The kraken. Dragons. Ktulhu.
It was then I truly realised the purpose that lay behind the initially inexplicable mass-suicide we had discovered. Stahl had intended to dedicate the Copernicus radio telescope as a temple, a cathedral to these imaginary chimeras: the literal fountainhead of a perverse cult of his own insane devising.
There now remained but one part of the puzzle to solve—
I remember Ehrlicson’s face as I was sealed into the pod, the look of trepidation and resignation. The plexi-glass sarcophagus had been thoroughly disinfected since the removal of its previous, moribund occupant. The electrodes had already been fixed to my naked body. I slipped on the Virtuality headset, the laser-optic eye-pieces an impenetrable visor shutting out everything but the scenario Stahl’s programme was to reveal. I waited for the muscle relaxant to work, minimising physical sensation. It took seconds. Now I was ready to access the experience the men and women of Copernicus had been staring at the moment of their deaths.
The laser-optic system projects its holographic images directly onto the retina of the eye. The transition from physical to conceptual reality is surprisingly smooth...
– A shallow, two-dimensional geometry of overlapping squares, rectangles, parallelograms, triangles and rhombuses, alternately coloured in luminous primary colours, unfurls like the time-lapse accelerated blossoming of a digitally-generated flower. Beyond this threshold lies a flat zone: featureless, barren, no horizons or any reference points from which to glean a sense of spatial perspective.
Occasionally, swarms of disorganised information will buzz through the void, following random, tangential vectors like squadrons of maddened hornets. I seem to be floating, hanging in zero-gravity like a comic strip character sketched in an empty panel.
– And then there comes the voice...
‘Sam, it is you, isn’t it? I knew it would be you. I knew you’d come. It’s working out just as I’d planned.’
Stahl. It’s Reinhardt Stahl.
Beginning as a pinpoint of light, Stahl – or rather his computer-generated image – materialises abruptly like a three-dimensional television transmission. He looks much as I remembered him. Hand-some with a vague yet unmistakable ascetic quality. Like me he is completely naked.
‘ Stahl – ?’ is all that I can think of to say.
‘Exciting, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Remember the old science fiction movies we both loved in our youth. Doesn’t this remind you of them? Of the Earth scientist who succeeds in constructing the Metalunan enterossiter in This Island Earth. Or perhaps you feel like Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet, accessing the Krell IQ-boosting machine; that was always my personal favourite.’
‘Stahl, what ... how can you be – ? I’ve seen your body. Your dead body, for God’s sake!’
‘For God’s sake? Yes, that is precisely correct. Though, I would hasten to add, not for the sake of any deity with whom you might be familiar. And no: this is not a recording. I am speaking to you directly now from Maximus Prime, the cosmic cradling of the Hyperbreed. We are all there now – all the men and women of Copernicus who dared share my vision. I have devised this computer-generated image for your benefit. I doubt if your limited comprehension could cope with the realisation of my true self, the phenomenon of what I have become. Not yet anyway. And as for my dead body, my empty human shell: on the level of quantum perception I now enjoy, the difference between the life and death of organic matter is so slight as to be negligible. As you will soon discover –’
‘But how is this possible? Why – ?’
‘You’ve already figured most of it out. I’m simply here to fill in the gaps for you. Now that you have initiated the ritual’s final phase, its culmination.’
‘Ritual?’
‘Of course, the Invocation.’ Stahl’s smile broadens to reveal something unguarded, alien. Hungry. Suddenly I realise just how very afraid I am. How vulnerable.
Our bodies now are luminescent thoughtform projections silhouetted against the infinite blackness of deep space, studded with tiny stars like innumerable jewels.
Radiant clouds of nebulous gas glower with the cold promise of cosmic transmutations. My own sense of foreboding seems corres-pondingly tangible.
‘Remember how – all those years ago – I postulated that the Maximus Prime emissions may not have been intended for our ears if, indeed, for ears at all?’ Stahl continues. ‘Well, I was right. The black static spectrum elicits sympathetic reactions on a molecular level. It was – is – communicating with something in us. Something in our blood and bones. Our cells. Our reactions are infinitely subtle, but significant. We respond genetically. The neural processors – bio-molecular computers – I devised to collate and interpret the Maximus Prime data, to decode the black static transmissions, held the key to this discovery. As the project progressed, unaccountably, spontaneously, they began to mutate. At first, I assumed it to be a malfunction, a virus perhaps. But, as I continued to observe the phenomenon, I realised that what was occurring was the reawakening of a dormant, evolutionary potential. The answer was obvious: the black static transmissions encoded a fundamental, biological imperative. The neural processors, bred from an active culture of genetically-altered human cortical tissue, were responding to that message; without the impedance of a human brain, nervous system and the countless other bio-chemical interactions necessary to sustain the integrity of our own physical structure they were highly-sensitised receptors. There were few barriers to inhibit their interception, interpretation and assimilation of the message. It was by devising a prototypical, psychoactive Virtuality software that I established a medium by which I could achieve active interface with what was a truly self-determinate, alien intelligence. And it was through them that I first communicated with the Hyperbreed, imprisoned for millions of years in the fifth-dimensional limbo that lies beyond the portal of collapsed dark matter that is Maximus Prime.’
I cannot reply. Stahl’s insanity seems to have survived his physical demise, to have somehow possessed the data matrix of his Virtuality programme. And here I am: ensnared within the coils of a madman’s dream, as inescapable as a python’s cold embrace.
‘You see, the Hyperbreed are in us: humanity, I mean. They are the lost, forgotten part of our evolution. Or that of some of us, at least. The pulsar operates on a twenty-three year cycle, at which interval the broadest vector of its elliptical orbit brings it into closest proximity with our galaxy. The effect of this is to concentrate the intensity of the black static emissions, saturating the entire stellar region that falls within its range. Our planet, Sam. Something is activated by it: a subtle alteration in the structure of the DNA helix. Babies born, or conceived, within that apothetical phase of the pulsar’s orbit enjoy a heightened, genetic empathy with the Hyperbreed. As do we both, Sam –’
‘But, Stahl,’ I finally manage to say, ‘this is insanity.’
‘Sanity has no relevance when one views the universe from the elevated plateau of Absolute consciousness, Sam. You’ll understand that yourself soon. The Hyperbreed have taught me much, opened my eyes to so many wonders. The Ultra-sphere and Quantaplex: the ultimate geometry that moulds time and space and consciousness itself. Just think of it: every point in every conceivable dimension; all the aspects of Time; accessible at the speed of thought. Doesn’t it excite you? Don’t you want to share in it? Anyway, whether or not you do, you have no choice. Remember the story of the epidemic? Essentially it was true. The entire island is infected with time spores of an organism that – how shall I put it? – transforms organic matter, a viral adaptation of my original neural processors. Already they’ve gone to work on your colleagues’ bodies; our corpses; your own body, too, Sam. The result I would describe as a sort of protoplasmic stew: a reservoir of non-specific, polymorphic organic tissue which shall provide the raw material for our bodies when we return from Maximus Prime. I believe you have already discovered our failures in this field: our initial attempts to transform living tissue into vehicles
suitable for quantum intelligences –’
Yes: the corpses sealed in subterranean catacombs, victims of a lethal, amphibious mutation. ‘Oh god ... this can’t ... can’t be happening –’
‘Don’t despair, Sam. You’ve no inkling of the miracles in store. It’s thanks to you that all this will be possible.’
‘ Me –? ’ I ask, appalled, my thoughts given an unexpected focus by this accusation of complicity.
‘Yes. Copernicus was constructed as an aetheric accumulator, a sacrificial temple as you had already guessed. Our deaths – or, rather, our conceptual experience of physical and aetheric separation – were painstakingly orchestrated, designed to download our primal consciousness, the reawakened memory of our Hyperbreed ascendancy, in the distilled essence of pure thoughtform energy: a reciprocal black static transmission to be beamed by the radio telescope direct to the heart of Maximus Prime. And there, in communion with our Hyperbreed forebears, to evolve. By accessing this programme you have re-instated the telescope’s function as a receiver of interstellar transmissions. Even as I speak, I can feel my consciousness – and that of the others – disseminating inexorably across light years of space. The whole island is itself a geomantically active beacon, a charged fragment of the cosmic catastrophe which overtook the Hyperbreed millions of years ago. There are others, of course. Ayer’s Rock, for instance. Another beneath the Antarctic ice-cap. There’s even a vast source on Saturn’s moon, Titan. All, obviously, unsuitable to our ends.’
All I can do now is listen. Pray that none of this is true.
‘We achieved the aetheric separation by means of a Post-Evolutionary Crisis Event, a conceptual programme generated by the psychoactive software I described earlier. You’ll be experiencing it yourself first-hand presently. It will be traumatic, of course. After all, what is evolution if not the chronology of trauma? But it will be illuminating. Soon you will understand everything. Even your ridiculous fear of the sea: simply the animal rejection – the simian denial – of your higher, pan-dimensional heritage. Your destiny. When next we meet you’ll be one of us –’
And with that Stahl is gone.
– A Mobius Strip folds in on itself, its undulating curves of infinity vanishing as if in some presdigitatorial display, demonstrating the fallacy of solid geometry and associated theories of temporal relativity. Or a cheap sleight of hand.
My last conscious thought:
Oh God he’s learned to fuck with timmmmmmmmme
– The ocean surrounds me, the pungent aroma of salt water filling my lungs. Above me the sun is bloated red, fierce and angry, its prehistoric fury suffused by hazy cloud cover.
Our vast, sacrificial raft of reeds and palm timber bobs lazily on the warm, rolling swell of the Pacific. Months have passed since our tribe’s migration from the land. The ocean sustains us – its children – with its endless bounty.
The appointed time of the Changing is upon us. And I, the chosen, the anointed, have completed all the disciplines of initiation and preparation; undergone all the sacred ministrations...
– My name cannot be spoken in the low guttural of primal vowels, the rudimentary staccato of plosives and consonants. It can only be expressed as a sequence of clicks made with the tongue against the palate: a non-binary code which imitates the holy language of our masters, the Undying who rule the sea...
– The sonorous monotone of the conch serves at once as a summons and herald of the sea-gods’ coming, a ceaseless entreaty underscored by the insistent rhythm of the waves.
– They arrive in their thousands: all the tribes who venerate the sea-gods. Huge catamarans capable of sustaining entire villages, all their chattels and livestock. Countless canoes. Rafts as large as small islands. All inexorably drawn in adoration. And fear...
– I am the fountainhead of the Hierarchy, firstborn of the ancient lineage, the ascendancy of Hybrids. Sea and earth merge in me. Webbed fingers and toes and the scaly cowl of diaphanous membrane that shrouded my infant features clearly distinguished me from the time of my birth.
My hermaphroditic sex has spawned numerous offspring who will, in turn, proliferate my divine seed. My mortal existence draws to an end. My life reaches its pre-ordained culmination: my acceptance of destiny.
For months I have fed on nothing but the abundant residual seed – the fertile spores – of the sexually prodigious Undying’s endless, submarine orgies. It floats like carpets of lush, green algae upon the waves, harvested by my acolytes for my exclusive use. This rich nourishment fuels the latter stages of my Changing. And feeds the things that incubate in my hugely swollen belly.
The thunder of drums, the atonal wail of the conch, signals the commencement of the pivotal ceremony. My scaly flesh has been adorned with luminous sigils and arcane arabesques daubed in a dye extracted from the natural phosphorus of deep-sea anglers; my own body heat infuses it with a startling iridescence. My conical phallus strains against empty air, hard and erect. My female genitalia dilate and ooze correspondingly. My senses soar, perception heightened by the potent narcotic derived from the venom of the giant puffer fish. I am ready.
– The sacrificially maimed shamans of the lower Hierarchy disembark from their ceremonial canoe. Bearing the sacred relics of their holy office they solemnly intone their wordless mantra, ready to initiate the sacrament which will culminate in their own ritual suicide.
The shamans are resplendent in shark-jaw collars; painted death-masks of intricately carved turtle shell; the tanned hides of giant iguana, electric eels and manta rays are sown into banded girdles embellished with anemone florettes; the fluted shells of elongated molluscs are worn as phallic sheaths. Attended by their retinues of adult eunuchs and pre-pubescent androgynes, they begin the ritual flaying...
– Honed to a razor’s edge, the scalloped ridges of fan-shaped clam shells slice effortlessly through my tough, outer skin. Mother of pearl scalpels, expertly wielded by my own hermaphroditic children, separate the hide from layers of flesh, muscle and fat. I offer my agony as tribute to the omnipotence of the Undying in the form of a shrieked incantation. Sea-birds wheel and squawk in the skies overhead, anticipating a ripe delicacy in which they shall never share. Enticed by the rich broth of my hot blood, squadrons of voracious sharks – threshers, mako, tigers, hammer-heads, the sacred great white – besiege our flotilla.
In their greed and fury they capsize many of the smaller vessels. The sea boils and froths, a cauldron of meaty crimson foam whipped up by their feasting, even turning upon one another in the ensuing feeding frenzy.
The skin is peeled from me, unbroken, like a single garment: an exquisite raiment flamboyantly embellished, hotly dripping. I watch with lidless eyes as it is held aloft in supplication to the gods. The labyrinthine network of my steaming viscera is enthusiastically unravelled to the clamorous din of massed screams as the sharks’ banquet proceeds. My own tongue is hooked out on the end of a bone spear. I see my exposed uterus, bloated with sea water and amniotic fluid; the dark embryonic forms that squirm inside the semi-opaque bladder as it is hacked from its pelvic roots and hoisted free.
– The agony.
And now I realise. I cannot die.
The last thing I see: a vast column of water churned up from the very depths of the ocean floor. And I hear a sound unlike any in creation: the voice of the sea-gods, the Undying. A monstrous, indescribable face is rising above the waves. It’s too big to look at, to comprehend. It’s...
– And then the shamans unhook my eyes from their orbits on the end of skewers tipped with the teeth of the great white...
The light floods me. For the first time I truly see. My vision encompasses the spectrum of infra-red and ultraviolet. And beyond. Far, far beyond—
– The radiant magnificence of the Ultrasphere, intersected by the abstract tangents of Time’s infinite continua, containing every point of possible concentricity.
The limitations imposed by my previously held perception of sequential chronology fall away like outmod
ed blinkers.
Consciousness blooms: incandescent whorls, blossoming corollae of kaleidophonic energy contrive a baroque architecture of pure, elevated thought encompassing the infinite facets of Ultratime.
– Set in its most distant quadrant, the amorphous blemish of Maximus Prime remains black and sullen in contrast to the fabulous cascade of nameless colours that define the numberless frequencies of the Ultrasphere. It resembles the blind spot on the human cornea, the dark shadow of a cranial tumour. But its cohesion is clearly unstable. It assumes a liquid impermanence like a slick of molten tar. Gathering motes of light are converging at its centre, consciously undermining the mordant integrity of its atomic structure.
And then it erupts. A phosphorescent fusillade of comets, a display of celestial pyrotechnics, is violently discharged from the cyclonic vacuum once occupied by the dimensional flaw termed Maximus Prime by the creature that had once been Reinhardt Stahl. Its companion pulsar is blasted out of orbit, shattered into billions of burning shards of radiant, stellar shrapnel.
The Hyperbreed are unleashed.
– Our mass-consciousness meshes with the very fabric of the Ultrasphere. We complete the process disrupted millions of years ago: the creation of the Quantaplex. We shift entire galaxies into new configurations, relocating planets; whole constellations of stars; with the ease of chess grandmasters moving pieces around their chequered board.
Its beauty and perfection are indescribable. A crystalline polyhedron structure, its super-geometry expresses every conceivable dimension of the physical planes of matter and energy, the conceptual realms of pure thought, quantum intelligence...
– Our consciousness touches everything. Manipulates everything...
– Our vengeance has had time to ferment. Millions of years. It’s a cold frost which will blight humanity’s useless seed. An endless fire that will consume its flesh. A cancer that will transform it and torture it forever. The usurpers. The spoilers of our world.
The Starry Wisdom Page 6