From the days when I first began to feel myself getting older and questioned why I should have to die one day, time hadn’t been any kinder to my aching bones. The wrinkles that started to appear on my face, along with the gray hairs that pervaded my scalp, didn’t seem like they should belong to me. However, up in the sky, Lord Preston sat ageless and unchanging—throughout the breadth of my life, he’d remained a steadfast presence. I realized that my time was running out to tell his story the way he would want it written.
I knelt on the prayer rug, performing my daily rituals in the place where Preston had initially spoken to me long ago. It was…special. The Wrathstones had dissolved in their entirety after the god’s sign, and I’d been trying to set a positive example of what he expected from his dutiful flock. However, I was beginning to doubt that I knew it myself, since his voice carried a note of displeasure: both when he answered me in a priestly capacity and when he regarded his followers.
I can detect that the church still isn’t to his liking, when I’ve done everything to try to make it serve his true will and calling! I must ask him why we fall short, because I myself don’t know. Sometimes, I feel close to Preston, yet other times, I feel so far away!
“My Lord,” I began, pressing both palms to the ground. It felt much less comfortable than our normal chats, but it was a gesture of humility to seek his blessing. I hoped I hadn’t lost it. “I would like to…apologize.”
“Whatever for?!” Preston sounded almost furious, his voice quaking. “Pretending you can wear gray better than me and my beautiful elbow skin? That head of silver almost makes you look wise, Enty. Wise enough to not be doing…this, I’d hope.”
“You’re unhappy with us. I can hear it in your voice, and I wish for you to explain why, so I might make changes to please you. I don’t want to slander you like priests of the past. Please, tell me what I’ve done! I would never want to risk your love.”
“Enty, no, you could never. My love isn’t so easily lost, it’s…I can’t. I swore I wouldn’t. Corai says it’s your choice, but I…”
“What, my Lord? What troubles you? I would choose to follow your path, always. I hope you trust me. You need to vent to someone, to get it off your chest. Even you must have limits to your patience, and I want to be here for you.”
The god paused for a long moment, as if contemplating whether to tell me, before he began spewing was on his mind. “I hate it! The churches, the prayers, the hymns, the statues, the exultation. It was never what I wanted, Enty. There’s nothing real about this parasocial clusterfuck. I don’t want you to make changes to please me. Make changes to displease me. Blow it all up. Lose my name from your vocabulary. Please!”
“What? Lord Preston, I don’t understand. I don’t think we’re beyond salvation. There are people who can understand your teachings. I’ve studied them, I’ve tried to help, I’ve tried to bring purpose. Why would I wish to stray from you? I…enjoy your presence. You bring me comfort in my darkest moments.”
“You don’t need these trappings to find me. You never did. All I wanted was for Liberi to know that they were loved and that we were there to support them, which believe me, I know the importance of. As I’ve confided in you. Instead, you take our power as a promise of salvation, and you throw up prayers to us. You make weepy pleas—ah sorry, pray on bended knee, and why? I never asked you to!”
I startled and glanced upward, my face contorting with hurt. I thought he liked our conversations. It’s a bother to answer our devotion? “My Lord, I pray to you. Do you hate my service?”
Preston sucked in a sharp breath. “You don’t pray. You speak.”
“No, my Lord!” I shouted, passion charging my voice. Maybe he is a fickle god. “I pray! I seek your guidance and wisdom. I never wanted to waste your time. If you wish for me never to trouble you at all, I’ll…leave and never utter your name. Is that your entreaty?”
“Never. I watched you grow up and become someone unshakeable. You’re my favorite, Enty, and if I lost being a part of your life, it would break my fucking heart. I am letting my food get cold right now to talk to you, so I can focus on this conversation wholeheartedly like you deserve—and I love food. Don’t tell me to go eat either.”
“I can come back later. I don’t wish to disturb you. Thank you for the kind words, Preston. What do you want though? Are you just hangry?”
“No, I mean this. It burns a hole in my chest. I want to see you become an independent warrior for right and wrong, to be passionate and do great things with your life. And I’ve held you back. You don’t need to worship me or be a supplicant. Remember? Preston: life coach and humor consultant. That sounds better than ‘god.’ Less prayers, more burning questions.”
I stared up at the sky, shaking my head as I failed to grasp his point. “I ask you all of my questions! I’m asking you one now, which you refuse to answer. Am I really worth every gift and blessing to you?”
“I’d let you hold the sun as your lantern just for its warmth to grace your face. I’m happy when you’re thriving and blossoming. Yes, a thousand times over, you fucking knucklehead.”
“Then tell me how else we can communicate with the divine. I know it’s a great pressure, but I thought you loved us! People need your help and kindness. How can you hate that we seek you? It’s the very thing that ties me to you!”
The divine paused, his voice taking on a lilt of hurt. “Enty…is that all that ties me to you? If I was just a man who loved you, would you still love me? Would anything change?”
“No,” I answered in earnest. “But you’re not just a man. You’re the one who made us. You have the power to answer our hopes and dreams. It’s our nature to want those answers, and…you must know that. You must understand, you must try!”
“I understand that you’re kneeling to a god that never was. I would help you regardless because I love you. I never want to see you lower yourselves before me or think that I’m better than you.”
---
As the memory came to its conclusion, I smiled with fondness. Preston was just a man who loved me, one who’d sought answers with tenacity himself; he understood our nature down to the core of his being, because the heart of the Liberi was his. He craved authentic moments, from one eternal soul to another. It was us who placed ourselves beneath him by believing we were lesser, but I saw right through it now. We were equals worthy of the multiverse who could achieve great things in our own right…without him.
I don’t want us to be without Preston. Here, alone in the cosmos without any veil of divinity, we had our most beautiful moments of connection. Liberi means “children” in their tongue. We’re family. He didn’t want us to see his power; he wanted us to see and emulate his love!
I reached out and clasped my daughter’s hand, seeing her uncertainty. “Atrina, you already knew that he didn’t want our praise. You saw his character. His person is why he’s important to me. He was my mentor, my guide, in life and matters of the heart! He looked out for us. Do you remember what he said to you when I told him you were atheist? Pull up the memory! Repeat it for Iara to hear, please.”
“He took me from my son,” Atrina wept, not answering my request.
I held her close, knitting my eyebrows together. “I’m…sorry. That plague wasn’t his doing. It will drive someone, someday, to find a cure and to understand germ theory, whereas if he fixed it, we never would have to solve it ourselves.”
“I suffered. It was easier to believe the world was godless.”
“It was unbelievably hard to be separated from you. I…wanted to meet my grandson. I wanted you to know my world, but not like this. I wanted to help you, but it freed you more to carve your own path. That’s how Preston feels, I think. I believe fate takes us when we’re ready, and the Watchers bring us back through love. You will bring your son back to you through love.”
Atrina swallowed, looking deep into my eyes. “He really brings you so much joy, doesn’t he? And you serve him willingly?”
“I believe that what he does is right and fulfilling. Preston’s world is strange to me, but in that complexity, my bond to him is what’s simple. I cling to the little moments with all that I am. Without his teachings, I wouldn’t have found my own way yet.”
Iara stewed in silence for a long moment, coiling her fist with resentment. “What did he say, Atrina? When he learned you didn’t believe in him? Gloating, belittling, agitated?”
“No. He said he didn’t desire my worship and that I could believe whatever I wanted,” my daughter said, squeezing her eyes shut. “He said he wished I’d known he cared about us, but that if I would’ve been afraid and subservient, it was his preference that I didn’t know him. He begged me to stay atheist. Preston insisted he wasn’t a god, and that he wished my dad would drop that term.”
“Let me get this straight. Preston doesn’t desire subservience, but in the next breath, he asks you to do things for him? By the time he tells you to stop, you wouldn’t want to, and he can…back into some benevolent maker claim before you wisen up to his wickedness. Maybe he can even lie to himself about how much better he is than Elusians. We never commanded the worship of Fakra or humans.”
“Iara, Elusians abducted humans and never loved the Fakra. Preston was involved with us and took an interest in the little parts of our life that were beneath you,” I countered. “By his own admission, he’s a fuckup, but he’s trying to do right! He wants to help us.
“That’s who we look up to,” Plonda piped up, having allowed Iara and Atrina to say their piece. “The Helpers. The ones who take our hands and show us along our first steps into the multiverse. The watchful ones who shelter us from the multiverse in the same breath, protectors who’d step in the path of a gamma ray at the cost of their own eternity. I see a Helper in Preston.”
“Thank you. I know how sacred that term is to you. Our societies center around someone from the stars that we love and revere. It’s different now, but I imagine in time, it’ll be the same.”
The Celau gave Iara a sincere nod. “We hid alone over false fear too. If the humans wanted to destroy us, I figured they would’ve, whoever they looked like and whatever their past was. A lot can change in a million years, so look what’s in front of you. Preston has no reason to deceive. Who’s he fooling? Why not just wipe you out?”
“Precog,” Iara spat. “Or to lull us into a false sense of security. Either we work with him…for him like his priests, or we give up the few pockets of our species left. Preston has no idea what it means to serve or to sacrifice! He only offers when he won’t follow through. Colban’s last memo.”
“What did it say?” I asked, reaching out to Atrina for comfort.
The Elusian cleared her throat. “‘Preston Carter developed a new form of precog, which could portend increasing difficulties for the Justiciary to counter human plots. To gain the traitor’s freedom, he suggested for us to continue our experiments and analysis. His awareness of what to say to manipulate our interests was striking. However, it may be useful. I cannot imagine that he’ll accept Corai being put away after breaking her out once, and he might do anything for her sake. He won’t sit in a cage and prove his value forever. Perhaps this is the prophecy.”
“How does that show Colban’s innocence?” Atrina interjected, finally choosing our side despite her skepticism. “This individual accepted Preston’s offer to use himself as…a caged experiment, and was upset that he wouldn’t bear that forever?”
“You’re twisting the words. Humans benefited from scientific research of precog too, if they’d worked with us. It could’ve saved us. Colban had the future of all Elusians on the line! And Corai was a traitor, who conspired against us and unleashed the Fakra who attacked us. That was hardly compensation for our planet being mauled, without provocation!”
“The Fakra had their provocation, millions of years ago,” Plonda chipped in. “We know what you did to them. You know why they plotted revenge too. They were abandoned and left to die. You chucked a child into the ocean without ever giving them swim lessons, with the intent for them to drown. Admit your wrongs. That’s pure apathy!”
Iara rubbed her forehead. “It was a harsh overcorrection to their dependence, but how many species subsist on their own out in the great expanse? Would the Liberi crumble if their gods vanished? We made weaklings because we bestowed too many kindnesses upon them. Survival of the fittest did correct them. It saved them.”
“Were the Elusians who died on Suam and the other colonies unfit? Was it all just an overcorrection?” I huffed.
“Those Elusians were slaughtered. We merely stopped doing everything for the Fakra, because like you said, they needed to carve their own path. Without our help. I don’t like their deaths, but that…doesn’t give them the right to thirst for ours. As awful as it is, look at the humans. The strong ones. How much death and evolution did it take them to become the executioner’s axe?”
Atrina curled her lip. “Okay, Dad, I’m definitely on your side now. And I don’t think the Elusians should come back. If this is the attitude Iara has about death and Preston’s fuckups, let’s leave her.”
“She doesn’t know any better,” I pleaded. “Iara told herself they had to do it, the same as our Lady Corai did. We can’t just give up on people, Atrina. That’s being Apathetic too!”
“I care about plenty of people. Why shouldn’t we leave them to their survival of the fittest, if they’re that keen to die off and refuse help?”
“You know how you said you suffered? I’m sure they have too. You have, haven’t you, Iara?”
The Elusian pressed a lever on the shuttle, reversing its direction back to the launch pad. “I was going to show you how we lived. A shell of our former selves, hiding out in an old factory. Growing up wondering when we might be found, and why we’d been laid so low. Tripping over each other, no privacy, no basic comforts; probably even by the ghastly technological standards that they allow you to limp through.”
“Your attitude toward their technology is exactly why the Watchers show the Liberi that there’s nothing wrong with it.” I found an epiphany from her biting words, as if I could reconcile the true purpose of that life on Domus at last. It wasn’t lesser because someone else had tech that blew ours out of the water. “That’s giving us struggle without not caring about lives, seeing who dies off like it’s some experiment. I feel sorry for you, if that’s all you saw your creations as.”
“Sorry for us? Not because we were murdered?”
“Preston’s connection with the Liberi gives him purpose too. He wants to be a part of our lives, even if we misinterpret that. I’m not just going to help the Liberi find their paths in the afterlife. I’m going to help Preston find his path in their first life. The church can be exactly what he wants.”
Iara rolled her eyes. “You’re a fanatic, put off by a utilitarian assessment that wasn’t made by me. That’s why I won’t bother showing you how we lived. You lived without nanobots. Why would you care if our limited production capacity meant we had to ration them, and share them around to keep ourselves immortal?”
“You didn’t have to, Iara,” I breathed. “The Alliance would help you. Please, pass along the message. Give people the chance to seek out a better life with us, if we really can’t come to an understanding?”
“No one is going to the Deceiver to be toyed with for information. Our numbers are too small to spare anyone. Too many Elusians have died to his schemes already. He wants his creators to pay, and he always has.”
Plonda placed a grasper on Iara’s shoulder, as the shuttle arrived back at the landing site where it’d started. “My people are Helpers. Shoen could help you, away from the Alliance. What matters is that you’re safe and that we try to undo the past.”
“You’re with them and believe his lies. You came here together. That says more than enough to me. Look, let’s agree to disagree, okay? If you’re here in peace, then go in peace. Shake my hand with some degree of civility and return to your ship. You won’t see Preston for what he is, so there’s nothing more to discuss.”
Atrina refused, stomping off to the shuttle. “I can’t believe I thought you were the good guys for a second. You deserve to be forgotten.”
“Don’t listen to her.” I extended my hand and took Iara’s in mine; the Elusian held it for several extra seconds and dug her nails in, like a strange contest of dominance. I yanked my arm back with care not to use too much Sol strength, before grabbing Plonda and dragging her away. “Plonda’s not shaking your hand if that’s how it’s going to be. No one has to subject themselves to abuse.”
“Sorry,” Iara muttered. “I got caught up in the moment. You have Sol strength, so I wouldn’t call that abuse. That’s dramatic. It didn’t even hurt, did it?”
“Let’s go.” I hurried back to the ship with Sol speed, picking Plonda up and carrying her despite her confusion. I’d gotten a bad feeling creeping into my gut when our hands touched, and I knew enough of Preston’s story to trust my instincts and get out of dodge. “I want to see my…I don’t know what he is. But I love him and know who he is. When I figure out a word to fit that feeling, I’ll replace the word ‘god’ once and for all.”
“Helper?” Plonda asked.
“No. Preston would’ve died for me. That’s far more than a Helper. That kept me true. I told you I would never turn on him.”
“I never doubted. He never doubted your heart either.”
While we’d failed in our mission to rescue the Elusians, perhaps there was a lesson that I couldn’t save everyone from their hatred, no matter the fervor with which I treaded a better path. In affairs of the soul, people had to be willing to save themselves. I was riding a new wave of confidence from defending Preston to Atrina, and for enduring the trials and temptations with such devotion. Precog didn’t dictate my heart or my actions.
I was leaving the Elusian AIs’ birthground without having gotten through to Iara, but I’d gained something far more valuable: the complete picture of what Preston longed to be to the Liberi. I loved my god, who was just a man, and I wouldn’t ever lose him without a fight.
A/N - 10! Entival shows how Preston admitting how he hated the entire religion that had spawned around him. We also see Iara comment on Elusians’ past wrongs, events involving Preston, and her own upbringing, and the survival of the fittest attitude in response to the Fakran atrocities brings Atrina back around. Enty leaves Iara behind, in defiance of the precog predictions, and admits to himself that he can’t save everyone.
Do you think there ever is or ever should be hope of negotiating with and talking the Elusians down? What do you think of Iara’s perspective? Has Entival managed to escape precog by staying true to his faith?
As always, thank you for reading and supporting!