2230, SAN FRANCISCO

With the use of a mind perfectly capable of generating infinite lies of perfect sheen and polish, Marieta Cartwright had once again bamboozled a court system meant to protect children like her Brock from people like her. But whatever she did to him at night--and for the record it was so vile that Brock in later years never carnally participated in the degradation of cadets--it was as nothing compared to what she did to him now.

"Brock, do you know this place?"

"Yes, Mother. Its Admiralty Hall."

"Brock, its five years old. Just like you. As long as it stands, you stand. Do you want to see what makes it stand?"

"Of course, Mother."

Nodded inside without so much as a word of warning, the pair walked to the construction area of the ever-expanding facility, an area kept so far out of view, it may as well have been under a light-bending dispersal shield.

"Do you see what's on the conveyor belts?"

The boy strained to see, and then gulped.

"Mother, those are people on those belts--and they have no clothes on!"

"But I want you to see them, Brock. These people stopped being people. They are our enemies now. Now, see the space they enter?"

Some entered unconscious, possibly dead. Some tried to get up, pleading as they went. But all fell into the space Marieta described.

"Brock? Do you know what those people did?"

"No."

"They swore to defend the Earth and its interests through Starfleet. But when the time came to decide who they should marry, they didn't choose other people. They chose to take animals as their husbands and wives."

The boy looked up.

"Like Daddy?"

There were people cut out to deal with the rigors of having a spouse in Starfleet. The dangers and the distance and the lack of communication never truly rolled off of them, nor did the fear of telling the children that Mommy or Daddy had died in an explosion where there was neither sound nor air, nor a hope of recovering so much as a hair on their heads. These people were the truly strong, and they were strong on many levels.

Marieta Cartwright was not among them. The dangers made her call her Tomas a reckless thrill seeker. The distance was something she accused him of seeking deliberately. The lack of communication she simply wrote off as her husband's betrayal of their fidelity oath with every alien piece of tail he could find. And she badly desired to tell Brock that the evil man who deserted them both was gone.

"Yes. Just like Tomas."

She pointed at the hole the victims had fallen into.

"The fire burns away their worthless parts. Their bones are ground to a fine powder----"

She pointed back towards the front of the structure.

"And used to fill those magnificent pillars."

Brock looked at the structures.

"How long do they take to fill up?"

She picked him up and hugged him.

"Such a smart question. Such a smart, smart little boy. You're a real man, right? You'll never desert me the way he did, right?"

It occurred to the child that if he were one day the one who decided who was on those belts, then Daddy could be made to stay and Mommy could be made to maybe stay away.

"No, Mommy. I'll never leave you."

2249, Starfleet Academy

The next few years at the Academy would be very different. The preparation year would be gone and done with. The courses would take only four years instead of the current seven. Cadets as young as sixteen would be admitted, down from the theoretically already-mature twenty-one. Class groups would move in separate years, rather than the massive septennial graduations and introductions. At the time all these had been instituted, it had all seemed necessary. Yet those had only been tweaks of existing policies.

These newest ones would be the most radical changes since Fox Mulder founded the Academy in 2013, desiring that humans should be ready for the first contact visionaries like him saw as inevitable. The story went that after he and his legendary partner spent all of 2012 waiting for some unknown event to occur, they chose to push their fellow humans to become the visitors rather than the possibly visited.

What had been the means to forge a group of dreamers coherent enough to bring others around to their way of thinking had at last become a going concern that needed to produce a lot of professionals on a constant basis. This first lot of this new group would produce a legend as no other. In fact, that man's father now taught a history class attended by Third-Year Cadet Brock Cartwright.

"...and it remains one of the great mysteries of space travel. While it seems certain that Admiral Peter Augustus Stiles and his fleet went down for the count, the fate of Captain Jonathan Archer and the Enterprise NX-01 is just a big riddle. It was last seen heading into a volley of fire from three to five Romulan ships, each enemy vessel shuddering as their primitive light-benders malfunctioned. No trace was found of that seminal ship and its crew of standards."

George Kirk (Since his eldest namesake son now insisted on being called Sam, he no longer bothered with either his middle name or 'Senior') was on leave from Starfleet Special Services, an on-call branch of the service meant to be first to a disaster scene, anywhere in the quadrant. One such event was soon to come, on the world called Tarsus Four. Despite his reputation as a man of action, he tended to enjoy teaching these history classes. Widely seen as a maverick for his opposition to the sometimes-isolated social club known as Admiralty Hall, he was naturally a favorite of most cadets, but certainly not all.

"Cadet Cartwright, may I have your judgment on the events of the Romulan War and its defining impact on UFP Era One?"

UFP Era Zero was defined by most as stretching from First Contact with Vulcans to the signing of the Federation Charter. Era One was marked by the final Kzinti expansion efforts, the Romulan War and the development of the failed 'Space Eddy' technology meant to 'sweep' ships over vast distances unthinkable by warp limitations. The losses of such ships as SS Valiant, The Terra Ten, USS Archon, USS Horizon and the Vulcanian Colonial Service helped push this along. When several advanced probes outfitted with varying levels of this tech also vanished, it was finally decided that at no time should the means of 'getting there' vastly outstrip the support structure needed to get them back again. Era Two was marked by the long period of brief, deadly hot wars between the Federation and the increasingly belligerent Klingon Empire. According to most, they were now living in Era Three. Its end would be marked well in history.

"Well, Commander Kirk--if the Rommie War had been a school project and I were its professor--I'd be forced to give it an incomplete."

Kirk nodded.

"Explain. And its Romulan War. Diminishing our enemies' names both causes us to underestimate them and diminishes us through pettiness."

Cartwright fought off a sneer. This was prime villain number one in his eyes. True ringleader of the space bums that kept his father away.

"Well, that's part of the incomplete, then, isn't it? We call them Romulans. But we lack any real intelligence about them. A lack of proper research. Add to that, no conclusive end to the thesis. A lack of follow-through. Just a shrug and a weak-kneed willingness to let someone else complete the project on some vague someday. This, even though it may be far too late. In this, I must render a failing grade to the student, the instructors and the institution they all served."

Was there anything of Tomas in this young man, George wondered?

"Some projects demand such limits, Cadet. The lack of research and follow through was dictated by a peace treaty paid for in dearest blood. The student found the project too much to be borne. The instructors found it an unfair burden on the student. The institution felt it was a waste of resources. Besides--have we heard from the research subject in the last eighty years?"

Jumping the metaphor track back again, Brock Cartwright was having more and more trouble fighting off that sneer.

"They came out of nowhere once. They'll do it again. Mark me, this so-called Third Era Of Near Space will be marked at its end by the all debts being called in. The Romulans, who we just let drift off and plan their next go at us. The Klingons, whose home sector we had taken before withdrawing in the name of peace-making! They don't even have words to fit that term in their primal jabber tongue! The Orions, to whom our patrols are just another source of slaves and extortion barter, as they dance and glide around them. Your student will get a passing grade, Commander, when he is able to review his many subjects--in a decidedly posthumous--if not a pathological light."

In one of that universe's more bitter ironies, George Kirk would never hold his grandson Peter, not yet born. Brock Cartwright would, just before casting him to the ground and kicking his bloodied form with a tritanium-laced boot. But George had held Brock, when he was new, as Tomas Cartwright had held Sammy and Jimmy, and as he would hold Peter twice, the second time leading to his death at Brock's hands. Any such tenderness on any level was not even a memory, then and there.

"Cadet Cartwright, please stay after class."

George Kirk was just past his fifty-second birthday, going on his twenty-ninth, as some cadets, many of them female, were wont to say. There was a reason for this, but a kept-after Cadet Cartwright saw only a broken-down, worn-out old man, the avatar of a dead ideology that need only be staked through.

"Brock, once upon a time, racism such as you just exhibited was so commonplace, it was like air itself. Then, a few started suggesting that this air was poisoned--polluted, and making us as a species weak. When this thinking began to take hold, some of a more bigoted bent rebelled and defended their rudeness and discourtesy by claiming the mantle of honesty. 'Do you want me to be dishonest about my feelings?', they would ask, and eventually, they pushed things very far. Finally, a movement meant to combat this itself lost sight of its goals, and rebelling against it became yet another excuse for 'shooting from the hip' and 'telling it like it is', or 'calling it as I see it'. Some called this, as always, well-intentioned, sweeping movement for 'political correctness'. The stereotype became that of a radical professor making a martyr out of a student determined to say that the moon was the sun. Well, no go. From now on, in this class, I will correct your facts—and that's it. So go on, bold rebel. You rave and rant--and I'll teach a class. I know who I'd listen to."

The contempt now nearly blatant, Cartwright rose up and shook his head.

"You're the worst of all. We know all about you, Commander Kirk. Born in 2195, child of Hunter J. and Kelley Sallarman Kirk. Born aboard the Enterprise, NCC-01, the second ship to bear that shame. Your parents were meddlers, too, weren't they? Claimed to have discovered the fabled tenth planet. Then--the ship finds itself in Jupiter's gravity well. Only you escaped--unharmed and unchanged, so they thought. Instead, as you grew older, you found that the works of Shaw, Nietchze, and Wylie applied to you. You were an overman, in every respect of the word, with powers unimaginable. And you are in that a perfect representative of what I have to get rid of in this fleet. For what good is supreme power without the willingness to truly use it?"

Cartwight left to meet with 'vacationing' Professor John Gill, secretly the Master Of The Terran Order Of The Ancient Destroyer. George Kirk remained, his eyes briefly glowing red as he ached to show the young genocidal bigot and all like him what supreme power could really do. Just as his resolve began to weaken, a news prompt activated the vid-monitors.

**TARSUS FOUR : SAVAGE CRISIS OR INSANE COLONIAL GOVERNOR?**

George left immediately, since both his son Jim and the in-laws he loved like his own parents were among those in peril. But since Governor Kodos of Tarsus was a member of The Order, other subjects concerned John Gill and his favorite student.

"Thank you, sir. It certainly helped to put my thinking back on track. Yeats was a superior poet."

Gill smiled at Cartwright, sporting for this night's meeting an authentic 20th Century Nazi SS armband.

"Glad to hear it, Cadet. 'The Second Coming' has always been among my favorites."

STARFLEET HQ, OFFICE OF COLONIAL AFFAIRS, JULY 2264

Soon the Order's revenge on the late Sean Finnegan would be complete. His replacement as Commissioner Of Colonial Affairs was the man he most directly betrayed, Captain Brock Cartwright. The offices Finnegan had set up at Lombard Street were nearly emptied. Now the only thing left was to dismiss Lieutenant Cortez, Finnegan's top aide.

"Have I failed to do my job, Captain?"

"Not at all, Mister Cortez. Your leaving here is not job performance related, let me assure you."

It was ideological, pure and simple. The OCA was meant to enervate the remnants of the recently shattered Commodity. Colonial Affairs would draw lightning away from the Hall. Cortez seemed unlikely to carry out this agenda.

"I see. Well, actually I don't, but that's the Fleet. Before I go, sir--may I submit my final report?"

Since there was literally no harm in this, Captain Cartwright again felt the extra rings on his yellow tunic's sleeve and nodded.

"Regarding the expansion of the colonial effort in Sector 351--Captain, its vastly premature. A larger settlement will draw attention beyond the ability of sensor-muffles to mask. We're still only seventy-five percent certain that this particular region of space is free to be claimed without dispute."

"Klingons, Mister Cortez? Orions? Kzinti renegades?"

Cortez shook his head.

"Nobody we know, sir. Again, maybe no one at all. But there are still questions about a possible advanced reptiloid presence in that world's past."

"So?"

"Well, sir, the Saurians always take it very sorely when the Tellarites or Andorians infringe on their colonial space. Normally, they're peaceful--what my Tia Ana would call peace-able. But with reptiloids, any unannounced entry tends to go very, very badly. I'm just saying we should work the contact and exploration end of this before letting such a settlement expand, perhaps literally to its death."

Cartwright smiled, and bid Cortez sit down.

"You asked me why you were being transferred, Lieutenant. Yet you already knew the answer, or you should have. The trolley car, as they say, is going on without you. Human--that is to say, Federation colonial expansion is cluttered up with too many reasons why we can't. We are a can-do species, Mister Cortez. I say that your seventy-five percent is more than good enough, and that in fact we should have stopped at forty. For too long, we have bent over backwards on behalf of those who often bend not at all for us. What about the loathsome Sheliak Treaty?"

"An extreme example, sir. Their firepower made it imperative that we make some concessions, if only to reality."

Cartwright stood up.

"Time to shape a new reality, Mister Cortez. If your reptiloids come, we will very briskly inform them that this is a Federation world now, a colony of a world called Terra, populated by humans. Its there, now. Your claims are in the past. Deal with it--or deal with our fleet."

Cortez stared as though he were looking at a play, or perhaps a parody.

"Suppose it doesn't go that way? Suppose they simply react without asking questions first? My God. You'd be inviting a slaughter!"

Cartwright slammed down his fist.

"Then, Lieutenant, they will be one sorry bunch of snakes for the short time their species has left. Your brand of weakness and hesitancy has been shown the door. I will in fact compose the document allowing the colony's unfettered expansion myself. I'd wish you well, Mister Cortez. But there's a wave rising in this fleet, and you and yours are about to be swamped by it. Dismissed!"

Cortez laid low after this, rightly suspecting that he could end up the target of some petty vengeance. But when the world in question met its noteworthy fate, he went public loudly. His disappearance, though, was quiet. That day after he left, though, Cartwright kept one promise.

*From Brock Cartwright, Commissioner Of Colonial Affairs. Your application to expand to a Beta-Status Colony is hereby approved, without proviso or restriction. And may I wish a happy period of ever-expanding growth to all the men, women and children of Earth Human Colony Cestus Three.*

2275, Admiralty Hall

They were two men who, despite their high rank, lived in the shadow of the Kirk family. One had been the protected protégé of Commander George Kirk, a man who knew his opposition to Admiralty Hall would continue costing him, career-wise. One had been the best student of the late Doctor John Gill. Despite Captain James Kirk's assertions in defense of his old history teacher, Gill's infection of Planet Ekos with a strain of Nazism had been no accident, nor would the older man have called it a mistake.

"Commodore Cartwright, I have a few questions about a variety of events. Both the events and the questions themselves have disturbing implications."

Once, he would have been called Commander In Chief, Starfleet. But through means that ony seemed to get murkier with the passage of time, Admiralty Hall--now a power in its own right--had persuaded the Federation Council to rename Heichiaro Nogura's office right out from under him. Now he was Grand Admiral, a title with warlike and sinister implications as far as its bearer was concerned. Yet he didn't know the half of it.

"Of course, Admiral Nogura, sir. And may I say what a pleasure it is to have you finally residing at The Hall itself?"

The Admiralty Hall Starfeet Liaison was a definite puzzle to most people, who thought that both the Ancient Destroyer and its worshipful Order were only a myth. Brock Cartwright had been a problem cadet and a bully. Yet while there had been expulsions, very often they counted among them those who had lodged complaint rather than the accused. As an Ensign, he had falsified a report indicating evidence that Alpha Centauran humans had been vastly genetically modified by the so-called Preservers that took them from Ancient Earth. As a Lieutenant, he had been sent packing from Pike's Enterprise after allowing human colonists to slaughter insectoid pilgrims. Yet each time he had been protected and promoted by a shadowy acclaim of voices and directives. In 2264, he began a disastrous term as Colonial Affairs Commissioner. In 2267, after his role in setting up the Cestus Three tragedy had been exposed, the OCA had been closed. Despite this, he--as Captain Cartwright--soon found himself in his current position. The few who noted this thought it Starfleet incompetence at its worst.

"Firstly, Brock, I'd like to offer congratulations on your promotion to Commodore."

"Well, thank you, Admiral. But I've held this rank for quite some time."

Nogura began to glare at the ever-smiling Cartwright.

"Yes. That's why I said I'd like to offer my congratulations. I'd like to--but the rank was given without legal authority. The Commodity recommends that rank. I approve it. As I choose to do so now. But this is the end, Brock. Granpa's moved in the house, and he's laying down some rules. Next thing even smells like a power grab, I will personally bust every last one of you in this Hall down to crewman, and assign you to Ranjar Bagdasarian's ship, patrolling the Dead Zone. Got me?"

The captain of The USS Daigo Fukyryu Maru, while not a legend to rival James Kirk, was well known within Starfleet--and especially to The Order Of The Ancient Destroyer, which he had quit and lived to tell the tale. This was meant to push Cartwright's buttons, and it did that.

"Are you sure you're ready to do that, sir? I mean, the political shockwave from dissolving the Hall could split Starfleet right in two."

For years, Cartwright had played some variation on this card. The result had always been the same. Either a peace-seeking Nogura had backed down, or the Federation Council had told him to, in the name of Starfleet unity.

"The Council's staying off me, Brock. And as to your threats--bring it on. I told people I was unifying Starfleet by moving here, but how I do it is my choice. And if I choose to replace the elite fifteen top-kicks here in Admiralty Hall with names like Spock, Riley, Rand--not to mention those serving above and below them--then that too is my choice."

Cartwright lost his smile. The card seemed to be worn-out and useless.

"What would you have me do, sir?"

Nogura nodded, secure in his apparent victory.

"The questions I have will be answered. Truthfully, without art, spin or blather about POV. Bullshit me, Brock, and I'll resign with Jim Kirk as my designated heir. Teresa Bunson will simply go to prison, where I've heard that people of her sexual appetites are looked down upon, even by snitches and traitors. How long do you think she'll last?"

Cartwright bit down.

"Ask."

"All right. What really happened to TJ Durant?"

The up-and-coming officer of Andesian descent had been a contemporary and friend of James Kirk's. The USS Prevailer, recently sent on a special secret warp experiment from which it had not yet returned, was widely regarded as being his rightful command, and not that of the reckless Ex-Admiral, Vaughn Rittenhouse, who attempted a secret coup during the Cosmic Probes Crisis Of 2271.

"Durant was looking into the Kirk Murders, Admiral. Section 31 did not like where he was looking. To this end, they turned one of their agents, Durant's own brother, against him. The suicide on the Andesian homeworld may have been either one of them. But we believe TJ Durant to be dead. His closest associates, such as Ripley and Duffy, were lost with Rittenhouse and the Prevailer. We have no idea if they even reached the Delta Quadrant. A pity, there. Helen Noel and Admiral Bunson had been so very close. Teresa regarded her as a kindred spirit."

Nogura fought off a chill, and kept going.

"Who really runs Section 31?"

Cartwright regained a bit of his smile.

"Roger Korby."

"BROCK..."

"More properly, a machine that looks and talks exactly like Doctor Roger Korby. He took 31 over some years ago--and he has since staffed it with a like membership."

Nogura felt his stomach lining dissolve.

"You mean to say that all of Section 31's agents are Exoite-model androids?"

Cartwright looked at his superior, and seemed ready to make a quip like, 'But They're Good People'. Instead, he kept on.

"Your next question...sir?"

Nogura appeared to hesitate for the first time.

"Yes, well. Okay. The Gorn Decimation. Was the plague artificially created, and who was behind it?"

All through the past year, Gorn by the billions had fallen to a mysterious disease. 'Decimation' was nearly literally correct. Less than ten percent of the Gorn once known to live in the galaxy were still alive--and some of those were not yet clear of the mystery plague.

"Yes, Admiral. The plague was artificial. And I should know. It was created under my orders, and placed near one of their slimy recreation spots. Since all of you seemed content to let the ghosts of Cestus Three cry futilely in Purgatory--we of the True Starfleet decided to act."

Nogura nearly grabbed at his chest, but stopped. His look was one of salt and fury.

"Its not the Gorn we're even talking about. You don't give a damn about Cestus Three."

The Grand Admiral pointed.

"Its God's own work you're undoing!!"

Cartwright fully regained his smile.

"Whose god are we discussing, Admiral? Because yours does not dwell here. But let's not talk shop. I believe you had one final question."

Nogura was seething with rage, as one might well expect.

"Do you of The Hall know who killed Brianna and Peter Kirk?"

Cartwright sighed. He called to his top aide, ironically already an Admiral. But she wouldn't outrank him for much longer. She walked into the office.

"Teresa, show Admiral Nogura everything we have on Peter Kirk. Including the--materiel--kept in our secret chambers. Give him full access."

Nogura got up, perhaps feeling his ultimate payoff was at hand. He looked relaxed.

"Hold anything back on me, Cartwright, and it all comes down."

"When you're right, Admiral--you're right."

On monitors, Brock saw Nogura descend through the Hall's layers, until the bottom-most chamber was reached. When Nogura finally reached the chamber where a young boy was kept in cryo, Cartwright cancelled the audio mute and fairly bathed in the sounds of Heichiaro's screams. The boy was his own godson, the galaxy's poor lost child, Peter Kirk of Deneva Three, the fabled Rock Of Prophecy meant to slay the beast worshipped by Cartwright's Order. But Cartwright and his fellows had used him in more ways than one, including to contact and attract the legendary monster King Ghidorah.

"Like what you see, Admiral? Was my answer straightforward enough?"

An hour later, Teresa Bunson stripped the tunic from a foolish old man who believed he could control and harness the forces of evil to maintain a balance. In fact, all that had been maintained was The Order. Brock saw that Nogura had grabbed his chest for real, this time. This last time.

"Your designated heir thanks you, Grand Admiral Nogura."

---------------------------------------------

USS ENTERPRISE, THREE DAYS LATER

Watching the carefully-crafted forgery vid of the late Heichiaro Nogura's last will and testament sign off, the senior staff of the Enterprise were frankly stunned.

"Vwell, they have finally done it. The Head Cossack just got himself named Tsar, vwithout ever having been tsarevitch."

"Och! I tol' Nogura to his face. Ye cannae throw red meat to such animals and somehow ken that they'll want less as a result. They'll target the Council next, mark me well!"

"Remember what I said about Gary Mitchell's power and the pile of pennies? Well, the Hall's been working with dimes. The Commodity, on the other hand, couldn't rub together a haypenny. Our careers from this point on just went from fresh Caesar's Salad to spoiled cole slaw."

"You're both wrong. Its not the Commodity, the Council or ourselves that have to worry. They'll want to consolidate their power, and you don't have to be be a doctor to see they'll go for the cradle first. I wouldn't want to be a Cadet at the Academy under that bunch."

"Its not that good a forgery. As a comm-systems expert, I can tell it’s a phony. But in court? You can't use intuition and the feel of experience in court. Not when I'd be countered by all of their experts. Those monsters wanted certain of us to know that they'd seized power. To know, and to be unable to do a damned thing about it."

"Logic says that the residents of Admiralty Hall expect a sea change in the next decade or so. Some event so cataclysmic, their unsustainable reaches for power will be rendered permanent. What logic, context clues, or even intuition fail to suggest is what this even could possibly be. Yet their tactics seem certain to eventually provoke revolt among the members of Starfleet. They have shown that they are not without intelligence. So what has changed? Captain, while we have been 'at war' with Admiralty Hall for quite some time, their brazenness makes me believe that we have fallen into a whole new war."

Kirk thought hard about just who was now running the institution he had given his life to, even over love and family. He felt numb.

"That's for those of us who were tired of the old war."

2284 - Planet X, somewhere between Pluto and the Wolf Express Route, Sector 001

On his knees on the floor of a lab on the mythical tenth planet of Sol, Grand Admiral Brock Cartwright, Master Of The Terran Order Of The Ancient Destroyer, and Ghidorah's Fourth Head, to hear him tell it, was dying of wounds so hideous, his life would end quite literally with his next breath.

The life he was about to lose moved apace before his eyes. It was a life spent in denial. He mused how his father hadn't chosen Starfleet over his family, and then an unclean Alpha Centauran over Brock's own mother. How his mother hadn't gone further into insanity as a result, using Brock as a physical as well as a mental companion. He smiled inwardly, for surely an uppity cadet named James Kirk had never challenged him, and inspired loyal Order-member Finnegan to leave their circle?

Yes, he was doing fine. He had no wounds, surely. And just as surely, that second Kirk in Starfleet failed to rise in rank, just like his father? And hadn't all the filthy alien-lovers failed to prevent Brock's own accession to Grand Admiral? Wasn't it true that Peter Kirk had never escaped captivity, leading a campaign against Admiralty Hall? Yes, surely the brat was still in cryo, which meant no one had just blown up the Hall, forcing Brock to flee to Planet Ten?

Hadn't he kept the stain of the alien from overruning UFP culture? Surely, everyone saw that.

But now came that last breath. Peter Kirk grimly commented as a Cartwright multi-furcating into literal ribbons of flesh, sinew and bone-mass. The champion behind Cartwright felt no joy at all this.

"As you ascend, Admiral--treat people on your way up with courtesy, dignity and kindness."

The Rock Of Prophecy used his power to erase the viscera from existence.

"For these will be the same people you meet again--on your way down."

This concludes the tale of the rise and fall of Brock Cartwright, a man, who, for all his supposed power, died alone and largely unmourned. His crime was perhaps the ultimate one. For God had shown him the wonders of creation, and instead of being awed, Brock Cartwright had sought to 'cleanse' it all.

For one can never, without aid, ascend above the unclean things that dwell in our own hearts.