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Category: Science Fiction/Fantasy
Description: Mystics and theologians warn us of impending cataclysmic events. Scientists raise alarms when they rail of dangers like global warming, planetary asteroid strikes, the potential for a pandemic, and other theoretical real-world disasters. Science and mystical religion often seem to occupy opposing realms. But, what if there existed an underlying TRUTH that unified both paradigms? The Breath of God reveals to the reader a desperate search for this TRUTH just as mankind surges relentlessly toward its ultimate fate. A group of scientists just might soon discover the TRUTH. But, will it be too late?
eBook Publisher: Whiskey Creek Press, 2012
eBookwise Release Date: August 2012

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [241 KB]
Words: 48622
Reading time: 138-194 min.

Chapter 1

Today's Southern Iraq

5259 BCE

The man ceased his smooth, powerful overhead swimming stroke and allowed his body to slow. Gradually, both legs sank to the river bottom until his toes gently touched the clean sandy soil. He planted himself to stand up straight, filled his lungs with moist, hot air and looked up to the bright sun cast against a cloudless blue sky. The body felt clean and cooled. The man smiled and began to wade toward the shore of his homeland. A strikingly high-pitched screech of a fishing bird's mating cry echoed behind from the east to capture the man's attention momentarily. He turned to see the graceful long-necked bird high stepping along the water's edge on the distant opposite shoreline. The bird was fishing in the shallows alone at the water's boundary to the Land of Nod, a close-by place to which the man had never ventured.

Nearby, the camouflage patterned, smooth skinned beast silently watched the man from behind the protective cover of dense green vegetation that bordered the river's narrow sandy beach. The creature peered intently with its head bobbing left and right as the man waded slowly from the river. Its intelligent black eyes bulged outward from a disproportionately large triangular skull. The eyes were tinged red with jealous hatred at the sight of man's approach. He could see now again that the man was built muscular and perfect in symmetry. His suntanned skin was dark and smooth without blemish. His wet brown hair sparkled in the sunlight as it flowed loosely toward his waist. Truly, the man was beautiful. But the hands were the hidden creature's primary focus. They were so intelligently well formed, capable of doing so many wonderful things! Why had the man been so favored by He Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken as to be given so much more of value than any of the others? But, it wasn't only the hands which evoked the creature's jealousy. The man walked upright on two legs, high above most others--another advantage unfairly given. The anger surged in the beast's heart just as the man passed foolishly nearby, completely unobservant of the beast's shadowed hiding place beneath the thick leaves and vines. Truly, the man had wonderfully formed eyes, but the eyes noticed comparatively little and the nose even less. Yes, the man was not superior to the rest of Creation in all traits. Moreover, the beast concluded, righteous equality and former balance within His Work would be properly restored if man were reduced still further.

The creature observed in silence from the leaf-covered ground level. He watched each unclad foot follow the other as the man walked past the hidden creature toward his lair. Surely, he would now search for his mate. As the creature noted always in the past, she would be expected to wait for him at their resting place. The beast now relished a visualized picture of the man's shock at the forthcoming sight. Gleeful joy replaced the deep-set hatred as the beast contemplated the man's soon to be made terrible discovery. He must follow cautiously, unobserved in order not to distract. He must be present, yet unrecognized, a witness to the most pleasuring anticipated moment of great torment.

The man stopped along the brook to quench his thirst. Next to the clear water spring was their lair. She was not there waiting for him. The man wondered. His mind sent out thoughts for her presence as he swept his vision in every direction across the beautiful greenery. The man sensed no thoughts, only silence. Her mind was not with him. He wondered again as he walked through dense, variegated foliage along one of the many narrow footpaths that stretched symmetrically in a spoke-like pattern toward the garden's center. Still, he could not feel her being. A strange, uncomfortable feeling stirred within the man as his pace unconsciously quickened down the walkway.

The man soon reached the center of his homeland where grew two wide branching trees, each the only one of its kind. This was the singular homeland place of caution. He knew the trees were to be left alone, but he didn't know why. The universe of that which cannot be seen echoed this warning clearly. Each tree bore multicolored fruit which had never been tasted. Freshly fallen, uneaten fruits lay strewn beneath the trees' low-lying, broad outreaching branches. Above all else in the garden, the caution echoed loudly in his mind now, these two trees were to be left forever untouched

There, at the base of one tree was his mate. She appeared first to be at rest. But strangely, her mind, as close as they now were, remained unwelcome to his thoughts. He did not understand that which had never been experienced. The man looked more carefully at her body as he approached. Her eyelids were shut tightly and she breathed only faintly. The man bent down to touch her shoulder. She rolled half over, yet unconscious, and exposed remaining in her right hand a residual piece of uneaten fruit, fruit from one of the two forbidden trees.

The man's eyes widened at the horror-filled sight and his heart pounded. He shook her shoulder more firmly, but she failed to open her eyes or to move again. Death was unknown to him. Pain was unknown. However, for the first time in existence, man felt the terrible pain of aloneness echo from deep within his mind. Tears, which he had never before shed, streamed down the man's cheeks, falling, one after another, upon his mate's naked body. The man looked first to the half-eaten fruit still held in the palm of her hand and then to the great tree from which it came. The man thought back to so many times which, together, minds lovingly connected, they had shared other fruits of the garden. A sudden impulse of desperation swept over him. He reached down, took hold, and brought the uneaten fruit remains to his mouth.

As the man ate, the great beast flicked its forked tongue, sensing the air for the slightest glorious aroma of that which he would never have been so foolish to eat. It had been so easy to persuade his mate! The creature's tail quivered as ecstasy raced through the great length of its elongated body when the man fell to the ground. Now, man and woman lay in the forbidden zone, nearly lifeless. Balance had been restored.

As the couple slept deeply, digestive fluids carried the fruit's unique, fat soluble molecule straight into the bloodstream to spread throughout the body. The molecule's effortless passage across cellular membranes had a mutating effect deep within the mitochondrial sub-cellular level. This genetic mutation was to be permanently locked within the couple's DNA and passed down, through countless generations, to offspring as a dominant trait. The original birthright of instinct, that which was shared with other creatures of His Creation, would be gone forever, replaced now by a new and permanent form of consciousness--human language.

They will see his face and his name will be written on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever.

Revelation 22:4-5