Amaranthine Historica

By O. LEMNISCATE

In a future 'Year 0', two beings—Pharaona and Astellaria—become catalysts for revolution in a city-state brutalised by an oligarchy of scientists. When Astellaria shoots down from the sky and accidentally steers them both into Amarantis, a twisted chain of events leads to them being convicted of espionage. The punishment is capital. The only way for them to survive is to force Amarants to break free from the 'wheel torture' spinning their minds.

Can machines help humans to survive and fight for freedom? Can the human spirit regenerate or will history repeat itself?

 

In this cyberpunk time-space maze, reality topples off its axis as we confront ordinary tyrants, surprising heroes, and terrifying questions about Humanity and its future.

 

Discover truths that never lay still and the perils of science with no wisdom!

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: O. Lemniscate
• Release date: Jan 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386547136

O. LEMNISCATE

Lawyer, human rights activist and author, I write fiction and creative non-fiction under various pen names. “Amaranthine Historica” is an intertextual sci-fi thriller involving ordinary tyrants and heroes, surprising clones and extraordinary robots. My sources are real life and fantasy. My works explore social, political and ecological danger zones and are often interactive or inter-textual, taking the reader on an exploratory journey into the nature of Nature, as well as the nature of 'self' and that of 'humanity'.

Book preview

Upon seeing an image of Earth from Voyager 1, Carl Sagan wrote, To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Mixing one’s wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably. Bertolt Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

PREFACE

Humanity has many skeletons in its closets. That’s what History is about—the inside of crowded closets.

AMARANTHINE HISTORICA brings odd schisms to orthodox dystopias, through a cyberpunk quilt of all things and non-things—all ages, epochs, and eras. No closet, nook or cranny of existence is left unsearched. Tragedy or farce, farce or tragedy, the chronological order doesn’t matter! What matters, in this farcical fantasy, is the bones of everything!

AMARANTHINE HISTORICA takes us on a long journey through a small Emerald Tablet. The road must be travelled ‘sweetly with great industry’ until truth and lies become unglued, leaving Truth standing where it must. Take heed to these words, and remember: Truth is never in the middle. Truth is where it is! In freedom!

N. Konstantinidis

MAIN CHARACTERS

Astellaria aka Aria - creature made from the remnants of a star.

Dorion Technon - scientist with a Bioneer Award from the Society for Ecological Restoration.

Eleni Makinti - scientist with a Nobel in quantum mechanics for her space-time warp analysis and an EPSO Plant Scientist Award regarding floral scents.

Georgia Genix - scientist with a Nobel for her work in protein engineering and an Isaac Newton Medal of the Institute of Physics for her ‘string theory’.

Jane Darkstorm – scientist with two Nobels for her work in regenerative medicine and in quantum teleportation enabling the quantum Internet.

Lucy Ferr – three Engelberger Awards from the Robotic Industries Association, professor of biomedical robotics and director of The BioRobotics Institute, founder of SkEyeClops, head and senior engineer of the Soldier Support System Centre of SkEyeClops.

Pharaona aka Ra – creature made of the same rock as the Sphinx.

Victor Ferrett - Olfus’ mind control advisor, with a Nobel in cognitive science and brain-to-brain technology.

Warwick Olfus aka Wolfie – Nobel laureate and President of the State of Amarantis.

GLOSSARY

AEONIOS - project in regenerative medicine.

ARC - Amaranthine RenaisScience Complex.

Bion - humanoid intuitive robot.

CRISPR - genome-editing method altering the germline of humans, animals, and food crops.

Emerald Tablet - the author is Hermes Trismegistus or Hermes the Thrice-Greatest. Below is my adaptation of Isaac Newton’s translation.

Tis true without error, certain and most true.

That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.

And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.

The sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse.

The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.

Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.

Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry.

It ascends from the earth to the heavens and again it descends to the earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior.

By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world

And thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.

Its force is above all force. For it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing.

So was the world created.

From this are and do come admirable adaptations whereof the means (or process) is here in this. Hence I am called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.

That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.

EmotMems - personally tailored memories based on the CRISPR biomolecular recording method.

Engelberger Award - the ‘Nobel Prize’ of robotics.

Euman - eugenic human.

Genome editing - genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted, deleted or replaced in the genome of an organism, using engineered nucleases or ‘molecular scissors’.

GROM - genetically re-organised mutant.

iPS - induced pluripotent stem cells; reprogrammed adult cells to embryonic-like state.

Kill-Switch - safety mechanism used to shut off a device in an emergency situation.

Life Ark Reserve Vault (LARV) - Amaranthine bank for stems cells.

Membrane Dome - radiation and electromagnetic interference shielding membrane dome.

Nobel - international prize awarded to the best achievers in Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Peace, Economic Sciences, Literature.

Ouroboros-Gates or O-Gates - circular gates depicting the snake eating its own tail.

O-Zone - Made up of eight concentric and intersecting canals, Amarantis is entwined with water. Its Canal Ring was once one of the world’s most unique urban landscapes. Each ring had a zone number, starting from central O-Zone 1 to outer O-Zone 8.

Post-Datory - post-D-Day.

Pre-Datory - pre-D-Day.

PURE - People’s United Revolutionary Eugenics.

SEAI - Social Emotional Artificial Intelligence.

SkEyeClops - SkEye Cyclops Surveillance Society (name derived from the Eye of the Cyclops).

SNS - Synthetic Nervous System.

Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALEN) - enzymes that can be engineered to cut specific sequences of DNA.

‘Ω’ - ō mega, mega meaning ‘great’. The Ancient Greek Ω is pronounced in the same way as the British English raw.

CHAPTER 1  The Interview

Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on D-Day. I was at ΩHM Military Base, holding the heart of humanity in my steely little hands.

I am a historian. The author of two Histories. Only one is true. Had Amarants been more astute they would have realised. They would have realised that the truth is hardly ever in the middle, and that middle-truth is hardly truthful. The real source of reality is here, in 'AMARANTHINE HISTORICA—A SECRET HISTORY'... the forbidden fruit of knowledge.

According to the 'OFFICIAL AMARANTHINE HISTORY', the Day of Destruction—‘D-Day’—flipped the Amaranthine Calendar to ‘Year 0’ with a disastrous survival tally. That’s about it, for ‘facts’. For years, I scribbled lies, spin, and all sorts of twaddle ordered by a chain of Amaranthine wheeler-dealers. After D-Day, the day came where an irresistible voice inside of me gave me different orders. It said: Speak the truth even if your voice trembles. My mind went click, click, click as all the chips fell into place. Tis true without error, certain and most true, that that day marked a definite breakthrough. And I wrote...profusely and in secret, for fear of being ‘recycled’.

'AMARANTHINE HISTORICA' is based on personal observation and interrogation of my star witnesses: two ‘dusty’ cousins known as Pharaona and Astellaria.

Pharaona is a cranky ‘She-Prometheus’ made from the dust of the Great Egyptian Sphinx. Astellaria is Pharaona’s starry-eyed cousin, a sassy twinkler made from the dust of a shattered star. Both encode information inside their crystal cells. Pharaona always says, If you want to know what’s really going on, look in more detail at rocks.

After D-Day, the day came when Pharaona popped out of the Dreamtime Aquarium for our exclusive interview—'Aquarium' because the lower world can only see the upper world in the way fish see things. When we met, she sanded her face and voice to protect her identity, then gave me the following account:

"Even before D-Day, the multi-ringed city trembled in troubled waters—somewhere between the ‘Gateway-to-Hell’ volcano and ΩHM Military Base. D-Day turned Amarantis into a floating graveyard, locked inside itself by its Membrane Dome and Ouroboros-Gates!

When the fevered clouds gathered, and well before the deluge of the first frothy hailstones, most Amarants left... Quickly. The Destruction happened within eight hours.

The calendar flipped forward to Year 0.

Those who were unable to seek refuge in time, were immortalised horrifically inside their ashen casts, like the frozen people of Pompeii. Eventually those cadaveric statues were scattered around the old city wall, resembling grotesque gargoyles jutting from medieval churches.

Only the eight twin pyramids and the Amaranthine RenaisScience Complex (the ARC) with its giant emerald staircase and croquembouche roof stood intact. Due to human and technical error, together with what my friend Hermes Trismegistus (or just H.T.) calls the ‘cosmic force of things’, the shielding Membrane Dome malfunctioned. By the time it kicked in, a good chunk of Amarantis had been annihilated. Eventually, it did snap shut! Once the Ouroboros-Gates at the border—"

I sought clarification: You mean the O-Gates? The circular gates depicting the snake eating its own tail?

She scolded me with one look and continued: "Once all O-Gates closed, this newly born necropolis was lost in a space-time warp... Please refrain from interrupting me! You’re ruining my lyricism!"

I sheepishly apologised and tightened my lips.

She took up where she left off: The once opulent city now resembled a mud cake rotting under its protective cupola. Ouroboros wrapped itself around it, sealing its fate. The snake is the crux of everything! Don’t forget Ouroboros!

Pharaona's mouth was running at top-speed. Her sands were all over the place. My camera couldn’t capture one solid image of her because she kept losing shape and form. Recording difficulties were the least of my problems... Her salty character was... the worst! Epic! I let her ramble on, thinking I would edit everything afterwards. Twenty minutes had passed when I interrupted her again with: Where exactly were you positioned when all this happened? Rumour has it that you were in Amarantis on a clandestine trip with a ‘person of interest’.

None of your business, you sticky beak! she snapped at me. "But if you must know, I was on the Red Sea Riviera, celebrating H.T.’s best-seller—‘The Emerald Tablet’! The explosion happened just as he was reciting the most interesting part: That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.

I interjected to clarify: "In plain terms, ‘As above, so below’.

That’s what I said! she responded tartly, and then put me in my place with, You’re lucky to have such a razor-sharp brain!

That was it! She smashed my ego with one fell swoop.

So, as I was saying, she hissed and crackled, Year 0 was calamitous for Amarantis; it was left with around 1400 living Humans—mostly under the age of 13—and 1000 incubating human embryos waiting to be born to parents who had fled or perished. Add on a first broth of 800 incubating Glowing TALENs to be born to PURE Inc....

"Glowing TALEN Eumans?

Reviews for Amaranthine Historica

[Artemis Smart · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an excellent book! Lots of fun and highly educational. In sync with the current crises we're experiencing on our planet. It's for YA and those young at heart. Great gift!