╨╧рб▒с>■  8:■   7                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ье┴G ┐а.bjbjО┘О┘ <ь│ь│а*      ]ТТТТТТТжжжжж ▓ж╢┌┌┌┌┌┌┌┌╠╬╬╬╬╬╬$╜Ї▒zЄТ┌┌┌┌┌ЄZТТ┌┌┌ZZZ┌*Т┌Т┌╠жжТТТТ┌╠ZrZ╠ТТ╠┌╬ `─╩ОЪЇ├жжV╠ УNatal Convergence!Ф Rebuffed once again by the hostile home planet, the return to base for the Argo IV starmen was not as joyous as it might have been, if only they had gathered more encouraging results than a box of strange, highly colored УtabletsФ--messages and pictographs impressed on a strange, dried animal skin by a bygone people who, apparently, left nothing else behind to say they had once trod the fair Earth as the living beings. Everyone had hoped for much more--need anyone say it? Immigration to Earth the mother planet? Now they would have to go on as they had--wanderers in space (though the climate-controlled, geo-domed base was comfortable and looked planet-based, to be sure, even though УhomeФ was a lifeless, Jupiter-sized leviathan of rock and heavy metals orbiting a giant orange star). In any case, they felt themselves wanderers, pathetic Ethan Allens, citizens without a country, doomed to spend their lives at sea, never allowed to make a landing. No matter how comfortable and culturally meaningful they had made their base, it lacked the feeling of Уhome.Ф Either you felt at home, or you didnТt. They simply couldnТt manufacture УhomeФ on an alien planet though their activities were all organized in doing just that: endless re-creating one culture after another to keep Уculturally-challengedФ--that is, alive, with a purpose to live. It helped dull the edge of great disappointment that on return there was much work to be done--de-commissioning the ship, finishing and turning over of reports to review boards, de-contamination, de-briefing, all the routine Уde-ТsФ must be done properly and in order, lest something go awry. This process lasted a year and even then was not being satisfactorily concluded. Why? the civilian in charge over expeditions wanted to know? Why were the star-voyagers still keeping to the ship and delaying, giving him specious excuses day after day why they had to review the data? What particular data? What on earth could be so significant that they could not rejoin their anxiously waiting families and friends, not to mention their fellow star-service people, so that they might review some data that ought to have been turned over to the central computer months ago? The data can be recorded, but, humanly speaking, it does not compute. It is a Welsh bard, A French philosopher-archeologist, and an English poet speaking from the dust of a long vanished world of a piercingly sweet, joyous Birth that was a bitter, agonizing death for the wise, an Уuncontrollable Mystery on the bestial floorФ that sought to make God a human being, and ultimately the worldТs consummating Pleroma--the fulfillment of all human destiny in a climax of magnificence, joy, and terror that exceeded all human expectation, hopes, and fears. Having lost all knowledge of the Nativity of Christ, the colony will be confronted with something they had not even imagined--the Birth of God as a man in the midst of the human family! What can they do with this evidence? The entire fabric of their society seems to have unraveled. Can their life ever be resumed on the old foundations? No wonder, the men hesitate to come out of the ship with this news. Deciding their Уnational securityФ is at stake, they decide it is best not to reveal what they have found. They concoct an excuse for their delay, then make it public, along with the УsafeФ data. As for the suppressed archive, it is put in a time capsule and sent to the 11th thousandth century, just to make certain it will never cause trouble. Who could reasonably expect there would be any colony left after so much time? The ruse worked. The time capsule was left alone, then forgotten, buried in various alterations of the colony beneath the foundations of numerous building and remodeling projects. Many thousands of years passed. Hundreds of thousands of years passed, in fact. A million and more years pass. Though eleven thousand centuries is only a grain of sand in timeТs hourglass, the Alpha Centaurii, despite fabulous technology, are in their last gasp as a civilization since their star and planetary system is about to enter a terminal nova stage. A decision has been made. They are not leaving just to save themselves. Wandering the Universe is so unwelcome a thought, that they prefer to remain and experience whatever is coming rather than suffer what their forebears suffered in times past. Yet the light dawns in their darkness. The dread Secret of the УIra Sulkowsky ArchiveФ and its УChristmas FactorФ held so long, now is revealed when the archive is discovered in a new building site just as all the records of the colony are being reviewed and burned in preparation for the final end. The news explodes in the colony like dynamite. A Savior, a God-Man, a Prince of Peace, a King of Kings, a Lord of lords, the A and the Z, and--as a conclusion, the indescribable УPleromaФ first glimpsed by St. John the Divine, and later by the priest-mystic, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Lakota seer-painter, Ira Sulkowsky? Painting after painting, analyzed and transcribed for every possible meaning and nuance, only reinforces the truth that the Alpha Centaurii have missed the whole point somehow--there is a ocean of truth, beauty, and, above all, Mystery, lying beyond their colonyТs perimeters, if they can only break out and grasp what is there. Like a tiny spark that ignites a fire that engulfs an entire forest, this news revolutionizes everything, starting with the lives of two hopelessly, bitterly estranged sisters who are playing roles in two widely separated productions of the on-going CCRP, a program that seeks to enhance the cultural vitality of the Acs and keep the colony from fatal stagnation. But now with the unearthing of the archive holding the УChristmas Factor,Ф the AC colonyТs ingenious calibrated political dyarchy, a governing system based on parity established between the religious monks on one side and the mechanist-secularists on the other, is suddenly superseded by a new paradigm, an entirely new mindset, game, and gameboard. The colony, with no reason to go on existing, forever playing out the same political strategies to maintain power while building an endless series of Уculturally challenging У habitats for the colony to cope with, has suddenly found genuine new life--the true УApproach of the New World.Ф. Abandoning the old life, the people decide to risk everything and make a final search for Earth. They must find her, and go and worship this Magnum Mysterium at the place of its original inception, if they can still locate it. No one wants to be left behind. Everybody wants to go. So a gigantic spacecraft is built that contains a billion Alpha Centaurii is constructed, taking every last bit of building material, stripping the entire colony of its infrastructure and buildings until the geo-dome is left a hollow shell enclosing the starship as its hangar. So far, so good, except that they have embarked upon the dreaded УWhite MartyrdomФ of exiles. What happens next explodes every expectation. Confronting them with seemingly annihilation, they are intercepted by a messenger sent by the Pleroma-Maker Himself--an extravaganza that looked to their eyes like a single, impossibly huge killer comet to begin with, but dividing and spreading across the galaxies with incredible speed and size. A comet undergoing a self-destructive nova? This defies all known astrophysics! Are they going to be burned up? Or entertained? It is not apparent that they can escape either fate. Their future forever taken out of their own hands, the helpless ACs--the lost tribe of humanity--watch the universal event unfold, their ARGO mother ship speeding into the heart of the consuming cataclysm. But as the light engulfs them in indescribable beauty and splendor, they find they are gazing at what could only be a ShepherdТs Crooked Staff and a living Christmas Tree, singing and proclaiming the MessiahТs birth with innumerable massed voices and faces shining like dazzling lights from top to bottom. Everyone, from Captain Stuartt DuPlessis on down to the humblest mechanic in the maintenance services, saw the convergence of the initial Фcomet-thingФ with their ship happening before their astonished and terrified eyes. Then they watched with even more terror and surprise the unfolding of a greater display of cosmic anomalies--the Crook of a shepherd, attended by a great Tree of Stars, all singing lustily away! The colonyТs governing, civilian Administrative Board, which had been converted for the voyage into a phlanx of admirals, stood before the wide screen of the bridge reserved for the Admiralty, and they could not come to a decision, whether to attack, or flee, or simply stand at anchor. But a non-decision is a decision, and the mother ship continued to fly straight into the face, the Z-point, of the two linked anomalies. The billion odd passengers aboard the last ARGO might have included several who saw cause in this extremity to ask whether the herald of the Parousia and the УChristmas FactorФ Ira Sulkowsky, had to say on the matter, but they were asking, no one in charge of the shipТs navigation was listening. Uncontrollable light and radiance and music engulfed the vessel. The Crook and the Tree, however, passed just as it looked like the collision would be fatal, and immediately the ARGO was attached to the CrookТs tail as it spun out into a long, segmented train of what appeared to be star system after star system. At the same time, the front of the cherry-red star-train turned and sped back upon the caboose, as if to show to the people--the billion transfixed Alpha Centaurii--all the passengers who had got safely on before them! At the same time another train appeared, for strangely enough, initially there had been two trains for the passengers to choose to travel on. Which train would they choose? Or had they already decided, when they boarded the ARGO to seek out the place of ChristТs Birth? One train, when it was close enough to see it, passed through something that appeared to be a gigantic golden arch spanning all space and time. And beyond the arch lay the outlying domains of an indescribable paradise. The other? For it and its passengers there was nothing but a plunge into whirling darkness that, like the happier place, would never end. Children of light, children of darkness, there had to be parting, and after that there was peace and the beating into plowshares of all swords from the great War of Heaven and Earth Л$П$Р$а.·°·Ї5БCJ(6Б 5Б6БCJ(╠4К  ╧ ;Э╧Т╫─!┼!╞!╟!╚!╔!╩!╦!╠!═!╬!╧!╨!╤!¤¤¤¤·························$╠4К  ╧ ;Э╧ ╤!╥!╙!╘!╒!╓!╫!╪!┘!┌!█!▄!К$Л$╣%!)Р)ў)],■-Р.С.Т.У.Ф.Х.Ц.Ч.Ш.Щ.№№№№№№№№№№№№№················$Щ.Ъ.Ы.Ь.Э.Ю.Я.а.¤¤¤¤¤¤¤░╨/ ░р=!░"░#Ра$Ра%░ [$@ё $NormalmH <A@Є б<Default Paragraph Fontа*<    а.╤!Щ.а.╧koszЙПж н .7┤╗ "(<E╩╙ЖНbk/8№╧╓╖║ж н о ╖ г"й"|$Д$и$▒$''в*╫▐▌р ╟╠ПЪ╖╝ОЧ▐єЗ Н ╧ ╤ _ f > G r w ╧ ╘ `Ш/;ЛШ н┤6: ]e"&-Ыео┤FM3>Ьг▌сзнМУЇ · ╣!║!R"]"╦#╨#t${$R%a%Р%Ц%ў%·%╒&▌&Z'a'I(U(F)P)╛)╞)■)*в*   Ron Ginthes)C:\My Documents\losttribechron-4.html.doc @АЯ*Я*шA├Я*Я*а*А@GРЗ: Times New Roman5РАSymbol3&Р З: Arial"qИ╨hгБВ&жБВ&*%#J!е└┤┤А20(+   Natal Convergence Ron Ginthes Ron Ginthes■ ZрЕЯЄ∙OhлС+'│┘0hИРм╕╠╪ш № $ 0 <HPX`фУNatal ConvergenceNat Ron Gintheson Normalt Ron Ginthes1n Microsoft Word 8.0@╥Ik@┬bЪЇ├@ФмyЪЇ├*%#■ Z╒═╒Ь.УЧ+,∙оD╒═╒Ь.УЧ+,∙о@№ hp|ДМФ Ьдм┤ ╝ █ф lJ(+│  УNatal Convergence TitleШ 6> _PID_GUIDфAN{22371385-2731-43A7-9902-CE96BF28FC7B} ■    !"#$%&■   ()*+,-.■   0123456■   ¤   9■   ■   ■                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Root Entry         └F@#├ОЪЇ├ ь╙ОЪЇ├;А1Table        WordDocument        <SummaryInformation(    'DocumentSummaryInformation8            /CompObj            j                        ■                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           ■       └FMicrosoft Word Document MSWordDocWord.Document.8Ї9▓q