God's Dogs
Chapter 16

Creativity is intelligence having fun.

Albert Einstein

Master Wong, a whipcord thin, ascetic monk of indeterminate age, a hatchet face and foreboding demeanor, was a marshmallow inside. He’d come to love Raina like a daughter or favorite niece. She had blossomed into a striking young woman with a commanding but unobtrusive presence.

He became her tutor after she moved to a small research station in orbit around Penglai. Her position was formally a doctoral candidate research assistant to a renowned Penglai physicist, Dr. Nguyen Ba. In reality, she solved the FTL communication puzzle in a more elegant way than the Empire scientists had. The prototype they were now testing was more robust, for one, and the Morse Code communication the system used was clearer and less static-prone than the Empire counterpart. They knew this due to a spy that sent them the Empire’s technical plans.

Raina entered Wong’s office, sat down, grinned at him and asked, “How’s Quinn’s team doing?”

“Off to Amazonia to see if we can recruit Coyote candidates from that world,” Wong replied.

“So it’s not a dangerous mission.”

“Not this time.”

“I like it that River checks in with me when she’s home. I worry about them.”

“It’s indicative of the opening heart. Tulkus have bigger hearts than normal people, and Quinn’s team seems to have a special place in your heart.”

She smiled and shrugged in reply.

He smiled back and inquired, “How is your meditation practice going?”

“I seem stuck at the archetypal plateau,” she answered. “And we agree – most of the time, anyway – that it’s Grace’s problem, not mine.”

“And the nature of the problem?”

“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? We don’t know.”

“What is the archetypal realm populated with?”

“Lots of different entities. I can’t keep track.”

Wong thought for a moment before saying, “Seek out one, a deity or ascended master, that can guide you to the Void.”

“Grace doesn’t want to go there,” Raina said with simple certainty.

“Her reason?”

“Annihilation. She doesn’t want to be destroyed. She knows it’s a non-dual, non-causal place, and she figures that because she’s a construct, her identity cannot survive in an environment without causation.”

“Hmm,” Wong breathed. “A logical argument. Can you go there without her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay. Let’s approach this from a different angle. Stand up, please, and assume the beginning taiji position, wuji.”

Raina stood, feet slightly apart, knees unlocked, arms at her sides. Then she settled her awareness in her center and emptied her mind.

Wong monitored the energy shifts until he felt her enter a no-mind state.

He said, “You are in the Void now, Raina. Has Grace self-destructed?”

Raina jolted back. “That’s the Void?”

“Yes. Your brain waves would have registered in the mid-delta range. In other words, there is still activity, like an engine idling before it engages.”

“There’s nothing to fear?”

“Well, when you explore the Void, rather than just rest in it, there are dangers. I don’t think Grace’s death is one of them.”

Raina sat back in the chair before Wong’s desk before asking, “Why is this important?”

“The Void is the place of pure potential,” Wong explained. “It’s outside time and space. It’s seeing the forest, rather than stumbling around in the trees. You can observe the nature of reality from an objective point-of-view. From there you can deduce the laws that govern reality, unravel mysteries, design experiments, and understand Creation.”

“All that,” Raina smiled again. “Haven’t others been there before?”

“Yes. For thousands of years, but, for the most part, they didn’t know what they were seeing. They didn’t have your education or the unique abilities Grace will bring to the observations.”

Raina considered his words and replied, “She’s still apprehensive. Something very real is bothering her, but resting in wuji gives her a window into the Void. She suspects she can identify what’s bothering her through that window.”

“Okay,” Wong conceded. “On to another topic. The balance between physical and mental activity. How are you doing?

“Good. Grace benefits from my physical program, so she makes sure I exercise.”

“And your dissertation?”

“I’m done except for a few more experiments to establish statistical reliability.”

“Congratulations on that,” Wong beamed. “Your parents must be proud.”

She tossed her head and grinned. “They are.”

“What do you want to do after your investiture as a doctor in physics?”

“Well, we have to win the war, or there’s no future for any of us. I think I can come up with a better form of shielding – from combat suits to ships to planets.”

“Interesting. I don’t have the math or science background to appreciate what that would entail, but I’m sure we could benefit from a better shield.”

Raina shrugged. “It’s just dimensional phasing that can be shaped. The math isn’t too difficult. The engineering will be the challenge.”

“Okay,” Wong stood. “Thanks for checking in. I believe we are scheduled for an extended meditation session at the end of the week. Maybe Grace will be ready to peer through the window to the Void. I can anchor us there if that is what we want to do.”

“Thanks,” Raina grinned as she bounced to her feet and bounded out the door.

In the Empire, Robert O’Brian had extended his assignment to the research station. It was an area of high security and warranted someone of his rank. He had been here a long time, though, and people might be wondering why he let his career stall out. He would need to do something soon.

His indecision evaporated when the emperor initiated a new project – a biological agent was needed, one that could wipe out a whole world.

At the staff meeting where this was announced, the speaker noted that the Penglai Exception would increase the number of Coyotes, thereby decreasing the Empire’s chances of bringing those wayward League worlds into the fold.

Penglai posed a tangible, existential threat to the Empire. For even though no one knew how many Coyote teams there were, doubling or tripling that number would allow the League the option of mounting a counter-offensive.

O’Brian knew the emperor couldn’t risk that. His Empire was held together through fear, even though the emperor didn’t think so. If the fear was removed, or even compromised, he would have a rebellion to deal with.

The speaker, a severe woman from the political oversight branch, justified genocide by making the Empire out to be the hapless victim of the unnatural freaks that Penglai spawned. By using a bio-weapon, the infrastructure would be preserved. So the task for the R and D team was to produce a bio-weapon that would self-terminate in no more than five years.

The biologists and virologists got cracking without blinking an eye, and O’Brian knew it was time for him to implement his exit plan.

He alerted his Penglai contact that he needed transport to disappear. Then he faked his death with an industrial accident that vaporized a shuttle he was supposedly on. Then he changed his appearance and identity to a merchant spaceman and boarded the merchant ship his contact supplied for extraction.

Within a month, Robert O’Brian was living in a tiny room at one of the mountain monasteries in the Penglai wilderness. In his mind, he was on retreat – metaphorically, he was in a solitary cave in order to replace his soul.

The masters wished he would have stayed at the R&D facility until he could provide them with the recipe for the bio-weapon, but they granted O’Brian asylum without dissent.

Because of the passage of the Penglai Exception, as well as the war of liberation falling into a stalemate, the emperor was not happy.

In his breakfast room with his close advisors, he once again let them know his displeasure.

“It is inconceivable,” Cedric said as the servers passed out the breakfast offerings. Platters of bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, scrambled eggs, muffins, pitchers of various fruit juices, and so on filled the table.

“We had them on the run. We have all the technological advantages. How can they have forced a stalemate?”

They took that as rhetorical and didn’t answer. No one wanted the emperor to focus on him.

Cedric sighed and sipped his coffee before continuing. “Okay. Let’s get practical here. If they do mount a counter-attack, let’s lure them into a trap. How would we arrange that? John?”

John Scanlon had been thinking along those same lines. Manufacture a tempting weakness, expose a strategic target, or leave a back door undefended. He wasn’t sure which would prove to be the irresistible bait for an ambush.

“I think we need multiple scenarios,” Scanlon replied. “Their planners aren’t stupid. They have out-foxed us more than once. So we will need a strategy of showing the enemy soft targets, a half dozen or so, and station ready forces to pounce on them.”

Cedric considered the idea but said, “It’s reactive not proactive. I don’t want them thinking they have the initiative.”

The fact was, Scanlon knew, the League did have the initiative. The prosecution of a successful campaign was predicated on the assumption it would be a sprint not a marathon. The Empire couldn’t prevail against a sustained conflict. It didn’t have the resources the League did. And the sprint didn’t work. Scanlon wondered if the emperor knew he was losing the war.

“An ambush should open a hole in the defenses,” Scanlon pushed on. “We can punch though, split their forces, and follow on with our forces to defeat them in detail.”

Cedric’s face scrunched in thought. He didn’t like that idea. Well, he liked it. It was an extension of what they were already doing, but it presumed the League wouldn’t react effectively to the hoped for breakthrough.

He said, “And if they blunt the breakthrough?”

Scanlon shrugged. “We’d be no worse off than we are now.”

“True.” The emperor nodded. “Okay. Let’s play cat and mouse and see what we get.”