The Sacred Era: A Novel (Parallel Futures)

by Aramaki Yoshio

  What is going on? Has a strange form of magic unveiled memories locked within this clay world?

  “Barbara,” K calls out the woman’s name.

  “Oh, I’ve been waiting for you so long, Gilgeas.”

  No longer a clay doll, Barbara stands before K in the flesh.

  “Barbara, please tell me. Who killed you?”

  “Oh, Gilgeas, you don’t need me to tell you. I forgive you.”

  “Who was it who dug your grave?”

  “Your master.”

  “Him?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “But what is my relationship to him?”

  “You know this already.”

  Perhaps I do.

  “I don’t have much time left, Gilgeas. I will be waiting for you there when you arrive.”

  “Where?”

  “Planet Bosch, of course.”

  “Tell me, just what sort of planet is it?”

  “It’s Paradise. Of course it is.”

  Her voice cuts off. The spell has lifted. The room has become clay once more.

  The Garden of Earthly Delights

  1

  The cosmos constricts at its center. Twisting into an hourglass shape, all the world converges into itself. Time is no exception.

  In that instant, time turns into something else.

  The turmoil of the vortex of a vast dream envelops K, a vortex dreamed up by all the world, a vortex at the very heart of the universe.

  What lies at the bottom of the vortex? K’s mind falls endlessly toward darkness, as if funneled down a narrow tube out of his very being. Consciousness now unsullied, pure as the polished surface of a mirror, immaculate as an infant completely free from the prison of being.

  Swathed in this new experience of time, dwelling within time itself, K begins to transform into someone else, something else, a whole new form of being altogether.

  Now, he sees everything. He sees right through every single thing, through all creation itself. Sentience is no more. All that’s left is perception. K has become vision in itself.

  This form of being—is this what we call by the name of God?

  God is not a being that can be seen, perceived. Perhaps God is a state of being, of dwelling in the reversal of time. That is why God manifests in any place and any time, traversing the spatial and temporal fabrics that weave through the universe.

  No further explanations are possible. You must awaken to it. A great awakening. This is what K finally learns at the end of his dream.

  By the time K awakens from his dream, Planet Sola is already far behind him. He finds himself seated within the cabin of a lotus-shaped ship, tranquil in its flight through space. Not a large ship. Nor does it have a crew aboard. He remembers that the ship is called Pilgrimage.

  K cannot tell if the ship possesses any kind of propulsion system at all. It simply travels through space, flying without any noise, without any vibration.

  “Just keep praying.”

  K recalls the words of the officer at the Planet Sola spaceport. K does just that. Does this mean that this lotus-shaped ship flies through space powered by prayer? Does the Pilgrimage draw its energy from K himself as he sits cross-legged in its center? Or perhaps K himself is some kind of circuit, channeling some form of energy that pervades the universe?

  The ship continues to fly K on the final leg of his route.

  How much time has passed around him? That is impossible to tell. K must focus his attention on his prayers, must devote all his mind to concentrating on one spot on his forehead.

  Until suddenly, his destination zooms right before him.

  Planet Bosch!

  A planet! A green globe floating in the blackness of space! This must be it!

  I’ve made it!

  K is filled with sheer joy.

  The sun blazes before his eyes, giving off a resplendent glow against the dark background. A G-type star, not all that different from Earth’s sun. K first assumes that Planet Bosch revolves around this star. But as his flying saucer approaches closer, another dark planet comes into view. Several times larger than Planet Bosch, approaching a size similar to Earth’s moon, it also revolves around an even larger planet close to the size of Earth. So, this dark rock is the satellite. Planet Bosch, therefore, is the satellite of a satellite.

  K’s mind swells with burning passion as he observes the system of three celestial bodies from his ship. No doubt, these bodies must exert complex gravitational forces on one another, generating complex movements in turn. Watching these bodies in motion, K realizes that some sort of vine connects Planet Bosch to the dead moon. This must be the chain of Pleiades that the astronomer Surim discovered. As far as he can tell, Planet Bosch extends its roots toward the satellite, absorbing all the nutrition from the soil of that moon. Multiple passages describing such a planet appear in the Southern Scriptures. He never thought he would have a chance to see precisely what those passages from the scriptures describe.

  Some believe that Planet Bosch once revolved around Earth’s moon like this a long time ago, until it broke away, floating off like a giant ball of algae in space, much like the one K saw back at Castle Loulan.

  But this one is far more massive.

  His eyes widen at the sight of this massive ball of green algae, now grown to the size of a celestial body.

  Finally, Pilgrimage enters orbit around the planet. K’s journey to this sacred land will soon come to an end. Up close, the verdant glow of the green globe visible from the window of his ship is even more stunning than he expected.

  The ship wanders close to the planet’s umbilical cord, the tubular stem, beautiful and green, linking it to the dead moon. K peers through a telescope, searching for the end of the stem. He sees the stem split off into countless root branches, spreading across the surface of the moon like a tight mesh. K shudders at the sight of the indistinct remains of what must have once been a civilization where one of these root branches burrowed beneath the surface. The appendages of Planet Bosch must have destroyed it, devouring all its natural resources, leaving the host moon barren beyond belief, its desolate rocky surface presenting an image of hell.

  K’s ship makes a smooth landing. An electronic foghorn sounds as the Pilgrimage completes its docking procedure with the Tower Station Terminal Ring. A voice, sounding almost synthesized, speaks to K through the speakers, informing him of the procedures for disembarking.

  “Welcome, K. We have been waiting for your arrival. My name is Basen, and I am in charge of this base. Right now, you will need to take off your clothes and sterilize them.”

  The inspection procedures at the station are unusually strict, requiring that K go from one decontamination dock to another, until finally ending with a shower in an aqueous solution and ultraviolet light.

  Tower Station is suspended five hundred meters above the surface of the sacred Planet Bosch. Traveling to its surface requires a long trip down a lift. Only a single shaft supports the whole station, while three branches constructed out of a hardened high-tensile polymer extend downward from the primary shaft at sixty-degree angles. Fitted at the tip of each branch is a heavy metal spindle. K is familiar with this structure. Known as the Balance Toy Structure, this system supports its main structure by coordinating and adjusting the angles of the branches through a precise gyroscopic horizon connected to a computer. Although it may appear ready to topple over easily, in fact, it is quite a dynamically stable structure.

  As instructed, K proceeds down a narrow hallway in search of the sign identifying the atrium. All of the Sacred Service staff on this planet must be elsewhere, using the common facilities above or performing inspections below, as this part of the complex is completely devoid of activity. K locates the atrium without too much trouble. Sliding open a dividing curtain, he arrives at a rather small, but nonetheless clean and efficiently planned, fan-shaped room. And he certainly can’t complain about the view. Curved panoramic windows line the whole surface of the outer wa
lls, opening up to a magnificent view of the verdant terrain of Planet Bosch.

  Pulling one of the hover chairs to the window, K lounges for a little while. More than he could have ever imagined, the lush landscape almost glows with a fresh green hue. Looking as if they were blanketed by a thick carpet, the plains extend all the way out to the horizon. Scattered here and there are various sizes of vesicular structures of vegetation that appear to be settlements of different shapes and sizes.

  2

  Could this truly be the planet that The Holy Igitur once prophesized? Before K now stands a city, not man-made, but one that grew organically. And as much as its structures appear to have been arranged in advance, anticipating the coming lives of its future residents, as far as K can tell, there is no one here.

  K recalls a widely known section of the Southern Scriptures, the “Law of Unplanned Nature.” Igitur taught that “this Nature itself only exists as it is. You give it purpose yourself. But your pride comes in and ends this state of being. You too will likewise be ended.” This teaching has since become a fundamental tenet of the Holy Empire of Igitur, calling for a spiritual way of being as the sole path to coexistence with nature. Igitur teaches in the “Book of the Body” that “this Body of yours is nature. This is where your error lies. You must return this body to nature. To possess a body is not good for the spirit.” Scholarly commentary has since traced the philosophical basis of the “Ten Prohibited Desires” to these passages of the Southern Scriptures.

  But the heretic Darko Dachilko directly challenged these teachings, declaring in his “Treatise on the Pleasures of Nature” that God’s nocturnal emissions created the universe, that all the world is God’s sperm. He wrote: “The single reason for all of creation, the phenomenon that has made this world appear as this world, is precisely God’s pleasure. Thus, what we experience as the phenomenological world is none other than the discharge of God himself, the result of the process of God’s nocturnal onanism.”

  K relaxes in the comfort of the hover chair as he spends much of his first day since arriving gazing out at the vivid colors of the sunset on Planet Bosch.

  The next morning, K wakes early in the day to prepare for his first descent onto the planet’s surface. The first step is to review the rules to observe while on the surface. These regulations are nonnegotiable. Next, like a hotel guest heading to the pool, K wraps a bath towel around his naked body and makes his way to the descent lobby on the lowest floor. Ultraviolet light and X-rays illuminate every inch of the room, permeating the air with the smell of ozone. The low grumbling of the air-filtering system gives the room an incessant clamor. Upon his arrival, he receives a card with the allotted time printed on it from the registration desk. He then steps inside a chamber, where he is to sit on a bench, giving him the impression of entering a sauna.

  Once he completes these procedures, K steps into the lobby, where a few others seeking to descend to the surface stand waiting for the lift to arrive. K briefly considers starting a conversation with one of them but then decides against it. There is just too much of an age difference between them. So everyone remains silent, until eventually, the lift comes up for them.

  The lift descends through a transparent shaft. It does not take long for K’s excitement to build as they slowly approach the surface. Unable to contain this excitement, he jumps out of the lift compartment before anyone else as soon as it touches the ground and the doors open. The fine green fuzz covering the surface of the ground caresses the backs of his feet with a touch akin to velvet. This carpet will never wear out. It will always be new, always be fresh, always be alive.

  K opts to walk on his own, apart from the other researchers who descended with him. It takes no time for him to face the same sense of disbelief that Tinguette—the first man who returned to Earth from this planet—had experienced when he first saw the planet.

  Everywhere around K, thickets of pod-shaped structures of vegetation in all sizes sprout from the ground. The larger pods grow to the size of the cargo containers at the spaceport. The smallest among them are about the size of a human hand. Most of the pods, however, are just large enough to house a few people within their hollow interiors. Evidently, these pods are organic, growing in size with age, so all that distinguishes the smaller ones from the larger ones is their place in the developmental stage. According to Tinguette’s book, close to the equator, these pods can grow magnificently gargantuan. Closer to the poles, however, their sizes are much smaller on average.

  It’s just like standing in the middle of the beautiful garden, reminding K somehow of his lost memories of The Orchard. The magnificent forests extend beyond what his eye can see, enshrouding the whole planet with a faint fragrance that’s quite intoxicating. For K, there is simply no resisting the urge to wander around this landscape without a single care in the world.

  K’s sole possession is a compass he carries around his neck. He carries nothing else, roaming the land just as primitive humans would have done. No other animals, never mind any predatory animals, are to be found on this planet of vegetation.

  K reaches the opposite end of the open field, where he finds a dense forest of the pod-shaped plant formations. A smattering of unusual pods, otherwise identical in shape but in colors that remind him of outcroppings of coral, mingle within the vast sea of green.

  Tinguette explained all this in his famous report: “Although I have considered a number of possible explanations for the existence of these pink pod formations, my hypothesis is as follows: Not unlike the agar-agar of planet Earth, red algae can photosynthesize energy from radiation at longer wavelengths. I am certain that the red pods work the same way. The long history of the growth of Planet Katavolos may have included a period of parasitism on a red dwarf star, and traces of this time have remained coded in the genes of the vegetation, leading to the occasional birth of a red pod.”

  K emerges from the forest into another open field. Crossing the field brings him face-to-face with mounds of the pod formations piled atop one another to form the walls of a twisting pathway. Without a moment’s hesitation he steps inside, losing track of how much time passes as he navigates its labyrinthine path. When he emerges into a clearing on the other end of it, his empty stomach begins to growl.

  The entire area of the clearing is slightly sunken, with a mirrorlike surface waiting in its center.

  “A pond!”

  This joyous discovery quickens K’s steps. He recalls no mention of any such pond in Tinguette’s report. Otherwise, he would have been honored as the man who discovered the Pond of Planet Katavolos.

  Where does all this water come from? K squats by the side of the pond, scooping some water with his hands for a taste. Pure water though it is, it nonetheless has a sweet fragrance akin to tree sap.

  K plunges himself into the water, which goes no higher than his waist at its deepest point. His bare feet feel the smooth touch of a carpet-like covering of moss at the bottom of the pool. He wades toward the center of the pond until it is deep enough for him to swim. It’s been a long time since he quite thoroughly enjoyed a swim. And in such an ideal natural environment to do it too, surrounded by the quiet green of the pod forest. Only when he’s thoroughly savored the experience does he emerge from the pond, lying down beside the water.

  K basks under the refreshing warmth of the sun, overflowing with feelings of joy.

  It takes him some time, but K eventually does find the source of the water on the opposite end of the pond, where it flows out of a small channel. Less than a hundred steps from there is another pod, which secretes the water from its skin, as if it were sweating.

  Every single thing here comes from nature itself. Not a single man-made thing in sight. Truly, Planet Bosch is a living planet, a ball of algae grown to the size of a planetoid, grown to a size large enough for inhabitants to land on its surface. Even though K knew the stories about the wondrous beauty of this planet, there was no way he could have imagined just how much of a paradise it truly
is.

  Like Marimo moss balls floating in water, this ball of space algae drifts through space, balancing between the forces of gravity and the speed of its revolutions. Unlike Marimo moss balls though, it produces its own water. Estimates drawn from a geological assessment suggest that multiple pockets of perched water—literal inland seas—hide beneath the planet’s crust. Deeper into the planet’s core—that is, the heart of this giant globe of algae—unbelievable amounts of dense mineral deposits are packed together in plasma form.

  It is well past time to head back to the Tower Station. But K is in no hurry. Even if night falls before he can make it back, he can always find a suitable pod for shelter, just as an insect in the woods or mountains might snuggle inside some plant to hide itself from the evening dew.

  This is indeed what K decides to do. It does not take him much effort to find a complex pod formation made of four pods layered atop one another. He quickly locates the opening that Tinguette describes in his report toward the rear of the formation, where the other pods close in on each other to form a narrow pathway. The entrance has the shape of a flower petal, which folds itself closed when night falls. Light, changes in humidity, and some sort of mechanical stimulation also allow the petals to open and close on command.

  Tinguette believed that these pods evolved from insectivorous plants. He writes: “Even though they function as perfect dwellings for humans, for other less developed animals, the pods of Katavolos are a deadly trap. Their nectar emanates a sweet fragrance that surely seduces any animal, compelling it to slip inside the pod through the flower petal entryway. Engorging themselves on this nectar hypnotizes them into a deep slumber. But as for me, all this was a charming lullaby.”