Chronicle 58 Anno Stellae 8732, Chronicle 59 Anno Stellae 10,272: RetroStar Chronicles, #3

By R.D. Ginther

Chronicle 58, was a chock-full of excitement and adventures, which brought a lot of closure to past adventurers and their exploits. We see the continual rising of the letter heroes chosen by FC and schooled by Daniyel; with the likes of Chiron, a blast from the past, the blue, poetic sensitive centaur. Then there was a brief confederacy between Chiron and a Paiute Indian young man named Mink. Wally also joined the forces of these unique letter heroes, showing their just as unique tactical combatant skills to these sworn enemies of mankind. Finally Dr Pikkard's wargame took a turn which ended these lengthy ongoing destructive evil onslaughts on mankind and it was not a sweet ending for everyone.

 

The Lost Chronicle started a story about a desert country goatherd named Qoph. During a time of great distress amongst his people the Arabs, Qoph rose to the occasion offering them a reprieve from their domineering slave-masters the Sassinids. But like all revolutions that go from one end of the spectrum to the other, and never in the balance, Qoph's hope-inspiring liberation from the imperial oppressors of the Sassanids. It also unleased the evil of untold greed amongst his people in years to come, with constant warfare and aggression. This did the world no good, and, in fact, in a matter of time would bring utter destruction. Will human beings ever recover from the onslaught of Qoph's reformation gone awry?

 

The Chronicle of the Nightingale is a beautiful story that recoups all that was lost for the people in a great trading, sea-faring city of  Baton Roo, that was under the thumb of a power-mad despot of a ruler titled the Doge. Utter ruin was on the horizon with the possibility of losing their city and their freedom. Yet an unlikely hero arose to rally the people with the hope to preserve their city and their lives. Reflecting on past exploits by a few of the letter heroes, this chronicle was truly a delight with just as delightful an ending. Pio was the hero for this story although from his rough start in life who would have considered him to be anything but a hero? It just goes to show that anyone can be raised to the rank of heroism, and Pio the beggar boy did just that. Not only was he a hero of sort but he was a singing prophet much like Jona, although Jona was not a singer, he was a prophet of judgment. But will Pio's  prophecies and judgments fall on deaf ears of the people of Baton Roo or will they be like Nineveh and repent of their evils and escape impending doom?

 

Chronicle 59 introduced a story of another unlikely and upcoming hero being prepped for another battle with the evil star stones. With just an unlikely mentor and grandfather figure, Nails Jensen A.K.A Gramps, a blind man takes Homer Bean, the soon to be young hero, under his wings. At this point, there remained just three evil star stones now but they are the most diabolical of them all. With the great prophet-trainer and mentor Daniyel retired and no other hero to take his place to help train up new recruits, it is curious to see how the future letter heroes will receive their much needed schooling to battle the alien entities. But FC is not to be taken for granted, the Forbidden Category is never without a plan. How is FC planning to use this youngster called Homer? No one really knows except he himself!

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.A.Edwards
• Release date: Aug 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201851859

Book preview

CHRONICLE 58

ANNO STELLAE 8732

"But in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel,

when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be

finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.

—St.  John the Divine, the Revelation of FC’s Son

Yeshua the Anointed (Messiah) spoken to him,

Revelation 10: 7,

Book of the War of Heaven and Earth"

1   Chiron’s PQ Plan

The Blue Centaur of the Blue Planet, nursing his melancholic, philosophic nature high in the glaciered mountains of  the West Bear and Turtle Island,  began to change.

Was it his brief exposure to the fatal Black Crystal of Pieter van de Wordt?

He had actually held it in his hands, and whoever held it but for a moment was touched to the quick of  his being. 

The Jet-stone of  Pieter van de Wordt was highly contagious as any virulent disease germ or virus. 

Full of never-fulfilled passions and yearnings, and an obstinacy that would never quit,  the crystal could penetrate the shield of  even a hibernating Centaur’s stoic composure.

Whatever it was, Chiron felt a growing desire to put his massive disappointments and gloom behind him and....and FLY!

Secluded so long in the depths of the Earth, he desired to rise into the light—which he could see shining daily through the entrance of  his ice cave.

Its rays seemed to beckon him to an active, public life—something he had shunned for ages as a professed stoic philosopher.

The short contact with the human-fragment that had turned into a black stone was extremely  hurtful, but slowly his heart-wounds healed and he felt stirred throughout his being.

Perhaps, if he flew, he might go and find the crystal, or at least satisfy himself that it was lost forever.

Having brought it to the surface, he felt responsible for its fate.  At least that was his reasoning.

With these things gathering steam within his mighty breast, the Blue Centaur began taking more of an interest in his surroundings.

They were strange, indeed—so different from Roncommon.  The glaciers had terra-formed the entire region, scraping off everything from one area and moving the mass of debris to another site half-way across the continent and even offshoots reaching a  restored new continent,  Atlantis II.

In his own cave system Chiron began exploring the exposed parts of  a natural gas-injection electricity plant from the late 20th Century.  It also had a jet engine to power the plant and the electricity it produced be sold commercially if ever it came to be activated, utilizing the natural gas to fuel the engine.

Never put on line due to litigation tying up government funding, it was three-quarters complete when the project was mothballed.

Most of it had arrived intact in the mountains of the Turtle and the Bear (the Bear riding the Great Turtle swimming the Divine Waters) via the glaciers after a journey of over eight hundred miles. 

Glaciers alone could not have moved it so far in that time, of course.  But the upheavals of  cometary collisions that precipitated Wally’s igniting the quark engine that powered the Re-Location also made for significant crustal shift to the south and east. 

This was accentuated by the splitting of the continent.

As the Midwestern plains of the divided continent submerged, the pull on continental masses west and east of the widening Straits between them  wrenched the crust toward the submerged center like a semi-fluid pudding. 

Plant foundation for the cooling tower, shipping/receiving shed, the main contractor’s office building, Conex tool storage units, unassorted flatbed trailers, huge tanks, spools of  electric line,  electric transformers,  Ivy Hi-Lifts,  forklifts, pipes and valves and miles of orange, black, and yellow  electric cords—it was all there for him to explore if he wished. 

The plant site also including a stretch of fir trees and grass and a security guard post set at the gate next to a telephone booth.  Need a new kind of trident with more striking power?  The site also was full of iron-mongering equipment with gas-fueled Ingersoll electric generators.

The unfinished, mothballed jet-engine power plant would have been crushed and ruined beyond recognition, of course, if it had not frozen solid first and then been scooped up and transported. 

Heat rising up through vents in the mountains eventually thawed huge ice caverns miles in extent, with rooms, tunnels, and chambers forming vast, sometimes interconnected mazes like labyrinths in which all kinds of artifacts came to light—if there were eyes to see them, that is.

Wondering who the inhabitants had been, and what sort of creatures, the inquiring mind of  the Blue Centaur got the best of  him. 

The naiveté of his conclusions was inevitable, because he had never known an industrial or technical society in his entire existence.

The Mukalia-Atlantis civilization had leaped directly from ox-cart and human slave labor to electronics and cybernetics—actually, a point beyond with their almost magical power crystals—with no intermediate stages of development.

Having reached the summit in virtually one bound, the Mukalian- Atlanteans were content to enjoy their achievement and saw no reason to change things from that point on.

Human slaves were accounted free labor and sources of  amusement forever.  The hierarchy running from emperor to court royalty and nobility, to wealthy merchants and tradesmen, to all the services of slaves at the bottom, was monolithic, rigid, and static.  It kept exactly the status quo from age to age just as Mizraim, a mirror image by human civilization, would attempt to do in its long tenure. 

Before the Mukalian and Atlantean Titans?  Nothing really.  The Atlantean view held the Cosmos, or Universe, existed first, then created the Titans of  Mukalia and Atlantis out of mud and water mixing around in a sort  of stew and then—zap!—a lightning bolt hit the primal soup and life organisms came galloping out of random molecules of proteins and minerals joining together in more and more complex arrangements.  This they taught to each other and their children  as  sacred doctrine not to be questioned.

A  rather pleasing world-view from the privileged Atlantean perspective!  So they were the only gods the Universe would ever know—which was to the advantage of humans, in this respect, that the Atlanteans were non-human, and, thus, humanity was not originally responsible for the maniacal Atlantean civilization.

Rummaging about the plant one day, Chiron found documents in the office building and the guard post that he studied for quite some time, puzzling out enough meaning to make sense of what he saw around him.

It was not an easy match—his Centaurian mentality and the products and mindset of the 20th Century. 

Yet from a mass of papers—FedEx chits, FAX sheets, Guard Post SOP’s, and Site Work Plans, he gleaned some understanding of the operations and thinking of the vanished race and their long-dead times.

What was the name of this city (for he could not tell a workaday, utilitarian industrial plant from a city of scholars and philosophers)?

He searched the papers and found what also was painted on a big sign at the entrance:  TZBV-TAKOMA,  A  Joint Venture for Building the Future. 

He decided that had to be the city’s name because it appeared so often.  FAX  came a close second, but he didn’t like the sound, and the longer name seemed more proper and  noble for a city than FAX.

How was he able to unlock the city’s founder’s unknown language? 

Actually, linguistics was his hobby, and from experience with the many tongues of  Atlantis he could make out the meaning of  the variants and descendants,  although the language spoken by TZBV-TAKOMA  A Joint Venture, etc.,  was difficult to translate since it represented a very distant,  shirttail relative of  the  Atlantean-Mukalian  family of  languages. 

Adept with languages, though not the equal of Jean-Francois Champollion the French philologist who deciphered the ancient Mizraimite hieroglyphic scripts of the Rosetta Stone in the 18th-19th centuries, he could spell out the syllables and from a stock of root meanings common to all languages starting with Sanskrit and he eventually deciphered the meaning—or recovered with some lucky guesses a good portion of the original meaning.

SITE WORK PLANS page 1 was his major project in language study, for it afforded the most text of all the documents.

We hope to show you the way to lay out your work plans to fit your job and by doing this, giving you a tool to help you reach you production goals.  All work plans should be job specific.  As we go through this work shop you will see why this is necessary.  When we first did work plans at the site involved as the shop foreman I was very scheptical [sic] because I was used to the old way of laying out the work day by day using the five week schedule.  I didn’t think I need to change because the old way seamed [sic] to work well.  When the craft saw the work plans all they saw was more work—

It took the persistent, enduring Chiron, able as he was, over a half -century to translate this portion, and then he was just as mystified as ever.

Plodding on, he gained more knowledge by the most painstaking efforts, which finally paid off in a modest increase of knowledge about the Ancients who had built KZBV-Takoma.

...They showed a lack of trust just like they do when you first introduce the PQ plan—

Chiron’s blue ears pricked up at this point.  PQ plan?  For some reason, he had to know what that meant, if he were forced to work at it for an entire century to find out.

After a short period of time they saw how they were able to use the work plan to track there [sic] own production goals.  It also helped me by laying out work far in advance which let the craft foremen plan they [sic] work early.  This world [sic] help them come up with which men to us [sic] and how to approach the work and let them know how I planed [sic] for the work to be done.  They would then study the plan and summit there [sic] ideas—

Chiron, by now, was intrigued—all his tremendous psychological-intellectual faculties locked on and fully engaged.

This paper for him was his Rosetta Stone (though, of course, that term had been long lost and  would not come to mind), unlocking the glories of  the past ages, as far as he could tell. 

Imagine!  A race that could set goals for itself—that planed.

Moreover, when they had laid out their work plans according to the PQ plan, it enabled them to reach the very summit with their glorious ideas.

Wonders!  These creatures, then, were marvels of intelligence and wisdom!  He greatly desired to commune with them and learn by their wisdom. 

How unfortunate he had been occupied beneath the surface all the time they had flourished above ground!

Now there was nothing left but this grand city and their writings.  He returned to his translation work, hoping to learn even more about the master-philosophers of TZBV.

Some were very good and saved a lot of labor.  In all I think once you use the work plans you will like what they do for you.  What we need to do now [sic] is to breakup in to three groups Civil, Mechanical, Electrical. (At this time read the names in each group and who the speaker is—

Chiron’s ancient language study did equal wonders for his morale.  He found the forward-looking spirit of the project men stimulating.

He even wanted to try the PQ Plan for himself, and to do that he realized he needed to divide his philosophic inquiry into the three categories, Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical. 

But what did they mean?  He went through the other papers to find the answer.  And what did he produce?  After all, the PQ plan concerned production goals. 

That stumped him for quite some time.  It was actually depressing to consider that he had not produced or done anything for so long that all he could put down as work experience was his guardianship in Roncommon. 

Nothing he did there seemed to qualify him for taking on actual production goals.  He knew he would never be able to plane on that basis. 

Fortunately, in this impasse, he happened to pull out a slip of paper, half a sheet entitled Basic Concept for Though [sic] One-Way of Doing a Work Shop.  This provided the needed clue.

"Break management up to groups.  Mech.  Elec.  Civil.  ect. [sic] Pick spokesperson for each group. 

*Copy of Donaldson LDR to respective groups.

*Start with determining what codes get a work plan.

*Why did they choose

*What are ground rules for choosing codes used.

*Compare to what we did - Actuals-

*Concept is that not all cost codes get a work plan - Bang for

your buck phase—"

"He saw now that he was at a great disadvantage, living the solitary way he did.  He needed other creatures to make up the groups, Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical, if  he were going to form and reach his production goals.

My, this philosophy was a complicating venture!  So cooperative and social! Chiron observed.

He had studied ants and termites enough to know how cooperative they were, and this system resembled theirs to a high degree, so that bit of knowledge helped him along.  But he also recalled the Atlantean civilization, and theirs too was highly organized, though a very merciless, oppressive system, to his painful recollection.

A dark cloud seemed to settle on his brow.  It made him grind his teeth, in fact, when he thought of them.  It was a good thing he had not crossed paths with any of them lately.  Had any survived the catastrophe when Atlantis broke up and submerged?  He had no idea, but he hoped they hadn’t.  But back to work!

"Have them develop out line [sic]

*Each discipline

*Review by each -

*Use paper boards to write answers

*Review with Donaldson outline

*Determine how foreman reports qty’s.

*What type of form.

*What should be on form.

*Have each displine [sic] make up one."

At this point, the paper was torn and the rest of the Basic Concept was lost forever.  Alas!

Yet he saw that the fragment afforded him a great deal to think about in the coming centuries.  He hoped in time he would understand what each thing meant—ground codes,  Actuals,  displine,  outline or out line,  paper boards,  foreman,  qtys, and such.

All things, he knew, took time to master.  Difficulty did not dismay him.  He had all the time in the world, and the brain to do it—to attain the summit and obtain the bang for your buck phase. 

Buck?  Bang?  Phase?  They were beautiful puzzles to his mind and temperament, which were that of  a philosopher and scholar—not to mention, a linguist who knew over seven hundred and fifty Atlantean-Mukalian languages, dialects, and derivatives.

The Shop Foreman, the Blue Centaur decided early on, was a philosopher like himself, only very different in aim and attitude and supporting philosophy and premises. 

Though evidently from philosophic modesty and decorum, he never named himself, his title Foreman indicated that he looked forward or thought forward for the common good,  directed the PQ plan,  created the Basic Concept, and formed the three groups of  the School or University of  Philosophy at TZBV.

The Blue Centaur came across the meaning for TZBV in the archives, found in various round, metal receptacles placed by flat-topped pieces of furniture.

The site was named after Tschellcoop,  Zyzbrynskje,  Benton, and Velly, who evidently were the Founding Sages and Philosopher-kings  of  this philosophical society and train of  thought, TZBV-Takoma,  A Joint Venture for Building the Future.

He decided this was a community devoted to scholarship and philosophy.  If they built things, they consisted of  big, mathematical models to illustrate their theories, and that explained the objects on the site.  They lived in a few of the structures, but the rest were mathematical-philosophical models used to demonstrate principles and instruct their young student-priests.

What a high civilization this had to have been!  he thought.

It even seemed to have advanced far beyond that of Atlantis, where brutal force and cruelty were used routinely to grease the gears and keep things running smoothly for the benefit of the elite governing classes.

Here, the inhabitants of the city worked together for the society’s production goals, breaking off into groups to achieve greater efficiency and help their Shop Foreman and various craft foremen administer the program. Cooperative effort and communal benefit were what KZBV was all about, not the elevation and enrichment of a tiny but all-powerful, super-rich, exploitive elite. 

The cooling tower, proving his conclusion, was a place where the greatest seekers and thinkers retired to let thoughts settle, whenever their lofty explorations tended to expand too fast.

They could also share thoughts in more of an intimate setting designed for fruitful collaboration,  amendment, rebuttal or confirmation,  and, thus, enjoyed a highly complex communication system.  This city, then, was a collection and dispersal facility for the products of philosophic studies.  From this university streams of the most advanced, progressive philosophy and wisdom flowed out to the entire world!

Chiron, realizing this about the site, felt thoroughly at home.  It was as close to an ideal ivory tower for this philosopher-scholar as there could be on earth.   But, yet, he wanted to explore the world beyond it more than ever once he had learned how to organize with others and facilitate the grand production goals of scientific and technical and social/philanthropist Philosophy.

Yet to organize with others meant he had find others. 

Who might these others be.  The original TZBV savants and philosophers were gone—extinct for thousands of years. 

He could not turn up a single bone, in fact—not that he wished to find any.  Still it seemed a bit strange there was not one tomb or cenotaph on the site.

Surely, the exalted Shop Foreman would order a handsome marble cenotaph before his demise.  That was the practice of all the Master Race Atlanteans, who lived so long they had no fear of death and yet vied with each other building the most talked-about funereal monuments.  Why did they?  There was only nothingness beyond this life, they believed, so why not celebrate life with Death as the ultimate terminus as part of life?  Death then seemed to enhance life, even in its last moments.  So lets go dancing, and break out the booze, and have a ball, was the reason, then, just as Torch Singer Peggy Lee sang in the Annis Stellae 1950s in her breathy whisper.   

They gave inspiration to the Etruskans who came along millennia later in Italia, who held splendid, year-long farewell parties and willingly took hemlock in golden goblets and toasted Thanatos,  or Beauteous Death,  when they grew bored with life and wished to retire into Hades gracefully.  Fufluns was another god, who figured as Beauteous life, the life of wine, women, and song, which appealed most to the youth, naturally, who didn’t care to check out early and dissolve into atoms.

Or, rivaling the Atlanteans, the TZBVites lived as long as the Centauri—which was indefinitely, barring some accident. 

In any case, the TZBVites seemed unaware of Death as well in ushering in a Hereafter of unconscious atomization, and yet must have thought there was enough bang for the buck in celebrating Death,  and so they eschewed the elaborate Atlantean death cult with its  Cenotaphs, Thanatos banquet,  eulogies,  golden goblets and the final sip of  perfumed hemlock. 

Whatever the case, whether they were stoical or simply resigned to the inevitable dissolution,  they left few personal marks of  their presence behind, other than what belonged to the whole society at TZBV, such as the Collected Works of Noam Chomsky, forty folio volumes of indecipherable argumentation in linguistic theory that no one could read. 

The thought brought back certain memories, which still were rather unpleasantly fresh.  As for accidents and mortality, it sometimes happened that a Centaur met fragmentation, or termination—terms he was trained to apply to his kind. 

(Only Atlanteans were judged real people, and everything else was an ignoble thing which the Atlanteans classified as not worthy of the dignity of Death).

He had known of such incidents of termination in the past.  In fact, he had terminated quite a number himself in Roncommon in the unpleasant human fragment episode.  How painful that experience had proved!  How painful!

But Chiron changed the subject quickly as he switched thought paths.  He had no desire to dwell on that aspect of the Past.  He was now forward looking and thinking, thanks to his re-location and new studies.

It was so new to him—looking outward and upward!  Yes, upward! 

Often, feeling the strain of idleness on his mighty limbs from so much study, he would go to the entrance of the cave and look out on the wide world, wondering what lay below.

Even with his limited vision—his night vision was excellent but he was half-blinded by the intensity of daytime illumination and reflection off the ice and snowfields—he could make out the major features.  Would he find men of like spirit that he could befriend, who would help him organize the three crucial groups of philosophic endeavor? 

He greatly hoped so.  But first he needed more study, to gain the knowledge he needed once he embarked on a journey to find his co-philosophers.  Once found, he would seek to train them up to Specs, as job requirements were called in the papers.

His understanding was greatly deepened, however, by another discovery.

He looked into the gate entrance’s guard post hut one day and found old SOP’s.

Because of his size, he could just manage to get his head and hands into the small post hut located by the main gate to what was the outer world (no longer there, except greatly changed, of course to what Chiron saw).

A water dispenser, a desk and swivel chair, windows all around, several objects of  which he could not tell the use  (since he had no knowledge of  coffee maker and  radio),  regulations posted on the wall with tiny, color-tipped darts.

What were those thin objects covered with black stacked together on the desk?  He pulled one out carefully.  Cracking open the first page, beginning to read, something dawned in his spirit.

"Site Security Supervisor:

"1.  Responsible to TZBV Personnel for all inquires [sic] on guard activities and overall responsibility for guard compliance with instructions.

2.  Responsible to train new site officers as needed after 1500 hours on regular Detex Rounds.

3.  Change Detex disc and review data with TZBV personnel M W F at 1400.

4.  Conduct periodic visual checks of equipment area across from the main gate when in the guard house.

5.  Keep security management informed of any changes to policy or procedure requested by TZBV personnel.

6.  Maintain a current list of security employees assigned for work at TZBV  (Scheduled and back-ups)

7.  Maintain a current list of required telephone numbers.

8.  Maintain a payroll log, recording time worked by all security officers assigned to TZBV." 

At this point the account became illegible, alas, due to water seepage, mold, and simple age.  The paper crumbled even as he read the account, and the entire contents of the SOP manual fragmented and fell like moldy cracker bits out of the black notebook he was holding.

But what he had read was most stimulating!  It reminded him of his own duties in Roncommon.  He too had performed periodic visual checks of the equipment—the various monsters under his authority.  Now as for the Detex disc, what was that?

He looked in again, doing inventory of the hut’s contents, and found a small, black, rounded object hanging by a strap from a nail on the wall.

Carefully taking it by his fingers, the worn black leather strap went to pieces immediately, but the object itself was solid and hard, able to withstand the changes and pressures of many, many years. 

Chiron gazed at the disc for long moments, trying to determine its use.  He turned it round in his fingers and found a glassed eye with the same markings as the much bigger ones he had already seen in the philosopher’s main lodge. 

Was this the same thing, only much reduced in size?  Since it bore numbers—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12—was it used to mark twelve sequential steps in philosophic inquiry and thinking?  Perhaps, they numbered the Twelve Pillars of Wisdom?

That seemed most likely, as the thought patterns of the PQ Plan were all stepped, or sequential.  This disc then was a most valuable means to chronicle his actual working out of the progress of  the philosophic program of  the university in regular steps and stages or increments.

How fortunate he was!  He suspected he had found the jewel of the entire operation,  the philosophic linchpin and chronometer, the portable philosopher’s stone that would transform all dross to gold!

No doubt the Shop Foreman had carried it upon his noble, philosophic breast as he paraded daily from college to college on the grounds.

For the Shop Foreman’s exclusive use there were long, open-ended, yellow chariots with TZBV painted on their sides.

What a grand sight it must have been, the Shop Foreman riding back behind the chariot’s driver installed in the little cabin, sitting on the long black bench marked COMMANDER, and waving to the multitudes of  working philosophers as acolytes as he took his daily inspection tour of the site to see that all was proceeding forward and ever upward.

Drawing some color-coated copper thread from a spool and biting off a section,  he made a new strap, but one long enough so he could hang it on his neck like a rare amulet. 

After more examination, he saw he had previously missed something—a small,  strangely shaped incision. 

Something, obviously, was inserted in the philosopher’s disc, but what was it?  Turning the disc, he found a very tiny black object hanging on a metal chain.  Was this it?

No!  Where, then, had the philosophers put it?

Sometime later he was moving about the compound when he happened