6. Helios on the Moon: "Moon Angel"

On the side of angels? Pointing toward? The latter says to the former? On the non-lunar surface of it, doesn't this chapter have more to do with Centauri Island than it does Moon? And, guess who's our chapter's titular character?

Okay, not that there should have been any bout a-doubt it, the Female Entity is a three-thing; somehow or other a tripartite fusion of Mnemosyne D'Angelo, Weir's original Mother Machine, and (you might as well know) Harmonia, the Unity of Balance, who's currently going by the name of Freespirit Nihila over in Gambit and also made a brief appearance in War. Glad that's all cleared up then!

So, what's her connection to the three former Strifes we encounter this time uP? Is she their mother too (unless it's three)? Answer's no, -- but our Moon Angel is trying to get them onside, if not with angels then with the Trigregos Sisters. As for our three former Strifes, Aranyani Nightingale, Ramona nee Avar(?) Ryne, and Crystallion, you will have to refer to Island if you want to find out what happens to them.

About this time in our usual synoptic proceedings, it's been my practice to provide a BLOCKQUOTE in hopes of enticing you to read the chapter in its entirety. Won't disappoint you. And, since it's her chapter, I'll even quote Moon's Angel!

"As for you, Aranyani. Turn your undeniable gifts for fully natural life, its preservation and furtherance; to the elimination of disease, poverty, and malnutrition. You shall not be alone but you shall be at the forefront along with your fellow sisters in Anthea. You are both bitter women, as am I in my frustrations. Together we shall become better women.

"Throughout my interminable existence, sisters," ended the Entity. "I have often seen the hand of God. It is holding a Brainrock Baton and is conducting a Fatal Symphony. I call God the Maestro of Confusion. It is my belief that the Maestro is out of whack and that it is up to we women to bring Him back into sync with reality. I have done that with my Man on the Moon. We shall do that with the Demon Sedon. And Panharmonium shall unite all men with all women.

"For the Good of Humanity and the Greater Glory of Sentience!"

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7. Helios on the Moon: "Starrus on the Liberty"

Funnily enough, despite what I wrote above, I'm beginning to like these short chapters. When last we heard from Lord Yajur, the Unity of Order, he was having a tete-a-tete, star-to-star, with Uncle Moloch. We don't get to listen in on their debate but it lasts a couple of days. Gets quite Red Giant heated, we're given to understand, and ends with, -- well, as usual, the title pretty much gives it all away.

The UNES Liberty's our concentration this time around. Lots of stuff on its captain, James Aremar, and his relationship to Loxus Ryne, various of Ryne's sets of twins by various of the Great Man's ex-wives (Is Aremar one, by a non-wife, and, if so, who's his twin?), the Secret War of Supranormals, Satan St Synne's devil-ray, and Strife's Miracle Key, all of which you may or may not give a toss about. Might like this though.

For a time he [James Aremear] dated Jane Ryne but it didn't work out. Eight years younger than he was, the patriarch's daughter by Barbara Plantagenet wasn't nicknamed Tempest for nothing. He'd never forget the night she wanted him to share their bed with the other Jade Tempest, James, her twin brother.

'You're a regular rock,' she [Jane] back-hand complimented him [Aremar, many years earlier]. 'Unfortunately I prefer vegetables. At least they breathe!'

Other than dropping indefinite hints as to Aremar's parentage, what EIGHTH-Moon definitely does is confirm the link between the Psychic Siblings, Doubleman Sean Smythe and the other Doubleman, Johann Schmidt, from over in Island. Seems they started existence as Leandro D'Angelo, who became the supranormal code-named Amoebaman. Seems also that, once he/they were devil-rayed by their maternal grandfather, Sedon-then-Satan St Synne back in 1943, they acquired a devil.

"Well, whatever it is," observed Aremar, "These extra bodies of yours had to come from somewhere. That's a certainty. We could speculate endlessly but I think St. Synne's device was well-named. Call it black magic if you like, but I reckon his ray caused people to become possessed, quite literally, by devils; turned them into supranormals. Somehow those devils are still around and, devil-ray, miracle key, or whatever, Mik is possessed by one, -- just like Leandro D'Angelo back in the Forties. Know any good exorcisms?"

"Death?" cracked Sean. "As I said, Leandro's devil, if that's what gave him his abilities, didn't transfer to me or any of my so-called psychic siblings. Not for long anyhow." Smythe saw Starrus go pale and hastened to reassure him. "Mind you, when Nita and Peter were killed, their devils went back into the typing pool, as it were, only to be pulled out later on, -- either by the devil-ray, in the case of Memory of the Angels, or the miracle key, in the case of the recurrent monstrosity, Demon Land."

And that's why what OMP, Old Man Power, is doing at the end of most of these chapters has to do with Helios on the Moon. Is also why the Thanatoids of Lathakra aren't so much antagonists, in the usual sense of the word, as on the side of angels; that is to say the Family D'Angelo.

As for what our overall titular character, that fellow on the Moon, has been doing, -- that's why, eight chapters in, Moon's still just getting started!

Just then they all heard it, -- the twang of an unearthly electric guitar ...

HELIOS WAS ON THE LIBERTY!

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8. Helios on the Moon: "Pandora's Gift"

So you'd think that with such a big flourish of an ending to SEVENTH-Moon (unless it was EIGHTH and this is NINTH, which is what its title claims it to be), we'd finally get a chance to see the Man on the Moon show us what he's made of, -- other than flesh and blood, that is. And we will, though not this time up. Won't have to wait much longer, I can promise you that.

Main purpose of this chapter is to get us up to speed with a few of our other sub-plots. It's now Thursday December 4, 1980 on the Outer Earth; Sapienda Tantalar 4, 5980 on the Inner Earth. Off Centauri Island, the little trickster, Hush Mannering, Young Life, the Pandora of our title, has just sprung Demios Sarpedon. They're on their way back to the Island, leaving Magnifico more than just a wee mite miffed on WORLD's Trawler.

Like Lady Guillotine (the Countess Ramona Avar), Magnifico's sister, Aranyani Nightingale, has just returned from her close encounter with Moon's Angel, that is to say Machine Memory. Crystallion, the transformed Crystal St Synne, will have returned from the same place not all that much earlier. Which of course also means the technopomp has had plenty of time to cook up any number of nasty surprises for her two fellow, former Strifes. And she does!

After spending some time with the two fifty or damn near fifty year old Ryne brats (Aran's the only one of the patriarch's children not born in a set of two, which should give you some idea of her actual paternity), we follow Hush and Demios to the Island itself. Where they have a close encounter of their own. With Centauri's Untouchables, who are finally revealed (not that there's been any doubt about in Moon) as devas possessing specially designed homunculi.

Fact is this chapter's got even more information on Young Life, Multivoids, and homonculi than THIRD-Moon (unless it was FOURTH). Same holds true for Cromwell Necator and his Valhallans. Only you may not have realized they were also Glomen. Do now though!

Have to admit that when I first wrote this, the fourth and last book comprising the Launch Tetralogy, I didn't envision it being published out here in Cyberia. (Didn't envision a Worldwide Web, truth told.) I rather fancied it would be published, in print form, after the other three came out and that dear, devoted readers like you would be able to readily refer back to 'The War of the Apocalyptics', 'The Trigregos Gambit', and 'Centauri Island' when the need struck.

Didn't work out that way, -- at least not yet, I'm sorry to say --, so you'll have to rely on their synopses to bring you up to speed for now. Be assured, nothing's changed. Not even minutely. What many of these non-Helios-featured chapters of Moon are doing is filling in blanks left by War, Gambit, and Island. For example, until 'Pandora's Gift' came along, could you say for certain Alpha Centauri had an homonculus of his own? Likely not!

By the way, Pandora's gift is Hope, one of the Seven Virtues (as opposed to Seven Sinistrals of Satanwyck). And, as for how it ends, since I've already done that, I won't repeat it. Will repeat its title though, "Magnifico Munched" (one of my favourite chapter titles ever) and leave you with this instead:

"Take my advice. Keep Daddy Ryne underground, and get ready to evacuate the Island on a minute's notice. Everyone who belongs inside better start getting back. I'll take care of the rest."

"How?"

"Trust me!" Hush told the real Fatman in Aka Godbad City. "They don't call me the trickster for nothing."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

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9. Helios on the Moon: "Yajur on the Moon"

After a one chapter diversion to get us up to speed with a few of our other sub-plots, it's back to the Man on the Moon. And not just the man, Heliosophos, or his woman, the Mnemosyne Machine, or even our chapter-titular character, Lord Order. We find out what happened to Ned Johnson and his Lunar Assault Crew as well as what's happening to Nidaba Starrus and her five fellow cosmicompanions from Cosmicar One, -- at least I think it's Cosmicar One.

One of the big problems with writing PHANTACEA, be it for the Web, the Comic Books, or just for pleasure on the weekends, is trying to maintain consistency. That doesn't mean I can't be mischievous. However, there are times when I come across stuff I'd written years ago that, in Nixonian terms, may no longer be operable. (Even in its present book form, Moon was written years ago; somewhere around 1980, to be precise. The 1992 on the chapter's front page only indicates when it was last revised; last revised before this latest revision, that is.)

Consider this, for me as a writer, rather dangerously bold statement that occurs early on this chapter as a for-example.

Suppressed within Mik Starrus, the battered spirit being that was Lord Yajur thought the figure that of one who had destroyed himself, and so much more, six hundred and sixty-one years before 'Uncle Sedon' raised the Cathonic Dome nearly six thousand years ago now. He was mistaken though. This wasn't Cain, Slayer of Abel. This was Cain's father, Alorus Ptah, the First Patriarch of Golden Age Humanity.

Isn't so, is it? Heliosophos is Anti-Patriarch Cain, isn't he? Certainly that's the impression I give in both PHANTACEA: Forever and Forty Days, still available, and the web-serial, Helioddity, that I started publishing out here in Cyberia quite some time ago, but stopped after only putting up the first two chapters.

So, how am I going to get around this? Change it? Not chance. Be mischievous and claim Helios figures he wasn't Cain? Not a bad idea. Re-route my thinking and go back to my original concept, namely that in his first lifetime he was indeed Kadmon Heliopolis? Or simply leave it as it and hope no one notices the discrepancy?

Guess what? Answer's none of the above. I mean, everyone knows the father sires the son and that the child fathers the man. So, given the convoluted, time-tumbling lives His and Her Stories lead throughout The PHANTACEA Mythos, I'll simply suggest that there's no reason the child (Cain) couldn't have sired the father (Alorus Ptah, the Biblical Adam). After all, as Helios complains toward the end of this chapter, Machine Memory doesn't tell him everything that happened to him before he got killed in an earlier lifetime.

Whew! Glad that's settled then.

In comic book terms we're up to pH-3. Action aspects of this chapter are as they appeared back in '79. So's some of the dialogue. End result's the same too. What is new is a whole bunch of additional yap, mostly between Helios and Moon's Angel. It's one of those tell-all chapters that I occasionally write, so I'll probably keep it up long after Moon's run its course.

Want some highlights? Well, May 2000 has come and gone by the time I write this, so Memory was obviously somewhat off-base when she implied there could be another Great Flood come May 2000. There are those who may object to Helios' characterization of God. There are also those who might object to the way he cheats Yajur during their confrontation. He of course has an answer to that; one that will, undoubtedly, come back to haunt him. However, since it's reprinted elsewhere, I won't repeat it here.

Will leave you instead with what Heliosophos tells those on the Liberty as to his motivation for bombarding them, not to mention everyone on the Whole Earth below them, with thought-altering mindbeams.

"For thousands of years humanity has been suppressed; the masses manipulated by the powerful elite, the ruling classes, -- nowadays the corporate giants of the status quo --, the very people who employ you. They care nothing for empowerment. They care only for enslavement. You will soon realize that you are not Liberators. You are Debilitators. When you awake, it will seem you have been asleep all your lives. When you awake, it will be as if you have awakened for the first time. You will be illuminated. I look forward to seeing you then."

Pretty impassioned speech for a madman, I trust you agree.

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10. Helios on the Moon: "Psychic Siblings"

Time for another breather from what's going on upstairs. While a breather it may be in that respect, it's an accelerator in every other respect downstairs; that is to say on the Whole Earth. Not only do we cover three days right rapidly, we go from Houston Texas to Centauri Island to Vancouver to beneath Cathonia and all the way up north to Sisert, the Head's cranium. In terms of continuity, we touch upon but mostly skirt by events covered in much more detail in Island, Chapters 9 to the start of 14, War, Chapters 7-10, and some of Gambit's Chapter 7.

It is unlikely many, if any, of these chapters are still up, out here in Cyberia, but the blue point-and-click markers provided above should take you to their synopses, which definitely are still up. The titular Psychic Siblings are, of course, Johann Schmidt and Sean Smythe. There's a third one now, more of a nephew than a sibling actually, and he's, -- well, let's just say he might be a latter-day Amoeba Prime.

Schmidt caught a seemingly errant series of thoughts: 'Supras .... Devil-ray .... Crimefighters Alive .... Little Girl .... Trickster .... Ryne Still Wants Signallers.' Finally came a chilling thought: 'Albinos Here Too!'

The upshoot of all this is that Centauri Island is about to come under attack, -- from WORLD, Sharkczar, Crystallion and her Hell's Horsemen, yes, but also from Schmidt's hastily gathered together Intervention Team, from the Seventeen Signallers by end-chapter on their way there from Vancouver, and maybe even from the American Military as well. About the only ones capable of defending it are a bunch of Albino-Valhallan-Glomen, who'll blow themselves up if they're taken alive (even if they already are dead) and by the Fatman's Untouchables. Devils all!

So, as usual when I run these non-Moon chapters I can hear wailing: "What's all this to do with Helios on the Moon?" Glad you wailed.

The riots that started in Tokyo just after dawn on what amounted to yesterday and followed the rising sun around the world had reached New York and were by then breaking out in Los Angeles. By the time Schmidt's plane, with its two hundred man Intervention Team, landed in Pearl Harbour it was already besieged.

BY ITS OWN MEN!

Now who do suppose could have set such fine upstanding young bucks as the American Marines and Sailors defending Pearl Harbour against their own base? You're right. It is a dumb question.

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