NATURIA and its two moons, with the Azure Sea at top right
and N'Abode at the head of the Butterfly Sea, top left.
Hesper's cottage was a little way up from the shore. There was a sandy beach that ran around the inside of his cove. Marble steps led partially up the embankment. The house was a simple, old stone structure with many small rooms, and it was just as serviceable then as it had been for over 200 years. The land only grew more beautiful with age. It was locally known as "Sea Garden Estate.” Hesper owned it before he was married, but his wife was now the true caretaker. He was too busy lately sailing around the Azure Sea.
Where the marble steps ended, the garden path began, winding into the back yard and then splitting off into a loose network of narrow clearings that were further connected by smaller paths, seeming to drift all throughout the flower gardens and orchards of the estate. Near an old fruit tree in the side yard was the greenhouse entryway. Quaint stained glass window panes, hundreds of them, were patched with pewter, their frames mortared together and then further combined with bits of antique glass. In the evening a colorful pattern cast itself, fired by the falling suns, through all that glass, across the tile floor of the greenhouse and then up the outside wall of the main house.
Aria
Aria was watching the shadows of distant trees silhouette across the face of those beautiful colors as she stood motionless and lost in thought. She held the watering can as if she were a small, pale statue. She was retired now...early...from what she thought should have been a longer musical career. She'd chosen the married life with the rough-edged, wealthy, Hesper, three years before that very day. He had finally settled her down into this domestic, but not altogether blissful, comfort. They "had” it all. They owned the house here on the coast and another cottage in the mountains of Dnalgne Wen. But their main residence was located near the International Park of the world capital, the City of N'Abode.
The "Hesparia" city estate in N'Abode was a splendid, sprawling net of marble buildings, stone walkways, small canals with bridges, flower and medicinal herb gardens. Their gardens abutted the park, and were known by their neighbors as, “the Domes.” There were many small sitting areas, each with its own tiny, seven-columned domed temple. They bought that house together. Here on the coast, Aria was freed from the public attention that constantly dogged her in the city.
She made her way to the door and up the stairs into the house with the full intention of getting some accounting work done. But she really wasn't in the mood. She was distracted. She kept escaping into her mind. Things went more smoothly there than they seemed to in the outside world.
Aria was nearly the same height as Hesper--who was considered a bit shorter than the average man, but she gave the appearance of being quite petite. With her silken black hair framing large, wide-set blue eyes, she was almost intimidatingly beautiful. But she was not pretentious. Friends and family felt comfortable around her. She sometimes considered her beauty to be a burden. Her soft, pale, violet skin and facial features were inherited from her mother. An unusually attractive grace and charming modesty set her apart from other celebrities. Still, she remained the focus of the fantasies of millions of men and women, scattered across the worlds and colonies of two star systems.
There was a time, right before she was married, when she was almost worshiped for her voice. Her name was no accident. There was a myth in the media, courtesy of her mother, that she sang instead of crying when she was born. She didn't remember of course. But her mother had told her that the melody she used in her first hit, “Land of Light,” was composed with the same notes she sang when she was born. It was a great story. And her mother was known for her great stories. But the public just devoured it when it was published. They loved her unconditionally from then on.
She played her very last hit, “Conquer of Men” in the million-seat amphitheater, at the central plaza of N'Abode. She could still hear the cheers of the ocean-sized audience in her head.
The stars mixed with the lights of the surrounding metropolis, which then blended into the seven concentric, elliptical seating stand levels of amphitheater. She remembered the schematics of the building and the seating diagram: 37,000 seats in the lowest ellipse—closest to the stage and then 74,000 seats in the next ellipse of stands, as one moved outward; 107,000 in the next, then 144,000,177,000, 214,000, with the final and outermost, cheap seats, which held240,000 viewers.
Throughout the night, immense holograms told an accompanying story during each song, in images and swirling masses of color, as the music played. During the first song of the set, “Land of Light,” a giant glowing sphere was projected at about 1000 steps up in the air, directly above the central stage of the amphitheater. And she sang along to this music...
Land of Light Ambient Instrumental
In the Land of Light
I can find my way
There are no shadows here
Even on the darkest day
Children of the Dawn
Are here inside this song...
The music immediately plummeted in volume, to one rumbling and sustained bass note. Middle tones gently transitioned in and blew over the rumble, like an audio wind, bowed instruments followed her voice as she continued...
In the Land of Light
Where the Promise lives
Where the Answers flow
Where the Parents give
Follow the Blue Dawn
LIVE! before you're gone...
As the slow-swept music rolled over the city, seven smaller spheres emerged from the main sphere. By the end of the first song, seven even smaller spheres emerged from each of the satellites. On the last note, the entire system of light-worlds began to revolve, the satellites around their mother sphere and the sub-satellites around them.
It was a new technique in graphic aerial display, designed by Hesper's company. All of the graphics were worked out, off-world, for secrecy-sake. And during that process – to Hesper's horror – the light show's graphics had failed the first three times, each leading to extensive lens burn-outs and fried electromagnetic lines. But on the last two tests the system worked flawlessly. Aria had only heard about the graphics tests – even though she had actually assisted in designing their story boards – but had not actually seen them in full size animation until that very night in N'Abode.
While these giant worlds of light circled above her, the second song began. “Youth Requiem,” another crowd pleaser, faded in. Aria's songs were very slow, hypnotic and filled with ambient, sonic imagery; morphing into light filled holographic images that themselves seemed to produce sound effects, through focused-audio engines. Minor chords filled all space with a melancholy mood. She stretched out her arms on either side, then began...
Youth Requiem Ambient Instrumental
When you were young
I told you you could dream
And when you found this dream
I knew you would succeed
But in the night
That utter lack of Light
Broke your body
And your soul
Dissolved out in the
Churning salty water...
The instrumental refrain played again. And as she began the last verse of the song, a holographic plane of shifting color tones, set in just below the giant light spheres, and then exploded into millions of flying female forms. And the chords turned into majors, as she sang...
And some one saw the candle light
But no one said the rite in time
In the middle of that starry night
The passages would burn sublimely!
Many in the crowd wept with a sentimental joy. She saw their faces in the first level seats. Each holographic being seemed realistically ecstatic and took her own random path through the sky, then down through the audience to their delight, then merging with the others occasionally and finally shooting straight up into the stars, one by one. Their movements were so fluid, the illusion was so apparently real, that they seemed like true persons, as if they had been trapped in the light for an eternity, but were now set free into the universe. The effect, a combination of other ground-based holographic imagery, laser-like flashes, artificial fog bursts and that beautiful, breathing music, was a rapturous experience... even for the musicians. No one had ever seen such a display of artistic and musical grandeur on Naturia before.
A falling-tone, from a modulated sound wave-generator slowly descended, windy and drenched in reverb. As the third song began - “Hesper the Evening Star” - the crowd was almost out of control, as they recognized the first tones.
Security pin-spot lights flashed on in dozens of places around the seating ellipses. Aria chuckled to herself as she sat remembering the ridiculous amount of emotional energy of that night. The instrumental – composed for her then-finance, Hesper – was mysterious, almost scary sounding. Pentatonic scales dripped down the core of the harmony, as a small wind instrument vamped out the exotic melodies.
Hesper - The Evening Star Ambient Instrumental
Though written about Aria and Hesper's lust for each other, it could have been misconstrued as a soundtrack for thief or a murderer. “Odd,”she mumbled out loud to herself as she sat alone in the cottage, the darkness of night filling the sky above the landscape outside her window. Waves could be heard crashing on the beach below and then sinking back into the sea.
She remembered how at the end of that ambient instrumental piece, the giant spheres slowed their movements and faded to a deep, dark, glowing red, becoming transparent and then very dim above the heads of everyone present. A holographic forest image of light faded into the ground level of the amphitheater. Green and violet holographic trees rustled and swayed in a windless breeze, gently creeping vines, flowers – at first dormant in their closed, night positions –suddenly opened. Insects and song birds darted in three-dimensional circuits around and through the performers and the audience members. What looked like a morning suns-rise of brilliant shifting, orange, that sparkled-out shards of secondary blue light through the branches and leaves of this non-material woodland image, pulsed slowly growing and then falling in intensity.
The forth song, “Okeanos” - dedicated to her good friend, former band mate and lover - came bounding in, with its playful, bouncing slap-delayed rhythmic notes. Each note turned into an elf-like creature who then skipped joyfully through the forest illusion. Above these rhythmic notes-made-light-flesh, a melody chased them around the chords.
The crowd was being blasted more frequently with security lights now. She knew that even the large 10,000-guard army of the security staff was being taxed to its limits. She recalled feeling bad for them. As she began to sing, the sky from horizon to horizon was blanketed by what looked like water. The holograms rippled and splashed, and there was the distinct impression of being under the waves of a brightly shining sea. Looking up, the refracted star light could barely penetrate the light image...
Okeanos Ambient Instrumental
Come to reign
My ocean King
Water hides the tears within
Skim the sea floor
Swim in Peace
Night and day
Release...yourself
Release...yourself
Child of Blue and golden Light
Sleeps above the waves tonight
Learned to find the distant Shore
He who walks will swim no more
Release...yourself
Release...yourself...
The show had to have ended soon, even if she didn't end it herself with the next song. The audience was getting out of hand, becoming unruly and defiant. The frustration after decades social dissatisfaction was reaching the boiling point and the crowd was expressing it, as if she had given them permission. The normally peaceful and gentle citizens of Naturia were beside themselves with the new spirit of freedom that her music seemed to impart.
It wasn't really the words Aria was singing—which were always enigmatic and left open to interpretation, nor the astounding light show that raised them into a frenzy, but rather, the need to release the collective anxiety that drove them from their common civility.
And then the rumbling bass for "Conquerer of Men" rolled in. Four notes repeated with an earthquake-like vibration, moving them out into the audience, over the city and into the countryside: |: G, F#, E, F# :|, over and over. A single horn began the melody and Aria followed it. There was only one verse, sung at the beginning and then sung again at the end followed by a chorus. She focused her memory upon the last verse that then led into the three word chorus...
Conquerer of Men Ambient Instrumental
Pilgrims move through
Out into the Age of Blue
For centuries I fought for you
Moons and worlds I bought for you
Are you ever coming back again?
Conquer of men
Conquer of men...
The chorus repeated again and again. The crowd joined in, and dwarfed the sound system with their profound power, as ONE VOICE.
The giant spheres brightened again. The holographic water surface contracted into small head-sized dots that rose and fell with the texture of the music, like a computer waveform image, while wide strips of sunlight-colored, bands turned into images of fire—without heat. They twisted around each other and weaved a tapestry of flame below the giant spheres. As the music ended – but for the four fading notes in the reprise of the introduction – the fiery surface of the holographic sky above rose through the circling spheres, ever expanding in width, continuing up and over them. When it reached a shuttle-worthy altitude, it crumbled into 99 more of giant sphere-systems, each exactly like the lower and first one. They stretched out in all directions across the sky, as far as the eye could see. And the light they shone down upon the world below illuminated it to an intensity of brightness greater that that of midday. The stars were no longer visible behind this grand and dynamic display.
For a moment – only a moment – Aria stood there on that stage in an apparent bubble of silence. She was just as overwhelmed as her fans, and they saw her as a tiny speck in a sea of light and color, caught under the focus of a seven spotlights—one for each hue of the white light spectrum. And at this moment she remembered seeing herself as just a humble, little colony girl stuck in the backwater orbit of her childhood home. How could a little girl from nowhere now be at the center of this temporary infinity; standing on the elliptic disc of that stage, surrounded by a million people who adored her? She was so small, so blown away. But she had risen to Immensity in her young life; TRULY becoming a conquerer in her own right. One of God's meekest creatures had ascended through the trials and struggles of a hard-fought career, climbing to this central isle of light; to this state of perfected glory. And she wept on that stage three years ago and also now, alone with only her memories.
Would any moment ever even come close to that one? There was a touch of the divine in the warm city air that night. A reflection of Paradise, made visible. It was so short a time. Would anything ever rise to this kind of level again for anyone. Could she ever be that happy again as she lived out the rest of her life in retirement? The time in the light...so short a time. The question kept presenting itself: Would she ever see anything or experience anything that could top that night?
YES--she certainly would!
And what loomed ahead of her, just over the horizon, would make her night on that stage in front of a million people look like a little private party thrown for a couple of friends.
But she had no idea about any of that yet. Her eyes grew heavy with the narcotic temptation of sleep, which she surrendered to, nodding off at her desk.
Things were about to transpire that would change her, Hesper, her friends, her family, her whole world, and that entire part of the star cloud which her beloved suns shone so majestically from. But there was darkness coming too—tragedy, betrayal, deception and soul-threatening destruction.
If she could have only know what she was about to face... If she could have only been able to prepare...
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