The Broken Bubble

What did he see in that other universe? For to him it was manifest, alternate presents of other possible Earths that had not been wrecked by man’s greed. They were inside his head. His mind was a space—time continuum that led from one Earth to the next, and his frontal lobe was trained on that miraculous salvation which he alone could see. Beautiful trees he saw and flowers, a great garden very much similar to the Garden of Eden. It was unspoiled by greedy man. Animals lay down with other animals. People walked around in peace and friendship. There was no strife.

Ron saw all this and he was sad, for he knew that man had destroyed his own world. Would man destroy this vertible Garden of Paradise? The heart of the superman was troubled. He knew the greed of homo sapiens, he was the beginning of a new race who lacked that selfish greed. And he had been imprisoned by soldiers because they hated and didn’t understand anything different. He had been chased by a howling mob of mass men. He had been stoned and thrown sticks at. Beaten, troubled, he had at the end crept away from the haunts of man. He could not endure among them because he could not kill. He lacked the ability to destroy. He was like God. He loved everybody. He wanted to be friends.

One day be was sitting alone in his cell and he looked into a different other world of such breathtaking beauty that nobody could imagine it. Nobody could believe it existed, it was so fair and untouched. Even the man of tomorrow was stunned and for a time silent. He trembled and grew cold all over as his eyes made it out. A lovely forest pool rippled in the prim-evil glade. Animals besported themselves under mountains that rose against the sky. The sky was star-studded and a moon of arresting beauty hung there beaming down.

Suddenly he saw something, a shape moving among the trees. He looked more closely. He saw a woman.

The woman was a goddess. A large catlike lion whose fur was green instead of the usual was sitting with her at the edge of an untroubled forest pool. The woman stared reflectively down at the water and every now and then dabbled in it sending ripples in ever widening circles. The woman was nude. Her breasts rose in two cones that ended in pink roses that he saw with almost awe. On her face was a sad look as if she was thinking.

Then one day just before they were going to come and shoot him the beautiful woman appeared. A blazing circle of blinding light appeared in the center of the cell and there was the woman.

“Come,” she whispered. Her eyes were large and blue and her lips were red. Her hair was a cascade of black down her bare neck and shoulders, her legs shone long and bare in the light of the flaming circle in which she moved. “I will save you,” were the words her lovely lips formed. “I will lead you to a world in which you can live.”

“Why?” was the other’s instant query. Col. Peterson might possibly appear at any instant.

“I have fallen in love with you. I know your plight, superior mutant. But—hurry!” She seemed to glance into the viewscreen attached to her bare wrist. “Soldiers are coming, if I’m to save you I must as soon as possible.” Their telepathic brains met and he saw what he had to do. He shinnied up the wall to the light-globe. From it he took the platinum atomic fihiment (an invention of the future that operated without power) and ripping wires from the walls he took his belt buckle and brought out the concealed microscopic tools he carried. He quickly made a machine under her telepathic direction.

“Do you trust me?” her lips whispered.

His rejoinder was, “Yes, my beloved, I trust you entirely. For you are not like the others. You are not like man.”

Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light. When the light cleared he was lying on a grassy glade he knew so well. At first he couldn’t believe he was there because something in the way the woman talked gave him grave doubts. He wondered if she was not telling him something. Then she appeared.

She wore a simple plain white robe looped at her waist. On her feet she had sandals. The cloth seemed to cling to her breasts which were full and upright. Her body moved as she walked.

“You are here,” she said calmly. The strange smile on her face had grown. She led him stumbling from the glade down to the edge of a mountain. The sun blazed down on them and temporarily he was blinded. When he opened his eyes what he saw was impossible. He cried out but there she was beside him. She sensed and knew.

For what he saw was that he was still on Earth. There was the ruined cities all broken and ruined as he remembered them. It was the regular Earth! He was stunned.

“This is your real world,” the woman told him. She pointed with her bare arm out over the ruins at the foot of the mountain. “I have brought you back to it. I and you will rebuild together. We will not turn inward and shrink our terrible responsibility. We offer eternal hope to mankind which deserves being rebuilt. With your ability and our money we can help repair the damage bacteria and H-bombs did. Millions have died horribly. War has taken a ghastly toll. But do not despair of men, it was the military not all men. I am a woman, you a man. We will help man, not turn our backs on them.”

He listened to her, and gradually a dawning discovery came to him. The point she was saying was this, that he had been wrong. He had taken the easy road. And the woman had helped him to see what he had to see.

“And all the Cot. Peters?” he asked.

“We have triumphed over them,” was the answer as she stood beside him on the mountain top. “They are no more. The power of goodness and love finally won out over war.”

Already, far below the two of them, the rebuilding had began. They walked slowly to greet it.

END