VENETIA: Pharos

Chapter forty-five

Pharos did not like Jim. He had been assured of the empire until Jim had returned
with Ching and Jan. Clearly Jim being the consort of Isis had full rights to share the
empire with Isis. Still, Pharos was the master of Atlantis. He was thoroughly aware of
the potentials of time travel. He himself had traveled time in the womb of his mother.
Clearly he remembered nothing, but he was aware of the fact that time travel is possible
and he had survived it. Jim had offered him the option to return to the future, but Pharos
declined. He would rather be the master of his own time and would build his own time
machine.

Jim expressed an intense displeasure with Pharos interest in time traveling on his
own. Jim would always comment that it was not the same as taking Pegasus for a spin.
Isis could say nothing since it was she who had resolved to take the risk of time traveling
in the first place. All were in the past because of her action. Still living in the past was not
that much different than living in the future. The laws of the universe remained the same
and Venetian technology could master the forces of nature no matter what year it was.

Should we regard the growth of our golden wealth or our growth of knowledge as
our true wealth? Humanity is lost and restricted to death and destruction if it limits itself
to uselessly exploiting the treasures of the Earth. Clearly the ability to create matter out of
the void because of the workings of a black box, is worth more than the gold that such a
device would be capable of producing. Yet the Box is a simple device that follows the
mechanics of the universe itself. As power releases energy, so does control release power.
The knowledge to control unlimited power is more valuable than all of Earth's oil. Yet the
Earth that Jim must return to is lost in its lust for oil and gold, just as the ancient empire of
Isis was lost due to pride and arrogance. How can we be so arrogant so as to defy the
laws that hold the universe together. Jim understood the laws well enough to teach an
idiot computer to control the tremendous amounts of energy that he gained access to
when he became involved with energy to mass conversions. To assume that one can
navigate the manifolds of space/time as easily as a Sunday country drive would be very
misleading. An entire civilization destroyed with no legacy is hardly something to be
proud of.

After Jim and Isis left, Pharos worked feverishly on his project. Jim had taken the
Pegasus, leaving him and all the Amazons marooned. Pharos had still not mastered anti-
gravity control and had been warned not to activate the warp drives until well away from
Earth. Pharos smiled triumphantly at his completed starship. Certainly it wasn't as large
as the Pegasus, but it did have very good acceleration characteristics. It would be capable
of making a time jump. All were aware of the legendary manner by which Jim had
escaped from Artemis with the Pegasus.

Pharos would visit Egypt, India and Peru frequently. He would demand human
virgins to bear his children. These women would die upon childbirth, but could yield him
sons.

These sons being half-human were then capable of having children by human
females without killing the mother. Pharos' mother Helen, was his high priestess and she
was acting ruler of Earth in the absence of Isis. Helen would demand sacrifices herself as
well.

Over the next several hundred years, the children of Helen, Pharos and the
Amazons created a very large population of Amazon-human descendants. The crazy old
man was still reported as being intensely involved with ship construction. It seemed that
Jim was very wrong about any catastrophe. Some of the humans were getting rebellious.
They insisted on the right to make their own laws. Pharos mentioned that a people who
could barely read and write would scarcely be able to rule themselves. The humans
countered that they had been around for thousands of years already without Venetian help.
Helen silenced the protesters and the rabble rousers by having them publicly executed.
She would remind all that before the Amazons, human men lived like animals; hunting day
by day for their next meal. It was in the strength of their community that they were all
able to survive more easily and more efficiently. Helen would then smack her son behind
the ear and remind him not to insult the natives. She had to remind him that you can't
expect good human help by belittling them. Eventually, Pharos matured and began to
realize the arrogance of his false assumptions.

Morgana was the name of the Amazon who had played the role of the counterfeit
Helen. She retained the name of Helen but would always answer to her own name.
Morgana had an intense influence on her son. Pharos never knew Jim, and like Jim he had
matured to a man by the time that he met his father. Still, Pharos was not pure blooded
royalty. Jim had many other sons by other Amazons, and to Jim, Pharos was no different.
Pharos felt that Jim avoided him because Jim had thought that Morgana was Helen at the
time that she tricked him and stole his belt. Morgana ruled Earth after Isis left as her High
Priestess. She gave her son all the luxuries that she could provide of which were many.

Morgana was very talented at her administrative responsibilities. She delegated
authority to all the Amazons and had a well structured empire established on Earth.
Pharos used Atlantis to construct lighter than air ships for mass transportation. Using the
sea and cheap energy, Pharos would manufacture hydrogen for use as lighter than air
potential energy. He would use massive air tankers to ferry the hydrogen worldwide.
The risk of fire associated with sudden release of hydrogen required this hydrogen to be
sealed inside a very tough and airtight balloon. These balloons would retain their lighter
than air characteristics indefinitely. They were quite useful for lightening all work loads
and made transportation of heavy objects very easy. No longer having the convenience of
the Pegasus and the Boxes to use as vehicles, transportation was limited to what the
Amazons could produce from the planet itself. The Amazons did not use very many
machines to do their work, since they had their human helpers. The technical devices that
they used were simple enough for the humans to use and understand. The humans were
delighted with these hydrogen balloons and found many ways to use them. It was very
difficult to puncture the balloon. Pharos had tried to make them human- proof. Every
now and then a balloon would escape into the atmosphere. The more intense radiation of
the upper atmosphere would cause the balloon to lose its elasticity as it would start to
crack from the intense cold and irradiation. Eventually the balloon would lose the gas into
the upper atmosphere and frequently explode. Pharos also had a harem of Amazon
women. He would breed with these women to make more of their own kind.

Eventually Pharos had developed a tremendous bureaucracy numbering thousands.
Each Amazon would have their own temple which would be her seat of local authority.
The humans would congregate at the temples daily where they would receive their
assigned daily tasks. Others would work for the temple offering a variety of specialized
services. Quite often at the end of the day, the Amazon would orate some new knowledge
to them to aid them in their tasks.

Yet Pharos never matched the skill and understanding that John and Jim each had.
Jim and John had the Box, and that was the big difference, or so he thought. He failed to
realize that both Jim and John had created their Boxes by virtue of their understanding.
Jim had always said that the secret to the Box was hyperdimensional geometrodynamic
mathematics and his hierarchy of the dimensioned structure of space/time itself. Jim used
his imagination as a crude simulator of imagined motion systems. Idiot's control system
required a mathematical base to successfully accomplish control of the energy fields with
the precision that it exercised.

Earth prospered under Helen (Morgana) and Pharos. Yet Pharos wished to go to
the stars as well. The people regarded Jim and John with an awed reverence. Determined
to reach the stars, Pharos constructed a great starship which he would call the Phoenix.

The Phoenix was not near as great a ship as the Pegasus. It's interior was cramped
as Pharos would have to conserve every bit of space for some valuable use. On the day of
its maiden launch, Pharos had selected a privileged few to go with him. He had no
shortage of consorts for this voyage. Helen was away with other business and was not in
Atlantis on that fateful day.

Preflight checks went flawlessly and all ship systems were in fine working order.
With great ceremony, Pharos made his way to the Phoenix as all Atlantis celebrated the
occasion. The old man on the mountain mocked his procession by parading an endless
menagerie of wild animals into his large boat. Pharos thought nothing about the crazy old
man. The world had lots of deviants.

Pharos fed hydrogen fuel to his fusion drive system. For fuel Pharos had special
containers for liquid hydrogen. He would break down the hydrogen atom into its nuclear
components and intense magnetic fields to propel the charged hydrogen nuclei out the
exhaust. He had anti-gravity installed so that he could endure the intense acceleration.
The sight of the Phoenix during launch was impressive.

The rockets were so tremendous that it caused the ground to shake a little.
However, the quaking did not subside but seemed to grow. Many seemed to think that it
was due to the engines, but the effects of the quake seemed to be spreading. Pharos
switched on anti-gravity.

The effects of the Phoenix's anti-gravity transmitted a minute amount of
gravitational energy into the Earth. This effect, however, was amplified due to the
instability of the Earth's crust at the launch site. The Phoenix began to have difficulty
maintaining stability as the anti-gravity mechanism started to oscillate wildly as the Earth
beneath the craft started to give way. Pharos only tried harder to break the Phoenix free
of the disaster, but the anti-gravity mechanism was only destabilizing Earth all the more.
Suddenly, the unit went out of control as the on-board fusion process began to go super-
critical. The explosion from the Phoenix was beyond description. At the same time, the
Earth's crust broke in two as intense flames of fire broke through and melted the ice caps.
The continent of Atlantis began to move at a very intense speed as the citizens felt their
world breaking apart. Streams of lava erupted from beneath the crust of the Earth as the
continent slipped downward into Earth's belly. The ocean's waters rapidly engulfed any
witnesses to the disaster.

The Amazon colonies became instantly aware that something had happened
because of the interruption of routine communications which was naturally always
occurring. Within days the remainder of those on Earth noticed the sky darken as clouds
upon clouds began to form in the sky. All were uncomfortable because of the intense heat
and humidity. Even though the sun was not seen and you couldn't tell night from day, it
was still unpleasantly hot. The heat went on day after day, until the temperature began to
drop. All were ready for the rain to release them from the intense heat. Many of the more
intelligent realized that it was soon going to rain very intensely and they proceeded to
head for higher ground. The crazy old man would not open up his boat to them. Who
could blame him. They had been mocking him all these years and he apologized that he
had no room.

The people were joyous when a little rain brought the cooler air. It would soon
end and the dreadful humidity would be back again. For over a week the rain started to
intensify to more frequent showers followed by a hot muggy period. Then came the wind.
The deluge was brought about by a sudden drop in temperature and the rains came and
never stopped.

Lazarus Cain

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