Remembrance Of Things To Come
Remember Ahead With Minds Serene
Welcome to fiction “From The Future” for this entry.
Congratulations, you have stumbled on a work-in-progress, it will not be emailed. It will change. What you see right now, will not remain the same. It will change.
This is also a new drafted chapter for a novel, “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 App, when you have fifteen minutes.
“And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death
-William Wordsworth (excerpt, “She Was A Phantom Of Delight”)
Part 1
The race between visions
The Island
Time: Hour 28 of 48
A few hours before, the flight blasted off the tarmac. SLN resources helped wave off jets scrambled to escort the plane back. There were countermeasures on the jet but they had to get to the island in one piece. The Mad One, shared on-board snacks with Aglaea and told her old tall tales which were true. He wanted to calm her. She let him.
The Mad One wanted to distract Aglaea, who was sleepy but restless, "Here’s a trick, sleep and wake up facing the window, look through the window. Nightmares get harder to remember, they’re pushed down by the light and the view,” and nodded, “And who can blame anyone? Long nights of the soul, where heavy lifting in the mind is done, is not as fast and fun as one night stands with shiny new things.”
Aglaea raised an eyebrow. She was almost used to being in his presence, “it’s like outer space outside the window, how soon before we see the sun?”
“Ah well, soon, but despite where we’re headed, evening is deep time for the imagination. Imagination germinates into creation, of the future (!) but it needs help.”
A long time ago, in the Aegean, answers were found in the Caves, Caves of Memory. There, we’re not binge-watching shadows, we’re leaving messages.”
“What kind of message,” yawned Aglaea. Sleep at last for the poor young one, hoped Mentor.
“The oldest messages, maybe the only messages, we pay attention to. Attention, but it has to be bottled up. Story. Story is bottled in mythology, history, and whatever we say reality is. Our stories, even our myths, are messages.”
Aglaea’s eyelids were heavy but she asked, “who… who are the messages for…?”
The Mad One looked in an overhead compartment and found a blanket for Aglaea, and said, “Each other. People. By that I mean every sentient living being. But we left the caves behind and made open spaces to send messages to each other. The Agora. People were made for each other. We are the gathering places, the gathering places are us.”
Aglaea’s eyes were closed and she managed to whisper one last question, “what did they look like?”
The Mad One smiled, “The messages?”, as Aglaea gave a faint nod, “Long before the printed word, there was the image, the picture. Painted scenes reenacting our sense memory of sight. The galleries, like the one where you found me, or I found you, are made of them. Tens of thousands of years after I first began to keep watch over humanity, as the Enlightenment became Modern, it’s still all the same as cave paintings, speaking to those yet to be born. To you, and I hope everyone after you.”
Aglaea was fast asleep, her breathing was steady and soft. Good she needs some rest.
The Mad One closed his eyes and went over what he thought had to be done next. He touched the outside of sealed check pocket which held the key fob sized device which a kindred Elder handed to him at the same time he transferred responsibility for Aglaea’s safety to him.
Part 2
The imagined futures of what was
The Island
Time: Hour 29 of 48
The Visitor secured the two scabbards, to his tac-suit’s back mounting. He began to double-check the other pieces mounted to his suit, “Imagination leads to Creation which multiplies with Conversation. The Curate embraces the silence of the shelves, the Mad One speaks to no one and everyone, not caring if they listen. No.”
“That’s been the way of my Clan. We maintain the Long Conversation with future selves to create The Future. We believe without fail that there will be more ahead than behind us.”
The Visitor shook his head, “To date, the conversation has been between humans, even if it’s envy, rivalry, mimicry, or learned of half-truths, third-hand through a note passed by the left hand, while in the right, we create more. It’s a “game of telephone” from past to present and beyond.”
“Stories survive migration to new formats because they are the “base layer” underneath… streams of recorded enactments, of stage plays, which enacted and portrayed the words printed on books, transcribed words written by scribes, based on stories that were once told by custodians of memory, under the stars around the warmth of a hearth, on an ancient evening.”
The Visitor looked over at Pallas, and said,”Zhongi Quan”, one of Pallas’ lives, he was remembered by the Carbons as, “Zhongli Quan, one of the Eight Immortals, was a soldier who rose to become a general of the Emperor’s armies — he had a greater destiny. Zhongli toyed with the forces of the universe through alchemy and became immortal. He had the power of resurrection with the wave of a mystical fan, transmuted base metal and rock into gold and silver. His greatest act, however, was the enlightenment of Lu Dongbin. Lu thought himself destined for greatness as an Imperial Minister but Zhongli put Lu in a trance. Lu dreamed an entire life, a great rise but then a fall into exile, poverty and the murder of his children. Lu had dreamed of a long tragic life in just moments. He changed paths to become an Immortal. Zhongli Quan was an Immortal with the power to create: life from death, wealth from nothing and an alternate reality of decades in seconds. He had the power to create even greater Immortals.”
And for a time, even the Mad One was someone before “Mentor”, he was perhaps one of our greatest from among our numbers, he was “Prometheus” to the Carbons. You could say he could both “do” and “teach”, “Prometheus, last of the Titans — grandson of the Heavens and the Earth. He created Mankind. At first he used gold but then fused clay into flesh. He tricked the Gods out of the best of sacrificial feasts, so that man could eat. Seeing that mankind had no protection from the elements, he gave them the secret of fire. Although his name means “Thinks Before”, he was not prepared for the consequences. There is a price for changing the world.
The Gods unleashed Pandora to bring misfortune on man. They chained Prometheus to a rock. His liver would pecked out by a bird. Each time his liver grew back, the bird returned — for eons. But one day, one of humanity’s greatest sons, Hercules, would free Prometheus. This is how the future unfolds, when the present frees us from the past.”
“That last bit about the Prometheus losing his liver was The Curate along with a quorum of Elder Nodes, when more of us were around, getting him punished for a while, put on a “time out” in a Manifold for getting too involved with the natives and too helpful. He was irascible and had a habit for personas, beyond lives, when he later on became “Mentor”.
“Attention, two minute alert. Launchship re-entering atmosphere, beginning descent. SLN has secured air traffic. Regional security responses intercepted by SLN Traffic Control, out of Heavyville. Weather conditions mixed, storm front approaching the Island. Please secure for landing.”
The small beeps and lights blinked for re-entry.
Part 3
The realized past of what will be
The Hidden Shelves of the Curate, The Ghost Ship From Bohai
The Island
Time: Hour 28 of 48
The Curate exhaled, and looked at the shoreline of the Island. She sat and watched as her tactical team, “Impatience is a corrosive virtue in a passionate world which wants to move faster,” She let a team-member secure her tactical suit, “Patience is in short supply. Its dour cousin, persistence, is bland when compared to passion,” The Curate paused, and asked, “How do we remember the future?”
“Imagine the idea of a belief that may be hundreds of millennia old, as old as language.”
“Language itself may be 100,000 years old or more. Some of the oldest discovered symbolic images on cave walls are 70,000 years old. It is believed that even their location, in deep, hard to access recesses of the Earth, were acoustic sweet spots where sound resonated, the sound of ancient voices in conversation. There is a hypothesis that some ancient images and markings may have been inspired by ancient artists making notes of sounds. Imagine such ancient sheet music.”
“There are cave paintings, about 20,000 years old, which recorded the rhythms of nature. There are about 400 caves in Europe, known to the Carbons, some as old as 40,000 years, where the paintings on the walls went from the abstract, to the figurative. The memory of animals in the story of these paintings were recognizable but there were other memories, more cryptic, other markings, of vertical lines, dots and “Y” symbols. Some of the earliest writing among the Carbons. Markings of language.”
The tactical team nodded with a faraway look, as they reflexively looked inward, back to personal memories of their service to the Curate and the Ashes.
“Those artists in the caves remembered through paint on the wall. For their people. Later, they marked the reproductive cycles of life, of quarry for the hunt and of time. This was how they understood the future. The future, as a promise, where yesterday becomes tomorrow, is protected by memory. To protect a promise, we remember it. That has been our purpose. We remember. Including the Mission.”
“Excuse me, ma’am. The landing team reports working with survivors of the specialist team 12 from SSN Eternal. We have faint indications that The Eternal has a field device on-board.”
“The one that disappeared from Overland Ventures’ labs. Untested and unstable. They’re probably waiting for an “all green” from what’s left of that specialist team. We have to deal with them before they arm and deploy their device before we reach the reactor core. Prepare to engage The Eternal.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
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”.
Chapter 9, “The Last Word of The World”, considers words as worlds unto themselves.
Chapter 10, An Intimate Path Of Desires
Chapter 11, Absent Without Longing
Chapter 12, Lonely In The Same Room
Chapter 13, Children Of Daedalus
Chapter 14, People Of A Faraway Land
Chapter 15, Distant Shores, Distant Worlds
Chapter 16, The Rules of New Places
Chapter 17, Space To Breathe
Chapter 18, The Extra Air
Chapter 19, The Clash Of Selves
Chapter 20, The Last Meme
Chapter 21, Mistakes And Memories
Chapter 22, The Confusions Of Things
Chapter 23, The Senses Of Wonders
Chapter 24, The Gambits Of Curiosities
“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.)