The Last Days of Atlantis, Island Outpost of the Empire of the Gods

"That way, when we leave, we’ll be able to disappear from this planet without leaving a trace of ourselves behind. No one on this world will ever know we were here." Isn’t that perfect? Aren’t I clever? His ensuing smile asked her. Alessia tried not to smile back for fear she would look every bit as silly as he did. But most of all she tried hard not to react because she had a huge crush on Kiel, and she wasn’t about to let him know about it. So far that had been easy. Kiel was pretty oblivious with regards to women, for all of his rational intelligence, insight, and perceptive ability.

And besides, what could she say at the moment to change his mind? They were all dreadfully bored, and "hey, let’s build a new civilization" was always a fun game for all-but-gods to play.

* * * * *

At this point, it might be expedient to point out that Hinev, the greatest scientist in the entire universe (and in fact the next one over) had not stopped at pursuing the mythical fountain of youth in hopes of staving off middle age. He had nothing short of mastering immortality on his mind, and after trial and error and a whole lot of failure with experimentation in his dark subterranean lab, he had at last mastered the secrets of immortality and come up with an elixir that he named after himself: Hinev’s serum. (Never mind that this magic goo worked on only a small percentage of test subjects, thirty-one exactly, and eventually showed nasty side effects on the other test subjects. Never mind that Hinev himself eventually developed a multi-personality disorder, went mad, and destroyed his own magic goo. For that, like I say, is another story.)

Suffice it to say that during Hinev’s quest for immortality, he had also discovered how to manipulate his environment using such paltry little tricks as telekinesis and telepathy. And was it so very strange that he had discovered the biological keys to these secret powers? After all, Hinev was one of the rare breed known as proto-telepaths (born partly telepathic), but maybe that was how he ended up being the greatest scientist in all of the universe (and not at all afraid of admitting it.) Last of all Hinev figured out "the veil", a kind of matter manipulation power that allowed his immortals to transform their outward appearances, and even their inner biochemical structure, into whatever they wanted.

So, what this boils down to is that Captain Kiel and his indefatigable-omnipotent crew had the power and ability to subjugate a small, defenseless planet if they wanted. Thankfully (for us), that objective wasn’t on their minds as they took one of their smaller space shuttles down to the planet below and stepped out for a look about the new homestead.

No, the explorers just wanted to have a little fun and stretch their legs. And it was going to be so much fun enlightening the local yokels a little bit on the wider ways of the big bad universe.

For lack of a better word, Kiel and his crew then named the main island of the chain of islands where they had landed just plain "Atlantis", after the TATMC logo on Wen-eil’s high-tech mapping compass, made by The Atlantis Terrestrial Mapping Corporation, Inc.

"Whey, Wen-eil, where’s your Atlantis?" Onracey had teased Wen-eil when he tripped over a root and the thing fell into a random spring and was momentarily lost.