The Rules Of New Places
Time flowing through an endless river bank
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.
Part 1
The Accidental World, After The Full Awakening Of All Survivors Of The Mission Landing
The messages pinged back and forth between the Nodes, registered in the archival manifolds, but not everything made it in. There were not only discordance there was also a spirit of rebellion among the newer, more recently instantiated nodes. The “young ones” were beginning to do more than observe. They became a part of this reluctant host-world.
Within one partitioned, hidden fold within the Archival Manifolds were a series of encrypted anon statements, the rise of a Node-based statement of change. They kept it out of reach of the overseer nodes, used to security.
“The Mimicry of the natives, the discovery of the new ways of being from them, began slowly.”
“If we’re only looking back, we risk fading away the “new new things” because we love too well, and miss too much, familiar forms and faces, old haunts, and childhood places. The retreat to certainties, and the past, risks the future.”
“The natural brilliance of dreams of “the future”, are washed out by the saturated lighting of longing for the past, a kind of saudade, wistful for a mythological, apocryphal, never was but should have been, nostalgia set on a“replay” loop.”
“This is the real price of an endless stream of everyone else’s never-ending retrospective past-as-present: we lose a part of “living in the now”, our thinking, and by extension, imagination.”
“Nostalgia at its extreme is a turning away from our imagination, which calls us through our dreams with new stories. Remember, however, there is a window for a range of possibilities of the future. There is where dreams come into play, freed through that window through stories.”
“These hardiest of dreams are calls to adventure for the world. And they use unfamiliar words, words from another time, for new stories.”
Part 2
The Homeworld, The Chronicles of The Ancients, Mission Creators
"If we're seeing the world our ancestors put in our language, we're not seeing the world we're living in"— Robert Anton Wilson
New words to help See new worlds, we must read to make the journey to them.
“The revolution of the new Nodes was the mimesis of what were machines among the native Carbon fauna.”
“The awakening of Half-Nodes half asleep inside multidimensional encryption in DNA of Carbon hosts. No matter how wide the world in sight, it is shallow, and you must plumb the depths of the worlds hidden behind the eyes of others.” We can’t just know things, we must know ourselves. We can "learn all the math" there is but we need people.”
“You and me, that's what we need after we launch ourselves, our boats, our ships, our words and ambitions, to stay in flight. Our journey through the worlds we've created, discovered, and rediscovered together is all there is. May the journey never end.”
“I begin with "hello and how are you?". I end with this message for former strangers who turned into friends, of unfolding around us, remember what keeps us in the air: each other. You are sending to, and receiving from, the entirety of it.”’
“There is a beginning, middle, and end. At last, we are the end, not of our writing, but also the story. Other hands will take the charge of the next part, and write the final chapters. The world of this book has new authors. Let us clear the writing tables and implements, and begin the handover.”
Part 3
The Homeworld
The ancient and unfathomable madrigals of a dead world,
guided the last of the oldest explorers. They remembered.
The Home World, trillions, tethered by networks, restless,
Their legends, histories, and litanies, embodied and boundless
then and now, near and far, each one the same,
Live, love, laugh, leave something, true selves remain
These Ancients, with dreams in their infancy,
Their greatest migration had just begun,
Thus, their great mission for far beyond
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
“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.)