In the end, I would learn that the Rebirth Moon was not a common lunar occurrence but a rare cosmic event that had actually begun forty hours earlier not in Earth space, but on the surface of the sun. Over the course of seventy-two hours, four massive sun spots, each larger than Jupiter and roiling with intense magnetic activity, had formed and were drawn together, their unification igniting a star-shuddering expulsion of charged particles known as a “coronal mass ejection” or CME. This once-in-a-billion-year event spewed a tsunami wave of magnetically charged gas bubbles that raced toward Earth on the solar wind. Channeled toward the poles by Earth’s magnetic field, the titanic geomagnetic storm ignited brilliant curtains of aurora light from the Northern and Southern hemispheres clear to the equator, announcing a charged solar particle wave that swept down through the atmosphere—frying GOLEM’s electronic circuitry into a molten mass of goo.

The computer—assuming it had ever been alive—was functionally dead, bleeding out gallons of adenosine-triphosphate fluid and trillions of strands of DNA. My bio-chip was off-line, having escaped the charged solar particles by shutting down into a dormant state known as “hibernation mode.” There would still be superficial damage, just as there had been when I had been immersed in the cryogenic pod. It was impossible to predict when ABE would return.

The Hunter-Transports, having no such mode to escape the onslaught of magnetic forces, were permanently grounded, their transhuman pilots anchored to their vehicles in a state of paralysis. The aphaeresis machine draining the enslaved cephalopeds had been rendered inoperable, its freed prisoners staggering toward us like Auschwitz’s liberated—the stronger survivors supporting those too weak to move.

Beneath a lunar spotlight, Oscar took center stage, expelling a long staccato blast of his breathing organ. Goose bumps rose on my flesh when I heard the cadence—the sound identical to the blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

My father’s words spoke to me from long ago: “The sound of the shofar awakens something supernal within us, Robbie, connecting us to the Light of the Creator, removing our desire to receive for the self alone. On Rosh Hashanah, our consciousness returns to the state of Adam before the original sin—a transformation that reveals the true state of existence—that every soul in the universe is part of the unified whole.”

Oscar continued mixing blasts and breaks, summoning more cephalopeds to join him. The exhausted, tortured creatures linked tentacles, gaining strength from the pack.

To my surprise, they were joined by the children of GOLEM. Winged transhumans fluttered down from their treetop habitats. Genetically mutated versions of Andria, Lara, Monique, and Bella emerged from the forest. Infants and toddlers cried out for the first time, igniting long dormant maternal instincts among the adults.