Lucifer's Odyssey

by Rex Jameson

  #####

  End of Lucifer’s Odyssey – Book 1 of the Primal Patterns

  Bonus: Chapter 25

  Horace’s First Lesson

  Circa 3,500,000 BGS (Before the Great Sorrow)

  Horace sat in the front row of his first patterns course, hoping to get a glimpse of Professor Tashen Taluntain. More importantly, he hoped the professor would notice him. He had not dressed to impress, not in the traditional sense. He instead dressed as a slacker genius, a persona that, from Horace’s experience, had always won over college professors far faster than the well-dressed, conservative look that some of the other elves in the classroom tried.

  Jeans. Flannel shirt. Unkept, curly hair. Black, stylish glasses. Patchy beard. Lounging in his chair more than sitting. That was Horace’s look.

  Being a teacher’s pet was less a fast track to greatness than it was a challenge. He gained a certain kind of satisfaction from having a harder path than other students. The harder he worked, the more he learned. Being known to a teacher often resulted in extra, harder assignments. The harder the assignment, the more likely Horace was to reach understanding and even enlightenment.

  He remembered every teacher he had ever had. The good ones. The bad ones. Even the ones who were only memorable in that they hadn’t imparted anything too important. He had always had a natural ability to memorize, to internally categorize, and to recall facts and figures. But unlike many of his other comrades in scholastic arms, he knew he was different. He had always been able to piece things together, apply what he had learned, and push the field or harness the knowledge gained for some practical purpose.

  In truth, Horace had been rich many times over. And not just from inheritance. He had built business empires, sold them, and built new ones. He had liquidated his assets four times over the years just to give them away to charities and begin again. And always, despite his accomplishments, he had sought knowledge. A new path. An interesting life. One with purpose.

  And that’s what was so exciting about Tashen Taluntain’s class. It was the first time that Arnessan University had ever organized a pattern class. Taluntain had no professor portrait on the networking systems. As far as Horace could tell, no one had ever seen him in person. But this brilliant elf had written practically every useful academic paper on patterns that had ever existed. At least, according to anyone who even understood what patterns could do. The secrets of the universe.

  Five minutes after the class should have started, the packed classroom was still full. Conversations had broken out amongst the tiered desks. Hundreds of hushed voices. The occasional tinkle of dangling earrings against each other along an elf’s elongated ear. Pencils thumping against wooden desks and the creak of a student leaning against their chair to whisper or look busy. Horace crossed his arms and waited, speaking to no one.

  A door slammed to the right, and a gray-haired elf with his hair pulled back shuffled to the desk in front of a chalk board. He was well-dressed. Dark gray suit. Pinstripes. His eyes darted around the room as he slammed books and a leather case onto the desk.

  Professor Tulantain surveyed the class, wiping his hands against his jacket and tailored vest.

  “Well,” the elf said. “I see I am overdressed. This is my first class. Any other students I’ve ever had have been one-on-one. In my … office.”

  He tried to run his hands through his hair but appeared to realize that he had previously pulled it back into a tight bun.

  “Right,” he said. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  Horace adjusted in his seat as he grabbed a pencil and hovered it over a notepad on his desk. All pretense of laziness and lounging was gone now. Replaced with that hunger for knowledge he had had since childhood.

  “Much like me in this suit,” the man said, “you’ve probably felt since birth that something has been off. Haven’t you?”

  The question was rhetorical obviously.

  “From the dawn of intelligence, creatures have always asked the hard questions. Not mathematically hard, at least not in the traditional sense. Hard because the answers seemed unknowable. Hard because the answers might tear apart the fabric of their reality. Their ego.”

  The professor nodded with the class, as if acknowledging their problem.

  “I some ways, I’m here to ease your fears,” he said. “To clear the shadows, so to speak. To tear apart your world.”

  A nervous chuckle ran throughout the room like a wave, starting somewhere in the back left and working its way around the classroom.

  Professor Taluntain smiled through his long gray beard.

  “I’m assuming all of you are familiar with basic quantum mechanics,” he said. “The concept of wave superpositions… The paradox of quantum superpositions…”

  He looked to the class, his hands raised slightly.

  “Two waves, traveling through space and time. We try to treat them as linear systems. If A produces X and B produces Y, then A+B must be X+Y, yes? But quantum superpositions are all around us. We see matter in multiple states. Not just one. Maybe two. Three. Maybe infinite. Not just waves, but basic elements. Electrons in more than one place at once. Matter that was there and not there. Why?”

  This question didn’t seem to be rhetorical. The professor waited for a response. For thirty seconds, he paced there. He may have waited longer for an answer, but Horace mustered up a small amount of courage.

  “Because of the primal,” Horace stated strongly with false confidence.

  The professor nodded and turned back to the board. He took out a piece of chalk and furiously attacked the board behind him. A large circle. A smaller one inside of it that emanated arrows in all directions.

  “At the heart of a universe is a primal. The primal emanates energy and realities in waves. Each reality is a superposition of everything within the primal.”

  Horace adjusted uneasily.

  “Why is this a hard answer?” the professor asked, as he turned around. “What makes this knowledge hard? What hard questions come from this?”

  There were a few mumbled answers throughout the room. Barely loud enough to make out.

  “It’s a hard answer,” the professor said, “because if reality is a superposition, and you are part of reality, and there is something underneath it all, projecting this version of yourself…”

  Horace felt a sickness in his stomach.

  “Then,” Horace piped up, “we are part of a simulation. Then reality is not real. Then we are not real. Something else is real.”

  “A natural line of thought,” the professor said, walking up to Horace’s desk. “But wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Horace asked.

  The professor slapped him soundly across the face. Horace recoiled as his face reddened, more from embarrassment than the force of the hit.

  “Was that real?” the professor asked. “Did that feel real?”

  Horace stumbled a response but lingered somewhere between outrage from the slap and curiosity for the answer.

  “What happens in this reality matters,” the professor said. “Maybe even more in this shadow of the primal than any other. In order to explain why that’s true, I first need to explain more about the primal and the interactions with realities, what I’ve come to call shadows—at least the ones in the air between the projector and the wall.”

  “Imagine a movie projector. A simple light, projecting images against a screen. If you walk in front of that projector, you’ll cast a shadow on the wall, right?”

  The students around Horace nodded.

  “Now,” the professor said, “what about the movie?”

  “What about the movie?” Horace asked.

  “The movie,” the professor repeated. “It’s a movie projector, right? And you’ve walked in front of it, casting a shadow on the wall. The primal, the movie projector, is trying to project something real onto the wall, and you’ve walked in front of it. Your shadow is on the wall. What else is going on on the wall?”

  “Th
e movie is playing?” A man asked nearby.

  “Well, yes,” the professor said. “Of course. Now, looking out from the primal, what do you see on the wall?”

  “The movie?” someone else asked.

  “Well, yes,” the professor repeated. “Of course.”

  Horace internalized the scenario and imagined himself standing in front of a movie projector.

  “A movie and a shadow,” Horace said.

  “Correct!” the professor said. “Now, imagine that you have spent your entire life watching that wall. Imagine you are in that reality. Imagine you were born in that reality. You don’t realize it’s not real, with you sitting in front of that wall, staring at it. More importantly, what else do you not realize?”

  “That the shadow and the movie are different?” Horace asked.

  “Correct!” the professor said triumphantly, smiling. “Absolutely right, you are! The same thing happens if you alter the lens. If you draw something on the glass of the projector, say, a red dot. That red dot will be on every frame that is projected. Every scene of the movie will have this red dot, and no one will know that the red dot is foreign. That it’s a false part of the movie.”

  The class grew silent.

  “Are you saying that’s reality?” a female student asked. “That we’re living in a movie?”

  “Not exactly,” the professor said. “You’re living in a reality that is projected from the primal. You are a superposition of the potentials and emanations of the Elven Primal. And specifically, you and I are in the focus of the primal. Do you know what a focus is?”

  Horace shook his head.

  “The focus is the screen,” the professor said. “It’s the wall. It’s the clearest projection of the primal. It’s where the movie is clearest, where the essence of the primal is truly revealed. What you are experiencing is real because it is also reflected in what is happening in the primal.”

  The female student who asked if they were living in a movie shook her head.

  “What happens if you look back at the primal?” Horace asked. “Do you see yourself?”

  The professor shook his head. “Perhaps there is a primal pattern out there that works that way, but none that I am familiar with. Your eyes are made to see three dimensional objects. Some creatures can see more, but not you.”

  “You mean like thermal?” a student asked.

  “Or sound?” another student offered.

  “No,” the professor said. “These are all senses for a three-dimensional space. You can feel heat, and you can translate that into distance. How far away is that heat source? How far away is that sound? Your senses can do that, but that’s not what I mean. You would need a different kind of sense.”

  “Like time?” Horace asked.

  “Now, isn’t that interesting?” the professor asked. “What if you could see time? Would that help? If you rolled back time on the wall, would you see the primal?”

  “No,” Horace admitted. “You would just see previous frames of the movie.”

  “And maybe previous shadows,” the professor said. “The ones that were projected onto the wall, on top of the movie, blocking it out. But these are just past images on the wall. Nothing more.”

  “So, how do you see the primal?” Horace asked.

  The professor smiled to the class. He turned and walked back to the chalkboard. He pointed to the center of the circle, where the small circle had been—the projector. The primal.

  “Imagine you are at a theater,” the professor said. “Imagine your seat is turned toward the screen, where the movie plays. Imagine your seat holds you in place, and you must always look forward. How would you see the projector?”

  “You turn around!” a student yelled.

  “This is stupid,” another student complained.

  The professor shook his head. “You cannot turn around. You can only see the screen in front of you. You cannot see the projector. Your eyes are simply unable to see outside of the three dimensions of the present. And even if you could turn around, all you might see are the superpositions of all of the images and shadows between the primal and yourself.”

  “I don’t understand,” Horace said. “You’re asking us to do the impossible.”

  “Not everyone can see the projector,” the professor said. “Some are unable to. Some are unwilling to. But let’s say that you desperately wanted to see the projector. How would you do it? In the movie theater, I mean.”

  “Is there anyone else there?” Horace asked.

  “In the theater?” the professor asked. “All around you there are people. Millions. Billions. Watching the screen. But none of them can see the projector either. Why do you ask?”

  “Is there someone there you can ask to see the projector?”

  The professor grinned widely. “Yes. Absolutely, yes. You are not the first person to want to see the projector. You are also not the first person to be aware that what you are watching is a movie.”

  “Who else is there?” a student behind Horace asked.

  Horace nodded as he bounced in his seat with anticipation. “Who else?”

  “Who else?” the professor asked. “Well, someone had to have made the projector, right? Movie projectors don’t just create themselves. And there are always staff in the theater, right? Ushers. The projector operator, if it’s not automated. People at the concession stand.”

  “How is a person selling popcorn supposed to help you?”

  “They don’t,” the professor said. “You have to ask the right person to take you to the projector. They have to know the path there—how to manipulate the shadow. How to get you from the wall to the projector.”

  “This is absurd,” a girl beside Horace said. “How do you know any of this?”

  “He’s written articles,” Horace said, gesturing toward the professor. “Academic papers.”

  The professor laughed heartily.

  “My dear boy,” he said. “I’ve written more than just articles. I’ve created more than just theory.”

  The professor turned toward the board and wrote his name “Tashen Taluntain.” Below the text, he drew a line from “Tashen.”

  “Tashen,” he said. “Ancient elven. Means pay close attention or listen.”

  “Are you saying that’s not your real name?” the girl from earlier asked. “Are you saying this is a game? I’m not finding this particularly entertaining.”

  The professor drew a line from his last name.

  “And Tulantain?” Horace asked. “That’s enlightened, right?”

  “Right,” the professor said. “Pay close attention to the enlightened.”

  “Full of yourself, aren’t you?” a student crouching low in his seat and hiding his mouth behind his hand asked.

  “I didn’t think of this name,” the professor said. “The faculty thought it would be funny, and I went along with it. In truth, I’m not particularly fond of games. I don’t have time for them.”

  “If you’re not Tashen Taluntain,” Horace said, “then who are you?”

  “My name is Archimedes,” the man said.

  Gasps echoed across the room. The man who had been crouching in his chair, somehow managed to sink lower behind his desk.

  “It’s not the only name I’ve been given through the ages,” Archimedes said. “Architect. Creator. Father. How do I know any of this? I created the Elven Primal.”

  He placed the chalk into the tray at the bottom of the board and grabbed his leather case and slung it over his shoulder. “And I created each of you.”

  Acknowledgements

  One year after the publication of this novel, I have a lot to be thankful for. Lucifer’s Odyssey has been downloaded tens of thousands of times from Amazon and other online vendors, and this has helped drive me toward the completion of the first trilogy. I cannot take credit for everything that went into this novel, and I would like to take a moment to reflect on all the people who made this series possible.

  Other author works ha
d a big influence on the concepts discussed in this series. Roger Zelazny’s Great Book of Amber, in particular, was instrumental in inspiring me to envision a primal pattern and its effects on worlds it might project. One reviewer of Lucifer’s Odyssey mentioned the movie The Matrix having strong similarities to the ending of Lucifer’s Odyssey, and while that may be true, Zelazny and my own background in programming meta-environments had more to do with the way it was depicted in this book than anything in The Matrix. Other notable influences are Neal Stephenson and Vernor Vinge—though I wouldn’t dare try to imply my books approach their caliber of epic fantasy or space opera. I am merely tipping my hat to influences that brought me to writing this series.

  This book would not be anywhere near as enjoyable without the amazing efforts of Derek Prior at Homunculus Editing Services. The draft I sent Derek was the fourth or fifth draft, and the Lucifer’s Odyssey that is available today is the product of an additional rewrite of the story with his guidance.

  I received a lot of great feedback from beta readers and I think they deserve some serious recognition. Celia, Galena, Alyssa, and Angela, thank you for all of your patience and comments from beta reading the initial drafts of Lucifer’s Odyssey and the prologue that is now attached to the Fifth Edition. Additionally, thank you to all the reviewers who gave their honest opinion. Although reviewer comments are intended for other readers, these helped me grow as an author as well.

  Finally, thank you to my wife Jenny for standing by me throughout the writing, editing, and marketing of this series. You are awesome.

  About Rex Jameson

  Rex Jameson is the author of three novels in the Primal Patterns series, beginning with "Lucifer's Odyssey" and half a dozen short stories. An avid history buff and an unabashed nerd with an appetite for science fiction and fantasy, he loves to create complex speculative fiction with layered characters. He earned a PhD in Computer Science at Vanderbilt University and researches distributed artificial intelligence in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. Rex and his wife Jenny live in Pittsburgh where they enjoy hosting family and friends.

  Sign up for email updates at https://eepurl.com/cNYnwX. You can check out his blog at https://rex-jameson.com for movie and fiction reviews, and find out about events and news on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rexjameson_fic.

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  Other Works by the Author

  The Primal Patterns Series (Lucifer’s Fall Trilogy)

  Book 1: Lucifer’s Odyssey

  Book 2: The Goblin Rebellion

  Book 3: Shadows of our Fathers

  The Perspectives Series

  Book 1: Angels and Demons: Violent Afterlife

  Book 2: Elves and Goblins: Father’s Rebellion

  Other Fiction

  Hallow’s Ween

  "Don’t Mess with the Meadow" in the Pink Snowbunnies Ski in Hell Anthology.

  “Saving Suzanna” in The Pride Collection.

  To find out when Rex Jameson has a new release, sign up for his email newsletter at https://rex-jameson.com/new-releases-email-list/.