Man was in his full powers at his first appearance in The Epic. He was living in the First Age of Magic. He was the Lord of the World then, and he gave a definition to all the other creatures. Some of those creatures that he defined were unbodied and invisible; but that made no difference at all. In his full powers, paradoxical man could see all invisible things. In that early era, time stood still when man ordered it to do so. Man had the Midas Touch then, the transmuting touch. He could walk through walls then, or through rock cliffs. He could fly then. He would walk on water. He could literally move mountains. He could converse with both spirits and animals, as well as with the superior plants and trees, and the mountains. He traded repartee with the lightning, and he didn't do too badly in that exchange.
Yes, he could do all these things. It is all narrated in the colors and sounds and commentary of the Epic, and in the happy rampant smell of it. He did all these things, and time stood still for him while he did them. (It is believed that only a very little time actually elapsed during that First Age of Magic.) And now the pilgrims traveling through the Masterworks of that first part of the Epic said in delight, as the Neanderthals themselves seemed to have said, “We remember a lot of it, we remember a lot of it!”
After several years on the Grand Tour, the flow of the Great Epic changed. The living narrative (made only of panes of glass saturated with color and with sunlight, but made very evocably) came to the calamity, to the catastrophe, the conflagration, the ruination, the fall, the depravity, the unhappiness, the dung-heaping of the world. There was the fire and the plague and the death-sickness, the blowing out of the lights, the shrinking of the world, the alienation of the species. And then man was living, so the Stained Glass Epic conveyed it, on the narrow “isthmus of the middle state” instead of in the wide wide world. Would truculent and proud man accept being restricted to the narrow and miasmal isthmus?
He had to, for a while at least. In that portion of the Epic that was traveled from the third through the sixth year of the eleven year “Grand Tour of the Masterworks”, proud and benighted man was a castaway marooned on the Narrow Isthmus (the “Desert Island” of popular accounts). Desert Islands are dismal, dismal, dismal. But what if they become dismally romantic?
Then, among that powerful class that roughly directs the world, there arose a powerful reaction against the Grand Tour of the Masterworks, against the whole emerging pattern of the Epic, against the Masterworks themselves. The parathurouclasts, the window-breakers (of very ancient lineage, they!) were on the rise again. There had always been a loose, worldwide group of them ready to spring into action. And besides the human smashers, there had been for the last two hundred years a faction of arrogant-brained computers adhering to the window-smasher, the picture-smasher party.
The window-smashers grabbed Air Control, they grabbed Nexus, they grabbed World-Wide Wave Allotters, they grabbed the Sky Relays, they grabbed Beam-Bouncers, they grabbed Multi-Press; they grabbed all the things that takeover groups always grab.
Both the Establishment and the Anti-Establishment (in reality they had been identical for two hundred and fifty years) were solidly behind the window-smashers. Sixty-three percent of the scientific community was behind the window-smashers, but it was given out that it was ninety-nine percent.
The objection, of course, was that the Epic was showing quite clear pattern and design. And if design were allowed in the Epic, it might imply design in the Universe. If there was any design in anything, then the establishment-anti-establishment and its billions of minions had been totally wrong forever.
That must not happen!
There was more than one interpretation for the Epic events of the fifth and sixth years of the Grand Tour of the Masterworks. In one version, man was free to leave the narrow isthmus of the middle state, the dismal desert island, whenever he wished to leave it. It was this news that it was possible to leave the miserable isthmus that was referred to in the message of the Medieval Stained Glass Pictures: “Wake up all the world and tell the good news!”
No, this good news must not be told, because the good news was false. The misnamed good news had been buried for a long while; and if it wasn't dead by now, it should be. It was too eerie to allow such a dead thing to stick its head out of the ground again. The desert-island-isthmus was the world, the only world there had ever been, the only world there could be allowed to be.
That was the other interpretation of the Epic events of the fifth and sixth years of the Grand Tour of the Masterworks; that was the other interpretation of the world, and it must be the only interpretation. Sure it was dismal, but certainly there was a strong and dismal romantic attachment to it. The Establishment had buried all its treasure on that desert island, and it could not go away and leave it.
The “First Age of Magic” was harmless if it was kept sealed off far in the past, before the beginning of the past. It could be the Golden Age in the beginning, the fairy tale age, a thing for children. It could not be rooted out of the group unconscious (it had been tried), so it must be declared a thing for children only.
But a “Second Age of Magic” must not even be thought of. And for one to say that it was there for anyone to reach out and take it meant that that one must be ready to die the death.
So start the smashing. Smash the glass pictures and the people who were hooked on the glass pictures. Get with it at breaking those windows, and at knocking off those cruise pilgrims. Those pilgrims were plague-carriers.
And what could be more popular than smashing glass! What could be more popular than smashing people! And a great toll was taken on both.
Soon there were not fifty thousand persons starting out each week on the Grand Tour of the Masterworks. One week there were only thirteen pilgrims starting out, and another week only eleven. And these persons traveled secretly: for the Grand Tour now had a very bad name.
The worst part of the “Narration of the Big Epic” was not the varied interpretations that could be put on the fifth and sixth years of the Grand Tour, the part that was sometimes called the fifth and sixth books of the Epic. The worst part was that the eighth through the eleventh years of the Grand Tour had to do with things that hadn't happened yet, with things that must not be allowed to happen, with things that must be destroyed before they happened.
Would destroying the Masterworks that showed the events prevent the events from happening?
Well, it sure would be a smash in that direction.
There is nothing like smashing records and smashing people to get out of inextricable tangles. Soon the Grand Tour and the little tours were no more. Soon the stained glass was no more. The biggest pieces of the recent stained glass left in the world were no bigger than the St-Cirq fragment of Neanderthal Stained Glass, and that was only thirteen by seven centimeters.
Then the bad weather, the short and abortive Zurichthal Ice Age (the Zeona Ice Age in North America), paid a short return visit just after it had been mopped up, just after all the stained glass had been smashed. Well, at least there were three very cold years, with heavy frosts even in the equatorial lowlands, and with new, violent, short-term volcanic activity. So the frost-acid stained glass made one more appearance (you'd have known it would do it if you'd paid attention to the eighth year of the old Grand Tour of the Masterworks). The “Living Spirits of the World” now impressed scathing acid-frost pictures on every piece of glass in the world, on watch and clock crystals, on instrument glass, on eyeglasses and on glass eyes, on all mirrors, on all windows, on all glass jewelry, on all drinking glasses and glass bottles.
These were very powerful and colorful pictures. What reds, what purples! What reds, what yellows! What reds, what blues! What reds, what reds, what reds! The most vivid of all the reds in the new pictures was popularly named Armageddon Red. Oh, beautiful!
There was another nice touch to the pictures. A great majority of them had the fiery words “Repent, Repent!” scrawled across their faces as if by lightning. But who would be so rash as
to make a value judgment on an appearance like that!
The three very cold years ended. The volcanoes went to sleep again. The pictures stopped appearing, and soon they were no longer in evidence. But the pictured glass of this worldwide spate was not smashed. People were afraid to smash it. Instead they replaced it all by new clear glass, and they hid the pictured glass away in secret places. Some folks swore that they could hear the pictured glass ticking away like time bombs. They knew they hadn't heard the last of them.
Another decade has gone by. We have a little bit of new-new stained glass openly displayed again. This colored glass of the present day is, like that of the Medieval period, of purposive and artificial manufacture. It hasn't the power of the Masterworks Glass of the time of the Grand Tour, nor of the stark Armageddon Glass of the three year return of the cold, that hidden-away glass that seems to be ticking the seconds off. Some of the new glass is pretty good though, and much of it is done by impassioned amateurs. It may look better in retrospect than it does now, if there is a retrospect to our now. It is in tenuous rapport to the Armageddon Glass of the three year period, though it does not seem able to achieve the real Armageddon Red.
It is only fair to state that there are other Informal Histories of Stained Glass that do not agree with the foregoing history in every respect. Some of them do not agree with it in any respect. This, however, is the only one that accounts for all the facts without using any element of the grotesque.
All Hollow Though You Be
“When are your friends going to arrive, Epikt?” Valery Mok asked that creative machine who was presently in his modified alligator mobile extension. “Not that I greatly look forward to their arrival, but there's a lot of spooky literature arriving here in care of them. That little magazine Okkult, ugh!” “They will arrive within minutes or seconds,” Epikt conveyed in a cavernous sort of voice. “That little magazine Okkult, ugh! contains an article of my own, ‘The Gravity of Hollow Spheres’, made up entirely of anomalies. I'm proud of it.”
“Epikt, do you know what happened to the water in Lake Yahola Reservoir?” Gregory Smirnov the Director of the Institute for Impure Science asked sharply. “The early morning report has it that all the water disappeared with a great sucking noise within two minutes. That was only half an hour ago.”
“All the water in the reservoir went down a big hole in the ground,” Epikt uttered. “I hate it when things go wrong like that. They were about five miles off.”
“Epikt, do you know what's making all the big holes in Donner's Pasture?” Aloysius Shiplap asked. “Half a dozen houses have already slipped into them, and there's consternation among the people of the neighborhood.”
“They're coming closer,” Epikt said. “They'll be here pretty quick now. Tell the people that no harm was intended, that they can have their houses back again if they want to go down in the holes and get them. My friends are trying to navigate by themselves, and a trip like this is a first.”
There was peace for a little while then, in the happy little group that was the heart of the Institute for Impure Science. They were sitting on their patio at the Institute, watching the breaking dawn, dialing for their breakfasts on their ‘Drasher's Dial-a-Deli Vendor’, viewing the morning wake-up shows, scanning the journals and papers that had just arrived by the ‘Morning Express Service’. They were three humans, and Epikt who was a Ktistec machine.
“This little magazine Okkult, Epikt, it seems to be a ‘Hollow Earth’ publication,” Gregory commented as he scanned the thing. “Isn't it a little bit infra dig for us to have such a thing on the premises of the august Institute for Impure Science? Where's it published anyhow?”
“Nah!” Epikt uttered in a voice that was like an alligator belching. “As to the infra dig part, you're going to have to do a lot of infra digging to become current. Infra digging, digging below the surface, get it? I suppose you realize that, in learning about the world we live on, we have only scratched the surface yet. Ponder that phrase ‘scratched the surface’, Greg. It is a hollow earth magazine, yes, and it's published in the hollow earth.”
“A hollow earth, Epikt, is simply not in the context of reality.”
“All you humans are still stuck in the context of Class Six Reality. But we more intelligent machines are well into Class Seven Reality. And the Earth happens to be hollow in Class Seven Reality.”
“Your piece on the gravity of hollow spheres is silly, Epikt. I know that you do know primary mathematics, for I programmed them into you when we constructed you. But this piece of yours is gibberish.”
“No, I read it and it's about right,” Valery interposed. “You programmed Epikt on primary mathematics, true. But who programmed you? We may need a little remedial mathematical instruction around here, starting at the top. Epikt, what is that awful roaring and clanking right under our feet?”
“It's probably the roots of the rose bushes showing a little vigor,” Epikt uttered. “You recall that I mixed a batch of my own ‘Never-Fail’ rose fertilizer for you to use last night. It works, it works! There is nothing more poetic than a veritable explosion of roses such as we are about to see.”
But what exploded out of the ground in the middle of the rose garden that bordered the sun patio of the Institute was not a cascade of red roses. It was a fourteen-wheel-drive, hang-on-anywhere, climb-the-cliffs Cavern-Buggy of unknown manufacture. There were two creatures (mechanical) in it who were covered with rock-dust and trash. The two creatures were wearing Australian digger hats, and they were quickly recognized as:
“Proaisth!” Gregory Smirnov cried out with something near loathing, and it was indeed that British speculative machine in its wrinkled Noël Coward extension that looked grotesque under the huge digger hat. And the other one was—
“Chresmoeidy!” Valery cried out in total contempt. It was in truth the French thesis-making machine in its French navvie extension with striped sweater and small artist's moustache, but with the digger hat instead of a beret.
“Finally we hit it just right,” Proaisth chuckled, and he put a third digger hat onto the mottled head of Epikt. “We went in from Australia this morning, just so we couldn't be accused of taking shortcuts. It's a good thing you have a big rose garden to make such a big hole in. If we'd have overshot it just a little, the whole Institute of Impure Science would have fallen into our hole. Ah, I'm sure you won't mind if we have a few of our associates in for a meeting this morning, Director Smirnov. There'll be about three hundred of them for a start. We'll entertain them simply right out here, cocktail party and then a plush banquet. The big hole won't matter to them. They're partisans of big holes in the ground anyhow.”
“Just who are these three hundred or so ‘associates’ of yours that you have invited to our Institute, Proaisth?” Gregory Smirnov asked. “Ah, will Austro be here, Epikt?”
“Oh, they're all members of the ‘Hollow Earth Society’, both from within and on the surface of the earth,” the British machine said. “Austro? I thought he was just a character in the Rocky McCrocky comic strip. Soon everybody both within and on the earth will be members of this ‘Hollow Earth Society’. There has been division between people for too long.”
“We are shamed beyond endurance,” Charles Cogsworth of the Institute moaned, “that there should be Hollow Earth People on the very patio of our Institute!” “They are only a thin cut above the Flat Earth People,” Glasses commiserated. “We will be the derision of the whole scientific community.”
“Oh, do you gentlemen really think so?” a cocktail-sipping lady asked. “I belong to both sorts of people myself, and I come by my affiliations honestly. My late first husband gave his whole life to the Flat Earth movement. And my late second husband gave his whole life to the Hollow Earth movement. I'm committed to both of them.”
“But they couldn't both be true,” Gregory Smirnov protested, “even if one or the other of them were true. They're mutually contradictory.”
“Yes, of course they are,” th
e lady agreed, “and I am totally committed to everything that is mutual. There isn't nearly enough mutuality to go around. A lot of us believe in both of them. And a lot of us here are members of the ‘The Moon is Only Twenty-Eight Miles High Society’. It's a Fortean society. It's new under that name, but the truth about the height of the moon has been recognized by all enlightened people from the beginning.”
Those members of the Hollow Earth Society, those who lived on the surface of the Earth as well as those who lived in the interior, were a grubby bunch. They simply would not admit that they were wrong about things. They undertook to argue their views with everybody, and it was a pretty shabby show that they put on.
“They have finally decided that it's time for some of them to come out from under the rocks,” Epikt gloated. “Hey, that's pretty good. To come out from under the rocks in the popular sense, and to come out from under the rocks—”
“Oh shut up, Epikt!” Valery Mok exploded.
“We have decided to turn this little impromptu meeting and cocktail party and dinner into a rather large expromptu six day convention,” the French machine Chresmoeidy uttered. “There'll be a couple of hundred thinking machines from the interior of the Earth, as well as a few thousand ‘people’ from in there, and there'll be several thousand surface-dwelling members of the Hollow Earth Society in attendance also. I know we will get a good press from inside the world, but I'm worried about the response we'll get here on the surface. You'd better get in provender for about ten thousand persons for six days. We're taking four hotels on the inside of the world, and we'll use the Institute buildings here on the surface, and you'd better arrange for the Town House North Hotel and the Okie International Hostelry also.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 293