The Sacred Era: A Novel (Parallel Futures)

by Aramaki Yoshio

  A woman. White robes embrace the gentle curves of her body. Soft eyes. Flowing golden hair.

  Finally, he meets the shining beauty.

  K’s next words are barely audible.

  “What name should I call you?”

  “I am the same Barbara that you’ve always known,” she says, smiling as she takes K’s hands.

  A narrow spiral staircase ascends from the coral-pink chamber. Hand in hand with Barbara, K follows her up this staircase. K hears the bells of a clock tower ringing twelve times in the distance.

  They enter a small room at the very top of the tower. Barbara’s bedchamber? A sweet fragrance enshrouds the bright-pink chamber, giving it an atmosphere much like the inside of a fruit.

  All the secrets of the world will be revealed in this chamber. Drawn all over the ceiling, the walls, and also the floor are countless paintings. No, that’s not right. These are no mere paintings. They show various animated views of the world outside, shifting and changing with every moment. The images appearing on the ceiling show a different world altogether. Take one step inside to be transported right into that world. And then there’s the rounded wall on one side, displaying the scene of The Orchard from a long time ago.

  “I have been waiting for you,” Barbara says. “You’ve finally made it.”

  A deep grief shows in her eyes, eyes that have seen everything in the world.

  “Yes,” K says. “It took me a very long time to get here.”

  Somehow, K made it here. Only now does he realize the gravity of what he’s accomplished.

  “I didn’t understand anything at first. But along the way, it dawned on me why I had to come to Planet Bosch.”

  Barbara offers K a faint smile.

  “You came for me, right?”

  Indeed, K has come here for Barbara, leaving Earth, traversing a vast distance of a thousand light-years, just so he could make it all the way here.

  Why? Why did I need to see Barbara?

  Finally, K remembers. Barbara is the woman he has always envisioned in his mind. She is the woman who has dwelled in his heart all this time.

  “Yes. I have been dwelling in your heart for a long time.”

  She smiles, as if reading K’s mind.

  “I’ve had that feeling for a while now,” K says. “That’s why we meet again so many times, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. We first met in the previous life.”

  “Hundreds of years ago?”

  “Yes, hundreds of years ago. In this previous life, you were Gilgeas.”

  Just as K has long suspected. He is indeed Barbara’s old lover, Gilgeas.

  “Yes. But the two of us died without having consummated our love.”

  “That’s right.”

  The rounded wall inside the tower displays the scene, a reenactment of their previous lives. The gazebo in The Orchard comes into view. K and Barbara both stand within it, facing each other, having just exchanged their final vows in this world.

  The K within the screen whispers to Barbara as he gazes deep into her eyes.

  “Ready?”

  Barbara returns his gaze.

  “Yes.”

  K extends his arms toward Barbara’s neck. His fingers tighten their grip. He strangles Barbara.

  Six fingers on each of my hands?

  Lost in a daze, K continues watching the images on the wall. They show his deformed hands picking up a nearby vial of poison. As he watches over Barbara’s dying face, he removes the cap from the vial.

  Barbara speaks.

  “Just as we promised each other, you took the red poison. But then, with his own hands, your father dug up my body under the cover of darkness and gave me back my life.”

  “You mean the heretic Darko Dachilko?”

  “Yes. He placed me within the Sarcophagus of Osiris to raise me from the dead. That’s why I did not die. We were supposed to die together and be forever joined as one. Instead, we were torn apart, separated between this world and another world for several hundreds of years. Until now.”

  As K listens to Barbara’s story, he finally begins to understand all he’s done, all that made no sense at the time. Darko Dachilko was Gilgeas’s real father. And Gilgeas was K in a previous life. Like Darko Dachilko, he too had six fingers on each hand.

  “I understand now,” K says. “Gilgeas has been within me all this time. His curse became mine.”

  “Yes. But we’ve now fulfilled our centuries-old promise to each other.”

  Barbara’s words resonate with clarity.

  “But the Gilgeas within me killed poor Martha.”

  Poor Martha. Daughter of the administrator at the Planet Bosch Research Center. She loved K.

  “I know. But you have nothing to worry about. Martha is here too. See?”

  Barbara points toward the pond beneath them through the window. There she is indeed, locked in the throes of passion, squirming underneath the weight of a large, pot-bellied man.

  “Darko Dachilko resurrected her. Like me, she was placed inside the Sarcophagus of Osiris. Then he brought her here to Planet Bosch.”

  “What about my mother? Is she here too?”

  She was the beggar woman who went by the name of Eva. She was the woman who offered K her milk in his time of need.

  “You mean Lady Piponoclara? Of course she is here! Over there!”

  Looking to that direction, K sees her on a white boat just as it crosses the pond right below them.

  “Who is the man on the boat with her?”

  “That’s your father, of course.”

  Looking over his parents as they appear to enjoy each other’s company gives K a strange sort of feeling.

  The beautiful woman who introduced herself as Piponoclara at dinner that night at the Holy Igitur Monastery was once a Sacred Courtesan in her day. That same salacious hall where K lost his virginity—Clara Hall—was once, a long time ago, her own hall.

  “She too can travel across the boundaries of space and time. She must have appeared before you,” Barbara says.

  “But why?” K asks. “There must be some reason she offered me her milk. It can’t just be the simple expression of a mother’s love toward Gilgeas.”

  “You’re right, of course. The milk she offered you was for the poor Gilgeas locked within you. But that’s not the only reason she appeared before you. Lady Piponoclara needed to save you from starvation so that you could pass the Sacred Service Exam and make your way here to this planet.”

  Her milk did have a strange power to clear my mind.

  “But to what end?”

  “It was to ensure that everything could return to what it once was. Just like the old days, so you and I could be together again.”

  Little by little, the story begins to make sense to K. Of course, everything unfolded according to Darko Dachilko’s plan. First, he appeared before him in the form of his master. Just as he once suspected, Hypocras truly was Darko Dachilko in disguise. But he was also the pope. The first day’s questions at the Sacred Service Exam must have been created by Darko Dachilko just for K.

  No wonder I was able to answer them without too much trouble.

  Barbara explains to K that the Sacred Service Exam was held for the sole purpose of bringing K to Planet Bosch, of selecting that one candidate from all over the Holy Empire who can fulfill Darko Dachilko’s will.

  Outside, K’s mother, Piponoclara, has revived her old romance. Having rekindled the affection of Darko Dachilko for her after it was once directed at Barbara, she looks very happy indeed on the boat in the middle of the lake.

  Still . . .

  Just one last thing that K has yet to understand.

  5

  So Darko Dachilko has the ability to take on many different guises. He did not appear to K just as Hypocras or the pope but also as a guard at the Holy Igitur Monastery. He also received K as the Lord of Castle Loulan. Finally, he even appeared in K’s dreams as that strange old man Parnassus while he was aboard the
Nirvana ship.

  Even that old devil living in the massive Space Clock tower—could he have been another one of his incarnations?

  Such a powerful man is this Darko Dachilko that at once he plays the role of both saint and devil. His split personality sometimes manifests as a great man of conscience whose power and influence make him a leader of the people. But at other times, he turns into a cruel man, a man who would make Barbara the object of his illicit desire.

  “Barbara, do you remember when you were confined in the tower of the Space Clock by that devil? What was that all about?”

  “Let me explain it to you,” she says. “His imprisonment there was his punishment for confining me to that tower.”

  “Is that why that devil—that incarnation of my father—could not take even one step outside the tower?” K asks.

  “Until you handed him the chain from your medal.”

  “Yes. The devil used the chain to repair his own wings.”

  A cold chill runs up K’s spine as he recalls the eeriness of all that happened then.

  “It didn’t matter whether you knew what you were doing. What you did was an important symbolic act. You, as his son, forgave the devil inside of him. That’s why the devil brought me from the dreary darkness of Loulan to this paradise.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The incarnation of the devil inside your father lost all its power.”

  K’s questions to Barbara continue.

  “So who was it that meted out this punishment on the devil?”

  “Of course, that would be Darko Dachilko himself. No, that’s not right. It would be more accurate to say that it was yet another incarnation of your father. It was The Holy Igitur.”

  Truly, these words astound K.

  “What?” he says. “The Holy Igitur was my father?”

  “That’s right,” Barbara says, her voice as serene as it can be, clear and without a single hint of darkness. “Darko Dachilko is none other than The Holy Igitur himself.”

  And so the mysteries of the universe begin to reveal themselves. The Millennium of Prosperity that was the pride and joy of the Holy Empire of Igitur—Darko Dachilko built all of it. Was it his very own ideal world that he had dreamt up? Or was all of reality in this Holy Empire simply taking place within his dream?

  But why would my father seek to bring me to this planet?

  “Within me is Gilgeas, his rival in his affection for you,” K mutters.

  “Well, K,” Barbara says. “That’s because it’s your turn now. At long last, he’s going to pass everything on to you.”

  None of this makes sense to K.

  “What do you mean?”

  Does Darko Dachilko intend to give back Barbara to his son, Gilgeas?

  Barbara continues: “I think he has grown tired of living. I mean, he’s lived more than one thousand years. I guess if you’ve lived that long, you might come to know too much about the world, such that your very reason for being in the world disappears. He often said, ‘After all, this world is nothing more than a dream—to live in this world, even if it lasts for more than a thousand years, is still to live an empty life.’ K, you’re still young, and so you probably wouldn’t understand, but I think that I do, in a way, understand what he means. I mean, I too have lived many centuries through the magic of Osiris.”

  Upon speaking these words, she raises her hand, waving as if stroking the empty air. Every single one of the images of the various worlds displayed on the walls disappears all at once.

  Finally, the two embrace one another. They lay their bodies down to perform a ritual of love before a single altarpiece. The painting shows scenes much too familiar, much too similar to the paradise on Planet Bosch. No doubt, this is the Hieronymus Bosch painting from the Twilight Era.

  But K does not think to ask how the painting managed to find its way to this planet. It vanished from the Papal Art Gallery following the inquisition of the year 567 of the Sacred Era.

  It is a partitioned triptych altarpiece. They say its images represent heaven on the left side and hell on the right. And in the center of it all is this Garden of Earthly Delights.

  6

  “My son.”

  A booming voice comes from beyond the window.

  “Gilgeas, answer my call.”

  The great garden falls still and silent. K rushes to the window. K spots the giant of a man standing tall in the center of the pond. This man must be none other than Darko Dachilko himself.

  He raises both hands and looks toward the tower that K is in.

  He is a great man with a pitch-black body.

  The Melanosized Messiah—the man appears just as he had been described by The Holy Igitur in the Southern Scriptures.

  Barbara stands next to K.

  “He is calling to you,” she says. “Go and answer his call.”

  K nods.

  “I am here!” he shouts.

  “My son.”

  Once more, the black heretic calls K as he stands waist deep in the water.

  All those frolicking just a moment ago stop whatever they are doing, standing silent as they watch things unfold.

  “At last, he intends to complete the Jump into the White Light,” Barbara whispers to K.

  “The ablutio is complete,” the man says, “Thus, my body will perish. My nigredo flesh will be purified. My son, perform my baptisma.”

  Somehow, K understands exactly what he means.

  Several pages of the Southern Scriptures cover matters of Alchemical Marriage, recording three forms of purification toward the stage of albedo following the destruction of the flesh. The prima materia of the flesh will perish by either sortio, separatio, or putrefaci, becoming nigredo. This death is then followed by a purification that proceeds step-by-step along three stages.

  The first stage is the baptisma.

  The second is when the anima escapes the flesh, then reintegrates into the dead body to raise it from the dead.

  Finally, the third stage passes through the omnes colores or cauda pavonis, the phase of many colors, uniting all these colors to bring about the albedo.

  K addresses Darko Dachilko with his own booming voice.

  “Why do you seek baptisma? You are able to return to the flesh of this earth and be resurrected through the magic of Osiris, are you not?”

  “My son, indeed it is possible for me to be resurrected into this world, just as Barbara was. But it is time to complete the Magnum Opus. And so, my son, grant me the baptisma.”

  As Darko Dachilko wishes, K grants him the baptisma.

  And so it begins.

  Once more, the man in the pond begins to speak.

  “People of the world! Hear me! The anima mundi has been trapped in the material world. What is salvation? It is the Opus of freeing the long-suffering spirit of the cosmos. I have devoted myself to the salvation of such suffering spirits of this world and all the cosmos. You are the chosen ones. Now it is your turn to save others. No longer will you be the ones who need saving.”

  His voice overflows with confidence, as if the will of the cosmos itself speaks through him.

  “God took the form of his son and hid himself inside Mary, within her virgin land, within this purest manifestation of the materia. It was then that the history of the Savior began.”

  K listens intently.

  “I myself did the same as Jesus Christ. The ground on which you stand, this very planet, will soon cease to exist. But this is not the punishment of God. Nor is it the will of the cosmos. All this, all of nature, came into being through the Great God’s nocturnal emission. The world is no different. Because all of the universe manifests within God’s dream, its end will begin with God’s awakening. And so you have all been saved and brought to this planet by my hand. But now, I must return you all to nothingness once more.”

  As his thunderous preaching continues, he begins to ascend from the pond.

  “Look. The purification has begun,” Barbara says, pointing tow
ard Darko Dachilko.

  Indeed, as if he were being thrust into another dimension, his putrefied naked body washes away before all their eyes.

  He hovers in the air for some time, twirling his hands as if he were about to lead one final prayer. And then just like that, he is gone.

  Barbara sighs.

  “It’s over.”

  People start to leave. No, they start to vanish into thin air, becoming one with the Holy Spirit.

  After the ceremony, the garden returns to silence.

  “Now, we have to cut the chain of Pleiades,” Barbara says.

  Something must have been readied ahead of time. Barbara gently presses a spot on the wall. Immediately, the planet begins to undulate like a ship whose anchor has been cut.

  “Now, it’s time for us to sleep.”

  Barbara guides K to press their naked bodies together.

  As they hold one another, everything around them begins to take on the quality of a dream. K knows what will happen next. If he falls asleep now, he will cross over to the other side of his dream, awakening to an entirely new, entirely unfamiliar world.

  Only a miniscule—if such a word even still has meaning—amount of time flows past them before Planet Bosch transforms completely. In an instant, everything dries out like a desert. The transformation is as rapid as an egg’s growth after fertilization.

  “The time has come for us to go.”

  “To where?” K asks as he caresses her white bosom with his lips.

  “To the new Earth. We will travel there to become the seed of the creation of the world.”

  Planet Bosch explodes.

  It happens quickly, as if its very existence had always been right at the threshold all this time.

  The planet scatters its seeds, countless seeds that will wander through the darkness of space.

  Perhaps, with the passing of time, everything will be reborn. Perhaps one of these seeds carries the spirits of Barbara and K. Perhaps one day it will reach some star in some galaxy, just as it was foretold by the allegories of the “Book of the Seed” in the Southern Scriptures.

  “Thus, once more will God desire in this great dream, and a moment of joy in his dream will be inseminated among the people. And so the Millennium of Prosperity will begin anew.”