Alternate States

[Miki Yamuri]

Alternate States

By: Liljennie and Miki Yamuri

Lauri Trillian walked out on her back porch. The night was clear, and the stars overhead twinkled brightly. In the dim light, just on the other side of the barn, she saw what looked like a man in the foggy moonlight ... but he had wings. Only for an instant the image stood there, then it was gone. What almost sounded like a soft and distant sound of large slowly flapping wings could be heard getting softer with distance. It happened so fast that she wasn't sure she’d seen anything. Had it been real? Had it, just for an instant, turned to look at her?

Over the next few days, Lauri decided she’d imagined the whole thing. Wasn’t there an old scarecrow in the field on that side of the barn? The next day she walked out there. There certainly was one, but it was in need of a lot of repair. She turned to go back to the house for some tools and some new fabric, and realized that she couldn’t see the house from there. The barn completely blocked it. The scarecrow wasn’t visible from the house.

No. Imagination it had to have been.

The next day she went over to Bridget Tusberry’s for their weekly bridge game with Janet and Helen. Most of the conversation was about the game, of course, or games they’d played in the past, and then there was Bridget’s husband and his health, or Janet’s daughter and her new wife, what was the world coming to, or Helen and her sister and the trip they’d recently taken.

Bridget said, “You know, Sandy Newsome, she said she saw something in the sky the other day.”

“In the sky?” asked Lauri. “What? Flying saucers again, like last November?”

“You know, those all turned out to be drones,” said Janet. “Or just plain old airplanes. You can’t tell how far away things are at night.”

“No,” said Bridget, “it was day. Something flying. It had huge wings.”

“Where?” Helen asked. “Outside Joe Bob’s?” Everyone laughed except Lauri.

“Ha, no,” said Bridget, “actually it was out by your place, Lauri.”

Now, Lauri had already written off what she’d thought she’d seen as just her imagination, maybe some kind of mirage caused by the full moon beaming down on the barn and the soybeans. Maybe the shimmering night mist in the air could make the scarecrow look like it wasn’t behind the barn. Probably. Even if it had been something, it had nothing to do with her. It didn’t affect her one way or another. Even if it had been real, it had been there, and it had gone. Now, somebody else had seen something, though.

“You see anything out where you live, Lauri?” asked Janet.

An expression of several emotions rapidly crossed Lauri’s face. One of the other women remarked, “We didn’t mean to upset you …”

Lauri said, “No, no … not upset, just sort of startled and amazed. I thought I saw … a man with wings out by my barn for an instant. Was so quick, thought it was just a trick of the light … until I heard Bridget say Sandy saw one too.”

Beth replied, “Well, now. Seems to me we have two sightings by two separate people at two separate locations. This bears more of an investigation.”

Janet said, “Might be a safety thing to it too. What if that thing happens to be vicious … or worse?”

Helen said, “Worse? How could something be worse than violent ?"

Janet answered, “I was thinking of a sex maniacal thing.”

Helen said simply “Oh.”

Lauri said, “Well … if it was real, it didn’t do anything. It was just there … then gone. I went out there. Didn’t see any footprints in among the soybeans.”


By the time Lauri had gotten back to the farm, the thoughts of humans with wings wore more and more heavily on her mind. She no longer believed the winged man she caught a glimpse of was a figment. She had even recalled the faint sound of large flapping wings that had disappeared quickly as it became too soft to hear amid the other nighttime creatures.

She did have an internet connection and used her computer to bring up any real data on such phenomena. Historical accounts of winged humanoids appeared across numerous ancient cultures from the earliest writings. From Mesopotamian Lamassu, Greek Nike and Sirens, to Egyptian Anzû, Horus, and Thoth, and later Judeo-Christian angels. There were winged humanoid beings in Hindu and Japanese mythology.

Those figures, often divine or supernatural, were depicted in art, mythology, and texts, symbolizing concepts like victory, death, or protection, and were found in diverse regions including the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

From what she learned in her search, the legends appeared over and over. Even in mythology there were many accounts of humanoids of one sort or another with wings. The list of names was huge under both searches.

Lauri came to the conclusion that these humanoids were real – something must have inspired these folktales across the centuries. There were too many accounts and descriptions throughout human history to discount it at this point. And she had caught a glimpse of one.

Lauri sat back in her chair and played with a lock of her hair as she always did when she was deep in thought. In her mind, the main issue was … whether it posed a danger or threat. After that came how to meet one … or capture it if a meeting seemed impossible … or at least get proof of its existence since no skeletal evidence existed in any form or fossil.

Did it pose a threat? Well, the one she’d seen hadn’t threatened her. She wasn’t certain it had even noticed her, but if it had, it hadn’t done anything to her.

Well, first things first. She’d been meaning to beef up security around her place for a while now. She ordered some basic security cameras and installed them around her property. If they sensed any motion, they were supposed to record a 30-second video clip. She made sure to attach two of them to the barn. They’d pick up any activity out there. She tested them herself, walking around her property and then looking at the clips the cameras had recorded. Every time she’d walked across their field of vision, there she was, on camera. Good, those worked. She’d probably catch a lot of videos of deer, cats, coyotes, rabbits, and squirrels, but if she got the winged man on camera, it was worth it.

Of course, every morning she checked over where she’d seen him to see if he’d left any evidence behind – footprints, feathers, anything. So far, nothing. A week went by: no videos showed anything but herself or wildlife, and not so much as a footprint. She paid special attention to the camera on the barn that pointed at the area where the winged figure must have been. But only one interesting video ever showed up there, and it was a bobcat, prowling around and sniffing at the scarecrow before disappearing behind a foreground tree. There weren’t a lot of cats in this area, but there were a few.

She even talked to Sandy Newsome, driving over to her house one afternoon. She was the nearest neighbor to the east.

“Well hello, Miz Trillian,” said Sandy’s husband Jeff. “What can I do for ya?”

“Good day, Jeff. Sandy home?” Lauri asked.

“Oh, looking to share some juicy gossip?” he asked. “Well, she’s out in the garden, last I saw, but … oh, look, just came in. Why don’t you come on in and siddown, and I’ll go let her know you’re here.”

Lauri had a seat at their kitchen table, and in a few minutes Sandy came in. “Well hi there, Lauri, how’s things going over at your place? How are you managing, just by yourself?” She opened the refrigerator and started pouring some iced tea for both of them.

Lauri shrugged. “Oh, well, it’s been a bit hard, just me, but I’ve said it before, I’m better off without that cheatin varmint.”

Sandy sat down at the table next to Lauri, setting a glass of iced tea in front of each of them. “You know, I never did like that man. He was no good.”

“Well, I liked him well enough for a while, and then he started sneakin’ around,” said Lauri. “But really what I came here about is … well … I heard you saw something. And … let me tell you what I saw, a week before last Thursday.” She told Sandy what she’d seen, just for a fleeting instant.

“So I put up all these high-tech security cameras all around, and especially on that barn,” Lauri concluded, “and since then … nothing. Not one thing. Got some nature videos. Got one of a bobcat prowlin’ around in the wee hours. But … no flyin’ man.”

“Now you say Bridget told you I saw something,” Sandy said. “and I did. And it was a week before last Thursday too. I was out in our west field. It was just after sunset. And I saw something in the sky. Thought it was a bird, so I didn’t think nothin’ of it. But then I told myself, that’s way too big to be a bird, and I looked again. Huge wings, and in between ‘em, it looked like a person. Arms and legs, and a head. It was headin’ toward your place, westward. But it was gettin’ dark, and it was flyin’ lower and lower. Watched till I couldn’t see it no more.”

“So … maybe he flew in from somewhere, landed out by the barn, waited around for a while, and took off,” said Lauri. “Sounds like he wasn’t doing anything, maybe just resting for a while before moving on …”

“What’s a winged man … or woman, I dunno … even do?” Sandy wondered. “They from around here? Or do they travel around the world? Or are they from … you know, outer space? Or are they angels, and they’re from Heaven?”

“You’re askin’ the wrong girl,” said Lauri. “Wish I knew. But … I think you and I, now we know, that was real. Even if we never see him again, we know we saw something.”

“Glad you came over,” said Sandy. “I’m sure people think I’m crazy, and I was startin’ to think I was.”

Lauri said, “Well, now, sometimes lots of people go crazy. I saw on the Internet, there was the story of the Mothman in the 60s, in West Virginia, and around 2020, ‘round about Chicago, people said they saw it again. But this … this wasn’t no Mothman. That Mothman, no way could that be real and still fly. What we saw, his wings were way bigger. Had to have been about 35 feet, tip to tip.”

“Real big wings,” said Sandy. “You see birds, they got wings that can hold ‘em up. But if a bird’s body was the size of you or me … they’d have huge wings too. They’d have to, or else they couldn’t fly.”

Lauri had inherited her parents’ farm. Currently her major crops were soybeans, corn, and sunflowers. Of course, besides the several hundred acres for farmland, there was also the yard around the house, barn, and a long but narrow field she used mostly as her personal archery range.

One of her hobbies was the making and shooting of the longbow. All around the edges of the large field grew some of the finest cherry, cedar, hickory, and Osage orange, also known in the archery world as bois d’arc. The very name translated to “wood of the bow,” even though it was pronounced “bodark.” She competed in the archery contest at the county fair every year and had won several ribbons and trophies.

She went to her storage shed and unlatched the door. Her pride and joy was a 72-inch cutting deck, zero-turn-radius industrial mower. She ran through the usual checking of motor oil, air filter condition, and the fluid levels within the independently-controlled rear wheels. Lauri loved taking it out and mowing the huge yard and field. The operator’s seat was padded and comfortable. Mowing was like doing it while sitting in an armchair.

By the third trip around the field, Lauri noticed something lying almost hidden at the edge draped across one of the smaller cedar trees. It looked delicate and seemed to be so white it sparkled. She came up to the place and stopped, shut down the mower and got off. To her total surprise, it was a feather almost 5 feet long.

It was bright white with some form of sparkling inclusion. Lauri looked around and wondered if she could find any others, or any other signs. The only other thing she found was some fluffy down-like feathers the same color as the large one. Lauri wasted about an hour searching for some other evidence, but as hard as she searched, she found nothing else but the down and the one large feather.

She returned to the farmhouse and sat at her computer. She began researching large avians and looking over any actual photos available. Even the California Condor, which had a wingspan in excess of 2 meters, had no similar fletch, and according to the net, it was the largest bird able to fly currently alive.

As best she could tell, the largest flying creature to have ever lived was called Quetzaltcoatlus. The group of pterosaurs Quetzaltcoatlus belonged to was characterized by living inland. They were adept terrestrial walkers and were thought to have preyed on mammals, lizards and baby/small dinosaurs. From fossilized skeletons that had been found, their anatomy showed that they had actually been very strong fliers, able to get airborne from a standing start and calculated max flight speeds over 100 mph.

The only issue here was that this particular animal had become extinct millions of years ago and had no feathers. It was way larger than a man and it was shown it could take flight from a standing start without falling off of some large cliff. And its body wasn’t shaped like a human’s.

Nothing Lauri could find made any helpful references to anything modern that would have feathers as long as she was tall. One thing she was going to do was take the feather to the local agri-research facility. She had to know just what this feather belonged to and if it was some sort of threat.

Dr. Brandy Genuri, head of the Agri-Green research facility, sat at her genetic sequencing console in total amazement. The data had shown the genetics of the feather were somehow … human, with a few weird additions to the sequencing. The sugar and protein intermixing was unique in a way Dr. Genuri had never seen nor thought was ever possible.

Whatever kind of avian creature this feather belonged to … It was not only humanoid, but as best the agronomist could tell, it was basically human. She turned and picked up the secure phone. She pushed the speed dial of the number to one of the most advanced genetic facilities on the planet … Nano/Gen.

Lauri was looking through some of the videos her cameras had taken, and she looked at the one with the bobcat again. It was timestamped 2:37 a.m., and the cat simply calmly walked toward the camera, then turned away from the barn and disappeared behind a blurred tree trunk that lay in the foreground. She’d saved that one, because she kind of liked that bobcat. She’d occasionally seen it prowling around at twilight, and she knew that it had seen her and knew her. It was like a friend. Maybe she should give it a name. She had already been leaving food out for it since she first saw it as a small kit.

Then, Lauri looked at a video from last night. It was a raccoon this time, wandering here and there poking through the weeds near the barn. It had been recorded a few minutes after midnight by the same camera that had captured the bobcat video – and then Lauri realized something. There was no tree in the foreground on this video. Now that she thought about it, there was no tree there. She went back to the bobcat video – and there was that blurry tree in the foreground.

She didn’t know what that was, but it was no tree. Was it … the creature? Why did it look like a tree trunk? Why had it been there? What had it been doing? It wasn’t moving; was that how it slept?

Lauri didn’t know what to do other than move the camera. She placed it higher up on the barn wall. It would get a wider angle view that way. Come to think of it … she moved a few other cameras from elsewhere on the property to the barn exterior. She looked at the computer and made sure the cameras covered every angle on that side of the barn. If anything moved there, day or night, she’d see it.

Dr. Thomas Blake was not only the foremost research geneticist at Nano/Gen, he was perhaps among the very elite of the elites on the entire planet. He sat at his diagnostic table in complete open mouthed shock.

The down feathers and the rather large five foot feather that Dr. Brandy Genuri, head of the Agri-Green research facility had delivered along with the other research materials on this object, showed conclusively, this was a humanoid with some form of avian naturally genetically mixed.

From all the results of the intensive testing, an impossible genetic mutation had obviously occurred. He could not belive the manner in which the nucleotides had been perfectly matched. From all evidence, this was no genetic construct, but apparently was a natural genetic life form.

Blake enjoyed science fiction a great deal, and therefore was well versed in many of the fantasy and mythological humanoid creatures with wings … and over the centuries, there were quite a few names, mythologies, and legends. Now, was there an actual basis for all of the many legends and myths? He felt the fluffiness of one of the sparkly down feathers and came to a conclusion. He now believed that, yes, there was a basis in fact.

He picked up the receiver of his lab phone and dialed Dr. Genuri’s office at Agri-Green research facility.

The phone rang twice, “Hello? This is Research and Development, Dr Genuri. How may I help you?”

Thomas smiled as he replied, “Hello, Dr. This is Dr. Thomas Blake … “

Dr Genuri’s excited voice came quickly back interrupting, “OMG!! What an honor to have the most famous in our profession calling me. What help might I be?”

Thomas replied, “Is there a way to … perhaps locate the creature this feather you sent me came from?”

Brandy replied, “I’m not sure. According to the individual who found the specimen, she has been attempting to find solid evidence for several months. This is the best she could do so far.”

Thomas asked, “Are you able to be in touch with that person, and if so, might it be possible for them to call me? I would love to go to the location the specimen was found and do a tad of exploring.”

Brandy replied, “That’s not a bad idea. Give me an hour or so and get in touch with her … I’ll call you back.”

Thomas said, “Thanks Dr. I would really like to find more spoor. This creature is totally unique to the genome I’m familiar with.”

The line went dead. Brandy hung up the receiver and fumbled through her contact numbers. She couldn’t remember exactly what it had been.

Lauri watched the night’s videos. Cars drove by on the highway and triggered the cameras sometimes, but it wasn’t a very busy road, so it didn’t happen often. Deer, coyotes, even birds set the cameras off. And then … on camera 5, at 10:33 p.m., it landed.

The night-vision infrared wasn’t in color, but it showed the creature … it was like a man. It came down from the sky, landed on its feet, took a few steps, then locked its knees, raised its arms and wings up into the air, and somehow interlocked them, spiraling together, until it really did look like an old dead tree trunk – at least, at night, on a night-vision camera. Then it stood motionless for the rest of the night. Before sunrise, it unwound its wings, flapped them powerfully, and took off straight up into the sky, vanishing from the cameras’ view.

Lauri closed her mouth, realizing she’d been staring open-mouthed at the videos. She carefully saved them.

Her phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Lauri Trillian?” asked a man’s voice she didn’t know. “I’m Dr. Thomas Blake, and I’m a genetic engineer from Nano/Gen Research facility. Dr. Genuri from Agri-Green called me. I’m fascinated by these feathers you found, and I was wondering if I could see the area where you found them. Maybe perhaps any other evidence you might have.”

“Well … if you can find the place,” Lauri said. “It’s a bit out in the sticks. If you’re sure. I’ve … got video evidence now.”

“You do?” Dr. Blake asked. “Well, that’s valuable. I’d love to see, if you don’t mind.”

It took a while for Lauri to explain how to get out to her place, but Dr. Blake said he’d got it.

A day later, Lauri was sitting on her front porch when several large panel trucks showed up. The top of each of the trucks opened, then expanded into some sort of communication dish which expanded like a pasta colander. Outriggers extended and stabilized the vehicle against the weight and location of the added dish. Out of one of the trucks stepped a very handsome man with thin wire-frame glasses.

He saw Lauri standing by the porch steps, waved, and approached her. He said, “Hello, I’m Dr. Thomas Blake.”

Lauri replied, “I’m Lauri. Come with me into the study, and I’ll show you all I have.”

Both of them walked into the house and down the hall to the study while the rest of the men and women scurried around setting up different types of research equipment.

Thomas sat in an armchair with his mouth open in total shock as he watched the creature land, then wrap its wings in such a way that it appeared like a tree of some type in the dim light.

Lauri said, “I’ll take you to the place where that was taken. It’s out by the barn.”

Thomas stood and followed Lauri out the door and across a large open grassy area to the barn. Once they had rounded the side of the barn, both of them immediately noticed an unusual footprint.

“Appears to be a print left by a nearly-human foot,” Thomas said into his voice recorder, “mixed with something else with claws.” He took several photos from different angles.

“You’re thinking this is, what, some kind of mutated human, then?” Lauri asked. “Maybe some kind of genetic hybrid?”

Thomas replied, “No, I’ve sequenced the DNA from the feather you sent, and it doesn’t show any of the telltale signs of being any kind of gene splicing or manipulation. This is natural … for some value of natural.”

“Humans can’t breed with birds,” Lauri said.

“No,” said Thomas, “but as you said, mutations happen, and … we don’t know how long ago this one happened.”

“You mean,” said Lauri, “there’s an actual population of bird-people? Somewhere?”

“I don’t have any evidence for or against that,” Thomas said. “It’s only one hypothesis among many. I’m hoping to narrow them down by collecting more evidence.”

“And that’s assuming that any of the ideas you’ve got is right,” Lauri pointed out. “What if it’s stranger than you think?”

Thomas smiled. “Then we learn even more. That’s actually the best-case scenario.”

Lauri watched as Thomas and several of his techs took soil samples around the print. One young man stooped and very gently collected a vial of the dust within the print, before he built some type of barrier in the shape of the print out of tinfoil. Another tech arrived with a small container of plaster and slowly poured it into the walled in print. He filled it to the very top edges of the tinfoil then went off to make some kind of entry into his data base.

Laurie watched as the plaster quickly set and changed from some kind of off-white grey to bright white. The tech showed back up with some type of pen-like device and touched the plaster with it. The red light on the device changed to green. The tech smiled.

He then took a small flat tool that looked sort of like a small trowel and began running it around the inside edge of the tinfoil. With this tool, he also carefully removed the plaster cast from the tinfoil. Lauri was amazed; he held in his hand a perfect plaster cast of the strange footprint. He quickly tagged it with time, day, date, and the geographical location it had been found before carefully cleaning and storing it in a padded collection box with several other similar casts of much older almost vanished prints of the same type they had found while examining the area.

Lauri had lost track of Dr. Blake. “Thomas?” she said, looking around. “Where’d Dr. Blake go?” she asked the researcher.

During his investigations, Thomas had walked over to a thick stand of trees he’d seen across the soybean field off in the distance. The crop of soy he had to walk through to get there was abundant and healthy. As he wandered into the edges of the stand of trees, he discovered a spring a bit larger than a creek but smaller than a stream cutting through the landscape.

It had carved a rather wide and deep crevasse for its bed over time. Thomas walked to the edge and looked down. It had to be almost 50 feet to the bottom, and way more than 100 yards across, which was surprising, based on the observable geology. The spring’s water source was visibly underground. Thomas could see the rock formation it gushed from before it became a small but beautiful waterfall.

The way down to the bottom wasn’t steep or hazardous, although Thomas had begun seeing small pieces of down feathers every now and again, although there were very few. About half way to the bottom, he rounded a protrusion that had been obstructing his vision. As soon as he rounded the protrusion, he discovered a cave beneath it, although this cave didn’t look exactly natural.

The opening into the side of the bank looked more like a constructed tunnel opening more than anything else due to the way the large round river stones had been placed in a very recognizable way. Of course, Thomas was prepared; he brought out a very bright LED flashlight from his pack and turned it on.

As Thomas carefully looked around, he was impressed at how well constructed this tunnel was. He was no longer even considering the possibility that this was a cave of any sort. Off in the far distance, a bit further off than his bright LED light could illuminate properly, he could see that the tunnel appeared to open up into a larger area. He was loath to call it a cavern yet, until he got to actually see it.

Thomas marveled at the construction techniques used. It looked for the world like some of the underground Roman constructions he had been fortunate enough to be in on the explorations of. He walked slowly, examining the fine hairlike seams between the stones, and wondered what type of binding agent they had used to hold the stones in place, if any.

After a short walk, Thomas exited the tunnel and stepped into the huge open area. Right in front of him stood two large statues, one on either side of the path he was following. He shone his light on them and marveled. What he saw were two attacking Avian warriors in armor, with their wings spread and their feet out in front of them where it was obvious that they used the large claws like talons.

There was light by this time, but Thomas couldn’t for the life of him find its source. He was now more than ever wanting to know what was in the other room beyond the statues. He slowly crept forward; he was determined to see.

He slowly realized that there was a faint, distant sound he almost couldn’t hear. He wracked his brain trying to figure out what it might sound like. Suddenly, Thomas’ eyes grew large as he realized that it was the rustle of many wings.

Thomas began to consider the possibility that he was vastly outnumbered and started to turn back when his flashlight lit up the figure of Lauri coming down the tunnel toward him.

“Ms. Trillian,” he said quietly, to avoid making too much noise, “you probably shouldn’t be here – neither should I, in fact. This place could be dangerous. Did you know this tunnel existed on your property?”

“Knew about the spring,” Lauri said quietly once she’d reached him, “but never saw this before. I wasn’t in the habit of going down into the crevasse real often, but there wasn’t any tunnel like this last time I looked – which would’ve been about five years ago. Maybe something uncovered it recently?”

“Down that way, I could hear a lot of what sounded like distant flapping wings,” Thomas said, just as quietly. “I don’t know if we want to disturb that many creatures.”

“Right,” said Lauri, turning around, “they might not take it kindly if we go stompin’ into their home. I’m sure folks with wings don’t stay underground because they like it.”

Thomas followed her back down the tunnel toward the light of day. “No,” he said in nearly a whisper, “they surely want to avoid notice by humans.”

And then there was a rumbling sound ahead of them, and the circle of daylight in the distance vanished. They stopped still and saw a cloud of dust in their light beams ahead of them.

“Cave-in?” Thomas wondered aloud. “But the tunnel looked well constructed …”

“Beneath us,” whispered Lauri, stepping toward the tunnel’s side, and Thomas stepped to the opposite side, because now he too felt movement in the stones beneath him.

The stones where they had been standing just then vanished as a dark hole opened up between them. From the hole leapt two humanoid creatures that had not wings, but two massive arms with digging claws protruding from their backs.

Speaking English with a heavy accent, one of them turned to Lauri and asked, “Who are you? What you want here?” The voice sounded human-like, perhaps masculine, but smooth in its tone.

Lauri got over her staring really quickly and replied, “Uh, well, hi there, I’m Lauri, and I do some farming up above here. We found this hole we’d never seen before and wondered where it went. Sorry to intrude.”

The creature replied, “Lauri. You are known to us. You live on surface near.” Then he turned to Thomas, pointed a very formidable appendage, and asked, “You are not known to us; who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Thomas Blake, and I’m here investigating sightings of a winged person on Lauri’s land.”

“Seniri!” the creature exclaimed. It sounded like some kind of curse word or profanity, but he went on. “Seniri was told not to go above. He stays out for days. Now that he is back, we were told to shift to digging body and close tunnel so Seniri would stop endangering the people. Now we see he has.”

“Shift to … digging body?” asked Thomas.

The creature said, “We not know what to do with you. No got orders. Aargh! Why on my shift?”

“Is my shift too,” complained the other creature. “I want to know what Hannuri will say. Glad I am not these surface people.”

“Do not move,” the first creature said to Laurie and Thomas, and the two of them climbed down, came up with visible stone below them as if they’d sealed the entire tunnel they’d dug through with solid stone, and then closed up the hole completely, seemingly shaping the stone like clay with their two massive digging arms and two smaller human-like arms. Soon it was as if there had never been a hole.

“Now you come with us,” said the second creature.

“Fascinating!” said Thomas. “How do you do that with the stone?”

The first creature said, “Not my job to answer questions. We take you to supervisor. He ask you questions. This way.”

He pushed Lauri down the tunnel toward the large cavern, mumbling, “Why gotta happen on my shift?”

“You too,” said the second creature, pointing Thomas down the tunnel in the same direction. “We see what Hannuri want us to do to you. Hehehe.” It seemingly laughed at this.

When they reached the opening into the large cavern, the first creature said, “Do not fall,” and put its arms under Lauri’s shoulders. She looked back and saw its digging arms change shape, grow feathers, and become enormous wings. It leapt off the edge into the vast emptiness, to Lauri’s total fear, carrying her rapidly aloft. Soon there was light here and there along the walls, and as they went, the cavern curved, and lights became more and more frequent, until ahead of them a fully lit segment of the cavern came into view.

Winged people were constantly flying from one opening to another along the walls, which had at least 25 stories on either side. Massive columns stood to the left and right of the center, with lighted perches cut into them where sentries stood watch. They flew to one of the larger sentry posts, where the creatures set Lauri and Thomas down on the platform. Laurie briefly looked behind her. She wasn’t going anywhere; that was a sheer drop of at least 200 feet.

Ahead of them stood a particularly large and powerful creature, its wings furled behind its back, but as Laurie and Thomas approached, prodded by the creatures who had brought them here, this leader, presumably the one called Hannuri, shifted its wings into weapons, so it now had two multi-jointed arms tipped with huge razor sharp bonelike blades in addition to its human-like arms.

Thomas stood up straight and said with firmness, “We are unarmed and mean you no harm.”

The creature seemed to hesitate for an instant as several expressions crossed his features. He replied with equal sternness, “You are of the Human clan and not of the Avian. Why have you sought us out and trespassed on our soil?”

Laurie spoke up then and said angrily, “Trespassed? Sought you out? Excuse me? I see something I’ve never seen before, discover others have glimpsed it too, and even found spoor. We didn’t intentionally trespass, nor do we mean any harm. All we wanted to do is discover this new creature we found evidence of and explore something that has obviously been here for a long time, but hidden.”

Hannuri cocked his head to one side, then transformed back to the winged man and arranged himself so he could sit. He replied in much more cordial tones, “I must apologize for that. We did put a stop to Seniri’s wanderings. Unfortunately for the two of you, we sealed the entire tunnel out to the stream bed solid. We’d hoped no one had caught sight of him, but alas, it seems the damage is done.”

Thomas asked, “Where do your people come from, and how do you come to be here?”

Hannuri smiled and said, “We have been here in hiding for centuries. Your clan has historically proven to be horribly violent and warlike. From recorded observations over the centuries, if not checked, your clan will destroy each other as they did so many other different selections of humanoids.”

Laurie asked, “If you sealed the tunnel, how are we to get out?”

Hannuri replied, “We didn’t realize you were here until the tunnel was sealed. The only way out from this point is to dig.”

Thomas had a severe and thoughtful expression on his face as he said, “There’s a major issue here. My research team knows where we went. If the tunnel collapsed, they’re going to do their best to dig it out.”

Hannuri stood and said as he beckoned, “Don’t be afraid, no harm will come to you.” To the others, he said, “Nahali, Periri, bring them to the library.” He stepped off the ledge and glided away. The two who had brought them there once again picked them up and flew them in a dizzying arc to one of the many lighted openings in the cavern walls.

Hannuri led the way as the other two winged beings set Thomas and Lauri down. Thomas was intrigued to see that the place was lighted with a plant that produced luciferin, the perfect light. Lived off the humidity in the air, and produced about the same amount of light as a 100-watt bulb.

Thomas, Lauri, and the other winged beings followed Hannuri into a side area that had an actual wooden door, bound with heavy iron bands. When he opened the door, Laurie and Thomas stood with their mouths open in shock.

The room was extravagant. The floors were lined with some sort of thick shag that looked like some kind of animal, maybe. A huge ornately constructed fireplace with some type of large candelabra on both sides. One whole huge wall was a library from floor to ceiling. Closer examination proved these manuscripts were older than most of the known civilizations and were all made by hand.

Hannuri invited Thomas and Laurie to come sit in one of the plush chairs or wallow on the floor with one of the super thick pillows.

He picked up a silver bell and rang it. Its tinkling sound was soft and quiet, but seemingly penetrated everything. A winged being fluttered to a landing after coming from an opening high in one wall Thomas had overlooked earlier.

Hannuri asked, “Would either of you like a beverage? We have many types of tea. Sorry about sweeteners, though; we only use honey.”

Lauri asked, “How about some honey cakes to go with the tea?”

Hannuri actually smiled. “Absolutely.” He turned to the other creature and said, “I want three cold glasses of sweet black mombasa and a plate of honey cookies.”

The creature seemed to vanish in a flash, and just as quickly, he returned with a tray with three large glasses, a pitcher, and a huge platter of cookies that he placed on the low table in front of them before he vanished once again.

Hannuri poured them all tea as Lauri said, “Your people knew who I was?”

“Of course,” said Hannuri, having a seat and sipping his tea. “We know, of course, who owns the land above us, in the world of the surface people. We keep track of such things for our own safety – after all, what if you passed away one day, and ownership of your land passed to one who would dig into the earth and discover us? You, however, merely worked the surface of the land for crops, as did your parents before you, and thus you were no threat.” He turned to Thomas and said, “You, are another matter. We don’t know you.”

“Well, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Thomas said.

The one who was apparently named Periri added, “He said his name was Dr. Thomas Blake. Said he came to investigate after Lauri saw Seniri.”

Hannuri replied, “Well, Dr. Blake, one can’t blame you for being curious.”

“I have so many questions,” said Thomas.

“I can answer those that aren’t a risk for us,” said Hannuri. “But … and this is probably going to be difficult for you, I know, but we can’t have you telling everyone we exist.”

“I understand,” said Thomas, “but I’m still curious anyway. Maybe we can work something out – start the process of creating a peace treaty between our peoples, or something. But I’m not a political representative of any kind.”

“Perhaps,” Hannuri said. “I am not a diplomat either. Whom do you serve?”

“I work for a corporation called Nano/Gen,” said Thomas. “I have a lot of latitude in what I research, though. Can I ask … how do you transform your wings? Do you know how that works, on a cellular or molecular level?”

“I am not a scientist,” said Hannuri, “rather a security commander, but we are in the habit of calling them alae, after the Latin. It is not that we transform the alae; we transform our entire bodies, the alae included. We have several useful forms we all learn to take as children, and some others that we learn when we specialize in different professions. But as to how exactly it works … perhaps you can speak with one of our scientists later. I know only that our bodies are made of cells, as with every other living creature on Earth, and the cells rearrange and take on new roles.”

“Fascinating,” said Thomas. “So a form is like a skill you learn, and like humans, who learn many common skills, you specialize into a career and learn more forms, as humans learn more specialized skills. I suppose I’ll have to wait to learn how you can rearrange and respecialize your cells at will. I could have sworn I saw skin cells change to bone and feathers disappear completely.”

“Yes, reabsorption of feathers, scales, or hair into the body happens automatically,” said Hannuri, “but again, ask a scientist to explain how it works, on a cellular or molecular level.”

“Now, I’m not a scientist,” said Lauri, “but I saw the two of them molding rocks like they were clay.”

“Yes, the earthwalking form is one of our basic forms,” said Hannuri. “That form’s alae are made for reshaping earth and stone. There are also the flight form and the swimming form; those forms all of our people know. You saw me take on the battle form briefly – those of us who are warriors learn that one, but not everyone does.”

“You’re a warrior, but you seem very calm and collected,” Lauri said. “You seemed hostile for a moment, but only until you saw who we were.”

“It’s the training,” said Hannuri. “We must be ready to defend our people against threats. If you wish to meet those of our people who are truly disagreeable, I can introduce you to some politicians.” He chuckled, and there were chortles from Nahali and Periri, standing guard outside the door.

Thomas chuckled too and said, “Perhaps another time. But … forgive me for asking, but is this city all of your people there are?”

Hannuri raised an eyebrow and replied, “Now, there is a question that I’m afraid I cannot answer. It is a matter of security.”

“Ahh,” said Thomas, “I understand. Question withdrawn.”

“Do you have,” asked Lauri, “I mean, are there … men and women? You … have children, right?”

“Of course we have children,” Hannuri said. “We must, to have a future. But unlike the surface people … we can choose. Most of the time, we’re neither male nor female. But we form couples. When we do, one chooses to carry the child, and the other chooses to produce the seed and to help when the mother grows large with child. Once the child is born, both raise them equally. We also have a community that aids in raising young to insure they are properly instructed.”

“Oh,” Lauri said. “That’s very … equable. So … do I call you he, or they, or …?”

“Ah, English and its pronouns,” chuckled Hannuri. “Not as bad as some surface dweller languages, I’ve heard from the scholars. Our language doesn’t have gendered pronouns. I suppose you can use whichever ones you like to refer to us.”

Above ground, things had started to become hectic. Thomas and Lauri were unaccounted for. The only thing anyone knew of Thomas and Lauri was that several had seen Thomas crossing the soybean field headed towards the spring. Lauri had asked where Thomas had gone and had headed in the same direction, and that was the last anyone had seen or heard of either of them for many hours.

Of course, the team searched everywhere diligently for any sign of them and found nothing. The spring was sunken and hidden from obvious view from the surface, but they had gone down and searched, finding footprints that could have been theirs but no sign of them.

The Avians were experts at camouflage after these many centuries of hiding from humans, so the tunnel opening was completely gone. The area looked like nothing had touched it, including what appeared to be years of wild growth. It now looked like the rest of the unused banks of this stream.

The source of the stream was obvious as it gushed from a collection of large rocks, forming a small waterfall before becoming this stream. The stream was above ground for only a short distance before vanishing once again into a large collection of rock, as is normal for this particular type of spring.

The stream wasn’t deep enough to hide a body in, and the drains for the stream at the far end were way too small to allow a large object to pass. The seams where the rocks stacked on each other were so small, the team couldn’t even get their fingers into them. There were only large enough gaps to allow the water to escape.

No one could justify bringing in a bulldozer or a bucket-loader, because there was no indication that doing any type of earth moving would accomplish anything but destroying the habitat. The ideas on what happened got to the point of alien abductions and spontaneous teleports. Everyone on the team knew they couldn't put that in their reports.

Nano/Gen responded quickly. One of their very best had vanished, along with a civilian, while researching a new life form. Regardless of cost, they had to discover what happened, or at least some evidence. Nano/Gen even went so far as paying for Lauri’s entire soybean crop more than twice over, since they had mostly destroyed it when they landed all their heavy lift helos there and offloaded their research equipment. Of course the extra money was justified by calling it rent for the use of the field as a landing and staging area.

As advanced as their research team and their equipment developed into with the new addition of items from Nano/Gen, they still found not one shred of evidence that would give any clue as to what had happened. Now, even the best of the best at Nano/Gen started postulating that alien abduction or spontaneous teleport might just be a fact, not wild fringe theory.

Once the genetic data on the feather hit the scientific journals, the news of another form of mankind spread rapidly through the scientific community, although it didn’t resolve the issue of where Lauri or Thomas had gone. The weird genetic data on the found spoor made sensations. The only real issue was that the only samples they had were the original ones. No one anywhere could find a single shred of further evidence, nor any clue as to what had transpired with Lauri or Dr. Blake.

Thomas sat back in the comfortable chair and took a large swig of his tea. It tasted wonderful and made him feel tingly all over. He began to worry about what Nano/Gen or one of the other places that were involved might do to the local area looking for them.

He looked around the large plushly decorated room with true awe. The Avians were on par or greater than his people as far as intelligence. Thomas smirked; he actually thought they were more advanced, but humble enough not to flaunt it.

There was a sound of wings outside and some whispering, and then Nahali came in, saluted sharply, and said, “Sir, reports state that the surface dwellers have increased their presence in the field above, including landing more vehicles and equipment.”

“Oh dear, that’ll be my employer,” said Thomas. “I should tell them something before they start drilling into the ground or the like. But … what should I tell them? And I doubt my mobile phone will have a signal down here.”

Hannuri said, “No need to worry; this room has a signal repeater. You may use your device. But please, be careful what you say. I am listening, and I’m not the only one.”

“Um, all right,” Thomas said. He made a voice call to his primary assistant, who should be on the surface team right now. “Hello, Dr. Lawrence? Yes, I’m sorry I’ve been incommunicado. Lauri and I just found something fascinating, and I lost track of time. Yes, I’m fine, Anna. Please don’t worry. Oh – GPS says I’m where? Haha, well obviously I’m not in the Yukon. Something must be severely distorting the signal, probably proximity to some unusual mineral layers. What? Dr. Holland wants to talk to me? Very well, then.”

He paused and looked at Lauri and Hannuri. “Dr. Holland, you’re on site? Well, I’m sorry to drag you all the way out here, but on the other hand it is quite a find, isn’t it? Yes, I’m hoping to be back with some evidence soon … oh, where exactly am I? Frankly, I’m probably beneath your feet – some considerable distance. How am I talking to you? That’s actually a very good question. I’m still investigating. The point is, there’s no need for alarm. Lauri and I are both quite well. When will I be back? Let’s say … within six hours. We’re both beginning to feel rather tired and should head back in not too terribly long. Yes, of course, Dr. Holland. Looking forward to it.”

He put his phone away. “I made up the six-hour figure,” he said, “but it is true that we can’t go forever without rest. The question is, how do we proceed?”

Hannuri said, “Messages have been sent among our leaders, and we’ll probably be receiving their decision soon. The fact is, I detect no ill will in either of you, only curiosity. But word of our civilization cannot be allowed to leak to the surface world yet. Our diplomats will need to make contact, if that’s the route the leaders decide to take. I can see several ways the decision might go, and I can envision plans for each. But that’s what I do – make plans to protect our people.”

Lauri asked, “What if they say to take us prisoner?”

Hannuri smiled understandingly. “I can see how you might worry about that, Lauri. But that would be nearly a last resort. We don’t like being imprisoned, so we don’t have anywhere to lock you up. Our criminals – yes, we do have a few – aren’t confined; they’re simply tracked and put to work.”

“So what might happen?” Lauri asked.

“I see two general strategies they might choose,” said Hannuri. “They’ll send you back alone, or they’ll send you back with an emissary. The rest is details.”

“So we might be sent back to the surface with no evidence … and instructions not to talk?” asked Thomas.

“No,” said Hannuri. “You’ll be sent back, we’ll carefully construct a cave that you supposedly found with some reconstructed skeletons, and you can claim that you’ve been investigating that for the past several hours.”

Again, there was a sound of wings outside, probably indicating that a messenger had landed, and then Periri came in, with an envelope bearing an official-looking seal. He handed it to Hannuri, who opened and read it.

“I see,” Hannuri said. “You’re to be returned to the surface … and I am to be the emissary.”

“You’re going to …” Lauri began, and suddenly Hannuri had changed form. He looked like a human man, a bit heavy-chested, but with no obvious alae on his back. He even had clothes – a dark gray suit with pinstripes and a gold tie over a white shirt. “That’s amazing!”

“Thank you,” Hannuri said. “Disguise is also part of security. Please come this way.” He led them out through another doorway, down a hallway, and to another chamber, one with a large circular raised platform in the center. He stepped up onto it and said, “This will take us to the surface. Please join me, if you will.”

When Lauri and Thomas stepped on the platform, it began to rise toward the ceiling, which appeared to be made of solid stone but retracted as the platform ascended, allowing it through. Stone continued to shape itself into a cylindrical tunnel above them until the stone opened to the evening sky. Stars were beginning to twinkle amid a deep blue sky. “And here we are,” Hannuri told them, stepping off the platform and into the soybean field.

They weren’t among the Nano/Gen helicopters, but they weren’t far away. When Thomas and Lauri followed Hannuri off the platform, it rapidly dropped into darkness, and the ground closed up. There was no sign of where it had been – even the soybean plants returned precisely to their previous locations.

“Now, I suppose you can introduce me to your superior, this Dr. Holland,” said Hannuri.
“All right, then,” said Thomas with a grin. “I’ll take you to my leader.”

Lauri led Thomas and Hannuri through the stretch of soybean, past the trampled place Nano/Gen had used as a landing and staging area to the Farm House. The old farmhouse definitely didn’t look as it had for the last hundred years. Once they had entered the house, they entered the library. Thomas saw Dr. Holland leaning over a large table with a map of some sort spread all over.

Thomas walked over and said, “Hello there Dr. Holland.” As Dr Holland stood and turned they both shook hands. Dr. Holland had an angry expression.

Dr. Holland said sternly, “Now, this had better be good. Do you realize … ?”

Hannuri stepped forward and said, “I think you need to clear this room. We have data to discuss that we will need your opinion on.”

Lauri and Thomas placed their backpacks on the table and began removing fantastically advanced artifacts Dr. Holland had never seen before or even read of. Several of the artifacts were obviously large manuscripts that were an unknown age but by observation appeared incredibly old.

Dr. Holland looked at Hannuri with a strange expression for an instant before he said, “Clear this room and shut the door on your way out.” Once the last person had reached the double doors, they turned and closed them behind them. “Now, tell me who you are. I know who Lauri is, and I know who Dr. Blake is, but you, I have never met.”

Lauri said, “Let’s sit here as adults, and we will explain what we have been up to for the last several hours. I know what we’re about to tell you will totally amaze you.”

Dr Holland said sharply, “Who are you to tell me about being adult? I can excuse you, Lauri ... But Dr. Blake.” He turned and scowled at Thomas. “He knows it’s a major violation of security and safety protocols to be incommunicado for over 7 hours while conducting an official investigation. The only thing anyone knew was that Dr. Holland was last seen walking towards the spring the other side of the soybean field. When you asked his location they told you he might be there. For 7 hours no one had any clue where either of you were, or if you were in danger or hurt and needed assistance.”

Hannuri looked sideways at Dr. Holland, “I can assure you, what they have discovered and what we have to discuss will change your entire perspective about evolution on this planet.”

Dr. Holland replied angrily, “And just who are you, and what makes you think you can …”

Hannuri interrupted, his voice taking on some sort of echoing bass majestic quality, “I am Hannuri. I am Shamshin zim Telal. That means Captain of Warriors.” He transformed into his battle form, barely fitting into Lauri’s library. His alae appeared and became massive blades at the end of multi-jointed limbs, the light glinting from the razor-sharp edges. His foot claws extended, as did several from the backs of his hands. His suit became finely-crafted, formidable combat armor. He continued, “I am of the Avian Clan, and we have allowed the Human Clan to rule the surface world these many thousands of years. I have met these two fine members of your clan, and through discussions with them my people have decided to once again attempt to make some formal treaty with the human clan. Trust me when I say, if no equitable agreement can be reached, it bodes ill for your world.”

Dr. Holland was speechless as he fell back in a chair and fearfully stared wide-eyed and totally mind-blown at the battle-ready Hannuri. He wasn’t sure what precisely he was looking at.

Thomas picked up one of the large and obviously extremely old tomes from the table and said, “This book tells a history of a people we thought were just fables and myths. It also tells the bloody and extremely violent history of humans. There’s no mistaking many of the battles and wars described. Even taken from this book’s different perspective, I can tell which historical incident was being discussed. This history goes back thousands of years before the dates given to the Kesh temple hymn or the Instructions of Shuruppak … which are supposedly the oldest complete manuscripts that survive.”

Thomas carried the heavy volume to the table and set it in front of Dr. Holland, then opened the front binder. Written in a flowery old English script it said: Translated and copied for the Human Clan in hopes for peace ; December 25, 1600 by: Elokin Hummond - Royal Scribe.”

Hannuri had changed back to his human-like form by this time. “I … am by no means a political authority,” said Dr. Holland, looking back and forth between the tome and Hannuri. “But I may be able to arrange some kind of meeting. I do not know how seriously they will take me … or you. This is … a lot to accept. Might I suggest the United Nations, or some other multinational body that regularly hosts representatives of many nations? If you can convince at least a few nations that you exist and mean business, there would be a better chance at convincing others.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Hannuri, “we might discuss a strategy for whom to contact?”

“I’m gonna have to build another house for all these guests,” said Lauri. “Maybe an apartment building.” Her home had become a hub of activity. She also noticed major renovations and repairs. Hannuri had managed to attract the attention of several smaller world nations whose issues were often overlooked by the United Nations; they were always looking for ways to gain influence. United Nations representatives were free to travel within the United States, especially for official business, so there were currently several RV trailers parked in Lauri’s yard that housed representatives from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu and the African island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe.

“My people would be happy to provide such a structure,” said Hannuri, “but only with your permission, Ms. Trillian.”

“Well, show me some plans, and we’ll talk,” Lauri said. “But how’s it going, for now?”

“These diplomats believe I exist and am really who I say I am,” replied Hannuri, “and we have made arrangements to help their nations in certain ways. Perhaps from there they can convince others from other nations to meet with me. The process is beginning. Meanwhile, Dr. Blake is still attempting to understand our genetics and how we are related to the human clan. Our scientists are attempting to assist him, but our methods are considerably different. I am not a scientist, but from what I understand, it is difficult going. I do not doubt that he will figure it out in time, however.”

“Not sure if you need me to do anything,” said Lauri, “but I’m here for you.”

Hannuri raised an eyebrow. “Your land is becoming what may be the site of a historic moment for both our peoples,” he said.

“Not sure I could stop it now if I could,” Lauri said. “Not that I’d want to.”

“I am glad that you do not wish to impede the process,” said Hannuri. “For your own peace of mind, I assure you that if you wish these proceedings to take place elsewhere, merely say the word. I have no wish to intrude. We would find another site. I would worry about your livelihood with so many vehicles and temporary structures on your farmland, but I believe this ‘Nano/Gen’ corporation is currently compensating you adequately for the use of your land.”

“Oh yes, no worries there,” Lauri replied. “I’m not worried financially. I just hope we don’t end up the center of some kind of controversy or even violence. Not to say your people are violent … but I know mine are. Lots of crazy humans this side of the ground. They’ll do anything if they think they’re gonna lose any of their money or power … ‘specially if they’ve already got way more than they can ever use.”

The word of the largest gathering of world leaders in history all in one single location was big news, especially since several nefarious factions had discovered its location. Major preparations were made by them to cause as much damage and loss of life as possible and perhaps change the course of history as invisibly as possible.

As clandestinely as possible, especially with the remoteness of the target site, large numbers of well-trained combat troops converged on the location in a complete surround from all directions being absolutely sure to stay as hidden and unobtrusive as they could manage. Small-scale individual troop-movable weapons and other unobtrusive military hardware were moved into the area as rapidly as possible without revealing themselves. They even had limited satellite surveillance, or at least what little they managed to hack into.

What they had disbelieved and ignored was that this was this world’s first contact in human memory with a separate but highly advanced alternate civilization and the peaceful enactment of a global treaty for the betterment of both species and the entire globe.

The alternate side of this selfsame coin was total obliteration of the entire planet. The Avians made it more than plain that after this many centuries, they had tired of hiding in the earth and not being able to fly freely. The rest of the free world learned rapidly that nuclear weapons were not the ultimate weapons that many had thought they were.

A small-scale demonstration removed all doubt that the Avians were fully capable when a small uninhabited volcanic island in the Pacific vanished in a bright flash with a tremendous amount of heat, leaving no evidence it had ever existed except for the huge expanse of rapidly boiling seawater. There wasn’t even any residual ionizing radiation or radioactive fallout.

Unknown to the advancing battalions attempting to surround Lauri’s house and the new large facility that had just been constructed, was the unknowable weapons array they were marching directly into.

Overnight a large building had appeared on Lauri’s property. It was low and flat, set far back from the road, and it could barely be seen from Lauri’s farmhouse. It had one story above ground; the number of stories below ground were known only to a few. And there was now an underground passage that led from a new door in Lauri’s root cellar to this new building. Its locks were operable by only a few humans, including Lauri, Dr. Blake, and Dr. Holland.

At the moment, the meeting was about to start, so Hannuri and Dr. Holland were in the large assembly room. Standing off to one side of the podium, Hannuri put his hand to the side of his head for an instant and said, “I have been informed that there are those approaching who are about to be harshly dealt with. I am letting everyone on premises know it’s coming."

Next to Hannuri, Dr. Holland looked around at the huge collection of the world’s leaders. He was impressed – but he also hoped this wasn’t the beginning of the end.

A spokesperson stepped up onto the podium and said into the microphone, “Welcome, ladies, gentlemen, Senators, and other world leaders. I would like to welcome you to the revelation of, and the historic treaty of peace we are about to …“

The huge building was suddenly filled with a bright light and trembled as if in an earthquake.

In Lauri’s farmhouse, she was watching this event on her TV screen, but then her entire house was also filled with the same light and shook with the same shockwave. She gasped and tried to look out a window, but everything was still very bright. It looked to her as if several large bright white sparks had appeared all over her land and the surrounding farms. Each one was a massive detonation of energy that had just obliterated a group of advancing troops, along with all their equipment. Somehow, there were no explosions of dirt or destruction of wildlife or even greenery. A few singed leaves were the only sign that anything had happened.

Hannuri whispered into the spokesperson’s ear. “Uh. Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “There has been a situation, but it has already been dealt with. It seems that certain nations of this world do not want to see this peace treaty signed. Their troops separately approached this building, but they will no longer be posing any threat to these proceedings. I’m informed that any further interruptions will be dealt with similarly.” She drank a glass of water and took a deep breath.

Many of the delegates and dignitaries were standing up and clamoring for attention, shouting questions and wanting more details. Many of them had assistants who were showing them incoming information as it came, so things quieted down as they looked at their assistants’ tablets or phones, or the assistants whispered in their ears via wireless earpieces.

In her living room, once the light had faded and her eyes had readjusted, Lauri realized that she had a message on her phone. It was from Hannuri, who had been provided with a mobile phone but had then never been actually seen using it. She read the message and looked out several of her windows. “What? Troops? They’re gone already?” There was another message, and she looked at it. She texted back, “Yes, I’m OK. Just a bit shocked. TY 4 asking.”

She went back to the TV screen, where the spokesperson was trying to get proceedings started again. The representative from Tuvalu had ascended the podium and was speaking about how his Pacific island nation had somehow been raised above the sea to its earlier levels – entire atolls, every islet and reef, just a few inches. They were now no longer worried about their nation vanishing beneath the ocean due to rising water levels from climate change, though they had no idea how it had happened. But it had happened exactly when the Avians they had spoken to had told them it would.

It had become more than obvious the Avians were far in advance of all the educated and industrialized nations … not to mention the many less industrialized and developed nations who ranked the poorest on the planet. It was also excessively obvious the Avian’s had lost no knowledge to war over the many centuries that mankind had to relearn because they lost knowledge in their foolish wars.

Those small undeveloped nations that had starved for so many years, suddenly found a massive supply of food … and even clean water. Whatever this device was the Avians gave to them, they thought of it as magic – even the wealthy nations had no explanation. As fast as they could manage it, all those nations signed a nonaggression pact of full peace and cooperation with the Avian nation. The larger industrialized nations were quick to leap on this bandwagon, they knew deep in their souls that the Avians were not playing, and were demonstrating massive amounts of restrained frustration.

Of course, when dealing with the mankind clan, there were those nations who thought themselves somehow superior and would rather kill … or under the current circumstances, be killed. These undereducated individuals brought Hannuri much consternation. It sorrowed him badly that they demonstrated such high levels of ignorance. Hannuri knew that not one of them had an inkling of what the end result of their actions would be if allowed to continue.

In a very well lit war room, many men in uniforms with varying officer insignia were in a heated discussion about current events.

The general with all the gold braid and the shiny gold and silver medals all over his chest banged his fist on the large table in anger, “I tell you, those ... abominations must be destroyed. Not one feather can be left.”

Another who had only several silver bars said, “We can’t just attack. I mean the US, Russia, and even China have all capitulated to the demands of those demons. Any sign of aggression by any of our factions would result …”

The general hung his head and said with obvious exasperation, “I know. Odds are good that any direct or frontal assault would result in those countries launching full scale missile attacks with who knows what kind of warheads.”

Another within the huge crowd of officers could be heard saying, “You must tune into the WKILL frequencies and stream the video of the Avians’ … what they called a demonstration.”

A hubbub of voices flowed like a raging storm for a few minutes until the general said, “Ok, I've tuned this receiver to a WKILL broadcast …”

He didn’t get to finish his statement as the large screen in the far wall of the war room came to life. It showed a medium sized barren volcanic island about 20 miles by roughly 25 miles. The entire screen flashed brightly white for an instant. When the light faded, what they saw was a rapidly boiling expanse of ocean where the island no loner existed.

The commentator for this particular stream came on and explained, “What you have just witnessed is the Avians’ proof that they will accept nothing short of a huge effort on our part to stop our killing and mayhem. As far as everyone concerned has determined thus far, and by the goodwill actions of saving many island nations from rising ocean levels, the atmosphere becoming noticeably cleaner as CO2 and methane levels fall rapidly, all the industrialized nations are on board for an all inclusive peace and mutual cooperation treaty. The Avians have more than demonstrated their intent for peace.”

The scene on the huge screen changed suddenly. No one knew how the clips had been filmed, but what they showed were rather well-armed mobile combat teams approaching the currently-designated meeting place. The screen suddenly turned completely white for an instant or so. When it cleared, nothing of the large advancing armies were anywhere.

The commentator’s voice returned, “And what we just witnessed there, was the Avians removing the armies that were going to attack. Based on how many of the poor unindustrialized nations the Avians have given means to make food and clean water, they are intent on making peace.”

One of the commanders said, “With that kind of weaponry, just how are we supposed to get close enough to do any damage?”

One of the 12 that were dressed in white labcoats said, “Does anyone remember COVID?” There was a soft round of mutterings. He held up a vial that glowed a soft gold color, “How about a pandemic that only we have the vaccine for and that kills so fast those western devils won’t have the opportunity to search out a cure. We don’t even have to hit a target, just land a missile when the wind is blowing the right way. This virus is not only airborne, it is also contact contagious … any contact will soon be deadly for an unvaccinated person.”

Another of the white robed individuals said, “Here’s a demonstration of this weapon and proof the vaccine works.”

The streaming images on the large screen changed. There were many filthy individuals in various stages of ragged dress. Several white robed individuals entered the area with a large box. They opened a window on the side of the box. Instantly, all the individuals in the room but those in lab coats gasped loudly, and many weird purple/green spots appeared all over their bodies that began to bleed, before they all collapsed. Elapsed time was less than 8 seconds.

The ones in the lab coats appeared to take blood and skin samples before they went to an antechamber. Huge gouts of flame filled the large screen turning every thing to ash before it turned off, sterilizing the entire room.

“Is it possible for the virus to be too effective?” asked one commander. “If it kills victims too quickly, how will it spread?”

“The virus lasts far longer in the environment than most, for one thing,” said one scientist. “For another, collapsing isn’t death – the victims lapse into unconsciousness, which lasts for an average of seven days before they die, during which time they’re highly contagious. Also, the cadaveric transmission rate is very high – meaning that it can easily be caught from deceased victims.”

“Can this virus affect the Avians?” asked another commander.

“We have no way of knowing that,” another of the scientists said. “We have no way to test. This is for punishing those humans who have fallen from the true path of putting humanity first.”

“So here’s the plan …” said the general.

“Naturally, any benefits we give to the poorest will eventually just end up in the pockets of their wealthiest, of course,” Hannuri was saying, with a finger to the side of his head. “But that just means that the wealthiest will be in favor of our plan, as it will line their pockets richly eventually.” He paused as if listening. “Yes, of course.”

Lauri emerged from her bedroom and wandered into the kitchen in her cute babydoll nighty, starting the coffee maker brewing. “Oh, you’re already up, Hannuri,” she said. “Good morning.”

“Ah, good morning to you too, Lauri,” Hannuri said. “Thank you for graciously allowing me to stay in your home.”

“Well, thank you for upgrading my house,” Lauri said. “The roof needed work, and the exterior needed painting.”

“I have a question for you,” Hannuri said. “Why are there those among the human clan who don’t want peace?”

“Well … the way I see it,” Lauri said, “there’s really just two kinds of them – the ones who stand to lose money or power if peace happens, and the ones they’ve fooled into following them.”

“I see,” Hannuri replied. “And yet so many of your wealthiest will gain even more wealth if there is peace.”

“Sure,” said Lauri, “but not all. Lots of money to be made on war, and stoking the flames. Power too. Point out an enemy and blame all your country’s woes on them, promise to do something about them, and bam, you’re elected.”

“Even if the country’s woes existed before that enemy did?” asked Hannuri.

“See, you’re trying to use logic," said Lauri. “These leaders are con artists. They know all the tricks to turn off the logic in people’s brains.” Without Warning, Lauri gasped loudly.

“And there is no way to … Lauri?” Lauri had collapsed on the kitchen floor, bleeding purple and green blotches on her skin.

“No!” shouted Hannuri and tapped the side of his head urgently. “Medical team, my coordinates, now!”

“It appears to have been spreading like wildfire across the US countryside,” said one of the Avian doctors. “Highly contagious, but it doesn’t seem to affect us. Our cells must be just different enough.”

“But Lauri? She’s more than our friend. I don’t want to lose her,” said Hannuri.

“We have her in a stable but suspended state,” the doctor said. “It’s enough to keep her alive, but she’s unconscious. Thankfully your warning prevented Drs. Blake and Holland from leaving the council building, and its atmospheric filters are apparently keeping the illness at bay. We believe that we’ve isolated the virus just now; we’re examining it carefully to ensure this.”

“I must find where this illness began,” said Hannuri.

The vast majority of humans in the infected region were in their homes, sick and dying, as there simply weren’t enough hospital beds. There were some who had isolated themselves as soon as they heard the news, and a very small few who were naturally resistant and were slowly recovering. High-ranking government, military, and corporate officials were, of course, safely in isolated undisclosed locations.

Hannuri walked through the waterfront area of a silent human coastal city. There were still bodies lying on the ground; it was horrible. He changed to flight form and flew onto the deck of a nearby ship, entering its bridge. He read the log. It had docked moments before the first cases had appeared.

He took off into the air above the ship. Its deck contained many, many cargo containers, and many more were on shore. But if it had been only moments, none of the containers on shore could have come from the ship. Focusing on the ones on the ship, he searched for any that seemed to have been opened, or for anything unusual about any of them. The timing was too convenient for this not to have been a biological attack.

He spotted one cargo container that looked damaged – its door was open. He flew closer to get a better look; his eagle-like eyes in this form showed him that the latch was broken, and looking closer showed him that there were fragments of it outside the container, and some empty metal canisters lying on the deck nearby. The latch had been blown from the inside by a small explosive charge. He looked inside the container; it was empty except for some plastic bags that smelled horrible.

Then he heard something. It was below decks. Something had moved down there. He took off again. He wasn’t sure where the humans put the entrance that would allow him to descend below the deck. He examined the tower where the bridge was and found a staircase going below. He shifted into stealth mode, landing without a sound on the metal staircase and silently descending on catlike velvet feet, listening for more sounds. Was someone still alive on this ship? If they were, they had survived the illness and might be among those who had caused it.

Footsteps. They were coming! They would probably be heading for the stairs. He took a position behind a wall so he could listen. Hannuri had learned many surface languages, so he understood when an approaching voice said, “Come on. The extraction must go smoothly.” Multiple sets of footsteps went up the metal stairs. Hannuri could easily have killed them all, but he needed information. He waited for them to pass, then silently climbed the stairs after them. He went higher, and then he saw them.

While he’d been below decks, a small speedboat had approached the container ship. The four men who had been on board this ship went to the side, attached and deployed a flexible ladder, and began climbing down onto the waiting speedboat. Hannuri could see a larger ship farther out to sea. He switched to flight form and took off, ensuring that the men climbing down toward the speedboat couldn’t see him, until he was high in the sky.

He flew out to sea toward the other ship. He needed information; where where these men from? He touched the side of his head, near his ear. “This is Hannuri. I’ve found what I believe to be the men who released the virus. They stowed away inside a cargo container, then blew the latch, released the virus into the air, and hid out below decks until their extraction came. They are now returning home on board an unmarked yacht, directly below my coordinates.”

“Understood, Commander,” said the voice of Periri. “Will you slay them all?”

“I need evidence and information more than vengeance,” Hannuri said. “Collect the empty metal canisters from the container ship and test them for residual virus. After they released it, they stayed below decks; search for any evidence there. I will place a tracking device on their ship; track it until it reaches its destination.”

“Yes, Commander,” Periri said. And Hannuri dove from high above the ship into the water. Perhaps they saw him; perhaps not, but he shifted to swimming form just before hitting the water and made nearly no ripples. His alae became long, powerful, undulating fins capable of driving his streamlined body through the water at great speed, and he could now breathe dissolved oxygen from the water. He attached the tracking device to yacht’s hull, inside the well above one of the impeller driveshafts.

He saw the speedboat approaching. His job was done here. He swam some distance away, then launched himself into the air, switched to flight form, and flew back to the facility where Lauri was fighting for her life.

“Commander,” said Periri, “we’ve brought the canisters to the lab, and the scientists say the virus residue is a match to what the doctors are detecting in the systems of the sick humans. Permission to speak freely, Sir?”

“Go ahead, Periri,” Hannuri granted.

“Those human fools released this virus onto their own people to punish them for making a peace treaty with us,” Periri said. “Why are we going to such effort? Why not simply allow it to kill them all and take our rightful place on the surface world? Or even simply do as we like and kill any who resist? They are inferior to us in every way, and they continually show us how little they care for one another’s lives.”

“That is not your decision, Lieutenant, nor is it mine,” said Hannuri. “The High Council has decided, and it is our job to carry out their orders. But the human clan and the Avian clan were once one people, long ago, so they are our kindred. It is wrong for kindred to kill one another, and the fact that some among the human clan do so does not make it right for us to. It merely makes those who do so guilty of horrible crimes. I was enraged at the humans I found today, and I would have slain them all except for two facts: we need to know where they come from, and they have not been tried and found guilty.”

“I hope they will be,” said Periri. “They, at least, deserve death.”

Hannuri replied, “Once they return to their homeland, they will be captured and delivered into the hands of human authorities, along with evidence of what they did. If they are found guilty at trial, it is likely that the humans will give them the death you believe they deserve.”

“Hm. At least I got to pull the trigger on some of those ridiculous human fools who tried to assault the council building,” muttered Periri. “They chose death by their actions clearly enough.”

“I will check on Lauri,” said Hannuri. “Return to your duties, Lieutenant.”

“Sir.” Periri saluted and left.

Thomas couldn’t believe it – he stood in a biologist’s fantasy laboratory. It didn’t matter that this place was probably miles beneath the large rock layer this area was known for; it was advanced far beyond anything he had ever seen. He was one of the top geneticists at Nano/Gen, the most advanced human lab on the planet … but after seeing the Avians’ labs and equipment, he was humbled to his soul.

They had brought Lauri to the facility and set up a negative atmosphere isolation room, complete with all the bells and whistles including emergency equipment within easy reach of whomever was in the chamber.

Tom looked at Lauri through the thick isolation window. He had no clue what it was made of, but he knew the window was some form of metal and not a polymer, crystal, or silicate glass.

He felt terrible as he looked Lauri over. Her medical readouts were stable, but on the dangerously low end. The oxygen hood over the upper portion of her body only made things look worse. She was covered in those horrid purple/green splotches that would ooze blood randomly and had a moderate fever. Her hair had become ratty, and there were bald places on her head. The bald places were unmistakable, since they were huge open oozing purple/green sores.

One of the Avian scientists came over to a panel at the foot of Lauri’s bed and inserted some type of crystal after injecting something into her IV tube. Immediately, the large screen on the wall of the lab lit up and began showing Lauri’s vascular system. Thomas noticed a weird red-green thing concentrated in various locations throughout the scan.

After he had insured he was properly deconned, the Avian scientist exited the isolation unit, came up to Thomas, and held out his hand, “My name is Screee. I think I might have a solution to this mess.”

Thomas took Screee’s hand and shook it warmly, “My name is Dr. Thomas Blake. I’m the head geneticist at Nano/Gen.” He pointed at the image on the screen, which was continuing to focus in on finer detail. “What have you come up with?”

About that time, the image became sharp. What Thomas saw looked like a lunar lander, except it had an elongated midsection between the legs and what looked like a control room of some sort on top.

Screee pointed and said, “What I have done is engineer a simple virophage to seek out and consume the main Gat protein in the other virus. Since it was a genetic construct, the guanine and adenine bonds were weak due to an improper mix of the sulfonating agent with the sulfur required. If I have my phage seek out and connect to the peculiar sugars in the virus's weakened cellular bonds, it would seem to me it would have a huge feast. You saw me administer the phage to Laurie a few minutes ago – do not worry; we have already run millions of simulations of each version of this agent, and this final version was successful in over 99.9% of scenarios. I know that ordinarily we would run live testing, but there simply isn’t time if we wish to save the lives of Lauri and so many other humans. Now, we have to be patient and vigilant and observe the reaction."

Thomas knew that humans, including some projects at Nano/Gen, were investigating the use of targeted virophages to attack viruses for which there was no other treatment, but the Avians were light years beyond anything he’d ever heard of. Thomas was in no way happy that Lauri was the guinea pig for the first live human trial of the new serum. Under the circumstances, though, there really wasn’t any other choice, this or she would die shortly. The two of them made themselves comfy in the couches as they watched the large screen.

To Thomas’ complete surprise, he saw millions of the weird lunar lander looking objects as they attacked the other viral strain. It looked like lunar landers setting up shop on something that looked like an old WW2 shipping mine more than anything else.

He watched many of those mine looking things being torn apart and consumed by the weird lunar lander things; the phage was proving extremely effective against the engineered biological warfare agent. Within 20 minutes, no mine looking spheres were on the screen, only the lunar lander things. In another few minutes, even they had vanished from the scan.

In that time Lauri’s skin gradually lost those weird purple/green sores, and all oozing had ceased. All the nasty looking sores on her head vanished, although the hair was still missing at this point.

Lauri’s eyes fluttered open. She looked around before partially sitting up, “What happened?” she gasped. “Last thing I remember, I was telling Hannuri good morning.”

Thomas came to the viewing window and turned on the intercom. “Good morning, Lauri, and welcome back. I’m very glad to see that the Avians figured out a treatment."

“Treatment? …” said Lauri faintly. “Was I … ill?”

“You were,” said Thomas. “A great many others were too. This was a biological warfare attack. I was lucky that I was in the council building when the viral cloud swept by. The Avian scientists have found a treatment that eliminates the virus from the body. It doesn’t confer any immunity, but the fact that you were infected once may have accomplished that by itself.”

“We have already programmed a vaccine,” said Screee. “That has already been delivered to your human medical institutions of various types. But Lauri’s system was in too much jeopardy. It could not defend itself. More drastic action was needed.”

“Yes, those who haven’t been reached by the virus have been vaccinated, so they won’t be affected,” said Thomas. “Those farther away are next in line once more vaccine can be manufactured. But those who were infected … many have died. We saved many in your area because they were relatively near this facility.”

“And even now, teams are moving out, armed with this virophage agent,” said Screee. “They are looking for survivors clinging to life, injecting them with the same treatment that just saved your life.”

“My friends … Bridget … Sandi …” said Lauri in a weak voice.

“They’re recovering, like you,” Thomas replied. “But you need to rest. You’ll get your strength back with time.” Lauri smiled, and her eyes closed, sleeping peacefully.

“Hannuri has made progress on those who created this virus, I hear” said Screee. “But if you want details, you may want to ask him.”

Hannuri had made sure that the US government had a complete set of copies, in triplicate no less, of all evidence he and his subordinates had collected – as well as several other governments as well as the UN. It was quite complete – right down to the identical DNA between the virus found in victims within the US and the viruses that Avian investigators had found in other locations including labs in a certain distant rogue nation. The viral trail was excessively visible due to the uniqueness of the genetic composition of the virus.

That nation had complained about a violation of their sovereignty when the inspection teams arrived, but they were reminded by every other nation on Earth that they had never signed any kind of treaty with the Avians, and that if the evidence they find here showed what it purported to show … there already existed a state of war between their nation and a large number of other nations through out the planet.

They had thought their attack untraceable … but they had been wrong. Technically, the Avians had caught them in the act. There was no denying the evidence, the eyewitness accounts corroborating the videos, and the actual footage. The viral genetic trail they left behind was easy to follow, since the virus genome was unique and the trail led unquestionably to them. Besides that, there was one more glaringly obvious piece of evidence, which was: no one in that nation or its allies had come down with the infection contrary to the rest of the world.

Hannuri was an exceptional commander and warrior. Every now and again he would loose his seeming inexhaustible patience and allow his martial instincts to show, sometimes in his severe reactions. Truth be told, he was a vary fair and lawful person. After meeting Lauri, Thomas, and many of the world leaders, he realized that it wasn’t the human clan that had such severely warlike tendencies, but certain select groups and individuals within each clan were to blame that left a stain on the rest.

After going over many ancient historical documents, Hannuri had come to the conclusion that it had always been so. The written documented proof covered millennia. It was always a small group that somehow managed to inflame a larger group, resulting in conflict.

The problem was, minor issues were badgered into huge problems that resulted in all-out warfare. Also, the coward’s tactic of blaming all of one’s troubles on a weaker opponent would also result in severe violence. There was also documentation of certain members of the human clan totally eradicating other humanoid creatures that occupied the planet with them just because they were different.

While Hannuri thumbed through yet another volume of historical documents that proved it was a select few who created the issues among the human clan, Thomas entered the huge library with an armload of laptops and memory sticks to go with them. He walked to the large table and placed his burden down.

Thomas said, “Hi, Hannuri. I see you’re doing a lot of historical research. Find anything interesting?”

Hannuri said with a slight bit of sorrow in his tone, “Hello, Dr, Blake. I have actually discovered something … rather interesting in my opinion.”

Thomas sat, opened one of the laptops, and turned it on, “What did you discover? Are you able to share it?”

Hannuri replied, “I can. Just so you know, I don’t want there to be anything between you and me except friendship. Firstly, you need to know I was of a mind to wipe out the entire human clan except for a few special ones when they started with the biological weapon attacks, and I wasn’t alone. Many of the Avians were of the same mind. What I couldn't understand was why the wisest of the Avian clans wouldn’t do the extermination protocol on a global scale.” He pointed to the many large volumes neatly stacked around his place, “Until after reading the historical accounts of the Human clan, I discovered it isn’t necessarily the whole clan. It’s a few of those within who have the ability to fire up people’s attitudes and turn off their thought processes.” He banged his fist hard on the table, making a booming noise, “So … I discovered that for all these centuries, it hasn’t been the human clan, per se … but let us say a small infection within. I swear to remove any and all contaminants I can find. To make sure I’m on the right track, I’m presenting my current decontamination extermination protocol to the council.”

Thomas watched with wide eyed open mouthed incredulity as Hannuri rose and left the library. He watched thoughtfully as several of the Keepers came and returned all the large volumes to their proper storage locations. At this point, Thomas knew someone somewhere, was about to have a really bad day.

In a well-fortified bunker buried some miles under a mountain peak, many officers sat around a large table and basically were having a huge argument over current events. They had received a video transmission over their most secure communications network. They were at a loss how anyone could gain access without security discovering the breach.

The video opened with the image of Hannuri, who appeared in the video to be a very large and muscular humanoid with feathers where his scalp hair should have been. “Greetings, slime molds of the human clan. I am Warlord Hannuri. Since I’m not one of the lowest of the low cowards as you have proven to be, I am notifying you of the upcoming conflict. Since the rest of the human clan has done its level best to join us in peaceful cooperation, I have identified you as a contaminant by your unprovoked biological attack on the planet and refusal to accept the only means all of your peoples have to survive. What that means to you and your nation will be discovered shortly. There’s nowhere you can run, and nowhere you can hide. Let us hope I’m more merciful than you. Releasing a viral weapon onto your own kind is as cowardly as you can get. We will be seeing you shortly, Prepare. I do so hope you offer at least some resistance.”

The large group of men were very less than pleased with the message, especially when their radar began reporting a huge mass of flying objects rapidly approaching them. The arguing intensified. They had already received many threats of total nuclear annihilation from the other nations besides and weren't sure how many of the approaching mass were missiles.

“Launch missile defense systems!” ordered a general.

“They already launched automatically, Sir,” replied a colonel. “Ineffective. Reports are inconclusive as to why. Our radar scans are proving to be mostly worthless.”

The ground began to rumble beneath them. “How are they penetrating this mountain?” the general demanded.

“They … they haven’t even reached this location, Sir!” the colonel said. Before the power went out, the radar still showed the airborne objects still a ways off but rapidly approaching.

Battery-operated emergency lights shone dimly. “Evacuate!” ordered the general. “Get to the emergency tunnel!” The large group left the conference room and ran down hallways. The ground shook again.

When they reached the doorway leading to the emergency tunnel, it opened onto a smooth wall of solid stone. The officers pounded on it with their fists – it was no facade, no illusion. It was a rock wall, it appeared as if the tunnel had never been excavated. “To the surface stairs!” ordered the general.

The entire group turned … the ground rumbled and a large hole opened, huge Avian warriors emerged from the floor in front of the group, their skin changing from stone to armor as their alae changed from digging claws to living weapons.

“We know the orders you gave,” one of the Avian warriors said, their echoie voice like gravel. “You have caused the deaths of untold millions and have forfeited the right to live.”

It was the very last thing the large group of military leaders and their huge group of followers ever heard as their entire complex was suddenly encased in stone … all of them included. Perhaps curious future paleontologists would find their fossilized skeletons someday and wonder over it.

“There are no genes for belligerence, no genetic markers that can tell us whether one human or Avian will turn out to be a murderous dictator,” Hannuri said. “Our scientists have studied both genomes for centuries. But we can tell bad seeds by their fruits.”

“No!” said the scientist. “Please! We were just following orders!”

“And that is why we will be leaving you alive but destroying this laboratory,” said Hannuri. “All samples sterilized, all information eradicated.”

“But we do disease research! We’re searching for a cure for cancer –”

Hannuri cut him off. “That is a cover, and you know it. You are making no progress in such a cure and any research or discoveries you claim to have made can be proven to be nothing more than window dressing. Besides, my people are ready to share the cure for all currently known cancers with any human nation that signs the peace treaty with us. Yours has not.”

“But - but that’s not my fault!” said the scientist. “The Great Leader and his generals –”

“Have already paid for their actions. I can assure you all of their punishments have been written in stone.” Hannuri replied grimly. “There is to be no more senseless slaughter of your fellow people.”

“But … what do you call what you did to the command bunker?” asked the scientist.
“Decontamination,” Hannuri replied.

The large group of scientists all fearfully huddled as the well equipped modern research facility basically seemed to age many centuries in seconds and began to crumble away. True to Hannuri’s word, not one single scrap of anything was left but crumbling moldering piles of corruption and dust.

The large group of Avians seemingly vanished as the group of scientists escaped from the large research facility. None of the men had ever seen anything like this, except maybe photography of time-lapse age effects on an object.

The last of the scientists had managed to exit the huge facility before it basically collapsed in a large cloud of debris and dust. Later, battlefield forensic teams could ID nothing unusual in the remains of the facility. Whatever means was used had left no traces. Whatever research or work had gone on in the facility, nothing usable could be recovered from the debris. No one knew how they had eliminated all electronic copies of their research data from every electronic system worldwide. It was impossible … and yet it had happened.

The last of the more aggressive of the individuals left alive discovered rather rapidly that there truly was no place they could run or hide to escape. None knew how those bird-things had managed to even appear, much less how they seemed to dominate everything suddenly. Then again, due to the fact their faction had been caught red-handed using a biological weapon in an aggressive attack, the rest of the nations had made their attitudes well known.

It boggled the remaining terrorist's minds how large a bite their coalition had taken. It was way more than they could chew, too, and it was way too late to do anything about it. The known remainder of the faction had perhaps a thousand members. The rest of the globe, including an unstoppable army, was surrounding them and against them. Whoever that Birdthing Hannuri was, he was right – they had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. They were completely surrounded by an angry planet out for blood.

Hannuri sat in a comfortable chair padded with thick cushions. He had assumed his human form, although he was still a huge and muscular man. He had apologized profusely. His issue was that when he and others of the Avians had learned to take on human form, the human clan were a lot bigger and more muscular than now. It would take time and a lot of practice, but this issue could be fixed eventually.

Hannuri said, “The leaders of that faction are … lets us say, dealing with the world with hearts of stone. They’ll not be leading anything anywhere.”

One of the leaders of a remote island nation that had been somehow rescued from rising sea levels spoke up. “With all due respect, what do you mean by that … ‘heart of stone’ comment?”

Several of the others who knew more of the incident and were in better communication with the Avians asked, “Do you want the truth? Or would you rather we be cordial and just say they had been rendered unable to do anything about anything and are no longer a threat to anyone?”

The leader looked around at several of the leaders from the larger industrialized nations, and had a strange doomsday kind of feeling wash through him as he saw the serious expression on their faces his question had caused. With determination he replied, “The whole gory truth, if possible.”

One of the other warriors with Hannuri named Bya Sgro stood and said quietly, “The truth is, their entire underground fortress was encased in solid granite with them inside. No place to run or hide with no reprieve options. Same as they gave to the rest of the world with that stupid virus.”

Those who weren’t already in the know turned pale, whether they had secretly harbored such genocidal notions or not. Those who had empathy felt horror for their fellow humans. Those who had no empathy felt terror for themselves.

Screee was helping Lauri into her home. She still felt a bit weak, but she was a lot better than she’d been, and her hair was growing back in the spots where it had fallen out. She’d gotten a haircut and was wearing a colorful head wrap while it evened out. She’d insisted that she was strong enough to get by in her home, and Screee had agreed that she needed to get up and doing things again so she wouldn’t get any weaker from inactivity.

“Thank you for the opportunity to care for you, Lauri,” Screee said. “You are still young and resilient. Most human specimens we get to see are, unfortunately, deceased, victims of accident or misfortune. Our records of human physiology are very old. However, fortunately, a great deal of our species’ physiology is very similar.”

“Well, thank you for saving my life, Doctor Screee,” Lauri replied. “Thanks for looking after my neighbors too. I hope they all pull through.”

“We should be releasing them shortly,” Screee said. “They need to be physically active again as soon as they are able. I hope you and they can visit one another soon.”

Lauri looked out the windows. “Hm. Looks like the corn’s doing OK. Soybeans need some weed control.”

“I will leave you to it, but do not overdo it,” said Screee. “Rest when you feel tired. If I am correct, you should feel stronger each day now as long as you do not overexert yourself.”

“I get it,” Lauri said. “Will do. Take care, Doctor, and I hope to see you soon – under more social circumstances, of course.”

“Likewise,” Scree said, and left.

Lauri looked at the news on TV, checked out her food supplies in her pantry and refrigerator – someone had stocked her fridge and pantry while she’d been gone – and was startled to see what had happened. The over abundance was incredible. She had mixed feelings; she’d felt the ravages of the virus firsthand, but she was alive, while those who had released it weren’t.

It looked like they were having new elections in the countries that had sent the virus – they all had democratic constitutions that had been ignored and supplanted by dictatorial regimes, but those constitutions were back in force now that the other regime was gone, and there would be elected governments again. Lauri doubted they’d escape dictatorship forever, but at the very least, perhaps they were less likely to declare war on the entire rest of the world again.

But … the Avians were clearly not a pacifistic people, Lauri thought. Hannuri had been quite decent to her, but then Lauri had never lifted a finger against him, nor had he given her any reason to. She wondered whether he would ever visit her again; he was a pretty busy guy lately. She felt a bit scared of him now. But if he did visit, she resolved to not treat him any differently than before.

Her phone rang. It was Dr. Blake. “Hello, Thomas,” she said.

“Lauri,” said Thomas. “Heard you were back home. Up for a visitor? I’ll get my own tea.”

“Nonsense, Doctor Screee told me I should be up and about as much as I can … without getting tired. I doubt making some tea for a welcome guest will tire me out too much. Come on over.”

“Well, then, I’m in the council building, so I’ll see you shortly.”

“All righty! It’ll be good to see you.”

“Until then!”

Lauri started the tea kettle boiling.

The doorbell rang. Lauri and Dr. Blake hugged, and she brought him some tea as they sat in the living room. “So, all the politics and whatever aside, how are you doing, Thomas?” asked Lauri once they were settled in.

“Well,” said Thomas, “the Avians are fascinating. I’m sure they’re not sharing everything with me, but what they are showing us is just mind-blowing. They’ve released quite a bit of medical information to us, enough that we’d be able to synthesize vaccines and virophages ourselves using their technology now.”

“They really reacted very harshly when the virus attack happened,” Lauri said. “It’s like … they felt personally offended by it.”

“I’m not sure why, but it does seem that way.” Thomas sipped his tea and thought. “My guess is that there’s a historical reason.”

“Maybe,” said Lauri. “What have you been learning? I mean, tell me what can I understand. I’m not any kind of bio … geneticist scientist.”

“Perhaps not, but you’re certainly intelligent,” Thomas said. “It’s just a matter of wasting years of my life getting letters after my name. We’ve learned new ways to regenerate tissue and bone, and even nerves. There might be hope for some paraplegics to walk again. Cures for ALS and Parkinson’s might happen. They’ve given us data that could lead to cures for several kinds of cancer – I’m not an oncologist; I’m just saying what some of them have been telling me. I understand that some of this data might help with Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s. It’s still early days, but there’s just so much … and, as I said, I think they’re only showing us a little.”

“Holy smokes,” said Lauri. “Hard to believe some people want to see all of that wrecked.”

“No matter what, someone somewhere’s against it,” said Thomas. “Heard your neighbors will be out of the Avian hospital soon. They built underground hospitals all over the place, and super fast. I haven’t learned how they did that yet, but we do know they can dig through rock about as fast as you and I can walk – not that I understand how it works. I’m not a physicist, and I’m not sure it would matter if I were – I don’t think they understand that yet.”

“I’m just glad the virus didn’t affect the Avians,” Lauri said. “I guess that means we’re different enough from them.”

“Well, that I can say something about,” said Thomas. “Although the genomes of our two species are extremely similar, there are also enough differences the Avian’s are immune. I did discover something else. Human and Avian are actually biologically similar enough that we could successfully mate and produce hybrid offspring.”

Dr. Screee had invited Thomas and Lauri to one of the iso-hospital units to show them the effectiveness of the new vaccine. Lauri and Thomas stood outside the large isolation ward the Avian’s had constructed. Both of them looked on with total amazement at the advanced nature of everything. As a joke, Thomas had asked Lauri if she could identify what the clear iso-pane was made of.

Lauri examined the pane closely for a few minutes then said, “I’m no scientist or anything, but I can tell it isn’t glass. Doesn’t feel like plastic at all. Might be some kind of metal.”

One of the Avian Tech’s in the room turned and commented, "That's a very good observation. Technically it is known as aluminum oxynitride. It is a ceramic material that looks like glass but is significantly harder and stronger, making it ideal for bulletproof windows, military equipment, and high-end optics. It is not metallic aluminum but a compound of aluminum, oxygen, and nitrogen, formed by pressing powders at high temperatures and then grinding and polishing them to achieve optical clarity.”

Thomas smiled, “Well, we both thought it was some kind or metal. We weren’t completely wrong.”

The Tech replied before he wandered off to another control panel and started documenting the readings, “Without being introduced to the item, that was an excellent guess.”

Lauri affected a country twang and replied, “Workin’ onna farm, a girl gits ta know some stuff.”

Thomas and the Tech looked at Lauri for an instant, then burst out laughing.

Lauri looked over the huge iso-unit at all the patients. There were many Avian nurses and doctors present. More and more of the humans were beginning to loose those horrid skin splotches and to sit up as the Avian med team worked frantically to administer the drug before it was too late.

Screee came to Thomas and asked softly so only he could hear, “I have a proposition for you and Miss Lauri there; would you perhaps be interested in entertaining such a thing?”

Thomas looked at Screee with raised eyebrows, “OK, I’ll bite. What sort of proposition?”

Screee smiled and brought out some kind of manuscript. It more than obviously wasn’t made of paper … or anything he could think of. Thomas ran his hand across the cover of the large thick tome. On the front cover was inscribed in gold letters, In the Beginning.

Screee said, “Be careful doing it, but open it to the first page. That book could technically be called older than history.”

Thomas’ mind was blown as he opened the large book to the first page. The very first chapter described a biological attack a nation called the Afroferensis had launched that had merged what were at the time precursors to the Avian warriors with their steeds, which happened to be large birds. The first Avians were created.

The best Thomas could determine, The main protein responsible for DNA transcription is RNA polymerase, which acts as an enzyme to create an mRNA copy from a DNA template. Other proteins called transcription factors are also essential, as they bind to DNA to help recruit RNA polymerase to the correct starting point of a gene. The biological used melded and transformed the RNA polymerase of the Warriors and the large birds they were using as steeds and created new mRNA that merged perfectly the human and avian steed into what instantly became the Avian peoples.

The tomb went into great detail about the huge mess and drastic actions that had to be taken to save the planet. The best the Avians had ever been able to do to the devastating virus was devolve it into something lesser that remained to plague humanity to the present day, known now as the picornaviridae family, also known as the rhinoviruses, or the common cold.

The extinction of 90% of the species in the sea coupled with 75% of land-based species due to this horrid virus were the birth cries of the Avian people. The tomb graphically went into great detail on the efforts the Avians went to to save the planet, and the horrid betrayals of Homo Erectus and early Homo Sapiens. This caused the newly created Avians to prefer a peaceful, hidden existence to taking part in the warfare that ravaged the surface world.

Thomas was flabbergasted when he discovered that the species known to folklore as “Trolls” were actually Neanderthals. Homo Sapiens, also known as the Cro-Magnons, were called “Orcs” at the time. He even discovered the lost races of hominids that were described as Elves in the fables were real … before the “Orcs” of the human clan wiped them out.

Lauri read over his shoulder. “If only we could’ve known some of them. It’s a crying shame they’re gone. I wish people could figure it out – war doesn’t solve any problems. It only makes more.”

Thomas sighed and paused before replying, “Lauri … I hate to tell you this … but in the wake of the virus, there’s a huge swath of the country where people have simply been wiped out. The area near the council building – on your property – is the area where the Avian medical teams were able to get to first, so losses weren’t so bad. But the farther you get from that, the worse the chaos will be. The military’s going to try to keep order, but … there’s only so much they can do. And they were hit pretty hard too – right now the only boots on the ground are the ones who got vaccinated before the virus got to them. The rest of the troops are either dead too or recovering in places like this.” He gestured toward the patients on the other side of the window.

Lauri responded with a harsh explicative, something decidedly unladylike. She added, “So there’s gonna be looters who think they can take anything that isn’t nailed down and it’s rightfully theirs. Lotsa stores, apartments, houses, fulla goodies to take, and people who think those goodies are worth something right now. I reckon they’ll start in the big cities and start to work their way outward. Haven’t seen ‘em around my place, but that doesn’t mean anything … I’m pretty far from the nearest big city, and the council building’s in my backyard, so the whole area’s monitored and protected.”

Thomas said, “Well, I’m not a military commander or anything, but from what I’m hearing, what you’re predicting isn’t far from the truth. It’s not complete anarchy, because the looters aren’t the only ones on the streets – police are out there too, though they’re in the same situation as the military. Elected officials got whisked away to undisclosed locations in the big cities, but the mayors and city governments of smaller towns were hit just like everyone else. Here and there, there were people who turned out to be genetically immune or at least resistant to the virus, but there are some of those among the looters too. Got some law-abiding citizens defending their property, but lots of property with nobody left to defend it.”

“Betcha Hannuri’d know better than we would how things are out there.”

“Indeed,” said Hannuri, who had entered the room. “Pardon me, I heard you were visiting. It brings me much pleasure to learn that you are back in your home. How are you feeling?”

“Well, I still get exhausted easily,” said Lauri, “but that’s getting better every day. Hair’s growing back too.”

“I am delighted to hear that you continue to improve,” Hannuri said. “I must return to the command center shortly, but it is indeed rather lawless out there in the countryside. The only thing preventing the coalition of nations who unleashed the virus from invading large swaths of land that isn’t rightfully theirs is the fact that we destroyed their military command structure and eliminated their despotic rulers. I happen to agree with my people’s leaders that those who commit atrocities like the release of that virus don’t deserve to reap any rewards from their actions. The fact that we had to kill some of the people who made those decisions is unfortunate, but considering all the deaths they caused, I find it difficult to feel sorry for them. I, however, feel the weight of their deaths on my soul.”

“But you’re still trying to make peace with us humans,” said Lauri. “That says something.”

“Yes, even though some of these rogue nations attempted to assault the council building area, we’re still trying to work out agreements with the other countries of the human world,” Hannuri said. “Aside from a few fanatics among us, we understand that the human clan isn’t merely one people; there are many human tribes who each have their own leaders, and some of those tribes are being led astray. Hopefully fewer of them now than before.”

“I’m kinda worried about some of my friends,” Lauri said. “I think I’d like to get back home. And make sure I’ve got enough arrows in case I need ‘em for anything. Think I might need to exercise my upper body muscles a bit.”

“I did notice that you were an afficionado of archery,” said Hannuri. “I’ve left some gifts for you in your home, just in case you needed them for defense. Fortunately you haven’t needed them yet, and I hope you never will, but one never knows. Look in your root cellar, just inside the door that opens on the underground corridor.”

Lauri had returned to her farmhouse. It sure didn’t look anything like it had before all this started. She went to the the door that opened onto the stairs down to the cellar. At the bottom of the stairs was her root and wine cellar – in the past she’d had a lot of non-perishable supplies laid in, sitting in dusty jars and cans on equally dusty shelves. Lauri looked around, shook her head and smiled. She didn’t mind that it had happened; she was just amazed that the Avians had done so many repairs and upgrades without even being asked. Her small root/wine cellar was now a huge cavernous room with many separate areas. The door to the underground corridor had also been recently added; it looked like a sturdy stone-framed doorway. On the wall next to it was a small panel with an LED display and small buttons.

Laurie entered the special code Hannuri had given her to have access to the council building … and of course the Avian city beneath. The door slid open with a squishy hissing squeak to reveal a very well-constructed tunnel that led to some sort of elevator.

She entered the elevator and pushed the button for the corridor. The door hissed shut and instantly opened, with no sense of motion of any kind; the only time she recognized passing was the doors closing and instantly opening, and she was in the corridor entryway.

Laurie walked to another stone inlaid door and opened it after entering the access code. On the other side was the corridor, leading off toward the council building and the Avian city, but on the walls on either side, stacked in many cases, were weapons. Some were of types she didn’t recognize, but some cases contained some of the finest longbows, Asiatic composites, and Scythian bone-backed bows ever manufactured. Each was finely crafted and well cared for. The materials the arrows and fletching were made of were unknown, as were the materials the bows were actually made of. She would have guessed carbon fiber, but no, this was somehow both stronger and more supple, she realized as she picked one up and bent it.

It was more than obvious that the Avians were serious. Lauri felt a tingle of fear run down her spine as she thought of how lawless mankind could be in this kind of situation.

Lauri’s cell rang. To her great surprise, the caller ID told her it was Warlord Hannuri. “This is Lauri, how can I help you?”

One of those male kind of voices that sent wonderful tingles all through Lauri replied, “It is good to know that you’ve found our gifts to you. Please take whatever you need, and leave whatever you might wish to hold in reserve. As knowledgeable as we Avians may be, we still cannot predict the future, nor can we be everywhere at once; we wish you to be able to defend yourself if the worst happens.”

“I understand,” Laurie said. “Some of these bows are way more than I can draw right now. I’m gonna have to exercise my way back up to full strength. But I’ll do it.”

Hannuri said, “Glad to hear it. Would you be up to having several Avians and Thomas visit you? We have some things to discuss, and since you are among the very first …You have a right to be in on the discussions."

Lauri replied with surprise in her tone, “Uh … sure. Just give me about an hour to arrange the library so it’s fit for guests.”

Hannuri laughed, “Don’t go to any trouble and wear yourself out on my lowly account …”

Lauri interrupted and fussed playfully, “And just who are you that thinks they can … just walk in here … into the pig sty …”

By this time Hannuri and several others could be heard laughing, “OK, OK, you convinced me. We’ll be there in about an hour and a half. Does that give you time to straighten up the pig sty … Miss Tidy Queen?”

Lauri and everyone including Hannuri burst out laughing, and she replied with her exaggerated country twang, “Sure tis, if’n y'all men wipes yer feet afore ya’ll comes in.”

Hannuri replied between gasping for air amid his laughter, “It’s a deal, fair lady queen. Until then ... a sweet adieu.” The phone went dead.

Lauri felt wonderful. Now, she looked at the clock on her phone and said to herself, “Better get off my hind end and clean the library from the last time there was a meeting.”

She took from the shelves a bow that she judged she could use right now, one that she could use once she’d exercised her arms for a few days or weeks, and a quiver or two full of the strange arrows. What were these bows made of? It bent and bent and always returned to its shape.

Lauri couldn’t help herself. She’d cleaned up the library and set chairs out long ago, the library was already spotless and took no time to ... clean. Now she just kept looking out the windows, searching for any sign that marauders or bandits were coming. She knew it wasn’t likely, this close to the well-patrolled council building area. She even saw some military vehicles passing by on the road, looking for signs of trouble but seemingly finding no signs of it just here.

She saw Thomas’ car drive up followed by several others, and there was a knock on the door shortly after. “Long time no see,” said Thomas when Lauri opened her door to let him in. He was followed by Hannuri and other obviously important Avians, but Lauri hadn’t met them before.

“Well, welcome, and would you like some tea? I was just having myself a cup.” She showed them to the library, where Thomas and about half the Avians took her up on her offer.

Once Lauri was done distributing saucers and cups full of wonderful-smelling spiced tea, she sat down, and Hannuri introduced the Avians Lauri didn’t know.

Hannuri said ,”I would like you to meet the Avian Council.” He turned to the others casually lounging around the library and said, “Esteemed members of the High Council, I would like you to meet a most remarkable Human, Lauri Trillian.”

Lauri was at a loss. She had no idea what to say or even why she would be invited to a meeting of the High Council.

“Uhh … yeah, welcome to my home. Is there anything I might be able to do to make you more comfortable?”

One of the other Avians who had many feminine characteristics said softly, “There is one very important thing you could do to make us more comfortable.”

Lauri asked, “What? Anything I could do would be fine.”

The Avian replied, “How about relaxing? Maybe letting your blood pressure drop a bit. You do know you are among friends. You and Thomas, are the first of the human clan we have met in nearly two thousands years, who made us feel we could show the world they have other brothers and sisters.”

Hannuri said, “Sit, Lauri, relax.”

He motioned toward one of the smaller Avians with them, who was carrying a very large satchel. The Avian removed from the satchel a very finely made tome. Embossed in large letters of solid gold on the cover said: Reemergence and Union.
The Avian opened the binder to the first leaf … and there was nothing on it. Lauri examined many pages in the large book, but all were blank.

The eldest of the Avians present said, “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Yù Feng Zhe … Wind Rider. I am what is thought of as the High Elder.” He cut his eyes to the left and right at the others who actually looked shy and timid under that look, “but I feel the only reason I hold that position is that no one else wanted to do it.
That tome is blank, because it starts a new chapter with the Human clan and the Avian Clan united once again.”

Hannuri said, “We are not a warlike people and have hidden away from the Human Clan for centuries while they warred and slaughtered millions and even totally eradicated several other kinds of humanoid species. Until the Avian clan met you and Thomas and actually felt the genuineness and depth of your willingness to make peace, which led me to believe we had misunderstood something.”

Yù Feng Zhe said, “It caused us to rethink all our strategies. The very records we keep even bore witness to something we were too blind to see, but you and Thomas opened our eyes.”

Lauri said with surprise on her face, “We did? How can we open your eyes to anything?” Lauri noticed that none of the others had anything to say in regards to that, but looked awfully timid.

Hannuri replied, “It caused me to go back and examine all the historical documents I could. In doing the research I discovered it wasn’t the Human Clan as a whole that was so fiendishly evil, but instead there was a small contamination that was infectious and would spread over time.”

Yù Feng Zhe added, “The same infection our retirement crew is already dealing with. We have met with and discussed many treaties and peace gestures with the Human clan. It amazed us that there were 2% who refused the safety and scientific advancements we offered.”

The feminine Avian said, “I must tell you, it brought great pleasure to all the Avian peoples that nearly all the above ground world wanted peace. I’m not sure anyone has noticed yet, but there is currently no armed conflict anywhere on the planet. There is a small group of factions that is about to be taught a severe lesson, but the rest of the Earth has nothing whatever to fear. We too are brothers and sisters of man and never had anything but good will.”

“But … what is this contamination, this … infection?” asked Lauri. “If you’re trying to uproot the evil within the human race, we’ve been trying to do that for millennia with no success. If it were easy, we’d have done it by now. And you can’t say it’s genetic – that would mean judging and convicting someone, and sentencing them to death, before they’d ever done anything, and that’s almost the exact definition of injustice.”

“You are correct,” Hannuri said. “It is not genetic. It spreads from human mind to human mind. It is called Fear. You know it well, I’m sure. Some are so beaten down by it that they know nearly nothing else and run from its very shadow. But more dangerous are those who have learned to use Fear as a weapon of control. And even more dangerous are those who have convinced themselves that doing so is anything other than the greatest of evils. That is the true infection. It is an idea that spreads, and it spreads because it works, and it must be constantly fought. But you on the surface fight it, again and again. This is what has convinced us to return to the surface world: Fear has not taken over, in all these millennia. If it were an unconquerable enemy, it would by now rule all humans, and yet it does not.”

“But how do we get rid of it?” Lauri asked. “How do we fight an idea? Especially an idea that works – one that’s built up great amounts of wealth and power for everyone who’s used it? Or rather … fallen victim to it? It’s hard to convince people that any idea that’s made certain people so wealthy and powerful is bad.”

“We do it by pulling Fear’s teeth,” said Yù Feng Zhe. “By ridding the world of fear, we take the tools out of the hands of those who use them. We make it impossible to gain anything by using fear. Those who would control others will lose their control. Without incentive, the idea does not spread. Using fear to control others becomes just another idea that doesn’t work, like chewing grass to make it rain.”

“A world without fear …” Lauri said, in awe of the thought.

“It is impossible to eliminate all fear, of course,” said Hannuri. “But fear of the sort that is easy for would-be conquerors to use … that can be erased from the Earth. Freedom from starvation, from disease, from tyranny … we believe we can accomplish that.”

“I’m betting there are a lot of wealthy, powerful humans who aren’t gonna like it,” Laurie said, smirking humorlessly.

Hannuri straightened his back. “Then they will reveal themselves as the contamination,” he said.

In the huge council chamber the Avians had built, hundreds of the world’s leaders and their diplomats filled the tiers of seats all around. Silence ruled as an Avian named Sayid Alrihla presented the peace treaty between the Avians and the Human Clan.

For the first time in any of their collective memories, there were absolutely no conflicts on Earth. The only exception to this rule were certain very wealthy individuals who were about to lose a great deal of power and profits and didn’t care how much destruction they had to cause to prevent it. It was easy for them to manipulate various small terrorist factions and impress them with weapons and money.

Sayid straightened up with the pen in his hand. He offered it to the leader next to him, who began to sign the voluminous document. This went around to all the dignitaries and their representatives, who placed their approving signatures on it.

For the first time in recorded history, almost all of mankind stood united with the Avians. The future of a colony on the moon or Mars no longer seemed such a pipe dream. Earth scientists began looking at the Lagrange points and perhaps building some sort of structures.

The Avians had had interstellar flight for centuries. Not having fought wars that had wiped out much of their knowledge, as humans had, had allowed them to advance far beyond the human clan, which was more than enough proof for the human clan to change their collective ways – that is … most of the human clan, at any rate. Now they all understood what those crafts were that finally got called UAP … it was the Avians, not aliens.

In an exclusive excessively posh underground survival bunker built by the excessively wealthy, many men and women sat around a large very elegant mahogany table. One woman stood and said, “I can give several billion to purchase weapons for those … I think they call themselves Tiran Alqatil Organization.”

One of the men nodded, “I can toss into that pile twenty billion to purchase those moble rocket launchers and missile defense systems. I’m sure they would jump at the chance.”

Another of the men said, “It is of the utmost importance that no one can trace any of this back to us.”

The other man replied, “I can relate to that. Those feathered critters are fully capable.”

One of the men snorted a laugh. “I saw the video of their little demonstration. An island about 20 x 20 miles suddenly vanished. All that was left was boiling sea water where the island used to be. There is no way any of us could ever hope to get away if we are discovered, regardless of how rich we are.”

A servant cleared his throat and whispered into the ear of one of the men, who stood up and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been informed that we have obtained a very important piece of information. The High Council of the Avians has been located. They’re meeting daily in a farmhouse just south of that council building the birdies built. Now, the council building itself is like a fortress. But this is just a farmhouse. There’s nothing special about it. It’s been there since long before the council building existed. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I think so,” said another of the men. Time to do a bit of retaliation."

“Let’s make sure this information falls into the hands of certain organizations,” said the woman who had spoken earlier.

“Together with lots of the weapons we’re buying for them.”

“Agreed,” another said. “With their High Council dead, the birdbrains will be running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

Little did they know, the massive transfer of funding to weapons dealers, even though it was entirely electronic and buried beneath layers of well-hidden transfers, was pinged by a seriously advanced sentry program. The data it collected showed the entire transaction trail – who had purchased what, and where it went. The Avians had also had computer technology for centuries, and although they had given some of their secrets to humans, by no means had they revealed everything.

The proceedings in the council chamber had moved on into their third day, as there were many signatures to be signed and many long-winded speeches to be made. Hannuri and the Avian High Council were once more in Lauri’s library, talking about the difficulties of eradicating the infection from the soul of the human race, when Hannuri got a message on his communication device and looked at it. He just raised an eyebrow and put it away again. Lauri noticed but didn’t say anything; she made a mental note to ask him about it later. None of the others seemed to mention it.

After a while, though, Lauri sensed something strange. She wasn’t sure what it was, but what ever it was had her on edge. But she wasn’t going to ignore it, not with such important guests. “‘Scuse me for a second while I go powder my nose,” she said.

“Powder? Nose?” asked one of the High Council.

Hannuri explained, “It is a polite folksy human expression for using the facilities.”

“Ah. I understand.”

Lauri picked up her bow, braced it, and grabbed one of the quivers of strange arrows before she stepped outside. Now she knew what it was that had felt odd. The birdsong had stopped. She couldn’t really hear it inside her house, but on some level she did, and its cessation had subconsciously put her on edge.

She’d already briefly looked at her network of cameras, which were all still operating all over her land, but she hadn’t seen anything that shouldn't have been there. Thinking it unlikely that any attackers would be coming from the direction of the council building, its security systems, and its regular patrols, she looked southward, across the road. That land had been Old Man Jeffers’ property, before he’d sadly fallen victim to the deadly virus. Nobody owned it now, and nobody lived there. Nobody she knew of, at any rate.

She scurried across the road and crouched in the cornfield, moving between the rows toward where she knew Jeffers’ house was. She moved as quietly as she could, bow in hand but no arrow at the ready yet.

She saw movement far ahead, between the rows of corn. Quickly she dodged into the next row to the right, hoping they hadn’t seen her.

Then she heard a clacking sound a bit farther to the west. With a fluid motion she nocked an arrow. She wished she’d gotten more practice in, but she’d gotten some. The trouble with these arrows was that they slid through her straw targets like they weren’t even there and lodged in the ground far beyond them. Downright annoying hunting for them, actually.

She kept moving south toward where she knew the farmhouse was. Then someone stepped into the row ahead of her, pointing some kind of gun – they were too far away to see it clearly. She backed away and almost ran into another person with a gun, probably the one who’d made the sound she’d heard.

“Ha ha, little lady, might as well put that thing down and quit playin’ cowboys and Indians,” said the nearer one as the farther one approached. It was a man’s voice, though he was wearing so much gear that she could barely tell. “Ain’t gonna do us no harm, ‘specially now that we got these fancy new guns.”

“You’re gonna have to make me do that, Mister,” said Lauri, pointing the bow directly at his nearest hand. It was a long gun, requiring two hands. If she took out that arm, he couldn’t aim. “Either of you get any closer, you and me are gonna have a problem.”

“Time for politeness is over, Missy,” he said. “Drop it, now. Or I shoot.”

Lauri didn’t wait. She drew the fletch to her cheek and let fly. The arrow did something she’d never seen happen before, but then she’d never aimed at a human target before, and certainly not with equipment like this. The arrow entered his hand with great force and kept right on going, piercing his chest and actually exiting through his back.

She gasped briefly; that had probably missed his heart but had probably pierced a lung. What were these arrowheads even made of? The man did manage to pull his trigger, but the gun clicked and didn’t fire. He made strangling, coughing sounds, but Lauri didn’t have time to see what he’d do next

She whirled around toward the man coming up from the south, still some distance away, and drew another arrow from the quiver, nocked it and drew to her cheek anchor point. She aimed and yelled, “Stop and back off, or I can’t be held responsible for what this next arrow’s gonna do to you!”

“Arrows?” said the man, not stopping. “We got us a real Robin Hood here!” Unwilling to fire because his comrade was in his line of sight, he ran faster toward Lauri, probably hoping to shoot her down once she was in point-blank range.

“Can’t say I didn’t warn you,” Lauri said, by way of giving him a bit more time to get closer, then let her second arrow fly, aiming for his left leg, with the thought that he wouldn’t be doing too much more running toward her if she hit.

The sweet sound of the bowstring’s song sounded briefly. This arrow again did something Lauri didn’t think possible, striking his thigh bone, but rather than simply lodging in it as ordinary arrows would, it went through and emerged from the other side, stopping there. His tibia splintered, and the running man collapsed in agony. Lauri winced to think how that must feel, but she considered it unlikely that these two were all there were and readied another arrow.

Wishing for some higher ground or some other way to see if any more of these marauders were anywhere near her, she looked up and saw a flying drone – it didn’t look armed, but it was probably a camera; somebody was tracking her that way. It was rather high up, though, too high to hear its motors, so she didn’t waste an arrow shooting at it. Maybe if it came closer.

Lauri ducked two rows to the east and ran toward Jeffers’ farmyard, still keeping her head down. There was at least one more of them; somebody had to be controlling that drone. Probably more than one – unlikely they’d be wasting time with a drone if there wasn’t also at least one other with a gun. She tried to duck unpredictably from row to row. What had gone wrong with that first marauder’s gun? She doubted he’d run out of ammo before encountering her. Maybe it had jammed. He’d mentioned it was a “fancy new gun”; maybe they’d found them somewhere and they weren’t as new as they thought. She hadn’t had time to so much as look at it.

Lauri slowed as she approached the end of the row; her view widened out a bit, but she didn’t see anything. She peered in either direction before exiting into the clear and saw another man in camouflage gear holding a gun to her left, looking straight at her. He raised his gun and got an arrow to the left shoulder. This one went clean through too, and this marauder also made an anguished noise. She nocked another and turned fully around, looking for any other threats.

She approached Jeffers’ house and listened at the back door, then tried the knob. It wasn’t locked, probably because until recently it had been guarded. She quietly slipped inside.

Listening carefully, she heard what sounded like a voice on a radio somewhere upstairs saying, “Missiles and artillery misfired … guns not firing … not sure if it’s bad weapons or bad ammo … assault the house on foot …” It sounded like they’d gotten some new weapons from somewhere, and some serious military hardware at that, but it also sounded like the quality was terribly poor. She wondered how many troops they had in this house.

Then she noticed the doorknob turning on the door behind her and took a position against the wall, ready to fire at whomever had seen her come in here. It was the one she’d just hit, trying to wield his gun with one arm, but she just shot him through the other shoulder, and he dropped his gun and howled.

She pushed the door shut again, but there was no way that anyone inside the house hadn’t heard that. She got another arrow ready, but she had a fast choice to make: go upstairs, where she knew there was at least one of the marauders, or go downstairs to the cellar, or go back outside? Upstairs, she thought. The bow wasn’t great for close-quarters fighting, but anybody up there was probably not heavily armed, expecting the better-armed field troops to defend them while they used the radio, the drone, or whatever other gadgets they had.

It was an old farmhouse with creaky stairs, so there was no way she was going to be able to get up there silently. She ran up the stairs two at a time, which was tough considering she was still recovering from her illness. But with any luck, so were the marauders. She then had a thought: what if they hadn’t gotten the virus? What if they’d been immunized? That is, what if they were terrorists? That didn’t make any sense; the men she’d run into sounded like they were from around here, with no foreign accent of any kind. So what if they were being supported by terrorists? That could be where their new weaponry had come from. And their orders.

The radio noises were coming through a half-open door from a bedroom, which she rushed into, seeing a lone man manipulating a drone remote with a screen on it. He was seated by a window that looked out over the cornfield toward her house. She slammed the door behind her, and he spun around; he had earphones of some sort in his ears.

Blocking the door and pointing the bow at him, she said, “Look, Mister, I don’t wanna shoot you unless you give me no choice. It’s my house up north there, where you’re looking with those binoculars and flying that drone around. I can’t help thinking you’re up to something. Can’t blame me for not being too fond of that.”

“I, uh, no, I’m not gonna do anything crazy,” he said. “Especially now that we’ve been found out. Look, those guys gave us a ton of hardware on the condition that we did something for ‘em, but frankly, this stuff is junk. I’m hearing none of it works now. It looked and worked fine when we got it, I heard, but now it’s all worthless garbage. I don’t wanna go to jail, but I saw what you did to them out there, and I don’t want an arrow in me either.”

“Then tell ‘em,” said Lauri. “I know you’re telling ‘em what to do on your radio. Tell ‘em the guns don’t work and you won’t be attacking my house today. You do that, I’ll go home, and you get outta here before the security patrols get here.”

“Yeah, OK,” he said. He picked up a walkie and said, “Alpha Base to all on the ground. The hardware’s bad. All guns inoperative. Abort mission. Bug out now. Rendezvous at Checkpoint Lima. Repeat. Bad hardware. Bug out. Checkpoint Lima.” He put the walkie away. “Look, I got nothing against you, nor those bird people. I’m just gonna go.”

Realizing that he’d currently have to go through her to do so, Lauri said, “Well all right then. I’m backing out this door and going home. You go to Checkpoint Whatever, I don’t care. You leave me alone, I leave you alone. But you’d better get moving.” She opened the door carefully to see if anyone was waiting outside to ambush her. There wasn’t. She hurried down the stairs, out the back door – the man she’d shot twice wasn’t there – and ran back toward her house.

“Ah, Lauri,” said Hannuri when she returned. “You have been doing a bit more than powdering your nose, I think.”

“Something’s going on,” she said. “There’s those outlaws, they took over Old Man Jeffers’ farmhouse, and they must’ve just moved in or the patrols would’ve seen ‘em. They were gonna attack here – probably because the High Council’s here –”

“Lauri, I know, we know, it’s all right,” Hannuri said reassuringly. “Who do you think informed the terrorists who gave them their weapons, once we’d made sure all those weapons were neutralized?”

“Wait, what?” asked Lauri. “Are you saying you knew they’d come?”

“Well, we knew they’d come sooner or later,” he said. “But we knew they would be armed with broken weapons. This is all so everything can be tracked back to the source and the traffic channels eradicated.”

“Was … was that all just a waste of time?” Lauri asked.

“Not exactly,” said Hannuri. “I did not know you would do that, risk life and limb to defend us, and even grant them their lives in exchange for leaving in peace. It is what I thought you would do, once I realized you had gone. Once again you have proven the sort of person you are.”

“The arrows!” Lauri said. “They may have messed-up guns, but now they could’ve picked up the arrows I fired! Those things are potentially deadly!”

“It is not a problem,” Hannuri said. “They are no longer deadly.”

“But how?” asked Lauri. “Did you somehow find them?”

Hannuri smiled, “They are only deadly in that manner in your hands. A little energy trick we learned a few centuries ago. The mechanics of it are that the arrows are tuned to your bio-frequency. The reason the heads, shafts, and fletching appear so strange, is that they are a type of bio-crystal that is programmable. When we gave those to you, they were programmed for you. For no one else will they perform in that manner, unless great pains are taken to remove their programming and reprogram them. What’s more, they are programmed to turn to dust a few hours after being fired, unless you are nearby. Since the human-clan has never heard of or even thought of such a bio-crystal, there’s no chance of a reprogramming any time in this century."

Lauri looked at Hannuri with a surprised expression. She then smiled and said, “That’s why those darned things always sliced through my straw bale targets.”

Hannuri nodded, “And they would do a number on concrete and certain types of metals too. We gave you weapons to defend yourself against the infected.”

Lauri raised an eyebrow, “Infected? This is what you were talking about before? Infected by fear?”

Hannuri smiled again. “Yes, exactly. There are those infected by fear, and those who are addicted to using that fear to control others, and the more the fear spreads, the more control the addicted have, spreading like a contagion, until there is a major conflict. Not all are infected, and we have pretty much isolated the infection globally. There are a few infected factions, but currently they are well contained until we find a better way to resolve the issue other than decontamination.”

Lauri asked, “Decontamination? What’s that mean?”

Hannuri said softly in a tone of remorse, “It means just what it implies. We remove the contaminated vector from the biosphere by cleansing it.”

Lauri gasped and put her hand to her mouth as she realized. She remembered the bright light and heard the talk of how many military assets had just vanished once the light faded. Laurie looked around. There were many Avians and Humans all huddled over a large planning table. Now she understood what they were talking about. The only issue was, several of the names mentioned in the group’s discussion for removal just happened to be some of the richest individuals on the planet.

Lauri felt waves of conflicting emotion run through her as she thought about what Hannuri had said the definition of decontamination was. She wasn’t exactly sure what it was, although she did manage to find a detailed report on who the factions were.

Lauri couldn’t believe it. The very rich individuals she was feeling sorry for were the very ones buying the weapons and other equipment along with large amounts of money to fund the ongoing wars. The outcome of all this was that they made triple the amount they spent, so they had no intention of stopping. Lauri's emotion frazzled a bit as she now realized they were actually funding most of the fighting left in the world. This had to be dealt with. Now Lauri understood Hannuri’s comment.

“I’m … conflicted,” said Lauri.

“That is because you are a good person,” said Hannuri. “You would give these people the benefit of the doubt, again and again. They would not do the same for you – not even once.”

“You’re … being judge, jury, and executioner here,” Lauri said. “But … on the other hand … these are people with more money they can ever use, who’ve killed millions in the name of even more profit, but they can make excuses by saying they never pulled a trigger themselves.”

“Precisely,” said Hannuri. “We are ensuring that they pay. With their money, at least, and with their lives if we can track them down. They hide their transactions. Their money is in many accounts in many banks. A little of it comes from each one, goes through many companies with many names, and ends up in the accounts of the weapons dealers. But we have taken over the weapons dealers, and now the weapons they provide are sabotaged. And we have drained any account used to buy weapons for terrorists. The more they try to conceal their involvement, the more they pay. The money goes into a fund for the families of their victims.”

“They should get a fair trial,” said Lauri, “but it won’t be fair, will it? They’ll just buy their way out of it and go right back to what they were doing.”

“Now, there are many wealthy humans who have not taken part in these schemes to control the masses via fear,” said Hannuri. “It is just that those who do were seeing their fortunes grow by leaps and bounds. The rest are left alone … although of course some of them made their money by controlling the masses through fear generations ago; it is just that their modern descendants no longer do so. We cannot punish those who are already dead, nor do we punish the living for the sins of their ancestors. Merely having wealth is not a crime. Using it to oppress is.”

“Well … you’ve decided it’s a crime,” Lauri said.

“Do you not think it should be?” asked Hannuri.

“I mean, yes, I do,” said Lauri, “but who am I to make decisions for the whole human race? And you’re not even human.”

“You think this should be a majority decision,” Hannuri said.

“Yes, I do,” replied Lauri.

“Polls show the overwhelming majority of humans worldwide believe that using wealth to oppress should be a crime,” Hannuri said. “Yet it remains legal to do so in every human nation, with only a few exceptions that are rarely enforced. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Because lawmakers are paid off by the rich,” Lauri said with a sigh.

“We do not propose to become the humans’ overseers,” said Hannuri, “but we do wish for our emergence onto the surface world to be a time of renewal for both our peoples.”

In the currently largest auditorium available, a very important and high-level trial was in process. As voluminous as the auditorium was, it was packed with many left standing in the lobby watching the live feed. Many of the planet’s richest and most affluent individuals were there in the prisoner’s box wearing some form of prison attire and chains while being well guarded by vicious looking Avian warriors.

An Avian and a Human were dressed in the long black robes that indicated that both were presiding over the current proceedings. The lawyer pleading the rich individual’s case was giving an impassioned plea, “... and, with all due respect, my clients are highly successful and respected businessmen and women. It is more than possible due to their global enterprises that they might own several weapons factories. It can be proven that not one of these individuals fired a single shot.”

The prosecutor was a young lawyer named Jennifer Vuursteen. She stood and opened a thick binder and began reading aloud, “Is it, or is it not true that on or about … “ as she continued to hammer more and more nails into the defendant's coffins. Vuursteen looked over to the defendant’s box and asked, “And is it also true that many of you and your compatriots lost entire fortunes? How about the back trails of the expenditures and purchases? I hold in my hand, multi-billion dollar receipts for various weapons, launchers, and many types of support equipment made out to a long list of names. Guess who these names and expenditures can be traced back to?" as she waved a large stack of industrial receipts for all to see.

A loud disapproving roar came from the many hundreds gathered to observe the proceedings. The Avian judge banged his gavel hard, “Order please. There will be silence in the court or I will have the bailiffs remove you.”

Silence instantly ruled. No one present wanted one of the warrior Avians who were manning the position of bailiff to be made to do that.

The Human judge said sternly, “In all of this evidence presented here today, is there any doubt in anyone’s mind it was they who perpetrated and funded this failed insurrection?" He turned and addressed the jury, which was also an equal number of humans and Avians, “I ask the jury to consider all the videos, transcripts, and affidavits from many financial institutions before making your decision.” Everyone knew that the jury’s job would be difficult. How could they be impartial with so much overwhelming evidence, even videos catching them in the act? “Remember, the penalty for what they have done upon conviction, is execution.”

The jury rose and filed into another room for deliberations. The Avian judge said, “The court is now in recess pending the jury’s verdict.” He rapped his gavel, and the bailiff said, “All rise!” Everyone stood, and the judges departed the chamber via another door.

The defendants gathered under heavy guard and whispered to each other. “I can’t believe you actually showed up for trial!” said one.

“You did! And besides, I had no choice but show up, I had been arrested and was incarcerated. If I had managed to escape, they’d just find me. I don’t think there’s anywhere in the world those birdos can’t find somebody.”

“Do you think they have their own spy satellites, and they’re better than ours?”

“That doesn’t matter! We’re all gonna die!”

“Relax, I’ve got somebody fixing the jury.”

“I’ll do you one better – I’ve got someone who’s gonna take out both judges before the jury ever comes back.”

A man in a suit, indistinguishable from any member of the legal team, whispered something in the ear of one of the defendants.

“What? You can’t even find the jury? What’s on the other side of that door? What’s that? A blank stone wall? Same with the judge’s chamber's door? That’s impossible!”

Meanwhile, Vuursteen had departed the chamber with her team of lawyers and paralegals. Walking down the hallway, they talked amongst themselves.

“What do you think our chances are of winning?”

“With all this evidence? How can we lose?”

“Well, remember that the jury has to be unanimous. This is a capital trial.”

“Yeah, but even so …”

“Did you get one of those packets of cash?”

“With the note saying there was more if we threw the trial? Oh yeah. Just gave it to the bailiff as evidence. I didn’t even count it.”

“Hey Jennie, I bet they gave you the biggest bundle of cash.”

Jennifer replied, “I have no way of knowing that, but you’re probably right. Yep, mine’s in evidence too.”

“You weren’t tempted at all?”

“Are you kidding?” Vuursteen replied. “Biggest trial of my entire career. I’m under the microscope, so I’m doing my absolute best and playing it 100% by the book. I don’t care how rich these defendants are. I’m doing my job, which is to put the case out there as best I can for the jury to decide. Some bribe or threat or whatever isn’t worth throwing my whole career away.”

“Yeah, it’s true – win or lose, you did an amazing job out there. You could run for AG in any state and win at this point.”


“Excuse me, Ms. Vuursteen?”

“Yes, Ma’am, can I help you?”

“I’m Lauri Trillian, and I was wondering if you and your team would like to have some tea over at my place.”

“Oh yes, that’s right, we were going to meet you,” said Vuursteen. “You’re the one whose house is nearby.”

They took an elevator down to a sub-level, then took a tram down a tunnel, then took another elevator up. “Just up these steps,” said Lauri. They ended up in Lauri’s kitchen.

“This lovely country farmhouse is connected to the council building by a subterranean tram?” asked one of the paralegals.

“Well, I was here first, you know,” Lauri said. “Now, let me get you all settled in the library. Anyone not like tea? I’ve got coffee too.” Half the team wanted tea, including Jennifer, and the other half wanted coffee, but Lauri soon had everyone settled.

“Any idea how long it’ll take for the jury to decide?” Lauri asked.

“Could be days, could be hours,” said Vuursteen. “There was a mountain of evidence. I can’t imagine they won’t go over at least some of it. They’re allowed to review anything they ask for.”

“All righty, then, I’ve got enough guest rooms for all of you,” said Lauri. “You’re welcome in my home. And it’s a bit more than an ol’ country farmhouse at this point. They’ve done a few upgrades. Bit more secure than most farmhouses. You saw what they did to my root cellar.”

“Are you starting a B&B?” asked one of the legal team, causing some laughter in the group.

“Thinkin’ about it,” Lauri said with a grin. “Avian Council Building adjacent, quaint country style. Do you really think that what those rich folks did deserves the death penalty?”

Taken aback by the sudden question, Jennifer replied, “Yes, I do. The treaty that almost every nation in the world signed, just before they committed their crimes, makes it clear. They bought billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and just gave them to a handful of known terrorist groups, who then used them to attack and kill civilians in the signatory nations. Sure, a lot of the weapons turned out to be duds, and I figure that was probably the Avians looking out for humans as best they could, but there were still thousands of victims who died in the days after, who wouldn’t have died if not for these … defendants. Sure, they didn’t pull the triggers, but they deliberately gave weapons of all kinds to known dangerous people who had killed innocent civilians in the past. And those terrorists, the ones who survived, anyway, already got their own trial.”

“I’d like to point out that they aren’t getting any financial help with their defense,” added another lawyer on the team.

“Hung ‘em out to dry, they did,” added another lawyer.

“These defendants got the best defense attorneys money can buy,” said one of the paralegals. “They did their best. And I’ll bet they also paid for the best jury tampering and judge threatening money can buy.”

“Well, I notice I’m not seeing Hannuri around here today, so he’s probably pretty busy with that,” said Lauri. “And don’t think this house isn’t patrolled. The Avian security team knows you’re here.”

“All they have to do is find relatives of the jury and threaten them,” said Vuursteen.

“Well, that’s just it,” said Lauri. “Their relatives are all guarded, and the jury’s, whadyacallit, sequestered, so no word in or out until the verdict. Even if they outright kidnapped the spouse of one of the jury, somehow, there’s no way for them to find out about it, so they might as well not bother. The Avians are pulling out all the stops to make sure this trial goes off without a hitch.”

There was a doorbell sound. “Just a moment,” Lauri said, getting up and leaving the library. “That’s probably Nahali with a security checkin.” She went to the back door, and indeed it was Nahali, one of Hannuri’s lieutenants, periodically checking in on Lauri and her guests.

“Still can’t help thinking that at least some of those weasels will manage to get out of it,” said one of the lawyers. “They’re like … some kind of video game cheat where you get infinite retries.”

“Sure, they’ve got money,” said Jennifer, “but they’re up against something they’ve never seen before. Something they can’t buy.”

A man in a suit, indistinguishable from any member of the legal team, was suddenly confronted by two very large Avians in their humanoid forms, wearing police uniforms including battle armor. Accompanying them were two regular humanoids dressed in the same way.

One of the large Avians presented his badge and stated, “I’m officer Gheara de Raptor. May we speak with you a moment? These passages and doorways are currently off limits.”

The man took a step back when one of the human officers drew a weapon that surely came from a science fiction movie prop storeroom and pointed it at him, saying, “We’ve been observing you for some time now – you’re attempting to gain access to either the judge’s contemplation chambers, or the jury deliberations. There’s currently no access to those areas, of course.”

By this time, the Avian officers’ hands had transformed into fierce-looking, extremely sharp-edged weapons, insuring that the man didn’t move.

The other human officer said, “We’re detaining you for now until we can learn more of who you are and who sent you.”

The man would have been struggling but for the extremely sharp blades, which made a razor-sharp barrier. He was terrified to move a muscle. He said in a sort of whiney voice, “I didn’t do anything. What gives you the right …”

About that time, the human officer doing the body search discovered the man’s weapon, while the other scanned his phone with an Avian-made electronic device and found the recording made when he was hired to do the deed. The officer smirked and waved the items as he said, “Whatcha think there, bub? Might this be the very thing?”

A large number of some of the planet’s wealthiest individuals were all huddled together and chained like animals, then paraded back into the huge crowded room being used as a courtroom. Once the prisoner area was locked and guarded, the door to the deliberation room opened, and the jurors filed back out to their places in the box. It should be noted that the stone barriers had mysteriously disappeared in the same way they had appeared.

The Avian judge asked loudly, “Jury, have you reached a final decision?”

A human and an Avian stood side by side at the same time and said, “We have, Your Honor. We find all defendants guilty as charged under all articles of indictment."

The human judge banged his gavel and stated, “The jury has ruled. Sentence is to be carried out according to mandatory statute; there is no need for a sentencing hearing.”

Silence ruled the chamber – until a young woman stood and said loudly, “All assets and chattels have been confiscated, proceeds to be given to the victims as described in the statute.”

Loud sounds of severe dismay came from the prisoner dock as their verbal protests grew louder.

The human judge turned to the prisoners and said, “I wouldn’t worry too much about losing that money. Neither you nor any of your offspring would ever have gotten to spend any of it.”

The Avian judge banged his gavel sharply, “The prisoners will be silent. There will be order in this court.”

The protests from the prisoners get louder and more animated. The judge indicated one of the Avian bailiffs and pointed, “Silence them, or remove them. Whichever is more convenient."

Amid many gasps of total astonishment and great fear, the Bailiff transformed from humanoid to warrior form. Exceedingly few had ever seen an Avian transform before, especially to this form, and most were truly shocked. The prisoners in the dock became silent as a grave.

The Avian said in an angry voice, “You have been convicted and sentenced to death. Your lawyers have already hung you out to dry. It would mean nothing to me to cut you all to ribbons, and I would not be charged, since your lives are already forfeit … but being civil dictates not.”

The many men and women chained in the prisoner box now realized that, if there had previously been any doubt, their former money and power was now no more. They also began to realize that the penalty for this form of treason was quite final … none of them wanted to contemplate it, but there was no way out that any of them could see.

The Avian and human judges both said, “You have been tried and convicted of treason.”

The Avian judge said, “You will be executed by this country’s laws at sunrise four days from now. What you and your cohorts have done is corrupt capital trade and for the want of greed, killed untold millions. Your sentence will, unfortunately, be more merciful than what Avian law would dictate.”

Afterwards, there was a press conference outside the courtroom. One of the reporters raised his hand and was called on, “Yes, My name is Reginald Llecar. I’m the roving reporter for Faux Nightly News. Could you please tell our audience what Avian law would dictate?”

An Avian legal expert replied, "Surely, human journalist. For such a severe crime that resulted in so many deaths, it would entail death by evisceration of the lower abdominal cavity and removal of all contents to insure completion. The suffering would be intentionally excruciating. After two days the remains would be collected and interred in the Hall of Eternal Shame with an appropriate burial marker, that their crimes would be remembered by all down through history.”

The reporter blanched white and silently sat amid the deathly silence within the press room.

Another reporter raised her hand and, when recognized, called out, “Veronica Hedges, Democracy Daily. So why is this not the penalty for these defendants?”

A human legal expert replied, “The international legal system formalized by the human-Avian treaty is a hybrid of the human legal systems of various nations and the Avian legal system, and frankly, there’s no precedent for a punishment like that, or there hasn’t been since barbarian times. The sentence, like the legal system, is a compromise between what Avian law would demand and what human morality permits. The death penalty called for by the statutes in the treaty is to be swift and merciful.”

Lauri was watching this on her TV, pale as a sheet. “I’m … confused about how the Avians can be so advanced and have such a free society but have these terrifying legal traditions,” she said.

Thomas replied, “Well, you have to remember that the last time a verdict like that was turned in in Avian courts, it was literally thousands of years ago.”

“Oh, so there’s been nothing to call attention to how draconian it is for that long?” Lauri asked.

“From what I’ve been reading of their history, that’s true,” Thomas replied. “Those laws are simply never used anymore. No Avian’s been convicted of a crime of this magnitude in living memory, and a whole lot longer.”

“So either they weren’t caught,” surmised Lauri, “or they were deterred by the horrific sentence, or they simply didn’t feel tempted to commit the crime.”

Thomas replied, “True, if an Avian committed such a crime and somehow weren’t caught, there wouldn’t have been a trial, and their name wouldn’t have made it into the history books … but I think that if that many Avians died, that would’ve made the books, no matter whether someone was caught or not, so I doubt such a crime was committed at all since the last time the sentence was carried out. As to whether they were deterred or just weren’t tempted … there’s no real way to be sure.”

“From what I’ve seen, they probably weren’t tempted,” Lauri said. “They may have a pretty savage past, but they just don’t have any reason to commit huge crimes like that. I don’t think there are ultra-wealthy Avians. They’ve got money, and there are some who have more than others, but it doesn’t seem as if they have that urge to collect more money than they can ever use. That’s probably fear again – even when we humans have got lots of money, we’re still afraid that somebody else might have more and use it against us.”

“I wonder,” said Thomas, “whether that means there might be somebody else pulling the strings of the ultra-wealthy, playing on their fears of each other to cause them to do things like what they did.” He gestured vaguely at the TV screen.

“Maybe,” surmised Lauri, “but even if there are … they didn’t pay the money to arm the terrorists, so it’d be awfully hard to prove. But now … are we any safer?”

Four Days Later :

The morning of the execution had arrived. The many prisoners were escorted under heavy guard to a new chamber. Within appeared to be a fairly comfortable lounge area seemingly with all the extras. The prisoners were escorted in, their shackles removed, the the door closed with a heavy boom with the sounds of large things in motion locking the door in place.

Unknown to the prisoners, one whole wall was a special metallic polarized view port. It allowed those external to see in, but because of the polarization of the light, the prisoner side appeared to be a shiny mirror like black.

On the external side of the view window were several tiers of seats, which were filled to capacity. As an interesting historical note, not a single Avian was present; the entire area contained only Humans.

One of the human men dressed in black robes stood. “May I have your attention please.” Silence ruled through out the large area. The man in black robes spent the next 45 minutes calling individual names and listing the crimes against humanity and treason they had been convicted of. The list was long and included most of the who’s who of the insanely rich.

Of course, by this time, within the chamber the prisoners had drinks, music playing, and several were watching videos and totally ignored the judge, oblivious to his proclamation of their death sentence. Perhaps, to the last, they continued to believe that consequences were for other people. Or did they believe that they should live their last moments as they had lived the rest of their lives?

The man in black robes turned towards someone off in the distance and said loudly, “Enable Bus 42.”

What happened next came totally by surprise. The viewing window suddenly clouded over and became totally black. The flash from within the chamber was so bright that it still slightly overpowered the room’s lighting for an instant, even though the window had polarized and redirected most of the intense flash back into the chamber, which was fortunate for the many hundreds of observers.

When the viewing window once again turned opaque and the heavy locking bars within the door had retracted allowing the door to open … the inside of the chamber was shiny silver clean. Nothing else was there. No ash, no odors, no dust, no residual ionizing radiation, just a room scoured clean enough to be a genetic clean room. The people watching gasped at the fact that all the prisoners, along with everything else in the chamber, were gone. Nothing remained.

The judge turned to face the multitudes and said, “So there are no founded complaints, we, humanity, completed the sentence for crimes we humans convicted them of. No Avian can be brought to task over it, because we carried out the trial and sentence, not they.”

The execution hadn’t been televised; most human leaders believed that such a thing would be beyond what most would accept. Certainly some would have watched, but most of them would probably have complained about such a thing being broadcast for all to see, despite the fact that any of them could have chosen not to watch. Of course, as it was, many people complained that it hadn’t been broadcast.

Thomas looked at his phone. “Should be over by now,” he said.

Lauri turned on a news broadcast. The reporter was talking about the execution that had just happened, of course, describing the scene as artist depictions appeared on the screen. “Will it work?” she asked. “Will this make us better? Or worse? Or will it have no effect? The Avians haven’t had violent crime for thousands of years – is it because of their draconian penalties deterring them, or is it because they just aren’t as warped or twisted as we are?”

“Hard to say,” said Thomas. “So many studies have shown that harsh punishments don’t actually deter crime. People are built to think that consequences won’t happen to them; they’ll happen to other people, or they’ll happen someday later, when they’re dead. We act in the now and don’t think about later.”

“Maybe that’s one of our problems,” said Lauri. “I gotta wonder whether those marauders are still out there. Sure, their fancy new weapons were engineered to be duds, but they had weapons before, and they’re always scrounging up more.”
“It’s like the Wild West again here in the middle of the country,” Thomas said. “Except right here in the neighborhood of the council building. A few tough federal marshals, each trying to keep the peace in areas too large for one person, while people flood in from the rest of the nation to take whatever they can lay their hands on. Still can’t believe you took some of them on with a bow and arrows.”

“Didn’t really know what I was getting into,” Lauri said. “Probably wouldn’t have noticed if it hadn’t been for their recon drone spooking the birds and other wildlife. Probably wouldn’t have made it back if it hadn’t been for the Avians swapping out crucial bits of the weapons for duplicates programmed to fall apart after a short time. I’m not some federal marshal.”

“Once the marauder gangs are rounded up, and the random looters are either stopped or on the run,” said Thomas, “there might be something that starts to approach law and order out there. Meanwhile, the parts of the country that the virus didn’t spread to before the vaccine are, well, relatively fine. The world’s economy dropped like a stone. But at least people are alive.”

“That sounds like more executions,” Lauri said.

“I expect so,” said Thomas.

“Maybe we can talk about something else,” suggested Lauri. “Are my neighbors out of the woods, medically speaking?”

Lauri was still wearing head scarves, because her hair was still in the process of growing back and hadn’t evened out yet.

“Should be released any day now,” said Thomas.

“Can’t wait to talk to Sandy about flying saucers again,” Lauri said. “Wonder if some of those flying saucer sightings were Avians?”

Thomas replied, “My guess is that they all were, with the exception of the ones that were hoaxes or misidentified natural phenomena.”

“Wait, I thought the Avians had a space form?” asked Lauri. “Why would they need spaceships?”

“They’ve got a form for operating in space,” said Thomas. “From what I understand, it’s radiation hardened and can withstand vacuum and micro-meteoroid impacts for days. But it doesn’t get them into space, and even if they don’t need space suits, they do still need oxygen. They need technology for things like that – and they have it.”

“So … if they can live in space, what do they need to live on the surface of the Earth for?” Lauri wondered. “Why did they go through all of that?”

“That’s … actually a good question,” replied Thomas. “Do they have orbiting space stations? I doubt it – we’d have detected anything that large in orbit. Do they have a settlement on the Moon? Or on Mars? If they’re mostly underground, we could easily have missed them. Or do they have Sun-orbiting stations we’ve misidentified as asteroids? That would be pretty easy to pull off due to the great distance and our inability to get clear images due to the brightness of the sun. ”

Nine months had passed since the execution. The method that had been employed was thought to be the most humane way to execute condemned prisoners anyone had ever come up with. One second they’d just been doing whatever casually, then, without warning, they’d no longer existed. It had happened so quickly that no one thought of it as cruel or even painful. The method was adopted rapidly throughout the world.

For the first time in humanity’s recorded history, the human clan was totally at peace. The only exception to this rule were the swaths of territory left vacant due to the biological attack. The human nations’ military forces and law enforcement had been as devastated as the rest of the population by the disease and couldn’t keep up with the looters and roving gangs.

The Avians tried a solution. They brought out an autonomous land drone they called a Panther. It was heavily armed with plasma grenades and particle beam miniguns. As far as the human clan could tell, the machine had some sort of armor that made it almost impervious to all weapons thus far used against it.

The Avians had released four battalions of them in the US alone, with orders to patrol and stop any and all looting or property destruction. Anyone ignorant enough to attempt looting were the first to encounter the Panthers.

They thought simple handguns, bats, or some other weapons of similar type would be effective, but these were like shooting spitballs at five-foot-thick armor plating (although the drones didn’t literally have armor that thick, but instead a new combination of carbon that was shown to be many times more indestructible than normal diamond, and was as easy to work with as steel).

Needless to say, the humans were terrified at the thought of indestructible killer robot drones roving the countryside playing judge, jury, and executioner with no oversight. The Avians did some minor reprogramming so the Panthers were less likely to instantly kill, and would more likely try to capture. They still didn’t attempt capture long and a few bursts of the particle beam minigun or a couple of plasma grenades always ended any disagreements or altercation.

In one badly affected country, several hundred surviving terrorists of the more nefarious type had banded together and thought they could take on the Panthers and defeat them. After the 10 minutes it took the Avians to call the Panthers back, there was no terrorist threat anywhere in what that country was calling the Deadlands. There were hundreds of dead terrorists, though, and there were no others willing to show themselves after that run-in.

The fear the Avians had been doing their best to rid the human clan of now filled the hearts of the remaining terrorists to the point that they totally vanished and went to deep ground to hide and were never heard from again. This might not have been the goal, but it did solve the immediate issue.

The problem, however, was that now the humans feared the Avians, and where there was fear, there could never truly be trust. But the Avians knew this and knew they’d have to work on it. They gradually removed the Panthers once each country’s law enforcement was able to regain control over the dead regions and resettlement plans were under way. For now it will have to do. In time, I know things have a habit of changing if certain stimuli are removed.

The Avians had joined with various countries’ space agencies and had begun showing the human engineers new aspects of physics they’d had no idea existed. Working together with the Avians, the human clan was building a staging area at the Earth-Moon L1 point. Entirely new construction techniques were taught to the humans, and the Lagrange station rapidly took shape. The Avians told the humans that they’d once had a factory at that location but had moved on to other sites.

Only a few short months after that, the Thlapa Lunar Mining Company started doing business. Human space programs had no lack of raw materials now. No one knew who had come up with the idea, but since they had a mining operation on the moon, they constructed manufacturing as well, which aided tremendously in building the human clan’s first real starship.

Great expectations began to bloom when the Avians showed the human clan a true working FTL engine with inertia removal features. Although the tech was sound, the Avian’s only gave humanity a version of the FTL that had limited speed. Their reasoning was, Man Clan didn’t understand the tech well enough yet to improve it, and it limited the speed with which they could expand throughout the cosmos in case they retained their horribly violent ways.

It was also known that mankind would eventually unravel the electronics and be able to break the speed barrier. They didn’t want to, but if the human clan proved to be overly aggressive once they moved into the Cosmic Neighborhood, the Avian’s were sad about it, although they did have a contingency plan.

“The humans are doing well under our oversight,” said Hannuri in Lauri’s library, “but I must wonder whether they would become hostile toward each other if we did not have a constant presence.”

Lauri paused, pouring Hannuri’s tea. “Humans are scared of you, you know. Executions, killer robots – why wouldn’t they be? I think the moment your backs are turned, we’ll be right back to trying to kill each other.”

“But we have worked so hard to eliminate the disease of fear from the hearts of humans,” Hannuri objected, sipping his tea with no visible alarm, even though it was piping hot.

“Guarantee you that somebody’s already out there trying to manipulate their fellow humans into rebellion using fear of you Avians as a tool,” Lauri said.

Hannuri sighed and looked into his cup. “No doubt you are right. But it does not matter. Soon there will be no Avians for human manipulators to use as a target for fear.”

“Wait, what?” asked Lauri.

“We will be leaving you,” he said. “We have completed our colonies and will be departing Earth for them.”

“But … all your cities … your civilization …”

“We are taking it all with us,” Hannuri said. “Perhaps not all our artifacts, but our entire culture. We will still have ambassadors on Earth. The council building will still be needed.”

“Where will you go?” Lauri asked.

“I cannot tell you where they are,” said Hannuri, “and not only because I am not a scientist and do not know the coordinates for the stars these planets orbit. We have decided not to disclose to any human the locations of any of our colonies. I am sorry. But we can choose to visit, and we can pass messages along. I will never forget you.”

“I mean, are you gonna live on space stations, or on planets, or …?”

Hannuri explained, “There are several worlds that we have been making habitable for centuries. Machines have been building habitations for us, and now they are ready. We will live on worlds with no humans – no offense, but many of us have been dreaming of such a thing for a long time.”

At the new Earth-Moon L1 waystation humankind had just completed, docking ops received a call. “This is docking control,” responded Lieutenant Storks. “Please identify.”

“Good diurnal rotations to you, docking control. My name is Commander Qaatl Rantor. I’m in command of the Avian relocation vessel Niya Zhor. I am requesting permission to enter your orbital lanes. We have equipment and personnel that need transport.”

“Roger that, Niya Zhor,” Lt. Storks replied. “Been expecting your arrival. Be advised there is a rather large starship already in orbital lane 456 by 122. Orbital lane 321 by 90 is free and clear.”

“Copy that. Assuming orbital lane 321 by 90. Niya Zhor out.”

Without warning, orbital control’s approach radar alarmed. The very best scans showed nothing until a huge and extremely elegant starship seemingly appeared from thin space and assumed a low obit that avoided the satellites and Earth’s new starship, Terran Blood. All the officers in docking control could do was stare in open mouthed astonishment at the Avian vessel. None had ever seen such a ship except in sci-fi movies.

Lauri was sitting on her sofa feeling rather depressed. It was true that she had discovered who and what the mysterious winged man was and had become quite rich and famous because of it, as had Thomas. The problem was that she had made some very good Avian friends, and now they were leaving.

She felt horrible. She knew she was really going to miss the Council, Hannuri, and all the others she had become close friends with over the last several years. She’d had her differences with them, but they were fundamentally decent people, extremely reasonable, and she’d miss them terribly.

There came a knock at the door. Lauri got off the sofa, sadly walked to the door, and opened it. To her greatest surprise, Hannuri and the Avian Council were standing on her porch.

Lauri gasped in surprise as her hand went to her open mouth, “Umm, oh yeah … please …. Umm, please come in and make yourselves comfortable. I’ll get us some beverages."

Sayid Alrihla said, “That won’t be necessary, Councilwoman.”

Lauri stopped and turned around with an eyebrow raised. “Councilwoman? Me? I’ve never been on a …”

Hannuri interrupted, “But you have, and for quite a long time, too. You and Thomas both. Most of the people you have introduced us to are some of the most excellent members of the human clan we Avians have ever had the pleasure to meet. You were part of our council from the start. We wanted human clan members on the Council with your integrity, to show we mean to be at peace, so we elected you and Thomas both. You mean you never wondered why we told you all our plans and asked for so much advice? The rebuilding of your house and root cellar including the construction of a council building should have been a major clue, not to mention all the many meetings in your home over the last several years."

Lauri didn’t exactly know how to feel as this explanation tingled pleasantly through her. She stumbled through trying to reply, “Yeah … I … I mean, no, I never …”

The group of Avians laughed pleasantly.

Sayid Alrihla said, “We have come to ask if you would relocate with us. You are a highly valued member of the Council, as is Thomas. We promise, once we leave ... your kind will more than likely revert to their old ways. With the new data and equipment we have given your planet, our advanced extrapolation computers predict a 99.99% chance that within 50 years this planet will be devoid of human life.”

Hannuri said, “The good news is, you can bring any and all who will come. Don’t forget any pets. I remember you telling me about a local bobcat you had become fond of. We have been tracking its location and activities without interfering with it. If you like, we can bring it with us, and we can ensure that it will have the absolute knowledge that you are its friend and beloved companion. We will remove the wild from it, and it will become like your guardian. Woe unto any and all who try to do you harm. There shall be no better watch-animal. Oh, yes, and it will love you dearly because we have already sensed that it knows how much you love it.”

Sayid Alrihla said, “You don’t have to do anything but name who, what, or where the location is, and any you name and choose to bring will be first notified of your selection as a valued member of the Avian Council, then asked if they wish to come. We will answer any and all questions without reservation.”

Lauri asked, “What if they say they don’t want to come?”

The Council all looked at one another before Sayid Alrihla replied sadly, “They will be left to fend for themselves. We are a peaceful people and wish to incarcerate no one for any reason if we don’t have to. If they choose to stay, it will be their choice. We will force no one.”

About that time. Thomas walked in, “Hi. What’s up? What’s the emergency …?” Thomas noticed who was present and their expressions and stopped speaking.

“Got a bit of a choice to make, it seems,” said Lauri, and she and the Council caught him up.

“Whew,” said Thomas. “That’s a lot to take in. The human race, gone in 50 years?”

“Not gone,” said Hannuri, raising a finger of caution. “We merely said that human life on Earth would be over. We predict a mass die-off of species unlike any mass extinction the planet has ever seen. But humans are entering a new era of space travel. There will certainly be humans alive in space. Some, we hope, will choose to live with us. Those will be treated as equals and given self-determination. They may live in colonies of their own, sharing the same planet as Avian colonies, or they may live in mixed Avian-human colonies if they wish. Humans will certainly attempt to build their own colonies independent of ours, and we will not interfere with them. There are several promising efforts already beginning.”

“Kinda sad to think that we’ve trashed the Earth so bad,” Lauri said.

“Oh, Earth will be fine,” said Thomas. “I’m sad to see that so many beloved species will be disappearing, unless we somehow bring them with us to space – perhaps in the form of frozen embryos for transportation. But life has survived on Earth for billions of years and is always changing. It will adapt to the environment, and new species will arise. It has always happened, and until the Sun becomes a red giant in 10 billion years or so, it will continue to happen. But I’m afraid that Earth is about to change to be inhospitable for humans. When we change the environment in such a way that it can no longer produce food for us, or that pollutants have made it too toxic for us, or that there are no longer places to live that are safe from weather disasters, or that the atmosphere no longer protects us from deadly radiation, well … other species may survive, but not humans. The ecosystem will change but survive, and even thrive. But humans will no longer fit into it.”

“But … you all worked so hard to change the human race for the better,” Lauri said, looking at the Avians. “And now … you’re admitting that you failed?”

“We have not failed,” said Sayid Alrihla. “Without our intervention, the only humans to survive would have been those we chose to bring with us. Now … there may be others as well. Even without any kind of profit motive there are humans reaching into space. That did not happen in our prior simulations. Those in thrall to fear and addicted to using it to rule others would have prevented it.”

Hannuri said, “It’s decision time.”

Thomas said, “I want to come with you. I would truly like to live in peace.”

Sayid Alrihla turned to Lauri and said, “We have someone who is having a fit to meet you on the ship.”

Lauri’s eyebrows rose, “Ship? What kind of ship?”

Hannuri smiled, “One like you only see on your fantasy programs. It’s large enough we can bring many types with us. It will still take some time to reach our colony world, but not a voyage of extreme discomfort. It is a considerable distance.”

Nahali and Periri entered, using a form Lauri and Thomas had never seen before. It was the space faring form.

Nahali said, as the two of them opened the large boxes they had brought with them, “The shuttle is here. and it is time to put on your suits.”

Periri said, “We have started contacting the individuals who are wishing to go. We have also gotten something you might like.”

Thomas opened one of the large boxes, removed one of the advanced space outfits, and put it on. The rest of the individuals also opened the other boxes and put on their suits. Lauri grabbed one and wiggled into hers. It was skin tight.

Nahali escorted the group out to the area in the soybean field that had become designated a landing pad. Thomas and Laurie entered. Externally the shuttle was massively elegant and impressive. Once inside, they saw two aisles of seats arranged in sixteen rows each. Ahead of that was the door leading to the flight deck.

Thomas went up, opened the door, and peered in. He saw the advanced control panels for each individual – the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and weapons officer. He had seen advanced control areas before, but nothing compared.

The large group all found a seat and fastened their harnesses. The Avian pilot and his crew entered the flight deck. The ship took off with no sensation of motion and was suddenly in orbit. Thomas and Lauri could now see the very large ship in low earth orbit. As they rapidly approached the enormous ship, a door slid open. The atmosphere retention field sparkled as the shuttle rapidly approached.

After the shuttle had landed on the deck and the gear locks fastened it down to the deck, the shuttle door gull-winged open to reveal one of the most seriously advanced areas Thomas and Lauri had ever seen.

Hannuri escorted them all to their quarters. When the door whooshed open to Lauri’s assigned quarters, an almost 50-pound bobcat jumped on her and wallowed and nudged lovingly. Lauri managed to sit up on her elbows and pet the large critter. It was just as the Avians had said. The creature was very loving and knew beyond any doubt that Lauri was its friend, the human woman who had left out food for it for years now since it was a kitt.

Many had chosen to leave with the Avians. On Earth, the remaining humans took an immediate global census to determine the population after the mass exodus. There was no population issue currently as well over 4 billion individuals had chosen to exit the Earth which resulted in large wide open unpopulated areas. Between the viral attack and the exodus … it reduced the global population tremendously.

“Your turn, Bridget,” Lauri said. Bridget looked at her cards.

“You wouldn’t even know we weren’t on Earth,” said Sandy. “They made your house look exactly like the one on Earth used to, Lauri.”

“Mine too,” said Helen. “They’re even sort of close to where they were before … if you know what I mean.”

“Sort of the same … relative arrangement?” Beth added.

Lauri’s TV was on in the background, showing images of the inauguration of President Kennedy, signals that were just arriving through space at the distance they were from Earth now. “It’s kind of sad … knowing how it turns out,” said Janet.

“Knowing how it all turns out,” Bridget replied. “I guess … we’ll get to see it all.” She played a card. “Your turn, Beth.”

“If we want to,” agreed Lauri. “I mean, we kind of know the ending.”

“This reminds me of a time a few years ago when we thought you were a crazy woman, Sandy,” said Bridget, “seeing people flying in the sky. Even Lauri thought it was the flying saucer thing again. But then …”

“Guess you were all wrong, then,” said Sandy with a smirk.

“How’s your husband doing, Sandy?” Lauri asked.

“Oh, Jeff’s fine,” Sandy replied. “Took him some time to recover from the virus, but once he did, he was back to his old self. He’s tinkering with the Avian technology, making solar tractors and threshers, and windmills. It’s just like old times, just … nobody’s got to buy gas.”

“Kind of funny, how the Avians have all these spaceships but have left us to ourselves to build our own farm equipment out of parts,” said Helen. “Although … it is pretty interesting how they all go together, and not too hard to understand either. And my husband Greg’s really interested in the organic way the Avians showed us how to make the seeds adapt to the soil on this planet … not genetic engineering exactly, more like fast cross-pollination. Though maybe that’s splittin hairs.”

“Things aren’t that different for me,” said Lauri, “except I’m not growing as many soybeans. Got a lot of different things now. That communal seed bank we set up means we can try growing whatever we want, and soon we’ll find out what we have too much or too little of. This planet’s got a winter coming, but we’ll just store up what we grow and share it once it’s harvested. And we don’t have to worry, really, because we’re not gonna starve no matter how bad we mess it up this first year. Plenty of stored food to start with. And Thomas is really good with the genetics.”

Sandy said, “What about that newfangled gadget the Avians gave us that somehow makes food and water? I understand the wicking of moisture from the atmosphere, but not about creating the food.”

Bridget explained, “It doesn’t so much create the food, as somehow manipulates the molecules of bio-matter of any type into edible custom selected foods.”

Lauri tossed a card and chose one from the deck. “It doesn’t matter what type of biomass is used either. A wooden mop handle or an old stump out of the woods will do as well as anything. It just has to be an organic of some type. Using that kind of bio-mass doesn’t taste the best ever, but it’ll keep you alive. The better quality the biomass the better quality food.”

Helen asked, “Has any of you heard any news from home?”

“Last news I saw was some large breakaway faction of humans had taken control of the Lagrange waystation. From best I heard, things were rapidly going downhill from there. That’s the newest news I have, and it was several months old when it arrived at ops.”

Laurie said with alarm, “That’s horrible news. It means the very thing all of us were fleeing from is about to unfold.”

Bridget said, “Thing about the news, though; we’re so far away from the Sol system, it takes decades for radio signals to travel this far. That’s why we’re seeing the Kennedy inauguration on TV.”

Helen commented, “Thought the Aves had sorta solved that issue with something called bonded communication?”

Beth replied, “They do, but there are several issues with instant communications with Earth. The only Earthbound bonded receiver/transmitter is located in an abandoned enclave deep within an old Avian city. I’m not privy to how the Avian ambassadors keep informed, but even their news isn’t so new – it’s several weeks old.”

Just as Hanuri had speculated, no sooner had the Avians left Earth and stopped their oversight than three large rogue factions arose among Earth’s nations. Two of the factions caused little damage but earaches and headaches from listening to their foolishness.

The third of these factions, Terran Essence, was the most violent and had managed, through subterfuge and massive computer hacking, to take over the L1 Lagrange waystation, though they didn’t have any actual personnel on board the station. Of course, Terran Essence’s communications with the rest of Earth’s nations were psychotic beyond insanity at best and made the proclamation of all-out war to maintain the purity of mankind’s bodily fluids including nonsensical vital essences and not have them contaminated, whatever that meant.

That didn’t mean Earth’s forces were weak. L1 docking control sensors showed a huge approaching mass of small fighters and many of something a bit larger with more firepower as they lifted rapidly from earth’s gravity well and quickly formed into attack formation in high orbit.

The rest of Earth wasn’t going to let Terran Essence get away with it. Docked at the waystation was the Terran Blood, the only starship mankind had ever built, with the only working FTL engine Earth had ever managed to build and document. It opened much of the galaxy to humans, although it was still slow in comparison to Avian tech. And although several nations on Earth had copies of the data for building it, it could only have been built in space, and the only existing facility that could build it was the waystation itself. Earth’s nations wouldn’t let the violent breakaway faction keep control of it.

Brand new force fields sparkled into existence around the waystation as several plasma torpedoes hit. It was obvious the torpedoes had drained the shields. Gigantic arcs of energy could be seen all through the field until all the energy from the plasma torpedoes had been absorbed. It took a few minutes for the shield to recover fully.

Many of the waystation’s ports irised open. The approaching armada’s sensors showed that the station and the starship’s weapons were charged. A huge spark appeared in the middle of the lead ships of Earth’s armada. When the bright white flash dissipated, a full third of the large attacking armada was gone.

Now it was the armada’s turn, as they released a tremendous volley of neutron plasma torpedoes. The unique thing about neutron plasma torpedoes was that nothing interacted with them until they reached their target. Shields, weapons fire, and even alternating magnetic fields would not interfere with them until they activated at target … and that was far too late, as half the Lagrange waystation discovered. Unfortunately for the innocent workers trapped on the station, with its hacked computers that they couldn’t control, this meant no way out.

The entire construction part of the huge Lagrange facility exploded in an amazing display of paracausal energies. The impact of such a heavy collection of specialty plasma, coupled with the destruction of the construction facility, and the huge spreading shock wave that carried tons of debris caused a severe imbalance that knocked the huge remainder of the waystation out of its orbit.

Due to the gravitational pull of the Earth and Moon, the remainder of the station, including the starship, began a gradual deorbit that would accelerate rapidly … headed directly into a bullseye hit on Earth. Besides the unknown quantities of explosive volatiles that had survived the initial attack, the approaching remainder and starship was shown it would land almost perfectly on Washington, DC. The resulting impact would be the same as if an asteroid the size of Rhode Island had landed on the White House.

Some within the Terran Essence faction rejoiced, as it meant the destruction of the capital city of the US, one of its enemies. Others were smarter and realized that such an impact would also cause a drastic change in Earth’s climate, possibly causing a short ice age, meaning years of famine and austerity for friend and foe alike.

The faction split and fought over control of the waystation’s remains and starship as both inexorably approached the Earth. But their computer hackers were among the more intelligent group and managed to electronically seize control over the station and starship, undocking and firing the ship’s thrusters toward the station. This caused both the station and starship to miss Earth and enter highly elliptical orbits around the planet. Even with all that effort, the orbit of the waystation were decaying. Nothing would stop the huge waystation from crashing into Earth someday, but the hackers were at least able to stabilize the starship’s orbit using its thrusters saving it.

“Wish we could do something about it,” Lauri said. “But the Avians don’t want to interfere. I thought they said they’d gotten rid of the infection or whatever. So what’s this Terran Essence thing? That mean it didn’t work?”

“Hard to say,” said Thomas. “They’ve got their hands full setting up their colonies – they’re on this planet but also on something like a dozen more, give or take. But the fact is, it sadly doesn’t matter. Earth’s environment’s already been changed. So many animal and plant species are going to die off that humanity can’t help being one of them. Other species will arise and survive, but it’ll take millions of years, although the Avians have the technology to fix the environment, same as how they terraformed all these planets to colonize – but even if they started right now, it would take centuries. Better than millions of years, but still, longer than we’ll live.”

“And they were going to start their own colonies, too,” Lauri said sadly. “Now, without the starship, that’ll never happen.”

“Hard to tell,” said Thomas. “The starship’s in a stable Earth orbit, from what I hear, but it has no docking facility anymore. The waystation orbits Earth once every few weeks, but it dips into the top of the atmosphere each time, so that orbit’s gradually losing energy, and it’ll eventually crash land, who knows where. The only way to fix that would be if it had some huge thrusters, but it just doesn’t have those. When it hits, well … if it hits land, it’ll throw so much debris and dust into the atmosphere that global temperatures will decrease worldwide – and anybody who thinks that would be great hasn’t read about the Little Ice Age. Crops failed across entire continents, and agriculture was harder for centuries – and that was from just a couple degrees Fahrenheit change. This would make that look like a minor blip, though it wouldn’t last centuries. But it doesn’t take centuries for people to starve."

Lauri said, “I’m back to wishing we could do something about it. But I don’t see what we could do. There are probably people still on that station who survived and now can’t even control it because the Terran Essence still has control of the computers. What’s the rest of the world saying?”

“Well, even the other two rogue factions, the Humanity First and Confederacy of Nations, have condemned the Terran Essence countries for what they’ve done. Of course, none of these are the big players – the US, Europe, China, India, Russia, Australia, and others are all trying to see what they can do.” Thomas was still reading the reports the Avians had sent. “Hard to say if they’ll be able to do anything.”

“NO!! Dag nabbit!!” shouted Lauri loudly as she banged her fist on the table, making everything and everyone jump. She stood suddenly and pointed at Thomas, “Both you and I are part of the ruling Avian Council. To the best of my knowledge, we have not been impeached for crimes ... nor has there been a coup.”

Everyone sat wide-eyed in amazement at Lauri's outburst.

Thomas calmly replied, “You know as well as I do that we’re both highly respected members of the ruling Avian Council."

As Lauri fumbled through a drawer in her china cabinet, she said, “That’s how we’re gonna at least patch things up a bit.” She found an item that looked like a communications earbud and looped it over one of her ears.

Thomas said, “I still don’t know if this will work. Don't we need something they call a Quorum?”

Lauri turned the earbud on. “Hannuri? This is Councilwoman Lauri Trillian. I’m gonna have to call one of those face-time meetings over the bonded secure comms. There’s an important matter we have to resolve.” Lauri removed several other items from the drawer and turned towards Thomas, “As far as the quorum, what you think happens when two high-ranking members start making proclamations?"

A few short minutes later, a knock was at the door. Lauri answered it and found Nahali standing on the porch, accompanied by Periri. They had on exquisitely tailored armor, but they were in humanoid form, not the formidable warrior form.

Nahali bowed respectfully, "Councilwoman Trillian, Councilman Blake, we have been dispatched to escort you to the secure bonded viewer room as is required for this type of meeting.”

Thomas’ eyebrows went up slightly. He hadn’t really realized until that moment that he and Lauri literally ruled the Avian Nation just as much as the rest of the Avian High Council did. The two of them had become well regarded over the several years they had both been members, and by this time their power and veracity were unquestioned by the other members of the Council; their words carried the same authority.

Lauri led Nahali, Periri, and Thomas down a very long newly constructed hall to a section of the wall that was blank and unobstructed. She placed her hand against a section of the wall and appeared to lean on it slightly. A large square section opened and revealed what looked like a large flat screen made directly into a super advanced and complicated piece of electronics.

Nahali said, “Here is our required authorization code.” He entered it using the advanced ephemeral holographic keyboard that was an integral part of the comm unit. The system verified the code. The screen split into 20 even squares, each with the image of one of the Avian Council.

Laurie said authoritatively, “Is the Council aware of what is taking place in Earth orbit as we speak?”

Several of the faces turned away from the view. They obviously were talking to someone not on viewer. When all of them returned, Hannuri said, “It is as we feared. As soon as we stopped intervening, madness ensued that most surely will end in some disastrous war.”

Thomas caught on to Lauri's train of thought, “The point is, where did they get the weapons and the abilities to do what is happening right now?”

First, Hannuri appeared to look at the Avian members of the Council. Then they each appeared to look at someone for an instant before the image of Sayid Alrihla said, “Technically speaking, honored members of the Council, it is the Avian’s interference that has precipitated the means for this current disaster to transpire.”

All of them agreed as they verbally went on record.

Lauri said passionately, “That being said, how can we sit back and do nothing? You just heard another of the members say it – Avians are the direct cause of this issue.”

The Avian who had many feminine features and was more than obviously pregnant said, “OK, Councilwoman Trillian. What proposal do you have to address the human clan’s innate love of disaster?"

Lauri replied, “I can do nothing about that issue. What we can do is use Avian tech to save the facility before it impacts the planet, and return the starship to a usable state. Even your computer models show the facility’s impact would severely affect Earth’s environment, possibly for centuries.”

Thomas said, “Vote time. Do we save Earth for the critters, or do we allow some ignorant idiot to destroy it all?” There was a pause as the members of the Council registered their votes, which the system instantly tabulated. The vote was unanimous except for one abstention. Everyone knew who the abstention was; it was Lauri herself. She never voted on anything she herself proposed – not even this. She just didn’t think it was fair.

Sayid Alrihla stood and banged his gavel. “It is decided, then. We would not be dictating terms or forcing our will upon the humans of Earth. This action will simply be moving an object and stabilizing its orbit. This is an easy thing, if we can get there in time. Even under max FTL, as we all know, it’s a long way.”

Lauri decided to stay home. “I don’t know how to fly some kind of spaceship thing,” she said. “I’d just get in the way.” So Thomas hugged her goodbye for the expected few months it would take to return to the Sol system, do the necessary orbital fix, and return to the colony, and Lauri would be getting constant updates via the Avians’ bonded communications.

So for a month she and Thomas played games across increasing distances of space – she and her friends even managed to rope him into a game of bridge a time or two, though the ladies weren’t as fond of playing with electronic cards.

Thomas wasn’t an expert at orbital mechanics or engineering, but he did know the basic physics involved. The Avians had some kind of tractor beam that could envelop the station and exert forces on it to stabilize its orbit; the entire station would be within the field, so that would prevent it from being pulled apart by those forces.

Earth itself would have to deal with the root cause of the problem – the rogue and fractious Terran Essence organization still had control of the computers on both the waystation and the starship. Fortunately the less nihilistic wing of the organization remained in ascendance, so nobody was deliberately trying to crash the station or starship into Earth, but they still refused to relinquish control back to the majority of the world’s nations, or to the remaining surviving humans on the station. The starship hadn’t been prepared for this and wasn’t fueled for an Earth-Moon voyage, let alone anything larger, and it was empty of humans – it was nearly complete but had still been undergoing final construction when the takeover had occurred.

“I’ve got some good news,” Thomas told Lauri on one of their daily checkins. “The Terran Essence people have some good computer hackers, sure, but they’re still a minority of nations in the world. The bigger nations have pooled their computing resources and cracked the Terran Essence’s control over the station. The people on board are back in control.”

“What about the starship?” Lauri asked.

“They’re working on it,” replied Thomas. “The waystation was the priority, since the starship’s orbit isn’t decaying.”

“Speaking of decaying, are you going to make it in time?” asked Lauri.

“Originally, things were looking grim,” Thomas said. “But now that the survivors are back in control of the station, there may be some hope. I’ve just gotten word that they’re using the station’s thrusters to prolong its orbit. They can’t stabilize it themselves; the thrusters weren’t designed for this and they don’t have enough reaction matter. But they can extend how long they have. Maybe it’ll be enough for us to get there. Yes, Dr. Veshi?” An Avian scientist had come up to Thomas; Lauri could see him on the screen.

“The humans on board the waystation have set up electromagnetic launch devices at strategic points on the external structure,” said Dr. Veshi. “It seems they intend to propel portions of broken framework at the appropriate moments.”

“Linear electromagnetic acceleration,” Thomas said. “The station has a lot of broken bits sticking off because of the incident. They’re going to use mass drivers to toss broken bits off into space at just the right times to keep themselves from crashing. The bits are small enough that they’ll burn up when they reenter Earth’s atmosphere, like meteors do. Their regular thrusters won’t have enough reaction mass, but here’s some more – but it’s not in the form of fuel, so this is how they’ve solved that problem.”

Dr. Veshi added, “Our calculations show that they will now be able to prevent their orbit from decaying until we arrive.”

This is how it happened. The Avian starship emerged from FTL and maneuvered into an orbit that would bring it in range of the waystation at its apogee point.

“Avian starship to waystation,” Thomas said. “Dr. Thomas Blake here. We’re about to perform the tractor beam maneuver we’ve been discussing. You might want to strap yourselves down. Over”

“Waystation here, Dr. Amanda Lovell speaking,” said one of the surviving aerospace engineers on board. “We’re way ahead of you. We’re all securely strapped in. All the kitchen cabinets are closed. Over.”

“Glad to hear it, Dr. Lovell,” said Thomas. “Countdown is at T minus one minute, 15 seconds as of … mark. Over.”

“Roger that, Dr. Blake.” Amanda sounded simultaneously relieved and tense. They continued to converse as the moment approached.

“Tractor beam in three … two … one … and go,” said Thomas. The Avian starship emitted a shimmering bluish beam that suffused the entirety of the waystation. “Beginning maneuver phase two. You should be feeling acceleration. Over.”

“Affirmative on that acceleration,” Amanda replied. “Readings show about three Gs … not pleasant, but lots better than crashing into the Earth. Over.”

Over a period of many hours, the Avian starship increased the station’s gravitational potential energy, pulling it around the Earth multiple times at ever-increasing distance and slowing as they approached the Earth-Moon L1 point. “Sure did take longer to get back here than it did to go flying away,” said Amanda.

“It’s always easier to destroy than build,” Thomas said.

“Just heard that they got control of the starship back,” said Amanda. “Doesn’t have enough fuel to fly back here right now, but maybe they can fly a refueling mission to it. Or maybe we can, once we can rebuild.”

Soon the large waystation remnant was stably situated at the L1 point again, though it was still out of thruster reaction mass to hold position. The Avians refilled the facilities reaction mass reserves, though, and Earth Space Control confirmed that repair and recrewing missions would be under way soon.

As for the Terran Essence rogue nations, they’d gotten some help with Avian computer technology, but the larger countries of Earth had a much wider variety of Avian advances, and once the starship was free of their control, they really didn’t have enough weaponry to hold off an assault from a coalition of unlikely allies who had found common cause against them. The Humanity First and Confederacy of Nations groups took notice – and some of the countries broke from those rogue coalitions to rejoin the larger group that was looking to establish colonies in space.

Before they left, the Avian High Council left Earth with a message: “We simply wished to prevent the waystation from damaging Earth’s environment for centuries to come. We do not plan to interfere any further with your destiny. We wish nothing but the best for the human clan’s future. And if you wish to speak, you know how to contact us.”

As the Avian starship instantly twinkled out of any type of sensor range Earth may have had, the Secretary-General of the United Nations called the huge assembly of world leaders and diplomats to order with his gavel. “This meeting is officially in session. It has come to my attention that several of us, as signatories of the treaty between our peoples and the Avians, have violated many of the major peace tenets while dealing with the Lagrange facility.”

The dignitary from India was recognized. She stood and said, “It is true that some of the Terran Essence nations were signatories to the treaty and thus violated it. But it is also true that several of our nations joined forces to try to retake the facility by force. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to overlook certain aspects of the incidents, due to the nature of the attack against what is by far Earth’s largest space construction facility?”

The Secretary-General obviously shook his head. “From the way the two human members of the ruling Avian council explained it to me, there were many more peaceful and less destructive ways to have dealt with the problem. As far as I can tell from all the documentation, we did and do have the technology to have rendered the facility harmless until we could reacquire access to the main computer systems. There was no reason for a military attack, and in fact military force in space is entirely prohibited by the treaty.”

An unknown voice was heard to say passionately, “You mean to say that all those hundreds who were helplessly trapped on the facility and died in the attack, did so in vain?”

A loud murmuring filled the huge space until the Secretary-General banged his gavel, “Silence in the chamber, please.” The murmuring died away. “Not necessarily in vain, but I feel a major part of collateral damage could have been avoided.”

At that point, any control the Secretary-General had over the large assemblage of world leaders instantly vanished in an extremely loud vociferous argument. It was more than obvious that none were happy about the insisted-on response to the takeover of the Lagrange facility, which had resulted in massive damage and loss of civilian life. And it had been the coalition of the world’s largest and most highly developed nations, such as the United States, China, Russia, and the European Union, that had insisted on that response.

Eventually the furor died down, and the pounding of the Secretary-General’s gavel could once again be heard, at which point silence reigned once more. “Please! Whatever was just said, no one was able to hear a word of it. You shall all have your say, but I must insist that it be one at a time, so all may be heard and understood.”

The speeches were fiery, heartfelt, and went on for days before everyone had spoken their piece. There were hundreds of proposals on what should be done – sanctions taken against the Terran Essence nations for violating the treaty, further sanctions against the largest nations for violating it even further and in more ways, endangering all life on Earth, and whatnot. In the end even the most highly developed nations were forced to admit that they had had military forces in space from the start, for there was no other way they could have arrived so quickly, and that therefore they had in fact broken the treaty first.

“So,” said Thomas, “it seems that they’re going to form a new international space governing body, to be in charge of all Earth space missions beyond Earth orbit. It’s going to be made of delegates from a rotating board of nations, and all the delegates have to be scientists. Every nation on Earth will rotate through. How the rotation order was chosen was complicated, but the point is that nobody stays on the board forever, and everyone gets their time on the board.”

“Not much for them to do until they fix the Lagrange waystation and get the starship back up to it,” Lauri said.

“And yes, that’s the new International Space Agency’s first order of business,” replied Thomas. He sipped his tea. With so much tense political debate and maneuvering back on Earth, there had been time for the Avian starship to return him to the colony world where he and Lauri now lived. “They’re working out the logistics of getting the waystation fixed up so the starship can dock with it.”

“There’s no point moving the starship until there’s someplace it can go,” said Lauri.

“Exactly,” Thomas agreed. “It’s in a stable orbit around Earth. They’re going to fuel its engines back up sooner or later, but that’s on hold until they get the docking area fixed – it took a lot of damage – and until the waystation’s shipyard facilities are back up and running.”

“But a lot of countries aren’t on board with the ISA,” Lauri said. “Like the rogue nations, especially Terran Essence. How are they taking it?”

“They’re actually pretty quiet about it,” said Thomas. “I can’t be sure, but the fact is that everyone knows there wouldn’t have been a danger to Earth if they hadn’t launched their cyberattack on the waystation. I suspect they know it themselves. They know they could’ve killed everybody with their act of reckless aggression. The sentiment on Earth is that everybody’s got to work together on this, or else somebody’s going to cause another calamity.”

“So that means countries are gonna be launching satellites into Earth orbit willy-nilly, but nobody’s allowed to do anything outside Earth’s orbit by themselves?” Lauri asked.

“Well, yes,” Thomas replied, “but as far as satellites go, that’s basically how it was before. They’ll have to talk to each other and make plans, or their satellites will collide. And there are legal definitions of what counts as Earth orbit, and how it will go if somebody tries to go outside it.”

Lauri sipped her tea as they sat on her front porch and talked. Suddenly an Avian flew down from the sky and landed nearby, shifting into humanoid form and walking toward them. It was Hannuri.

“Well, hello, Hannuri,” Lauri said. “Pull up a chair and I’ll pour you a cup of tea.”

“Thank you, Lauri,” Hannuri said, taking a seat once he reached the porch. “Hello, Thomas.”

“How are things?” Thomas asked.

“Well, I wanted you to know that our computer models now predict a new outcome for Earth,” Hannuri said. “I assume you’ve been following the proceedings.” They caught him up on the latest developments.

“I believe the computer models have already taken these happenings into account, but I did not know all of it myself,” said Hannuri. “The models now state that Earth has only a 20% chance to become uninhabitable by the human clan in the next 50 years, and that it is now 75% likely that the human clan will found their own extra-solar colonies within 100 years.”

“Sounds – well, not good, but better than before,” Lauri said.

“To me it sounds as if Earth managed to pass an inflection point in its history,” said Thomas. “One that wouldn’t have happened if humans hadn’t managed to nearly kill themselves off – and this without any nuclear weapons. I’d have called nuclear weapons as the way the human race was going to eliminate itself.”

“Could still happen,” said Lauri.

“I admit to being unaware of the odds given by the computer models regarding self-extermination via nuclear devices,” Hannuri said. “However, I believe that 20% chance does include them as a potential avenue to render Earth uninhabitable.”

“Better odds than I’d give,” Lauri said.

Thomas’ watch beeped. “That means Sol is rising right now – just coming over the horizon,” he said. “Not that we can see it from here – it’s way too small and dim a star to be visible from this distance – but I just like to keep it in mind. For sentimental reasons, you know.”

They looked toward the eastern sky as Earth’s sun invisibly rose. Lauri said, “Take care of yourself, folks.”

While Thomas and Lauri were lost in their fantasy earth sunrise, they thought they heard the rustle of wings. Shortly after that, there came a knock at the door.

Lauri and Thomas looked at each other as she commented, “I’m not expecting any visitors, are you?”

Thomas stood and went to answer the door. When he opened it, Nahali and Periri were there in their flight form with a large package of some sort between them.

Thomas backed up a few steps and motioned them in, “Come in … come in, make yourselves comfortable."

Both of the Avians bowed formally. Nahali said, “We come with special gift for our two human council members. Hannuri says you will love it.”

Nahali and Periri proceeded to the place Thomas had indicated to set up what ever the item was. Lauri walked in as they opened the large boxes and began to assemble some really weird looking electronic thing.

Lauri pointed and asked, “What is that thing supposed to be? All I see is some kind of electronic nightmare with a very large screen.”

Periri replied as he turned it on, “I think it’s a bit of home just for you.”

Thomas and Lauri watched the large screen as the snow went away and the screen became mirror black. A spot of light appeared dead center the screen, then like some kind of thin oil spread out and filled the entire screen. The resultant image, was sun rise … not just any sunrise either, the sunrise at her earth farm. Both of them recognized the terrain, the council building, and the now paved staging area where a soybean field used to be.

Lauri gasped, That’s so sweet. Is this live?”

Nahali replied as both he and Periri bowed formally and left, “It is live. Hannuri thought it would be nice to have a bit of home to make the distance seem not so far.”

Thomas and Lauri watched the magnificent sunrise as the sky changed many colors on the screen … the sound of large flapping wings faded to silence in the distance.

~~ A new beginning ~~