1. Kiles was in Advanced Guardianship when his transponder began to irritate his chest.  He was watching the instructor combine cobalt, phosphate and an electrode in water to create oxygen gas; one never knows when an alchemical application of psionics may be necessary. 

2. Dayton had built a transponder in the shape of a flattened Onimex medallion for Kiles to summon Onimex with.  Once it was activated, only Onimex could disable it.  He had to be within the vacinity and in the same time in order to hear it.  Kiles had activated the transponder so many times since leaving Earth that he forgot it still worked.  Onimex was now receiving 10,000 calls in cue.  

3. When it hit him, that his transponder was suddenly working -- he jumped up from his seat and nearly made everyone else jump out of theirs.  He was so overjoyed that he couldn't speak.  "Are you OK?" a classmate whispered with concern.    

4. Kiles nodded his head while clutching his chest.  His medallion was tucked under his shirt.   

5. "I have to go," he said psionically to the instructor.  Nobody understood his English or his German but he had learned enough Vejhonian from his mother to get by.  He now thought in Vejhonian. 

6. She motioned toward the door, "But you've got to tell me when you come back." 

7.  "I will," he promised.  

8. He dashed out of the lab and set a new speed record heading toward the most logical rendezvous point.  He had imagined that point so many times in his mind, that he knew Onimex would land there.  It didn't matter -- his medallion was the rendezvous point.  Onimex had trained him to meet at discreet locations.

9. He caught his breath on a cobblestone path that framed a flawlessly manicured patch of grass.  The grass sloped beneath a lake of mythical serenity.  He took a moment to notice that the day was postcard perfect and the bottom of the lake was almost transparent. 

10. He clutched his transponder again:  Call # 10,001.  Onimex was roughly 8,000 miles out, on a trajectory toward Kiles.  He could feel it.  He thrust his arms out and twirled around the way he used to dance when totally elated!

11. The arc became less of an arc.

12. Then a distant streaking dot braked to a soft, purry halt in front of him.  A ripple of sound concussions followed since Onimex was not concerned about his cover at the moment.   

13.  He was genuinely happy to see Kiles and spun around stupidly, like he used to do to show his happiness, an antic he learned from canines.          

14. "Guards!" Kiles said, "What are you doing here?"  He reached out to pat Onimex and burned his hand.

15. “You know better than that,” Onimex scolded him parentally because he didn't duck fast enough, "I'm not supposed to be here in this time."

16. "But I'm still glad we could meet," Kiles said happily.  "I am too," Onimex agreed, "but I’m on a mission from God, and I have to get back out.  If I don't, everything could change."

17. Kiles studied Onimex with wide eyes.  He had a million things on his mind that stopped at one question, "I can't believe Mom let you come?"  Onimex did not respond.  Missing a cue now and again was subconsciously comforting to Kiles and felt natural.  At least some things never change.  Onimex could pixilate his exterior even better than a Jolvian.   He projected a panorama of objects that were endearing to Kiles; that overcame the limitations of speech. 

18. "How's Mom?"  Kiles asked, a little more sober.   He wasn't going to let Onimex evade the question and Onimex knew it.  Kiles knew that this encounter was an accident, but he had every intention of dragging it out for as long as he could.         

19. "She loves you Kiles, more than anything, and when I finish this assignment - it could repatriate you with her."  It sounded like a little white lie.  

20. "Repatriate ALL of us," Kiles ammended with a happy laugh.  His countenance panned from rapturous joy to one fraught with pain.  "You know she won't ever come here, even though they'll let her now.  You already fixed that."  Her unique predicament was above Vejhonian authority.   Kiles didn't know that.

21. Onimex was sympathetic, "Yes and No," he said in his quantitative tone.  His mechanical pulse beat for this single biological.  His feelings were real -- Conscious had told him so.

22. "The discussions we've had on time differentials," Onimex continued, "tampering with history and all of those other 'like' categories..."

23. "Yeah?" Kiles prodded, playing stupid; his trademark antic Onimex knew like the back of his own deflector.  Consistency is comforting. 

24. "I'm in the middle of one of those..." he said, omitting the word, 'paradoxes.'  Kiles knew the missing word.  Onimex continued, "I'm gathering evidence for Kor's criminal trial -- if I don't finish..."  Kiles finished for him, "Time will change."  "Yeah," Onimex confirmed.  Abrupt but true.  Kiles had become more poised and intellectually more agile.   He could have replied with, "Kor's trial was three years ago," but he knew better.  

25.  "Well, how many places are you in?" he asked with machine envy; which meant, "I thought you did that already."  There was a pause as Onimex caught both messages.  There was a subtextual question, "Which Onimex am I talking to?" followed by, "Why can't one of you stay here?" 

26. Kiles sighed like a despondent school boy and looked around like the answer was somewhere in the grass or perhaps in the lake.  Dayton had already admonished both of them against talking in circles.      

27. Onimex nudged him.  "Time is not always..."

28. "...what it seems," Kiles finished.  Kiles made a face that was fracking angry and clinched his fist, then he calmed himself.  Truth will not delay the inevitable.  They knew each others lines.  Kiles rested his hand on Onimex's cooler upper surface.   It didn't make him feel any better. 

29. "When I'm finished," Onimex said, "I swear by Kolob, that you'll see more of me, but, I've got to get going."  Terse, if not impatient. Kiles knew that tone too. 

30. "I've got something for you in the meantime," Onimex said.  I've downloaded a message from your mother into your medallion.  "Watch it in private."  Kiles was stalling for time.  "How's Dad?" he asked.  "OK," Onimex sighed privately, "It won't hurt if I stay just a few more minutes."  He projected the Corlos symbol to abbreviate further explanation. 

31. "Dayton is getting ready to test his second artificial gravity platform -- it's a dramatic improvement over the first one, which was very successful.”

32. "Second... platform?  Kiles questioned.  The projections that his Dad gave him for the first platform, by his sense of time, should not have happened yet.  "How much time has passed on Earth?" Kiles asked suspiciously.   

33.  "Earth experiences almost 10 years for every one year on Vejhon," he answered.  "Every point is a unique point in space."

34.  Kiles looked ashen.  "My Guards," he wailed dramatically, "You mean they're 30 years older since I've came here?"  He knew it, but his consistency was comforting for Onimex too. 

35.  "28 years," Onimex corrected. 

36.  "I left in 1985... it's... it's 2015 there now?" 

37.  "1987," Onimex corrected, and it's 2012 there right now."  He cancelled his comment about math. 

38.  "I don't want them to die before I see them again," he gripped Onimex on both sides.  His real forte' should have been in the theatrical arts.  "Oh, please," Onimex said, seeing the drama and feeling the heartbreak.  There's always a 'little more' to everything.   Their relationship was hard-wired.

39.  "When I get back with my report, there won't be any reason for you to be separated from your parents any longer.  You did the right thing to clear your mother's name, but the time differential is one reason why Ireana wanted you to stay home."  Before Kiles could react, Onimex nudged him, "And... I miss you too.  It's just not the same without you."

40.  The grief was mutual.

41.  "Onimex?" Kiles asked.  "Yes."

42. "When you get home, would you tell Mom, Dad and Xanax that I love them, and I miss them, and that Vejhon is even better than the Cardship said, and to bring Dad with her when she comes, and Xanax?"  Onimex had never set hover aboard a Cardship; he could only imagine what Cardship life was like through available media. 

43. "That's a tall order, Kiles," he answered compassionately.  "You know I'll pull through, if it kills me."  

44. "You're the best thing my Mom ever did," Kiles said.  Onimex was inately modest, so he didn't comment.  A 'blush' was still understood. 

45. "I have to get going," he said assertively, "Please avoid pushing any buttons until I'm out, OK?"  He changed the status of his 10,000+ calls to, "Answered."

46. Kiles nodded his head and patted his transponder gently.  There was nothing that he could do to extend the visit; this detour happened strictly to honor their family bond.        

47. Onimex had cooled down with an unnatural refrigerant that only he and Ireana knew how to make.  He nudged Kiles a third time to cheer him up a little.  

48. Kiles patted him affectionately -- the "I love you" was implied.  Onimex gently pulled away and accelerated straight up, stopping in mid orbit just under the watershell to calibrate a new time index.  He was there before Kiles' senses reported it to his brain.  The campus Guard liason was also approaching Kiles and Kiles knew why.


KILES ARRIVAL TO VEJHON

49. The transponder that Dayton made for Kiles was a dual-function life history recorder that enabled Ireana and Onimex to spy on Kiles; unembellished by his fantastic imagination.  The recording function was unaffected by psionics and synapse.  Ireana later installed a synchronizer for continuity and sequencing.  

50.  While configuring a new injection point from orbit, Onimex reviewed the events of Kiles' life, from the point where he left Earth.  His conversations with Mother while enroute Vejhon were warm and colorful, but things really perked up once he arrived:    

51.  Per order of the Director, the inbound Cardship was sealed until he could arrive in person.   

52. "One occupant better have a lot to say," the Director mumbled.  He wasn't angry -- just perplexed at the exceeding oddity of it.  This was information that the recorder sequenced before Kiles was formally trained in Guardianship.   

53. When the door was opened, Kiles was aboard, but no where to be found.   Most major cities did not have 75 square miles in which to lose oneself.

54. That was when the Director sensed that the half-Vejhonian occupant wasn't hiding from him at all.  The occupant had Theite-like intuition, but was not psionic.  "One of those ellusive types," the Director concluded, "...like a Theite... or maybe a Jolvian."   

55. Kiles watched every step of the Directors approach on monitors in the operations center.  Mother let him in because he was the sole biological aboard.  

56. While enroute, he read Kiles entire life history. He learned about his biological mother, who was, coincidentally, the missing sorceress... but 'Kiles' did not know that his mother was 'the' missing sorceress -- his father calls her that, "this is getting good," the Director told himself, "nothing like a little more fracking intrigue."  

57. The Director saw Onimex, Xanax, Dayton; and every nuance recorded by Kiles' sensory perception, most of which, he had no compulsion to remember. 

58. By the time the Director was on his final leg, he had absorbed the core essence of Kiles soul.  Ireana had never met a real Psionic Guard on M'tro-1, but her parents had told her about life on Vejhon and she was later able to rummage through e-literature, tablets and data files found in the colony library.  Most of the systems were networked, and sometimes, mysterious data would appear from unknown sources in spacial static.  Much of Kiles information was from Onimex.     

59. Kiles had the kind of piss and vinegar that made the Director smile.  He liked his light-hearted sense of humor that he inherited from his father, Dayton.   Corlos had been forced to divulge some of their methodology to the Director.  He put those pieces together too.  The German didn't make sense, but the manner in which Corlos downloaded Dayton's mind into their mainframe made sense. 

60. The Director could see, although unfamiliar with Earth's culture, that Dayton was a former Nazi icon, turned Corlos Operative, exiled to Earth, which made perfect sense because Corlos never toyed with the mundane.   The Nazi's were a lot like The Elite... he figured out that connection too.  Kiles had been sheltered from any negative connotations regarding his genetic composition... "He doesn't know he's a hybred," the Director concluded.  "I like him.  His father, in essence, was the key to bringing down Kor's empire.  How could I not like him?"           

61. Earth had a diverse and dynamic culture not wholly dissimilar from Vejhon's, but alien nonetheless.  A Blue Funnel-like entity had a stranglehold on Earth's financial infrastructure.   Kiles could not provide Earth's coordinates because Mother had deliberately deleted the location.  "Why?" the Director wondered, "What's so special about that one point in space?"  She did not hide anything else -- just that. 

62.  "That guy has the ‘Power of God’ over me," Kiles thought, and then quoted, "... for whom the bell tolls." 

63. The Director smiled at Kiles' over-dramatization, "Don't be afraid," he said to Kiles in psionic symbols.  Accoustically, Vejhonian and English are nothing alike.  Ireana had taught Kiles enough psionics to communicate with Onimex, but Kiles was not psionic by a Vejhonian standard. 

64.  Mother had revealed her fateful tale to Kiles before deleting the Earth's location, which the Director read from Kiles' mind; the crash landing on Earth, the layered time paradoxes and the marooned survivors dying of reversion.  Between Onimex, Ireana and Mother -- the Director could piece together what happened.     

65. The Director psionically ordered his entourage, "Guard everything you know about this, implicitly."  He touched a side-panel button and the door dematerialized.  The other doors were not this advanced.  This door was never meant to be recognized or opened.    

66. Kiles snapped to attention.  The Director motioned for him to sit back down while he examined the room's technology.  He had been born on a ship like this while in exile, but had never entered the spherical chamber that housed Mother's mind.  The chamber represented the pure core of Cacci Dai technology.      

67. "This is like the movies," Kiles thought, thinking that it was his private thought.   Onimex and Ireana were both guilty of making Kiles believe that his thoughts were private when he wanted them to be:  That way, they knew what he was up to, all the time.  The director restrained a private laugh as he deduced Ireana's and Onimex's parental motives, and felt compelled to join them, for now.        

68. The Director grinned.  "I don't know your verbal language, but I can speak to you this way.  We have similar forms of entertainment here."

69.  Kiles grinned because he understood what the Director was saying.  His Mom talked to him in Vejhonian psionics at home -- this was the first time he had ever heard anyone else speak to him in Vejhonian other than her.  Onimex liked to swear in German since Xanax did, but otherwise spoke English since Kiles spoke English.        

70. "Were I your father, I would be very proud of you, for what you have done for her."

71. "She told you that we were empathic on Vejhon.  I am the Psionic Guard Director."  Kiles was humbled and impressed and nodded his head.  He did not expect the highest authority on Vejhon to greet him when he arrived.  "Aren't you supposed to be... God?" he asked privately.  Kiles unconsciously started to genuflect but the Director gently interceded.  The intention was sufficient.        

72. "Your mother could not tell you very much about her home world because she was not born here -- she was born aboard a Cardship and relocated to M'tro-1 when she was 4. 

73. “Before we leave this Ship,” he added, “I need to brief you on local customs and courtesies, some of which you will need to memorize."   

74. That briefing lasted nearly eight hours and was not dull in the least.  The memorization component wasn't very long, and the rest was perfunctory, as a father would advise his son.  At the briefing's conclusion, the Director pronounced, "You're mine," to Kiles, which spoke a family bond into existence:  The only family that either of them had on Vejhon.

I-20's ENTOURAGE

75.  The fallen angel studied the sky with interest, his furled wings singed.  In the sky above was a commotion that he had seen before, as a participant and not as an observer.  By rebelling against the light, he became dark matter; an abyss that sucked up gravity.  He could manipulate his vacuum into energy but was otherwise imprisoned on this barren world.      

 

76.  Having absorbed and reflected the Supreme Light for countless eons, he was now a collapsed being and the master of thirty Billion who followed him.

 

78.  He epitomized what happens when the polarity of a light-machine is reversed.

 

89.  The leader of the fallen ones was not psionic -- it could not read minds:  Eons and eons of observing the Ellipsis and Tetragammeton confirmed that the fallen light machines were not operating under the authority of either, and in essence, learned nothing:  Intellectually void, spiritual feces; exista non grata.  Contractive species are not psionic, embodied or otherwise. 

90.  The chief anti-being observed the arrival of I-20's entourage and held a conference of its own.  "Until a law is given -- a law can't be broken.  They don't know what they're doing," the anti-being said.  "Doesn't Conscious commune with Tetragammaton?" asked an inferior: "How could they come here without The One's consent?"  The chief anti-being stared with contempt toward the sky, "I know your stupid plan," it scoffed, "and I have one of my own."