Sister Hida is repeatedly pushing one of the many buttons on the lower base of the machine, and she does, the Ancient letters are scrolling vertically across the flickering screen and disappearing out of the top end.
“So what do we make of it?” she asks, without turning around, eyes fixed on the screen.
“We’ve gone through the entire document, line by line”, a man standing behind her says. He is accompanied by another man and a woman, neither of whom say a word.
The man continues: “It has taken us a lot of time, and unprecedented efforts. Our sharpest researchers of the Ancient language have attacked this from every angle for weeks on end.”
“Yes?” Hida says, still scrolling the text up and down aimlessly.
“Well…” The man clearly has trouble getting to whatever point he initially had intended to get to. “There is a lot of information in there. A lot! That’s for sure. We have learned more about everyday Ancient life shortly before the Big Change than we have since the first Nobili diaries were found. And this is a personal view from a central point within Ancient culture. It is totally invaluable.”
Sister Hida turns around and looks directly at the man as she speaks: “And the most invaluable piece of information?”
Her firm look makes the man swallow an imaginary piece of shame, disappointment and bruised professional pride before he continues: “Well, I guess you mean to ask if we’ve found the description of the secret of the Scriptures of iX?”
“I guess I am”, Hida, who has returned to the scrolling of the text up and down, says faintly into the air.
The man clears his throat.
“Towards the end, the very end, there’s something about ‘falling from the sky’, which makes perfect sense, as if he actually foresees his own destiny before creating this scripture.”
“No doubt.” Hida says absently, loosing herself even more into the pointless scrolling.
“But then it continues with a passage describing ‘the importance of the symbols drawn on the seed of a tree’, and ‘barely escaping the raging Ape’. Then it goes on about ‘the appearing faces of demons and a man from the stars’, and from there on it just all gets even more incoherent. The words seem like they have been put there very hastily and in a disorderly fashion.”
“And?”
“To be honest it doesn’t make much sense at all, at least not to us.”
Hida turns around and stares worryingly at the trio of observers. She can’t believe her own ears. After all their efforts, her expectations had been built up to a maximum.
She rises to her feet and raises both hands in the air with wide open eyes, as she asks the man presenting the bad news:
“Is there anything else we might have missed? Anything?”
The man pauses for a number of seconds.
"No, Sister Hida” he finally says. "There's nothing else of use in there. Nothing that we don't already know."
Monday, March 22, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Irretrievable information
“Well done, Sister Njoro!”
Njoro’s eyes gradually adjusted to the light.
Pi was sitting next to her bed. Smiling.
Some long forgotten animal reflex deep inside her wanted to catapult her right arm into a warm reunion with his happy face, but her body was far too weak to obey the order.
“It’s so good to see you”, Pi continued.
“You. Left me”, she barely managed to whisper.
“Ahh, yes. You are so strong. I knew you would be our only hope to match the R.O.S.E. agent.”
She had no notion of what he was talking about, but couldn’t believe he had the nerve to try to change the subject, after what she’d been through. Nevertheless, she had to admit that she was very happy to be lying in a warm bed after all her struggles out there on the ice.
As she touched in on the memories of what had happened, even briefly, a wave of sorrow washed over her as she remembered.
“Killed… Mungpuk”, she said quietly.
“Yes I know. As he would have killed all of us who don’t possess the powers that you do.”
Pi’s words still sounded like incoherent babbling to her, and didn’t make much sense, but she decided to not deal with it and start any discussions surrounding her strength at this moment.
Instead, she closed her eyes, and let the comforting softness of the bed embrace her, and fell asleep.
The passing of several days spent mostly in bed, with masses of strengthening food and loving care soon brought her back to life again, and the more she awakened to her regular self, the more she wanted to know about her new surroundings.
And know more of what really had been going on during their journey out here.
Pi had been keeping his distance for the last few days, and this had irritated her greatly as he’d already given her signals that he knew far more about matters than he'd been willing to share with her when they set out on this journey.
She considered his absence as proof of his growing fear of further confrontations regarding his own cowardly actions, so in one way it was understandable that he kept away.
However, about a week after her arrival, he suddenly appeared in her room. She was out of bed, dressed and was starting to feel rather restless.
“You’re better”, Pi said as he entered. Still smiling.
“Much better”, she replied, hoping it would sound alarming to him.
It didn’t seem to worry him at all. He only added: “I’m glad.”
Njoro didn’t feel glad.
“I guess you want to know more about all this?” Pi asked.
“Yes!”
“Please. Come, dear Sister Njoro.” He offered her his arm, and to her own surprise, she accepted the gesture, although her inner resistance would have been felt by anyone with their senses intact within her close surroundings.
They left her recovery room, and walked past many doors through a shiny white stone corridor leading into a giant hall that stretched as far as the harsh, yellow light that filled it could carry.
The hall looked very old, and was so big that she couldn’t imagine how she had not be able to see its exterior at surface level when she arrived. The roof must surely have reached far above the ice, unless they were really deep down below the surface.
Maybe she’d been so exhausted when she arrived that all she could see was the light from the tunnel gate?
She accepted that as an explanation.
Everything in here was very solid and well-kept, and she guessed the whole construction must have been immersed in a massive pool of water after it had been built, and then left to be swallowed by the surrounding ice over the years that had passed.
Many years, that must have been. It was like a sunken fortress from times long gone that was still fully intact due to the natural preservation qualities of its surroundings.
“Where are we?” Njoro asked, awestruck.
“This place used to be a most sacred site to the Ancients”, Pi answered in a lowered voice, as if to underline the sacredness of the place.
“Like a temple? Like our old temple-halls in the mountains back home?” Njoro offered.
“Not so much like a temple in the way we know it today. This is one of the last things they built before the Age of Restoration. It is a place where they tried store all the knowledge they had of the world.”
Njoro stopped walking, puzzled by this information.
“What? Here? Outside of themselves – in the material world? How could they possibly do that?”
Pi just smiled, it was evident that he found this idea as ridiculous as she did, although he seemed to have lived with the idea for a while and had probably grown used to it.
“But all the information in the world is already stored within the Soul of Everything. You cannot remove it from yourself, and believe that it will endure anywhere else!”
“Of course it is. But you have to remember that the Ancients had lost their connection with themselves, and therefore the connection with the Soul of Everything. So instead they made machines to hold their knowledge, enormous machines that reached across the whole world through a spider's web of moving electricity.”
“They built machines to keep all their knowledge of the world for them? How horrendous! It is truly like a nightmare.”
Njoro shuddered at the thought, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped.
“It certainly is”, Pi said thoughtfully. “Come! I will show you.”
They walked down the vast hall. After a short walk, they reached another exit, this time leading into a new and smaller corridor.
At each side of the corridor, there stood a line of strange objects on display, meticulously lined up on far-reaching racks mounted against the stone walls.
There were various devices made of wood, metals, textiles and stone, some rusty old pieces of junk and some very worn-out but similarly strange-looking objects made of materials unknown to Njoro.
“What are these things?” she asked.
“Basically, they are a good place to start.”
He let go of her arm, walked over to one of the racks, and picked one of the devices from its shelf.
“This”, he continued “is an early attempt by our own people to create a generator of electricity.”
The device contained of two cylinders of clear, yellowish stone – most likely amber, she figured, like some of the relics in the Temple back home were made of. The stone cylinders were mounted upon a wooden base by means of a metal construction and, stretched around both the amber wheels and another cylinder mounted to a metal crank, a twisted piece of woolen cloth had been fastened.
“But why would our people want to generate electricity?”
“In order to spark the ancient machines back to life, and reveal the mysteries they hold. As much as we now know about the Ancients there are as many things we don’t know, and some of these issues might turn out to be crucial for our own future - even if just to stop us from committing the same mistakes.”
“But why would we want to wake their horrible machines back to life? Couldn’t we just use our seers to gather this information by connecting to the Source of Everything? That’s what we’re for, isn’t it?”
Njoro sounded slightly insulted.
“Yes, of course we could – and are – using our seers to shine light on our dark past. But as we do, we only attain this information in the angle of how you see it – and you are all still people of this day and age, thankfully lacking the disturbances of an Ancient mindset. Wouldn’t it be quite interesting to understand how they viewed this information, and what uses they saw for it?
Njoro thoughtfully studied the device.
“So how does this work?” she asked as she stroked the woolen fabric with her fingers.
“It creates electricity out of mobile energy and friction between the wool and the stone, in a very inefficient and rather clumsy way, that is. But it has brought us one step closer to unraveling the mysteries of the Ancients’ technology.”
Njoro stopped stroking the rough fabric. It made the tips of her fingers sore.
“They used electrical energy to power all their machines?” she asked as he put the thing back on its shelf.
“The ones used to store knowledge, yes. But they had even cruder technologies that were powered by digging up the blood of the Earth and burning it in primitive devices that let out extreme amounts of toxics into the air. Eventually these technologies were creating such disturbances and imbalances inside Earth that she answered with horrifying earthquakes, weather disturbances and other ‘natural catastrophes’ as the Ancients would call them – all natural reactions from Mother Earth. But even they realized the madness of this and tried to change course towards the end.”
“Oh, thankfully! But they still stuck with electricity? It must have been the same power that the Savage intruder used for his strange devices? And it has also been the reason for great concerns among the Elders of the House in recent years by its growth and widespread use in the Middle-North, right?”
“Absolutely. And it’s the same energy that fuels the lights of this entire place.”
“I don’t understand. Shouldn’t we restrain from meddling too deeply with the past? Do we know what will happen should we actually succeed in revealing all the madness of our ancestors?”
“Too deeply, yes. But maybe we could prevent the disasters of the past if we understood better what mechanisms within us all would bring us on the road to such disaster? The past is only what we had to go through in order to get where we are today, but if no-one knows what we actually have gone through, all our costly experience is of no real use to anyone.”
Pi sounded very enthusiastic, something that she recognized from back when he convinced the House to take on this task back home in what seemed long ago.
He offered her his arm again, she took it, and they started walking slowly past the endless line of machines.
“So what exactly is electrical energy?” Njoro asked as they walked.
“I guess you can say that it is a force that exists within the imbalance of the Universe. Or rather; it is the force that seeks to re-balance the Universe.”
“Oh? Is it Love?” Njoro stopped walking and gazed at Pi with wide open eyes.
“No, not exactly.” Pi paused and stared at one of the machines on display. Then he said: “Maybe it is a different aspect of Love.”
They walked on in silence for a while, and then Pi continued his explanation:
“Electricity is a force created by the movement of charges within the particles that all matter in the physical world is built from. As within us, and within all of the Otherworld, the material part of the Universe is also dependent on total balance. Whenever any physical object falls out of balance by losing or gaining too much positive or negative charge, the appropriate complementing charge rushes in to restore the balance of the object. This movement of charge is what the Ancients named Electricity, and towards the end of their age most of their civilization was dependent upon it.”
“What do you mean? Were they feeding on the imbalance of the world? Like some kind of parasites?”
Pi smiled, for no reason that Njoro could fathom. This wasn’t funny at all.
“I guess one could view it like that, but it’s not the whole picture.”
“What is the whole picture, then?”
“I don’t know that myself, and hopefully it won’t ever be my burden to do that. But I can tell you more of what we know about our ancestors at this stage.”
“Please do.”
“Their craving for electricity meant that the Ancients were totally dependent on their world being out of balance at all times.”
“But that’s terrible! Simply terrible.” Njoro interrupted and shook her head in disbelief. “Balance is the most important principle of all. The basic nature of the Universe itself is the will to create unity and harmony through balance. Didn’t they know this?”
“They might have temporarily forgotten it for some reason. Or maybe they even wanted imbalance?” Pi said, and smiled.
“Why would anyone want such a thing?” Njoro was truly shocked.
“For excitement, maybe?”
“Excitement?” Njoro said furiously, and had to work hard in order to still the damaging emotional wave rising within her.
Pi continued:
“When everything is balanced, you are at peace with yourself and your surroundings, and there is harmony.”
“Of course. Our main goal as a species.” Njoro couldn’t believe why Pi would present her such inevitabilities and think it would make her feel better.
“But harmony can also make people feel motionless and dull, if the harmony gets too monotonous, don’t you think?”
“No! Not at all. What nonsense.”
“But sweet Njoro, wouldn’t you say that our adventure over the last months has been of any value at all? Hasn’t it by any means added to the experience of life?” Pi gestured into the air with shiny, clear eyes staring into an imaginary but doubtlessly bright infinity. “Would you rather we’d stay back in Lhasa, locked into the mundane cycles of repetitive everyday life?”
Njoro didn’t answer. She rather walked on and let her mind drift.
So here Pi was suggesting that the endless struggle across the ice, the entry of the horrible intruder that took her travel companions’ lives and nearly ended her own - were episodes purely to be viewed as sources for her excitement? This was too much for her to take in. How could he be so insensitive?
Or was it that she was being too sensible?
On the other hand, she knew deep within that this journey had already become unforgettable. Ever since they had set out for the Far North from Lhasa she had felt an underlying excitement in her that had been more than welcome into her life at the time, and as they reached the Archangel on the brink of the ice to gather their supplies and meet with the others, she had to admit that she’d been able to breathe more freely than she had been able to in a long time.
And then, the movement into the ice, and the lights, the silence, the connections to her travelling comrades…
“But these Ancients”, she finally broke the contemplating silence.
“Yes?” Pi answered, halted, and turned towards her.
“They met their own Nemesis by holding on to their set of values, didn’t they?”
He looked at her with something she figured was his version of a concerned look, which didn’t work - he still just looked happy.
“They went very far. Towards the end, they had developed into a species that opposed Life itself, and for that reason they had to go through the destruction that they eventually did. Or correction if you want.”
“But it could have so easily been undone. Made right again. With the right teachings…”
“Maybe. But they were possibly too entangled in the system they had built around them. Their mindset. Their very culture. It probably just started out as a way of trying to make life more convenient, but soon ended up becoming a prison of thought that fed off its creators in order to keep itself alive.”
Njoro walked a few more steps still trying to adjust her emotions to all this.
“But what was out here? Why did they build this place in the middle of the ice?” she finally asked.
They had now almost reached the end of the corridor with the machine display. It seemed to be leading into another hall opening up.
Pi stopped.
“Just before the Big Change and the Age of Restoration set in, they had gathered so much information in their machines all across the planet that they started getting problems with keeping the machines running.”
“I’m not surprised. Only Everything can hold the knowledge of Everything. We all know that you cannot separate knowledge from its source. Infinity is too big to fit into any of its parts.”
“Heat”, Pi said.
“Heat?” Njoro had a confused look on her face.
“Their machines were pushed to their limits to store more and more information, and as they were being run by the movement of electrical energy, the machines started producing so much heat that they were about to melt down and self-destruct the whole system. As we all know, energy cannot simply disappear into nothing, but only change shape, so it was inevitable that this would become a problem for them.”
“I guess they didn’t know that either?”
“It seems they had forgotten a whole lot of basic principles of Life and Nature. In a last desperate attempt, the most powerful guardians of the knowledge-machines built this place and moved enormous amounts of these devices here, far into the ice, to try and keep them cool enough to stay functioning.”
They reached the widened-out end of the corridor as a new giant hall opened up.
It was a crossroads where four tunnels met.
Above one of the tunnel entrances, there was an old worn-out inscription that read “o.g.l.e.” in yellow, blue, green and red Ancient letters.
To the left, an even more crumbled sign in blue read “a.c.e.b.o.o.” above the entrance, in the same ancient alphabet.
Pi led her by the arm over to the third entrance. It had the inscription “i.c.r.o.s.o.f.” above it, in dark blue lettering.
“This is the most well-preserved area. Come, I’ll show you”, he said and pulled her by the arm.
They walked through the short tunnel, and reached a new tall gate leading into a new area. There was an almost perfectly conserved inscription above it.
It read: “B.u.i.l.d.i.n.g.7.”
“This is amazing”, Njoro said. “It looks much less than a thousand years old.”
Pi stopped for a second, as if to admire the endurance of the inscription. “Yes, it has been very well preserved here in the ice. It is almost as if there has been some kind of magic involved, as if they left it all for us on purpose so we could understand their ways better”, he said, sounding slightly euphoric. “Come, let’s enter!”
As they passed through the gate called ‘Building 7’, an enormous hall opened up in front of them. The mere size of it was enough to make Njoro cling a little harder onto Pi’s arm, as if she was afraid of being swallowed by the space.
Then she saw the machine.
Or more precisely, the machines.
Stacked up from floor to ceiling was an arrangement of what seemed like an endless amount of small rectangular boxes – devices similar to some of those on display in the corridor they just had passed through.
It looked like a solid mountain, if it hadn’t been for the unnatural arrangement of the units.
At the base, filling the most part of the enormous floor, the boxes were arranged in a large square. On top of it, and for every new level up, a slightly smaller square of boxes had been placed, until it narrowed down to a single box at the very top - almost reaching the ceiling far above.
It made a giant peak with triangular walls on all four sides.
In between the boxes, arrays of strings were attached, making it look as if all the machines shared the same blood, like a giant hive-like entity.
The blood it craved, she guessed, must have been electrical energy.
Njoro was speechless.
It was a scary thing, but nevertheless an object of some kind of twisted, ancient beauty.
“What is this?” she whispered to Pi, as if afraid to wake the sleeping giant.
“I’m not sure”, Pi answered. “No-one’s really sure, actually.”
Pi held his breath for a second, and then continued: “But we think it might have been their God.”
Njoro gasped.
“Their God?”
Njoro shivered and thought the giant machine suddenly got a sinister quality to it.
“Ever since the Nobili found this place and started their work of attempting to restore and decipher all this, speculations have often ended up in theories surrounding the religions of the Ancients.”
“Who found this place?” Njoro asked.
“The Nobili.”
“Who are the Nobili?”
“They are our friends”, Pi said. “They are the survivors.”
“Survivors?”
“Yes. Like us. We shall meet them now.”
They left the great hall with the giant machine and returned through the short corridor back to the crossroads where they had entered.
There, they walked into the fourth tunnel, which had no inscription at all above its entrance.
After a short walk they came to a new gate, and above this one, in modern Global lettering, a red sign spelt: ‘NOBILI’
Past the gate, they entered into a different looking part of the underground complex. It seemed somehow newer than the other areas they’d been going through. There was more activity in this room. A low murmur could be heard from small groups of people scattered throughout the space.
A woman came to welcome them. She was tall, with dark hair and almost Eastern or Original features, and Njoro found her very beautiful looking.
“Welcome Sister Njoro”, the woman said. “I’m Hida”.
“Thank you”, Njoro answered, surprised that the woman already knew her name.
Pi just nodded and smiled at the woman. It was obvious they already knew each other.
The other crowds of people further into the hall behind Hida didn’t take much notice of their entrance. They all seemed busy, gathered around tables or bent over different devices deep into discussions.
All over the place, the bright flickering of electric light filled the space, and made it look somewhat otherworldly to Njoro’s eyes.
“Please come. Come and sit with me”, Hida said.
The three of them walked over to a seating section and sat down in three comfortable chairs surrounding a small table.
“You have gone through so much for us all, Sister Njoro; please let me begin by thanking you for your efforts on behalf of the Nobili.”
Njoro looked at Pi with a questioning expression.
“Please, Sister Hida, I think Sister Njoro is very eager to attain a deeper understanding of the whole situation, including these unfamiliar surroundings and the history of this place. Why don’t you please begin by telling us about yourselves, the Nobili?”
“Of course”, the woman Hida said. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Maybe the beginning would be a good point”, Pi smiled.
“The beginning is a long time ago, but luckily we’ve kept our history well. My people, that includes the most part of those you see inside this room as well as spread all over the Golden City, all descend from a small group of survivors from before the Age of Restoration. Much like your own people of Lhasa.”
“But out here? This far north? That’s impossible!” Njoro protested. “I thought it was mostly the Eastern peoples who lived through the Big Change, with only sporadic tribes of Originals surviving in the Northeast? At least that’s what I’ve been told since childhood.”
“Yes. I know. I know, but please listen.” Pi tried to calm her down.
Hida smiled, and continued: “A little more than a century before the Big Change, the Ancients were obsessed with the areas around the Far North. Because of their system of dividing land and people into ‘nations’, a race was started of sending people out to ‘conquer’ this area in a series of disastrous attempts. One such attempt was made with a giant airship filled with explorers and people of Ancient science. All men of Ancient science to be more precise.”
“Why all men?” Njoro asked.
“That was just another one of their strange ways, I guess. Anyway, the weather troubled this airship - a gale hit them by surprise. Of course had they known what we commonly know today about Nature, this wouldn’t have been such a big problem to foresee, but as they were unable to see the gale coming, they were forced to turn around and return to from where they had set out. But before they reached their destination, the ship crashed on the ice, and their leader, a man by the name Umberto Nobile, together with eight other members of the crew survived there until they were rescued. One died in the crash. As there were outpost settlements within reach as well as other expeditions in the area, eventually someone came to their rescue. Another six men – mostly men of science - were trapped inside the part of the airship wreck that got carried aloft by the storm, and transported far into the ice to the north of the crash site.”
“How horrible. Did they come to the rescue of the remaining men, too?”
Njoro felt touched by the story. It was as if she could sense the desperation the men may have felt, having been left out there on the ice on her own.
“No. And that changed a lot of things.”
Hida had a gloomy expression on her face, and leaned over towards Njoro as she continued:
“Most of all it changed the belief these men had in the society which they had wholeheartedly served and invested their entire lives in the duty of. The fact that they all survived…”
“They survived! How fantastic.”
“Yes, Sister Njoro. Truly fantastic. I - for one - am very happy for this. The wrecked airship stranded at what they would name Gilesland, after an observation that had been made decades earlier, but never found again. It was situated northwest off the coast of where the Archangel lies today - far into the ice. Of course the ice reaches further south these days than it did back then, but even at the time, the conditions in Gilesland must have been hard enough for a band of southern city-men of science.”
“What did they do? Make their back south again?”
“No. They stayed. There was no way they would go back to the society that had turned its back on them and left them out here to die. Instead, they created their own settlement, based on a mixture of all the scientific knowledge they had from their old world, and the natural liaison with their new surroundings that their survival now depended upon. Eventually they would meet hunting tribes of the Original people of the ice and later continued their blood by establishing families with women of these tribes. I am a result of one such family establishment that now spans across centuries, and so are the people you see around me here. We, Sister Njoro, are the Nobili.”
Njoro gazed with her mouth half-open at Hida, the Nobili woman.
“But… why have I never heard of you? Why haven’t you made contact with the rest of our Global society? You should be represented in the House of Lhasa, like all surviving peoples are entitled to.”
“I guess you can say it’s an old habit we have inherited over generations, but you must also remember that our closest Global settlement is the Middle North, and we are not too sure if we wouldn’t be better off staying a little invisible for the time being - looking at the latest developments in that region.”
“I guess that’s understandable.” Njoro said, and looked at Pi, who’ve been sitting quietly through Hida’s story.
Probably he’d heard it all before.
“But you have contacted us, and you speak Global very well, so something must have changed.” Njoro said.
“That’s true”, Pi said. “And that’s where our adventure begins, and your part of all this started.”
“Yes. Why DON’T you tell me where my part of this started?” Njoro said and turned towards Pi. She couldn’t hide her irritation, and didn’t care much trying either.
“Dear Sister Njoro. You are one of the most sensitive seers of the city of Lhasa born in our times”, Pi stated. “The Circle of the House knew that you would play a big part in the shaping of the world, even at an early stage in your development.”
“Flattering, but I didn’t exactly see all this coming. How come not?”
“You couldn’t imagine how difficult it has been for the circle of seers back home, in addition to those already present in the Golden City to keep it all from you. It takes a whole little commune of your strongest peers to keep your clarity looking in the different direction. You’re that strong!”
Njoro strongly disliked the enthusiasm Pi put behind telling her that she’d been willfully deceived by her own.
“But why? Why would you do such a thing, and leave me alone out there on the ice as prey to a murderous Savage? What kind of people have I believed to be my closest allies in life in all these years?”
She was almost in tears, looking Pi, who finally had stopped smiling, straight into his eyes and beyond.
“Please, Njoro. We will explain everything. He took her hand.
Hida spoke:
“When first we found this place, we decided that it should be the duty of the Nobili to take upon us the task to become the keepers of its secrets. We didn’t exactly know the extent of the secrets this place actually held, but it seemed to be a place of great significance. Not only to us, but to all survivors living today.”
“A treasure.” Njoro added.
“Or a curse. When we saw the development in the Middle North, where many ways of old suddenly started reappearing, concerns were arising among us. As people started tapping into the great sea of ideas within us all, a new urge awoke to pursue the hunt for technology, with all its conveniences for a more ‘pleasant’ human existence. We are worried that this hunt might lead to a new obsession, like in the Old World. We all have these urges in us to make life ‘easier’, even if we have been taught that we need to live in balance with Nature and all of our co-existence.”
“And as you know we’ve had the same concerns for some time within our circle back home”, Pi added.
Sister Hida continued:
“Our own seers advised us to reveal ourselves to the House of Lhasa and make a connection directly, as you seemed to be the people of the Global community who were most able to withstand a too hastily and unguided re-progress. Our two peoples agreed that there were simply too many traps awaiting those rushing themselves into this, and none of us really know enough about the past to come up with the right arguments to make them thread more carefully. It seems the people bitten with the urge for progress are losing their clarity in the intoxicating haze of expectations that arises.”
“But it seems we don’t know the solution any more than you do”, Njoro said, as if to lower Hida of the Nobili’s hopes to a more grounded level.
“No, we never expected such. But together we stand much stronger than apart, as I guess no-one here will deny?”
“Absolutely, Sister Hida”, Pi broke in. “And it seems we are just about to prove that.”
“What do you mean?” Njoro asked. “What more don’t I know?”
Hida spoke:
“As I told you, we Nobili are descendants of a group of Ancient men of science on one hand, and Original women on the other”, she explained. “Our traditions have always told us that technology in itself is not to be feared, but that people’s blindness can be lethal in combination with it. We - like you - seek balance. However, our teachings tell us that there has to be balance within the balance. This means that our ideal has never been to acquire total enduring harmony. Harmony sometimes also has to be countered with disharmony in order for life to be fulfilling.”
“Hmm… where did I just recently hear about a similar line of thought?” Njoro said, with narrowed eyes directed at her fellow Lhasa travel companion sitting next to her.
“Please, Njoro. Please listen”, Pi asked. “Open your mind.”
Njoro decided whether to express her full range of emotions concerning Pi and his carefree attitude towards her recent sufferings, but decided to keep it for later. Instead, she said:
“Maybe I can learn to understand your ways, but please see that it’s all very new to me now. And all this strongly reminds me of the ways of the Ancients as I’ve learned to know it, which I find quite alarming”, Njoro stated, and then gestured she would shut up and listen.
“I totally understand your concern, Sister Njoro, but let me remind you that the ways of the Ancients were very much about embracing the extreme. In the end, their polarized worldview made them blind even to their own progression as a species.” Hida leaned forward and gave Njoro a firm look. “For instance, they set their goals to re-create the world in their ‘own image’, and in the process they abandoned all their natural instruments of navigation; reading signs, using their intuition or noticing the reactions from their surroundings and fellow creatures to their own actions. They set their own personal goals, and assigned the fulfillment of a goal, and everything that harmonized with such fulfillment as ‘good’, and every hindrance or sign of their goal being out of tune with the natural harmony of things as ‘evil’. This meant that whenever their dreams and manipulations of their surroundings failed, they would condemn their surroundings and fellow creatures instead of using the resistance they met as a correction from the environment they were part of. Their idea developed into trying to create a ‘Kingdom on Earth’, but they forgot that Earth already is a ‘Kingdom’ in its own right – a Kingdom they should live as part of.”
“So you, the Nobili, also see clearly how they couldn’t keep moving in the direction that they did? That eventually they had to be corrected on a much larger scale?” Njoro gesticulated as she spoke, and felt she was getting quite excited about this conversation now.
“Absolutely, But we think that they were strangled by their own mindset more than corrected by Nature or self-destructed by their disharmonic technologies. They simply wouldn’t let go of their hierarchical structures of thought or their expectations of polarity in everything, so they eventually collectively accepted their ancient ‘prophecies’ and ceased to exist.”
“Prophecies?” Njoro asked. “Visions from their own seers?”
“No, we don’t believe so. We rather suggest that these ‘prophecies’ were historical blueprints for their own destruction, created by their wisdom keepers of the past. Originally, these were just meant to be maps of possible collective obstacles to be overcome – a set of common evolutionary tasks to be solved in co-operation. But as the Ancients never adapted to a new way of thinking, these blueprints instead became self-fulfilling prophecies of destruction.”
“Self-fulfilling?”
“Yes, their collective intellectual acceptance of these roadmaps pointing towards their own obliteration made them expect, and eventually take part in creating all kinds of disasters: epidemics, wars, violence, environmental collapse, the de-humanizing of their treatment of each other and a number of other nightmares-come-true.”
“So?”
“So the world of the Ancients ‘ended’ on their sacred chosen day of December 21st in the year of 2012, and the Age of Restoration began.”
Njoro sat quietly to let Hida’s words sink in for a while.
Pi said nothing.
Then Njoro asked: “So, I take it you – the people of the Nobili - don’t believe in repeating the ways of the Ancients, I guess?”
“Too much of anything is still too much, and surely we don’t want to repeat the disastrous mistakes made in the past. The experience of Life is too precious to let it turn into an arena for only pain and darkness to reign over those who’ve chosen to take part in it. And that is exactly why we intervened when we learned that the most progress-eager and uncontrollable Middle Northern forces had discovered the tracks of the Scriptures of iX.”
“The Scriptures of iX?”
“Not all Ancients were out of touch with their own Nature. Some kept their channels open throughout most of their lives, by either chance or free will. At great costs, that is, as the pain they experienced from having a world of total chaos, disharmony and darkness surround them would surely hurt and confuse them greatly.”
“And who were these people?”
“All kinds, when it comes to those who kept in touch with themselves and their abilities by chance. But throughout all ages there have always been numerous Inspirationals taking part in the evolution of Mankind, lending a lifetime to the cause of human progress. These Inspirationals have usually left their marks in different parts of human culture in the period they lived - sometimes in the field of science, and sometimes in other fields like art or scripture. Just before the Big Change, one such Inspirational placed a great secret with a man who lived at the time - a man who hadn’t closed off his own channels to Universal wisdom – by chance rather than choice.”
“What kind of secret?”
“Nothing less than the instructions to create a device that would provide Humankind with unlimited supplies of electrical energy.”
“What?”
“That’s right. A device to transform the energy of gravity and the magnetic field of the Earth, into electricity. ‘Free’ power.”
“But this must have been a fantastic treasure in the eyes of the Ancients?”
“Certainly. If you just take a look at the place we are in now, you soon understand that an unlimited supply of energy would have been the greatest gift to such a civilization.”
“But I haven’t heard about any of this before. What happened to this secret? Was it put to use by the Ancients?”
“No. The secret was brought to the grave with the Ancient who were given it. A cold grave. A grave, in fact, located a little further to the southwest of our present location.”
“What? Here? In the ice?” was all Njoro could say, as she was no longer sure whether it really was necessary for her to process all this information at this point. She had wanted to know more, yes, but it didn’t mean that she’d wanted a completely re-written history-lesson from a woman representing a people she’d never heard of, up until she’d just met her moments ago.
“And this, Sister Njoro, is where the importance of your participation becomes evident.”
Pi had stayed quiet for a long time now, but finally spoke again. Njoro had almost forgotten his presence.
“Really? And how is that?”
“Our Ancient friend who received this secret ended his life on Earth in an accident involving one of their flying-machines - a very crude and energy-consuming type of air travel. The wreck was buried in the ice with all the remains of the people inside it and their cargo. The secret is believed to have been noted down in a document that has come to be known as ‘The Scriptures of iX’, which was encoded and stored on an Ancient machine like the ones you can find all around the Golden City. The document is believed to be retrievable - if only we can understand how to extract information from the Ancients’ technology. This is what the Middle Northern forces bribed the seers to reveal, and set out to find before anyone else.”
“And in the race of getting to it first”, Hida continued, “You were our only hope to distract and overcome the highly lethal hired assassin that the R.O.S.E. alliance sent out to collect this treasure. You are the reason we got to it first.”
Njoro felt as if someone hit her in the stomach.
“R.O.S.E.?”
“Research On Soul Evolution – a small but very efficient and progress-hungry Middle Northern entity who’ve taken matters into their own hands. They operate totally independently from the Global Council and use Ancient methods of appealing to people’s greed and personal gain in order to recruit manpower. It was one of their agents that tracked us down and slaughtered the rest of our entourage.”
Njoro stared at Pi in disbelief.
“The Savage? He was ‘the rose’? It wasn’t just a nickname for one of the other entourages, as you told us? You lied to me!”
Pi looked down. Visibly ashamed.
Njoro continued. Very angrily:
“You told us that someone was following us when I could sense it after our first few days in the ice, but you told us all it was nothing but a ‘friendly game’ that had been agreed on, that we had set out from the Archangel in different entourages with different nicknames and were only playing this game to make each other move faster towards the destination. So no one knew that this was a most lethal ‘game’! How dare you? How do you think Mungpuk would feel about this? How do you feel about this? Or do you even feel anything at all about anything at all?”
Pi didn’t smile anymore.
He spoke quietly:
“Dear Njoro. This is the hardest part. Please forgive me, but you had to be kept away from this. For your own protection. And for the success of the whole mission. When you sensed it – and it was inevitable that you eventually would, I simply had to offer you an explanation. Otherwise you wouldn’t have let it go, and would have started following your sensations. But I assure you, all the others knew the risk involved in this. All but you. I am very aware that deception is the worst thing to happen to your kind, as it creates confusion and conflict between your senses and your trust in your surroundings - in this case, me, but I am truly very sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but the least we can do is reveal the whole truth to you now, so your mind might get some peace and you can start seeing clearly again.”
Njoro felt like crying or screaming. A feeling of deception and distrust filled her soul. A terrible feeling. She let go of Pi’s hand and took a deep breath.
“So? Was it worth it?” she said with great efforts to overcome her disappointment.
“Sister Njoro. You can’t possibly imagine how much your efforts have mattered. For all of us.” Hida said in a gentle voice. “There is no way we would have gotten to the site first and secured the Scriptures of iX if you hadn’t overcome the R.O.S.E. assassin. It would have been in their hands by now, and then there might have been no way back.”
Njoro knew she had to return to her room and be alone for a while, but one question forced itself out:
“How did it happen?”
“What?”
“How did I defeat him? What happened to him there in the snow cave? I only tried to heal him.”
“He fell ill, and died.”
“Ill? How?”
“His unbalanced organism couldn’t stand being exposed to you. You’re simply too pure of heart.”
Njoro rose to her feet, and left in silence.
Njoro’s eyes gradually adjusted to the light.
Pi was sitting next to her bed. Smiling.
Some long forgotten animal reflex deep inside her wanted to catapult her right arm into a warm reunion with his happy face, but her body was far too weak to obey the order.
“It’s so good to see you”, Pi continued.
“You. Left me”, she barely managed to whisper.
“Ahh, yes. You are so strong. I knew you would be our only hope to match the R.O.S.E. agent.”
She had no notion of what he was talking about, but couldn’t believe he had the nerve to try to change the subject, after what she’d been through. Nevertheless, she had to admit that she was very happy to be lying in a warm bed after all her struggles out there on the ice.
As she touched in on the memories of what had happened, even briefly, a wave of sorrow washed over her as she remembered.
“Killed… Mungpuk”, she said quietly.
“Yes I know. As he would have killed all of us who don’t possess the powers that you do.”
Pi’s words still sounded like incoherent babbling to her, and didn’t make much sense, but she decided to not deal with it and start any discussions surrounding her strength at this moment.
Instead, she closed her eyes, and let the comforting softness of the bed embrace her, and fell asleep.
The passing of several days spent mostly in bed, with masses of strengthening food and loving care soon brought her back to life again, and the more she awakened to her regular self, the more she wanted to know about her new surroundings.
And know more of what really had been going on during their journey out here.
Pi had been keeping his distance for the last few days, and this had irritated her greatly as he’d already given her signals that he knew far more about matters than he'd been willing to share with her when they set out on this journey.
She considered his absence as proof of his growing fear of further confrontations regarding his own cowardly actions, so in one way it was understandable that he kept away.
However, about a week after her arrival, he suddenly appeared in her room. She was out of bed, dressed and was starting to feel rather restless.
“You’re better”, Pi said as he entered. Still smiling.
“Much better”, she replied, hoping it would sound alarming to him.
It didn’t seem to worry him at all. He only added: “I’m glad.”
Njoro didn’t feel glad.
“I guess you want to know more about all this?” Pi asked.
“Yes!”
“Please. Come, dear Sister Njoro.” He offered her his arm, and to her own surprise, she accepted the gesture, although her inner resistance would have been felt by anyone with their senses intact within her close surroundings.
They left her recovery room, and walked past many doors through a shiny white stone corridor leading into a giant hall that stretched as far as the harsh, yellow light that filled it could carry.
The hall looked very old, and was so big that she couldn’t imagine how she had not be able to see its exterior at surface level when she arrived. The roof must surely have reached far above the ice, unless they were really deep down below the surface.
Maybe she’d been so exhausted when she arrived that all she could see was the light from the tunnel gate?
She accepted that as an explanation.
Everything in here was very solid and well-kept, and she guessed the whole construction must have been immersed in a massive pool of water after it had been built, and then left to be swallowed by the surrounding ice over the years that had passed.
Many years, that must have been. It was like a sunken fortress from times long gone that was still fully intact due to the natural preservation qualities of its surroundings.
“Where are we?” Njoro asked, awestruck.
“This place used to be a most sacred site to the Ancients”, Pi answered in a lowered voice, as if to underline the sacredness of the place.
“Like a temple? Like our old temple-halls in the mountains back home?” Njoro offered.
“Not so much like a temple in the way we know it today. This is one of the last things they built before the Age of Restoration. It is a place where they tried store all the knowledge they had of the world.”
Njoro stopped walking, puzzled by this information.
“What? Here? Outside of themselves – in the material world? How could they possibly do that?”
Pi just smiled, it was evident that he found this idea as ridiculous as she did, although he seemed to have lived with the idea for a while and had probably grown used to it.
“But all the information in the world is already stored within the Soul of Everything. You cannot remove it from yourself, and believe that it will endure anywhere else!”
“Of course it is. But you have to remember that the Ancients had lost their connection with themselves, and therefore the connection with the Soul of Everything. So instead they made machines to hold their knowledge, enormous machines that reached across the whole world through a spider's web of moving electricity.”
“They built machines to keep all their knowledge of the world for them? How horrendous! It is truly like a nightmare.”
Njoro shuddered at the thought, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped.
“It certainly is”, Pi said thoughtfully. “Come! I will show you.”
They walked down the vast hall. After a short walk, they reached another exit, this time leading into a new and smaller corridor.
At each side of the corridor, there stood a line of strange objects on display, meticulously lined up on far-reaching racks mounted against the stone walls.
There were various devices made of wood, metals, textiles and stone, some rusty old pieces of junk and some very worn-out but similarly strange-looking objects made of materials unknown to Njoro.
“What are these things?” she asked.
“Basically, they are a good place to start.”
He let go of her arm, walked over to one of the racks, and picked one of the devices from its shelf.
“This”, he continued “is an early attempt by our own people to create a generator of electricity.”
The device contained of two cylinders of clear, yellowish stone – most likely amber, she figured, like some of the relics in the Temple back home were made of. The stone cylinders were mounted upon a wooden base by means of a metal construction and, stretched around both the amber wheels and another cylinder mounted to a metal crank, a twisted piece of woolen cloth had been fastened.
“But why would our people want to generate electricity?”
“In order to spark the ancient machines back to life, and reveal the mysteries they hold. As much as we now know about the Ancients there are as many things we don’t know, and some of these issues might turn out to be crucial for our own future - even if just to stop us from committing the same mistakes.”
“But why would we want to wake their horrible machines back to life? Couldn’t we just use our seers to gather this information by connecting to the Source of Everything? That’s what we’re for, isn’t it?”
Njoro sounded slightly insulted.
“Yes, of course we could – and are – using our seers to shine light on our dark past. But as we do, we only attain this information in the angle of how you see it – and you are all still people of this day and age, thankfully lacking the disturbances of an Ancient mindset. Wouldn’t it be quite interesting to understand how they viewed this information, and what uses they saw for it?
Njoro thoughtfully studied the device.
“So how does this work?” she asked as she stroked the woolen fabric with her fingers.
“It creates electricity out of mobile energy and friction between the wool and the stone, in a very inefficient and rather clumsy way, that is. But it has brought us one step closer to unraveling the mysteries of the Ancients’ technology.”
Njoro stopped stroking the rough fabric. It made the tips of her fingers sore.
“They used electrical energy to power all their machines?” she asked as he put the thing back on its shelf.
“The ones used to store knowledge, yes. But they had even cruder technologies that were powered by digging up the blood of the Earth and burning it in primitive devices that let out extreme amounts of toxics into the air. Eventually these technologies were creating such disturbances and imbalances inside Earth that she answered with horrifying earthquakes, weather disturbances and other ‘natural catastrophes’ as the Ancients would call them – all natural reactions from Mother Earth. But even they realized the madness of this and tried to change course towards the end.”
“Oh, thankfully! But they still stuck with electricity? It must have been the same power that the Savage intruder used for his strange devices? And it has also been the reason for great concerns among the Elders of the House in recent years by its growth and widespread use in the Middle-North, right?”
“Absolutely. And it’s the same energy that fuels the lights of this entire place.”
“I don’t understand. Shouldn’t we restrain from meddling too deeply with the past? Do we know what will happen should we actually succeed in revealing all the madness of our ancestors?”
“Too deeply, yes. But maybe we could prevent the disasters of the past if we understood better what mechanisms within us all would bring us on the road to such disaster? The past is only what we had to go through in order to get where we are today, but if no-one knows what we actually have gone through, all our costly experience is of no real use to anyone.”
Pi sounded very enthusiastic, something that she recognized from back when he convinced the House to take on this task back home in what seemed long ago.
He offered her his arm again, she took it, and they started walking slowly past the endless line of machines.
“So what exactly is electrical energy?” Njoro asked as they walked.
“I guess you can say that it is a force that exists within the imbalance of the Universe. Or rather; it is the force that seeks to re-balance the Universe.”
“Oh? Is it Love?” Njoro stopped walking and gazed at Pi with wide open eyes.
“No, not exactly.” Pi paused and stared at one of the machines on display. Then he said: “Maybe it is a different aspect of Love.”
They walked on in silence for a while, and then Pi continued his explanation:
“Electricity is a force created by the movement of charges within the particles that all matter in the physical world is built from. As within us, and within all of the Otherworld, the material part of the Universe is also dependent on total balance. Whenever any physical object falls out of balance by losing or gaining too much positive or negative charge, the appropriate complementing charge rushes in to restore the balance of the object. This movement of charge is what the Ancients named Electricity, and towards the end of their age most of their civilization was dependent upon it.”
“What do you mean? Were they feeding on the imbalance of the world? Like some kind of parasites?”
Pi smiled, for no reason that Njoro could fathom. This wasn’t funny at all.
“I guess one could view it like that, but it’s not the whole picture.”
“What is the whole picture, then?”
“I don’t know that myself, and hopefully it won’t ever be my burden to do that. But I can tell you more of what we know about our ancestors at this stage.”
“Please do.”
“Their craving for electricity meant that the Ancients were totally dependent on their world being out of balance at all times.”
“But that’s terrible! Simply terrible.” Njoro interrupted and shook her head in disbelief. “Balance is the most important principle of all. The basic nature of the Universe itself is the will to create unity and harmony through balance. Didn’t they know this?”
“They might have temporarily forgotten it for some reason. Or maybe they even wanted imbalance?” Pi said, and smiled.
“Why would anyone want such a thing?” Njoro was truly shocked.
“For excitement, maybe?”
“Excitement?” Njoro said furiously, and had to work hard in order to still the damaging emotional wave rising within her.
Pi continued:
“When everything is balanced, you are at peace with yourself and your surroundings, and there is harmony.”
“Of course. Our main goal as a species.” Njoro couldn’t believe why Pi would present her such inevitabilities and think it would make her feel better.
“But harmony can also make people feel motionless and dull, if the harmony gets too monotonous, don’t you think?”
“No! Not at all. What nonsense.”
“But sweet Njoro, wouldn’t you say that our adventure over the last months has been of any value at all? Hasn’t it by any means added to the experience of life?” Pi gestured into the air with shiny, clear eyes staring into an imaginary but doubtlessly bright infinity. “Would you rather we’d stay back in Lhasa, locked into the mundane cycles of repetitive everyday life?”
Njoro didn’t answer. She rather walked on and let her mind drift.
So here Pi was suggesting that the endless struggle across the ice, the entry of the horrible intruder that took her travel companions’ lives and nearly ended her own - were episodes purely to be viewed as sources for her excitement? This was too much for her to take in. How could he be so insensitive?
Or was it that she was being too sensible?
On the other hand, she knew deep within that this journey had already become unforgettable. Ever since they had set out for the Far North from Lhasa she had felt an underlying excitement in her that had been more than welcome into her life at the time, and as they reached the Archangel on the brink of the ice to gather their supplies and meet with the others, she had to admit that she’d been able to breathe more freely than she had been able to in a long time.
And then, the movement into the ice, and the lights, the silence, the connections to her travelling comrades…
“But these Ancients”, she finally broke the contemplating silence.
“Yes?” Pi answered, halted, and turned towards her.
“They met their own Nemesis by holding on to their set of values, didn’t they?”
He looked at her with something she figured was his version of a concerned look, which didn’t work - he still just looked happy.
“They went very far. Towards the end, they had developed into a species that opposed Life itself, and for that reason they had to go through the destruction that they eventually did. Or correction if you want.”
“But it could have so easily been undone. Made right again. With the right teachings…”
“Maybe. But they were possibly too entangled in the system they had built around them. Their mindset. Their very culture. It probably just started out as a way of trying to make life more convenient, but soon ended up becoming a prison of thought that fed off its creators in order to keep itself alive.”
Njoro walked a few more steps still trying to adjust her emotions to all this.
“But what was out here? Why did they build this place in the middle of the ice?” she finally asked.
They had now almost reached the end of the corridor with the machine display. It seemed to be leading into another hall opening up.
Pi stopped.
“Just before the Big Change and the Age of Restoration set in, they had gathered so much information in their machines all across the planet that they started getting problems with keeping the machines running.”
“I’m not surprised. Only Everything can hold the knowledge of Everything. We all know that you cannot separate knowledge from its source. Infinity is too big to fit into any of its parts.”
“Heat”, Pi said.
“Heat?” Njoro had a confused look on her face.
“Their machines were pushed to their limits to store more and more information, and as they were being run by the movement of electrical energy, the machines started producing so much heat that they were about to melt down and self-destruct the whole system. As we all know, energy cannot simply disappear into nothing, but only change shape, so it was inevitable that this would become a problem for them.”
“I guess they didn’t know that either?”
“It seems they had forgotten a whole lot of basic principles of Life and Nature. In a last desperate attempt, the most powerful guardians of the knowledge-machines built this place and moved enormous amounts of these devices here, far into the ice, to try and keep them cool enough to stay functioning.”
They reached the widened-out end of the corridor as a new giant hall opened up.
It was a crossroads where four tunnels met.
Above one of the tunnel entrances, there was an old worn-out inscription that read “o.g.l.e.” in yellow, blue, green and red Ancient letters.
To the left, an even more crumbled sign in blue read “a.c.e.b.o.o.” above the entrance, in the same ancient alphabet.
Pi led her by the arm over to the third entrance. It had the inscription “i.c.r.o.s.o.f.” above it, in dark blue lettering.
“This is the most well-preserved area. Come, I’ll show you”, he said and pulled her by the arm.
They walked through the short tunnel, and reached a new tall gate leading into a new area. There was an almost perfectly conserved inscription above it.
It read: “B.u.i.l.d.i.n.g.7.”
“This is amazing”, Njoro said. “It looks much less than a thousand years old.”
Pi stopped for a second, as if to admire the endurance of the inscription. “Yes, it has been very well preserved here in the ice. It is almost as if there has been some kind of magic involved, as if they left it all for us on purpose so we could understand their ways better”, he said, sounding slightly euphoric. “Come, let’s enter!”
As they passed through the gate called ‘Building 7’, an enormous hall opened up in front of them. The mere size of it was enough to make Njoro cling a little harder onto Pi’s arm, as if she was afraid of being swallowed by the space.
Then she saw the machine.
Or more precisely, the machines.
Stacked up from floor to ceiling was an arrangement of what seemed like an endless amount of small rectangular boxes – devices similar to some of those on display in the corridor they just had passed through.
It looked like a solid mountain, if it hadn’t been for the unnatural arrangement of the units.
At the base, filling the most part of the enormous floor, the boxes were arranged in a large square. On top of it, and for every new level up, a slightly smaller square of boxes had been placed, until it narrowed down to a single box at the very top - almost reaching the ceiling far above.
It made a giant peak with triangular walls on all four sides.
In between the boxes, arrays of strings were attached, making it look as if all the machines shared the same blood, like a giant hive-like entity.
The blood it craved, she guessed, must have been electrical energy.
Njoro was speechless.
It was a scary thing, but nevertheless an object of some kind of twisted, ancient beauty.
“What is this?” she whispered to Pi, as if afraid to wake the sleeping giant.
“I’m not sure”, Pi answered. “No-one’s really sure, actually.”
Pi held his breath for a second, and then continued: “But we think it might have been their God.”
Njoro gasped.
“Their God?”
Njoro shivered and thought the giant machine suddenly got a sinister quality to it.
“Ever since the Nobili found this place and started their work of attempting to restore and decipher all this, speculations have often ended up in theories surrounding the religions of the Ancients.”
“Who found this place?” Njoro asked.
“The Nobili.”
“Who are the Nobili?”
“They are our friends”, Pi said. “They are the survivors.”
“Survivors?”
“Yes. Like us. We shall meet them now.”
They left the great hall with the giant machine and returned through the short corridor back to the crossroads where they had entered.
There, they walked into the fourth tunnel, which had no inscription at all above its entrance.
After a short walk they came to a new gate, and above this one, in modern Global lettering, a red sign spelt: ‘NOBILI’
Past the gate, they entered into a different looking part of the underground complex. It seemed somehow newer than the other areas they’d been going through. There was more activity in this room. A low murmur could be heard from small groups of people scattered throughout the space.
A woman came to welcome them. She was tall, with dark hair and almost Eastern or Original features, and Njoro found her very beautiful looking.
“Welcome Sister Njoro”, the woman said. “I’m Hida”.
“Thank you”, Njoro answered, surprised that the woman already knew her name.
Pi just nodded and smiled at the woman. It was obvious they already knew each other.
The other crowds of people further into the hall behind Hida didn’t take much notice of their entrance. They all seemed busy, gathered around tables or bent over different devices deep into discussions.
All over the place, the bright flickering of electric light filled the space, and made it look somewhat otherworldly to Njoro’s eyes.
“Please come. Come and sit with me”, Hida said.
The three of them walked over to a seating section and sat down in three comfortable chairs surrounding a small table.
“You have gone through so much for us all, Sister Njoro; please let me begin by thanking you for your efforts on behalf of the Nobili.”
Njoro looked at Pi with a questioning expression.
“Please, Sister Hida, I think Sister Njoro is very eager to attain a deeper understanding of the whole situation, including these unfamiliar surroundings and the history of this place. Why don’t you please begin by telling us about yourselves, the Nobili?”
“Of course”, the woman Hida said. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Maybe the beginning would be a good point”, Pi smiled.
“The beginning is a long time ago, but luckily we’ve kept our history well. My people, that includes the most part of those you see inside this room as well as spread all over the Golden City, all descend from a small group of survivors from before the Age of Restoration. Much like your own people of Lhasa.”
“But out here? This far north? That’s impossible!” Njoro protested. “I thought it was mostly the Eastern peoples who lived through the Big Change, with only sporadic tribes of Originals surviving in the Northeast? At least that’s what I’ve been told since childhood.”
“Yes. I know. I know, but please listen.” Pi tried to calm her down.
Hida smiled, and continued: “A little more than a century before the Big Change, the Ancients were obsessed with the areas around the Far North. Because of their system of dividing land and people into ‘nations’, a race was started of sending people out to ‘conquer’ this area in a series of disastrous attempts. One such attempt was made with a giant airship filled with explorers and people of Ancient science. All men of Ancient science to be more precise.”
“Why all men?” Njoro asked.
“That was just another one of their strange ways, I guess. Anyway, the weather troubled this airship - a gale hit them by surprise. Of course had they known what we commonly know today about Nature, this wouldn’t have been such a big problem to foresee, but as they were unable to see the gale coming, they were forced to turn around and return to from where they had set out. But before they reached their destination, the ship crashed on the ice, and their leader, a man by the name Umberto Nobile, together with eight other members of the crew survived there until they were rescued. One died in the crash. As there were outpost settlements within reach as well as other expeditions in the area, eventually someone came to their rescue. Another six men – mostly men of science - were trapped inside the part of the airship wreck that got carried aloft by the storm, and transported far into the ice to the north of the crash site.”
“How horrible. Did they come to the rescue of the remaining men, too?”
Njoro felt touched by the story. It was as if she could sense the desperation the men may have felt, having been left out there on the ice on her own.
“No. And that changed a lot of things.”
Hida had a gloomy expression on her face, and leaned over towards Njoro as she continued:
“Most of all it changed the belief these men had in the society which they had wholeheartedly served and invested their entire lives in the duty of. The fact that they all survived…”
“They survived! How fantastic.”
“Yes, Sister Njoro. Truly fantastic. I - for one - am very happy for this. The wrecked airship stranded at what they would name Gilesland, after an observation that had been made decades earlier, but never found again. It was situated northwest off the coast of where the Archangel lies today - far into the ice. Of course the ice reaches further south these days than it did back then, but even at the time, the conditions in Gilesland must have been hard enough for a band of southern city-men of science.”
“What did they do? Make their back south again?”
“No. They stayed. There was no way they would go back to the society that had turned its back on them and left them out here to die. Instead, they created their own settlement, based on a mixture of all the scientific knowledge they had from their old world, and the natural liaison with their new surroundings that their survival now depended upon. Eventually they would meet hunting tribes of the Original people of the ice and later continued their blood by establishing families with women of these tribes. I am a result of one such family establishment that now spans across centuries, and so are the people you see around me here. We, Sister Njoro, are the Nobili.”
Njoro gazed with her mouth half-open at Hida, the Nobili woman.
“But… why have I never heard of you? Why haven’t you made contact with the rest of our Global society? You should be represented in the House of Lhasa, like all surviving peoples are entitled to.”
“I guess you can say it’s an old habit we have inherited over generations, but you must also remember that our closest Global settlement is the Middle North, and we are not too sure if we wouldn’t be better off staying a little invisible for the time being - looking at the latest developments in that region.”
“I guess that’s understandable.” Njoro said, and looked at Pi, who’ve been sitting quietly through Hida’s story.
Probably he’d heard it all before.
“But you have contacted us, and you speak Global very well, so something must have changed.” Njoro said.
“That’s true”, Pi said. “And that’s where our adventure begins, and your part of all this started.”
“Yes. Why DON’T you tell me where my part of this started?” Njoro said and turned towards Pi. She couldn’t hide her irritation, and didn’t care much trying either.
“Dear Sister Njoro. You are one of the most sensitive seers of the city of Lhasa born in our times”, Pi stated. “The Circle of the House knew that you would play a big part in the shaping of the world, even at an early stage in your development.”
“Flattering, but I didn’t exactly see all this coming. How come not?”
“You couldn’t imagine how difficult it has been for the circle of seers back home, in addition to those already present in the Golden City to keep it all from you. It takes a whole little commune of your strongest peers to keep your clarity looking in the different direction. You’re that strong!”
Njoro strongly disliked the enthusiasm Pi put behind telling her that she’d been willfully deceived by her own.
“But why? Why would you do such a thing, and leave me alone out there on the ice as prey to a murderous Savage? What kind of people have I believed to be my closest allies in life in all these years?”
She was almost in tears, looking Pi, who finally had stopped smiling, straight into his eyes and beyond.
“Please, Njoro. We will explain everything. He took her hand.
Hida spoke:
“When first we found this place, we decided that it should be the duty of the Nobili to take upon us the task to become the keepers of its secrets. We didn’t exactly know the extent of the secrets this place actually held, but it seemed to be a place of great significance. Not only to us, but to all survivors living today.”
“A treasure.” Njoro added.
“Or a curse. When we saw the development in the Middle North, where many ways of old suddenly started reappearing, concerns were arising among us. As people started tapping into the great sea of ideas within us all, a new urge awoke to pursue the hunt for technology, with all its conveniences for a more ‘pleasant’ human existence. We are worried that this hunt might lead to a new obsession, like in the Old World. We all have these urges in us to make life ‘easier’, even if we have been taught that we need to live in balance with Nature and all of our co-existence.”
“And as you know we’ve had the same concerns for some time within our circle back home”, Pi added.
Sister Hida continued:
“Our own seers advised us to reveal ourselves to the House of Lhasa and make a connection directly, as you seemed to be the people of the Global community who were most able to withstand a too hastily and unguided re-progress. Our two peoples agreed that there were simply too many traps awaiting those rushing themselves into this, and none of us really know enough about the past to come up with the right arguments to make them thread more carefully. It seems the people bitten with the urge for progress are losing their clarity in the intoxicating haze of expectations that arises.”
“But it seems we don’t know the solution any more than you do”, Njoro said, as if to lower Hida of the Nobili’s hopes to a more grounded level.
“No, we never expected such. But together we stand much stronger than apart, as I guess no-one here will deny?”
“Absolutely, Sister Hida”, Pi broke in. “And it seems we are just about to prove that.”
“What do you mean?” Njoro asked. “What more don’t I know?”
Hida spoke:
“As I told you, we Nobili are descendants of a group of Ancient men of science on one hand, and Original women on the other”, she explained. “Our traditions have always told us that technology in itself is not to be feared, but that people’s blindness can be lethal in combination with it. We - like you - seek balance. However, our teachings tell us that there has to be balance within the balance. This means that our ideal has never been to acquire total enduring harmony. Harmony sometimes also has to be countered with disharmony in order for life to be fulfilling.”
“Hmm… where did I just recently hear about a similar line of thought?” Njoro said, with narrowed eyes directed at her fellow Lhasa travel companion sitting next to her.
“Please, Njoro. Please listen”, Pi asked. “Open your mind.”
Njoro decided whether to express her full range of emotions concerning Pi and his carefree attitude towards her recent sufferings, but decided to keep it for later. Instead, she said:
“Maybe I can learn to understand your ways, but please see that it’s all very new to me now. And all this strongly reminds me of the ways of the Ancients as I’ve learned to know it, which I find quite alarming”, Njoro stated, and then gestured she would shut up and listen.
“I totally understand your concern, Sister Njoro, but let me remind you that the ways of the Ancients were very much about embracing the extreme. In the end, their polarized worldview made them blind even to their own progression as a species.” Hida leaned forward and gave Njoro a firm look. “For instance, they set their goals to re-create the world in their ‘own image’, and in the process they abandoned all their natural instruments of navigation; reading signs, using their intuition or noticing the reactions from their surroundings and fellow creatures to their own actions. They set their own personal goals, and assigned the fulfillment of a goal, and everything that harmonized with such fulfillment as ‘good’, and every hindrance or sign of their goal being out of tune with the natural harmony of things as ‘evil’. This meant that whenever their dreams and manipulations of their surroundings failed, they would condemn their surroundings and fellow creatures instead of using the resistance they met as a correction from the environment they were part of. Their idea developed into trying to create a ‘Kingdom on Earth’, but they forgot that Earth already is a ‘Kingdom’ in its own right – a Kingdom they should live as part of.”
“So you, the Nobili, also see clearly how they couldn’t keep moving in the direction that they did? That eventually they had to be corrected on a much larger scale?” Njoro gesticulated as she spoke, and felt she was getting quite excited about this conversation now.
“Absolutely, But we think that they were strangled by their own mindset more than corrected by Nature or self-destructed by their disharmonic technologies. They simply wouldn’t let go of their hierarchical structures of thought or their expectations of polarity in everything, so they eventually collectively accepted their ancient ‘prophecies’ and ceased to exist.”
“Prophecies?” Njoro asked. “Visions from their own seers?”
“No, we don’t believe so. We rather suggest that these ‘prophecies’ were historical blueprints for their own destruction, created by their wisdom keepers of the past. Originally, these were just meant to be maps of possible collective obstacles to be overcome – a set of common evolutionary tasks to be solved in co-operation. But as the Ancients never adapted to a new way of thinking, these blueprints instead became self-fulfilling prophecies of destruction.”
“Self-fulfilling?”
“Yes, their collective intellectual acceptance of these roadmaps pointing towards their own obliteration made them expect, and eventually take part in creating all kinds of disasters: epidemics, wars, violence, environmental collapse, the de-humanizing of their treatment of each other and a number of other nightmares-come-true.”
“So?”
“So the world of the Ancients ‘ended’ on their sacred chosen day of December 21st in the year of 2012, and the Age of Restoration began.”
Njoro sat quietly to let Hida’s words sink in for a while.
Pi said nothing.
Then Njoro asked: “So, I take it you – the people of the Nobili - don’t believe in repeating the ways of the Ancients, I guess?”
“Too much of anything is still too much, and surely we don’t want to repeat the disastrous mistakes made in the past. The experience of Life is too precious to let it turn into an arena for only pain and darkness to reign over those who’ve chosen to take part in it. And that is exactly why we intervened when we learned that the most progress-eager and uncontrollable Middle Northern forces had discovered the tracks of the Scriptures of iX.”
“The Scriptures of iX?”
“Not all Ancients were out of touch with their own Nature. Some kept their channels open throughout most of their lives, by either chance or free will. At great costs, that is, as the pain they experienced from having a world of total chaos, disharmony and darkness surround them would surely hurt and confuse them greatly.”
“And who were these people?”
“All kinds, when it comes to those who kept in touch with themselves and their abilities by chance. But throughout all ages there have always been numerous Inspirationals taking part in the evolution of Mankind, lending a lifetime to the cause of human progress. These Inspirationals have usually left their marks in different parts of human culture in the period they lived - sometimes in the field of science, and sometimes in other fields like art or scripture. Just before the Big Change, one such Inspirational placed a great secret with a man who lived at the time - a man who hadn’t closed off his own channels to Universal wisdom – by chance rather than choice.”
“What kind of secret?”
“Nothing less than the instructions to create a device that would provide Humankind with unlimited supplies of electrical energy.”
“What?”
“That’s right. A device to transform the energy of gravity and the magnetic field of the Earth, into electricity. ‘Free’ power.”
“But this must have been a fantastic treasure in the eyes of the Ancients?”
“Certainly. If you just take a look at the place we are in now, you soon understand that an unlimited supply of energy would have been the greatest gift to such a civilization.”
“But I haven’t heard about any of this before. What happened to this secret? Was it put to use by the Ancients?”
“No. The secret was brought to the grave with the Ancient who were given it. A cold grave. A grave, in fact, located a little further to the southwest of our present location.”
“What? Here? In the ice?” was all Njoro could say, as she was no longer sure whether it really was necessary for her to process all this information at this point. She had wanted to know more, yes, but it didn’t mean that she’d wanted a completely re-written history-lesson from a woman representing a people she’d never heard of, up until she’d just met her moments ago.
“And this, Sister Njoro, is where the importance of your participation becomes evident.”
Pi had stayed quiet for a long time now, but finally spoke again. Njoro had almost forgotten his presence.
“Really? And how is that?”
“Our Ancient friend who received this secret ended his life on Earth in an accident involving one of their flying-machines - a very crude and energy-consuming type of air travel. The wreck was buried in the ice with all the remains of the people inside it and their cargo. The secret is believed to have been noted down in a document that has come to be known as ‘The Scriptures of iX’, which was encoded and stored on an Ancient machine like the ones you can find all around the Golden City. The document is believed to be retrievable - if only we can understand how to extract information from the Ancients’ technology. This is what the Middle Northern forces bribed the seers to reveal, and set out to find before anyone else.”
“And in the race of getting to it first”, Hida continued, “You were our only hope to distract and overcome the highly lethal hired assassin that the R.O.S.E. alliance sent out to collect this treasure. You are the reason we got to it first.”
Njoro felt as if someone hit her in the stomach.
“R.O.S.E.?”
“Research On Soul Evolution – a small but very efficient and progress-hungry Middle Northern entity who’ve taken matters into their own hands. They operate totally independently from the Global Council and use Ancient methods of appealing to people’s greed and personal gain in order to recruit manpower. It was one of their agents that tracked us down and slaughtered the rest of our entourage.”
Njoro stared at Pi in disbelief.
“The Savage? He was ‘the rose’? It wasn’t just a nickname for one of the other entourages, as you told us? You lied to me!”
Pi looked down. Visibly ashamed.
Njoro continued. Very angrily:
“You told us that someone was following us when I could sense it after our first few days in the ice, but you told us all it was nothing but a ‘friendly game’ that had been agreed on, that we had set out from the Archangel in different entourages with different nicknames and were only playing this game to make each other move faster towards the destination. So no one knew that this was a most lethal ‘game’! How dare you? How do you think Mungpuk would feel about this? How do you feel about this? Or do you even feel anything at all about anything at all?”
Pi didn’t smile anymore.
He spoke quietly:
“Dear Njoro. This is the hardest part. Please forgive me, but you had to be kept away from this. For your own protection. And for the success of the whole mission. When you sensed it – and it was inevitable that you eventually would, I simply had to offer you an explanation. Otherwise you wouldn’t have let it go, and would have started following your sensations. But I assure you, all the others knew the risk involved in this. All but you. I am very aware that deception is the worst thing to happen to your kind, as it creates confusion and conflict between your senses and your trust in your surroundings - in this case, me, but I am truly very sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but the least we can do is reveal the whole truth to you now, so your mind might get some peace and you can start seeing clearly again.”
Njoro felt like crying or screaming. A feeling of deception and distrust filled her soul. A terrible feeling. She let go of Pi’s hand and took a deep breath.
“So? Was it worth it?” she said with great efforts to overcome her disappointment.
“Sister Njoro. You can’t possibly imagine how much your efforts have mattered. For all of us.” Hida said in a gentle voice. “There is no way we would have gotten to the site first and secured the Scriptures of iX if you hadn’t overcome the R.O.S.E. assassin. It would have been in their hands by now, and then there might have been no way back.”
Njoro knew she had to return to her room and be alone for a while, but one question forced itself out:
“How did it happen?”
“What?”
“How did I defeat him? What happened to him there in the snow cave? I only tried to heal him.”
“He fell ill, and died.”
“Ill? How?”
“His unbalanced organism couldn’t stand being exposed to you. You’re simply too pure of heart.”
Njoro rose to her feet, and left in silence.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
