Starrider: The Birth of L5

"Had you been victimized by a carbon monoxide hallucination..." I assured her. "You would not have been able to even raise yourself from the floor you might have collapsed upon... much less, needless to say, spent the last fifteen minutes of Earth time washing your body from daily soils."

She rubbed her head with a towel and nodded. "I know... I know..."

I stood before her, slightly bent over once again, and regarded her.

She continued, "So what's the verdict? Was I correct?"

I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, attempting to push aside my natural inclinations and objections, and replied to her. "It would appear that you were indeed correct."

"Hah! YES!! I knew it!!" She said with triumph.

"Might I add, I am a bit wary and taken aback by the whole concept... though I dare not object upon grounds of my own understanding in this matter. You must consider your place in future events most carefully. There is much here to be considered... much that you might not be quite ready to accept."

She sat down upon her bed and continued to dry her hair, then pulled the towel around the back of her neck and held the ends with each hand. "What's it all about?"

"You are a girl of many talents. I have been apprised that you are not only a musician who sings and writes songs of love ... but you are an athlete as well... and not merely an athlete, but one who has been trained in hand to hand combat... in the martial arts."

She shook her head lightly. "Now... how would you know that? NO ONE knows that... I don't even keep any books, or other materials to let on that I have that kind of background."

"Overtly, of course not. For one who states that everyone should make love... and not war..." I said while gesturing to the poster on the wall. "It would appear you have designs which are kept hidden from even the most closely held confidant."

She lowered her eyes thoughtfully and said, "I... want to do more... but I just don't know how... It's great to sing songs of love and protest social injustice and oppression, but others who have come before me did that... and what do they have to show for it?"

"Vigilantism is illegal."

"I know, I know. And I have so little influence..."

"What will you do? Become like those you oppose? Will you employ the same tactics as they in order to achieve the opposite results?"

She sighed heavily. "No... and that's why I have never been able to get off of the ground with this thing... I can't make a difference... I'll just be killed... and where will that get me?"

"An early grave... no doubt." I said flatly.

She chuckled lightly and pursed her lips. "Yeah... it's a silly idea."

"So silly..." I replied. "That you have a 'costume'... a battle suit... in your closet, just waiting for your appearance upon the crime fighting scene..."

"Did you go in my closet????" She asked with a bit of offense.

"Indeed." I replied. "All things have been revealed to me."

"So you know I have weapons in there, too?" She asked, no doubt referring to the swords, knives and handguns she had tucked away in a private corner of the closet.

"Indeed." I said shaking my head slightly. "It will crush your spirit to cause harm even to those you must confront in the service of protecting the defenseless. You cannot perform the duties required of this intent without turning your most cherished beliefs into chicanery."

She looked up at me with a quizzical expression. "If we are going to continue to chat, I am gonna need a thesaurus."

I smiled and held out my hand. "Come, it is time for you to embark upon a journey that will not only cleanse you of your current infestation, but will also equip you to become a force for change which, until now, you could only have whimsically imagined possible."

"What...?" She said leaning back from my hand.

"Disrobe." I suggested.

"UUUhhhhh..." She stammered with suspicious inflection.

"You and I must travel to another planet. A place called Krannel-Plotis. A wonderful planet I am sure you will enjoy."

She started. "WHAT??? Another planet??? Oh, come on... I am having some drug induced trip..."

"No, no. I assure you. I am no dream. No drug trip. No gas induced hallucination. In order for you to be cleansed and find your destiny, you must come with me..."

"Now??? But... but I haven't even had dinner..."

"I am offering you a trip into space to a planet that would take one hundred and fifty of your Earth years to reach with current Earth technology, and you are concerned with dinner?"

"That's pretty close..."

"It is."

"How do we not know about this?"

"You do... well, your world governments do..."

Mystified, she retorted. "No, shit...?

"When your astronauts landed upon the moon, they were met with a delegation of life forms from all over the universe, both shipped, and like myself, un-shipped; and they were warned off of the moon. They were told to abandon their search to reach into space, for mankind is deemed unworthy to enter the realm of space in its current state. Love, and the rest of us who inhabit space, will simply not have it. Man must never reach out to the stars. He would only pollute the holiness of space with his current disposition."

She paused for a long moment. "We're that bad, huh?"

"Yes."

"And it's just US?"

"It is."

"Can you tell me more about why this stuff happened?"

"As we go along... I shall have to... I shall have to inform you of many things. That is why you must consider your position most carefully... for you must make the decision for yourself to become what Love would have you to do."

"I have the chance to make it up to Love for all of mankind?"

"Each must do for themselves, but your contribution can become unequaled. To those who are given much... much is expected."

"...and I need to be naked for this?"

"Space is holy. There is nothing shameful about your beautiful created body. It is one of the finest works of all creation... even the Angels fell to be with you."

"You mention the Angels... I often think... even the Angels went to war."

"All over Love." I said nodding my head in agreement.

She narrowed her eyes and offered up her hand for me to take. As she stood up from the bed, her other hand whisked off the robe she wore, and she kicked off the slippers from her feet. She closed the gap between us and looked me dead in the eyes.

"Starrider..." She said with conviction. "...take me to the stars."

*******

"AAAAUUUGHHH!!" She screamed as I held her close to my side. "OH GOD!! PLEASE DON'T DROP ME!! DON'T DROP ME!!"

"You humans are so automatically distrustful..." I attempted to reply.

"How can we be doing this????" She spat out with more than just a little panic in her voice.

The large, blue spinning Earth turned quietly beneath us. The moon to one side of us was now larger than Connie had ever seen it. At least as far as real life would allow. For that matter, I had not considered how seeing her home planet from space for the first time would actually impact her. The impact, needless to say, was so major - that she vacated her bowels into the vacuum of space around us.

"I'm... I'm... naked and in space!! How the hell????" She almost screamed, and clung tightly to my side, holding the Legit-Roos in the crook of her right arm, as we floated in the open void.

"You need not fear, young one. As long as you are with me, all effects of the laws of physics are suspended. However, I cannot control your autonomic nervous system from within your own person. You must work at calming yourself before you cause serious internal harm."

"It's not everyday I get to take a naked ride in space... this is so friggin' unbelievable!!"

"I assure you, this is only the beginning of our journey. Here at this point in space the gravitational push and pull of the Earth and its moon are creating a median point that holds us in place, as it would an orbiting body. The L5 point lies at the third corners of the two equilateral triangles in the plane of orbit whose common base is the line between the centers of the two masses. The reason this point is in balance is that, at L5, the distances to the two masses are equal. Accordingly, the gravitational forces from the two massive bodies are in the same ratio as the masses of the two bodies, and so the resultant force acts through the bary-center of the system."

"Thank you, Mr. Wizard..." She said with quite a bit of fear and trembling in her sarcasm.

"This Lagrange point... or L5 point..." I continued. "Is the beginning of your entrance into a new life that awaits you... should you decide to accept this mission..."

She grew silent for a long moment while viewing the massive planet Earth beneath us and then quietly whispered. "She's truly beautiful... is there anything like her anywhere in space?"

I turned for a moment myself and regarded the blues and greens of the planet, and also the swirling, spinning weather patterns so readily obvious as they moved across her atmosphere. She hung freely in her place among the stars, silent and surreal in her majestic solitude. It was not a usual thing to see a planet so naked as the young girl I held at my side, so vulnerable and opened to the random dangers of space unleashed before her fallen glory.

"Had you been here... long ago..." I told her. "You would not have seen the glorious Earth in this way... tilted on her axis... stripped of her ice canopy which covered the entire circumference of the planet's atmospheric system. It surrounded her in a mile or so deep of ice crystals, as all other planets which sustain life are required to have; protecting her from ultra violet radiations, wary comets and asteroids, and other such dangers. No, what you see here is a naked planet. Naked as much as you are now." I turned to her and then said. "It is a travesty which all life in the universe takes an offense to."

"But... but, why...?" She asked like a small child.

"A long time ago... mankind was offered the possibility of independence from Love... and unlike any life form... anywhere... they considered it."

She turned closely to my face and regarded me with thoughtful eyes. "And then...?"

"...and then set into motion consequences which must now play themselves out... dreadful... disgusting consequences of things like... death, disease, violence, hate... need I go on?"

"Were Starriders not given this choice as well...?"

"We were..." I replied, taking note of her increasing adaptation to her formerly impossible circumstances at my side. "My ancestors were angered beyond belief at the prospect of separation from Love. The adversary who came to us to make presentation was throttled and battered back into space, back among the stones of fire, until finally he came to rest here... on the Earth itself... where he is now held in a free-flowing stasis."

"Being given a choice... when there really is no alternative... is not much of a choice in the first place." She mused, seeming to suddenly forget her place among the stars.

"Oh no, the choice DOES exist... you witness its resultant consequences before you... in reality... and it is allowed to continue for now as a premonitory to the entire universe as to what happens when one believes that reality can indeed be lived apart from Love... while seated within Love's abode."

"...deep stuff..."

"Indeed. It is a difficult concept to relate... but when mankind made the choice it did... it broke Love's heart... something that had never happened in all the eons before known reality... but enough of this..." I said, shaking my head and trying to move on. "Now it is time for us to make our away, there is much to be done." I told her, and I turned from the mighty planet before us and headed out into space at the swiftest of speeds. We would arch towards a certain sector of space where the Legit-Roos would be released and allowed to return to his mistress, then we would continue on toward our goal.

The stars turned to long dagger streaks of light before us and we made silent, incomprehensible progress toward our intended destination, namely: the planet Krannel-Plotis.

*******

It was necessary for the nude human to make her way among the Plattis-Neruve trees, with their large, palm like foliage, in order to pass her skin against the nutritional and medicinal fluids which secreted from each leaf. Krannel-Plotis was a planet of towering trees, deep, cavernous valleys and humongous mountains that rose before us and blotted out the horizon. Connie, however, was agape at the many wondrous colors which surrounded her in the natural realm here. Toolet, coroniasil and rinootoo, were just a few of the myriad of tints and shades of which she was now a first time viewer.

"What is that color?" She asked in amazement while pointing to some wavy, long and thin grass over to our left.

"That is the color toolet..." I told her. "Over there, the small budding flower like items you see growing among the grass, are known as coroniasil... well, the flower and its color are often one and the same."

She gasped in amazement, as she should, though these colors were not at all foreign to myself. Humans were limited in the scope and breath of the color pallete, and were is a state of almost complete blindness toward other pigments without my assistance in the ability to view them.

"Why have I never seen such colors before?" She marveled.

"Come with me." I stated while reaching out my hand to lead her into the nearby grove of trees. "I will explain as we move forward." With that I did indeed take her hand and walk with her into the cloying foliage. The ground was firm yet moist, as though covered with the sweet rain of morning dew.

She giggled and chuckled with delight as the foliage caressed her budding breasts, her blushing cheeks and smeared its cooling medicinal liquids across her attractively flat belly and womanly thighs. I attempted to relate to her the nature of being cut off from the ability to view the surrounding color pallet, but she became suddenly more concerned with her current experience.

"I'm getting soaked!" She told me with a mischievous tone.

"Indeed." I told her as we made our way into a clearing. "This is all necessary, I quite assure you. The moisture you will absorb topically works in much the same way to benefit your physical person as foliage upon Earth was designed to do."

"But not anymore, huh?"

"No. Nothing on Earth is what it is supposed to be. All things have been ruined, diminished... eradicated from their initial use and purpose. Mankind is awash in a reality born of consequences placed upon empirical design... and as in all things... the whole of your life on Earth... must be ... re-booted. As it were."

She nodded thoughtfully. "So what WAS the purpose of marijuana, anyhow?"

"Its purpose has been long lost to you... much like the appendix.. " I whispered.

She looked skyward past the towering trees before us and asked, "And where are the clouds?"

"The ice canopy which surrounds the planet keeps the entire sphere in a temperate zone climate. There are no weather patterns here... or anywhere else in the universe for that matter... clouds only existed once the ice canopy of Earth was destroyed. Before that, Earth too, was a temperate zone."

"...but not anymore..." She whispered as she looked fore longingly at the towering trees before us. "These trees look like California Redwoods."

"They are much more than that." I told her as we viewed the hundreds of thousand foot trees that filled the valley before us. "Their fruit is multi-faceted. There are over a dozen different kinds on each tree." I then turned and looked to her and she met my eyes. "YOU must feed from these fruits. They are the same fruits and trees that will be planted on Earth once the whole of the planet has been restored... their fruit will be for the healing of the nations."

Her eyes went wide with realization. "The tree of life?????" She spat with amazement.

I nodded. "The same."

She looked a bit pensive suddenly and related, "I... am not sure... we should do this..."

"All directives that I propose come from the order of Love itself... I can assure you of that."

"Yeah... but... y'know... forbidden fruit... and all.." She mused.

"Your concerns are unfounded." I retorted.

"How do I know? How can I be sure it's not just another sucker play? No offense intended... you understand..."

"It is imperative that you understand that the standard operating procedures for the physical world exist of their own. They are neither good or evil in their corporal existence. When they are misused, then folly comes into play. For instance, we will soon have sexual relations as a part of your healing and transformation according to Love's decree. Many on your home world would feel that such displays of carnality would be shameful, and even perhaps,... perverse. However, I would like to point out at this juncture that sex happens all over the universe as a part of physical reality. There are no questions about its appropriateness due to the fact that it holds a common, functional place in the triunal position of mind, body and spirit. Yet how many on Earth would question my being a Starrider, and you being a human, having coital union?"

She raised an eyebrow and said. "Quite a few."

"Indeed. But in that same vein, this too, the eating of this fruit, is performed in line with Love's directives... I could lead you no other way. My service to Love, with unquestioning devotion, ensures my forthright position with you now as it will in the next short span of time."

"So says you. I am... sorry."

I nodded my understanding. "No, no... I recognize that struggle within you... and I applaud it. You are truly a superior human now due to your life experiences... not merely a superior female... though, to be honest, you are indeed that as well."

I closed my eyes, stretched out my arms and raised my face to the sky. Inwardly, I called upon Love for assistance. There was a warming glow which almost immediately enveloped us both and I held my eyes closed so as not to intrude upon Love's work. I could hear Connie Robin Wilcoxin gasping and laughing and seeming to respond with delight to whatever Love had deemed to make known the girl. And in mere moments, it was done.

She stood before me with a "stupid" grin on her face and a glossy light in her eyes which projected a complete change in demeanor from only moments ago. I asked her, "Will there be any further resistance on your part?"

She reached out her hand and took mine and said, "No... I am fully on board for this."

We walked up to the nearest tree and plucked some of the rather large, juice filled rectangular fruit. I handed it to her, and with aplomb, she did eat. I smiled as she rolled her eyes in satisfaction.

"This is FAB-TASTIC!!" She exclaimed. She then shoved more into her hungry mouth and the plithonia juices rolled down her neck and over her firm, almost egg-plant shaped, mammaries.

"What color?" She asked with a mouth full.

"Plithonia." I told her between bites of my own luscious fruit piece.

"It's like a square black grape... but more purple looking..." She continued.

As the fruit reached her innards, I awaited her initial response. Her eyes went a little wide and she began to foolishly grin. She then rubbed her lower belly in satisfaction.

"Oh my! I can feel that in my... uh..."

"Your sex?" I asked dryly.

"YEAHHH!! Oh GOD! I am having some kind of rush!!"

I chuckled. "Hehehe... YES! It is time for you and I to make our way to the nearest marsh."

"OOOO! Sexy time????"

"Heh. Yes. Sexy time."

******

The cry of the parnil-fretts, far off over the horizon, echoed through the valley and across the marsh mare where Connie and I lay half submerged within its milky effluence. Having never seen them herself, these animals were wholly unknown to her and she seemed distracted by the mournful wailing in the key of B flat, which was their common cue when dusk was prevailing across the land.