The Vostok Revelation

CHAPTER TWO

“Emperor Bharata,” A turbaned man wrapped in clean white tunic said as he knelt down and placing his elbows and forehead near, but not on, his master’s opulent black and red checkered floor.

Xi Bharata contemptuously studied the prostrate man several feet below his feet. A purple sash with gold bars? Noting the material tied around the man’s waist. A science advisor, astrology division. Bharata examined the man’s posture for several seconds. Satisfied that none of the advisor’s unclean flesh had sullied the glorious crystalline floor of his audience chamber, he finally spoke, “Yes, what have you for me today science adviser?”

“A message, my Emperor. A transmission has been received from Kawkab El Ard.”

“Kawkab El Ard?” The Emperor’s awkward pronunciation echoed in the vast chamber. Without the slightest change of expression, his mind ran through the names of all the off-world mining facilities, orbiting stations, moons, planets and suns in his possession. He could not recollect ever giving anything such an unsavory and guttural name. Cradling his jaw between his left thumb and index finger, he softly spoke Kawkab El Ard into his jewel encrusted bracer. A second later, his companion, the electronic brain built into his bracelet, retrieved the information and answered discretely through the gold rings dangling from the Emperor’s ears.

“Vasundhara?” Bharata, his face still expressionless, was intrigued to receive confirmation that one of his oldest memories was, in fact, real. “I have received a transmission from Vasundhara?”

“Yes, Emperor. Va… cin… duh… era.” The adviser, now petrified to be talking directly to his master, struggled with the high-caste pronunciation.

“Interesting,” the Emperors eyes fixed on the mural of the blue planet, only one of the many planets, painted on the domed ceiling of his throne room. Unlike the vast majority of his eleven billion subjects, he had known from Day One that Vasundhara had existed. The only surprise to Xi Baharata was in discovering that anything had survived the Anatarnhas, the rain of meteorites predicted to strike Vasundhara, trigger global volcanic eruptions, worldwide flooding, and tectonic shifting. Such planetary upheaval, as the Ancestors knew, would annihilate every living thing on the entire planet. It was with this foreknowledge that the Ancestors created scores of automated craft engineered to traverse the stars and prepare a new world where humanity could again flourish. It was because of this pending catastrophe, sensing what humankind would need to become in order to survive on a new world, that Xi Bharata, Emperor of Ories, Supreme Ruler of all humankind and, two-million rebirths ago, Chief Scientist of Vasunhara’s governing council, became Vasundhara’s only warlord in nearly five thousand Chandra.

Now, after millions of years with no sign that anything survived Anatarnhas, because of this signal, humanity’s first world could perhaps be salvaged.

Pleased, the Emperor’s mood quickly changed as he looked down on the groveling adviser. Pathetic. He comes into my chamber, casts his filthy body down on my crystalline floor, and assaults my ears with his wretched ethnic language.

“Get up and get out of here before I have you flogged for speaking Bicara in my presence.”

The adviser, still averting his eyes, bowed deeply several times as he quickly backed his way out of the audience room.