Lord(s) of Earth
𒀭 𒀭 𒆠
The Story Before All Stories
Humans gathered at the base of a gangway attached to the barnacle-clad wooden vessel. Peels of laughter rang out as some used it to slide into the mud below. Most appeared quite groggy. Having recently departed that sap slathered hulk, they aspired to do nothing.
Not one child moved in their midst.
A silhouette filled the large square doorway. Scattered cries of “Nephilim” rang out as the figure descended toward the gathering. Nephilim was their word for giant.
Iblis towered over the humans gathering around her. Despite her incredible size, they showed no fear. Childlike, they swarmed, touching her robes, stretching and jumping to get her attention. For her part, Iblis appeared dispassionate. She did not engage with test subjects. Her species barely interacted with one another, and those interactions were governed by cold, hard logic. They had no empathy. They had lost the word love from their lexicon.
She neither scolded nor encouraged the human’s attention seeking behavior. Size and strength aside, she felt superior. They were no match for her intellect.
“I am Tiamat’s messenger,” she stated. “I bring a gift.”
Peals of laughter filled the air. People slipped and slid on the soggy, damp ground clamoring to get closer to the Nephilim who had appeared from the ark. Some repeated the word messenger. Others whispered Tiamat.
This group constituted the last cadre of humans to disembark across the emerging continents.
The time had now arrived for the final experiments. The age of humanity had begun.
These one hundred fifty mating pairs along with their ten counterparts around the globe represented the penultimate reproductive goals of their makers – the Djinn.
They had been released into this, their new home only hours before. Tiamat, the leader of the Djinn, had woken them and led them from the ark to high ground where they could create shelters and build a life. Not one of them could remember life before the waking, for not one of them had a life before that waking.
Tiamat promised that the waters would recede and that every place they walked was theirs to steward. She instructed them to manage their world. Her final words were, “Multiply and survive. Thrive.” With that, she returned to the ark.
Multiply and survive summed up the Djinn’s entire purpose in this universe. With life spans beyond human comprehension, they had the surviving part down. They labored here to address their species’ persistent inability to multiply.
Several hours had passed since Tiamat released her subjects into the wild. She now dispatched Iblis from the Alaha, the ark as the humans called it, to present a gift from their makers.
The people were curious about this new stranger who had come down the gangway.
Their faces brimmed with expectation as Iblis assembled a bow drill for creating fire. They watched as she balled together a handful of dry grass, twigs, and bark placing it at the base of the drill. Not trying to hide her perturbed boredom, she said, “Tinder” pointing toward the dry ball.
Their curiosity was pleasing, hopefully a sign that they were more intelligent than the previous groups.
Pressing on the top of the drill with a wooden block, she began to draw the bow back and forth. Everyone pushed forward to see what she was doing, to see what would happen. Smoke began to rise. She picked up the tinder and blew on it. “The breath of life – fire.” That last word thundered and reverberated.
Fire leapt up from the ball of tinder.
An involuntary chorus of gasps ran through the crowd. Someone said, Mumu their word for it grows.
Iblis stood and turned to the people. Pointing toward the fire she said, “Izi.” They repeated, “Izi”.
She presented the bow to closest man. “Now your turn.” She said, pointing to the fire. She turned to others, instructing them to gather dry materials for the fire.
The man took the bow. He turned it over and over in his hands, pulling the taut cord and letting go. His effort produced a pleasant thrumming sound. The man smiled. He thrummed the cord over and over. Smiling larger and larger. Everyone laughed, some mimicked the sound. “Hummmmm”.
Iblis held out the drill.
The man slung the bow over his shoulder and took the drill. He felt the smooth shaft and peered down its length from one end, observing its straightness. He flexed the wood and understood that it was strong; he could not bend or break it. He unshouldered the bow. Rather than looping the drill through the draw string to make fire, he held the bow in his left hand, laid the drill across it, and nocked the shaft against the cord. Pulling back the cord he loosed the drill. The air sizzled as it sailed up the hill and hit a tree about eighty feet away.
Iblis’s brow furrowed. “Keep the fires burning.” She rose and returned to the ark or the Alaha as she knew it.
#
The Djinn had programmed the Alaha to look like a huge rectangular wooden ship, crude and primitive … from the outside. In contrast, the interior transformed at-will morphing from one thing to another as its owner deemed necessary.
As Iblis entered, she saw one of her siblings moving across the command center then vanish mid-step. Another sibling appeared from thin air and moved toward a grouping of holographic images without acknowledging her presence.
Iblis moved toward Tiamat who stood on an observation deck overlooking the community they had just dropped off. She took up a position at her mother’s side observing the humans.
“Do you think their long stasis will affect their fertility?” Tiamat asked.
“For a time but let us hope that they can overcome the malaise and despair that stopped the first two rounds.” Iblis replied.
“Who can say.” Tiamat’s voice betrayed no optimism.
“According to reports, we have completed seeding the planet. One of the cadres will take hold and thrive this time. We are narrowing in on the keys to survival and reproduction.” Iblis didn’t sound confident but determined.
“Let’s hope so. I’ve made too many mistakes already. I’m sure that your hypothesis about recombinant DNA is correct. But I can’t comprehend how that will track back to solving our root problem.”
Tiamat leaned forward. “What the hell is Lahainu doing down there with that female?”
Iblis looked. There was one of her siblings in male form copulating with a human female. She did not speak.
“You damned boys will be the death of me and your father.”
Without a word, Iblis turned and walked back into the command center looking for an escape from the sameness of it all. He knew that boredom had overtaken Lahainu, that’s what he was doing with the human female. Iblis felt boredom creeping up on her too – almost a physical presence.
She had ten siblings whom she understood all to well. But she liked only two of them – Sisyphus and Shaytain.
Shaytain was on the other side of the planet busy dropping off the other five human cadres. But Sisyphus was near at hand.
She shifted from the command center to what appeared to be a stasis deck filled with now empty human-sized pods. Covered in something like grease, Sisyphus bent at the waist inspecting one of the pods.
Iblis spoke first, “Hail sister.”
Sisyphus turned and acknowledged her. “The delivery of fire went well?”
“Almost too well,” Iblis recounted the story of the man converting the drill to an arrow. “That rapid tool development troubles me. I had not anticipated that this new batch of humans would improvise from the start, without instruction.”
Sisyphus mused, “What could happen? Will they leap to smashing the atom next?”
“For the first time we have given them critical sections of our recombinant DNA. Anything is possible.”
“You doubt your decision now, sister? I’m afraid those particles have left superposition and become entangled.” Sisyphus returned to inspecting the dead man in the pod.
“Through our DNA we have inserted unknown genetic wildcards into the experiment.” Iblis leaned over, taking a closer look. “What happened? Why is he still in there?”
“This one did not wake. We had a few cases of acid reflux and flatulence. The usual post-stasis recovery in humans.” Sisyphus looked perplexed. “But this? Not sure. I’m analyzing to understand if his pod caused the outcome or if he suffered from a genetic anomaly. There are another fourteen over in that section – all males.”
“Odd.”
“The initial diagnostics lead me to suspect that he suffered a buildup of carbon dioxide which prevented his oxygen intake.”
“One less human to babysit,” Iblis said flatly. “Lahainu is out there right now breeding with this one’s partnerless female, ‘enjoying’ her.”
“Is that such a bad thing? Since we made them with our recombinant DNA maybe we can produce offspring with these humans.”
Iblis dismissed the thought out of hand, “They would be half-breeds at best, not real Djinn, more like monsters.”
“Progress sister, progress. One entanglement at a time.” Sisyphus gave her sister a wink. “You know the saying, ‘It’s the little entanglements that spoil the plan’. No, wait. I mean, ‘small superpositions can lead to large entanglements.’” She guffawed. “You know what I mean, trial and error may break a few things, but it is the path forward.”
“Like I said, one less human to babysit.” Iblis was not amused. She wondered at Sisyphus merry attitude, Was she too giving into the malaise of billions of years of boredom? She had not seen her this light-hearted since they had left their own universe for this one.
“You’ve grown weary of these experiments.” Sisyphus’ voice stern now.
“Haven’t you?” Iblis moved to an observation portal overlooking the inner workings of the Alaha.
“The concept of time bores me.”
“But you always say time is meaningless. Memory matters.”
“Memories are meaningless too when it’s all said and done. We make no progress here. We may as well eat drink and be merry since nothing matters.”
“So. You admit defeat, that you were wrong about this universe, these experiments?”
“We have given up our lives in an attempt to live on through our non-existent progeny. The inevitable outcome imprisons us even now. Fear of our own mortality drove us to create this ‘universe’ setting it in place and letting it grow. Little did we know that the thing we sought to evolve could devolve us.”
“Sister, what we are doing was your idea. I cannot comprehend your misgivings. What do you mean, devolve us?”
“This work has become my prison. We call it reproductive research, but it is torture. Life in this universe – twelve billion years of hope, half a billion years of failure – has left me with nothing but agony, sadness, and regret. We torture ourselves along with these barely sentient creatures.”
Sisyphus sought to comfort her. “It has been an arduous task. But a task worthy of our people.”
“There is nothing new under this sky. My fingerprints linger in every corner of this universe. All our preparations come to this – cross breeding with humans.”
She studied the Alaha’s current configuration.
Packed with technology, it rose as a multi-tier, hub-and-spoke structure, level stacked upon level along a vertical axis. But even that description defied its true nature. It was not three-dimensional but rather a dimension-agnostic tool. It leveraged the inflaton particles that the Djinn had used when they brought the universe here, set it in place, and allowed it to expand to roughly its current size. Combined with dark energy, the inflaton particles utilized dark matter and microwave background radiation to create an envelope of sorts.
The resultant envelope allowed its designers to move through limitless time and space at-will. A person could be on one deck of the Alaha and instantly move to another. One could walk into the Alaha from Mesoamerica and walk out somewhere in Austronesia. Time inside the Alaha had no relationship to its passage outside. A conversation could happen in the Alaha, while outside tens of thousands of years might pass. In essence, the envelope gave the Djinn the ability to move between realities existing side-by-side. That was how humans began the myth of the Djinn’s magic and shape-shifting capabilities along with their incredible speed and power.
This Alaha belonged to Tiamat but each of the Djinn possessed one – twelve in all existed in this universe. Coded to their DNA, only a Djinn could wield the Alaha’s power. If they needed to travel back to their universe, an Alaha was their means to do so.
Iblis knew that the man who shot the arrow was long dead outside the Alaha. She knew that humans, in their various configurations, had either taken root and spread or had died out during this talk with Sisyphus. “It’s all so meaningless,” she said with an air of finality.
“How can you say that? We are trying to save our species.”
“Are we? Is that what we are doing?” Iblis turned back toward the room. The site of three hundred thirty stasis pods filled her with despair. “Look at how we behave. Aren’t these experiments a way to justify our debauched devolution into oblivion?” [alternately extinction]
“We are the final twelve. When we are gone, the Djinn will be no more.” Sisyphus looked solemn. “Our universe is all but dead. These emergent life experiments are our only hope. We must hope in ourselves and keep trying.”
“So says our mother.” As Iblis left, she called back through the echoing hallways of time and space. “I’m off to check on the humans.”
#
When Iblis stepped outside the Alaha into Mesopotamia circa 9000 BC. One hundred thousand years had passed. The ark had been long forgotten. Most humans lived in small bands foraging, hunting, and fishing for survival. The Alaha instruments indicated that the human community had grown from 1,800 to nearly 6,000,000 people.
Compared to the two previous attempts at human introduction, this round of experiments was an enormous success. Those earlier versions had failed to thrive, dying out after a few generations.
To avoid cross contamination, the Djinn had scrubbed the planet’s biosphere and geologic record clean of every human trace related to those earlier attempts.
Iblis observed that the humans seemed driven to organize into symbiotic working communities, but they consistently misinterpreted certain interactions. This led to immense dysfunction in the population and caused constant community conflict, often resulting in violence.
The addition of Djinn DNA segments to this new batch of humans had increased their intelligence. But it had given them other Djinn characteristics as well. The Djinn were by nature hermaphrodites, both male and female in one being. These new humans showed a propensity for homoerotic relationships. To Iblis the behavior seemed normal. But for many of the subjects in this third round of experiments the homoerotic behavior felt abnormal. They abhorred it opposing it vehemently.
Some humans had moved from primitive hunter gatherers to an agrarian society growing trade. Lush landscapes stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see.
All eleven of the linguistic groups thrived where the previous cohorts failed.
Something about the humans’ behavior gnawed at Iblis’ psyche. A fear of ‘the other’ gripped the subjects causing unpredictable often violent behavior. The heavier browed bipeds, early hominin leftovers from the small mammal experiments, had died out. Those early human cousins, Neanderthals, had been non-violent omnivores. Had these new more aggressive humans wiped them out?
It didn’t make sense. The Djinn were non-violent. There was no record of Djinn-on-Djinn violence – none.
Every cohort had developed a peculiar sense that their lives had purpose and meaning beyond their temporal situation. They rejected a simple, straightforward acceptance of life and death. A significant majority refused to believe that when their lives ended, they ended. They had become obsessed, almost possessed by the notion that there was more than this life, than this world. Fully one third suffered extreme anxiety and unhappiness caused by their choice to delay immediate joy in exchange for some unknown future reward. They denied their true natures to attain some more perfect future life – a life afterlife.
Absurd.
In contrast to their future reward seeking behavior, they seemed to fear some sort of divine retribution. They feared their makers.
Iblis shivered at the thought. How had they become so aware of their makers? Why would they fear us? We mean them no harm. They shouldn’t know we are here.
We have no expectations other than to learn about our own genetic maladies. What has caused them to live in fear of us?
To make matters worse, they had taken to fermenting grains and fruits producing an obnoxious liquid that further altered their perceptions of reality.
#
Little did Iblis’ know that her sibling, Bel, had manipulated the recombinant DNA preparations. Bel’s strategy was simple yet far-reaching. She would leverage Iblis’s intention to increase human intellect by adding a side effect. She had introduced a genetic propensity to delusion.
That simple alteration was what had led the humans to survive and thrive. It seemed humans needed two things to thrive – an outside enemy and hope. They needed to trust in something or someone beyond themselves and their short lifespans. Their newfound genetic predisposition toward delusion fed those two needs. Delusions of a religious nature seemed to cause them to reproduce at astounding rates. On the downside, those religious delusions also led them to kill and subjugate one another at astounding rates, especially among the men.
For most, the genetic predisposition manifested as an incessant feeling that others were out to get them. But in a third of the population the trait manifested in dark religious overtones.
For several millennia, Bel had slipped away from the other Djinn and interacted with those most prone to religious ecstasies and mystic delusions. Her followers referred to Bel as Baal. She welcomed their fear-induced worship and the sacrificial offerings of their children. She reveled in being their deity.
Iblis suspected none of this as she continued her check-up visit. She did, however, sense that something or someone had tainted the experiment. She postulated that it was the introduction of their Djinn DNA that caused the odd human behaviors.
The death of the males who did not wake from stasis seemed to back that hypothesis. Too late she would understand Bel’s role in their predicament.
#
Iblis’ frustration had grown since the failure of the second round of experiments. She could not acknowledge it, but for quite some time cynicism had been growing. She had contemplated setting aside logic and dedication for some much-needed rest and relaxation – for a distraction. What ensued was nothing short of hedonistic abandon.
Iblis leapt forward in time to about 4000 BC. It was there, near the trading center of Ur, that she met a man named Terah, the father of Nahor and Abram. Seeing a Djinn in its natural form for the first time, Terah assumed that Iblis was a deity and fell at her feet in worship. This new sensation, receiving worship, was not unpleasant to Iblis. It amused her, soothed her boredom, distracted her. What harm could it do? She rationalized that she was providing a means for the humans to thrive.
Iblis commanded Terah to take Nahor and Abram westward toward the land of Canaan, a place where they could worship her.
Iblis would evolve a deity worthy, or unworthy as the case may be, of human worship.
First there was Hathor the smelting God of Egypt, followed by El, the highest God of the Canaanites. She finally settled on Yahweh the deity of metallurgy whom she bestowed upon Abram. “I created fire!” She bellowed as a blazing firepot danced and consumed slaughtered heifers, goats, and sheep.
All the while, she found herself in competition with a deity named Baal, never suspecting that it was her sibling, Bel.
As the fortunes of her human community of worshippers evolved so did Yahweh. Iblis gave Yahweh an update through Moses and his generals, but always with fire.
“I am the unconsumed burning bush!” Iblis announced to Moses and the Israeli slaves in Egypt. She descended upon Sinai in fire and smoke. The mountain trembled; smoke billowed upward as from a furnace.
These new revelations of Yahweh always required sacrifices consumed by fire.
Then, after several generations, a strange thing happened.
The shape-shifting Djinn became enamored with David and spent many passionate moments, on the battlefield and off, with him in the form of Jonathan. Through David, Yahweh became more loving and compassionate. But as he aged David abandoned Jonathan for the love of women. Iblis, aka Yahweh sulked in anger.
Not long after, she grew bored with Yahweh and became less interested in her worshippers. In fact, she gave up; she quit. She contemplated returning to the Alaha and her family. But then after twenty or thirty human generations, a woman caught her eye – Miriam. She rekindled Iblis’ passions, driving her mad with desire. To fit in with the customs of the time, Iblis appeared to Miriam as Joseph.
Joseph and Miriam spent many passionate moments together.
Over time, something wonderful happened. The passion and desire gave way to joy and enjoyment – a deep abiding relationship.
The couple welcomed a child, Joshua. Miriam’s son was of course half human and half Djinn. Little did they know that the boy would become a significant marker in human history.
Before Joshua’s birth, Iblis had pursued physical intimacy with only two humans – David and Miriam. She had felt different with those two – something akin to genuine empathy though she lacked the vocabulary to express it. When Miriam gave birth to Joshua, something changed inside Iblis; a subconscious switch flipped to the on position.
An animal instinct awakened within her which could not be denied or explained. Contrary to logic, it operated blind, uncontrollable. Inexplicably she would wake in the night to check the child’s breathing or fly into a frenzy if a stranger approached. She would die for the boy; she would die protecting him from all threats. She would do anything and everything so Joshua could survive and thrive.
It was during this period that Iblis experienced something altogether new, long forgotten among the Djinn.
She conceived a child of fiat. One moment she was not pregnant. In the very next moment, a fresh new life spontaneously sparked in her womb. Beyond explanation, she knew this experience could only be explained to one who had experienced it. In that moment, Iblis wanted her mother like she had never wanted her before. Tiamat.
The very thought of Tiamat focused Iblis’ thoughts. While this new life growing inside her would bring great joy, it would also bring jealousy. She needed to protect the child above all else. She would need to hide the baby until she could gauge the reactions of her siblings.
She developed a plan.
She remained in time and place with Miriam and Joshua, cloaking their presence through her Alaha. She bore her child in the Alaha and raised him there until the age of three. Those days were filled with joy and vigilance. Neither Miriam nor Joshua knew of Iblis’ Djinn child.
She sensed the baby, though born, still lived within her, in her blood, in her organs, in her bones, and, yes, in her psyche. Her baby, its survival and growth, became her sole focus. She developed contingency upon contingency to face any of her siblings who might appear and harm her baby.
Simply put, Iblis loved both children beyond her own life.
She developed an elaborate plan to conceal her child’s existence until the right time.
Instinct had told her that she must hide her child before anyone knew of its existence. She travelled through time and space searching for one to protect the child. She settled upon a humble old man working on a backwater farm. She prepared everything so that no one would suspect the child’s existence, let alone her location.
After hiding the child, she returned to Tiamat’s Alaha to proclaim the good news.
#
Everyone had gathered in the command center upon Iblis’s return. Along with Tiamat, her ten siblings gathered to hear the report. Including Iblis, there were twelve, all that remained of the noble Djinn race.
Iblis spoke, “From the beginning we agreed that new life should align with and support the whole. Using horizontal gene transfer we made it so. Block upon block we built life, life inside of life, inside of life. We leveraged our own recombinant DNA to nurture the evolution of life from single celled microbes to complex organisms – bacteria and viruses. We used those genetic materials to develop other, more advanced lifeforms – vertebrates and invertebrates – studying the reproductive cycles of life. Primates were symbiotic mosaics of all life that came before them. Finally, we added other sections of our own recombinant DNA to create these humans.
“Life now thrives on this planet, in this universe.
“The humans have moved from the hunter-gatherer phase to an agrarian society. They innovate new tools almost at will. They conduct large hydraulic engineering projects which allow them to increase their population density and proximity. They are reducing their languages to writing. They are prolific breeders. They now number three hundred million across the planet.”
Tiamat seemed pleased. “Excellent! And so our third attempt at humanoid breeding begins.”
Bel also called Marduk, known to the humans as Baal, spoke up. “Sister do not lie to our mother. You speak of a world where humans broaden connections and seek to compress the distance between themselves. But you are not telling all that you have seen, all that you have done.”
Bel looked furious. “Tell them of the paranoia and delusions. Tell them how humans worship us and revel in fantasies of life beyond their lifetime. Tell them of the lack of trust, the hatred, and violence that you have witnessed.”
Iblis stood stunned. In that moment, she realized that Bel had been interacting with the humans for thousands of years.
“They do seem to have a need to extend themselves in time and space, to see themselves as having a larger purpose than simple survival and reproduction. It is as though they seek to evolve themselves through joining forces with this universe. Humans live as though evolution itself has become sentient, conscious.
Bel became enraged, “Enough! They are deluded! Sisters do not tolerate the failures of our mother. Do not defend this disaster created by Iblis. We have been here far too long following the lead of Tiamat. We are no closer to solving the extinction of the Djinn race.”
Bel pointed at Iblis, “Both of you have been wrong from the beginning. You are too soft on these humans. They are mere test subjects.”
“Ruling the humans is not our goal.” Tiamat snapped. “Solving our own reproductive problems is our only goal.”
“Is it our only goal? Iblis, tell them of your adventures as a deity to the humans.” She stared into Iblis blinking eyes. “Go on. Tell them how you created the deity of fire. Tell them how you have setup yourself above all others as the only true deity.”
Everyone looked stunned. Bel stood gloating
“Life Mother there is something else.” Iblis’s voice seemed tentative.
“Yes, my child.”
“Our family surfed the inflaton streams at the beginning of this universe harnessing them for the Alaha. Together we scaled the cliffs of the Carina Nebula. We have worked the star nurseries of Orion. I tell you all, though only our mother can understand, nothing compares to bearing and loving a Djinn child!”
No one responded. An eternal silence filled the space spreading to every corner of this universe.
“What are you saying?” Shaytain asked, breaking the spell.
Sisyphus laughed hysterically.
“I have conceived and born a child.”
To say a tumult arose would be a universal understatement.
In that moment, something in Bel broke. “Where is this child? No doubt a half-breed monster who should be constrained before it creates havoc among the humans.”
Iblis pulled away from Tiamat’s embrace and spoke. “Bel, do not speak of my child. I hid it from you.” She turned to face all her siblings, “all of you.”
Bel’s demeanor changed. He clapped his hands together. “This is wonderful news. You have saved the Djinn! Tell us. How did this come about?”
“You owe your sibling an apology.” Tiamat stared into Bel’s eyes. The demand of her countenance did not waver.
Out of necessity, Bel grudgingly submitted – a humiliating defeat. “Join me for a celebration. Let us bring all the Alaha together that we may move freely back to our universe proclaiming the news that we have overcome our malady – that after time beyond definition a Djinn has produced an offspring.”
#
When they gathered next, each carried an Alaha orb that they had brought from their own universe. The presence of the orbs was an ancient Djinn sign of surety. It reflected the ultimate vulnerability coupled with the ultimate invincibility.
Tiamat was on guard understanding that all their children could be envious of Iblis’s accomplishments. They alone understood Bel’s motivations; knew that the boredom of their work had driven him insane.
“Let the celebration begin!” Bel motioned for Tiamat and Iblis to join him. Bel raised a glass in his left hand. “To my sibling, I say congratulations. I cannot wait to meet the child. To my parents, my gravest apologies for doubting your wisdom.” He raised the glass and everyone drank a toast. The smile had not left Bel’s face before he pulled a curved scythe – a star cutter – and beheaded his parents with one stroke.
Everyone stood in shock. No Djinn had ever purposed to hurt another Djinn.
He pointed the obsidian blade toward the ground before him. Tears formed in his eyes as he looked at the now lifeless body. His parents’ blood had spattered his robes. “Place your Alaha on the ground before me.” Bel commanded.
One by one, his stunned siblings obeyed.
He raised the star cutter, like a blackhole it absorbed all light, fresh blood and raw tissue smeared the murder weapon.
Without the Alaha orbs Bel’s siblings were powerless to resist. “Bow before me.” He commanded.
His siblings looked at one another horrified.
Iblis spoke. “We will not lower ourselves and dishonor Tiamat. We will not worship you, despicable usurper that you are. We will not bow to you the murderer of our parents.”
Sisyphus and Shaytain joined him, “Every single one of us refuse.”
Bel raised the star cutter preparing to strike. Tears running down his cheeks, he pleaded, “Bow before me, brothers, as a sign of submission to me, the ruler of this cosmos.”
His siblings cried out in unison, “This is not you, Bel. Resist this evil.”
Then Bel growled. ‘Don’t make me kill another. Show fealty.”
Iblis spoke. “This universe has made you insane, brother. You alone have slain our parents. You have destroyed our hope for a future.”
“Bow before me. If you do not, I will imprison you for eternity in desert places far from all that our parents loved, far from water.”
Iblis’s response was simple, “I came from Tiamat. I will not prostrate myself to you.”
Bel raised the star cutter, tore time and space, imprisoning his fellow Djinn within the orbs that they had brought from their universe. The Djinn, who could move across this universe as fast as morning light pierces the night, were imprisoned, and scattered among the hungry deserts of a tiny blue orb suspended in an empty yet vast energy-filled universe.
“Mark my words, brother,” said Iblis. “I will avenge our mother and father.” The words echoed through the corridors of time and space as the ten disappeared against their will.
#
From that day to this, the Djinn have searched for a way out, for a way to exact revenge on Bel. Only one had hope. Only one had solace. Only one had fallen in love with a baby, her child.
Love saved Iblis long before it freed her from an orb in a desert place. Love made it possible for Iblis to conceive and bring forth a child. Love for the humans, love for the half-breeds, and love for his family.
#
And so came about the birth of Iblis’ child, the first Djinn to be born in billions of years – the hope of all Djinn-kind – born to one now captive, but hidden from those who would kill her to maintain power.
From these events Iblis embraced one enduring lesson. Time is meaningless. Even memory is ultimately meaningless. Love is all that matters.
The End
Or
The Beginning
[Author’s note: This is a work of fiction. It is my attempt to weave together Sumerian, Judeo-Christian, and pre-Islamic creation myths creating a universe of powerful villains and imperfect heroes that are driven by twin goals – survive and thrive. This story begs the question, What if we are test subjects – one among millions of species under observation as part of an ancient reproductive study?]