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 pureblooded 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 workloads 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. A sudden drop in temperature brought about the deluge and the rains came and never stopped.
VENETIA
Chapter Forty-Five
Pharos