Solutions: The Dilemma for the Gods, James Gerard [top 10 books of all time .TXT] 📗

the good world gave no physical description of themselves except in the instuctions on how to make their clothes.  No one knew how many of them there were as well.  It was always assumed by the lights sitting atop the pinnacle of the Greater Temple that five Gods existed.  Each one represented by one of the five lights.  But each of the Gods was thought to be equal in stature, but as he had witnessed, that was not the case.

 

Terrance wondered if the taller of the two represented the mightiest of the Gods.  That God might have been  the one who lit the first light that signaled the emergence.  That light may have represented the mightiest of the Gods and whose light towered over the other four atop the pinnacle.  The smaller of the two may have been one of the four Gods that sat in pairs to the lower left or right of the taller, but the information was incomplete.  There still remained missing pieces to the puzzle.

 

Curious enough, Terrence wondered why the Gods moved about as men.  He knew of a history that spoke of giants, but that history alone did not help to dismiss the Gods he had just witnessed.

 

Imminent Destruction

A sense of urgency came over Terrance as soon as the giants boarded the vehicle that brought them to the Greater Temple.  He raced to the cabin.  There, with the partial information he had about the truth that lay atop the cast iron stove, he had the desire to reconcile the information with that he had just witnessed.

 

He sat fidgeting, relied on the flames flicking forth from the now lit stove to provide the light to study the information.  The excitement of possibly discovering a revelation concerning the Gods came with a frantic search through the messages handed down to him.  There were some confirmations about the Gods he had seen within the messages and books, but concerning who the Gods actually were, the references were vague and beyond his understanding.  There was no information describing the vehicle that descended from the sky in any of the hand written notes.  No information about their ability to communicate with one another without a spoken word was mentioned in any of the messages.  Their clothing was not cited in any of the information.  The only references that could be slightly connected to the witnessing concerned their physical stature towering over those around them, but it was unclear if the citations referred to mere men or to malevolent beings.  Other than that, there was no information describing the physical form of the Gods in any of the other books Terrance had at his disposal.  Their identity once believed to be a temporary mystery began to appear as a permanent one.

 

Hours passed as the information was diligently scanned.  He carefully scanned all the material anew with the hopes that some detail was missed, but the results were the same each time.  Over and over again Terrance felt like knocking himself senseless over the lack of risking a face to face showdown with the Gods.  He kicked himself for allowing the tenets to cast a spell of fear over him just long enough to dread the contact with the Gods.  He suddenly realized he was no better than the children who would not think to challenge the tenets in the same manner he had.  Never before did he concede to the notion of such trickery and lies that had been instilled in the other children, yet, he had fallen in the same trap.

 

Lost in the search for the truth, a sudden panic rattled Terrance’s senses.  “No,” he whispered, realizing he had missed the appointed time in town.  He jumped up and lunged at the window then threw open the curtain.  There was no sign of any of the high priests.  Then he noticed the lamps atop the Greater Temple.  The final light illuminated brightly with the others and spelled out doom for the children.

 

Terrance sat back down and re-read the tenets regarding the high priests’ obligations to carry out and administer to the Gods’ wishes to make sure they were clearly defined.  No doubts circled around the prescribed procedures.  The words plainly stated that in the event the gatekeeper failed to make an appearance in the morning the high priests were commanded to conduct a search as to ascertain the reason why, and to witness if another gate keeper were needed in case of death.  But apparently they failed in their duties.  Nonetheless, he reasoned, it was a transgression that angered the Gods, and a transgression worthy of an end to the good world provided for the children.  Once again he lunged at the window and looked, listened for the rumblings of the Gods but there were none.

 

With sudden terror Terrance fled to the grounds of the Greater Temple believing the high priests were coming for him in an attempt to placate the Gods by administering an instant punishment of death.  By fleeing to the Greater Temple he hoped the high priests would be too fearful of the Gods and thereby wait the three full days to consider the evidence at hand before one of them, as prescribed by the tenets, would be allowed to enter the Greater Temple to verify his presence and possible death as well.

 

Terrance scanned the outer world looking for any sign that the Gods were once again present.  The vehicle they had descended in was absent.  The door to the inner world was closed.  Everything looked normal, intact, and untouched.  He scampered over to the door leading to the inner world and entered.  There he encountered silence.  The Gods and the Guardian of the Gods were nowhere to be found.

 

He raced over to the door leading to the supposed Guardian of the Gods, to the first room where he had encountered the volumes of manuals and instructions, and there, sitting on top of one of the many shelves, sat a few books that he had never seen.  Curious, he picked one up and started to thumb through the contents.  With a sense of awe he found himself reading the second book of the tenets.  That book was reserved only for the eyes of the high priests.

 

The book contained tenets that described the further journeys and obligations that the children had to endure at the hands of the Gods.  Tenets describing correcting all the damage caused by the evil entities on the Gods’ good world were spelled out in great detail.

 

The Gods would first dispatch the young and strong to restore, replace, and rebuild a system of tracks where specially made vehicles provided by the Gods would transport the preferred children all throughout the good world to perform their duties to the Gods and their good world.

 

Once the new transportation system was in place, the Gods would provide the heavy duty vehicles and tools needed to carry out all the work as that they had prescribed.  All debris from most ruins would be removed and given back to the good world.  It was a duty to please the Gods.  The exception was the ruins of the mighty ancient cities where the children once thrived in great numbers. Those ruins would remain in the current condition as monuments to the Gods for defeating the evil entities and saving the children that escaped annihilation.

 

When the children fulfilled the cleansing of the good world, prescribed restorations followed.  The children would start the process of grooming the good world, reseeding and planting the flora that pleased the senses of the Gods.  The reestablishment of the plants, trees, and grasses that once thrived and fed on the delicacies of the good world would be provided at the discretion of the Gods would follow the cleansing.  But the Gods commanded the children to do such not out of vanity, but the promise they would permanently return to the good world.  It would become a world in which everything that could be seen, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted would be pleasing to them.  In return for the servitude, and as a promise made for the continuance of servitude, the Gods would inhabit the good world once again and provide all needs out of gratitude for their service.  However, the Gods would separate themselves to prevent themselves from the polluted presence of their children’s transgressions.

 

The Gods, as prescribed in the second book of the tenets, put forth that out of obedience would come contentment for all.  Tranquility would settle over the good world; the good world would be complete and afresh as the Gods had first created it.

 

Terrance contemplated these specific tenets of the second book.  While reading he found himself almost swept up into the concept, but the idea of servitude bothered him to no end.  It was the reality contained in the information from a man who described the slaughter of the masses shortly before the selected survivors were buried deep underground.  It was in the suspicions of a man who had been assigned to work at a place called the Solutions Center, a man who described what he believed to be a great lie that was perpetrated on the masses to force them to seek protection in the underground shelters.  It was from hand written notes from unknown children that described various aspects of servitude, of having been forced to toil relentlessly in an effort to propagate a lie.  The ugliness of the servitude came from young women claiming they were used as sterile incubators to propagate the human race.  Other notes, preserved, having found their way into the hands of some distant relative, all described the reality of the countless lives that seemingly were intentionally destroyed for the benefit of the few; the few meaning the Gods.   And even while he pondered the key missing pieces that would solve the mystery, a hand reached out to a book that contained the missing pieces.  The book sat right in front of his sight.

 

It was a book that was sitting under the second book of the tenets.  Terrance was too consumed with the second book of the Gods to have noticed it right away.  The book had no title.  Terrance picked it up and thumbed through as he did with the first.  There, in language foreign to the language of the Gods but more akin to the language found in all the information from the past, was the answer to the question that had been elusive as the Gods themselves.  The Gods’ identity was revealed.  The birth of the Gods described in detail.

 

All of the Gods’ reasoning for what had occurred in the past was spelled out much like the items listed for daily chores, sequenced events on a weekly checklist, goals to be accomplished on a monthly chart, and timelines to meet in annual increments.

 

Terrance felt pangs of dull pain invading the stomach.  Tormented thoughts stabbed at the conscious.  Fury raged in a rapidly beating heart.  Fists clenched tightly as vengeance filled the desire of hatred.  But the truth, the truth that was included in all the truths left behind in written form came to the forefront of his agony.  All he could do was confess to the God, the only God he had ever needed and wanted to know, the one true God that would one