© 2009 Richard H. Orndorff
Chapter Two
This is the battle so far. The moves have been made in a place between Olympus and Elysium. In the real world of astronomic studies this would be three to four on the end of a point universes away from the one you are living in. In other words, a quantum leap isn’t going to get you there from where you are. This is how it was and is at the inner dimensional moment in the story.
The Rebellion
1.W . . . . P-Q4
1.B . . . . P-QB3
2.W . . . . P-QB4
2.B . . . . P-QN4
3.W . . . . PxP
3.B . . . . PxP
The winner of the first rebellion is declared on the seventy-third move at the conclusion of book five. This book (four) ends with the interpretation of the forty-first and forty-second moves. The conclusion of the first rebellion does not begin to affect the Living until the later Classical Age of Greece with persons such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and many others made famous.
This story is an interpretation of the three moves made in each chapter. Some characteristics of quantum mechanics lead the story.
Here are six quantum characteristics shown within the setting and plot of the story:
1. random chance exists and it slips in occasionally;
2. it is impossible for the characters to predict an outcome of the rebellion even though one exists;
3. no link exists between cause and effect except the human mind;
4. no phenomenon exists until it is observed;
5. particles/waves exist in the thought/concept of which Elysium is composed;
6. the reader changes what is observed by reading the book; and number seven relates to Chaos Theory rather than quantum mechanics;
7. the chess game is on a higher level of human thought and behavior and it is attributed to knowledge and expectations, thus probability or outcome of the rebellion shows that what appears to be random chance in Quantum Theory is not necessarily random in Chaos Theory.
***
Elysium works on what is presently known in science. The connection between the Dead and the Living goes both ways in mind perception. The Living help the Dead by learning and increasing the bounds of human experience.
Everyone contributes through self-education, what one learns in and from life is taken with the Dead. The human mind serves as a taxi service, if you will. The Dead, of course, are out of time, therefore have plenty for development of theory, which they inversely pass on to the Living. The River Styx is the conduit, for whatever the river is in actuality, it is a Form that carries a current of concepts.
The reader is as an angelic observer of a portion of the Book of Life and Death. Imagine that if you will, your mind as angelic-like, but in form only. Let’s see how that goes in this chapter.
***
Salamon sat in his head thinking. Zeus and Hades are conspiring. Why is it Hades is not on the throne in Olympus? He is he older brother. He rehashed the theology. Zeus saved his brothers and sisters, the brothers Poseidon, Hades and Zeus share the power. Hades has the invisible helmet and he could visit Olympus if he wished but he enjoys his own Underworld so he doesn’t go out much. He is not as ambitious as either Zeus or Poseidon. These gods need humans as much as humans need them. I can’t imagine that any of them would take kindly to our rebellion. Zeus rebelled against his parents to save his siblings, and Apollo and Artemis could rebel against Zeus and help us. That’s our backup defense. If we can know the children side with us rather than with the Parents, Aunts and Uncles who control Olympus. It is the young who unite in rebellion among the Living. Perhaps we can persuade them to join our cause. Apollo has already protected one of our own in this. I need to talk this over with Marios. He is the closest to Sophia in council.
***
Marios and Salamon sat at a small table in a stone walled dining establishment called ‘The Mikroikia’ about fifteen by twenty feet in a late afternoon sparsely clouded sky. A decorative fireplace sat to the west with a three step mantelpiece of plastered flat stones about three feet wide and two feet high. The L-shaped working counter is decorated with various pieces of colorful marble – mostly a mix of blues, grays browns, with a few onyx and deep red. The bottom base of the bar is a wall of stone each about the size of one or two human fists. Four clay bowls are inserted into the well spaced holes in the top of the stone counter with the lips of the bowls holding them in place.
The nearby Dead assume the food is what they ate and drank along the southern Greek coastal towns. This, along with the aromas is what comes to mind when they sit and talk as these two are in this establishment of convenience. Salamon has just explained his point of view about Zeus and Hades and the need to discover a way to add Apollo and Artemis to their own forces.
Here is Marios’ reply. “I think you are correct about Zeus being involved already, Salamon; but I think Zeus is cleverly implementing himself within Thanatos [Death] and his twin, Hypnos [Sleep]. We are as still as dead bodies when we aren’t dreaming, but when we are dreaming we are semi-conscious of the fact. The dream that Aeneas had at rock hill and Thales had later this morning may be distractions to keep us from our task which is mainly a presentation, a protest of our right, our natural right to want to visit our descendants and tell them how things in this world really are.”
Salamon showed cleverness in his brightened eyes as he replied, “How are things here? We don’t know what are world really is other than we continue to exist here. This diner is a representation of what we knew in life. We feel comfortable coming here for discussion. We remember the foods and drinks we enjoyed and feel as though we are or have been partaking in them recently, perhaps moments ago, which is enough for our satisfaction, for our pleasure, for our sense of fullness, but look around Marios, there is no food. It is wish fulfillment or a community madness.” He stopped but then involuntarily added, “We did not understand reality when we were alive, and as far as I am concerned, we understand it even less being dead.”
“This is why our protest is important,” added Marios. “We need to know more about our situation here. What it means? Why we still exist, particularly in this given state. We have justified reason to demand an audience with Zeus himself if need be. He knows this already, yet he and his brother are toying us.”
“Where is Sophia?”
“She is with Kassandra or at least she was earlier. I suppose their discussion is similar to our own. I will have a talk with her.”
“Perhaps we should have a full meeting and develop a plan to rouse Zeus out instead of the Supervisor,” suggested Salamon.
“It is possible, you know, that Zeus is his brothers. Who would know? He is perfect at disguises.” Marios stopped a moment as a stone in deeper thought, “Perhaps he is the whole pantheon of gods and goddesses.”
“Doubtful. Zeus needs all the help he can get,” said Salamon.
“Perhaps there are gods we do not know involved.”
“It is truly possible that the Supervisor is one of those, one who is higher even than Zeus,” noted Salamon. “Anything is possible here.”
“We live by imagination and rumors,” recited Marios and he mumbled, “This is a curst Place.”
***
Sophia is ruminating over her situation, let’s listen in to her soliloquy.
‘I am in this position because of my looks. This is just like life. I have administrative and people skills but I am respected more in this Place because I appear to be a twin of our Mother. What she must think? She arrived here alone and many of her grandchildren’s grandchildren followed her to this place. If a goddess were human, she comes the closest.
We are a good species. The people Here are still courageous in mind and yet moderate in their thoughts and actions. No one wants to be thrown into Tartarus, the abyss with the fallen Titans, but I doubt Zeus would throw us humans into an eternal fire and brimstone reserved for the gods.
We are built to rise up. We are built to become more than we appear to be, even in death this is so as we are still Here. We are built with prudence, with reasonable self-discipline. Our minds have use of shrewd skills and good judgment, and that may be our best common resource in this coming protest with the Supervisor.
Our heartsansoulsanminds have to be as a singular dimension to be at our sharpest if we are to meet this goddess in charge of our demeanor with her. The Supervisor shows herself to have a woman’s shrewd cleverness. Look at Zeus. Men don’t have the patience, mostly thunder, with lightning bolts only when needed. Kassandra agrees with me on this, but our differences rest in our fourth great virtue as a species, justice.
It appears to me that we have been merited a punishment by not allowing us to communicate directly with our descendants. Some have tried but the message always seems to be in garbled dreams if it gets through at all. Our purpose is lost in translation.
Purpose, now there is a word. Meaningful intent. We want the Living to learn to live so their children may have a better life. Sometimes I think that it is only through our children that we have reason to exist, yet I know deep down there are other, more mysterious reasons, and being in this Place appears to be one of them.
Kassandra thinks it is the principle of the thing that is the injustice. We are built have and care for our children. This should be extended beyond our Living. Our primary purpose appears lost in this Place. A part of our basic humanity has been withheld from us.’
***
Parental thoughts and motherly concern for her children, not that much different from the mindset of the genetic Eve who was the first among the Dead of the human species to arrive in this Place.
Eve originally had a choice. Other species with heartsansoulsanminds existed in the same galaxy. She immediately recognized the similarities of one of the other species and said “Hello” and was greeted warmly, but within a pre-conditioned Earth week Eve declared, “I’ll make my own Place and wait for my children, friends, and friends of friends.” Then she said, “Good-bye, to the Dead of a three planet system from the other side of the galaxy, and added, “We shall meet again.”
This short aside about Eve would mean nothing to Sophia who helped began the Rebellion of the First Ten Thousand, but it does have meaning for a later time in book six of Merlyn’s series.
***
A question has been raised as to why no sun exists in the Place of the Dead when a blue sky is sometimes intermixed with fluffy white clouds in the day which has the appearance of a dawn and a dusk as well as a night with a moon and stars for visual comfort.
From Earth there is but one sun. One sun is enough from my point of view. Besides with direct sunlight there would be strongly dark shadows. The only shadows in Elysium are caused by the individual heartsansoulsanminds that dwell in that Place. If the reader wants further reasons for no sun look into the imagination and discover what is wished for personal satisfaction. This follows the general line of thought the Dead pursue in their own post-existence.
***
# Morning, the third day.
Kassandra slowly awoke to find Thales appearing as a solid piece of gray marble next to her. She turned away from him slowly. Why do we each make ourselves into a stone effigy when sleeping dreamless? Thales is our dreamer without a dream? No sense in asking when he wakes up.
As dawn rose she thought, ‘We need to be forthright in this plan and find a way to confront Zeus and let him draw out the Supervisor.’ And, mumbled, “If nothing else we will see who holds the power here.”
“Who holds what power?” asked Thales suddenly.
“That was a quick wake up from a sound sleep.”
“How so?” grumbled Thales.
“You were a stone man not half a minute ago.”
“I had another dream.”
“Just now? How could that be? What was it about?”
“How we beat death.” He paused, “I dreamed the gods do not know how we beat death.”
Both of Kassandra’s eyebrows rose. “Where I you getting this when stiff as stone you clearly were not dreaming.”
“I don’t know. I was dreaming and then I awoke. I was awake.” His blue eyes pleaded for an answer. “Dead to the world, then awake.”
Kassandra declared, “We need to find if this is true?”
“Apollo will tell us the truth,” he quickly replied.
“Or a half truth.”
Thales shrugged his shoulders, “Who do we ask then?”
“Athena.”
“Why is it always a goddess rather than a god with you?”
“I don’t trust Zeus so why should I trust any lesser gods?”
Thales felt his emotional argument collapse as he did not trust Zeus either. He angrily shouted, “We are imprisoned here.” He waved his arms in high frustration, and abruptly piped, “We are same ones who argued we were imprisoned when we were alive.”
“Your dream makes a point with me. If the gods themselves don’t know why we are here, then what choice to they have but to keep us in this compound, in the Place that is away from Earth and from Olympus.”
“I don’t understand what you mean?”
“Whether the dream is true or not is not important,” said Kassandra calmly. It gives us a strategy to develop. We want to know more about the gods, but they also need to know more about our species. We come up with stories about them and they also must have come up with stories about us. We need to know what their initial reaction was to our Mother coming here and making this Place a home for her and her children.”
What, he thought quietly, if the dream is a trick and the Supervisor is cleverly seeing how we are going to react to it – particularly if he doesn’t know as much as we think a god should know. The gods know our theology. Perhaps they show us what we already expect of them? This dream of going Home to Earth may not have been foreseen by Apollo or any of the others. We stand on very uneven ground here. My dreams may be unwittingly used to bring about our ultimate downfall, perhaps to a place far worse than the pit of Tartarus.
***
The Supervisor, disappearing a few inches deeper under the dust of the floor of the stone privacy, suddenly transformed into a cool breeze that seemed to Thales to come from the northeast corner of the room at the same time he felt a distinct short shiver in his tailbone become a bolt of lightning into his brain. Thales’ eyes jumped at the earth-like floor and for less than a blink the floor became a distinct brown, the color of the irises of the goddess he had seen on the pathway two days earlier. Facial perfection, he thought with secret dread. No matter what I say or do I will be the ruination of this peaceful protest. I can mention this to no one. My deepest self is already surrounded from this toe touched terror.
***
“What do you think we should do?” asked Kassandra of Salamon at lunch, a politely convenient term when both are sitting at a table. They are sitting at the same well established and colorful local eatery where Marios and Salamon sat called ‘The Mikroikia’, at the northwest corner of Lyceum and Eleusis Streets.
Salamon glanced the room and suggested they talk somewhere else and the usual family server, Aranos suggested a little used back room with a table and two chairs. Once resettled, the conversation continued in the quieter, much more subdued area.
“I think Thales may be onto something here. We may be looking at this all wrong and if the Supervisor has lack of knowledge as to why we are here in the first place we may be able to use this as leverage.”
“Perhaps, suggested Salamon solemnly. “I cannot see what difference that makes though. We cannot surround Hades with petitions all shouting and waving our hands. We could march North on Eleusis towards our Mother but she okayed this venture so what good would that do?”
“What about south to the River Styx?”
“We cannot cross.”
Kassandra immediately felt enlightened and eagerly replied, “We could build a bridge.”
Salamon broke into laughter.
Almost giddily and wide-eyed she continued, “A protest bridge. A symbol. A stone bridge that stops just off shore. The gods may wonder what we are up to but they cannot know in advance if it is a symbol or an actually attempt.”
The laughter stopped, “A two lane bridge,” added Salamon with more excitement than he intended. “A lane for revisiting Earth and a lane for us Dead to return Here.”
***
Later that afternoon the five had gathered within Sophia’s privacy walls and the enthusiasm was mounting.
Sophia spoke last. “I think we have a good plan. We need to get word out tonight so that when morning comes we can implement it without a whine or a shout. If the Supervisor will not see us directly then we will go about the business of building a bridge from the shoreline of South Eleusis Street across the Styx and from there make our way back to the Living. We had to get from there to here so we will build our way back. We have to believe we can do this with all our heartsansoulsanminds. If nothing else the gods will be confounded by our arrogance and stubbornness as a species. We are the caretakers of the Living, it is our natural right to return from whence we came. We are demonstrating for the right reasons, so our grandchildren may see the truth and learn from it.”
Righteousness echoed her short directive and soon the echo would reverberate throughout the night through dreams and word of mouth. Elysium’s flowers had the strong scent of Free Will and direction and in their hearts they were singing private hymns not to these gods but to themselves as the heroes they continued to be. They, the ten thousand, would make their own road Home.
***
# Morning, the fourth day.
As the sky turned a light blue in the low eastern sky, a first pre-chosen assembly of the Dead began to rise and in a systematic planned manner arrived at Stone Hill and picked up a few stones and wheeled or carried them back to Eleusis Street and set them down along the side walkways. Another preferred group began carrying them down Eleusis to near the shore of the River. This operation was continually carried on during the day. The conversations among the Dead were general or personal but no one even in a whisper gave a reason for this silent maneuvering. Others carried on their daily habits for reasonable comfort. Each appeared to know what they were to do and from above the entire process looked like a nest of ants on a mission of food gathering, but in this case they are the nearby Dead gathering food for thought.
***
The Dead understand the air of Elysium is as their genetic Eve Mother’s eyes. She is the at the heart of the heartsansoulsanminds of the elected ten thousand. Orders are few and far between but when deeply heartfelt by Mother commands are intuitively understood. Most children of all ages understand this process though it is more easily communicated among the Dead.
With the elected ten thousand this is more easily grasped but intuition runs deep, and all Eve’s children recognize a truth when they feel it from the inside out. Feeling is not declaring however, and in here, true translation from one sense to another is not so easily accomplished no matter heartfelt it may be. Elected as used in these books means favored, all who enter Elysium are favorite sons and daughters, it does not mean that the other children are not cared for or loved, but some are or become favorites. Parents who claim they love all their children equally deny a truth of nature within.
To absolve a few questions between the social terms of elite and the proletariat for instance, I’ll say each individual is judged equally, but how the person lived was in part up to how the person chose to live herorhis common life under the circumstances sheorhe lived. Souls are all-common in these books. Hearts are distinct as are minds. People who have a problem with this and come Here will find there is an awakening of higher consciousness after death. Otherwise, why would the person be Here in the first place. The only roost one rules is herorhimself. This sharpens the sense of Free Will. People have no fear of other people Here. Control is genetic in that the two common elements of living are a birth and a death date. Beyond that is growth of heart and mind. Necessity provides the few rules, nature abides.
***
This is the Supervisor. While I watch individual heartsansoulsanminds their souls experience the fact they are being observed. This causes a possible imbalance, a teeter-totter of heart and mind in the deepest of unconscious levels. This is how it is. A rule. Mix this with Free Will and the heart and mind resort to a very intimate pairing. Subtle changes in behavior may eventually result.
I know this Place like it is the back of my hand, which it isn’t. The Dead will continue to grow. Are they going to build a bridge across the River Styx? I do not know. The Dead don’t know themselves, and the Living know even less.
Traditionally, in the later Medieval Age the Virtues and Vices were simplified and separated into fourteen qualities. This story and the next two include them as it is necessary for the reader to discern the subtle differences. This is not an easy task but it raises the bar for those who are curious about the eventual outcome. These are those traditional fourteen in alphabetical order: the Virtues: Abstinence, Chastity, Diligence, Humility, Kindness, Liberality and Patience. The Vices are as follows: Avarice, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, Sloth and Wrath.
Now, let’s return to the humans and watch these qualities sparkle from time to time as they run from heart to mind and back again. This species is not to be toyed with, or any other that is similar in heartansoulanmind. It is interesting to observe growth under such circumstances when you are a timeless being such as myself. I wish all such species well.
***
Kassandra is sitting in the privacy walls of her childhood friend, Agathia. Here is the heart of their discussion.
“I am on the taskforce to inspect the bridge once we settle on a design,” said Agathia. “We have no choice but wood and stone.”
“I am just glad we are doing something. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought it before.”
“Some of us have,” replied Agathia, “Bridge building does not appear practical. For one reason we don’t know how deep the River is. Nor how wide. This is a symbolic venture, that is what Mother likes, and we are a part of it. The gods may think us crazy, but there is a chance, like Mother says, that they do not know who we are any more than we do.” She smiled her petite and warm smile. “This is what makes it such gorgeous fun.”
She is ridiculous, thought Kassandra. Even the stone and wood Here is not Earth real, no more real than we are. We are probably crazy as loons. I’m no god but I don’t think about animals being crazy. They are just dumb eccentric animals. Eccentric, unless the animal is a god in disguise, and gods we are not.
“What are you thinking about, Kassandra?”
“What the River is made of. We talk about how deep and how wide, but what of its composition.”
“It’s drinkable and has no salty taste but wood does not float.”
“I know, but how do we swim through it coming here?”
“I don’t know. People say we arrive as skull and backbone to the tailbone. No one knows for sure. We just arrive.”
“Doesn’t this bother you, Aggie?”
“You are the only one who calls me that. Even mother doesn’t call me that any more.”
“I was your first friend.”
“And I likewise.” Why aren’t we content, thought Agathia. People dreamed of an afterlife with their friends. What more would anyone want? Turns out, we want to go home to at least listen to our grandchildren making it through the world.
***
Marios, Thales and Salamon stood above the shoreline staring down at the vast sea of a river, watching piles of stone and wood being placed along the edge and back toward the city. Eleusis Street ended. nearly splitting the beautifully crescent-shaped beach in half. Seven hundred yards of beach east and five hundred yards of beach west each ended with rocky tower-like precipices.
The east rocky crag sat about a thousand feet high two thousand feet out and the west river cliff measured fifteen hundred feet high and only extended out a thousand feet. Natural gate towers that would welcome hordes of ships, their sailors and cargo on Earth sat desolate, waiting for the eventual incoming who arrived from the inlet community pools just north of the river’s muddy sands rather than from the center of the Styx to the south.
“It is up to us to make this deception work,” asserted, Marios whose ruggedly manly Greek face showed signs of both resoluteness and glumness at once.
“Who’s deception, that’s the point?” declared Salamon in a shovel face of inner irony. I would say we are building our own grave, he considered, but then where would we be?
Thales alone said nothing and shook his somber head sideways then towards the eerie leeward side of the hill above the town. Such is the breeze that blows to our west off passed Stone Hill and the pit of Tartarus beyond, the place where the rebel gods were thrown by mighty Zeus for nine years, or so it is rumored. Never have we heard a word from them. Who knows what nine years is to a god? One may last more earth years than the stars in the heavens can count. O to have bones again, and muscle for their working. I could, on a good day kill a hundred men in battle and that would be the end to it. But Here we move against the gods and doom the very race of our Mother who is in ultimate charge.
We are as Demeter taking Persephone to Hades. So sad will we be when this rebellion is completed. This Place of the Dead will become the winter of minds and hearts. Our very souls will shiver endlessly. And, I am mad to have such a desire to built a real bridge not this sham. We should walk down into the greatest of rivers, Styx and build from the base up a mighty stone and wood path all the way Home. Stone and wood and green grass for our very feet to walk on along the way to the delight of real air, earth fresh, that even with hope we can never breath again. How to live with dignity while Dead, that is the question, but I cannot bring myself to ask it even among my friends.
***
In another Place (neither on Olympus, Elysium or Earth) stood the three bearded ones, witch-hags all and three-in-one also. A ragged bikini or loincloth for this youthful adult, the fair-measured naked Necessity in this story. Following the line of ancient Greek theology, the three are named Clotho, the spinner; Lacheis, the measurer; and Atropos, the cutter of the thread.
Some say this trinity are the daughters of Zeus and Themis, but not I, the Supervisor. They are dressings as powerless as even I in this event as it is driven by the growing or, if you will, maturing of civilization within the thread of humanity in the heartsansoulsanminds of Mother and the first Ten Thousand. Being alive or dead makes little difference, the growth inwardly and outwardly continues, charging through the whole of the species.
Necessity is the Container of All Things and Beyond. Sheorhe is an adult personification of a rugged Beauty and/or Handsomeness of either sexual preference. Imagine Necessity, if you will, stalwart and Olympic-like, animatedly stretching herorhis naked arms out and back as if to perform a grand high dive through the very mystery of the Styx itself.
Clotho, Lacheis and Atropos sit on solid stumps of Oak around a genuine though small rock ring in whose exceptional center floats the pristine pinnacle of Olympus. The top, last gold crowning inch of the Greek gods spiritual mountain, which, alas, has been encircled by the seeming ordinarily exploited stones picked up by the bearded weird sisters and casually tossed into a manifestly vibrant ring that surrounds the golden pyramidal inch.
“I have no flax to spin,” stated Clotho as she glared at that Olympic inch floating and appearing encased by a common ring of casual stones a fist or two in size.
Atropos pointing with long and bony finger and appealed, “Take the gold fiber from that thimble.”
“Make it invisibly thin and as long as Destiny,” suggested Lacheis with a wink and cackle while watching Atropos’ delight turn glower.
With sudden curiosity Clotho asked, “Who’s life is this for?”
“That bumbling nature made species that lives in two conditions at once.”
“You cut their threads, Atropos and yet stationed they are in Elysium between Olympus and Earth.”
“How is that?”
“And now they rebel against the gods and themselves.”
“Why is that?”
“No one knows,” lamented the three as one. "Mystery has no bounds when it comes to these peculiar souls."
“Can they actually build a bridge?”
“Why? Why return to their graves when those dreadful crypts have been conquered?”
“To watch over their children,” declared Clotho. “That is the secret. They rebel the gods to serve the Living from beyond the grave.”
“Such a noble hubris,” suggested Lacheis in faeried bewilderment. “It is no wonder that I commanded to make this thread so long and thin.”
“I say this was not a command at all,” added Atropos the cutter. “Be it done, Clotho, thin and long.”
“The threading of souls, by silent unknowable will.”
“Not even will in a capital puffed.”
“Quietness Unbound.”
“And all around,” whispered the uncannied sisters in unison.
***
Sophia, with white toga wrapped loose around lay down alone for sleep and assumed she would shortly be stone-like but that was not to be for a dreamer’s dream she would soon in a golden vision see.
Sophia’s Dream on the Fourth Night
Genetic Mother Eve whispered to Sophia, “It is our turn to consider the next move. Your father is Fate for you but not me.”
Sophia responded, “Thought and memory are all we have here. Experience that was and now is.”
Mother: “We should move to better control the center of the field?
Sophia: “Won’t that be expected?”
Mother: “The Supervisor already began the Exercise with the first move. She already is aware of all our moves.”
Sophia: “Then why do she wish to have the Exercise?”
Mother: “We cannot anticipate the Supervisor’s cunning.”
Sophia: “She can anticipate, but we have free will and we are built to use it.”
Mother: “The Supervisor is not a family of gods or even one god. She is here to keep us in our place for our own good, as a parent would.”
Sophia: “Why do we make mischief then?”
Mother: “It is our inclination to question what is.”
Sophia: “I say we move to a flank immediately. She will not expect it.”
Mother: “Right or left?”
Sophia: “Better to stay in the field, move our forces right.”
Mother: “The species is created to bare living children.”
Sophia: “To live beyond freedom and dignity? Mother, we are more than child-bearing machinery.”
Mother raised an eyebrow: “Tit for tat.”
Sophia: “We can be as quick witted as the Supervisor.”
Mother: “Our forces are down one and a Crown will be taken.”
Sophia: “No matter. Supervisor cannot expect our next move.”
Mother: “Even though She started it.”
Sophia: “We thought the Rebellion first.”
Mother: “I feel that She moved first.”
Sophia: “We have to trust ourselves.”
Mother: “To do what, lose?”
Sophia: “Losing is not our purpose here.”
Mother: “I did not know my purpose.”
Sophia: “We find ourselves Beyond; and in a body of ten thousand souls.”
Mother flared: “A hundred thousand passions.”
Sophia: “We have multiple souls.”
Mother: “Our minds are our purpose in this business.”
Sophia: “And our memories and hearts.”
Mother: “For what is my purpose if not to speak with my children?”
Sophia: “We have no other species to speak to.”
Mother: “Thought needs grammar.”
Sophia: “Our thought slows the Supervisor.”
Mother: “The Supervisor is beyond grammar's construction.”
Sophia: “How can She play our rebellion?”
Mother: “Like theatre.”
Sophia: “Alas, we do not exist in the real world of the Living.”
Mother: “We did. The Supervisor has not.”
Sophia: “The Supervisor’s not living in Life? This is a weakness we can exploit.”
Mother: “The Supervisor has the next move. We have made our play.”
***
Sophia awoke abruptly. “What was the dream?” she muttered. “Something about thought and grammar and about the Supervisor’s weakness and about our next move.”
She sat up on the edge of the bed and stared off into the southwest corner of her private walls. Her eyes moved slowly from the top corner to the bottom and back again several times, like a threading machine.
Sophia said aloud to the corner, “We need to thread ourselves with the Living. We must return to Earth and rise up from our graves whole-bodied. Then the Living would know the truth. We must find a way to raise ourselves up from our very graves.”
She waited for a reply but neither the top, the middle, or the bottom corner had anything to say. None of the four corners replied, nor did the walls, floor or open ceiling to the moon and stars. The rest of her night sat in uncanny silence. Sophia soon rested into a stone effigy resting on top of her bed of privacy. A tomb she became, surrounded by the significance of the common silence of the Dead.
***
# Morning, the fifth day.
Today appears as any other among the Dead. To build a bridge is the unifying theme of the day. Marios is in charge of construction. Let’s listen in.
He glanced at Thales in sight of a blink and said, “Which of you want to assist me with this bridge building?”
Thales responded, “I think Salamon is better suited.”
“I don’t get along with Sophia as well,” acquiesced Salamon.
Marios quipped, “None of us get along with her as well as her ladies.” They laughed bravely as well as heartily.
Then Thales with bright blue eyes and a manly grin intimated, “I think we each know her privacy chamber very well.” This was followed with more comradery and laughter.
“Women,” declared Salamon with renewed aplomb.
“Never point a finger at the opposite sex!” hammered Marios. All three suddenly adolescent-like minds flashed on the statement and laughed again.
“Not a finger,” saluted Thales.
“Back to the bridge,” sobered the still tearing Marios.
“I’ll take it,” uttered Salamon ending with the echo of a tightly concealed smile. “How are we linking stones for the lead off tower?”
“Lengthwise one way and end stone the next, stretcher and header.”
“We can spend time on the tower entrance and go out two or three arches.”
“You’ll have a fine pier but no fish below,” commented a much more relaxed Thales.
“I don’t think anyone has swum out more than a few hundred yards and back,” said Marios.
“Why not just swim it?” replied Thales.
Salamon answered, “The water becomes effervescent and everything sinks.”
“So we pile the stone a foot or so above the River creating a wood plank as far out as we can to make the next deep pillar down,” stated Marios.
“We don’t know how deep,” lamented Thales, “or how wide.”
“If worse comes to worst we could construct wooden pilings topped with a stepping stone and one could leap from one to another,” proposed Salamon jokingly.
“It has been proposed by the engineers that we make the bridge sixty feet wide at the tower entrance.”
“Ludicrous,” interrupted Salamon.
“I agree. Twenty feet at most,” aired Marios.
“You only need a yard,” reasoned Thales. “You are not marching an army. You only need send one across.”
“Sophia wants more. She wants us to go in mass and rise from our graves.”
“When did she tell you this, Mario?” groaned Thales.
“She knocked me up early,” he beamed.
Mario’s two friends razzed and parodied the discrete early morning circumstance almost uncontrollably.
Clearly this is not a good morning for focusing on the project, thought Thales. I am bringing no good to this. Hades is no doubt listening in and mocking me somewhere in his private chambers.
***
The same time the men joked in their modest fraternal forum, Kassandra sat with Sophia in the backroom at The Mikroikia discussing the bridge design.
“Which design gives a deeper impression,” asked Kassandra, “ Wooden arches on stone pillars or the effect of the stone arch and pillar moving solid under the water?”
“Wooden arches would give a military effect and send a message as such.”
“Do you really think we ten thousand will be able to cross this bridge and return to our graves to rise up?”
“I like the theatre of it.”
“The bridge is only a symbol, Sophia.”
“I know, but the gods don’t know that.”
Maybe they do, thought Kassandra. She said, “We had talked about gaining Hera’s trust. It would help if we had some goddesses and Apollo on our side.”
“We can move stone hill if need be. We can do what we need to do to allow us to go Home.”
“It would help if we understood the composition of the water of the Styx. Some say it fizzes and foams further out.”
“Rumors. No one knows,” noted Sophia. “It acts like a river but who knows what it is other than a barrier to keep us Here. It is a moat to keep us in and others out. We can’t go further than we are. Where would we go? We have to return to the Living.”
“I agree with you completely on this,” replied Kassandra dutifully. “We have to outwit the gods.”
“Zeus and Hera have never lived. They do not know us, whereas we are now immortal and have mortal memories. We need to use this as an advantage.”
“It sounds like you want to use the wooden arches as it will make the construction much faster.”
“We can go out a few hundred yards,” said Sophia. “In the meantime we need to have people interrogate the recent Dead to see if we can find abnormalities in the arrival here. We need to find advantages.”
“I agree,” stated Kassandra with enthusiasm. “If we could just fly like eagles.”
“Or swim upstream like salmon,” retorted Sophia while she quietly reckoning, ‘we are higher animals with so accorded minds.’
***
A forty foot square lined within the specifications and by midday the base of the tower stood marked with stones on the bank of the River Styx. Meanwhile, other crews are hauling down timber the sizes of ten to fifteen foot wooden beams and the larger are more like telephone poles in length and circumference.
Like Stone Hill to the west there was a place to the south that had a forest for lumber that if needed could be cut to form. Again, like Stone Hill the forest trees cut one day appeared the next as if they had not been cut. The widespread theory was that Persephone had blessed these two places with her resting presence at one time while trying to escape the indeterminable affliction of her husband Hades. The story told is that her mother Demeter, the goddess of fertility, while following her daughter, had double blessed Stone Hill and Forest Plentiful for allowing her daughter sufficient rest and repose nearby.
The Dead therefore were fortunate enough to be close by to take advantage of a situation that had happened long before the Dead had arrived. In fact, some believed that it was Demeter who had initially directed their genetic Mother Eve to this Sacred Place. Others had another, sadder such story and as such called this Place of the Dead the Sacred Prison instead.
Looking back at this from modern times both stories of Stone Hill and Forest Plentiful are considered jokes. In fact, their theology, the study of God and God’s relationship with the Greeks of those days is scorned in the twenty-first century as chapters of allegorical and childish stories about Greek gods and goddesses and their relationships with human beings.
Time, culture, education and belief systems make a world of difference in engaging mirror-like story-telling motifs. What would happen if you survived death and the afterlife was just as you imagined it would be? Then what? That doesn’t sound very productive to me. All that evolution up to where the beings have a conscious/unconscious mind that can ‘cross over’ and that’s it?
***
This is the Supervisor and I have a short relevant story here. Once there was but ONE but now there are MANY-in-ONE and MANY MORE and still there is ONE. To make the story relevant the reader supplies the applicable antecedent.
***
All stories have a humor about them, some however becomes settled in like dirt in a grave. The mind is built to come up with something, thus it does. The story is buried and later resurrected as something new, which it isn’t. The story isn’t new because the human mind that has the fiction built in isn’t new. Minds are stuff dreams are made of.
***
Hera stood mature and resolute by the small fountain spring in front of her home on Olympus. She stared out beyond three universes that lay like water ponds in her sight.
She stood in mind as in a library as do all the gods on Olympus, which is among other things not spoken, a library of souls, a spiritual DNA script of Passion before Life, the Essence of UnconsciousanConsciousness, the seed, the ring, the system. A catalogue, if you Will, of Creation in its bud.
Hera whispered, “Athena.”
As in the time before a blink of the eye is first considered, Athena appears the most determined and mindset protector. A warrior guardian who would stand twice the stature of Hera if she dared. Hera’s three water pond universes stretched out across the green mother field were as three small puddles to Athena. It is she that carries the Trumpet of Conclusions to eventually be blown and heard silently reverberating across and through All-that-Is in Reality and Imagination alike.
From a long jump down to the human perspective the universe seen and unseen is but the center of the dark pupil in the eye of this, the most intelligent and wisest of the Olympians who first sprang a fully mature warrior guardian from the splitting headache of the great and mighty Zeus and sadly leaving him a little less gifted than he was before. Rumor has it that she once had Wings as no Messenger who ever flew from any PLACE but she drew them and plucked them out whole as two great swordsanshields and shoved them into the deepest and mightiest of her Guardian Heart for added strength were she to ever need it.
What sense would this description make to an ancient Greek? Or any wide-eyed human of those days, be they dead or alive? What sense does it mean to the modern reader? Very little, I imagine. Why? Because this is a story beyond orthodox belief even though reason is the center of it and reason will carry it through.
***
Supper at the Mikroikia. The five sat at the rectangular table away from the bar area and in the darkest corner. A variety of fish, a Mediterranean salad and local red wine were in their collective thoughts about so that is what they had, another of the most satisfying meals they had ever tasted.
Salamon, Marios and Thales sat on a long bench looking out at the others and the window and entrance beyond while Kassandra and Sophia sat on the beach on the opposite side of the table facing the men and the back wall.
From an outsider’s perspective it would appear that this small lively family restaurant was serving food on invisible dishes and in invisible glasses, giving the appearance of a pleasing pantomime of gustatory delight being enjoyed by all. Conversation, focusing on the eyes and facial expressions of the person talking; listening skills honing in on the marvelous sounds of the human voice, that is what sitting around the table is all about when Dead. The voice and face are what keep the people conscious of others as well as themselves. Living solely in one’s own thoughts produces a silent agony that drives them to this comradery. Instead of sharing food, they share themselves.
Unknown to those in the establishment another guest sat on the bench directly across from Marios, a wingless being the size and appearance of a small woman child if she were noticed. Cherub-like, she listened closely to the conversation of the hour. She is Metis, the Titaness, the first wife of Zeus, the morally wise counselor, the mother of Athena and maker of her daughter’s armor, forever bound to the belly of Zeus, swallowed, but never eaten and digested.
Now, she thought, here I am at supper to digest this dinner-held dead human strategy while my unsuspecting Athena prepares with the marriage-feasting Hera. As Metis listened she found herself struck with the injustice that had befallen these of human innocence. They had arrived Here through their trials and inspired good works in life. Their goal was to visit their great grandchildren and to tell them how it was in this Place, to give them added hope that the children could eventually build a better world for all the children of the world.
A sudden streak of empathy with the humans bolted Zeus directly. And, beyond this he realized this innocent human hope of good will to children all was beyond his station as King thinking: these are mere translucent creatures, the flawed remains of good will that have passed beyond the physical realms.
At his Olympian throne Zeus looked up to the piece of gold locked in the sky and saw it slightly tarnished. His sudden belly ached as did his forehead. To remain all-wise in this contest, he resolved, I’ll need to be in the most humble of disguise should this tentatively modest human uprising turn the mighty Zeus against his only older brother.
The End of Chapter Two
of the fourth book in the Merlyn’s Mind series
©2009 Richard H. Orndorff
***
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