Chapter 4.A

“Stop. Let me get this straight, you two are aliens, and you are also cops chosen by God?”

“It’s a lot to take in for someone like you, I understand that,” said Cerulean.

This was a lot to take in... Hank threw the sawed-off shotgun that was still tucked under his armpit onto the desk in the workshop and began to pace. He still carried the strange cylinder in his offhand, it was extremely heavy for its size and it almost felt like it was putting out a low electrical current. Hank had a million questions flying around in his head, so he figured it was best to drop into his Hank-zen-mode. He relaxed his shoulders, slowed his breathing, and turned to face the two aliens in his workshop.

“Why me?”

“We don’t really know, but I can take an educated guess. You are a relatively nice person and you have been willing to take a stand against evil when a lot of other people on your planet haven’t. Sound familiar?” asked Cerulean.

“What do you mean you ‘don’t really know’, you were sent here to recruit me. How could you not know why I’m being recruited?” asked Hank.

“That’s not how this works Hank, that canister in your hand is delivered to us by God himself. We just take it from there and make sure it gets to you.”

Hank raised one of his eyebrows insanely high before continuing, “So you are telling me that the heavens open up, the clouds part, and God walks down on a glowing staircase to hand you one of these,” said Hank while holding up the canister in her direction. “That’s horseshit and you know it,” Hank finished.

“You are wrong and you are right monkey man,” said Dractus.

“How so?” asked Hank, he was to curious now too be mad at Dractus’ slight insult.

“There is a competing theory, one that I’m a subscriber of, but to understand it we are going to have to go back to the beginning,” said Dractus.

“I’ll get beers,” said Hank. He reached into an almost empty box at his feet and retrieved three lukewarm cans. He threw one each to Cerulean and Dractus, they both caught them out of the air. Dractus examined both sides of the can before just putting the entire thing in his mouth and chomping down. The can of beer exploded down his throat, and then Dractus spit the now mostly-empty can on the floor.

“Refreshing beverage human, thank you. Amway where was I… Ah, the beginning of the Arbiters.”

Hank and Cerulean shared a look of amusement over Dractus’ beer consuming show. She carefully copied Hank’s actions and popped her can open using the tab. They both became focused when Dractus continued his story.

“So, thousands of years ago a race of beings much similar to your race now, became spacefaring, but out of necessity. Their planet was used up, abused. They were out of natural resources, overpopulated, and large swaths of their planet had been cleaned by nuclear fire leaving it uninhabitable for life. Something had to change, the last of the reasonable governments on this planet assembled a team of their best scientists, warriors, and explorers. They also shared funding and all of their own independent research to build a coalition ship. A ship the likes of which had never been seen before, to send on a mission of great importance. Their goal was to find a Goldilocks planet. Am I saying that right Goldilockssss?” Dractus made sure to drag out the extra ‘S’ sound at the end of ‘Goldilocks’ using the lizard architecture of his mouth.

“I have no idea, I don’t know shit about Astronomy,” said Hank before taking another slug off of his beer. Dractus mumbled something that sounded like “backwards monkey planet,” before continuing.

“Well, a Goldilocks planet is a planet that is in a perfect alignment with the nearest sun and stars. It’s just warm enough to support life, yet not too warm to be a charred piece of trash. There are obviously planets in the other direction as well, giant frozen balls of useless shit, I’m getting off point though. The point is, there are a lot of planets, but only a few that you can live on without massive amounts of terraforming or oxygen filled infrastructure. Goldilocks planets are highly sought after prizes because of their rarity, civilizations rise and fall over wars fought for them.

So this mega ship built by the best scientists from all over their world, using the technology of over 20 different cultures, set off to find a habitable planet in the hopes of saving their race from destruction. Their ship was swift, their scientists were bright, and their warriors and explorers were eager to navigate the unknown. Within sixteen solar months of this planet’s time they had found two Goldilocks planets! That may seem like a long time to you, but the speed of their ship was unheard of at the time, and their ship despite being state of the art was somewhat of an experimental mess. They had left relay satellites as they traveled to ferry messages back to the coalition of governments that was supporting them.

The people of their planet were elated to hear the news of their discovery, yet there was rumor among the population that a religious fanatic had snuck aboard the expedition and was looking to sabotage the ship and their mission. Surely this rumor had no merit, for only the best representatives from each country had been chosen, avatars of virtue and accomplishment. The expedition couldn’t return conquering heroes until they set foot on the ground of each of the planets they had discovered. Readings from space are one thing, but they had to know without a doubt that each planet was safe for habitation. There was too much riding on this mission to send future settlers out into space on speculation alone.

So after a tenuous atmospheric entry the expedition landed on the first planet which was named BG-1. If you haven’t figured it out yet BG is a common designation for planets that have a good ratio of land to water with vegetation of a certain type on them. The BG in particular stands for blue-green the blue being water, and the green being foliage. Of course there are habitable planets that aren’t colored blue-green from space but they get a different designation. Anyway, continuing the story. BG-1 was a dangerous world, but beautiful. The wildlife there was extremely violent and was constantly at war with itself and when the aliens arrived they quickly became part of the local ecosystem.

The warriors and explorers they had brought with them were stalwart and experienced though, they balked at the dangerous creatures and gunned them down. Still tensions ran high and everyone was constantly on alert. They had to make many scientific expedition into the depths of this planet’s jungles, rivers, caves, and other environments to ensure that it was safe for a colony. Yes the creatures on the planet were dangerous, but walls could be built, and soldiers could be deployed. It would be worth it for a fresh start for their home planet’s best and brightest. They just had to ensure that the creatures were the full extent of the danger.

As they explored they discovered evidence of a stone-age civilization. They found things like bowls, stone knives, mud-based pottery, simple arrowheads. They knew they weren’t alone, but they also knew whatever civilization lived here had to be insanely fierce to have survived alongside the vicious creatures of the planet. They knew at this point they would have to find this civilization. Morally they couldn’t uproot the people that already lived on this planet, but the planet’s landmass was huge and they hadn’t run into any settlements yet. There was more than enough space for everyone to share, and the explorers were willing to share technological advancements with the stone-age civilization in exchange for a peaceful coexistence.

They followed the breadcrumbs of the primitive civilization. They moved through the trees searching day in and day out, all the while the animals of the planet attacked them with ever more veracity. Almost like they were trying to stop them from moving forward. Finally the brave expedition came to a fort tucked so neatly among the thick forest that they didn’t see it until they were practically stumbling through the front gates. Inside the fort walls there were signs of a small town, maybe of a population of 1000. Except there was no town folk running about, and the air was just a little too still. The expedition walked down what looked like the main road through the town. This town rested among the forest you see, and the people who had cultivated and built the town had left many live trees inside the town walls so it was hard to make out its boundaries and landmarks because it was so cleanly blended with the forest. The exterior town wall was even tied into live trees here and there which hid the existences of the small town even further, the whole thing was organic in nature… There was an aura in the air as the expedition moved deeper into the town, something felt off.

The expedition continued until they saw a large structure in the distance and began to hear humming or chanting of some sort. The found the source of the haunting humming. It seemed the entire population of the town was knelt in prostration in an enormous semi-circle like shape around a large building that resembled some kind of open-air town hall. Whatever they were humming had a slow sing-song motion to it, rhythmic but terrifying, somehow you could feel that It was dark and represented something unnatural. The situation was so insane that the explorers hardly even thought about the fact that they were walking among aliens. ‘Alien’ is a stranger term though, and a lot of what is ‘alien’ is in the eye of the beholder. The aliens had two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, sure they weren’t exactly the same, but your mind can recognize the pattern and quickly normalize aliens. They lived in a town, they had families, they had walls, this was very much a civilization, these were people.

The expedition had some of the best linguists and universal translators that their planet could offer with them. They moved among the people with armed escorts trying to communicate with hand symbols and different basic forms of language, but none of the townsfolk would leave their trance or stop their humming. The captain of the ship, a burly man known for his command prowess soon tired of the locals ignoring him and against the wishes of the cultural experts with him he lifted one of the aliens to their feet and shook them a little bit. There was no reactions so he poured some water on the alien’s head.

The alien stopped chanting and his eyes snapped open, alert and confused like he had just left a dream. He looked around at all of the town folk chanting and then at the large structure that everyone was facing. He said three words and then before anyone could stop him he grabbed a stone knife he had concealed somewhere in his loincloth and slit his own throat. None of the people praying or humming or whatever they were doing even seemed to mind that one of their own had just killed himself. The captain was appalled, angry, and sickened by the behavior of the alien and his fellow townsfolk. He demanded his interpreters tell him what the man had said. The interpreters were mostly stymied except for one, he came forward and told the captain what his best theory of the translated version of the three words were: God Help Us.

Let’s just say at that point the mood darkened even further after hearing the ominous translation. The only obvious moves left was to run screaming back to their ship or to explore the large structure and see what all the fuss was about. With the weight of a world on their shoulders the expedition knew what they had to do. They all moved directly to the front of the large structure, they noticed then the intricacies of it. It was tied into 4 or 5 living trees and had live branches beautifully braided through the wood that made up the walls and roof of it. This must have taken generations to build and nurture the trees into this formation, this was clearly a holy site. The captain decided to split the party for the safety of all. He would enter with the interpreter who had been able to translate the three words along with a four-man fireteam. The plan was to find the shaman or mayor or whatever person lead this village and establish diplomatic communications with him or her.

The six-man crew entered the structure and all was quiet for twenty minutes or so, the townsfolk’ humming remained the same, but as I said before it was almost rhythmic and it was easy to drown out. That spooky feeling never quite went away though and as time went on the remaining party began to worry. As they were debating whether to send more people in or return to the ship the translator they had sent into the temple came out alone. He looked happy, or perhaps a better word is manic. He was humming the same thing as the townsfolk as he walked through the threshold of the structure. He looked at the remaining members of this expedition party, he raised his voice loud and clear before shouting:

‘I’d like to introduce you to our new dark lord and savior!’

Then something else came out of the structure. It was one of the aliens from the town, but it was bigger than the others, by a large margin… It would be about 9 feet tall by your earth measurements. It was wearing ceremonial armor made from the trees of the region. The armor was stained with something and leaked sap in a hundred different places. The branches that made up the armor had been expertly bent into a functioning suit. On his head he wore a crown of the branches. Some of the branches were piercing his skin in places and blood leaked down his face, he didn’t seem to care. Around his neck he wore a necklace made of ears. On his back a cape rested, when the explorers examined it they found that it was made up of the alien’s scalps… Unlike the rest of the aliens, this larger one had fingers that came to distinct points, each one looked as sharp as the finest knife.

The giant alien places his hands on his hips and laughs loudly and then barks out a few rough sentences. The translator’s eyes fill with absolutely glee upon hearing whatever the large alien said. The rest of the expedition stares and waits for the translator.

‘He said bow before him, and he introduced himself with a name that I am not fit to say.’

At this point the executive officer of the expedition had heard enough. It was clear the captain was either dead or being held captive and that the translator was the traitor they had been warned might be hiding among the expedition. It was time for him to take charge and stop this madness. That man’s name was Magnus Jesus Supreme...”