.
I am all-powerful Time, which destroys all things.
Lord Krishna, Ch. 11:32, Bhagavad Gita
.
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
.
1
It was Tuesday, September 28, 2123. Noah spent a semi-comfortable night down by the lake in his own, tiny, two-man tent that Snake and Jonesy scrounged up for him from the container. His sleep was shallow and intermittent. He awoke in the middle of the night and crawled out from his tent to have a look around, and a think.
The night was painted in blacks and dark blues with patches of lighter blue that were charmed out of the darkness by the silver light of the half-moon. A ghostly zephyr ruffled the surface of the lake and caused it to shimmer like a bed of diamonds. There was almost no sound except for the slightest occasional whisper from the treetops.
Completing this Vincentian aesthetic was the warm, reddish afterglow of the dying embers of the campfire. Apart from the ever-present scent of pine, he occasionally, when the breeze wafted his way, got a subtle whiff of smoke from the fireplace.
He thought about this group of survivors and the best way to handle their situation.
Mostly, though, he thought about the predicted, widespread radioactivity emanating from the hundred-odd, melted-down, nuclear power plants, 96 percent of which were strategically dispersed all across what used to be the eastern half of the United States of America. The data on their exact locations was programmed into his ship’s computer.
Although the Rama wanted to architect a scenario that resulted in the shutdown of all the nuclear power plants, prior to the comet strike, they were never able to do so. Their final projections for post-apocalypse Earth predicted limited, isolated locations that would remain relatively uncontaminated and habitable.
The Rama cannot remember a time when their spaceships were not fitted out with radiation-measuring instruments. The sensors were embedded in the hulls of the craft. It
807
is assumed that uncountable millennia before, when they began to traverse interstellar space, the Raman ancient ancestors rapidly realised that there were highly radioactive zones everywhere that needed to be avoided. They thus designed their ships to sense, in real time, the source, nature, intensity and distribution of any radioactivity present in the space they were about to traverse.
So, in summary, Noah was aptly informed about the nuclear power plants’ exact whereabouts, and he had a pretty good idea how radioactive the areas around them were going to be after one hundred years. He also had exceptional projected data on the radii of the radiated, no-go zones around the meltdowns, as well as the directions of atmospheric currents that carried the radioactive fallout downwind to distant places. He also possessed data on the locations of some, but not all, nuclear waste dumps, as well as nuclear, weapons-storage facilities. Some of these were so well hidden that even the Rama could not find them.
Furthermore, Noah understood clearly who was behind the whole nuclear phenomenon on Earth. It wasn’t the hapless Earthlings, but the mysterious Dark Ones who dwelt no-one-knew-where and operated in the telepathic realm through their victims, the Earth humans. Through them, the Dark Ones took pleasure in grandiose military strategy and war, preferably nuclear. They also got a great kick out of sexual depravity of every kind, like, for example, the sexual abuse, sacrifice and cannibalism of children, even babies. Unknown to the Earth humans was the fact that homosexuality was actually a telepathic disease, which became rampant. In fact, the whole LGBT sub-group, and all its bizarre sub-branches, was remotely enslaved by the enigmatic Dark Ones.
These parasites became the consciousness of their victims, mostly from afar, without their ill-fated hosts ever being aware that they were possessed by them. As a note, the Rama only time-chipped Earthlings that remained free of this ‘parasitic affliction’.
So, to reiterate, about two years before the comet hit, a Rama, nuclear-radiation-assessment team performed a detailed survey of the number and distribution of nuclear power plants around Earth. They further deduced a projection of global radiation contamination from the 100 percent certain meltdown of all the radioactive cores post the comet strike. From these projections they assigned three short lists of locations where contamination was (a) within short-term acceptable levels, (b) within medium-term acceptable levels and (c) within indefinite-term acceptable levels. These locations were then programmed into the navigating computer of every Rama ship that sailed to Earth.
808
All this data could be displayed on the spherical holographic display within the ship by it being telepathically willed by the pilot.
As he sat in the moonlight next to the shimmering lake, Noah contemplated the immediate future. He knew what had to happen in order to eradicate the influence of the Dark Ones from this planet. Their hosts had to be exterminated. The comet conveniently took care of that task. All the Rama needed to do now was what they did best. They needed to allow nature to restore herself in her own way and in her own time. With the half-life of Plutonium being 240,000 years, give or take, Noah knew that it would be a while before his people would be able to call Earth their second home.
The Rama were an ancient people. They were wise and patient with extremely long-term plans. He knew that neither he nor his grandchildren’s grandchildren would benefit from what he was doing now, but he knew that the lucky generation would come in time, perhaps in a thousand millennia, and they would colonise this beautiful planet and bear their children upon it.
2
Being the early riser, Jonesy was first to emerge into the pre-dawn. His first act was to have a stretch and marvel at the ‘mind-blowin’ streaks of vermilion radiating out of the eastern sky. ‘Big Man’s gotta be tripped out of his brain this mornin,’ he thought.
Jonesy’s LSD years had altered his perceptions quite profoundly. He felt an awareness now, which was acute like that of a wild animal, like a desert coyote.
He had been wrestling with an ‘ass-backward’ idea for years. It had to do with the perception of his own reality. He deduced that his universe depended on his existence for its own existence. The whole idea manifested itself one night out in the Mojave, under a Brobdingnagian full moon, tripped out of his mind on ‘liquid sunshine’. While joining in a howling chorus with distant coyotes, he trigged on the idea that he was an infinite spirit.
This was chiefly because he saw himself begin to glow like an incandescent light. In the end he glowed so bright that he caused the whole reality around him to fade in that light.
To this day he doesn’t understand what happened, but the idea that germinated in his skunked little brain was as epic as eternity itself.
This thing each one of us perceives as our universe, this reality, this seeming infinity, comes to us through nothing more than five senses, or sensors. What’s more, the five signals are converted into electric code, which is transmitted, via nerves, to different
809
parts of the ‘spaghetti ball’. This code is then decoded, by the ‘spaghetti’, and converted into our experience.
Right in the middle of a passionate coyote howl, in the centre of the brilliant light, he saw all that, the nerves and spaghetti, the code, the decoded universe, everything. He saw it all on a spherical movie screen.
The thing that happened next completely blew his mind to smithereens. He experienced himself expanding out, right through the screen and the image upon it. The light emanating from him literally melted the screen away and the universe disappeared.
In that moment, the whole universe, including his body, was gone, but he was still there, glowing like a shining star. And what was around him? To this day he has been unable to find words to describe it, even to himself.
At that moment he realized that he was eternal and his universe was not. His body, and its brain and nervous system, wasn’t part of him, it was part of his universe. Also, his universe was his alone and no one else’s. It was unique. Other people dwelt in their own unique universes. His universe wasn’t billions of years old, either, it was 45 years old, like his body. All the ancient archaeology, the history, the dinosaur bones, the pyramids, the whole depth-of-time aspect of it, was all baked in, all pre-programmed. It was a perfect, pre-packaged, living, four-dimensional, space-time, hyper-virtual-reality program with a human body at the centre of it. And its mortality was programmed in as well, through the human body. In fact, he now believed that mortality was absolutely unreal. It was something that was invented, along with time and the whole program, perhaps for no other reason than to make things more interesting, kind of for the adventure.
Imagine being a timeless, eternal being having an experience through a space/time program incorporating great new ideas like death and danger. But these phenomena weren’t really real, they just seemed real because of the perfection of the program, or construct. And it was all done for the adventure, for the fun of it. And the human body was the link at the centre of this construct. It was the apparent vessel, the apparent container, the apparent receptacle, the apparent temple, the vehicle for him to traverse the virtual space and experience it through the five sensors. It was a temporary home for him, as eternal spirit, to dwell in and be the life of. And it was his light that made it all shine, all of it, the sun, the moon, the stars, the galaxies, everything. And he figured, in his own cockeyed way, that his light, along with the light of every other shining spirit in infinite, eternal existence, was in reality God’s light shining through everything from on
810
high, or as he liked to think of it these days, from the great pin-point within which everything existed, probably as nothing more than a mystic dream.
Thus, he couldn’t live without God, and his universe couldn’t live without him. If God departed from him, he would die. If he departed from his universe, she would die. It was thus that Jonesy’s new construct of the foundation of his experience was complete.
He further understood that the way others perceived his whole infinite universe was simply as his physical body-shell. It rendered itself on their mind’s spherical screens the same way that their physical bodies, which represented their infinite universes, rendered on the spherical screen of his mind. And the construct of all the universes was very similar, but not the same, because each one of us lives in our own, private universe, which is incontrovertibly unique.
He had heard some people suggest that the universe was a hologram, a well-crafted illusion. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. The thing he understood though was, hologram or not, the universe was his alone and no one else’s. Just because it matched, nearly perfectly, other people’s universes, did not mean that we all somehow dwelt in the same, one great big consensus universe, the idea of which he decisively ‘nailed to the counter’.
And just because it looked like it was millions of years old, it didn’t mean that it was, it just meant that it looked like it was.
And the magic trigger for Jonesy’s grandiose, ass-backward way of looking at reality was the mind-expanding, spell-working power of Lysergic acid diethylamide.
3
Jonesy stirred some still-glowing embers to the surface with a stick and re-kindled the campfire. He immediately set to the task of brewing up a pot of coffee. As it turned out, Noah was the first to join him. Everything was becoming visible in the purple light of the pre-dawn.
‘You certainly are an early riser, Jonesy,’ commented Noah.
‘Never been one for lyin in bed with me eyes open, Noah. You’re up pretty early as well. Sleep OK?’
‘Thank you, yes,’ Noah replied not giving away his nocturnal concerns.
‘I’ll never come to terms with lookin at your ship floatin there like that,’ said Jonesy glancing at the silently-levitating intergalactic cruiser.
811
Snake and Ludwig were next to rise. They both ventured down to the lake where they washed and brushed their teeth. They finally sat next to the other two around the fire.
‘Cracking morning, chaps,’ said Ludwig in his phony, British accent while pulling his beany down over his ears.
‘That Arbuckle’s hot yet, Jonesy?’ said Snake warming his hands over the fire.
‘Hot as a hoe house on nickel night,’ replied Jonesy with a laconic drawl.
Snake turned to Noah. ‘Sleep OK in that tent, Noah?’ he asked him.
‘Like a log,’ Noah lied. He took a sip of his coffee. ‘Fine coffee, Jonesy,’ he said. He looked at the sunrise. ‘We have two suns on Rama,’ he commented, ‘although most everything else is the same as here.’ Noah was making casual conversation but he was thinking about Geiger counters. ‘Actually, I lied about how I slept,’ he finally confessed.
The other three looked at him strangely. A man didn’t usually ‘fess up to bendin the truth’. Noah continued,
‘Thoughts about all those nuclear power plants, around your country, melting down kept waking me up. I must confess that I’m concerned about great swaths of the North American continent being potentially too radioactive for habitation.’
‘Holy crap!’ exclaimed Snake. He thought for a moment then added, ‘The survivalist people packed a bunch of maps in the container. There might be one with the power plants marked on it. I might go look for it in a minute.’
‘While you’re in there, Snake, you might wanna grab one of them there Geiger counters,’ suggested Jonesy.
‘Yes, I was thinking that,’ said Noah. ‘It couldn’t hurt to measure the latent radiation around the camp here.’
‘You boys must be readin my mind,’ said Snake.
Noah already knew that the area around Pikes Peak was designated type (b), medium-term acceptable radiation levels. It allowed them about twelve months in that location. He would have never set foot on the ground if it had been worse. The survey and subsequent projections, carried out a century before, marked out the future safe zones.
That was the reason Noah told Thebe to tell Jonesy to be on top of Pikes Peak at the time of the comet strike.
Pikes Peak was exactly 215 miles from the nearest nuclear power plant, which was the Diablo Canyon Power Plant at Avilla Beach, California. To further add to the safety
812
from this nuclear disaster, the plant was now more than likely under water due to the sinking of the California coast. Projections, made a century before, predicted that substantial parts of northern California should remain relatively free of radioactive fallout. Noah knew, though, that projections could be wrong and that a real-time, ground survey was necessary to detail-map-out the area the survivors hoped to live in.
4
One hour later, the Pinecrest camp was a hive of breakfast activity.
‘Daaaahling,’ exclaimed Ivana with a guttural passion, ‘I would give my shirt for an almond croissant right now.’
‘As long as it isn’t your underwear, my love,’ replied Ludwig, her husband. Everyone chuckled politely and held their collective tongues.
‘Canned bacon’s OK,’ said Snake admiring the empty can.
‘And you’d never know the powdered eggs weren’t real,’ added Trixie.
‘My favorite is the pancake mix,’ said Lori, Jonesy’s wife. ‘It’s the girls’ favourite.’
Everyone was happy munching breakfast around their own campfires. Snake, Jonesy, Ludwig and Noah sat around the main fire. Snake rose to his feet and said,
‘I might go and look for that map and Geiger counter.’
‘Capital idea,’ said Ludwig.
While Snake was rummaging inside the container, Noah spoke to the others about the information he possessed regarding potential radiation zones.
‘I must remind you,’ he emphasized, ‘that what we have are just speculative projections from a century ago, so they will not be absolutely error free. The only way we can ascertain accurate data is to survey the ground ourselves.’
‘That’s a lot of walkin,’ said Jonesy.
‘Yes, I agree, it would be if we had to walk,’ replied Noah, ‘but we don’t. I haven’t told you this yet, but my ship has radiation detectors embedded in the hull. I can summon up a readout on my display.’
‘So, you, like, got a Geiger counter built into your ship?’
‘Yes, Jonesy, precisely. We Rama need to monitor radiation sources, intensities and types wherever we go. Interplanetary space is an exceedingly hostile environment and one does not want to spend any more time in it than one has to. We always aim to traverse open space as quickly as possible and find shelter behind a suitable magnetosphere, like, for example, the one that surrounds this planet.’
813
‘It shields us from cosmic rays,’ Ludwig contributed.
‘That is affirmative, Ludwig,’ said Noah. He continued. ‘So, at some stage I should undertake a quick reconnaissance of the surrounding area and map it out for radioactivity. I can take one person with me, there is enough room in my ship for that.’
Everyone’s ears pricked up. Suddenly there was an air of excitement around the fire.
The thought of getting a ride in an alien spaceship had been a top fantasy in all the men’s minds, and even in some of the women’s, for years. It went right back to when they witnessed their first UFO.
Around about then, Snake returned from the container carrying a map and a Geiger counter.
‘Found em,’ he said as he sat down between Noah and Jonesy.
Snake spread out a map of the USA. They began to study its details. Ludwig asked if he could look at the Geiger counter that came in a small, metal box. A quite comprehensive instruction manual was included with it.
‘This map’s got all the power plants marked on,’ said Snake with an almost surprised sounding voice. ‘It says up here that there are 104 of em. And check this out, most of em are east of the Missisip. There’s two in California an one in Arizona. There’s a number next to each one, an here down the right side is all their names.’ He was sounding astounded. He continued sounding completely blown away. ‘I never realized how many nucular plants we actually had. Never even thought about it.’ He looked at Noah and asked him, ‘An you reckon that they’re all melted down?’
‘Have to be.’ Noah replied almost too casually.
‘Like in that ol movie, China Syndrome?’ said Jonesy.
‘Yes indeed,’ replied Noah.
‘What? You seen it then?’
‘Certainly I have. We have all your movies. I believe that the idea, for the China Syndrome screenplay, was actually implanted into writer Mike Gray’s mind by us, er, way back in the early seventies. Of course, he had no idea where it came from,’ Noah smirked a little, ‘but we did.’
‘Holy guacamole,’ exclaimed Snake.
‘I’ll second that,’ said Ludwig looking up from the instruction manual for the Geiger counter. ‘By the way, this measuring of radioactivity becomes quite complicated when you get into it.’
814
The others all looked at him.
‘Let me read you just the basics,’ he suggested. ‘OK. There are four different but interrelated units for measuring radioactivity. Exposure, absorbed dose, dose equivalent
…’ He stopped reading, looked up from the page, closed his eyes, tilted his head back and breathed in deeply. He appeared to the others to be focusing on something within. After a moment’s pause, for effect, he announced to everyone in a very proper, English accent,
‘I do believe that I shaln’t be needing my prune juice this morning.’ After the chuckles subsided, he continued. ‘Radioactivity refers to the amount of ionizing radiation released by a material. Whether it emits alpha or beta particles, gamma rays, x-rays, or neutrons, a quantity of radioactive material is expressed in terms of its radioactivity, or simply its activity, which represents how many atoms in the material decay in a given time period.
The units of measure for radioactivity are the British curie and the international metric becquerel.’ He looked up from the manual and asked, ‘How is everyone going?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Snake, ‘do we need to know all this crap?’
‘I believe,’ said Noah very calmly, ‘that your very lives may depend on it. You now live on what could generally be described as a hot planet. The trick to surviving, and thriving, in such an environment is to avoid the hot zones and hang out in the cool ones.’
Snake and Jonesy’s jaws began to hang limp.
‘Shall I continue?’ Ludwig asked.
The others nodded their heads.
‘OK, er, exposure describes the amount of radiation traveling through the air. Many radiation monitors measure exposure. The units for exposure are the roentgen and coulomb/kilogram. I imagine those are British and metric again but it doesn’t say. Er, absorbed dose describes the amount of radiation absorbed by an object or person, that is, the amount of energy that radioactive sources deposit in materials through which they pass. The units for absorbed dose are the radiation absorbed dose, or rad, and the gray.
‘Er, it goes on here to say that the dose equivalent, or effective dose, combines the amount of radiation absorbed and the medical effects of that type of radiation. This is measured in sieverts.’ Ludwig paused for a moment and read on silently. He then exclaimed, ‘My God this gets complicated. There are so many ways of measuring …’
Noah offered a simplified version.
‘I think basically it’s the type of radiation and how much of it penetrates into the body. Also, different parts of the body are more susceptible than others. The worst thing
815
is when a radioactive substance is ingested into the body by either breathing or swallowing. That is usually fatal.’
‘OK, I found another part here,’ said Ludwig flipping through the manual. He read,
‘There are three primary radiation types associated with radioactivity. Radioactivity is the spontaneous emission of energy from the nucleus of certain elements, most notably uranium. There are three forms of energy associated with radioactivity; alpha, beta and gamma radiation.
‘Alpha particle radiation was found to be nuclei of helium atoms, two protons and two neutrons bound together. Alpha rays have a net positive charge. Alpha particles have the weak penetrating ability; a couple of inches of air or a few sheets of paper can effectively block them.
‘While alpha particles are stopped by a piece of paper, the situation changes once alpha radiation is inside the body.’ He noted, ‘Aha, this is what Noah was talking about.’
He read on, ‘Er, then the effects are more harmful than beta or gamma radiation. So, materials that radiate Alpha particles are harmful if ingested or inhaled, but are not dangerous when external to the human body.’ He commented, ‘Well, at last, that was a lot clearer. Will I read about beta and gamma?’
‘Yeah, go on, Ludwig,’ said Snake. ‘We need to know this stuff.’
‘OK, er, where am I, oh yeah, here, er, beta radiation was found to be electrons, identical to the electrons found in atoms. Beta rays have a net negative charge. Beta rays have a greater penetrating power than alpha rays and can penetrate 3mm of aluminum.
‘Gamma radiation and x-rays are high-energy, electromagnetic radiation, high-energy photons. This classification of radiation has the greatest penetrating power. High-energy gamma rays are able to pass through several centimeters of lead and still be detected on the other side. Gamma rays are produced naturally from the decay of some radioactive materials. X-rays, on the other hand, are man-made radiation used in medicine and dentistry. While x-rays are man-made electromagnetic radiation, their frequency is so high that the radiation is also ionizing.
‘Natural background nuclear radiation is a normal part of our life on planet Earth, it says here. We are bombarded with nuclear radiation every day. Background radiation, from natural sources on Earth and cosmic rays, will cause the Geiger counter to click randomly a number of times every minute. When performing radiation checks to see if a material is radioactive or contaminated with radioactive material, this background
816
radiation count is usually deducted from the reading to evaluate if a material is radioactive.’ He surmised, ‘I guess that’s kind of the gist of it.’
‘Well read, Ludwig,’ said Noah. ‘It was very clear.’
Snake picked up the Geiger counter and said,
‘There won’t be any batteries in it. They wouldn’t have lasted an they’d have made a huge mess of the insides. Lucky for us we have plenty of spare batteries that we brought in our backpacks. They’re fresh. And we got some solar chargers and some rechargeable batteries as well so we should be set. So, what we should do today, actually right away after breakfast, is put some batteries in a couple of Geiger counters and measure the background radiation around our camp.’
‘Very good idea,’ said Noah. ‘I think you may rest easy, though, because I checked it out with my ship as I flew in and it is well within safe levels, although only for about one year as the dose accumulates in your bodies over time. Then you will need to move on.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind taking a closer look at the nearby nuclear plants, and as I said before, I can take a passenger. But before we do anything else, I think that we should all partake of some Mana. It will actually help our bodies to deal with the radiation, not to mention extend our potential life spans.’
The whole group gathered around the main fire to pass around the Mana pipe.
While they were all gathered together like that, Noah spoke to them.
‘I have been wrestling with this information for days. I really wanted you guys to find this out for yourselves, for nothing more than the adventure you understand.
Discovering something can be very exciting. So, it comes with some regret that I have decided to tell you this news myself, er, only because of the current circumstances. Er, the big news is that the majority of the California coast has slid into the Pacific Ocean. The water laps up to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range now. The Central Valley is completely flooded by the Pacific. You know, I really wanted your scouting party to discover this, as I said, purely for the adventure of it, however greater priorities have arisen and here I am, telling this to you myself. Sorry.’
There were gasps of shock and amazement heard around the group as the magnitude of the century-old catastrophe sunk in. They all also seemed to instinctively understand that they were going to have to get over the whole cataclysm eventually, so they all calmly resolved to get over it pretty much there and then. Unbeknownst to any of
817
them, though, was the extent that their states of mind were under telepathic control by Noah. He wanted them calm and in control.
5
By mid-morning, they had put fresh batteries in two Geiger counters and two men, Ludwig and Cowboy, set off to explore the latent radioactivity in the area surrounding Pinecrest Lake. They were gone for the rest of the day.
Snake and Noah studied the map. Noah decided that he wanted to fly over the sunken, Diablo Canyon power plant, as well as the San Onofre Plant that was located on the old Pacific coast of California, in the northwestern corner of San Diego County, south of San Clemente. Although he wasn’t 100 percent sure, Noah believed that this part of the coast had subsided into the sea as well. He was personally very excited and looking forward to exploring that whole coastal region.
The third power plant he wanted to check was, he felt, the most important because it was still on the surface. It was the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station located near Tonopah in western Arizona. It was located about 45 miles due west of downtown Phoenix. He figured that even after one century it was still spewing its radioactivity all over the surrounding countryside. He intended to approach its location very carefully.
The fourth and last nuclear plant he wanted to see was The Columbia Generating Station located 10 miles north of Richland, Washington.
Those were the four closest nuclear power plants to the group of survivors. The San Onofre plant was about 400 miles due south, the Palo Verde plant was about 550 miles slightly east of south and the Columbia plant was about 600 miles north of Pinecrest Lake.
Noah knew some facts about US nuclear power. For example, he knew that the USA was the world’s largest producer of nuclear power, accounting for more than 30 percent of worldwide nuclear generation of electricity.
A very democratic show of hands unanimously voted for Jonesy to be the first person of the group to take a ride in Noah’s magnificent spaceship as he flew on his reconnaissance to measure the latent radioactivity associated with the four nearest nuclear power plants.
…….
818