Intelligent Design: Revelations to Apocalypse Read Online Free PDF Page B

live with the change for the rest of their lives. She wondered if she’d live beyond a hundred like these people—more time to learn more languages, origins and maybe even find a new power source for the emitters.
    Perez, comfortable now with the array of edged weapons and firearms they carried nearly all the time in their subterranean world, dodged more clusters of females clad in various browns, black and reddish colors. Her own knife bounced against her hip.
    Damn! Forgot my sidearm again! I’ll regret that one of these days.
    She entered a larger space brightened by light reflected through large skylights. Unique markets, food dispensaries, drinking establishments and places to sit lined the sides of a wide foyer. Though reminiscent of the old markets of Earth, the ornate, colorful sculptures, free standing or embedded in large stone archways, resembled those of ancient Rome. But while ancient Rome had fallen on Earth, here, Rome’s origins and life remained commonplace.
    So much to still learn still,
she thought as she sidestepped a group of adolescents and avoided crashing into a weapons rack. Edged weapons were so familiar in public that she hardly noticed the first aid kits, fire extinguishers, atmosphere alarms, and racks of knives for killing the planet’s large rodents.
    I really have to learn more maneuvers
, she thought as she continued her jaunt past more newly installed racks. The monsters had become more brazen recently. Finally, she saw the two women. They’d stopped to wait for her in the congested walkways. She realized that with an entire civilization built underground—three level structures on the surface and three below the crust—elevators for people were not really necessary. Feeling as tall as a giraffe in the land of lions, she could easily spot the Terran-Earth mixed children. Even as adolescents, they were taller than the native Terran. Perez enjoyed her transition into a society that valued height and strength almost as much as teaching and learning. As a scientist and an ambassador from Earth, she held the title of Immunes, a direct derivation from Latin meaning a soldier with at least one specialization. Her pink sash, one of five on the whole planet, indicated the high regard in which they held her—a scientist responsible for fixing a failing cloaking system for the planet.
    New arrivals from different parts of Terra looked sideways at her; even though the proportions of her limbs and trunk were nearly identical to theirs, they perceived her Earthly thick build and short stature as thin and tall. Her thick, dark-brown hair, which fell below her shoulders, was truly an anomaly among the shorter red-haired women and the few Terran men. Her narrower head with a corresponding jaw, higher cheek bones and an average human skull with its high forehead all differed from her Terran counterparts with their heavier brows, sloping foreheads, and flatter craniums that jutted out more towards the back of the neck.
    But what really turned heads was her brown skin, signifying her heritage from Earth’s sub-Saharan Africa, along with her European-genus blue eyes. These features indicated that she came from a world where one could be in the sun without fear of immediately dying.
    “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed giant will be king,
“she remembered her dad often said.
I wonder if this is about him. Have they moved up the plans? It really would be great to see him sooner than later.
    Finally, she stood before the women and bent over to catch her breath. Her original assessment of being out of shape dissolved as she realized she’d run at least a mile in about nine minutes. Back on Earth when she was out of shape, she could’ve run half a mile in the same time, then would’ve promptly thrown up.
    Legate Legionis Clematis and Dux Cloelius looked up from their stone-like tablets, one green and the other purple.
    “Minor Perez! We are so happy you made it.” It hadn’t taken Perez long to