The Emperor
Page 71
Epilogue
I find reality mysterious.
I wonder if others do, as well.
We have a small, comfortable world, situated happily, appropriately, in the center of all that can be, a plate beneath the inverted bowl of the sky, all details of which have been arranged by the gods.
How different is our little world from the vastnesses of space and time hinted at in the Telnarian chronicles! It is no wonder that the wise ones, in their holiness, have begun to search the libraries, to remove all allusions to, all traces of, the Telnarian world. To speak briefly, the Telnarian Histories were long undiscovered, or neglected; they were then, when discovered or noted, proscribed, and denounced as heretical; later, despite considerable evidence, archeological, linguistic, numismatic, and such, it was proclaimed that the Telnarian world had never existed. Alternative explanations were then provided to account for, or dismiss, the evidence, ruins and such, which suggested the actuality of the Telnarian world. Recently, manuscripts pertaining to the Telnarian world are being systematically sought, presumably to be consigned to private destruction. They are no longer burned because this called public attention to their existence. I have managed, in my role as a scholar, and librarian, a dabbler in antiquities, often alone in the library, to remove certain references to certain manuscripts from the catalogs, and obtain and conceal the associated manuscripts. Among these manuscripts, dealing with Telnaria, is that known as Valens 122b, on which these chronicles are largely based. More particular details pertaining to these matters I recounted earlier, elsewhere.
I myself, though ostensibly a trusted scholar loyal to the one true and holy regime, have little doubt, personally, that there is, or was, a Telnarian empire. To my mind, as simple and uninformed as it may be, the evidence for the Telnarian empire, or world, is indisputable, and overwhelming. Truth is often embarrassing to piety; and it is often, understandably, felt as threatening to establishments founded on its denial.
I mentioned that I find reality mysterious. Perhaps you do as well. Surely it is interesting that something exists. Does it not seem more probable that nothing should exist, even empty space? We have one reality. Why might there not be more than one? Perhaps there are. Might not our space and time, with their mysteries, be derived from, or founded in, other spaces and times, with their own mysteries?
I think I have mentioned, at one time or another, that I once had an unusual experience, in which I glimpsed, or seemed to glimpse, another reality, one in which my sleeve brushed, or seemed to brush, a golden pillar. I think, for a moment, I had touched Telnaria. But it was not a Telnaria of rain-worn statuary, of worn, cracked, furrowed pavements, of gray shards of once-bright pottery, of crumbled ruins, but a sturdy, vibrant, bright, beautiful, sunlit reality, momentarily glimpsed and then gone.
Can reality turn, and repeat itself?
Is Telnaria gone, or is it with us, at our elbow, a neighbor?
Is it ancient, or contemporary?
Are we in the vicinity of Telnaria, perhaps somehow on its porch or within a stone’s throw of its wall? Are we perhaps a part of Telnaria, a fragment temporarily dissociated from a golden mainland?
I do not know.
Did the story in these chronicles take place long ago or is it continuing to take place, even now?
I do not know.
I will mention one last thing.
Perhaps it is not important, but it is interesting.
Yesterday afternoon I saw something I had never seen before, something the orthodoxy deems impossible, something it does not permit.
A ship crossed the sky.
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Copyright © 2019 by John Norman
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