The Unveiling

Chapter Three: Religious evolutionary connections

A bright light flashed. Valerie instinctively shielded her eyes as a gush of warm air pelted her body. Dancing stars of every color replaced her vision, the kind produced if one squeezes one's eyes together too hard and too long. She started to get frightened and wondered if she and the kids had done the right thing by requesting that a Balazon show itself.

Soon the light display faded. When she dropped her hands, she saw a being that was semi-transparent, whitish-yellow, taller than an average human, with skinny body and extremities and long fingers. Its head was narrow and the face, though similar to a human's, had stumps for ears, slightly larger eyes and no hair. It also seemed to have female facial features.

Nick and Stephanie stared at the Balazon.

"My name is Acin-om," it said. "How may I assist you?"

Stunned and unable to speak, Valerie stared at the Balazon too for several seconds. Then she hypnotically said, "Please sit down."

"Thank you," Acin-om said and sat in a leather chair across from the couch.

All four were speechless. Even Nick seemed to be too overwhelmed for words.

After a while, Acin-om spoke. "I am neither female nor male."

"Um...what was that?" Valerie said as if snapping out of a daydream.

"I am neither female nor male. You were wondering what sex I was."

"Oh...I'm sorry." Valerie looked away, slightly embarrassed.

"No need to apologize. You simply do not understand my people cannot sexually reproduce. We can only duplicate ourselves by helping other beings evolve to a higher plane of existence. That is why we are so concerned for you humans. You are like our children, so to speak."

"Yes," Valerie said slowly, trying to remember the words Khur- ak had used. "I guess this mind implant of yours didn't work as well as you thought."

"No," Acin-om admitted. "People used their creative imaginations to add to what they sensed from the implant and developed all types of religious systems, everything from the ancient beliefs in the Egyptian, Roman, and Greek gods to the more modern philosophies of Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, and Sikhism. These religions are often violently opposed to each other. Others are extreme and cruel, even involving rape, torture, and burning of babies on altars."

"Are you saying Christianity is merely another human attempt at explaining God?" Valerie asked. She had never been a diehard believer anyway, but the thought was still a little disheartening—sort of like when she was younger and woke up to catch her mother putting a quarter under her pillow, glad she finally knew the truth about the tooth- fairy but sad her mother had lied. She would have preferred to remain ignorant until she had grown up and out of simple beliefs on her own.

"Not exactly," Acin-om countered. "Christianity is not merely a human invention, for we have expended a personal effort in creating it. We had to come up with some way to try and curtail your wild imaginations from totally corrupting what we were trying to do. So we decided to try to create a more vivid depiction of what God might be like if he did exist. We guided the development of a nation called Israel and inspired various individuals such as Moses to write down the Scriptures, giving more appropriate definitions of God, his laws, principles for living, and worship ceremonies."

"Wow!" Nick suddenly said. He had been uncharacteristically quiet for several minutes. "You inspired the Bible."

"Yes," Acin-om said. "We had hoped Israel would influence other nations to worship and obey the types of directives we had given them."