500 Miles to Babylon

The history of gods and goddess, their origins and evolutions, has always fascinated me. Humans who follow religions often forget those religions have a beginning- and  those for whom that religion serves a private agenda or self-aggrandizement, those origins are often obscured to prevent followers from any doubt. Indeed, it is often true that those who dare to question or doubt the origin stories are called heretic and destroyed. The earth had had many gods and goddesses, many creation stories- and I suspect the origins and the results are often the same, no matter the religion. Someone desires power and control, and creates a way to ensure they receive both- often with minimal effort or cost on their part, but with much suffering and sacrifice on the part of others.

The village lay beside the flowing Tigris River, its banks piled high to hold the seasonal floods.  It consisted of a few mud huts, but it would be more- much more- one day. Eh-Tehmen Ahnkii had told her this much when last they had met. “We will teach them, Nahbũ, and they will build. And from their labor will grow a vast city to which people will go and from which wisdom will flow to the edges of the lands. It shall be called Ba’bliim, the Gates of the Gods, and we shall see it rise as a beacon for all.”

Ba’bliim. The Gates of the Gods. Nahbũ stopped and pondered the meaning of the words. Something about them bothered her. Perhaps it was the arrogance of the words “gates of the gods”. They were not gods- they were beings from another world, but they were not gods. They had come to bring knowledge of the spaces between the worlds, of the worlds themselves, but they were not gods. And because they were not gods, they were capable of the same flaws and failings found amongst those they found. We are becoming corrupted by the temptations of this world.

She had seen signs in Sko’lii- he paid too much attention to how the people they had found here responded to power, to the voice of authority. He paid too close attention to how they responded to the voice that urged fear. Nahbũ shook her head- they had prepared and trained to inhabit this world, yet all the training and tests to prove the training had somehow failed in some of them. Was it this world that corrupted them, or did they have the seeds of that corruption within them, hidden until a time of opportunity arose?….

To read the rest of this story, see link to Tales of the Homeworld by Jordan Amar

©2021/Sikander