Amaranthine Historica Read online

  By Year 0+13 years, Amarantis was doing splendidly. Amarantis now counted around 6,000 Pre-Datory and Post-Datory Humans and over 5,000 Eumans. Bountiful crops of Post-Datory Amarants had bloomed. Of course, the term ‘Amarants’ is used loosely, because in fact only Humans had rights. The Glowing Eumans—luckily the term GLEUmans was never adopted—had very limited privileges; nothing that one could rightly call ‘rights’. As for Bions? They had the rights and privileges working themselves to the bone. Bions built the new Amarantis. Bions built more Bions. They were fruitful and multiplied and populated Amarantis abundantly. This was some heavy metal!

  The 8 giant twin pyramids were evenly distributed inside the farthest two canal rings (O-Zones 7&8), 80 kilometres away from the nucleus of the ancient city. After Olfus’ ‘I have a dream’ speech, Eleni lost no time. She founded the Amarantis Evolution Museum, housed by the grandest twins: the Olfus Hybrid Life (aka the Olfus Hybrid) for Olfus’ design mutants and the Maria Makinti-Lemniscate (aka the Lemniscate) for real life.

  LARV natural and genetically-tinkered stocks were put to full use. Eleni’s secret treasure trove of seeds from her grandmamma’s tiny suburban jungle thrived inside the belly of this pyramid. Maria’s invisible hand—or invisible ‘green thumb’, if you prefer—took extra care of her glorious oleanders, roses, Aram lilies... olive, almond and apricot trees... parsley, sage rosemary and thyme.[20] The birds and the bees blissfully buzzed and chirped inside grandmamma’s pyramid.

  The main entrance of each pyramid was adorned by two larger-than-life faceless caryatids (twelve metres tall), each bearing a giant Emerald Tablet streaming ads and information about each museum. Smaller Emerald Tablets were dispersed inside and around the pyramids—with multi-touch screens capable of detecting multiple touch inputs from many visitors simultaneously. There was, however, one noticeable difference between the two entrances: the Lemniscate caryatids stood tall next to whopping Weeping Willows, whilst the Olfus Hybrid entrance was guarded by angry and twisted Wakeful Trees.

  The Olfus Hybrid produced generous disease-resistant, flavourful crops, engineered to withstand and neutralise radiation and other pollutants. However, inside this luscious mutant wonderland, Nature continued to impose a No-Fly Zone, making pollination a thorny issue. No bird and no bee was duped by the bogus beauty of this fake paradise... ‘for Nature cannot be fooled’.[21]

  In an effort to please Mother Nature, Eleni and Dorion had wild roses planted throughout O-Zones 7 & 8; not only to attract more bees—and repel mosquitos—but also to bring sweet dreams back into this Kafkaesque upside-down world. And let’s not forget the multiple petunia hummingbird feeders! Not the first honey-trap one would think of for the dove returning with an olive leaf, but good enough for hummingbirds and hummingbird-lovers like Eleni and Dorion. In any case, all birds and bees were more than welcome.

  Despite expected and unexpected hicks, it seemed as if all was well.

  However, things are rarely as they seem—

  Dorion was somewhat frustrated in his co-director job. Olfus constantly vetoed his marvellous mouldy ideas or otherwise stole his thunder and glory. Thankfully, having decrypted the SkEyeClops password—altering it to ‘My-name-is-Nobody!’—Dorion found a way to temporarily blind SkEyeClops, as and when necessary. In this way, he was able to regularly sneak down to the underground chambers of the Lemniscate and toil over his secret cauldrons for charms of powerful trouble.[22] The added fringe benefit was that he got to work closely with his childhood pal Eleni. As the saying goes, ‘the company that plays together, stays together’.

  “Those were the good years... Elmer,” Dorion teased nostalgically, “when your grandmamma chased us around the garden, like a wobbly Buddha, threatening to hang us upside down on the clothesline! Hah hah...”

  They often reminisced about Pre-D-Day life, stirring each other with their ‘Elmer & Doris’ nicknames and caricaturing the one-and-only Maria.

  “Remember that laugh that shook, rattled and rolled?” Eleni laughed basso profondo, just like her grandmamma. “Yep! Grandmamma was definitely larger than life!”

  “She used to say, the earth laughs in flowers!” blurted Dorion in a flash.

  Eleni quickly took his cue weaving in her part of the narrative. “Yeah, and she used to take us to the forest and tell us wild stories, and plonk daisy crowns on us! Georgia and I were princesses... Victor and you, dear Doris—”

  “Ahah,” said Dorion, “Ferrett was with us too, back then—before his weirdo parents shipped off to... Wherever!”

  “Poor kid! He was stuck in that plush palace of theirs, with the ‘best’ tutors and then kicked up and off to St. Albans and of course Harvard. He did well, but we were the luckiest—we had my bunica[23]... She would’ve been tickled green with that interview you gave on 60 Minutes—even though most of what you said was snipped!”

  “Well, she was the best professor in the world! She taught us to love nature. And she used to call you Chattanooga Choo Choo—instead of chatterbox—coz you were non-stop yakety yak!”

  They both cracked up and took turns mimicking grandmamma’s thick Romanian accent. Eleni started: “‘Choo Choo, I no go to fancy university, but Life is best school, you remember that!’ And then she would churn out a bunch of bungled-up proverbs and quotes!”

  Eleni rolled around holding her sides with laughter as Dorion blended into grandmamma’s persona, gesticulating like her with all her extravagant contortions, shaking his index finger at Eleni. “‘In questions of science, authority of a thousand not worth humble reasoning of one.’ That was Galileo, but she insisted it was Einstein”.

  “She never liked Galileo. She said he stole the spinning spherical Earth from Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Eratosthenes!”

  “So the poor guy was condemned by the Catholic Inquisition and by your grandmother!” Dorion said, his laughter winding down to a giggle. “Anyway, she’s still my science muse! She’s the one who taught me to question everything!”

  “Well, maybe that’s why Woooolfie hates you so much!”

  “Who’s Wolfie?”

  “Oh, that’s Darkstorm’s nickname for Olfus... ‘You’re a sly old Rrrrat, Woooolfie’, she purrs wickedly like—”

  “You’re pulling my leg!”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die!” Eleni went through the motions with the same taunting cheek as her pre-schooler self.

  “You're teeeerrible, Elmer,” teased Dorion, followed by a delayed inquisitive “What d’you mean he hates me? Isn’t that a bit over-the-top?”

  “All right then, he dislikes you intensely. Have you noticed the ringtone of his phone when the call is from you?

  “Well no, how can I? I’m never near enough to hear his ringtone if I’m the one calling him...”

  “Gotta point there... Anyway, when the call is from you, he looks like he’s just been strapped into the electric chair and the ringtone is— Thorn in my side. You know that's all you'll ever be.[24] I know coz, once, he picked up the call saying: ‘Yes, Technon, what’s up this time?’ You don’t hear his terse tone? No, obviously not... So, unless there’s another Technon around, we can safely assume that the ‘thorn in my side’ goes hand in hand with you!”

  “You’re kidding me! A thorn in his side? Why?” Dorion looked like a puppy kicked across the room.

  “Shall I make a list? For a start, you’ve always challenged scientific orthodoxies and above all, his orthodoxies... Then, after the Fukushima disaster, you launched the campaign: “No to Nuclear Mushroom! Yes to Mushrooms!” To add insult to injury, you made public statements that if the world’s top scientists are still clueless on how to contain the radiation at Fukushima, that says heaps about what happens when a species develops technologically yet does not operate with wisdom. And let’s not forget ‘the omniscience of fools will cause our extinction’... That one was the kiss-of-death!”

  “But the omniscience of fools will cause our extinction! Who could disagree with that?”

  “W
ell, Wolfie was personally offended—”

  “No way!”

  “Oh yes!” Eleni kept taunting him with her pert tattletale look. “Georgia told me everything! She overheard him talking with Darkstorm once—who was firing him up as she loves to do, only to scold him with ‘Oh grow up Wolfie! It’s not always about you!’”

  “I didn’t realise I was so important!” Dorion said with a glazed look in his eyes. “So why did he appoint me to co-direct bioneering?”

  “It’s the Dilbert Principle! He couldn’t get rid of you, so you got kicked upstairs or sideways... out of his way and a long way from anyone else he cares about—”

  “That’s amazing! What else did Georgie tell you?”

  “He was really mad that you, an insignificant ‘snake-oil salesman’—those were his exact words—that you got your fungus funding over his Aeonios.

  “That was ages ago! Not that funding matters anymore. After all, GROMs and Bions do everything for free! I mean—”

  “Freebies don’t exist babe! We’ll get hit with the cost when the GROMs and the Rust go berserk!”

  “They can’t! All GROMs are psycoded! As for the Bions it’s the kill-switch, kaput-end-of-story! And let’s not forget the general PURE PPP Law which applies to all... psycoded or not—you know, the Pre-emptive Permanent Pause against anyone whose activities are injurious to the common interests of Amarantis!”

  “Oh, here she is! She tells it better than I do!” Eleni reeled Dorion back to the hotter topic.

  “Hey you two, what’s up?” said Genix approaching cheerfully but unprepared for the Spanish Inquisition. They were both hanging by her lips and she didn’t know why.

  “I was just telling Doris here about Wolfie’s thorny ringtone!” Eleni indicated Dorion with a quick sideways double-take.

  “Oh, Eleni Makinti! You can’t keep a secret, can you!” Georgia was thoroughly unnerved. The three exchanged unspoken words and she knew she wasn’t going anywhere until she spilt her guts. “OK, here goes! I’m sure Deep Throat here, told you that Olfus blames you for Aeonios!”

  “But that was ages ago! Water under the bridge and all that, ol’ sport—”

  “Only if your cadaver is floating under that bridge ol’ sport!” Georgia confirmed Olfus’ deep-rooted hatred. Squeezed into a tight corner, she spat out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  “He said your research on the antiviral properties of your favourite shroom was poppycock and that you cheated to get the grant.”

  Dorion’s eyes popped and his mouth froze open like those “Wow” emoticons. He protested. “I don’t get how any of his failed projects have anything to do with me! As for the antiviral properties of Elixir-of-Life shrooms, those findings were supported by scientists worldwide, including scientists from the Amaranthine Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (AMRIID)!”

  “I haven’t finished! There’s more!” and now Georgia’s playful sadism was rearing its ugly head. She was on a roll; the dice were flying! Like Eleni, she savoured the zest of this lemon twist. “He said that you nearly brought the Freaud government down with your disruptive technology, harming the petroleum, pesticide and herbicide industries”.

  Dorion was stupefied.

  “Of course, She Wolf kept egging him on until he totally lost it! You know her blah blah blah...etcetera etcetera”.

  Having blown the last note of her whistle, Georgia’s lips were punctually sealed.

  Eleni sighed. It was one of those sighs that’s usually followed by a cliché. “Hell hath no fury like an Olfus scorned!” said she, and as she said that, her phone sang. Calls from King Olfus, sparked King Crimson melodies.

  “Knowledge is a deadly friend

  If no one sets the rules.

  The fate of all mankind I see

  Is in the hands of fools.”

  “Speak of the devil and he doth appear!” she chirped.

  Eleni’s sanctimonious conversation with the devil was quite impressive. What an actress! “Yes Sir, No Sir, I don’t know why SkEyeClops isn’t picking up signals... No, Sir, I’ll get Dorion onto it... Of course, I’ll call you back and update you... Thank you, Sir... We’re doing our best... Yes, I’ll call you within the next 10 minutes... Thank you, Sir—”

  Dorion hurried to unblind SkEyeClops. The situation was uncomfortable, to say the least. Pre-Datory Olfus was somewhat of an oddball, but Post-Datory Olfus was a full-on screwball. Even worse, the screwball was grabbing more and more power—if that was even possible. Most of the Rats didn’t know how to get around him and none was even remotely allowed to disturb the King’s status quo.

  Initially, no Human was psycoded. Olfus was all too aware that imagination is more important than knowledge. He knew that psycoding everybody would have been a stupid move. A control freak he was, stupid he wasn’t—at least not in his own eyes. If the choice was between sapient ‘beings’ and moronic ‘subjects’, then the choice was clear. SkEyeClops sucking up intelligence was enough, he thought. The risk of disobedience was negligible, he thought. Thus he thought.

  However, Year 0+13 was turning into a mega grande annus horribilis.[25] Olfus’ biggest headaches came from the Fearless Four and the Rebellious Six making them all, the Rotten Ten. When Olfus connived to get all Humans—except for his Rat Pack—to agree to psycodes—for their own security and health monitoring, he sealed the agreement with a solemn promise that no improper use would be made of the implants.

  Although the foul King could be trusted no more than the foul Scientist, only the Rotten Ten objected. The Seditious Three (Georgia, Eleni and Dorion) remained under the radar. The Fearless Four were the 60 Minutes interviewing team; they released banned footage from the Time Capsule. The Rebellious Six were six Human teens; they meddled with the software of their Bion-parents.

  Olfus desperately tried to untangle the causes and effects. Why did they betray him? Especially the Fearless Four, who had it all! And what about the Rebellious Six? Their daily programme included the ritual chanting of the mantra, ‘Amarant Humans are perfect. In Olfus Science We Trust. Hail Olfus!’ What went wrong? “What Blasphemy! He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters!” Thus the deadly thunder spoke!

  And thus, in adamantine chains, the Rebellious Six were delivered to Quality Assurance for recycling! Their Bion-parents had the same fate.

  As for the Fearless Four, Olfus took care of that insolence by inviting them to a private feast, drugging them and implanting them with Ferrett’s evil device.

  *****

  And now I say unto you—If one steps into mud can he be purified by mud? Be wary of those who defiling themselves with blood, purify themselves with blood.

  CHAPTER 8 - The Wakeful Tree

  The Beast was satiated. His Garden of Eden had become securely snake-proof. Henceforth, his psycoded Amarants had one raison d’être—toiling over Olfus’ cauldrons for a singular charm. They were burbling the requiem for the death of Death! Ah, sweet immortality!

  However, Olfus also had a Plan B.

  For some reason, call it snobbery, Olfus refused to even remotely consider being fused with a GROM or a Bion—or any other of his hocus pocus thingamajig toys. Strange as it seems, Olfus was rather attached to the idea of remaining Human. That’s why he made multiple clones of Himself—all cooked up by the star-crossed Pre-Datory Aeonios. Alas, despite decades of sweat and tears, Aeonios had borne no more than one clone; and although Post-Datory Aeonios arose like any self-respecting Phoenix, this resurrected bird laid no golden eggs.

  Olfus was stuck with limited resources. Oh seed of Olfus, His lone Clone, His chosen one!

  “If I can’t defeat Death physically,” he thought, “Ferrett’s brain-to-brain voodoo will do the no mess, no fuss transfer!”

  Thus, Olfus stayed on course with his Plan A&B possibilities; immortality or brain-to-brain transfer. But his satisfaction did not remain intact for long. His mind was increasingly and persisten
tly being darkened by creepy galloping shadows. After all, first-hand experience taught him that human and technical error, together with the ‘cosmic force of things’ can cause uncanny, arbitrary events. That’s not always a bad thing—some of the greatest sapiens discoveries were propitious blunders. However, Olfus could see nothing propitious in the ‘force of things’ that caused D-Day—or the impossible rebellion of the Rotten Ten, for that matter!

  What’s more, he was now being harassed regularly by the desert sorceress with her cosmic psalms—

  “She tied you to her kitchen chair

  She broke your throne and she cut your hair

  And from your lips, she drew the Hallelujah!”[26]

  —all in A Cappella rife with stinging false notes and insults such as egghead, birdbrain, schnook, goof ball. “Hey ARC-head! You’d sell your soul for Total control!”[27] During every Pharaonic mind raid, she would hold up her enormous Emerald Tablet and spin it around the circles of his mind.[28] Her screeching repertoire included songs like, ‘Baby give it up. Give it up, Na, na, na, na, na’[29] and she always finished off on the wings of an Eagle, “We are all just prisoners here, of your own device”.[30]

  Olfus just couldn’t kill this beast. Over and over again, she scratched and burrowed into his brain, projecting endless reruns of the simultaneous explosions above and below. He was stuck in Cinema Purgatorio!

  Outside superhuman efforts to stop her from haunting him in his sleep, during his tortured wakened hours Olfus religiously went over D-Day events, desperately trying to untangle causes and effects. He took notes and doodled diagrams trying to put all the dots in the right place before trying to connect them. He repeatedly studied his scribbles and read out loud his perceived sequence of events: “When the consoles at the early warning hub at Base ΩHM-Ωmega lit up with indications of an imminent missile attack, Chuck the Drunk pulled out his nuke codes. Within 3 minutes he was giving the authentication code Gateway to Hell, matching the challenge code issued by Colonel Heller. Just as Chuck’s finger was on the hellish button, Heller called back, cancelling Hell. False alarm! ‘Human and technical error’, that’s what Heller said.” Mind-blowing—isn’t it? “Maybe,” Olfus concluded, “the desert siren’s warning ‘when-the-‘O’-becomes-an-‘Ω”, relates to ΩHM-Ωmega Base... and me pressing Chuck to nuke that Jinx ball!”