Building Jerusalem

Shedding his boots and vest, Moishe dove into the warm waters of the Western Isles. The water was clear and refreshing, even cool compared to the sticky air and midday sun heating the metallic deck of the Abraham. How he loved that ship. She was the only sizable motorized ship in the entire fleet--the rest were wooden and powered by sail or oar--which was fine, as Mogo would be greatly upset if they trolled their foreign pollutants about so liberally.

The Abraham was a sterile thing by herself; she was made after all of refined rock and smelled the harsh smell of diesel and the bite of iron, not the flexible, organic craft with the simple fragrance of the pinewood with which they constructed their warm-water fleet, or even the sturdy oak of their northern fleet. Nevertheless, the Abraham was a reminder of Earth, and of Moishe’s grandfather, the great captain and founder of their 'Garden in the East of Mogo.'

That was the planet’s name. Mogo. It was said to be a literary reference of some sort, but no one knew specifically what it was referencing. Moishe himself had spent countless hours of his life perusing the electronic library archives on Earth’s great literature and rich history, yet had never seen any mention of “Mogo,” and even the ship computer’s search function failed to find anything in that great mass of stored data.

Moishe's sandy-brown haired head burst forth from the water, then proceeded to bob up and down in the oily wake of the Abraham. The ship wouldn't go far, only about a hundred yards to give him some room; that wasn't his concern. He had lost track of the Sapientia fish. That long light-blue scaleless fish with yellow eyes, twin facial antennae like a mustache, and which swam as fast as any motorboat, had outsmarted him again.

"Wise guy, eh?" Moishe took a deep breath and dove back underwater. Not to be outsmarted by a fish, he kicked and stroked until he was about thirty feet down, at the rocky bottom. He grasped a vast rocky protrusion that seemed almost to reach the surface, and looked around while hanging on the rock like the giant gorilla or spider-person on the buildings in the old Earth films. Then he waited. And waited. Nothing. Moishe pushed off the jagged volcanic rock--hard on even his callused feet--for some air. The surface appeared to be only ten feet away when he felt a sudden bump. It was little more than a brushing against his side, but he paused briefly to look around. A flicker of movement caught his eye and a moment later a sudden thud of unbelievable force removed the remaining air from Moishe's lungs.

At one hundred and forty pounds, the average Sapientia weighed almost as much as Moishe did. The Sapientia was also faster, stronger, and had home court advantage. What had seemed a good idea to him at the time, singling out the largest specimen he could find, an estimated one hundred and ninety pounds, now sent shivers down Moishe's spine as he frantically thrashed about in an attempt to surface. However, the old fish, fortunately toothless like all its brethren, had its mouth around his left foot. It was dragging him back down to the bottom. Not to eat, as the Sapientia wasn't overtly dangerous; it was playing a game. A dangerous game nevertheless, but it had a different perspective on the matter.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


As the grandson of the great Captain Abram, Moishe was probably the most eligible bachelor on all of Mogo, but his lusts lie elsewhere. "No, not anything like that," he had been forced to explain to his mother. Wanderlust. "I want to go places, see things..." He looked skyward. The sunlight reflected white off the clouds, but sprinkled like gold dust upon the village huts.

"There's plenty to see right here in the village," the fiery redhead of Irish-Scot descent retorted. "And if you absolutely have to, there's a whole planet around you. No need to join your head in the clouds."

That was ten years ago. Now Moishe was fast approaching his twenty-fifth birthday and his mother was getting more concerned by the day that he wasn't engaged to be married. It wasn't that he hadn't shown interest in the fairer sex, or vice-versa, but that he was so rarely around the village. Like today. He was off adventuring, and if he came home it would be with stories to tell at the tavern.

As a colony, and one founded so recently in historical terms, Mogo had a relatively small population made up mostly of farmers, fisherman, and your basic village tradesmen. One of the primary goals established by Moishe's grandfather when founding the colony was to establish the sizable population necessary for industrial production. This became all the more problematic when it became clear that Mogo was unwilling to provide the materials deep within its crust in sufficient quantities to industrialize. So the old Captain Abram came to a compromise with the recalcitrant sphere; if Mogo would provide just enough material, the colonists from Earth would be able to create their own colony upon Mogo's ore-rich moon, Kobold. This, however, would require many more people than were in the colony on Mogo, and with no hope of more colonials arriving from Earth, it was time to start making babies.

This was one of Moishe's biggest problems. Men were expected to marry at age twenty-two and women at sixteen, although some leeway (how much was determined by personal discretion) was allowed before the practice of ostracism was utilized. Ostracism, in their small community, was the chief form of negative reinforcement, not punitive legal measures. Divorce, adultery, blasphemy, several heresies, and kleptomania among others, were some of the many crimes for which a person was likely to be ostracized, a state that tended to be rather permanent. In the case of 'refusing wedlock,' as the act, or lack thereof, was known, the only way a person could be excused from ostracism was by taking religious orders. No one on all of Mogo expected Moishe to do this.

The joke had for a short time gone around that he was, in fact, engaged; for he was not simply 'cavorting with Mogo,' but was actually 'consorting with Mogo.' This joke stopped abruptly when someone suggested it might upset Mogo. At first everyone laughed, then, realizing the implications upon interruption by one of the planet's regular tremors, seemed to mouth a collective 'sorry.' The language the colonists used to describe the planet they inhabited was no turn of phrase, no literary flair, but an honest assessment of what they all experienced daily. The rumblings of the earth were the planet's words, and the tossing waves of the sibilant sea its whisperings.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Moishe grasped the rock as before when the Sapientia pulled him passed it, swimming backwards in a side-winding motion whilst flapping its fins feverishly like a giant thrummingbird.

It didn't work. The large fish held his ankle tight between its jaws and continued to pull until his oxygen-deprived muscles were about to give out. Expecting the worst, Moishe said a prayer to God, and one to Mogo for good measure. Then the unexpected happened. Mogo answered.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Moishe's grandfather had rejected the political games--at first publicly--then, seemingly acquiescing to pressure and the threat of removal from the project, privately. The silver-templed veteran eventually managed to arrange a compromise (something he was known for); he and the Council would each choose five hundred candidates and on the day of departure they would, together, eliminate roughly half of the one thousand present.

His grandfather had instructed the five hundred he had chosen to arrive early--leaving with them for their new home, the flood of winged chariots licking at their proverbial heels.

"Abram," the familiar voice crackled over the speakers on the command console. "Don't do this."

There was silence for a moment. No noise was heard save the muffled whir of the overhead spaceship cabin fans and the radio static as the two old friends prepared to forever part on less than amicable terms.

"What are you going to do," the captain finally responded, "court martial me?"

"In absentia. You will lose all honors and die a criminal. Is that really how you want to go out?"

Silence. Then, "I would be honored," the highly-decorated war hero began, "to share the fate of our lord."

"This magical-thinking is why you're doing this, isn't it? Fine. Let me abuse my status as a representative of our secular state and tell you: your sins will be visited upon the third and fourth generations."

"I pray your descendants think differently."

"And I hope yours do."

"God bless. We leave because we have not had--but perhaps ironically now that we do--there will be peace on Earth and good will toward men."

"One can only hope... good luck," said the Chair of the Committee on Transsystem Colonization to his long-time friend, whispering these last words so that no one on his own end could hear. And that was how the colonists parted with Earth.

Or so the story went.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Ever since his grandfather first arrived in charge of the colonials, Moishe's family had been said to have a special connection with Mogo. His grandfather had written in his journal that he was "guided, as though by some unseen hand, to this particular planet. And a fortuitous thing it was!!!" Here his grandfather used multiple exclamation points, when even one was beyond the normal range of his expression. But Moishe remembered reading of the joy in his grandfather's journal, and had experienced firsthand on numerous occasions, when in the most difficult of times the planet itself had provided for the colonists. Full-blossomed fruit-bearing trees of all stripes would be found where all would swear there had been none before, and live, flopping fish, glistening silver in the moonlight, would wash ashore without apparent cause. "No cause save our need," his grandfather opined.

So it was now. Mogo rumbled his answer to Moishe's unspoken cry for help, setting loose rocks along the seafloor as he did so, including the portion of the protrusion onto which Moishe held. It was only a small piece of the jagged rock, and thus was pulled along with Moishe, still clutched neatly in his hands. Spinning around with what seemed the last of his strength, Moishe managed to slam the blunt side of the rock onto the nose of the Sapientia fish. It paused, dazed, but did not let go. The other side of the rock, he noticed, would have been better. It was near razor sharp from the looks of it. He decided in his disoriented state to try to ram it through the fish's skull.

No, came the rumbling reply. Moishe dropped the rock. Whether out of compliance, or because he was about to pass out, even he couldn't say. All he knew is that his foot inexplicably slipped free of the fish's mouth and a blast from geothermal seafloor vents--appearing out of nowhere--bubbled cozily around him like a heated sea-blanket as they rapidly shot him to the surface and then held him there like a warm water-cushion while he regained his breath and senses. After what seemed half an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, Moishe dove right back into the water to find the elusive Sapientia.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"This can be nothing less than the vindication of our flight from home," wrote Moishe's grandfather Abraham--as he was now called, the father of a great nation--of the bounty provided by the planet Mogo. Yet his grandfather used that word of Earth so often, so lovingly! Home. "Where the heart is. I should like to return someday. Here an exile, I feel even our green and pleasant land should have seen..." his grandfather never finished. Moishe had never known the man, having died before he was born, but his father always told him grandfather Abraham could never speak of what he missed about Earth.

"I suppose," his father speculated, "only growing up on Earth up to my teens, that we never can understand it. The land of one's forefathers has special meaning. Where all your ancestors--every last one--are buried." Leaving the fatherland for the 'New World,' so to speak, was hard for Europeans. Moishe's reading of history taught him that. How much harder, then, was it for people to leave Mother Earth? His father assured him the difference was astounding.

"This is not my home," his grandfather wrote. "It can never be my home. I am a stranger in a strange land, and have remained here for two reasons only. First, that I cannot return either physically or legally. Second, those who call Mogo home need me. My family needs me. My son needs me. My soon-to-be-born grandson needs me. And at least I can take peace of mind in my own land. A world kept separate unto itself. Every man needs his plot, separate from the troubles of the fast-paced, hustling, bustling world."

Moishe's plot was the open ocean and mountain-covered isles secreted away in the far west. The isles only the Abraham, with its powerful motor and reasonable storage space, could reach with ease.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Moishe emerged triumphantly from the water. He was sitting upright. Between his thighs were the sides of the Sapientia as he skidded across the water, riding upon the beasts back. He steered with subtle tweaks of the antennae on either side above the fish's mouth. Tugging left or right and twisting up or down, he made his way to the Abraham, and circled it at least a dozen times upon arriving, shouting gleefully out to his friends on board.

"Josh," he glanced at a boy somewhat younger than himself, "throw me down a canteen. Water, water, everywhere, and all that."

The boy, wiry thin and copper-haired, grinned widely at his friend's success--no doubt hoping he would share in the rewards--and obliged quickly.

Moishe caught the canteen deftly, emptying it in one swig before tossing it back up. "Another for the road."

"How long will you be gone?" Josh asked while once again throwing a fresh canteen to his friend.

"Not long. I just need to go to the shore for a moment."

He yipped and hollered his way to the shore on the back of the Sapientia. Then, arriving in the shallows, he hopped off; giving the fish a pat on the head and tying its antennae in a knot to keep it from leaving.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The beach was hot. The sand under his feet burned a little. Making his way to a stone obelisk at the edge of the jungle, Moishe picked up a piece of shale at its foot and stuck it into a thin crack lining the monolith. He pried open the small compartment only he and a few others knew was hidden there. Inside was the communication equipment from the ship the colonists had left on, appropriately named the Exodus. It was the only equipment on Mogo that could be used to communicate with Earth, something that had been forbidden for some years now. That, of course, was the reason for the equipment being left on an island far from civilization.

Now the equipment was needed for other purposes. It was to be taken apart and used in tandem with the Exodus' internal communications system to facilitate the industrialization of Kobold. In the meetings held a month prior, knowing that the alterations to the equipment may very well be irreversible, and therefore prevent future communication with Earth, the question had arisen, 'should they send one last communique to Earth?' The answer was a resounding 'no.' All the stories they had been told by their parents, or lived through themselves, convinced them that they had no need to speak with Earth ever again.

Moishe was not here to retrieve the communications equipment. He was here because he had been a powerful dissenting voice to the decision. That, he supposed, is why he chose this of all isles to play the game of Sap hunting. Now he found himself in a dilemma. No one would ever know if he used the equipment to communicate with Earth--it would be disassembled and parts of it reassembled on Kobold long before Earth replied, if it replied at all. The problem was, what would his father, were he still alive, say? Or his grandfather? Or his still-living mother? Moreover, this wouldn't give him what he wanted. Even a response from Earth wouldn't come close to that. He needed, first, confirmation that he wouldn't have his grandfather's 'sins' visited upon him. Then, if all went well, he would be off for the adventure of a lifetime. The engine of the Exodus was still intact and in place, as were several cryopods. The hull's integrity was not compromised, and the computer would handle the rest.

It is what his grandfather wanted, for himself anyway. Moishe had read the tales. The mythology, the history, the art and literature had been an object of intense study for him. He loved a land to which he had never been. To see resplendent Rome--the original shining city on a hill--hear the eagle cry, to visit Jerusalem. It was sort of like that Earth book, "The Giver." All these memories were lost to their world, and he wanted to experience them for himself just once.

Sure, the people of Mogo would hate him forever for taking such valuable resources, but is that not what happened to his grandfather? Now perhaps he would miss his home, he was not born on Earth, like his grandfather had been. Moishe gripped the communicator speaker firmly in his left hand and thought of his grandfather Abraham.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"I will not leave, but cannot stay much longer," read the last page of his grandfather's journal. "Mogo has not spurned me--rather, the planet loves me. I, however, am not suited to this land. My very being has rejected it. I cannot return the love Mogo offers me. Nevertheless, I must continue. There is much to do. If I could not return to Earth, I determined many years ago now, there was always the possibility that I could recreate--build--its finest elements to my satisfaction here on Mogo. It won't be for me. It is a project that will take too many more years to complete. But I am a nostalgic old fool, and my successors will doubtlessly scrap my plans and shape the world to their own liking... should Mogo let them," he finished wryly.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Moishe bit his lip and thought of Mogo. His grandfather wanted his father to build Earth on Mogo. His father rebelled, had a change of heart, then soon afterward joined his own father in the grave.

"DAMNIT!" Moishe screamed, hoping none on the Abraham heard him. He thought he loved his grandfather, a man he'd never met, just as he loved Earth. It was all there in the journal, in the history books. He loved them dearly. But his grandfather wanted something from him that he couldn't do. He couldn't build Earth. He didn't know the first thing about it. He had never been there. He loved Mogo, not Earth. And Mogo loved him, apparently.

Moishe flicked the switch turning on the communicator. Several lights flickered and there was a humming noise, and then static. There was nothing but empty space for twenty light years. Earth was at the end of all that nothing.

"Hello, Earthlings," Moishe spoke into the device. "This is Moishe, colonial on Mogo and son of Jacob, who was the son of Abraham, known to you as Abram." He paused as if for a reply. When none was forthcoming he continued, "You. Bastards. Why must you poison everything? Ever since Eve ate that damn apple, you have been ruining everything you come into contact with. Why is nothing satisfactory to you? Why can't you just say, 'hey, this Garden of Eden is good enough for me, no need to look for more out of it than has been offered... or to change it.' Why can't you just say that and be content? What is wrong with you Earthlings? What the hell is wrong with you?"

'Us,' you mean, a whisper rolled up the beach from the sea.

"Granted," Moishe said aloud, turning off the communicator while he did so. Still, he reasoned, it was appropriate, and Mogo would get a kick out of it.

"People of Earth," he began, working up his courage, "I suppose what I've been trying to say, what a lot of us colonials have thought since we left, but never really bothered with until now..." He still hadn't said it. "What a lot of people on your own planet have wanted to say for a very long time I'd imagine..." Still not saying it. He took a deep breath. "Let me begin again."

He took another breath.

"People of Earth, and this is to the entire planet, I want you to know..." Damn it. That was it. Now they even tied his tongue. Well, no longer. He put his mouth close to the speaker and said loudly:

"Earth... fuck off."

Oops. He had forgotten to turn the device back on after replying to Mogo. It didn't matter though; he had said what he'd needed to.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


It was dusk on the Abraham when Moishe watched the now released Sapientia swim out to sea. The clever thing deserved its freedom, and probably would have gotten away on its own if given the time anyhow. There was no point in keeping it; the meat on the things was supposed to be awful, and Mogo didn't seem all that keen on anyone hurting it. Still, he would have liked to ride it a little while longer. After all, Moishe wasn't sure he would be riding any Sapientiae for some time, if ever again. Once he returned to the village it would even be a while before he could take the Abraham very far. No more adventuring for a bit. His duties as chief, his mother, and his betrothed, whoever she would be, would see to that. He supposed he could always live vicariously through his children...