The following is a cross between two plots - the first is "Moses" from the Bible,
and the second is "The Devil in the Dark" from the original Star Trek Series.


Moses Meets the Horta

Captain Moses and his crew had left Egypt and were looking for the Promised Land, on a five year mission to seek new life, to explore strange civilizations, and to go where no man had gone before.

(Angels begin to sing: Ah ah ah ah ah ah, Ah AH ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah AH ah ah ah AHHHHHHH!)

They landed on Desert 6, where silicon miners were stationed. The miners, for an unknown reason, were losing men at an alarming rate - they were apparently being sizzled to death by an unknown entity. The miners could not understand what they had done to earn the wrath of their Lord.

Moses and his trusted first officer, Aaron, decided to investigate. They had determined that the most recent slayings had occurred on Level 3, so that is where they began their search.

Moses and Aaron searched the tunnels until they came across evidence that the unknown entity had recently burnt through solid rock to create a new tunnel. Moses decided to go through the tunnel. It was a long walk, and Moses had to use his communicator to stay in contact with Aaron. When Moses finally reached what appeared to be a cave, he found a number of Burning Balls, (they weren't burning, really, but they were shiny like copper, appearing fiery.) They were actually broken silicon nodules, and it appeared that someone had been busting a lot of balls.

Then the soundtrack of "Jaws" started to play, and the camera zoomed in on Moses' shoulder, until he whirls around to come face to face with — a beanbag on a wagon covered with either a tablecloth or a very chintzy throw-rug with a lot of fringe (for legs) at the edges.

The tablecloth or throw-rug appeared to be decorated as either an oversize pizza, or as a coffee-cake, heavy on the cinnamon.

After the commercial break, the immediate danger seemed to have passed. Moses and the mysterious entity faced each other. The moving carpet let Moses know that Moses wasn't going anywhere, but indicated, in a series of feints, that it wouldn't attack unless Moses became aggressive with his staff. Moses relaxed.

At that moment, Aaron signaled through the communicator, and relayed to Moses his belief that the entity was in Moses' immediate vicinity, and cautioned him to beware! Moses dryly informed Aaron that not only was the entity in the vicinity, but he was actually face-to-[face?] with it.

Aaron arrived, and held counsel with Moses, but they were unclear what action to take. Suddenly — the carpet moved again, and sizzled a message onto the stone floor of the cave. In smoking, fiery letters, the Commandment said, "NO KILL I."

Moses suggested that Aaron communicate mind to mind with the throw-rug, being careful, of course, not to get burned, while he used his communicator to call in the Holy Shaman to heal the entity, which had clearly been injured. (One of its pepperoni-crusts had fallen off.)

In the process of channeling, Aaron stations the thoughts of the entity, who calls itself the Horta. She was the mother of her people. The Horta race only reproduced once every 50,000 years, and it turned out that the broken silicon nodules were her eggs - and the last hope of her race. She accused the miners of murder, and expressed her natural anguish over the thoughtless destruction of her race.

While this was going on, the Holy Shaman beamed in, and Moses explained what he wanted the shaman to do. The shaman examined the Horta, and indignantly told Moses that he was a healer, not a decorator. Moses pointed his finger and said, "I command you to heal, in the name of God!"

The Horta was healed, the divine message was relayed, and Moses was inspired. Moses managed to dig up the floor tile inscribed with the Horta's Commandment to "No Kill I" so that the People would understand what it meant to coexist peacefully among various life-forms in a state of Harmony and Grace.

Moses and Aaron went back through the tunnels to tell the miners what they had found in the cave. Moses, by this time, had a pretty good headache from being in the stuffy spray-painted paper-mache walls, and his feet and back were sore from stooping in the tunnels. When Moses arrived and saw that the miners had formed a mob, struck the security guards, and were preparing to club the Horta, he lost his temper.

Moses threw the tile on the ground, where it smashed into bits, and the Horta's simple message of Love and Light was lost forever.

Moses decided to see if he could get the Horta to reprint the message one more time, so again, he crawled through the tunnel to find the Horta. When he reached the end of the tunnel, there was no Horta. Only then did Moses realize his mistake - it was the wrong tunnel. This is understandable, as the tunnels were not clearly marked.

Yet, it was not a dead end, after all. Moses found a Burning Bush in one of the lairs. Moses asked the Burning Bush to inscript a Commandment for him to take back to the People. The Burning Bush complied with his wish, and issued a series of Commandments, which Moses hardly looked at in his zeal to return to the miners and deliver the Message intact.

It was not until Moses had reached the miners and delivered the tablet that he realized that the new Commandments were much lengthier and were less explicit than the original, and therefore open to debate.

Enough was enough, and Moses beamed himself and his crew out of Desert 6, and eventually parted the Red Photon Belt to lead his people into the Promised Land.

The miners are now divided into several different groups, all with different interpretations of what the Commandments really mean, and they still do not understand the nature of Horta, or of Man - that they are truly one and the same.

But the Horta knows.

The End.

Love, Galadriel
06/27/2003
Tales/moses.htm