Daimones by Massimo Marino - HTML preview

Humans

Of Men And Gods

The Palladium beamed on its marble pedestal in the center of the square. The beam was visible from miles and miles away and seemed to pierce the sky, uninterrupted.

From our hill, two more beams were also visible where other communities prospered and grew as ours did. Mary was pregnant with our second child; my first of the new generation though I will outlive this baby, too. My dear wife was as beautiful as ever, even more than ever if possible.

Laura gave birth to our lovely baby girl. We called her Hope. She was smart and extremely clever. At one-year-old, she was starting to walk almost without hesitation. I regretted that Hope had been conceived shortly before I received the Palladium but that made her ever more precious to my heart.

Algea was always present and helped us with everything in her power, which was a lot. Alaston made impromptu visits from time to time, always very welcomed. We discussed all possible subjects, present, past, and future. He revealed to me what existed out there; his civilization and others, too. A humbling experience.

Every Selected community was followed  and helped, instructed closely by its own Moirai. Little by little, we were just starting to have access to their technology. We were "given according to our means, and beyond our means at times, of our own accord" to rephrase what Menis once told me. I wondered whether someday he would visit us, too. But I knew every Moirai was quite busy with their obligations and would be for quite some time.

I still don't know if the Palladium had a role in changing our minds as, bar none, all Selected accepted to work with the Moirai to rebuild the human race. In one year, over eight- hundred thousand children were born or were due to be and that was just counting the Selected women. No one stepped back from the role that had been planned for us by the Moirai.

The pregnancies were, in themselves,  a revelation. Selected women could feel their babies like no woman had ever been able to. They could also feel when the baby, still in the womb, gained self-consciousness. The regrowth numbers that Algea put in front of me only a year before didn't seem unreasonably optimistic anymore.

In the past year-with help from Algea and Alaston- others joined us and the spared ones were making our tasks more bearable. With.grace, should I say? I didn't know many details about the other communities but it seemed everyone got along as nicely as we were.

Jean Claude joined us a month after the Moirai revealed their plan to me about the Selection process. He was now our Chief Agronomist and had one apprentice: Liliana, a girl from the Italian city of Aosta. Liliana and Jean Claude had a romance going on and, at the moment, they didn't much care that he wasn't going to be able to get her p