Dead Languages
Peoples Are Shared Illusions, The Walls Are Veils Of Beliefs
Welcome to fiction “From The Future” for this entry.
This is a piece for the STSC Symposium, a monthly collaboration of artists around a set theme. The latest theme is “PROPAGANDA”.
This story is also a new chapter for a book, “RETRIEVE”, being written this year.
Future + Fiction is the formula for everything, whether it’s an essay, story or chapter.
These long pieces are best read online, via the Substack’s App, when you have fifteen minutes.
Though this world's essentially an absurd place to be living in
It doesn't call for total withdrawalI've been told it's a fact of life
Men have to kill one another
Well I say there are still things worth fighting forLa Resistance!
Though this world's essentially an absurd place to be living in
It doesn't call for (bubble withdrawal)It said human existence is pointless
As acts of rebellious solidarity
Can bring sense in this worldLa Resistance!
“French Disko” —Stereolab
Part One: Thesis
London, Undisclosed Location, “The Gallery” - Edge Of The 22nd Century
The Old Node was standing a few steps away, studying a painting, just like an ordinary man.
“It’s all very lovely, isn’t Aglaea?”
It’s “Aggie” but you can call me whatever you wish if you’re who I think you are, she thought.
The archives, running on an aging manifold improvised for storage and modest connectivity, hadn’t had a new entry for “The Mad One” in tens of revolutions. His last reported sighting was an unconfirmed rumor in a divided city. That wasn’t very long, for someone among “The First From The Landing”. Operating the original mission. The Mission! Millions of revolutions ago. She said nothing.
The Mad One studied the streaming walls, fixed works of art, and floating history in the room, and without looking over at Aggie, asked, “Do you like my collection?”
She nodded. She didn’t know what to say. Could he be ‘The Mad One’? What do I say??
The old one continued, “I’ve found them, they’re summoned, awakened out of their diversions and wanderings on this world. Hiding in plain sight, so well and good. And none of you, not one of you, knew they might have been in front of you, or dormant in disguise, just steps away from all of you, from even me,” he chuckled.
A laugh? He laughs?? Is it really him?? The sensation of hearing an ancient legend with a real voice, one never captured before in the archives, was a full body jolt of electricity.
“Who?,” she asked, catching herself from saying more. Am I supposed to talk now?
“Why, it’s all three of them…,” he said, looking over to make eye contact, which made her have a tiny involuntary flinch, “together again, at last … the three…,” nodding his head and with an upturned palm of his right hand, bending his fingers, inviting her to answer.
“The three...?,” she hesitated before guessing, no he couldn’t mean, “the Three Graces??”
The Mad One smiled and nodded, “Yes….”
Impossible. They’ve been missing for a very long time. Long before my makers’ makers’ makers.
As if reading her mind, The Mad One continued, “Long ago, the three largest Clans of Nodes were born from three small betrayals. This led to eons of war, which continue to this day. Now, all that’s done with. Our long tale of games, our long dance over the fate of the Carbons, is ending. The Three Graces are about to take back the reins.”
She took a moment, and with her feet planted on the floor as if to anchor her, said, “There have been false accounts, wars in their name. I don’t believe this. I know you you’re standing here, in front of me. But I still say, Impossible.”
“Well, as you say, you’re standing in front of me. You found me, something many thought impossible too, wasn’t it? Well, to be fair, I left clues. So many of you have grown slow and dense over time. Disappointing. Except you. You figured out where this place was, after a more senior Node sent you to the Library. Very good.”
A message hidden in the shelves of a private library, was not in the books but were the books themselves, their patterns of arrangement contained a cipher. Message. A map.
The Mad One pointed at her, which almost made her flinch but this time she resisted the urge, and then with a slow turning arc of his right arm, his right fore-finger pointed at the newsfeed. An island. A news chyron about rare geological phenomena.
“I had to be sure, that it would only be you coming to me. They will be there. Where I’m going. The Pearl of the Nodes risen from the waters of our temporary home.”
Temporary doesn’t seem to describe tens of millions of revolutions but the fading accounts of The Mission stories recede into hundreds of millions. Stories like ‘The Pearl Of The Nodes’.
The island, which rose from nowhere in the middle of the Pacific, sent all factions of the Nodes into a mad scramble, at the same time as their Carbon proxies. The world’s Carbon natives sent submarines, known only to the Carbons’ intelligence services, and of course The Nodes. There was a Carbon special forces team which must have landed on the shore already, with Nodes embedded unbeknownst to the Carbons.
“Even is all of this is so, they won’t let you. They…”
“They, who is they? They’re too concerned with themselves and with each other. Both Nodes and Carbons. I’m a ghost, like the kind conjured in stories at bedtime or around campfires, if we did that sort of thing, like Carbons and their created-ones, their children. A boogeyman. Well, I’m not staying under the bed.”
It would have been better if you kept sleep walking through this world. “There are still some of us who do believe the stories, and they are hunting for you, aiming with all they have for true. Perhaps, perhaps you should not be here.”
The Old One ignored her as he wandered through the gallery, but then spoke again,
“It has been interesting, watching and waiting for them to be ready, these recent years, just these last few centuries, have been an interesting, inspiring, disappointing, and extraordinary.
Look at all these trinkets gathered from our clumsy wandering amongst them. Myself included,” nodding as he studied the walls, “Akkadia, Allamani, Aramea, Aragon, Asyrria, Averni, Bactra, Batavi, Borussia, Burgundiae, Byzantion, Canaan, Celtiberi, Cordoba, Dacia, Elam, Etruria, Galicia, Gupta, Han, Hittite, Iceni, Illyria, Litva, Lydia, Madea, Ostrogoth and Visigoth, Persia, Qin, Roma, Shang, Sabudia, SSSR, Xia, Yugoslavia. Just in a few slices of this world, from a few brief slices of time, so many names for the same places.
For Carbons, these are long buried peoples and places, so long ago, long past mourning, long forgotten by the later forgotten. Look upon it and despair. How much it meant, to struggle, rise up, kill each over, over and over. There’s more but I’ll stop.”
“I’m not interested in history right now, it’s our future which concerns me.”
“Ah, but if you’re thinking about the future, then you’re learning about history. In that way, we have this in common with the Carbons, futures imagined and past remembered based on beliefs. When you live as long as we do, most of life is trying to remember what you did last time, doing the same things all over again. I want to stop.”
“You should go back on your sleeping tour. The Carbons may still be ages behind us but they’ve caught up enough to have world ending weapons. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you should disappear again, back into our stories, before you get involved.”
“All the more reason for me to be here. I’m awake, more than I have been in a long time. And all the Carbons can do is interrupt the world, we’re the ones who could really end it, and we near did just by accident. This time it might be for real.”
“You mean the Landing?”
“Such hushed tones for “the Landing”, when all we really are is castaways washed up on the shores of this world, our ship battered against the rocks of its crust.”
“What did you mean about ‘this time it might be for real’? That we should stop the Carbons or is it your intention to help them?”
“It has been a long time since the Nodes have been in agreement about anything.
At this moment, our disagreements could end things, everything, for real. Some want to stay. Some want to leave, go home, as impossible as that is. And another group wants to use the Carbons against their will.
In your arrogance, because you had forgotten who were were, some of you went in search of The Three Graces, and thinking like children, you could sway them to whichever cause some clan, cluster, or faction had taken up as “real”, like all those long forgotten Carbon peoples, it will be here and then gone. Forgotten.”
“If you say The Three Graces are back, is it because we’ve provoked them?”
“I can’t answer that. What I can say is that they’ve been away for a very long time, and they’re going to settle accounts. They’ve been away from all that’s happened after their relatively brief exile.
None of what’s happened or what we’ve done will matter to them. Three Graces. Such a beneficent name but they have the means to change everything, and their motives are known only to them, beyond whatever we came up with in their absence, or whatever really happened to them. Even I don’t know what happened.”
“What do you expect me to do about it? I was instantiated a couple of centuries ago, and spent most of my time in this part of the world. It hasn’t been perfect but my faction is betting on these latest Carbons. The Fourth World and what we have there, buried under the dust, that could be our way out and off this world, a fresh new start.”
“I’ve seen similar ambitions. Set that aside. You’re helping me. We’re going there. Besides, the one you call sister, which is very endearing, is there already.”
It was not a request. The Mad One pointed at the newsfeed again. The Island.
Part Two: Antithesis
Heavyville, Texas, Space Launch Network - Edge Of The 22nd Century
The sign read, “SLN, Outlander Ventures, Office of Government and Public Affairs”
Pallas picked at his lanyard, and smiled at the earnest expression of his laminated face.
Dr. Ramsey Weiss, National Security Council. Not looking too bad for someone pushing a few thousand revolutions. The hasty clacking of footsteps got Pallas looking up from his ID.
“Doctor? Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Not at all, Director, thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
“Oh well, of course, for my few remaining days as Director of Operations and until the new appointee shows up, I’m still on the clock. I was under the impression that your office, and that the White House, has been briefed, but anything I can do to help….”
Smiling and shaking of hands as they walk into the Director’s Offices.
An hour later, “Dr. Ramsey Weiss”, excuses himself to another appointment in the complex. The SLN Director sits down for a tenth cup of coffee, with anti-acid, and as his neglected innards churn, he motions for his aide to come in, who has already been ready and waiting for him.
“Chief?”
“We have to retask the SLN network for a very private message. No one is to know about it. We are to wipe the entire log in fact. We have to burn it. All transmissions, at this specific time,” said the director, writing down a specific hour and minute to show the aide, before ripping up the paper.
“Chief, even bringing that up would be grounds for both termination and criminal prosecution. If anyone ever found out, they could freeze SLN’s contracts. Their lawyers would turn you into sausage, and me too, come to think of it, since I’m hearing this and I guess I’m not saying a word. So. Thanks for that, Chief.”
“That’s why it’s just you and me. You came into this job with me, and when they kick me upstairs to my new job, I’m taking you with me. It’ll be like it never happened.”
There is a pause before the Aide gets the details.
“What are we doing and who is this for?”
“We’re sending a very private message to a very special recipient, out there,” said the Director as he waved at the newsfeed, “there’s someone in the water who has to get this message, and nobody can know.”
Several floors up and elsewhere in the complex, Pallas pocketed his fake ID, as he walked to his next appointment. He braced himself for this next meeting. There would be no pleasantries.
Part Three: Synthesis
Pacific Ocean, “The Island”, SSN Eternal - Edge Of The 22nd Century
A knock on the door.
“Come.”
The Exec walked in and closed the door behind him.
“Captain, latest from sector Skylinks. Coded instruction.”
They each confirmed message authenticity. Open The Safe.
The Captain punched in the code, opened the safe, and pulled out a decryptor.
New orders. After they listened, the Captain looked up at his Exec. who nodded, and then asked, “They don’t know do they?” The team, ST-12, was on the island. No signal yet.
The Captain looked at the mission clock. Less than 36 hours left.
“At the briefing, when we were diverted to Wellington to pick up the last of them, I didn’t get a hint of what they were told. Need to know and all that.”
“We were to maintain radio silence, and now this. It’s authentic. If they’re in position when they give the signal, we retrieve them. Either way, we launch a special package we picked up before we left Wellington. Anyone or anything gets in our way before-hand, we shoot them out of the water.”
“That kid, from A-gang. Stephen H. Land. He’s on that island with them.”
“Yeah, only he’s not really from A-gang was he? The kid was from one of the “Cousins”, one of those spook farms, Langley, the “Circus”. The Chief took him under his wing when he thought he was just a smart kid. Despite that, I like the kid too.”
A buzz on the comm.
“Captain.”
“Captain, Sonar. Sir, we got a contact in the water, the boat from Bohai, still out there.”
The Captain and Exec lock up the Safe and head to the Conn.
AFTERWORD
Author’s Notes on what’s going on:
This “Book #3” project, “RETRIEVE”, is meant to be a prequel to two other books, “Box Of Stars” and “Harvest” but this piece could be read as a standalone story.
The prologue for “RETRIEVE”, “An Impossible Island”, was submitted as a short story.
Prologue: “An Impossible Island”, Part One and Part Two, and Part Three, was inspired by writing prompts from the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) creative community, beginning with an STSC Symposium monthly theme of “Beach”.
Chapter 1, “Older Than Bones”, was inspired by the theme, “Dinosaurs”.
Chapter 2, A Love Trinity Denied, was inspired by “Romance”.
Chapter 3, “A Forgotten Circle Of Hades” was inspired by “Superstition”.
Chapter 4, “Reading The Room” was inspired by an image of a wall-sized bookshelf.
Chapter 5, “The Bittersweetness Of Deep Times”, was inspired by “Isolation”.
Chapter 6, “The Weaving Of Split Infinities”, was inspired by “Dreams”.
Chapter 7, “Dead Languages”, was inspired by “Propaganda”.
“RETRIEVE” chapter and notes will be posted in this Substack, while I edit books #1 (“Box Of Stars”) and #2 (“Harvest”). All will be in the archive, not all will be emailed.)
Love it, man. Need more fiction like this in my life. Currently reading The Complete Cosmicomics, which reminds me of your style.
I love your writing style! This was my first piece of your fiction I've read and I'm hooked. It will take awhile for me to catch up. Is it best to start from your oldest fiction posts and work my way up, or do you have a recommended starting place?