CETI ALPHA SYSTEM, 2282

As the rocks cut my hands ever more deeply, I ignore the pain, even though in this one instance, I truly feel it. Yet I must ascend the summit. Lucifer must climb back to Heaven this one last time.

I remember so many days of my incredible life. The day a five-year old was told who he was and why he was created. The day a fifteen-year old defeated a strong local ruler, and used the power he took to free a people from old shackles. The day a twenty-five-year old held the corrupt rulers of the oil-producing nations and forced them to watch as their children were auctioned off. The day a thirty-five-year old forced the only remaining superpower to remove its decimated, demoralized troops from those same countries, then beheaded his laughing ally on satellite TV, making the land of the Tigris and Euphrates the new ruler's first major conquest. The day that a forty-five-year old was literally heckled from power by of all things, an insolent surgeon from Maine.

 I can feel the air growing both hot and thin, contradictions aside. Is he actually capable of breathing in all the oxygen? But the climb is now all I have left. I must and will reach my goal.

But now I focus on other days. The awakening, and the greatest mistake I ever made. The presumption that my foe was an ordinary man. If I had just recognized who I really faced in Kirk, I could have taken him. The ultimate folly of the superior man is always to presume that not only does he have no equal, but that he may not even be approached. My beloved wife told me tales, after we were sent down to this place. A man like a god, buried under a mountain. A biblical plague in which Kirk did not hesitate to kill his own brother. The shattered boy left behind by it all--a boy who bested three grown men. I had heard tales of the Line, of course. Supposedly, when one of them was asked how strong he truly was, he challenged the questioner to a pebble-skipping contest. When he won, he answered by saying that he was strong enough to throw a pebble, when throwing a pebble was required of him. A vague statement, to be certain, but one any fool could decipher.

I have never allowed myself to waver. I will not allow it now. My life is done when I reach the top, in any event. But not a nanosecond before.

Another day of note came six months into our exile. Simeon, an astronomer and stellarist of immense natural talent, proclaimed loudly that certain cosmological events sighted through his telescope heavily indicated a major upheaval in this little system we now inhabited. Yet nothing occurred. Our planet did not explode. No nearby planets did. Simeon offered me his life, but why would I take it? I praised him for preparing us for a storm. That it never came was a whim of creation, not a failing on his part. Yet oddly, Simeon was in no way comforted by this. He commented that it was as though a cloudburst had been avoided, yet only so that a tsunami could replace it. How prescient he was. The building cosmic energies swirling in space he had become aware of were real. Yet some one or some--thing had taken them as their own. What was it that Orwell said? We may avoid 1984. But there is always 1985.

As I sight the yet-distant summit, my thoughts turn to a wholly unremarkable day, seven years ago. I was plowing. The ground is hard here, and it is the most menial, back-breaking work possible. Could I be a true leader and ask such a thing of anyone else? I plowed my way up a hill I had given up on til that very day. The hillside was still many months away from being at all usable, but I had broken it for the first time, and viewed all that we had wrought from that small remove. To my absolute bewilderment, I realized that I was happy. No legions shouted my name. No coinage bore my visage. The only plans I made were for plowing this and the next hillside over. Yet Kirk's Hell had become my Eden. Who was down there, below me? My wife, who chose to embrace me and all that I am. My followers, and their many children, undeniably of the best stock. Instead of shearing sheep and boiling mutton, all the while hoping another Kirk would pop up, I was in the perfect world. I could have spent many lifetimes conquering our universe, and yet never have the confidence and pride I did then. There are no lessers, no weaklings here. Unlike Alexander, the only world I would ever need to conquer was in the air I breathed. Unlike Charles Foster Kane, I would never have to put away my beloved toy. My creators saw me as an Adam, and like all those wretched old pulp stories, I had to leave Earth and all I knew and all I was to actually achieve this.

Marla and I began to have children, after that. Some barrier fell. I even named my second boy Jacob. How he would have resented my little joke, given time. Given time.

Today, I at last remember yesterday. I was plowing again, a treasured duty I reserved for myself for life. I plan to demolish every square inch of the Botany Bay as I make this land usable, so I have become accustomed to slamming the metal until the rocks give. Yet as I approached an odd large one, the freshly-built plow shattered. I stared up. The stone was no stone. It was the merest edge of a toenail. A toenail the size of Kirk's ship, that I can estimate. Three obscenities poked down beneath the clouds.

What a tragic thing for a poor fool such as myself to make Miltonian affectations, only to come face to faces with the true Devil. I had forgotten that in some literature, Lucifer was merely the rebel angels' general. In these stories, Satan was yet a se

te entity, and Lucifer faded before him like the Morningstar. Evil does not wish to be headed up by some poetry-spouting office seeker. It wants a beast. The Beast.

It as yet did nothing, so I withdrew. Again, how odd for a born warrior to simply walk away. But the thought of battling against a creature that would never notice my feeble efforts to unmake it shook me still further. How did it land unnoticed? How was it gone when I came back later, again unseen?  I chose not to seek the answers in these. They could not help me. I ordered a great feast be prepared. I made love to my wife. I held and played with my children. I fought with and praised my followers and friends.

The poison was quick and merciful. Let them die as the conquerors of this harsh world. I only spared myself because a ruler has no choice but to witness the kingdom's destruction. As I collapse in an exhausted heap atop the summit, I prop myself up and take a drink. It is noonday, though, I suspect, not for long. You see, I've reasoned out where the beast will strike. Where I would strike, if I had the power, and if my desire was only ruin. The sun goes dark. A creature the size of a small planet is hovering in front of it. Now, I actually see its sihlouhette. Let my eyes die first, staring at the wonder of a system's death. I wonder if my old friend will encounter this bit of cosmic mythology made flesh. Will he fare any better?

Three heads, two tails and wings mark off this dragon. The first head fires off craggy lightning. The second fires a thin, precise beam. The third fires off a large stream of energy that seems to shut the sun down. Drained of fuel, what does a star then become? Though burned and boiled in their sockets, my eyes still see the final light, and my ears hear my mouth and tongue form unbelievable words.

"You could not have known. I forgive you, Kirk