THE WOUNDED WORLD
A Story of Mantra
Written 2006 by Aladdin
Revision and Editing by Christopher Leeson
Posted Nov.. 21, 2020
Revised Nov. 22, 2020
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THE ANGEL AND THE APE

When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears
Did he smile, his work to see;
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

William Blake

With Penelope Lammars away getting some shut-eye, Evie and I watched The Miracle on 34th Street. Being restless, I could hardly follow the story. But there wasn’t much else for me to do, not until Barbara Freeman arrived in town. Another thing that bothered me was my feeling of responsibility for the Evie and Gus of this world. On top of everything else, I couldn't get my mind off Penny’s condition. Something had gone wrong in her life, something so bad that it had driven her to drink.

When the movie ended, I shook Pinnacle awake and put both her and my daughter into the car. The drive to Budget Inn took us through some bad traffic, but I’d dealt with a lot worse since the automobile had been invented. We were only at the motel for a short time before Barbara Freeman showed up.

After brief introductions and a few pleasant words, the still-tipsy Penny excused herself and retired to the car. Evie and stayed behind to help “Mom” register and settle in to a room of her own. Whatever she’d thought of Pinnacle, she didn't say a word. She simply told me that she was glad that I’d I'd found a psychiatrist so quickly. I felt obligated to give her a cover story about Penny, claiming that she and I had been friends in college. I elaborated that she’d done great work in a psychiatric clinic back East before coming to California to start her own practice. As soon as I could, I took my leave on the excuse that Penny and I were going to get re-acquainted over dinner and, later, would discuss of my memory problems.

I took Penelope back to her own place; my watch was reading seven by then. That reminded me that contacting Lauren was crucial. I selected her number from my phone list and her father picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Mr. Sherwood? This is Eden Blake. May I speak to Lauren?"

"Oh, of course, Mrs. Blake,” he answered cordially. “Lauren’s told me that you've moved away from Canoga Park. I guess nobody could really blame you. Hopefully, we aren't going to lose a good neighbor like you permanently."

"I hope not either. But I left town in too much of a rush to get everything done. I think Lauren might be able to help me with that, if she has the time."

"Sure. I’ll call her. Just a minute!"

I waited tensely. After a minute, Lauren's voice came on.

"M-- Eden?"

Embarrassing moment. Her stumble reminded me that, unlike the Lauren I knew, this Lauren was aware that I was -- or used to be -- Mantra. I would have to speak to her guardedly.

“Where are you?” the girl asked.

"San Francisco. We can't talk over any public line. I’m in a bad situation and you’re one of the few people I can talk to about it."

"Yeah, okay."

“Just a minute, Lauren,” I said, looking back at Pinnacle.

"Penny, I need to ask Lauren to call me back on some secure line. Can you recommend one?"

The melancholy blonde nodded. "My line here is heavy-duty secure.” She jotted down a number on a pad and me handed the page. I took the sheet.

"Lauren,” I said, “I can't say too much just now. Can you find a public phone, maybe -- without your dad becoming suspicious?"

"Fortunately, there’s at least one public phone left in the neighborhood. When should I ring you up?" she whispered.

"Maybe after your Dad’s in bed. Would you feel safe going out that late?" I asked.

"Are you kidding?"

Silly me; she was the "new Mantra" after all, and sounded as cocky as all hell.

"Sorry, this arrangement takes a little getting used to." I read Penny’s number to her. “When can I expect your call?”

“Is eleven o’clock too late?”

"Not at all. Great. You're super."

"Funnnn-ny."

We said goodbye.

I sat there, reflecting that Lauren had sounded normal and levelheaded, at least for a teenager. That was definitely a big improvement over the way she had flipped out when she’d gotten powers the first time. Back then, she had come at me with intent to kill.

#

I had brought over some evening clothes back from the motel. By the time I was dressed for dinner, Penny was likewise ready. She suggested a cafe that she liked and, upon arrival, we requested a private spot. The attendant escorted us to a candlelit table behind a row of potted fronds.

Left alone, I kicked off the conversation with: "It's unbelievable how much you look and talk like the Pinnacle I know."

"Well, I just hope that she’s in better shape than I am."

“How did that happen? What put you over the deep end?”

She glanced away. "It's a hard subject to talk about it, Lukasz. I've found out some really disgusting things."

“About what?”

“About myself.”

“I’ve never found anything disgusting about you, except for your sense of humor. What’s happened?"

She met my glance this time, the candlelight dancing in her cerulean eyes. "You of all people should know what's wrong! You saw it the day we met!” Then she paused. “I mean, it was right in front of the other Mantra."

I frowned. "I'm here to listen. Give me the straight scoop.”

She laughed, but with a shrill edge. "I don't know where to start. I always try to come off as cool and wise. But I do have emotions, and they always trip me up. When they click in, they can switch off my sense of reason."

"So I've noticed!"

She shook her head. "It's about all I can do to keep myself from running and screaming right now, so be on guard."

"I will,” I promised.

Pinnacle started out with a non sequitur: "What's the world going to do, without Mantra to look after it?"

"The world is going to be all right," I advised. "It already has a new Mantra. Or haven't you heard?"

She narrowed her eyes. "From what I’ve gathered from your thoughts, Lauren is the ‘New Mantra' now. Did that girl steal your powers? Or did they somehow transfer to her on their own?”

I shook my head. "All I know is that the Lauren back home is a natural-born ultra. Evie tells me that I lost my magic after being injured in a fight."

“How powerful is this Lauren?”

“It’s creepy. She came out of the gate as a powerhouse. When I went toe to toe with her the first time, she packed an incredible wallop, even though I had my magic armor boosting me, and she didn’t. She almost took me down, and I don’t think it was only because I was trying not to hurt her.”

“Can a child be trusted to control so much sorcery?”

“She's sixteen, and a thousand things can go wrong whenever a kid tries to play ultra. But let’s talk about you instead. You're saying that you have a problem. What is it?”

Pinnacle glanced down. “Do you remember the first time we met?"

"Who could forget it? Your boss sent you at me like a guard dog. But what does that have to do with anything?"

She swallowed hard. "It has everything to do with everything. Remember how I used my mind to evolve into a woman of the far future?”

I certainly did. "That was weird. How much control over your own body do you actually have?"

"I have a lot of control. But think back to when you used your magic to flip my control switch, to throw my evolution into fast-reverse. What did I look like then?"

"Ahh, well, you looked a lot like a...gorilla."

"Bingo!"

"Is that what's upsetting you? A bad hair day?"

She dropped her voice. "Don't you get it? Why should a Homo sapiens devolve into a -- great ape? You may come from the Dark Ages, Lu, but sometime since then you must have heard that humans didn't descend from gorillas."

I shrugged. "I’ve seen a ton-load of strangeness; I’ve learned to just go with the flow."

"I should have realized the truth at that minute, but I think NuWare had played with my mind, to keep me from asking myself hard questions. Once I was out of their influence, I started removing elements of their conditioning, one piece at a time. It's been like picking boot-jacks out of a pair of jogging pants."

“What is it that NuWare doesn’t want you to remember?”

Her lips tightened into a thin line; I could hardly hear her next whisper: "They didn't want me to realize that I'm not, and never have been, a human being."

#

Now that the ice was broken, Pinnacle seemed to be in a rush to tell me everything. I just listened.

According to my friend, she had remained clueless until she’d developed an interest in human genome studies. She began with an analysis of the available research, mostly by hacking into university and private laboratory data banks.

Most of these studies affirmed that all the other mammals on Earth appeared to have been better built than was humankind. The modern human genome seemingly held thousands of unused pieces. These are popularly called “junk DNA.” In late days, there have arisen theories that that ultra powers might actually be supported by portions of this material, and also some diseases, both great and small.

Her preliminary readings encouraged Pinnacle to start a serious independent genetic study. She learned that homo sapiens didn’t fit in well with every other form of life on the planet. He had fewer chromosomal pairs than other hominids, including the most advanced of them, Neanderthal. Also, about 98.8 percent of what Homo sapiens did have in his genetic makeup was junk DNA. It didn't make any sense. How could the most intellectually advanced animal upon the face of the earth function even survive, much less thrive, if he was built out of bits and pieces, like a scrap-metal sculpture? The accumulating data eventually made Penny realize that mankind couldn’t have evolved naturally. It seemed more like it had been built rapidly, and not very well. If it hadn’t been Nature that put the planet's dominant species together, who or what pulled it off?

Penny had found that available research literature was very flawed. University and corporate scientists are by nature afraid to ask the hard questions. They simply ignored things that didn’t fit in with accepted ideas from the ivory tower. Their bosses didn’t complain; they were all in on the game and they were all playing it together.

According to a few honest researchers – usually labeled “controversial” – the human race, by the weight of the evidence, had to have descended from a very small population that existed as little as 5000 years ago. The “ancient aliens” people ran with the idea and gained the scorn of the establishment by speculating that a population so tiny could conceivably have been produced inside a genetics lab. But in plain fact, whatever his means of origin, modern man gave every sign of having been put together using the organic equivalent of robber bands and chewing gum.

“If any of this is supposed to make sense,” my companion said, “it would seem that mankind was created for a narrow purpose – to have brain power and a creative imagination. The builders apparently stuffed all the leftover pieces into the box and closed it."

So, Pinnacle was left with a mystery and went after the truth like a bloodhound. She started out with a study of her own genetics, letting herself stand in for a typical human specimen. She was looking for human genetic patterns that were inconsistent with those of the higher mammals and fossil hominids.

The trouble was, there was nothing in her own genetic makeup that wasn’t an anomaly. Pinnacle, without wanting to, had discovered a completely new paradox – the mystery of her own being. Having found out that she was a “freak,” she forgot about the human genome business and tried to discover what sort of creature she actually was.

She wondered if her parents had been strange, too. But her whole life story was a mystery to her. She had no living family connections. Although she had eidetic memory covering thousands of topics, she inexplicably retained only sketchy impressions concerning her own younger years. She began to realize that these bits were not real memories, but “recordings” that had been artificially imposed onto a blank mind, probably by the scientists of NuWare.

It figured. Science had gotten dirty as of World War II. Penny had learned about the black ops experiments back then, aimed at implanting false memories as a means of controlling mass populations once they conquered them. The big-nation intelligence agencies, proliferating like locus after the war, had carried on the same evil work, mainly aiming at controlling their own populations. She inevitably came to doubt everything that she’d thought she had known about herself. For her peace of mind, this was very disorienting.

To start filling in the blank spaces in her past, Penny searched the records of the schools and places of employment that she remembered attending, albeit in a sketchy way. She found out that she could verify almost nothing from her memories. Her schools and universities had preserved no records about her studies or even her attendance. Basically, she could find no evidence to prove that she had ever lived at all.

The implications of these discoveries obsessed her. Pinnacle went so far as to get a court order to take samples of genetic material from the graves of her deceased parents. A thorough testing proved that she was not related to the buried couple at all!

Delving further, Pinnacle discovered that the only known daughter ever born to her so-called parents had actually died in infancy, leaving nothing behind except a birth certificate. That was the very birth certificate found in her NuWare files. Someone had used the document to built a false identity for her. But if Penny was not whom she was supposed to be, it begged the question: who was she, really?

Having reached a dead end, she checked and rechecked her DNA. What was apparent from the first proved out. Penelope Lammars could not deny that she did not fit anywhere inside the human race. Her body, presumably, had been grown from the heavily-edited chromosomes of a...gorilla. She had had no real parents and, probably, had been born to a human surrogate mother as part of the experiment. When the facts could no longer be denied, Pinnacle had stopped working and started drinking.

My friend gave a weary laugh. "Lu, do you know what I’m really afraid of?"

"Penny..." I began.

“I’m afraid of having a child that’s made of the same garbage as I am!” she declared. “I won't have children. I'd have a tubal ligation before I’d ever let that happen. Whatever I am, it has to die with me."

Her tears had started to flow copiously. I was sure that she wanted me to say something, say anything to make her feel better, but I couldn’t utter a word except, “Why?"

She looked up. "What do you mean, why?! Don't you understand? I'm a species of livestock! I have no rights, not even under the law. If I were killed, it wouldn't even be murder. No wonder NuWare looks at me like I’m escaped lab rat. That’s what I am!”

Penny seemed to be losing it. I placed my hands over her balled fists. "I mean, why do such a terrible thing to yourself? If you didn't start out human, it doesn't mean that you're not human now. Didn’t you say that the whole rest of the human race might have come out of an experiment? Your origin might not be of the usual kind, but the results have been pretty damned good. NuWare, even if it’s only acted from selfish motives, did something positive by bringing you into the world."

Pinnacle stood up, angry. "I was hoping that you, of all people, could understand, especially since you’re pretty damned freakish yourself! Don't patronize me! I can't bear it." She shoved her chair back and stomped toward the exit. I rose, wanting to say something, wanting to call her back, but I didn't know how to relieve so much anguish and despair.

Suddenly, all on her own, the young woman – for I still saw her as such -- turned back my way, her expression incredulous.

"Good God, Lu!”

“What?”

“I heard you thinking.”

“What was I thinking?”

“That you actually meant what you were saying."

#

I thought Penny needed a glass of wine, and so signaled to the waiter and asked for a bottle of the good stuff. "Wherever your body comes from," I told my companion over drinks, "the spirit inside you is human in every way. That kind of spirit has to come from the same place that every other human spirit does."

She shifted uncomfortably. "I've never been into religion," she said.

"Good grief, Penny! Last winter you put my consciousness into the body of a clone! When you were doing that, didn’t you realize that you were proving the existence of the soul?"

She was silent for a moment, avoiding my glance and attentively stirring her wine glass with a swizzle stick, "I call the thing a life-entity,” she sighed. “What you’d call the 'soul' is probably only a natural, bio-imprinted recording of sensory impressions that allows for coherent thought and patterned behavior."

"Soul, ‘life-entity,’ you're only playing with words."

"I just find it hard to believe in the ---" she trailed off.

"In what, the paranormal? That's a damned funny thing to say to Mantra, the Golden Sorceress."

She cleared her throat. "I can't help it. I'm hard-wired to be rational. If I can't see something under a microscope, if it doesn't produce a wave pattern on an oscilloscope, if it won’t grow in a culture, we shouldn’t assume that it’s real."

"You modern people! You think you’re respecting reality, but you’re really searching for ways to avoid it! You assume that ancient people were backwards but, from everything I see, we understood the world a lot better than your generation seems to. It was plain to us from the start that religion and science were only two sides of the same coin. Why else were all the best minds of the Renaissance both scientists and theologians at the same time? They'd be stumped to understand how people today can suppose that religion and science are in any way at odds. They both seek to understand the laws of Nature.”

"So what are you trying to say, Lulu?"

I ignored the annoying nickname. "You're a genius, Penny. Can't you figure it out? A human being isn’t just a machine made of meat. Your own body is whatever your body happens to be, but you have a spirit of the highest order. You're brilliant, funny, brave, generous, and compassionate. You're devoted to your friends and...and..."

"You’re not saying anything that can’t be said about a pet poodle," she broke in.

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call a poodle 'brilliant.'"

That got a laugh out of her, her first of the evening. "You’re making the same mistake I did; you're being blinded by emotion. You want to see me the way you want to, but I’m something else. I don’t know what I should be called, but I'm not human, not by any objective standard."

"Well, you're a pretty good approximation," I said. "You're easy on the eyes and you come across as human in spirit."

"If I'm so wonderful, would you like to marry me?"

"Now who's not being serious?"

"You're so old fashioned, Lukasz!"

I regarded her levelly. "I was born in the year 430 A.D. before it was called 430 A.D. Who has a better right to be old fashioned?"

"Well, whatever you say, you can’t change my whole world outlook in just the time it takes to down a glass of Moccagatta.”

“No, I can’t. But you’re smart enough to figure things out for yourself one of these days.”

“Never mind me. I’ve been sitting here thinking that I can do something super-great for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can rustle you up a male body just like I did before. The way I see it, it wouldn't be an improvement, but if it would make you feel a little better...."

I shook my head. "That's something I've thought about a lot, but my life has gotten a lot messier than it was before.”

“Messier? How?”

“Eden Blake saved my life by offering me this body, and she asked only one thing in return – to protect the children. I take my promises seriously. The kids are still so young. They need parenting and their father isn’t offering them much of that. If I became a new version of the old Lukasz, I’d have to get out of the children’s lives. How could I possibly keep their custody? Gus still thinks I am his mother, and Evie loves me for being Mantra. If I can’t pass muster as Eden Blake, I don’t think either one of them would be happy with me. And another thing, I’d like to get my – Eden’s – powers back. There's at lot wrong with the world and I want to go back to straightening things out.”

“Are you saying you'd rather live someone else's life instead of going back to your own?”

“My real life ended before Rome fell. The life I’ve been living since then has been insane,” I told her. “And if I got a new body it wouldn’t fit in with the present-day needs of the Blake family. It could have been different if I’d been able to marry Eden, as I wanted to. But without her I’m out of the clan. In that case, the kindest thing I could do for Gus and Evie would be to disappear."

"It seems to me that Gus is a very big part of your problem. Why haven't you said more about him so far?" she asked.

I sighed. "Because what's happened is so painful that a large part of me is trying to forget about it. Everything that's happened to Gus wrenches my guts just to think about. Even though he’s not my own Gus, I can’t help but care."

"So, none of this wild stuff is happening back in your own world, I take it."

"No. It was a perfectly normal summer for both of the kids. As for me, well, nothing is ever normal."

“I heard about what happened to the Blake family last summer and tried to contact you. I found out that you were in Europe, whereabouts unknown.”

"I don’t know where your Mantra was at the time, but I was in Britain on a mission for Aladdin.”

She frowned thoughtfully. "Why is it that your world seems to be so much like ours in some ways, and so different in others?"

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said. “Did you ever hear of an ultra hero named Contrary?"

"Is he in the comic books?"

"No, she was -- is -- famous in my world. She's an original member of our UltraForce.”

“I’ve never heard of her.”

“I wonder if Contrary was even born into this reality. And how many other people are missing? Was there an Adolf Hitler here?”

“Unfortunately, yes," she said with a grimace, "but that’s old news. I have to wonder whether you're invested enough in helping the Gus of this world to be willing do try something really extreme?”

"I can be pretty extreme when I have to be. What do you have in mind?"

"Here's what. I have the know-how for cloning bodies, even if I don't have the specialized equipment just yet. When I was at NuWare, I was curious enough about the subject to hack into the company's research database. I downloaded quite a few gigabytes of company secrets. What I'm trying to say is that if we grew a new body for Gus, I could transfer his -- soul -- into it, like I did for you."

I regarded her keenly. "Would that get rid of his magic and his disfigurement?"

"It should. But we have to find out whether his DNA has been been mutated by what happened. If that’s the case, a clone would be just like the Gus who exists now.”

“That wouldn't get us anywhere,” I said.

But her face remained optimistic. “No, it wouldn’t. But even in the worst case scenario, we wouldn't be totally beaten. Like, can we recover a bit of his pre-mutation DNA?. Do you think that there could be some saved tissue from a past medical procedure?”

I shook my head. “All I know is that he hasn't needed any serious medical attention since I've been with him.”

“Well, there's still another option. You once told me that he’s the spitting image of his father. If Gus, Sr. contributed a cell sample, I could develop a little-boy version of him and incarnate Gus, Jr. into it."

"You could?"

"Sure. Everything about human cloning is illegal, of course," Penny confided, “but we all know the sort of crap that government people are involved in. Their hypocrisy aside, what Big Brother doesn't know can't hurt us. If the transplant worked, I might also be able to wipe away young Gus's memories of the last few months. That would protect him from the psychological trauma that he’s been sustaining."

I regarded the lady scientist. If ever there were angels in real life, Penny would be one of those flying at the front of the flock.

"Please, Lukasz," the blonde ultra chided me, "you'll make me blush."

I sat back and sighed. Mind readers! Love 'em or leave 'em.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 6