Amaranthine Historica
O. LEMNISCATE
Published by Katya Stiletti, 2018.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
AMARANTHINE HISTORICA
First edition. April 7, 2018.
Copyright © 2018 O. LEMNISCATE.
ISBN: 978-1386124627
Written by O. LEMNISCATE.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Amaranthine Historica | A Story of Unoriginal Sin in a Topsy-Turvy Parallel Universe
MAIN CHARACTERS LISTED IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
GLOSSARY
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1 - Her world... Before D-Day...
CHAPTER 2 - The Other World... Astellaria’s D-Day...
CHAPTER 3 - Paradise Lost
CHAPTER 4 - Gaslighting
CHAPTER 5 - Victor’s world
CHAPTER 6 - Running With The Wind
CHAPTER 7 - Year 0+13: Something is rotten in the State of Amarantis
CHAPTER 8 - The Wakeful Tree
CHAPTER 9 - Treason
CHAPTER 10 - Olfus’ Victorious Speech
CHAPTER 11 - Birds in a Cage
CHAPTER 12 - To Catch A Thief
CHAPTER 13 - Puzzle Pieces In A Fish Bowl
CHAPTER 14 - No Exit
CHAPTER 15 - Dream A Little Dream
CHAPTER 16 - Was It In A Dream, Was It Just A Dream?
CHAPTER 17 - What Now?
Epilogue and Epitaph
OHM Lemniscate’s Appeal
Dedicated to George, Maria, Georgia, Eleni, Evangelia and Telemachus Konstantinidis.
Special thanks to Ioannis Adamidis for the book cover, Elsa Konstantinidou for stellar inspiration and Camille Delorean, the man who brought me face to face with the rhinoceros and drove me to murder—the kind you get away with!
Also thanks to the following: Kyra and Adam, Janet Foyle, Maire Collins, Helen Giokas, Alexandre Maramenides, Dimitris Michalopoulos and Alexandra Kipourgos.
Amaranthine Historica
A Story of Unoriginal Sin in a Topsy-Turvy Parallel Universe
Upon seeing an image of Earth from Voyager 1, Carl Sagan wrote, “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
“Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.” Bertolt Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
MAIN CHARACTERS LISTED IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
Astellaria aka Aria - creature made from the remnants of a star.
Dorion Technon - scientist with a Bioneer Award from the Society for Ecological Restoration.
Eleni Makinti - scientist with a Nobel in quantum mechanics for her space-time warp analysis and an EPSO Plant Scientist Award regarding floral scents.
Georgia Genix - scientist with a Nobel for her work in protein engineering and an Isaac Newton Medal of the Institute of Physics for her ‘string theory’.
Jane Darkstorm – scientist with 2 Nobels for her work in regenerative medicine and in quantum teleportation enabling the quantum Internet.
Lucy Ferr – 3 Engelberger Awards from the Robotic Industries Association, professor of biomedical robotics and director of The BioRobotics Institute, founder of SkEyeClops, head and senior engineer of the Soldier Support System Centre of SkEyeClops.
Pharaona aka Ra – creature made of the same rock as the Sphinx.
Victor Ferrett - Olfus’ mind control advisor, with a Nobel in cognitive science and brain-to-brain technology.
Warwick Olfus aka Wolfie – Nobel laureate and President of the State of Amarantis.
GLOSSARY
Aeonios - project in regenerative medicine.
ARC – Amaranthine RenaisScience Complex.
Bion – humanoid intuitive robots.
CRIPSR – genome-editing altering the germline of humans, animals, and food crops.
Emerald Tablet - author is Hermes Trismegistus or Hermes the Thrice-Greatest. Below is Isaac Newton’s translation, found among his alchemical papers that are currently housed in King's College Library, Cambridge University.
Tis true without error, certain and most true.
That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.
And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
The sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse.
The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.
Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry.
It ascends from the earth to the heaven and again it descends to the earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior.
By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world
And thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.
Its force is above all force. For it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing.
So was the world created.
From this are and do come admirable adaptations whereof the means (or process) is here in this. Hence I am called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.
That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.
EmotMems - personally-tailored memories based on the CRISPR biomolecular recording method.
Engelberger Award - the ‘Nobel Prize’ of robotics.
Euman – eugenic human.
Genome editing - genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted, deleted or replaced in the genome of an organism, using engineered nucleases or ‘molecular scissors’.
Google – verb - search for information on the Internet using the search engine Google; an out-dated tech term still in use, like ‘carbon copy’ which has turned into ‘cc’ when you copying others in emails.
GROM - genetically re-organised mutant.
iPS - induced pluripotent stem cells; reprogrammed adult cells to embryonic-like state.
Kill-Switch - safety mechanism used to shut off a device in an emergency situation.
Life Ark Reserve Vault (LARV) – Amaranthine bank for stems cells.
Membrane Dome - radiation and electromagnetic interference shielding membrane dome.
Nobel – international prize awarded to the best achievers in Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Peace, Economic Sciences, Literature.
Ouroboros-Gates or O-Gates – circular gates depicting the snake eating its own tail.
O-Zone – Made up of 8 concentric and intersecting canals, Amarantis is entwined with water. Its Canal Ring was once one of the world’s most unique urban landscapes. Each ring had a zone number, starting from central O-Zone 1 to outer O-Zone 8.
Post-Datory - post-D-Day.
Pre-Datory - pre-D-Day.
PURE - People’s United Revolutionary Eugenics.
SEAI - Social Emotional Artificial Intelligence.
SkEyeClops - SkEye Cyclops Surveillance Society.
SNS - Synthetic Nervous System.
Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALEN) - enzymes that can be engineered to cut specific sequences of DNA.
PROLOGUE
Everyone ‘remembers’ where they were and what they were doing on D-Day. I was at ΩHM Military Base, holding the heart of humanity in my steely little hands.
I am
a historian. My account is based on personal observation and interrogation of my star witnesses; Pharaona a rocky descendant of the Sphinx, and Astellaria, Pharaona’s starry-eyed cousin. Both encode information in their crystal cells. Pharaona always says, “If you want to know what’s really going on, look in more detail at rocks.” She told me to be wary of the ‘Official Histories & Prophecies’ archived in the Amaranthine Oracle.
The day after D-Day, Pharaona popped out of the Dreamtime Aquarium for our one and only exclusive interview—Aquarium because the lower world can only see the upper world in the way fish see things. Then just as quickly, she dove back into the tequila sunset dust of her Desert.
When we met she sanded her face and voice to protect her identity, then gave me the following expeditious account:
“Most of the events actually happened in the ancient parts of Amarantis—mainly in the old multi-ringed city located northwest of the coast. When the fevered clouds gathered, and well before the deluge of the first frothy hailstones, most Amarants left; quickly. The Day of Destruction, referred to as ‘D-Day’ by survivors, happened within 8 hours of the mass exodus. The calendar flipped forward to Year 0.
Those who stayed were immortalised horrifically inside their ashen casts, like the frozen people of Pompeii. Eventually those cadaveric statues were scattered around the old city wall, resembling grotesque gargoyles jutting from medieval churches.
After D-Day, only the 8 twin pyramids and the mammoth Amaranthine RenaisScience Complex—the ARC, for short—with its giant emerald staircase and croquembouche roof, stood intact. Due to human and technical error, together with what my friend Hermes Trismegistus (or just H.T.) calls the ‘cosmic force of things’ in his work known as the ‘Emerald Tablet’, the shielding Membrane Dome failed to open in time. Amarantis resembled a crushed mud cake left to rot under its protective cupola. All Ouroboros-Gates (O-Gates) at the Amaranthine border, shut down and Amarantis was locked in a space-time warp. The snake eating its own tail is very important; it’s the crux of everything! Don’t forget Ouroboros!
So, as I was saying, Year 0 was calamitous for Amarantis; it was left with around 340 human survivors—and almost 1000 incubating humans waiting to be born to parents who had fled or perished. There was also a first broth of glowing creatures—800 incubating Glowing TALEN Eumans to be born to PURE Inc. (short for ‘People’s United Revolutionary Eugenics’). Glowing TALEN Eumans? Yes, that’s right. Not because of their glowing talent, but because of TALEN gene-tinkering and the Glow-in-the-Dark juice injected into their embryos. Those jolly jellybeans, were fabricated from a hotchpotch of human induced pluripotent stem cells turned every which way but loose. Together with their hyper-growth rate, they reached muscled-up adulthood by the age of 5 and glowed just like Olfus’ first fluorescent green piglets. Nasty tongues call them GROMs (short for ‘Genetically Re-Organised Mutants’). They have no parents. No names. Only serial numbers. Except for one of them. There’s always one, isn’t there, a sort of law of nature.
As for Bions, they’re walking, talking, breathing, living dolls—on D-Day, there were about 2000 of them.
Like all comparative experiments, Human embryos were not interfered with genetically.
All sprouted and thrived inside the wombs of Bions and—”
Then quite abruptly she vanished, leaving an echoing trail of her ominous prophecy: “Tis true without lying, that only when the ‘O’ becomes an ‘Ω’, the beast’s pride will crumble and fall”.
*****
And now I say unto you—as this Historica unravels, you will see what happens when humans breathe a spirit of pride above just measure.[1]
CHAPTER 1 - Her world... Before D-Day...
Not once upon a time, but once again, everything that could slither, crawl and scurry, stowed away inside scarce, quenching shadows. Nothing was visible on the white-hot sands except Pharaona who, over and over again, delighted in the flaring caresses of her abounding star.
“Ah,” she thought, “my very own blissful desert!”
Yes, even in the freeze of the night, and despite loads of floating metallic junk littering her panorama, aeon upon aeon, Pharaona tirelessly marvelled at her kaleidoscopic skies.
From this hotspot her fiery creativity thrived. As dream and dreamer, she slid through multiple dimensions, in and out of the Dreamtime Aquarium, shaping some of the best minds of all time. Her cosmic landscapes appear everywhere... The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh? Well, guess who was behind that? As for Mozart’s splendiferous music? He wasn’t alone. Isaac Newton? Who shook that apple tree? And more importantly, who helped him translate the true blue Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the timeless Emerald Tablet?
Nobody knows her real age. Nobody dares to ask! Perhaps she hides it, or perhaps she really doesn’t know. In any case, she’s infinitely knowledgeable. She makes a point of that in conversation!
A little eccentric and somewhat of a primadonna, just remember if you ever meet her, that she is the most delectable, most agreeable creature in the world—so long as you agree with her.
Her credo and gospel? “As above, so below! Her Will be done!” “Whose Will?” you might ask. Pharaona’s of course—the only Will that matters... to Pharaona. And above all, ‘Her Will be done’ during tourist infestation seasons. Why? Bear in mind that, if there’s one thing Pharaona really loathes, it’s tourists. Every year she huffs and spits the same old complaints: “Oh, here they are again! Swarms, like giant biting flies! Babbling and bumbling hither and thither, clammy and stinky—”
She has felt not the least bit guilty, striking back day or night, making them writhe and screech with spine-chilling mirages and dreams, of multi-headed venomous snakes and hulking scorpions, or even tidal waves. Amidst their howling, Pharaona’s laughter would swirl through the dune valleys, like a Chinese New Year dragon, raising up maddening sand storms. “That’s it! Scram! Skedaddle! Dégagez! Raus! I, Pharaona, guide all things to their proper end. To me revenge and punishment belong, chastising every deed unjust and wrong!”
Tour operators no longer knew what to do. She went from ‘major attraction’ to ‘fat liability’! Business was hitting rock bottom. She even posted signs everywhere: ‘No Trespassing’, ‘Quiet Please’, ‘Beware Stinging Sphinx’. As she has the power to metamorphose, they couldn’t even locate her, let alone negotiate with her. They tried all methods, new and old; sophisticated sensors... dream-catchers, incense, offerings... Niet! No go! Nothing worked.
“Hah! I’m much better than those used-up demons and monsters!” she would gleefully applaud, “but I need something new, something supremely earth-shaking!”
Truth be told, Pharaona’s crustiness was not limited to tourists. In fact, she found most things and most beings boorish and dull. To a degree, this was due to Soapy saturation. She was washed out by Human Soap, having watched all the Ages—Stone-Bronze-Iron-Dark-Golden, the whole broken merry go ‘round and ‘round! But mostly, her grandiosity had to do with her unusually noble origins. After all, how many Wonders of the Ancient World originated from the same rock as the Great Sphinx! As for her misanthropy, it became firmly rooted when she read Saturnion’s goodbye note: “Dearest Ra, I reigned when Earth could endure the gods and human places were crammed with deities. The crimes of man have banished Justice. To Hell with them!”
“What was Hell?” Pharaona often wondered. “What was it really?” There were so many wild stories about this place, that separating fact from fiction was impossible. However, something she overheard once rang true for her. She once overheard a real estate agent, chatting with his son: “And that’s how the book finished, ‘Hell is other people’.
“Yes,” she thought, “Hell is other people! And all this time I thought Hell was about real estate! Location, location, location!”
And talking about location, let it be known, that no location was more dreaded by Pharaona than Amarantis—and no ‘Other’ more than Olfus. He was Pharaona’s Lex Luthor, Darth Vader and Doctor D
oom. Apart from being the Head of the Amaranthine RenaisScience Complex (ARC) for more than 60 years, he was also the Grand Poohbah of SkEyeClops (short for the SkEye Cyclops Surveillance Society). Pharaona was convinced that Olfus’ invisible hand had something to do with the Amaranthine Day of Destruction. She knew about his secret experiments and kept crystal-clear records of his lunatic conversations and impossible dreams. All her efforts to curb his lust for power had amounted to nought.
Just after the Aeonios Lab explosion, 20 years before D-Day, she droned inside his head through auditory hallucinations: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!” and “Let accursed fear ravish your maddened heart! When the ‘O’ becomes an ‘Ω’, you’ll be stripped of all!”
Niet! No go! Nothing worked!
Again and again she slipped into Olfus’ skull to warn of torrid times ahead.
Niet again! Mr ‘IQ-off-the-charts’ just didn’t get it!
One of her crystal archives was particularly disturbing—perhaps because it was—or wasn’t—so wacky. Much as she tried, she couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. The fact that sound and image quality was shot, didn’t help. One thing was clear though; that a frenzied Olfus was trying to persuade an unshakeable Darkstorm about something of great urgency. The fragmented recording went like this: “Despite the fact that a star Shreeeeee Fwoosh orbit of the moon would Shreeeeee Fwoosh scorch the surface of our planet because of its energy emittance, solar winds, electromagnetic radiations Shreeeeee Fwoosh not to mention that it would definitely screw up Earth’s gravity Shreeeeee Fwoosh... Bottom line: everything living on earth will be royally dead in less than a week”.
Panicked, Pharaona googled ‘star, moon, earth, royally dead in less than a week’—SEARCH RESULTS 0. She searched H.T.’s Emerald Tablet, double-checked all Oracles, ancient and new; still nothing about mysterious forces wobbling or blasting Earth, moon and stars. However, she did take special note of the Amaranthine Oracle, which proclaimed: ‘Divine Justice will extinguish mighty Corus (Greed) the son of Hybris (Insolence) lusting terribly, thinking to devour all’.
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