1999 Story

 

 

The Myth of Everythingness

Years ago, a white angel came to me, her flight hindered by a red flame which danced upon her wings eternally.  She crawled near the dirty ground, whispering senseless words, extending her hands to me in despair.  I did not wish to interpret whether she begged for my mercy or offered herself in sacrifice.  What I do remember, most vividly, were the deformities of her hands.  Her five fingers, trembling in exasperation, were no different from mine.  Yet when she turned her hands around, from the middle of both her palms sprung a sixth finger.  On one hand it was small, wiggling about in its solitude, wrapped tightly with the fresh skin of an unborn baby.  On the other hand it hung loosely, shriveled, weak and gray, battered by the agents of time and disease.  I felt as though I should chose one of the hands to take into my own.  When I refused to do so, I watched in horror as her entire figure dismantled into stripes of pure flesh and blood, and seeped into the grounds surrounding me.  Then I awoke.

For many nights after I dared not sleep, for the dream was certain to return.   In every moment of silence at work I could hear the angel’s mournful whispers.  In every face that walked by me in the city streets I saw her face looking back into my eyes.  In every shadow which lay quietly on the walls at night, I saw her finger tips, reaching slowly across the room in my direction.  I had assumed these disturbing images would fade away, but they were engraved too deeply into my memories.  I could not deny that these powerful forces were haunting me, yet I could not believe that a man of science and technique was being manipulated by emotions and superstition.  I was then fired from a reputable profession because of the manner in which these non-existing enemies were destroying my mind.  I thought I was going mad until the day these enemies became real.

The first visit only puzzled me.  Two men in nice clean suits came to my door one dreary Sunday morning, asking me if I wished to sell them the rights to my book for a generous sum.  I told them I had never written a book in my life and they must have had the wrong address.  Two days later, an e-mail arrived, advertising a new website which allowed aspiring authors to publish preliminary versions of their works online, free of charge.  Two days after that, I found a letter that my college professor had sent me, many years ago.  I had dropped it on the floor when I received it and never got a chance to read it because it disappeared in between the floorboards.  A recent termite attack forced me to pry open the entire ceiling of my basement, and there I found the letter, stuck in a dusty corner.  The letter congratulated me for a brilliant achievement in the area of Spatial Sciences, acknowledging my thesis argument as captivating and commendable, worthy of having its own place in all theoretical studies.  They strongly encouraged me to pursue my ideas by writing a book, which would have received full funding by the university, had I read that letter in time.

After pondering much upon all these odd occurrences, I concluded that this curiously backward series of events served to warn me that something was about to happen.  I wondered if willful forces were behind each little accident… dropping the letter, the termites… What would have happened if I had not lost the letter in the first place?  Infinite possibilities of cause and effect raced through my mind, bringing back the wild imaginings I had as a youth.  I then began to realize that the images of my dream held some significance within the context of those theories which I formulated during my younger age.  Somehow, other people seemed to give these theories more attention than I did myself, and, as I later came to realize, I had placed myself in a dangerous position because of what I ventured into.  It was time for me to straighten my things and leave.  When the men in the clean suits came to visit me again, I was prepared.

“Mr. Telemacho Thraller?” one of them asked, staring blankly at me.“Threader.  Telemachus Threader…  Tell for short – and you are…?”
“We are here to negotiate with you a new investment plan.”
“I’m – I’m sorry, where are you coming from?  Do you represent an agency, of some sort, or…“
“Yes, our agency wishes to purchase the rights to your book.”
“Ummm… w-which one? Which one of my books are you interested in?” I looked beyond their shoulders and spotted two more men standing beside a car.
“All of your books,” he replied, as though the words were being fed to him.
“Right,” I took a step back, “Well… if you just wait here for a second, I’ll bring them right out and then we can ah, negotiate, about them.  Okay?”

Without waiting for their reaction, I closed the door, ran downstairs and grabbed the things I needed to survive during the trip ahead.  Taking a last glance at all the folders and journals which I had kept from my many years of studying, I could only hope that I would be able to remember all the most important things.  I tipped the wax candle over and let it topple to the floor and roll across a pile of papers.  The fire was quick in its spreading, and it would soon engulf the entire house.  I jumped out the back window, thinking it was time to stop hypothesizing and predicting.  Everything would soon be very real.

Crop Circles
I saved the little money I had by riding in the luggage compartments of the trains and buses which I managed to sneak into.  Getting to Europe was a little more complex, for I would freeze to death if I were to ride with the luggage in the airplanes.  Just before take-off, I would run alongside the plane and crawl up the wheel, then wait until they were retracted into the wheel compartments.  Then I would crawl towards the back, up through the garbage shoot and squeeze into the ceiling above the oven room, where I was kept warm by the heat rising from the meals that were being prepared.

It soon became evident that my voyage would involve much more than initially assessed in my diaries.  A great deal of the research would have to be done to replenish everything I had lost in the fire, including the geographical locations I had pin-pointed with much effort for Step One of the process.  This served only to my advantage, for I could now expand on my original ideas.  These locations were also completely different now, considering the fact that crop circles disappear along with the crops, at the end of every season.  Yet, to reinforce my suspicions, the new locations of these Crop Circles fit precisely into the same geometrical and chronological patterns I had established for them years ago.  I traveled for months, observing how the lines, shapes and circles had been imprinted onto the corn fields, recording every piece of detail I could find.  They appeared in such an order, at certain time intervals, locations and distances from each other, sizes, numbers and with certain meanings; as to imply a greater pattern which was undeniably premeditated.  The only thing which changed season-to-season were the points of reference upon which these patterns were laid out.  And this time, after mapping out these coordinates, the point turned out to be the Mediterranean Sea.  The Center of the Earth.

Some believed these crop circles to be a natural phenomena, or the work of extra terrestrials.  I shared the view of most scientists, but with one exception.  They believed these were designs of normal human beings, architects with artistic or religious motivations which were maintained secret.  I was convinced they were not normal human beings.

The People of Aquilo
Thousands of years before the dawn of ancient civilization, there was said to be an island where man had achieved such knowledge which is still to be equaled by our present sciences.  This city was destroyed mysteriously, and some believe its ruins still lie at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.  The Greeks recalled it as the City of Atlantis.  During the remainder of my travels I continued to research the history of this city, visiting the greatest libraries of Europe and reading manuscripts so rare that the pages would crumble to my touch.  I had learned that Critias of the Greeks had gathered and translated Egyptian documents which spoke of such city.  Years later, Hermocratese and Socrates would encounter for several debates about the credibility of his findings.  Such debates had supposedly been recorded by Socrates’ student of philosophy, Plato, into what became known as Plato’s Lost Dialogue.  All of this was rebuked by most famous historians since then, but one writer of the late nineteenth century had caught my attention.  I had found a series of journals of a French priest called Saunière, which were locked away in a small cathedral in the town of Rennes-le-Château.  His ideas told of the same city, which he claimed to be populated by the People of Aquilo.   The evidence for his findings were considered suspicious, however, for he had a reputation of a mad-man.  Amused by this author’s use of geometry in his speculations, I pursued his ideas free of prejudice, and found them to be astonishingly familiar to my own theories.

Saunière had discovered a numerical code language by breaking down the complex architectures of an ancient wooden ark, which he believed to have drifted off from the so-called island of Atlantis.  This Code of the Ark functioned upon a basis almost identical to the modern-day Binary Code, the primary building blocks for all of modern-day computer systems.  He believed the existence of this code was the sign that these people had found some kind of secret, encoded in the layers of the universe itself, when it was first created.  The next step would be where to find the scripture which the code was made for, and what the scripture spoke of.  Saunière, however, formulated his own ideas.

These People of Aquilo were more than human, he suggested, for they had discovered a way to become immortal.  By achieving a supreme level of self-awareness, they detached themselves from the realms of the physical world.  In this state they believed themselves to be invincible to any forces of matter, or the passing of time.  Yet it was their greed alone which brought them to their demise, for they had discovered that this state of mind, body and spirit was communal, not individual.  All of the Peoples of Aquilo needed to be connected in order to achieve this elevated state, splitting the potency of their power among each member.  Soon they figured that if fewer of them possessed this power, they would become even stronger and live even longer.  The thought of greed itself was enough of an impurity to bring the entire link to collapse upon itself.  In an instant they were all mortals again.  Although Saunière does not explain what happened to the People of Aquilo, I like to believe they scattered out towards the land when their city began to sink, and until this day their descendants live among us in secrecy.  They now search for each other, in hopes of once again achieving that state of perfection.  I believe that these are the people who draw the crop circles, communicating among themselves and to the world that an event of epic proportions will take place when all the lost members of Aquilo meet once again.

If Saunière was right - if these people had discovered a key to all secrets of human existence with the use of this one basic Code of the Ark – finding the encoded scripture would mean drinking from the elixir of supreme knowledge and immortality.  Granted Saunière passed away in 1917, he never found the final piece of the puzzle.

As my desperate search continued, I became more and more frustrated with an inherent lack of material.  There were no records of documents or artifacts originated from the People of Aquilo, which I was not even sure existed.  How was I to examine their history for any clues as to where they had found the scripture?  Had there at least been an archeological dig I could visit, and maybe spot a series of symbols engraved in the walls of their ruins.  Perhaps they had scattered numerous scrolls across the island of Atlantis, written in the Code of the Ark which I would now be able to decode.  I should have known it wouldn’t be so simple.  Yet there was one piece of literature which seemed to be leading me in somewhat of a meaningful direction.  When describing the religious customs of the Aquilos, Saunière once wrote:

These were the transcendental values which fed the elders their new life.  They chanted in circles around them, then walked over the center to the other side.  This they would repeat seven and two times.

The apparent senselessness of this passage brought me back to it over and over again, trying to think it through in different contexts.  Elsewhere, it was determined that to the Aquilos, seven was a symbol for death, and two was a symbol for life.  Their sum was nine, unity.  It then struck me that this was not only the steps to a ritual, but a description of two parts of a circle, its circumference (circles around them) and its diameter (over the center to the other side).  That is what was mean by “transcendental values”…  The transcendental number which is obtained when dividing the circumference of any circle by its diameter is (Pi).  This number is equal to 3.1415926535897932384626… continuing infinitely in a sequence of numbers without any significant pattern.  I knew I was extremely close now.  Was it possible that the scripture which taught the Aquilos all of their secrets was hidden inside a mathematical value?  Holding a pencil in my trembling hand, I separated the first group of eight sevens and twos in , obtaining 27222772.  Translating this with the use of the Ark Code, I obtained a letter of the alphabet.  The letter B.

The implications of my new theory were absurd.  Mathematics was not created randomly, it is a numerical reading of the physical construct in which we exist.  Modifying so that its value contained a specific sequence of twos and sevens which would then satisfy a code and translate into a message would mean changing that basic physical construct.  It meant being able to manipulate the fabrics of the universe itself.  Not even the People of Aquilo could possess such power.

Servo of Ether
The next three years of my life were spent in translating the scripture.  When this was completed, I could not read it.  It was in Latin, and I had learned to read Latin, but this, I could not read.  I looked at the letters, grouped them into words, grouped those into sentences yet I could not read it.  Many times I tried forcing my eyes to move over the letters and pick them up, but it was like a part of me was trying to fall asleep, the very concept of reading was escaping my range of capabilities.  As I went along, something was unthreading my intellect, fragmenting my knowledge so that nothing made any sense, and I simply could not read the scripture.  Immediately afterwards I encountered no difficulties in reading a sports magazine, also in Latin.

Destroyed by this incomprehensive frustration, I would break down in tears every night.  All those years had been a waste of time.  I should have know I was not worthy of knowing all these secrets, I was only an ignorant mortal being.  This left me once again on the brink of insanity.  The white angel returned to haunt me in my dreams, but this time they were more intense, even more frightening.  One night I woke up drenched in sweat, my hands covered in blood.  During my sleep I had scratched my skin open because now, I imagined the sixth finger was beginning to sprout on the back of my own hands.  I then began to suffered from severe hallucinations in which reality would bend before my eyes.  I would feel a tingling on my forehead and – like a curious child trying to decide whether a drawing of a cube was meant to look like it was seen from above and facing the right, or seen from below and facing the left – suddenly I could not decide whether a person was facing me or if their back was towards me, but I could still see their face because their skin was translucent.  One day the whole world to me looked as though it were upside down, the ground was above and the sky was below.  On that day I found out that those were not hallucinations of a lunatic.  I was being elevated into a higher level of being.

There are a type of glasses called the pyramid glasses.  They take the image which will be received by the eyes and turn it upside down.  If someone decided to wear those glasses for two weeks, eventually, without them even noticing it, their brain would get used to the image and turn it right side up again.  If the person were to take off the pyramid glasses after two weeks, then their “normal” vision would be upside down.  I thought a lot about that idea while sitting in the park and watching the rain drops falling upwards, and came to a final conclusion.  Reality as we know it, is perceived by us with the use of one instrument: the brain.  If the brain has the power to decide it can correct an upside down image without its owner’s consent, what other things about reality must the brain be assuming for us?  How would we know the kinds of restrictions which the brain imposes upon our perception of reality?  We wouldn’t.

That is the kind of awareness which I was beginning to achieve.  The tingling in the middle of my forehead… like a third eye trying to burst open, that tingling was giving me control over my brain.  I now had the power to decide whether my world was upside down or right side up.  I could now get a glimpse into a fourth dimensional plain, a place where the limits were now voluntary, like the movement of an extra limb.  I could now read those scriptures.

The Myth of Creation
One Day the Great God of Everythingness wanted to make a place with Moving Things.  He wished the Moving Things to love each other, so they became the Loving Things.  He decided they were better than Things so he called them People.  But People started looking different because Things were not the same before they turned to People.  To make sure People would know that they were the same, The Great God of Everythingness told them to make Circle and hold hands.  But People could not hold hands because they needed to hold on to Sky because The Great God of Everythingness had not made Earth yet.  So He made Earth from Sky, and People held hands, but when Earth started moving, People could not hold hands because they were not strong.  People got separated from People, and they were different so they lost each other and could not make Circle again.  Then The Great God of Everythingness made People find People so they could make Circle again.  But People were different from People and People began to fight People so Earth fell from Sky.  Some People turned back to Loving Things and went up to Sky.  Some People turned back to Things and went down to Night with The Great God of Nothingness.  Then People that were still on Earth wanted to go to The Great God of Everythingness instead of the Sky, but The Great God of Everythingness told People that were still on Earth to make Great Circle of Everythingness.  They made Great Circle of Everythingness and turned to Loving People.  Then they went to The Great God of Everythingness.
     
I suppose drawing the true meaning from those words would be even harder than getting to read them.  I did not understand why all this had been kept secret for several millennia.  I had been disappointed at the simplicity of those words, a tale of creation which to me resembled that of a cave man’s perception of the world.  I could not understand how the People of Aquilo (if there was such a thing) elevated themselves to such level of spirituality using these stories as a source of all their truth.  And above all, I could not comprehend why had the history of all humanity, all the hopes and dreams of the hundreds and thousands of civilizations which came and were still to come, had been shortened into a simplistic story of Things, People and Everythingness.  Why had this been stamped into the building blocks of the entire universe, instead of the answer to greater and deeper questions.  How will we solve the problem of world hunger?  How will we construct the perfect civilization?

The passing of years led me to ask less and less questions.  The more I read the story, the more I understood its significance.  I understood that the world is much simpler than that.  Instead of asking those same questions, I answered them with other questions.  When will People find People?  When will People make Great Circle of Everythingness?

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