Paths Forsaken
Fate Threaded Through the Eye of A Needle From Infinity
After shipwrecks and nightmares, follow far more shipbuilders and dreamers
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 “RISK”.
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.
After shipwrecks and nightmares, follow more shipbuilders and dreamers.
One Fate Threaded Through A Needle From Infinity.
One heading, changed by an infinitesimal notch, on an infinite journey.
Each embrace of one, becomes a rejection of the many.
Miami-Marseilles Simalcrum, Outlander Ventures Deep Works, Edge Of the 22nd Century
The sky was on a very slow-roll dimmer switch, turned from day to night.
An invisible sun marked a day’s sleep-mode, as slow warm angel-food-lemon light toasted into slow cool golden reddish tones with rose pink accents. A never-ending city-by-the-sea of an endless ocean turned on thousands of lights, as night awakened.
On the waterfront, there was flaneur-on-parade, punctuated by laughs about the avatars worn by weary upsiders, with their Atlantics spilling out of pockets, who bribed their way downverse through a chain of local locked SubVerses, to a sub-address of a Grey Verse, which was not a registered as an official realicrum.
A City which never existed upside in all of Carbon history stretched in all directions in a place that existed only for those who knew about it, one of many scattered across a secretverse in an unreachable mantle of the firmament of networks of the Carbons (and Nodes).
Water slapping soft against the shoreline, Riva launches to and from Yachts, it was real enough, and so was what was at stake, as was the worry about the take.
“Would never trade it all for the world. Never. This place was seeded by the Carbons, but then half-abandoned in a portfolio of trillions, a city grown in an electric petri dish. Elder Nodes visit, incognito, because it reminds them of their past. Our past.”
“We are here to discuss a trade for something more important the view.”
Pallas got off the lounge, stretched and yawned. He turned and motioned to his guest to get up too, “Let’s walk.”
“Yes, sorry. So, to business. Instead of a bounty, a/k/a bribe, to one reformed blackhat, a greyhat known among various circles by the nomen of Polytropon, whose Node aliases include Oduze Odysseus Kephalonia. In the future, the client surrenders claim to 10% in return for the remaining 90%. The aforementioned bounty is for retrieval.”
“This isn’t just a snatch job. This is about Conclaves of Nodes, of the three great factions, splinters, spinoffs, clans and clusters, of all the Landed and Longafters landed. Everyone wants the same things from these three Nodes. Everybody wants an edge, they want more. But this, this is everything. Whoever finds one of The Three Graces won’t stop until they find the other two.”
“It’s amazing, we’ve managed to get by on this world for as long as we have, and most of us still never learned that it was enough. I had enough a long time ago,” Pallas stopped to look at the sunset, as he leaned on a railing, “Do you know the story about me and Thalia? A longtime ago we put our hands in the dyes of the Carbons, after we assumed their forms, and then one day, pressed our dye-covered hands on a cave wall, and gave ourselves names. Our names changed over time but we we stayed the same.”
“That is dangerous even now, despite thousands of millennia, I knew some Elder Nodes considered you a violator and transgressor, “gone native”, living like a Carbon but able to hide it. Some wanted to contract me to find you but I made sure to be busy.”
Pallas smiled, and gave a small nod of thanks, “While I appreciate the professional courtesy it was because I was useful, and there was no sense of banishing me to stasis in a manifold, put on ice like those great beasts I hunted along with the Carbons.”
“Useful to both Nodes and whether they realized it or not, the Carbons too.”
“Exactly, I was at the ExComm meetings in D.C., when the real Miami, upverse of where we are, was moments away from Russian missiles on Cuban soil. They could have let their new deadly tools fly, and there were some among us who thought, let them, let them play the game and lose it all for nothing, for lines on maps, and words on paper the will mean nothing in a thousand years. You know what I did, when one faction sent a Node in to complicate things for the Carbons? Right in the middle of a blockade and all the rest? I made myself useful to both Carbons and Nodes, and took care of it.”
“Yes, according to friends, it was on your own initiative that you uncomplicated things, and that Node was never heard from since. These are of course rumors, and strangely, there are no accounts in the archives on any manifold of what really happened.”
“Yes, and ever since then, I have to watch my back, that was a gambit they played and they lost. They wanted to wipe the board clean by pushing the Carbons’ buttons, figurative and literal.”
Overhead, there were feeds of news from upstream, from the world above the Greyverse. An island that emerged from the middle of the ocean was like a stick poked into a dozen hornets’ nests. News chyrons reported unconfirmed reports of naval presence from the current powers that be. Outland Ventures was a player playing both sides of a new game. It saw no downside. Agents of all Node Factions had assets in the field and recruited proxies from among the Carbons.
“She’s on one of their submarines.”
“Thalia?”
Pallas nodded, “it’s part of a greater plan. That island sprouting from the ocean is the last part,” while looking at the newsfeeds of grainy b-roll of an island silhouette nodded, “The island was created by tectonic protocol nodes. It’s sitting on the “Ring of Fire”. The mission’s Planetary Infrastructure Primitives must have survived the Landing in hardy frag, in the impact ejecta. Dormant for millions of revolutions. Well, they’re awake now.”
“Is this why are we meeting here? The subterranean hosting for this realicrum is in the region, close enough.”
“In a way, yes. One of the Graces is here, in this city, and we're getting her out. Exfiltration, before another faction grabs her, or worse, burns her into half-memories for the manifold.”
“We'll find a body to host her. We need her.”
“Not that it matters, but why do you care? You live like a Carbon, and you could easy disappear with your skills. Leave all this behind… with Thalia perhaps.”
Pallas stopped, looked around, and pointed at a Riva, and smiled before talking again,
“From galactic cloud to cloud, galactic spiral to spiral, we wandered, never lingering. We learned what we could. Then, one day, a strange day with an impossible particle, and we’re castaways, on the shores of one world, trapped down “one well”. Until recently, that is. At that moment, our journey was mostly within ourselves. We changed, and became something new. But not everyone agreed, and war has been waged for thousands of years. It began the moment some of us recognized the potential of the beings, the Carbons, which we helped usher, by accident, into existence. Some of us want to use the Carbons to find a way back home. Others see another path, is for us to stay.
What’s the risk now? Changing back, and going back to where we came from, or staying on this path? What do we risk losing, not changing who, what, and where we were versus who we are and will be?”
“Some would accuse you of oversimplifying the situation.”
Pallas took the controls of the Riva and started the launch.
“Maybe I am. We oversimplify the world around us, of which we know but a slice, of a fraction, of a part, with our limitations. We dare to impose a personal order and chaos on everything and everyone around. Even if one were to live as long as the oldest of the oldest, they have only 1% of 1% of 1% to describe 99% of 99% of 99%.”
The guest shrugged, “The only percentages I thought we were here for was the job.”
Pallas with one hand on the wheel, raised the other to placate. The sound of the Riva cutting through the water of the endless Ocean in the Greyverse gave privacy to explain.
“I understand, down to business. The job. The job is exfiltration of a Grace, one of three, of the most important Nodes. Not since the series of events involving the reawakened Half-Nodes, known as the Three Fates, have we had a crisis. That island seems like the start of something but it’s the end, finally the end. With The Three Graces, we have an opportunity to settle this forever secret war among all Nodes.”
“I read your briefing. The Carbons have since developed new weapons in addition to the ones they brandished in 1962. If you’re going for a decisive win of one faction over another, it could trickle down to our Carbons proxies, and you’ll lose everything. They don’t know about our war, besides they have their own secret war they want to win. They launch everything they have pointed at each other. They could throw it all away for what they think they’ll get on that island.”
Pallas nodded, “Not the first time. To risk all, is to risk falling from paladin to pariah. One carbon I knew, in an earlier life, Marcus Licinius Crassus, was a Roman general, who helped break a republic into an empire. Overnight, he became the richest man in Rome, Syria became his private kingdom, the source of all his new wealth. You would think that was enough. No. For glory, he crossed the Euphrates for Parthia. Part of the First Triumvirate of the Romans, this “richest man” among them was felled by the Parthians at the Battle of Carrhae. For some, there is never enough gold to quench an endless thirst.”
“Do you have that too, a thirst?”
“Not to end the world for Carbons and Nodes alike.”
The Greyhat known as Polytropon, formerly Oduze Odysseus Kephalonia, leaned back in his seat, and asked, “What do you really need? Not just one Grace for you either is it?”
Pallas nodded, “You’re right. Truth is, I need help to retrieve all three of them. Alive.”
“It will cost. I worked for a long time to become a trusted third party by the top Elder Nodes of all Factions. At the last Conclave, they each tried to cut their own deals of course with me, and I made each faction pay, and none were satisfied in the end.”
“Fair enough, closest to the King, furthest from the Agora, gets the best deal. Let’s make this a sweeter deal. We’ll have three retrievals. 100% guarantee. Best part of this, is everybody will pay. All the Node Conclaves want them but no-one gets a monopoly.”
“This sounds like more deception, another “long con” from the infamous Pallas but as long as I get what I expected, then have it. I knew it, you’re grifting, playing sides against each other, very well, have at it.”
“There are two kinds of grifters in this world, those that deal in certainties, and those that trade in doubt. All I’m certain about is how beautiful this place is. What a view,” said Pallas, as he restarted the Riva, to take the Greyhat back to his yacht, “I’ll pick you up later, until then, have a great time.”
“Time is the one thing we don’t have a lot of, Pallas, if I understand the situation. It’s picking up speed. The Carbons deployed submarines, and much more for that island. They’re impatient and think in hours instead of centuries. They have no sense of patience, of real time, none of deep time.”
“There were Carbons that understood time. That knowing spread during the time of the watches. Time pieces were playthings of the rich, then work tools for workers.”
“What are you telling me, you’re talking about… watches….”
“They mastered coal and iron. They are really impressive. One moment, it was rocks in the ground, next they have steel. Steel for war, for peace, and the first machines, meant for both. Transportation. Trains. Trains was one of the reasons for their creation of standard time. The slicing of a day like a cake, and its slices were time zones. This changed work habits. This was the creche for a new kind of law, it turned the Carbons’ bimodal sleep into tranches of 8 hour slices, to squeeze out more from their short lifespans. A daily tithe of one-third of each day on average for sleep. It inspired a fetish for waking ever earlier to go to bed earlier, perhaps they will all sleep at noon and rise at midnight. Zulu hour.”
“Zulu…?”
“Zulu. For Z, the twenty-sixth letter of one of their alphabets.”
“Universal Time, also known as Greenwich Mean Time, GMT. Their world began to be squeezed under the weight of all those strands of connection, and there needed to be a tether, an anchor. An anchor was forged by the world’s prime maritime power, Great Britain. Speaking of “prime”, enter, the prime meridian, of “zero degrees” at Royal Greenwich Observatory. South-East London.
At midnight, the time is eight hours earlier in Los Angeles, where many of their ocean vessels, are housed. Clocks of the silent ones which swim beneath the surface, at departure from Los Angeles are recalibrated by their Quartermasters, across all those silent metal worldlets, to Zulu Hour. As in Z, and Zero hour.”
“Thalia is aboard one of those submarines, one of the Carbons’ silent ships. The one thing, the one being who matters to you. It’s clear that’s your only interest in all of this, and you put her in the middle of it. You could lose her. Is all of this worth it? This hunt to find the Three Graces, before any other Node does, is also a race to stop the Carbons from handing over this planet to us the moment they destroy themselves. Is it worth risking her in exchange for a fight that isn’t yours?”
Pallas was silent, as he waited for the Greyhat to board the yacht, and said only,
“We’ll know at Zulu hour, right?”
Pallas waved good-bye and headed for unknown waters.
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”.
Chapter 8, “Path Not Forsaken”, was inspired by “Risk”.
“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.)