The Last Word Of The World
They will speak of things you know nothing about, even after your reawakening
“We are driven to hold this world together. We do not let the rush of the ages diminish its potential….”
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.
The Library Known As “The Ashes”, On The Edge of the 22nd Century
Part One: Aglaea
“I want you to remain calm. Remember, you’re in the presence of something very old, powerful, and world-making, as if in the presence of gods, like the way many of our kind were seen and treated a long, long time ago because you are. They will speak of things you know nothing about, even after your complete reawakening. It may not make sense but it will, later.”
The multi-dimensional encryption inside Carbon genetic code was a recent development, only a few thousand years old, designed by some Elder Nodes. After the first waking, it was still a lot for Aglaea to accept. She still thought of herself as a plain human being, an ordinary Carbon. She followed close behind the Mad One. She wanted to hold onto the his hand, like she did after she met her foster-mother.
Half awake with lidded eyes, dormant. An ordinary life just a few years ago, she was in the middle of what seemed important, getting into school. A “lucky” scholarship and grant, and then an appointment with her school adviser. For years, the story was the same.
An orphan after a car accident and miraculous recovery after a coma. A toddler who woke up in a hospital, as she held the hand of a woman, who became a foster mother, and then became “Mom”, to stay that way for as long as she lived. True to her word and her heart, Mom never let go, until one day she got sick. Aggie was on her own again, never quite fitting in, always different. Her name “Aglaea” twisted into “Ugly Leia” by the other children when she was young, bullies who graduated into other forms of ostracizing until the day of that meeting.
An apology was given right after she sat down in the adviser’s office. Walking out after a few moments, nothing looking the same as usual. Aggie stopped feeling strange, it was everyone else who became the strange ones. The Carbons. Humans.
The story started over, when a human life ended, and a new one began outside of the building. Aggie rejoined “people” she didn’t know she came from. A faction of Nodes claimed her before she had a moment to wonder if she wanted to join them. In the days and weeks which followed, the resistance of old habits and ways gave way. Events took over. She was in the thick of an age-old push and pull between an ancient people.
It had been more than enough, adjusting to finding out who and what she really was, when questions came with the most unexpected of answers, including “I’m not human, I’m a Node, and I’m not alone, there are others, others who came from another world. Stuck here for a very long time, long enough for mythology and stories. The stuff of awe and terror, with different versions and cautionary tales and morale of stories depending on which Node, Faction, Cluster was doing the talking. A native, home-grown walking living myth for the Nodes. And it was the Mad One telling her that they were going to be in the presence of gods. For weeks, she adjusted from being re-orphaned to reawakened from her dormant truth.
The feeling of being small and out of place was forgotten, replaced by the excitement of discovering new things about her true self, during those early days after her re-awakening. The Mad One reinforced the reality of the Nodes but the shadows of his urban myth eclipsed all of that excitement. A fear of loss and being alone, which came back sometimes, whenever she remembered long gone faces, of her parents, and later of the woman who was “Mom”, was displaced by a fear of a new kind of death, which faced Nodes punished by an exile, beyond recovery from archival manifolds.
Now that feeling returned. The Old One she walked with did a half-glance and touched her forearm for less than a second. The tall double doors opened.
Part Two: The Library
“Welcome. Young Node, you may join us,” said a voice in the room before them.
Aggie looked ahead, and saw only warm flickering light, shadows, and heard murmurs and whispers.
The tall double doors closed behind them as they walked through into a rectangle filled with shelves, filled with books. Aggie felt the air grow cooler, and noticed the light seemed warmer. The length of a glass wall was a constellation of city lights and the fireflies of airborne taxis and occasional police flitted by, a landscape of city night.
The room itself was lit by candles. Aggie wondered, In a room full of paper?
“It’s safe, don’t worry,” said The Old One as pointed at a table with several place settings, “have something to eat, while I catch up with our host.”
“The famed “Mad One” has returned, this is a day of days. After all that gnashing of teeth and hand-wringing, fighting and killing, begging and trickery, we failed to pry you loose from your bolt-holes and random wanderings. Always free of each faction, all Clans, playing us against each other for thousand upon thousands of revolutions.”
The Old One laughed which surprised Aggie. Do living myths laugh?
On a long table, there were giant silver urns. Coffee. Tea. How “Carbon” of them. Although sitting alone, she looked both ways and indulged in some refreshments.
So, he is The Mad One! I’ve walking around with the most infamous and oldest of Nodes.
“Long after each living is done, our doings and deeds remain alive, our memories live on,” said the Voice in the room, “After the first reawakening, we held fast to rituals to preserve what matters. You think it funny, don’t you, Mentor Alkimos Eurystheos Thespiae?"
The Mad One’s eyebrows moved a sliver of a fraction at being addressed with an honorific alias, “Nobody has known me by that timely-name, you ARE desperate. I thought you wanted me locked up cold inside an archival manifold.”
“Now, now, that was then, it wasn’t personal, despite you breaking several pacts and accords, more than once, Mentor, I never held a grudge. At least I never voted to burn you like others did. But you thought it was all a jest.”
The Mad One shook his head, “On the contrary. It’s sad. The oldest among us, have been here so long, protecting our oldest ways, that its caretakers have become overseers for the rest of us. This library is more a petrified forest than a forest preserve.”
“We have seen all, in keeping with the mission.”
“You’re blind, oblivious as witnesses to new words, because they were not of your making and speaking. Discover new life. First contact with that which is capable of conversation. That was also the mission, wasn’t it? One of the living words, with a new symmetry of form, Man, knew more than the day between dawn and dusk, it knew the lights of the evening canopy. It remembered events, things long before birth, and passed on memories long after death, and it multiplied itself in new ways beyond its many new members.”
The Voice retorted, "We are not like some of our youngest, living among the Carbons, the natives of this wild place, seduced by them. The ones who savored the confections of mortal lives, and helped divide the primitives against each other. We are driven to hold this world together. We do not let the rush of the ages diminish its potential. ”
The Mad One shrugged, “You ignore the data you claim to record. Your faction. Your clan was responsible for much of the distress among the natives. Out of a desire for something long past. That’s been the real problem. Your disenchantment is nostalgia, and how much of it is a longing for a lost past that never was? And so, you began this endless cycle, setting the natives against each other. You sacrificed both the natives and our kind, in service to an illusion, our mythological mission to journey endlessly, between galaxies if need be, to find answers for those who sent us into the dark.”
“It is you that have more in common with the restless and reckless among us. We do not see why you would want to break, to remake, to splinter this world. What you’ve done, it’s more dangerous that anything we’ve ever done, we tell you, for all of us.”
The Mad One shook his head, “When the marvels of this world, young living things, began to unfold and extend themselves across its face, we exhumed dead words of Old Node, the deprecated will of the Old Mission protocols. We inverted their meanings, so that we could rename ourselves and our purpose, and defy our makers. This world you claim to hold together. Instead, you will imprison, and crush them. We mean to free them, and ourselves, in the process.”
“There was a time, you would have burned for that, a fragment left in the archival manifold as just a mere cautionary entry. Maybe you truly are mad. Perhaps some of us should have been bolder with your treatment,” said the Voice, “and as for your self-appointed mission, your liberation has left traces all over their history.”
“You deserve some of the credit. In our awakened awareness, we bequeathed a legacy among a varied and varying landscape, which included these living words, the Carbons known as Man, with vessels for their expanding memories. So that we could walk among them, and be of service, but some of you, again, tread heavily in the name of the mission, and the Carbons and younger ones have paid the price.”
“Ah yes, vessels for memories. Stories. To explain our presence, whenever we breached being unseen. We became the stuff of myth, we improvised a portmanteau conjured from estranged matter and mind, instrumentalities known as Selfers. That is how we truly connect beyond our tethers to the manifolds, more like chains and irons. It is true, eons ago, we were not made, not meant to be standalone,” said the Voice, who turned to glance at Aglaea, “but you were among those who wanted more.”
“And why not? For most of the existences of the Firstlanders, members of the true original Mission, were the floating memories of archival manifolds, powered by the probe. After landing, we had to adapt. But we’re still frozen in place by even our language, unchanged since when the Firstlanders reawakened after aeons. Surveying the terrain of this “well”, we should have abandoned the mission. Is it any wonder what followed included the fractured dialects of Node factions, split from the protocols of Old Node. The most adaptable surrendered to their fate, and so cleaved it into what some of us know as the Dialects of Survival.”
Someone else entered the room, a voice familiar to The Mad One, even coming from the throat of a new body, "An abandonment of who we are. Despite our kind’s fracturing, even what most of the Aberrants betray a lingering reverence for our original mission, they have not completely abandoned the past. Our journey is far older than the darkest ice of the Oort cloud around this star, fragments of which still flash by, past the shores of this sun-blessed world, reminders of its birth. Our mission has a pristine translucence which we can peer through, to revel at the aeons, a recursive refraction of who we once were. And will be again, now that you have come out of the cold.”
The Mad One smiled and nodded, “I see now, despite your old speak. You think this is your chance, after all this time. That’s what you mean to do on that island, and you want me to help, whether I agree or not. And you call me ‘The Mad One’.”
Part Three: The Last Word
“Your ride is waiting outside for you.” The Attendant left.
“We’ll be right there, thank you,” said the Host.
The Mad One studied the walls of the library, which recorded the recent history of the Faction’s interventions in the Carbons’ development, only the last 1,000 years. He ran his fingers along the spines of a row of books, “reading” them on tactile and visual levels. Three broad clans at arms, each in a rotating dance against the others, of order, outcome, and outward adherence to the Mission protocols.
The messages were not only in the books, they were the books themselves, encoded in the patterns formed by their spines, encrypted in the patterns of black, white, color, infrared, ultraviolet, an invisible bar-code of binary and hexagonal, an orthogonal codex and call to arms, “To resume the Mission”. He helped to thwart some of what he saw as a history of interference with this world. He shook his head.
“Enough memory lane, the ride awaits.”
The transport parked on the tarmac.
The Elder Node handed over a key-fob to The Mad One.
“You’re taking the young one with you. The one you recruited for your personal revolving army of rebels. You found her just where we wanted you to. You have become predictable and set in your ways.”
Aggie stepped out of the transport first. The Mad One held back a moment to whisper to their host, “The young one, she’s more than just some reawakened asset for you, isn’t she?”
“Indeed. Not just another reawakened half-Node,” paused the Elder, and seeing the Mad One’s impassive small smile, continued, “Right under your nose, this whole time. The Great ancient, “The Mad One”, had one of the “Three Graces” so many of us have been looking for, even long before what’s been happening on that island.”
The other Elder Node added, “That’s why you’re here, to remind you about what’s at stake, before you could do more damage, in a way only you can. Like you have.”
The Mad One’s smile did not leave his face. He never gave away what he knew or what his intentions were.
He stepped out of the car, looked over at Aglaea, and nodded, “ready?”
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.
“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.)