship Kodho to save the people on Niam from their dying sun had for a short time overshadowed his need to answer the question but once that historic accomplishment of saving the five billion people was done, the question of Why returned to constantly bedevil and prod his mind like the shock of a cattle prod.

He became driven by the need to answer that question.

He held a work session with his team and asked them the question.

But he asked them in terms that would cause them to want to give him a solid answer.

He asked them what would make them give up everything they had, all their worldly goods and even their lives to accomplish something that they knew would not immediately benefit them.

The silence that followed made him think that he had not asked the right question.

He was about to ask the question another way but then Lacey spoke up quietly.

Lacey began by saying that this was the first time she had thought about such a situation. She then said that she would do it to save the rest of the people in the room.

She was greeted with silence.

Joe was surprised when Darian said that was the only thing that would make sense to him. He added that he had so many people to whom he owed his life that he would most likely include all of them as well.

He would do it to save his world.

The world as he knew it.

That seemed to open up the flood gates from the rest of the team and the general sentiment coalesced around the concept of saving those around them and those they loved.

Joe nodded and then asked what would have caused the Maraburoans to support the use of all their resources to seed the eight planets with their children, friends, and themselves.

What possibly could have caused that to happen.

He added that there was no evidence of any massive destruction on the planet.

He pointed out that there seemed to be no threat.

Lydia was quick to answer that it had to be a threat to the entire population of the planet. It had to be a threat that they all believed was very close to happening.

She shook her head and said that it had to be something so obvious that anyone exposed to it would understand and would believe.

Yara nodded and said that she agreed but that kind of information should have come out in their review of the historic records that they had been pouring over.

H Cubed agreed but he reminded everyone that they were the ones that had opened the door to a past that the Maraburoans had totally forgotten and the records that were the basis of their knowledge had all come from the computers on the derelict spaceship the Kodho.

He doubted all of the history of the planet was on its computer.

Samantha reminded everyone that they had so far not found any records on the planets that went back to the time the Kodho had been built and the thousands of years it had spent seeding the eight planets.

They had not tapped into the flow of the sap that would give them the sweet syrup that they could put on their the layers of Maraburoan historical pancakes.

Darian chuckled and said that his mate talked in such an eloquent way because she was anxious to get to her beloved Vermont maple trees and get to the sap that was currently filling the tubs so she could put it over the fire where she would make her delicious syrup. He smiled and said that he agreed with her that the team’s knowledge was based on only having read one chapter of the book of Maraburoan history.

Joe smiled and said that springtime was also having an effect on him, and he wanted to be on the ranch and help with the birthing of the new calves.

He said that he would continue to work on a way to answer the question of, WHY and he wanted to have the team focus on that question but added that they all deserved a break after having drained their souls saving of the people now relocated to Nivian.

He announced a two week leave for everyone.

Linda announced that she and Tom were heading to their home in London to be there for the Christening of their newest granddaughter and planned to spend some time touring the first two planets that the team had discovered.

Joe wished them a good trip. He then reminded the team that three new spherical ships were nearing completion and would soon be ready to be commissioned.

He added that the three captains for those ships were all in the room and since he wanted no confusion he was letting them all officially know that Lacey, Yara and Samantha would be the captains for the three new ships. He suggested that they tour the three ships and decide which ship each of them wanted and what they wanted to name their ship.

He watched as Lydia joined the other three captains to congratulate them on their new commands.

He knew that the next voyage would have a different character to it because the four would be operating from four separate vessels versus all being on one ship and sharing the role of captain. He had discussed this for hours with Lydia to make sure she was fine remaining as the Captain of the ISF Cosmos Terra.

Lydia had assured him that she loved the Terra and as long as he made it his command ship she was pleased to be its captain. She had let him know that Lacey, Yara and Samantha had discussed the three new ships nearing completion and had agreed to the use the sequence of the planets that had been discovered as the names for the new ships. She had pointed out that Samantha was the exception.

Lacey had asked to have her ship name to be the ISF Cosmos Nivian after the planet that the second discovered group of humans had now been relocated to. She felt that she had a very close association with the entire population that she had been a part of saving.

Yara had asked to have her ship’s name to be the ISF Cosmos Gaja. The third discovered planet.

Samantha said that she wanted to see if she could skip out a couple of planets and be allowed to take the name of the planet where a love affair that had caught her imagination was in progress. She wanted to name her ship the ISF Cosmos Kelima because she knew she wanted to embrace her love affair with her new ship in the same manner as the love affair of the new leaders of Kelima.

Joe agreed to allow a couple of planets to be skipped and that each of the three now needed to select which of the three spheres they wanted to claim.

Lydia chuckled and said that she had toured the three and they were duplicates of the Terra and she was sure that the three would have no problem accepting the helm of any of the three new ones.

She waited until they were both back on the ranch walking across the field to go fishing to discuss Joe’s intense focus on the question of Why.

She asked what was it about the Maraburo history that concerned him..

Joe pointed at one of the steers that had a calf following it. He said that if a wolf came out of the woods, the mother steer would put herself between the calf and the wolf. He figured that seeding eight planets was like the mother steer.

He then described the scene of a herd of elephants where every adult faced an oncoming pride of lions and put the young behind them.

The ancient Maraburoans had done that for the human race.

But why had they done it kept nagging him.

Where was the wolf, where was the pride of lions, what was the threat?

He felt that the answer to why, given the space travel time, was still very critical to answer.

He pointed out that Tom and Linda had given them the ability to move from star to star, from galaxy to galaxy and traverse the universe in mere hours so it was hard to comprehend a threat that might still be on its way toward the seeding planet and that was what he was concerned with.

He felt that the answer to Why would let them get one step ahead of any threat that might in fact still be on its way towards Maraburo.

The Maraburoans had spread the human race out across the universe to shield it and had left themselves exposed to a threat that might still be on the way.

Lydia nodded and said that what they needed was to find the records that the Maraburoans must have hidden somewhere on the planet.

Joe nodded as he cast his fishing line and felt the hit of the first catch of the morning. He figured he and his team needed to spend time to physically search the planet for the needle hidden in a planetary haystack.

It did not take long for he and Lydia to be carrying enough trout and a couple of bass back to the house. They both knew that Uncle Ted would insist on cleaning the fish and would sent them to relax with a cup of tea on the veranda while he fixed lunch.

Life on the ranch had a cadence that seemed to always be in step with what Joe and Lydia needed when they were not out traversing the universe.

2 Return to Maraburo

I  Laki, was still on the ISF Cosmos Javelin, in orbit around Jomaoko, participating in establishing the United Intergalactic Worlds Organization. This was a privilege that I knew that I did not deserve but nonetheless was overjoyed to be a part of.

Because I was the representative from Maraburo, the seeding planet, representatives from the other eight planets treated me with a veneration that was embarrassing. They had no clue that I was the most ignorant among them.

I and my planet had forgotten the seeding.

But let me turn my focus to what I did when I learned what the Admiral was planning on his return trip to Maraburo. The fact that he wanted to search the planet for the missing portion of history that I had overlooked was the strongest pull that I have ever felt. I could not wait to participate in such a search.

The question that came to my mind was how could a repository of historic importance not have been discovered during the thousands of years that had passed since the time of the seeding. It seemed impossible that such a thing could have happened.

I was surprised when the Admiral arrived with three additional spaceships. The fact that they were duplicates and brandished both heavy armament as well as a wealth of what appeared to be telescopes and other sensors was impressive. I was struct with the speed and ability that the Cosmos organization displayed in so rapidly expanding their fleet.

The Maraburo leadership were nervous when the Admiral’s four vessels took very strategic orbits around the planet. They worried about his intentions.

Having just returned from the meeting that was focused on how the nine human worlds and the other five non-human worlds would all work together in a harmonious, friendly, and productive way, I reassured them that the Admiral had no ill intentions.

It was not long after his arrival that the Admiral asked to address the Leadership Council. There was a very different situation for this address. Since the previous time when only I and the Council leader had the neural mind head gear, enough copies of the head gear had been made so that the Admiral would be communicating to all of the council at the same time. This greatly improved the interaction between he, the captain of the four spaceships, and the entire council membership. It allowed me to focus on what the Admiral’s intent was.

He presented the fact that he had spent many hours since his last visit struggling over the reason Why the entire planet of Maraburo would have spent what had to have been an enormous effort and absorbed an astronomical cost to seed eight additional planets with humans but there was no record of it.

He made the very rational point the Maraburo forefathers must have identified a monumental and very believable threat to the race and had decided to safeguard the human race by spreading it across the universe.

They had acted like a mother shielding her child.

The Maraburoans of that time willingly had spread the human race throughout the universe to protect it while they had stayed behind to face the threat.

He then made the point that the threat had yet to materialize.

He pointed out that the effort, technological development, and cost of developing a spaceship the size of the Kodho must have strained the engineers, the technologists and drained all the resources of the time. He then asked a question that should have been one that I should have researched and had an answer for.

Where was the knowledge currently hidden on Maraburo?

He then asked for permission for his team to search for that knowledge. He pointed out that direct contact between his team and the people on Maraburo was not yet cleared so he wanted to have a team on the planet with which to work.

He asked for a ground team consisting of people knowledgeable of the planet’s geology, geography, architecture, engineering, and history to find out what had driven the Maraburo forefathers to take the extreme measure of seeding the eight planets and then hiding the information of having done so.

He made the point that once they had that information they would know the WHY the seeding was necessary and why they felt a need to hide the information about such an activity.

He closed by restating that the threat to Maraburo might still be in transit coming at it at close to the speed of light and that time was the currency that was currently being spent aimlessly by the Maraburoans that had lost the connection to the monumental effort of carrying out the seeding.

I was surprised to once again be asked by the Leadership Council to take the lead and assemble the teams that were being asked for.

It was not so much of a request by the leadership team but an order to select the best minds in each of the fields and to select as many people needed to make the search successful and rapid.

In reality I was one of the least qualified to do such a thing.

I was sure that some of the writers of fiction and fantasy were more qualified than I. At least they were using their imagination to create stories that were entertaining when everything that I had written about history was not only somewhat boring but in most part totally wrong.

All I as a historian had done to date was to write fiction about history and was now being asked to correct that story.

Again, I have wandered off course, and I realize that not only am I a terrible historian, but I also have trouble concentrating on the task of narrating the actions taken by the Admiral.

Before I was able to pull the teams together I needed to ask what specialty the Admiral was asking for.

He had a linguistics specialist, Kashanti work with me to clarify what each specialty was. Having the mental connection made the going easier but it was still a challenge.

This was a great exercise for me in that Kashanti and I needed to learn more about each other’s language before we made any headway. Doing so was a mental game similar to moving a ball through three dimensional space only the neural head gear allowed us to do it in each other’s mind.

He thought what a geologist did, and I would then think a Ayikungban or ground tracker.

He thought what a person specializing in geography did and I was able to think of a Didedide or maker of maps.

He thought what an architect did, and I then knew that person would be a Ziquratum.

Then it came my turn. I have mentioned multiple times that I am a historian. In my language I am referred to as a Ragegita. That first thing that registered in Kashanti’s mind was it was one to be mocked.

I burst out laughing because that was probably an appropriated perspective of how I should be treated.

Once I had what skill each member needed to have, it turned out that the difficulty was not identifying a sufficient number of participants but one of sorting through the resumes of ten times the number of people that were needed.

I approached that task by selecting one person that was a recognized leader in the field and asked them to select the right number of people based on the areas that their team would be searching for the information treasure the Admiral was looking for.

The Admiral asked me to convene those leaders so he could create a team that included people on the four spheres he had orbiting Maraburo. He stated that he was looking to create a team that would work well together and could move swiftly.

I convened those leaders, and we went on a learning journey that amazed us and created a camaraderie that was truly life changing.

There were five of us that would lead the ground search and there would be an on board member that would pair with each of us.

The Admiral had each of us introduce ourselves and our skill sets.

He then shared that he planned to scour the planet and find the knowledge repository and to do that he needed a ground team that was sufficient to do the work rapidly. He emphasized that he felt that speed was urgent.

Once each of the leaders on the planet had introduced themselves and the matching personnel on the spheres had done the same, the Admiral let us know that he was going to visually present the preparation that the four Cosmos Spheres had done before returning to Maraburo.

He shared that he wanted everyone to be at the same level of understanding and appreciation of how important he thought it was to find the answer to the Why question.

The presentation and the Admirals insistence that the four Cosmos ships be able to react to any obstacle that they might face was an amazing demonstration that impressed all of us Maraburoan. He had a thousand steel balls the size of bowling balls randomly launched in the path of the four ships and had them fly through at flank speed as the last test before returning to Maraburo. I and all team members on Maraburo viewed the video of that flight and we were amazed that the four ships flew through the randomly flying steel balls and none were hit. It looked like it was a game in a circus arcade where the targets randomly appear, and the shooter has to react instantly.

When the video ended I realized that I and everyone on Maraburo had been holding their breath. It was then that I came to the realization that I would never be qualified to be a captain of a spaceship and I most likely would not be qualified to be a crew member. I laughed as I wondered if I would even be able to qualify as a sous chef in the kitchen.

The presentation had nothing to do with the actual search, but it made everyone appreciate how serious the Admiral was about finding the information that would answer his question of Why.

Every member voiced their support for such a search.

********

During the time Joe was waiting for the three new Cosmos ships to be finished, commissioned and ready to run through their qualification exercises he spent his time back on the ranch participating in the annual cattle branding season. Branding had been replaced with tagging the new cattle with ear tags. The change was not because of preventing pain to the calf or to the cattle but an economic one of having a more valuable hide later when they were butchered.

It was a great way for him to physically work hard, enjoy every meal and sleep tight. However, this time what seemed to consume him was that nagging question of Why the ancient Maraburoans had hidden the reason they had seeded eight planets spread across multiple galaxies. He had to constantly be reminded to clip the tag on the ear that was being held out to him.

One of the younger cowhands laughingly said that he wanted to get done by dinner and pushed him away and took over the tagging operation.

Joe got the message and went riding out on the plain.

He asked the Why question of everyone participating in the tagging, every person around the dinner table and of Lydia when they talked in bed or were riding, fishing of skinny dipping in their favorite pond.

Uncle Ted’s and his father’s answers seemed to resonate with him the best. Uncle Ted figured that the bad guys were on the way and the Maraburoans wanted to protect the eight seeded planets.

His father agreed and added that by erasing the information from the record they in fact would most likely also protect the home planet population.

Lydia agreed with both of them and said that what she was curious about was how the ancient Maraburoans had successfully erased the information and why they preserved the spaceship, the Kodho. She speculated that their speed of light spaceship must have cost a monumental amount and that it also provided a way for the Maraburoans to save at least a portion of the population if they faced a planetary destruction event.

Joe then asked everyone where they would hide something so that it would be next to impossible to find.

He got, the deepest part of the ocean, buried under some glacier, or buried under some mountain.

Over dinner, between bites of her steak, Lydia suggested that she would hide it in plain sight. She would put it on the top of the empire state building or in the torch of the statue of liberty or the tallest building in the world.

Joe absorbed everyone’s input and by the time the three ships were ready for their trial runs, he was ready to get back to Maraburo to search for that information treasure.

He was almost certain that the human race still faced a formidable threat.

Every one of the Captains knew that they were in for grueling space aerobics training with their newly commissioned space spheres.

As the ships went through their grueling trial runs, Joe realized that the crews of all four ships not only became proficient, but he felt that they reached a level of performance that in combination would make them nearly invincible.

He surprised his four captains by having the Kodho join them. He had reassigned Captain Jeffery Yang to be the Captain of the Kodho and had transferred his entire team from the Cosmos Empowerer with him. The Kodho had also gone through intensive exercises and though it could not dance like the four spheres the giant ship had demonstrated a capability that surprised both Joe and Captain Yang.

Once the five ships were ready, he gave the order to travel through the Hole to Maraburo.

Lydia was in overall Command of the Cosmos Ships and took them through the hole following their normal procedure. The Kodho was the last ship through the hole and seemed to be chasing the four seemingly small spheres.

Joe then had the four spheres take up orbits that would give the four a total view of the planet at all times. This would allow the entire planet to get scrutinized by the sensors that the ships possessed.

He had the Kodho take up the orbit that it had been in for more than ten thousand years before he had requested that it become part of his command.

His initial focus was to establish a ground team of Maraburoans. He had the four captains identify the appropriate people to pair with the Maraburoans who would be their ground crew.

He wanted the teams to as rapidly as possible find the historic record that would answer his question of Why.

He asked Tom and Linda to lead the ground search.

He had H Cubed and Darian lead the ocean search.

He then asked each Captain what teams they wanted to lead.

Samantha volunteered to lead the search of the Northern Ice Cap and several of the Northern glaciers.

Yara volunteered to lead the search of the Southern Ice Cap and the Southern glaciers.

Lacey said that she and Lydia had agreed to search the cities.

When Jeffrey asked which team he should join, Joe said that he wanted him to take the Kodho out and learn how to maneuver it at the speed of light the way he had maneuvered the Empowerer.

Jeffrey laughed and said that at the speed of light the Kodho would be lucky to wiggle but he would see what he could get it to do.

That got a good luck from the other four captains. Each of them had been at the helm of the Kodho when it reached the speed of light and they all knew that it was great in a straight flight.

Lydia had flown it as she tried to outrun the explosion of the red sun and knew that the Kodho was a magnificent ship, and she had stressed it beyond its design, and she had guided it in a long turn as she tried escape that sun’s heat wave. She suggested that he try maneuvers at less than the speed of light and work his way up to it.

Joe surprised Elisha Sands by promoting her and reassigning her to the Kodho as the lead technical officer.

He smiled and let her know that he was sure that she could use her skills to make the Kodho dance.

He knew that she was the reason that Lydia had been able to outrun the heat blast bubble from the dying red sun.

He hoped that later he would be rewarded for having promoted her.

He then ordered that the search begin in earnest.