Anthelm quickly took an habit, when he finished a scroll, go ask for another to Adenankar, accompanied with Elnadjine or with Nellio. And each time the same ritual happened again: two, sometimes four geese mounted by unknown more or less exotic Eolis appeared in the sky, delivered the new scroll and departed with the former, most often immediately, sometimes after a meal heartily offered by some friends in the village, gladly accepted by the unknown travellers. Once, it was not silent Eolis of the Mountain, but a couple of a distant village, who proved very talkative instead: they stayed three days, and they learned a lot of things to Anthelm, we shall see what a little further.
We shall also look at these scrolls with Anthelm, although we have to fly over what he needed years to learn and assimilate in details. In fact he had not finished, when the events of the following chapters occurred, but it is better to see this entire knowledge before resuming our narrative thread.
Also, we shall often compare the descriptions of Aeoliah with those of Earth, just to give us a convenient reference point. Of course in this time Anthelm could study only Aeoliah, he even was unaware of the existence of Earth, and he became interested only later, after the said events, and still in a way which would surprise many of our complanetriots.
We shall not speak of the mathematics scrolls, which either are already known on Earth, or are still too exotic for us. No. Anthelm could gradually study dozens of them, during his long life. But the second scroll he requested from Adenankar was, we might expect, one speaking of the shivers of Aeoliah. It spoke of them only incidentally, but it was saying very interesting things. Anthelm installed it with curiosity, on his nine scroll bearer.
The scroll bearer is a small wooden desk, tilted at 60 degrees, without feet because the Eolis use to sit in lotus, on the ground, without a seat. The scroll is wound on a wooden shaft, which takes place in grooves at the bottom of the console; then we just have to unwind it on the tablet, at the top of which it finds another receiving bobbin, equipped with a crank. The text and images are then well visible for one or two Eolis. The scroll bearers for the school are vertical as a blackboard, in order to be seen by more people. The scroll is much larger than a book, and the Eolis use this width to present their ideas in synthetic diagrams, poetic panoramas, rather than in texts in a row. When you receive the scroll, it is packaged in a pretty colourful waterproof sheath for rain, to be transported on a goose back. When reading we tuck this sheath under the desk.
Anthelm sat satisfied. Elnadjine was here, of course, with her sewing, her frills, and her warm and unique fragrance. She gave Anthelm a beautiful complicit smile, while balancing her mass of hair, a gesture of love which was always going straight to his heart. He returned her smile:
«This is a beautiful scroll, with paintings, you can come and see.»
She thanked him with a new smile: the main thing was that Anthelm was happy with his studies. She expected nothing more. But she would come more often than she expected, because some images were really beautiful.
This scroll started with the formation of the planetary systems, but with more details than the school. It was a very long time ago, more than three billion years, in a region of the infinite space, dense and rich in primordial clouds. These clouds began to condense. Large and bright blue stars formed first, illuminating the cloud in superb rose and green, while it continued to tighten on itself, turning around the Galaxy of the future Aeoliah. Big blue stars create in their inside the elements which would become later the rocks, water and soil of the planets such as Aeoliah. Then they projected them, while exploding in a blaze of light, producing rare metals such as gold on this occasion (the Eolis know gold, as we we shall see) but also a variety of substances with subtle properties which were later diluted in the rocks, the water and soil of the planets, and so useful for the functioning of living bodies: trace elements.
Anthelm and Elnadjine were marvelled to see so many substances essential for life, owing their existence here down to these ancient stars, which shone so much in their time. These parts of the scroll were illustrated with very beautiful pictures, and not only Elnadjine but also many others Eolis of the village came to marvel at the colourful swirls and fraying of the wonderful Galactic cloud with so fruitful bosom. These illustrations were each a small work of art, with wonderful shaded and degraded tempera masterfully executed by anonymous artists, some two hundred and sixty-seven years earlier, after the manufacture date of the scroll. Tiny splinters of mica were figuring the stars. In the sun light, they had their sharpness, brilliant and sparkling. These works were so pure, that nobody would even dare to pose a finger on them, to keep them fresh as long as possible.
Let us not forget friends readers, that Aeoliah exists in the same physical world than ours. The only question which arises is to know why it is different from Earth.
All these explosions of stars did a beautiful upheaval in the primordial cloud, which was still contracting. They tore it into pieces, that they compressed even further, while fertilizing them from their dust. To compress is here very relative, since these clouds were still extremely diluted, compared to air, and still much bigger than the future solar systems: all this was happening at the immeasurable scale of the Galaxy. But at this stage the clouds were already black, with sometimes strange shapes: kind of splashes, necklaces of dark pearls, sometimes with kinds of peduncles. It is that they do not obey the same laws as those we use to see in our sky.
We suspect that these clouds were forming new stars, but smaller than the first ones. But let us not go too fast, because it is at this moment that groups of souls choose their future solar systems in the making, where they will live bodily experiences. Indeed, even if three billion years is very old for us, this universe is much older, and the first civilizations occurred ten billion years ago. This makes that, three billions years in the past, or seven billion years after the primordial civilizations, many important civilizations already existed in the universe, and had unfolded their wisdom well beyond what we know on Earth. And then they died with their Sun. Such primordial civilization appear spontaneously, and it is their own evolution which allows the billions souls who inhabit them to take birth, live and evolve, in a slow maturation process sometimes strewn with painful pitfalls (we shall speak again of this later). The result of such an evolution is unpredictable, and it is what makes its moving beauty. So, at the time of the formation of Aeoliah, several generations of such spontaneous civilizations had already existed, and an unimaginable number of souls of all kinds and all levels already lived in this universe, often wishing to relive wonderful bodily experiences, each in their own way.
So already in this epoch, times were ripe for civilizations of a new kind to appear, neither spontaneous nor primordial, but created and planned from the very beginning by already advanced souls, according to their desire and their vibration. This second type of civilization is much more conducive for happiness, and everything is planned so that no evil can happen there. But the first type still exists, because no one can predict what new kind of happiness can result of them. This is why today the two types of civilizations coexist in our universe. Of course things are not so clear-cut, and spontaneous civilizations can now rely on beneficial helps from advanced civilizations, if this can prevent them from veering in too harmful ways. The civilizations of the second type may also collect souls from the first type, and help them accomplish their evolution. Finally the spontaneous civilizations have the possibility of accessing the same permanently stable happiness than those of the second type, as soon as their residents control their destiny. It is such a transition which is currently the stake on Earth. Earth is a spontaneous civilization of the first type, while Aeoliah is a created civilization of the second type. So this is why there is the evil here and not on Aeoliah, and how this evil can disappear from our world as fast as we want.
Aeoliah is a civilization of the second type, but at the time of the nebulae, it was the project of a group of only a few hundred souls, among many other candidates for founding a civilization. Like interstellar clouds which gather from disparate and chaotic elements, these souls must agree together and form egregores, that is sets of consistent feelings and thoughts, kind of collective bodies in abstract planes, which can have quantities of appropriate uses. Each soul was free to further amplify his group, or to change if he did not liked it. Thus, at the time where the future planetary systems become individualized, the groups of souls also gather, everyone at the site of a future sun. It was now or never, because they had to choose the good clouds, with a good dosage of trace elements and metals, without too much chemicals adverse to life. Aeoliah was one of these good dosages.
Primordial clouds were now well separated from each other, continuing to contract on themselves. Ideally they gather into balls, called Bok globules, because the gas and dust which composes them begin to be close enough to rub on each other and calm the hectic movements of the beginning. Therefore these movements dissipate, except for one: the overall rotation, which always exists little or less, and has nothing on what to rub. So each cloud takes a ball shape, small compared to the beginning, but still much larger than the future solar system, turning on itself while dwarfing. But in certain clouds the rotation is too strong from the beginning, and the ball condenses into two pieces or more, which continue to contract each on their side while still rotating around each other. This gives double or multiple stars.
Anthelm, reading this, almost forgot the Aeoliah shivers for the great cosmological thrill. But we were coming here, since it was written in the introduction of the scroll. He invited Nellio, and also Algenio, who brought his companion Liouna. The later was literally fascinated by the formation of the worlds, and especially by the groups of souls who elect home in them. The Eolis know of course that some planets are inhabited, and some of them commonly visit friendly planets, through what we call astral travel. this was even explained in the astronomy scrolls of the school, which was entitled «Oh, love the universe!» But at this point none of the new Eolis had even attempted this kind of experience, of which people were seldom speaking about, so absorbed as they are in their flowers and their discreet nature happiness. Anthelm therefore resumed his reading, the discrete Liouna on his side, and behind, Elnadjine in her charming scented frilly: she only had to lift her head to see the beautiful images of elliptic nebulae in each of their stages, masterfully illustrated by the unknown artist.
Alongside the condensation of the physical matter, groups of souls began to organize themselves, each on the vibration or around the project that they had chosen. They now had to distribute the roles according to the future organic reigns, imagine the bodily forms, ecological relationships, etc. At this stage these groups were already well defined, even if other souls were still joining them in harmony with their project. It happened also that more experienced souls joined them, from civilizations which had terminated their existence without all their souls had completed their personal evolution. Such souls are seeking other planets in formation, where their experience can be invaluable.
We suspect that the formation of a world is a very important matter, which attracts the attention of very evolved beings, guardians of life, and a quantity of workers of the infinite: a grandiose plan sets itself and starts, with its architects and its artists, its actors and its technicians, its tenors and its extras. A precise and well timed plan, a partition of genius which execution will extend over several billion years: homes for new souls, layout for the subtle workings of the bodies or ecological regulations, and many other things, which are the role and the ideal of a whole people of workers of the infinite, Companions of the Creation, who migrate from new planet to new planet to help the building of the worlds, simple technicians of the creation or great initiators. Liouna literally devoured these lines, but the scroll was not saying much more. Curiously, at this stage, she did not thought at going with Adenankar to search for more...
In the meanwhile, the material cloud of the future Aeoliah continued to collapse on itself under its own weight. As there is no top or bottom in space, each part of the cloud was falling on the other parts: as a result, it shrank. But this as for effect of increasing the rotation speed, causing a stronger centrifugal force, forcing the spherical cloud to take the form of a rotating disk. We can visualize such as disc of concentric cloudy ringlets, turning increasingly faster when we get closer to the centre. The whole has the shape of two cymbals or Chinese hats touching by the tip: on the edge are large rings rotating slowly, then moving toward the center we find smaller ringlets, thinner and faster rotating. Each ringlet matches the orbit of a future planet. Thus the regular and circular movements of each planet is already in place, even before the formation of the star.
If all the energy of rotation was conserved and concentrated in the star, it would turn at a mad speed. In fact the magnetic field of the cloud, also incredibly concentrated, produces a kind of magnetic storm which ejects a part of the accreting matter through the poles of the star, throwing it at hundreds of billions of kilometres. In this way the matter which will feed the star losses its energy of rotation in these jets, and thanks to this the new born star rotates slowly.
All this matter accumulating in the centre heats tremendously, due to the fall and compression it is experiencing. Thus the star starts to shine, making a triumphal entry into the world of light! Now it is hot enough to light the fire of the stars, first deuterium, then hydrogen. It finally begins its long life as a stable adult star without history.
The birth of a star is a great event, especially when it was elected by living souls! What a cosmic celebration for the millions of beings who are waiting for it to live!
The disk around the star is still there, but the new stellar wind is now chasing any residue of the primordial cloud which would still feed it. It is soon formed only of large rotating ringlets, matrix of the future planetary orbits. It could remain like this, without the phenomena that we are about to describe. This cloudy disk of dust and gas, is indeed unstable over time, until a tiny imbalance makes it abruptly evolve in the condensation of planets. This is what the souls preparing to invest the future planetary bodies are waiting for: in such situations, a minimal influence can bring the balance in one direction or another, and have very different consequences. And they do not miss it, this occasion, believe me, because at this stage it is no longer a vague idea which pulls them, but a strong project which moves them with enthusiasm!
There is a very important matter of numbers. If a cloud volute always crosses another at the same moment of its orbit, it always draws it in the same way. If it never crosses it at the same time, sometimes it will attract it, sometimes it will repel it, which is equivalent to not influence it at all. Thus it tends to repel all other volutes which orbits have an integer or fractional ratio with its own, to regroup them on orbits with irrational ratios (square root, cubic root...) As all the parts of the disc do the same with the others, they contradict each other and nothing happens. Until the day where somewhere in the disk a volute becomes a bit larger than the others... The symmetry is then broken: this volute begins to draw matter of his own ring, and chase it from ringlets with a fractional ratio from its own. The phenomenon quickly spreads to the whole disk: it fragments into rings, separated by voids, which orbits have irrational ratios between each other, according to the Titus-Bode law. Thus the future planets are each assigned their final orbits and their constituent materials, although they are still in the form of clouds. Souls at the time of the symmetry breaking ardently pray to make it happen in such a way that the ring which will become their planet contains the right amount of matter, with an adequate composition...
Then, quickly, the matter of each ring gathers in a C shape, then an arc, then a bean, then in a sphere orbiting the sun. Finally each of these orbiting cloudy spheres condenses in its turn into a solid planet, according to exactly the same process than the one which gave the star: disk, rings, etc. This explains that the planets may have satellites too, miniature replicas of the great solar system. The final phase of the condensation in a solid body is very fast: a few months, finally leaving a more or less hot planet, depending on its size, often entirely molten. (More about the formation of the planets, in the chapter VIII-2of «General Epistemology»)
These explanations apply to an ideal solar system, but usually many causes come to slightly or deeply change the process of the formation of planets. First, the disk is never perfectly regular in mass or in composition: the Titus-Bode law is only approximate, and orbits are only approximately circular, the axis of planets more or less tilted, etc. Sometimes, like double stars, the cloud which must form a planet can become fragmented and this gives a double planet. This is what happened with... our Earth and its moon. It's fantastic, we live on a double planet, did you know? It happens that the original disk is so big or tormented that the process of formation of planets starts here immediately, even before the star. This can result in a gigantic planet, a brown dwarf, or even a little star companion. (A brown dwarf is the intermediary between a star and a planet: it shines like a star, because of the heat produced during its formation, but, unable to turn on sustainable nuclear reactions, it goes off slowly).
Aeoliah does not have this problem, because Antheroah is significantly smaller and more distant than Jupiter. An unstable system can still bear life, if the big disruptive planet is at such a distance of the Sun that one of its moons is inhabitable, as this could have happened for Titan, Saturn's big Moon, and the only one in our solar system to have a real atmosphere. Closer to the Sun, Titan could give a cute little world, with in its sky the fantastic spectacle of Saturn and its rings...
In the outer parts of the disk, matter is dispersed on too large distances, and here it will never form true planets, but thousands of ice planets with some tens or hundreds of kilometres in diameter, and countless comets. In ours, it is the Kuiper belt, beyond Neptune, which has its replica in the Eolis system. It finally happens that, during the formation of a planet, the central part of its disk cannot condense, and it remains so indefinitely, in the form of a planetary ring. This is typically the case of Saturn, but other planets in our system as well as Aeoliah kept a fainter ring.
It is important to understand the formation of the planets: the draft of each planet is a vast cloud of gas and dust, bound by the order of their movements, which, as we saw, occupies a disk around the Sun. It is not a small pebbles which grows, and even less a collection of asteroids which collide. This origin as large clouds explain the many regularities of a solar system, especially things such as Mercury's rotation on itself, which with an exact fractional ratio of the Earth's orbit: once the planets condensed, it is impossible that such resonances appear.
All these features can be more or less induced at the time of symmetry breaking, by the souls who will incarnate into the solar system in formation. Indeed, a physical system where all parts depend on each other is especially receptive to spiritual influences.
But there is still better, when we come to finding planets at the right distance of the Sun, neither too hot nor too cold, so that life can flourish. Planets can regulate their temperature, in certain conditions, and thus be inhabitable in a broad range of distance from the Sun, called ecosphere. If the planetary system is well formed enough, which is still true for the majority of them, the locations of the planets are at regular distances, according to the Titus-Bode law. And the ecosphere is wide enough to often contain at least one, sometimes even two slots, occupied by rocky planets. In our system, Mars is also in the ecosphere, and it could host life if, more massive, it had been able to retain its air and water. A good share of the stars, double included, have a planetary system like our own, with one or two well placed planet; and many of these can host life, sometimes even two, around the same star.
Civilizations are therefore far from being rare in the cosmos. The reader will then not miss to ask the question of why on Earth we are not aware of such a profusion of life. The answer is rather curious. Or rather the answers.
Earth scientists seek manifestations of life among radio emissions, encouraged by the fact that the radio-telescopes we have today on Earth could communicate with their counterparts at several hundred light years, including several technical civilizations comparable to ours. In practice, these devices can only detect powerful sources, focused in the right direction: television or radar transmitters. However they are systems of centralized control of information, created by a hierarchical social system. And unless we stepped by a fabulous coincidence on a planet just at the same stage of evolution than Earth, it is highly unlikely that the other humanities of the Cosmos retained such archaic social systems, of which the long-term survival is very problematic. Using discreet and social friendly techniques is more realistic, in a social network of responsible people, able to lead their lives and organize themselves their relationship together, where they take place. Such a situation can persist indefinitely, without particular difficulty... But these civilizations do not use powerful radio transmitters! Even on Earth, this stage is already in the decline, it lasted only a few decades, to compare with the ten billions years of the life of our Sun! The probability that our neighbours are going through the same stage at exactly the same time is extremely low...
We may also wonder if there would be some kind of cosmic censorship: civilization within reach of our ears would refrain from emitting in our direction, for a variety of reasons ranging from non-interference to their safety, through a project of contact in a well-defined manner, when Earth reaches a certain level.
There also are morally very advanced civilizations, but for various reasons they do not use radio techniques, like Aeoliah.
Without forgetting a possible censorship, really from good old Earth, of a discovery with such broad philosophical implications. In any cases the result is the same: life is there, undetectable... (More about the Fermi Paradox in the 8th part of «General Epistemology»)
But the explanation of Anthelm's scroll is of course entirely different. Communication between planets is a vast and beautifully simple story, and we shall learn a lot throughout this wonderful history of Eolis, and the following book.
The formation itself of the spherical and dense planet, from a cloud of gas and dust diluted in orbit, is not actively followed by the group of souls. It is mainly a matter of mechanics, offering little opportunities for the creation. A big splotch. Each Planetary ring gathers in a sphere of clouds, which still has to condense. Solid state will appear only at the very last moment. However all these dust grains have to rub against each other in order to gather. If it is a large planet such as the Earth or Aeoliah, the temperature rise caused by this friction can melt it entirely, and it is a sphere of boiling rocks which appears, where iron, heavier, goes immediately to the centre. However, contrary to what you read in many books, this burning stage does not last, because a planet does not have the energy to keep an incandescent surface glowing for hundreds of millions of years. A crust cold enough to receive water forms quickly, in a few months perhaps. But it still needs a few million years for the planetary crust to cool off to its full thickness.
The first rain on a planet, hissing with steam on the hot but fertile rocks, is also a big feast, and the beginning of a new work for the souls who elected it.
From this moment begin two parallel and related adventures: the life of the internal rocks of the planet on one hand, and on the other hand the incarnation-evolution of life itself, on its surface, from the materials of its soil.
The interest of Liouna, the companion of Algenio, for the creation of the planets, did only grew up to become a passion. The discrete small Eoline with dark, short hair, always dressed in purple, helping for sewing or in fields, had found her way. She wanted like to attend such events in the worlds of the, but curiously her and Algenio were among the rare Eolis to never get out of their bodies. They were unaffected so far, absorbed as they were by their merry daily lives. But Liouna started to regret this situation. She nevertheless continued to enjoy the scroll, alongside Anthelm, especially since it was talking about the formation of the material living bodies of Aeoliah.
It is a long term and very delicate work, by successive stages. You all heard, friends readers, about what Earth scientists call the Evolution: initially, in the first Earth oceans, rich of many organic substances today disappeared, formed the first living drops which became cells. After a very long time these cells assembled, giving the first animals and the first plants. These in turn mutated step by step: a four-finned fish came out of the water and created reptiles, of which originated the first mammal; It diversified in many others, including primates, of which one gave the humans, who will give... etc.
If, as we saw, the evolution on Earth was spontaneous, slow and unpredictable, the one of Aeoliah was intensely directed from the very start by the founding souls and the great beings who presided over its birth, according to their specific intent, which acted and materialized step by step. Our small Eolis were fully aware of this, and also that life always expands toward more opportunities, toward more wonders, even when it is not guided. They knew all this from having learned in their school, quite simply. Of course the creative intent must deal with the material world and its hazards, and no one can say exactly how long will take every step, nor what solutions will be actually found. But our friends never doubted, even when later they assiduously studied the long and groping evolution of the life on Earth. On Aeoliah, it was too passionately complicated, but infinitely more direct.
The continuation of the scroll explained how, from simple solutions of various chemicals and volcanic substances in the primordial clay of shallow seas, the souls and the great creative beings, tapping into the Universal Source of Life, came to create simple living beings, then more and more complex. Bacteria appear spontaneously and quickly, whenever there is water. The most difficult is to select the right genetic system. To pass to multicellular being can take more time (several billion years on Earth!), but after the rest comes naturally.
On Aeoliah, everything went very quickly, barely five hundred million years, compared with five billions years for Earth. This is not so simple as it sounds: for example in the beginning a planet does not have oxygen, but only sulphur. And only an oxygen-rich atmosphere can provide enough energy for the muscles and the brain of the animals and of the Eolis (or Humans). First must be formed organisms able of living without oxygen, but which are inefficient. In return, these sulfur-eating bacteria can live anywhere, even into layers of rocks several kilometres deep. We owe them some metal deposits. It is only when such beings are sufficiently complex, that plants can be created, capable of forming oxygen in sufficient quantity. On Aeoliah, to get there needed four hundred millions years after the first rain. On Earth, it took four billions, as we saw. It is quite paradoxical to think that the air we breathe today exists only since one fifth of the total age of our planet.
On Aeoliah, the beings who lived before the oxygen (the first four hundred million years) were like plants, without personal soul, but still more or less sensitive. The souls themselves were waiting in the world of the spirit, but some were starting to feel through the primitive senses of the first beings. To the new Eolis reading the scroll, this intermediate situation strangely resembled what they experienced... just before their birth!
So these ancient times of Aeoliah saw some souls already living bodily experiences, which was a tremendous help for both the plan of Aeoliah and for their own evolution. But the other souls, staying at close distance, were also working for the plan. The egregore was consolidating, thanks to their powerful vision of the future Aeoliah, and at this stage it would now be impossible to change it. They also created plans for new living forms; but it would take time to realize them, since they had in fact little means of physical action. Fortunately the life of Aeoliah was equipped with a genetic system (a form of DNA) much more flexible and responsive than the one of Earth, which explains the more rapid results. The creators even had to stabilize this genetic system once their wishes accomplished, in order to avoid future slides.
On Earth our genetic system is more rigid, more mechanical, which explains the slowness of our evolution. But with the moving Earth plan, a too flexible system would allow the emergence of all kinds of monsters, a thing which was not completely avoided. Indeed, it should be noted that, although Earth is a spontaneous civilization and not a created one, we can still speak of a plan. This plan was originally designed by great souls of other civilizations, to prevent Earth to drift too far into evil, while leaving enough spontaneity to invent its own culture. This plan was since taken up by purely Earth souls, in order to develop and finalize our original civilization and get definitely out of evil. Hence name of backup plan it is sometimes given.
After the four hundreds millions years of the beginning of Aeoliah, a family of algae, kind of sargassum with a fantastic ability of rapid expansion, overlaid the whole surface of the Aeoliah ocean with a brown-green grass, starting to pour massive amounts of oxygen in the air. They extracted it from carbon dioxide, that the volcanoes were discharging in abundance. This gas was stabilized in the form of limestone, in order to avoid the planet to become a burning hot uninhabitable greenhouse. These rocks, unbalanced, were suddenly dissolved by the call for carbon dioxide, and this made a beautiful geological bustle! There remain no trace of it today, because all the thin crust of this era was several times fully re-melted in the colossal convection movements of the central magma. Once the air became breathable, animals were able to develop and acquire nervous systems, experience feelings, and physical consciousness. The simplest souls chose also simple shapes: caterpillars, insects, then the first birds. The pioneering souls could finally create the Eoli body they wanted, and live there.
It was not an easy task to create these bodies, which are wonders of cleverness and miniaturization. They started from a mollusc, still widespread today on all coasts, and called for this reason «mother of the Eolis» (friends readers, I realized, well after writing these lines, that there also are «sea slugs» on Earth, called aeolides, closely resembling the Aeoliah mollusc). The birds were also derived of it. This relationship explains that the Eolis have wings, and that there are no other large animals on Aeoliah, except the mammals in the polar regions, whose origin is different.
At the many intermediate steps, pioneers incarnated to animate hybrid bodies, fortunately few in number, by successive steps somewhat reminiscent of the Earth evolution, but very accelerated. But as soon as better forms were created, the old ones were systematically abandoned by their occupants. It is somewhat this way that things happened on Earth for the last animal primates in the process of becoming Humans, in a small population, on the edge of the African Great Lakes... If already Humans make such a fuss for simple variations in skin colour, we can easily figure the mess if all intermediates between Humans and monkey were still alive!
But on Aeoliah all these technical details were a matter of only a few millions years, at the end of which there were two or three thousands Eolis (some of the incarnated founders) and hundreds of species of insects, plants and birds, under still difficult conditions. The invasive algae from the beginning had also been also eliminated, by a simple bacteria: they had no immune system.
These first genuine Eolis, the founders of Aeoliah, as soon as they mastered writing, archived on the first scrolls the story of this exciting adventure they just experienced, then began the written chronicles of Aeoliah, which still continue today, two and a half billion years later. The time before writing are the mythical times of Aeoliah, though unlike our myths distorted and embellished by too long oral transmission, those of Aeoliah are the direct memory of the founding Eolis, who personally experienced the events, and that thousands of generations of copyists retransmitted without changing a letter.
These preliminaries settled, the founding souls of Aeoliah could then begin the second part of the plan: harmony, beauty, poetry. Ten million years, during which the maddening Aeolian genetic system was gradually slowed, were needed to create the fantastic diversity of flowers, trees and plants of Aeolian (several millions, not counting the mutations which still occur sometimes) hundreds of thousands of birds and even as many insects, more everything which lives in soil, lakes and seas, and the strange giant animals of the polar regions.
It was needed that all these forms of life complement each other, providing each other what they needed to live, into vast and harmonious ecological mutual help cycles: plants, animals, air, water and the humus so important that the Eolis call it «mother of life». But because economy is only a fraction of ecology, plants were needed to provide the Eolis with all needed materials for clothing, homes, paint, etc. without requiring industrial facilities which they did not wanted on this planet. But especially all this had to be done with the greatest beauty, the purest harmony, in an EVERYWHERE FRAME OF POETRY WITHOUT THE LEAST STAIN. This was the bet of the founders of Aeoliah, easy in the worlds of the spirit, but almost untenable in the physical conditions of this universe. They however succeeded with a noticed mastery, building an unimaginable paradise often imitated since, where were able to grow beyond the conceivable trillions of Eolis and animals, often in their first bodily existence!
It is this wonderful work of blossoming of souls that the third part of the plan of the founders of Aeoliah was about, and it is in this third part that this story is taking place. The founders of Aeoliah, after working for five hundred million years in the world of the spirit, could at last live the personal experiences they had projected. This took them only a small hundred of thousands of years, after which they returned in the incorporeal worlds, or even more wonderful realms of existence where the current science of the Eolis lost their trace. What only remain now of this shattering epic, the guardian spirits of Aeoliah, and of course the extremely powerful founders egregore, that hundred thousand generations of Eolis continued to feed almost unchanged, so neat and complete it was!
At this point, Anthelm and his friends were so blown away and excited that they could not easily come back down; for some days they were very distracted in their work in the fields, speaking and dreaming constantly. The village looked at them with an amused tenderness, and some even came look at the images with them. The Eolis are very curious, but never in a hurry. In the village they knew for long that some scrolls have curious effects on the young Eolis! All know the history of the Foundation of Aeoliah, and all feel a moved recognition for the beings who created this beautiful world, and designed these wonderful sensitive body which give them so many joys and pleasures. But they also know that all this was possible thanks to the Universal Source of life, which created the whole universe, which had established the beautiful Universal Laws of life and happiness, this inexhaustible source from which emerges in an impetuous stream the immense Universal Energy. Wisely, they recognize that the ultimate cause eludes them completely; they admit that the purpose of the evolution of souls also exceeds by far the capabilities of their intellect. But you know, they still live very well like this. They do not know, but they admire, they like, deeply grateful, because this is good and beautiful.
* * *
A large part of the scroll explained how the founders of Aeoliah, and their successors, agreed with the life of the rocks, what we call geology and geophysics. The Eoli name could be translated with humour as «short treatise on tectonic engineering», story of teasing our Earth technolatres unable to act on the depths of our planet, limited as they are by their too short individualistic timescale! But the best translation would be geophilia: «love of the planet Aeoliah».
Just after the final collapse of the planetary ring, Aeoliah, heated to the white, was only a huge boiler of molten rocks, shooting out tornadoes of hot gases, bombarded with huge comets raising thundering lava waves twenty kilometres high, crowned with flames and lightning. Incredible that a paradise could arise of such an abyss of fire, but yet the founding souls and their Artisans of the Infinite were already there, in spirit, in the burning heart of the planet.
The solid crust of the planet formed quickly, in a few thousand years. Oh it was only a few metres thick, and life had to wait a bit before settling: we could not move over 100 metres without encountering crevasses of fire or roaring fumaroles; falls of large meteorites, late residues of the old planetary disk, could sometimes turn over this crust on half of the planet. It is yet at this time that the first rains came lashing the smouldering rocks, forming the first ponds. These rains were so acidic that everything would die in minutes, yet it was in these pools that immediately started attempts to form the first living cells. Clay played at this time a decisive role, preferably accumulating certain key components of life, among all the potential candidates. For this reason, most forms of life on the planets of this universe have a similar composition in amino acids and nucleic acids, with sometimes strange exceptions. Clays were catalysts of choice. This intimate link with the origins of life may explain the curious healing power of this seemingly so innocuous substance.
While the biological creation specialists were active from the plane of the spirit, other were working inside the planet, on the melted and bubbling rocks, brewed by vast currents of heat. Initially, the inside was not warmer than the outside, but while the surface cooled, the inside continued to heat up, because the radioactive uranium and thorium gathered here, products of the explosion of the first large blue stars. Thus each planet, to be able to live its internal life, received as a gift, in its heart, a small part of the fire of the stars which existed before. The uranium thus plays a fundamental role for life, a curious paradox for a body which activity is itself inherently harmful to this same life. One of the works of the creators was to stabilize it in the depths of the planet: the future Eolis did not at all wanted to be fobbed off uranium mining!
During the first billion years of Aeoliah, there not really were continents, because the magma movements were still too powerful, aspiring them inside as soon as they formed. The early crust of basalt however took its thickness in about fifty million years, thinner than on Earth: barely eight kilometres. But unlike Earth, where underground pockets of molten lava are rare, the early crust, and yet much of the today oceanic crust of Aeoliah, floats on liquid rocks, as it is perhaps still the case on Venus. It was not until ten kilometres deep that the mantle pressure prevents melting, as in Earth's mantle. The existence of this layer of liquid lava explains that the oceanic crust of Aeoliah is more complex and more differentiated than on Earth, with even acidic lava volcanoes. This does not prevent Aeoliah of being a very beautiful planet, but its geology is in some ways different from ours, and sometimes very surprising. Think about all these adorable small volcanoes which formed millions of paradise islands in the sweet tropical seas of Aeoliah...
During the whole time of the creation of the Aeolian life, the four hundred million years of the beginning, and even beyond, Aeoliah was then covered with an extensive and unique ocean, travelled by deep ditches, and from which emerged countless volcanic islands of all sizes. These islands played, you may think, a fundamental role. But in reality, as long as there was no oxygen, or no chlorophyll to capture the sun, the life on Aeolia took refuge instead in the depth of the sea, near the volcanic emanations which alone could provide the chemical energy needed for the first beings. What emerged from the water was only rocks and sand deserts. This also happened like this on Earth, but you will be excused not to remind: it was over eight hundred million years, maybe you were even not yet here.
Towards the end of the four hundred million years required by the Aeolian life to grow, the Interior of the planet began to cool off, very slowly but permanently, at the rhythm of the decay of uranium and thorium: half every five billion years. The landscape remained roughly the same, but some islands were larger and safer. Fresh vegetation began to happily cover angular rocks and pebbles, the first insects and birds went busy. It was on one of these islands that began the wonderful and fantastic adventure of the Eolis, two and a half billion years ago. It was large enough to have nothing to fear from volcanoes, but comets were still frequent, and they had to repeatedly request the intervention of the cosmic guardians of the Galactic fleet vessels to divert their dangerous trajectory.
The crust of the planet Aeoliah, just like the one of Earth, was in this time, and even today, made of rigid plates emerging from the depths of the planet in some places, and reabsorbed in the obscure oceanic trenches, following the currents which are stirring the burning inside of the planet. Initially, these currents formed at random, but soon, lighter rocks began to escape from the absorbing currents, forming the first continents. These continents began to grow. The inhabitants of Aeoliah managed to direct the magma currents, and form the continents in specific places. There are twelve, each great as America, and eight circular oceans: six evenly distributed along the equator, and one at each pole. The continents are also evenly distributed six by six at mid-latitudes. This amazing layout still exists today, although these twelve continents were repeatedly totally eroded and melted down by the powerful Aeolian tectonics.
So, how the inhabitants of Aeoliah thus control the movements of the burning heart of their planet, and from there direct the formation of mountains, plains, volcanoes and oceans? And if I tell you that they do not use spiritual means? The inhabitants of Aeoliah use no technical means. But what inhabitants of Aeoliah? The Eolis? No: ... Remember: the birds. They are the ones who shape the Aeolian landscape. Them are the main inhabitants of Aeoliah, hundred times more numerous than the eolis, them the guardians of poetry in the planetary egregore. This is why they received this enormous power. And yet they are no more gifted than our terrestrial birds! The Eolis know the importance of the birds, and they admire them. And yet the birds are with the Eolis like small children with their mothers. How moving all this is!
The birds Act on the depths of Aeoliah, by leading erosion. On Earth, the principal agent of erosion is the river, especially during exception floods, which often make more work than centuries of quiet flowing. Earth rivers are capable of sawing the hardest mountains, and glaciers are even more aggressive. They create angular landscapes, sawtooth shaped. On Aeoliah, where the climate is more regular, floods are almost non-existent, so that brooks and rivers simply flow in the existing holes without much deepening them further: there are a lot of lakes. The slower Aeolian erosion is mostly the work of a little-known yet very important factor: the soil, the plants, and especially the thin layer of roots and humus that they maintain on the surface. This rich and living layer is the true skin of the Earth, which prevents the direct erosion from the rain and weather. But it slowly digests the rocks, to extract valuable trace elements, which otherwise would eventually disappear, leached off by runoff. This soft and equal erosion gives mountains and hills with rounded forms, often found on Earth, but which are absolutely typical of the poetical and enchanting Aeoliah landscapes. They are found everywhere where tectonic movements do not act directly to create more vivid shapes. Our geography course have this error: it is not because mountains are old that they are rounded, it is actually the humic erosion which gives these forms. Few people yet know it, but it is of capital importance: the couple vegetation-humus models the landscape, acts on climate, rivers and groundwater flows. To it, we owe the pure source, to it we owe the poetic shape of the fat prairie or the so fragile high mountain meadow. The vegetation and the food producing land are really the living skin of the Earth, with regulating flows, growth and decay. All those who have overlooked this basic data paid the high cost: dried up sources, devastated fields, sterilized lands, destroyed crops, and, still more serious, poetic hills changed into development zones...
If plants control erosion, the birds of Aeoliah control plants, fertilizing here, removing them from there, or carrying their seeds elsewhere, sometimes very far. In the short term they regulate climate and humidity, by varying the thickness and the colour of the vegetation cover. They also ensure that the Eolis have all the variety of fruit they need, leaving glades for their villages and their cultures: the Eolis have no need to clear the woods.
This is one of the few known purposes of the mysterious migrations of the birds of Aeoliah, travelling tirelessly all the twelve continents and eight oceans their lifetime along, to return to nest in the same places. Some of them carefully deposit the delicate seeds in the earth and protective moisture; others, more expeditious, drop from ten thousand metres high with their dung! And yet even so they fall in the right places. Many seeds, in order to germinate, need to pass into the stomach of a very specific kind of bird. Such restrictions make no sense in the Darwinian theory of the selective advantage, but they are one of the factors which allow the bird activity to control the plants, and from there to form the landscapes.
Birds, accelerating erosion here or slowing it elsewhere, can literally carve the hills, mountains and rocks: these artists, generation after generation, give them the most harmonious forms, poetic and balanced: sweet curves, living domes, liquid waves, powerful compositions which make of Aeoliah a fairy and living painting, a mysterious garden, a masterly creation.
In a larger scale, regulating erosion is equivalent to setting the thickness of the planetary crust, and its weight. Then, it is obviously where it is heavier that it will more easily sink into the heart of the planet, facilitating the internal downdrafts. Then the loop is closed, since the mastery of these internal currents leads to the formation of the continents, which aggregate where the currents are descending, just like foam on a boiling soup.
But what extraordinary beings are these birds of Aeoliah? Oh, they are just nice small birds like those of our Earth, I mean of course the charming singer birds, such as titmouses, blackbirds and many other angels of poetry. Birds have a simple small brain, with a few ideas and some very nice feelings. This material brain alone would be unable to carry out such projects, nor to understand their millennial goal, if it was not very sensitive to the influx from their lovely little soul... and to the one of the planetary egregore! The only advantage of Aeolian birds over Earth birds is to be able to capture the souls of the Aeolian landscapes, their project, the creative intent which acts and model the whole planet, and to be its humble and joyful instruments. Even here, on Earth, who knows if these mysterious migratory species who cross our countries so high that we do even not see them, do not take part in some fantastic global plan, still hidden from the masses of ignorant humans?
The bet of the mysterious creators of Aeoliah was to live the wonder in the heart of this matter so foreign to the ineffable laws of the mind and the soul. They had to deal with it, and they could control it only by complex ecological mechanisms, as above, or biological mechanisms, in living bodies. They had to admit that some phenomena, by principle dangerous, could not be removed from the surface of their paradise planet. Their mastery of the climate (which was not obvious at the beginning) eliminated frost, hurricanes and storms of the inhabited areas, but it was not possible, on a planet essentially alive, tectonic and active, even far more than our Earth, to prevent volcanoes and earthquakes. They took the party of making them part of the fun: Aeoliah shivers make the Eolis laugh... whose homes fear nothing! The volcanoes renew the carbon dioxide content in the air of the planet, and in the long term regulate its temperature, by taking part to the complex adjustment of the greenhouse effect, together with the erosion directed by the birds, and with the carbonate sedimentation, also regulated by coral-eating birds. Because during its lifetime the light of a sun rises gradually, and without compensation of these variations of temperature, no planet could be inhabitable long enough: the proportion of carbon dioxide in the air must therefore gradually decrease. This regulation also work on Earth, and it also allows a planet to remain inhabitable at a fairly wide variety of distance from its star. The Aeoliah shivers, them, are mitigated by an intense underground water circulation. This also happens on Earth, where some fault creep slowly, without shocks.
But the best guarantee against any danger, is this spiritual sense enjoyed by all the conscious beings of Aeoliah, which tells them of impending accident or disaster: eruption, rockslide... with enough time to flee. Anthelm and his friends remembered the very strong urge to fly that they suddenly experienced just before the Aeoliah shiver, while all the birds and crickets went silent. Thanks to this sense, it NEVER happens anything unfortunate on Aeoliah, despite its hundreds of thousands of bubbling volcanoes and its moving mountains. The Eolis and animals know, sometimes centuries in advance, where will occur eruptions, projections, landslides, and settle and live quietly in sheltered areas. Birds even grow the art up to prevent any vegetation of growing where the burning flows will pass! The Eolis and their volcanoes are great buddies, and the first never miss an opportunity to admire the latter, especially at night, when they deploy their draperies of fire and vapour mounts, imposing and pathetic performances which do not hurt a single gnat. This spiritual sense also exists on all the planets of this material universe, including ours, friend reader, but we are so often distracted by our ridiculous serious business and our annoying leisure... When a natural disaster threatens on Earth, the animals often flee; when a plane or a boat leaves for the beyond, it sometimes remains on the quay a passenger who was warned and who did not went. The author of these lines will never withdraw a single word of them, despite all the sceptical sophistries and all rationalist lies, because he himself saw such things.
Already, Anthelm and his friends much loved the Aeolian birds, their so charming companions. But after discovering their moving and discreet work, their love raised to adoration. Birds are the masters of Aeoliah, but they draw from this only more Modesty and Humility. Their souls are really simple and straight souls, joyfully and passionately consecrating their lives to an obscure activity which would bear visible fruit only one hundred millions years later, long after their departure of Aeoliah. Each one performs only a tiny parcel of this geological sculpting, but all together they... raise the mountains.
⚠ A much more serious problem occurred shortly before the Eolis developed writing, still on their first Island. A small group of perverse souls had managed to infiltrate the egregore of Aeoliah. Their purpose was to grab the fruit of this exciting development, to create a society based on selfishness. They manifested their intent openly only when the evolution of the Eoli body was complete, but they managed to win to their views one of the first villages. The problem could be settled only with a great violence, which may seem surprising on behalf of such gentle and benevolent people as the Eolis. But be gentle and benevolent does not mean that one is a limp, and even if the only war of Aeoliah lasted only a few seconds, nobody ever challenged the Eolis since. The Chronicles of Aeoliah the gentle and poetic curiously begin with this single bloody episode, which sounds like a warning. But when the winners arrived at the place where laid the crushed and shredded bodies of the troublemakers, what they did? They wept madly, from all this life, of all these broken happiness! Following this episode, the Eolis could undertake the slow settlement on all the islands of their planet (germs of the future continents) and the few problems which arose since were settled in a much quieter way, as discussed in the next chapter.
* * *
The scroll on the creation of Aeoliah ended with the end of Aeoliah. The Eolis calmly consider the death of their Sun and the end of their touching civilization, in a little more than a billion years, as part of the inevitable things in this material universe.
Little by little, like all the stars, the Sun of Aeoliah will go becoming warmer over billions of years. This has no effect on the climate of the planet, since the activity of corals, by fixing carbon dioxide, reduce the greenhouse effect and perfectly regulates the temperature.
But, shortly before dying, the Sun of Aeoliah will go through a burning hot phase. Slowly but inexorably, the heat flow will increase on the surface of Aeoliah. When it will no more be possible to further lower the greenhouse effect, clouds will take over, occupying more and more of the sky to diffuse into space the heats of the dying sun.
The Eolis of this epoch will see an increasingly overcast sky, hiding a sun which heat will become painful. Knowing that the end of their paradise is coming, they will gradually stop reproducing, lowering little by little the population of their planet. They will be reborn elsewhere, into ineffable worlds of the mind, or on other heavenly planets revolving around stars which are not yet born today...
The planetary egregore, formidable power of love and devotion to life, patiently gathered over four billion years of happiness and creative activity, no one knows yet what it will be done of it. Will it be transported to a second Aeoliah? Will it be thrown in one block on a planet where evil rules (if they are still in this time) to provoke a brutal but radical healing? A crazy project speaks of releasing totally and instantly all its power in the physical space itself. Such a huge explosion could cause visible changes in the entire universe, and make it more conducive to harmony, more receptive to the spirit...
It will take about thirty million years for the clouds to completely cover the sky of Aeoliah, and it will probably remain in the end only some witnesses, who will depart leaving all the altars and temples illuminated. Indeed, once the sky is completely covered in clouds, nothing will any longer prevent the temperature to rise on the surface of the planet, toward the divergent greenhouse effect: the hotter it is, the more water vapour there is in the air. But water vapour further strengthens the greenhouse effect...
The planet will become totally uninhabitable within a few months. Its oceans will evaporate, its limestone mountains will be calcined as in a lime kiln, in a more and more dense and heavy atmosphere. Any erosion stopped by the end of the rains, the last mummified testimonies of its wonderful life will remain for some million years, under their shroud of white clouds...
Then, with heat still further increasing, clouds and air will dissipate in space, exposing a bare desert surface which will soon melt...
Finally, just like a satellite which makes its re-entry, the planet will begin to brake in the corona and the giant protuberances of its monstrously dilated star. This wind, starting tenuous, will surround the magnetosphere and magnetic tail on the planet, wrapping it with a blue dazzling flame, like a giant Comet. Then the hot solar wind will rip away the magnetic field, rubbing directly on the surface of boiling lava. The planet will continue for a time to spiral inward inside its star, dragging a huge shock wave, plus a gigantic tail, almost as bright as the star itself. Then it will lose its matter faster and faster. The burning iron core, released from the fantastic pressure of the rocks, will boil very brutally, giving rise to amazing magnetic volcanoes which will totally volatilize the planet in a matter of hours.
In the form of cosmic dust, impalpable but sacred, it will join other nebulae in interstellar space, and, who knows, maybe take again part in the wonderful adventure of life...
Scenario, graphics, sounds, colours, realization: Richard Trigaux.
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