Kosmoautikon: Girl on a Dolphin (Book Two)

Copyright © 2015 by Mark Chandos.

ISBN:                      Softcover                        978-1-5434-5037-8

                                eBook                             978-1-5434-5036-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

KJV

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

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Rev. date: 12/13/2017

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CONTENTS

KOSMOAUTIKON: GIRL ON A DOLPHIN

Argument Book One

Argument Book Two

LIST OF CHARACTERS

CANTO ONE

PROLOGUE (BOOK II)

Mouths Still Blue and Flaked

The Clutch of Prophets

Peas for Toes

CANTO TWO

O Adam, What Have You Done?

Quota of Stigmata

I Removed the Lake

The Rule of Zeroes

CANTO THREE

Death of a Killer

Look Into My Eyes

The Sentencing of Stendhal

The Wound of Genesis Is Traceable

The Alien Corn

CANTO FOUR

Space Has Starfish Eyes

Saturn Returns

I Saw My Dead Retreat to Another House.

Murder In a Cave at Callisto

The Voice of Stendhal Returns

Another Voice Arrives

Contact with Ship 17

Who Made the Camera’s Eye?

A Cheating Mind Made the Telescope

Reap the Bright Protocol

The Return of the Gods

Doctrine of World Ice

Bent Jazz on Ears of Ice

CANTO FIVE

Aaron Descends to the Surface of Callisto

Stop Talking

The Serpent in the World Garden

CANTO SIX

The Lizard King

A Sect of One

Like a Girl Riding a Dolphin

CANTO SEVEN

The Wall of Wives

Panspermia by Machine

INTERLUDE

How the World Will End.

CANTO EIGHT

Political Interlude: Vargus Arrives

Vargus Assembles His Men

Vargus Does Not Praise Democracy

Vargus Speaks of Dangers, Suspicions

Vargus Retells the End of Moscow

Vargus Speaks of Giants

CANTO NINE

I Am Meteor, I Am Asteroid

Making Love from the Unknown

Who Speaks?

No Stowaway at Jupiter

Scene Shifts, Enter Chorus

Chorus: Another Voice Steps Forward.

Chorus: The Voice of Sofia

Chorus: The Voice of Death Speaks

Chorus: Death Makes a Final Argument

Death Is a Wind

CANTO TEN

Chorus: If You Have Strange Descent

Chorus: Aaron’s Testament

Monster Sabbath

Interlude: The Night Watchman

Final Log Entry to Book Two

The Third Vessel

The Speech of Englishmen

The Tablet of Destinies

No. Again. Begin Again.

COMMENTARIES TO THE POEM

INTRODUCTION

A Ship Going to Tarshish

CHAPTER ONE

A Race for Supremacy

CHAPTER TWO

The Strong Poet and his Society

CHAPTER THREE

To Know One Beautiful Thing

CHAPTER FOUR

A Story-Making Mind

CHAPTER FIVE

Data That Survives the Long Count

CHAPTER SIX

Lighter than a Feather in the Scale

CHAPTER SEVEN

What Does Our Mind Want with Homo Sapiens?

To Mike Porras

The master builder of the Ring

KOSMOAUTIKON:

Girl On A

Dolphin

Book Two

If you’re lucky you’ll come to a crossroads and see that the path to the left leads to hell, that the path to the right leads to hell, that the road straight ahead leads to hell and that if you try to turn around you’ll end up in complete and utter hell . . . . Then, if you’re ready, you’ll start to discover inside yourself what you always longed for but were never able to find.

Kingsley

And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed. which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, read this, I ask you, and he said, I cannot; for it is sealed.

Isaiah 29:11

Argument Book One

Aaron is the last member of an American political dynasty. The Earth is in nuclear winter. The last war was the result of a coalition of nations against the Anglo-Saxon West. The major powers used nuclear weapons if they had the chance. It was not enough that foreign nations entered the homelands of Western civilization. They would not be satisfied until all Western men were made submissive to the East – or eradicated. Aaron’s forces use every nuclear weapon to hold back America’s enemies. To make another leap of advancement, he seizes all American and Russian spacecraft to ensure that only one nation survives the exodus from Earth. To guarantee that the English idiom will survive outside of Earth’s atmosphere, Aaron’s intent is to create a race of men able to live without a carbon and oxygen base.

Aaron’s companion on the voyage to Jupiter is Talon, the greatest scientific mind of his age. Talon suffers from a rare bone disease and moves in a wheelchair. Talon has secretly set in motion his plans to translate his own broken body into a new powerful skeleton based on methane and ammonia. With Psionic chant, Aaron and Talon have channeled their learning and science into the minds of their new race of men. Faustus and Replicants are programmed with Western ideals of civilization and poetry.

At Jupiter’s moon Callisto, they build giant factories in stationary orbit. They ignite scalar energy beams, creating an immense vacuum that funnels up the minerals from the broken moon below. Talon’s robotic arms are programmed to build a large artificial RingWorld circling Callisto. Antromity, a new substance, replicates Earth’s gravity – but has serious side effects.

Though dangerous, their audacious project is the best hope for the further survival of the mind of men beyond the crib of the Earth. The conditions of life at Jupiter contain a new astrology. The Murmurs have told Aaron that the alien mind that formed the human genome communicates in prophecy from beyond the cosmos. Previous rational sciences of Western men are thus rejected in the quest for this original source of consciousness.

The crews of the thirty spaceships become desperate after three years. The men are unable to support the pressures of space flight that never ends and offers no hope of returning to Earth. Aaron’s last military commander, Vargus finally destroys the Earth—after final negotiations for world peace break down. China still uses her remaining masses to try to control the planet. All remaining nuclear weapons are used with a ruthlessness matching a Hitler or a Stalin. All proud cities scorched, all tall structures of modernism leveled, the Earth becomes a snowball in three months. A year later, Vargus arrives at Aaron’s station at Callisto moon after this last extinction on Earth. Vargus was ordered to capture any remaining Russian Federation ships and to gather 200 females from various nurseries across the European Theater of Operations. These are genetically perfect humans.

Unknown to most, Aaron has purchased (or taken) girls from families in conquered Eastern Europe. He places them in special orphanages in the Taiga forests that allow only a strict diet and education. At the end of ten years, running a hand-held device over their heads, he selects the strongest to make the journey to Jupiter. Later, Vargus reports that each girl has passed an unspecified test. These girls will be the mothers of a new mankind.

In route, while the leadership was in Kryostasis, the hindmost ship loses power due to the failure of the Russian reactors. Another ship is positioned to rescue the stricken craft and transfer the sleeping human cargo. The Kryon stations fail – and humans must be re-awoken. Vargus is terrified to see (later) a recording of how humans revived from Kryostasis proceed to take control of the rescue ship. It is only then that Vargus discovers that this group of thirty pilgrims is not from the orphanage on Aaron’s original list. They are from a mental institution of a similar name.

Aaron explores the origin of the human mind. Realizing the inner power could only exist within consciousness, he attempts to find trace images of this construct. Facing life at the edge of the solar system, Aaron creates a new linguistic idiom—as advanced as any idiom of science. Outside of Earth, Homo sapiens discover their original ancient powers after two millennia of the rule of a corrupt universal church… and blind alley, ideological scientism.

The sweating god donned his robe and took a sturdy staff, and went toward the door limping; while round their master his servants moved, fashioned completely of gold in the image of maidens; in them there is mind, with the faculty of thought; and speech, and strength, and from the gods they have knowledge of crafts. These female robots bustled round about their master . . .

Homer, Book 18

Argument Book Two

After three years in space, voices appear to Aaron. He finally executes judgment on the killer, Stendhal—a sentence he has long delayed for unknown reasons. Stendhal has murdered the crew of ship 17 and reprogrammed two Replicants to pilot the ship into the unknown depth of space outside of our solar system. The thesis is to test if Galaxy maps, as charted by humans, meet with the same reality perceived by non-human entities – in this case, mechanical Replicants. The goal is to evaluate the substance of the human mind by testing the veracity of material reality. Does mind exist before matter? How to discover the essential but lost, truth of the human mind? It is Stendhal’s idea that there is no atom, no world, no physical phenomena, outside the co-agency of a human observer. It is his heretical belief that the world is essentially a product of the human mind – that the world does not exist independently of a human mind. It is a savage throw of the dice.

As always, Aaron has other plans. Aaron hopes that after Stendhal’s death his voice will also return to the Murmers to tell Aaron what astrology of space has been entered. Are there new laws of Being of which he is still not cognizant? The men are growing restless and losing faith in their mission so far from Earth. The crews complain they will not survive to see another future of men. The crew begins to repeat rumors of Aaron’s alien birth.

The Army Commander Vargus arrives with Russian ships containing the last pilgrims from dying Earth. Two ships are lost, with uncanny agency. He has with him 300 Slavic girls, from the former Russian Federation. This changes the military structure of Ring World, since for the first time there is a large population of civilians under his command. The strains on Aaron are almost to the limit of his competence.

He makes Vargus his second in command and sends him with a mission to Europa. Vargus addresses the men. At Europa Vargus is to extract a new supply of water and to place the tiny moon, Metis, on a course of collision with Europa. The same plan is made for Thebe to impact into Europa and burn off much of the ice. Talon’s plan originally was to create the conditions of carbon-based life on Europa by burning off much of the water and creating a thick, moist atmosphere on this planet. It is an audacious and challenging risk to attempt to change the tectonics of another planet—the first time ever attempted by humans—in effect to grow planets for continued human survival outside of Earth.

LIST OF CHARACTERS

CANTO ONE

PROLOGUE (BOOK II)

Mouths Still Blue and Flaked

(Member of chorus steps forward.)

1

i

When I cast your death mask, myself will brush

your eyes with tint and warm, my love, your lips

now blue and flaked. I mark, with chill abstract,

sudden rampant boils blushing on your cheek

easing where my knife made a little prick.

A small ember goes out. Enraged, I watch

the clenched snakes uncoil—the retinal fingers

retreat—as oil extracts in water—all

standing scope, all erect dimension, searched

again with clarity – inside your sleep.

You may hear news of your reproduction,

but that is the speech of precarious men,

for you will see my lips, two last thin priests

still urging warmth at your breasts, whispering,

my love, everything, with time, passes away.

You will see your hands by my hand

already crimsoned where I rise guilty

ten templed fingers posed to urge my plea;

our only crown once stretched in shrouds

our bodies templed by our hands.

Yet lighter brides who take this church

timely kneel when blushing pilgrims pass

to view beneath the glass your stifled cry,

and now, so mutely turned,

appraise your inward gaze.

ii (Mature voice from chorus steps forward.)

I am

light, turned on lathes before zodiacs.

I am

friable beard from a single rod of flame.

I am

plank, bevel in your brain.

I am

photon, ark mutable to cognizance,

insolvent synapse to anorexic eyes,

which blinking, mislocates the pea

scuttling to and fro lightly tipping cups.

I am

love, seismic spice, the gravity you sense,

poor empty broken cups drained dry.

Look up from your ghetto, cry through the smoke

of gas ovens, where there are no answers.

If not for rote learning, you could not trace

the scurry of the boson from the stem

of your brain. Seven times I run back flushed

into my forge to mark the beam, twice again

oblique, twice reduced to pry my prism

bevel in your eye. Disown the insolvable.

At best, your eye can only make a flash

of photo in the glare of a flash. How

many lives can you tarry still striking

photons snaking from the bulb? Lend flash

to dilettantes of flash. Who amends their

tears when grief is counted banded salt or

chemical brine? What can I tell you about

your highest, most essential quality?

Trace me round inside till you can feel me.

If you divide sound again and again,

hearing words spoke fresh, as deaf men sign,

what could I say that you would not refute?

You trace, vexing in dark, a prior mind.

Mind is a test of mind. Yes, I plow your

brain, turn your blood, mix pigment, yet not with

static art, not from a ghetto of men

crying, Because of A . . . therefore B!

No – strike deep with seismic blows. I will see

you stumble, like a man that holds his father’s

head carried from battle. How from troubled,

shifting hands, cupping rough private beard, crushed

bristle cheeks – your blood is turned – and so renewed?

Knowing the cost, what price to gain my eyes?

It is the question that forms your mind,

not the answer. There are no answers. I

have placed a self-licking colored mesh

in your brain, a lit phosphorus smear,

so you cannot see we move in the same

space. How else can I be at your side when

you stumble or fall? When you have doubts

recall tender acts, past days in the sun:

When you could not yourself believe,

I made you diamond tablets of belief.

When you yourself could not detect your light,

I wrote the sun for you each day anew.

When you by yourself were congealed as frost,

I dipped your brittle mouth still blue and flaked.

When you could not find your name in worlds,

I drew a figure carved in sand and blew it breath.

When you could not task the cunning of your

hand to build a standing cenotaph,

I fused your spine to mine as crowning arch.

iii (Female chorus member steps unseen from shadow.)

Sofia. I know you. You are the man that demands

a thousand years. So be it, I have cleared

a ground for you. And if you cannot find

your name on tombstones, your runes obscured

by rain or wind, by my own hand I will claw

back the leaves. When temple stones are burned for

lime, when pilgrim shrines are broke for crofter’s

walls, when shifted bones are searched for human grail,

I will set again your distinctive fonts,

still proud and fixed in future cobalt skies.

Slowly relax the grip of tightened fists.

Release your clenched teeth. I know, you feel the

shadows of forest chill. Grasp your arms for warmth,

still moist with morning frost; wait, feel the wind

from God, stirring leaves rising now weightless

from cupping fires, the rim piled high. O, if

you can still be strong, men will hold them up

to beam your voice against the force of suns.

Feel the warmth of crowding eyes.

2 (The poet assembles the implements of his voice.)

i

Midway in my road, not glancing back,

I finger the laurel of my courage.

Though I must traverse with feet a galaxy

on my verse, in wisdom I can only

place one step before another. I do

not know my final standing pitch; inert,

I shadow the lease of my mind complex

to trace just now the music in my ear.

Watch with me. Because I have measured you,

my native speech, before time was. Because

I am compound to the boneless precursors

of my sky-deep heart-way. Because I have

raced one-way past the Elephantine Rocks.

I have carried my ships overland to

distant Punt and soon may trade no living

cargo except my voice, insolvent without

your folding eyes on my sail-filled craft. I

turn forever my back to alien

Kush, my eyes to scout ahead. On steady

parted eddies I urge my ship ahead.

By guiding stars, past hidden rocks, I find

safe port – clasping my purse of images.

I carry you beyond Earth with no return,

not forgetting you were less than sapling once

to Greek and Latin watchers at my crib;

no timber of my country’s voice precedes

me now with cornerstone or mime.

I guess I have loved you.

ii

Bring me the implements of my voice.

The Clutch of Prophets

3 (Kosmoautikon, Book II. Scene opens in a cave on Callisto.)

i

Aaron. New peril forms blisters on my eye; new

sleep descends by fits. In weak gravity

my heart contests to beat. I watch my pulse,

making breath. I raise my head to the skies,

but they are thin, like the sleep in my eyes.

New reproduction matures my science.

I have built six stations farmed on minerals

funneled from twisted, rising storms

ingested to our works. I send scouts to Europa

extracting water on Jupiter’s circus.

New cosmology disorders my ship’s charts;

uncanny cycled broken horoscopes;

fresh ascendant still unmapped; new septile

portends discovery and decision; seven

Judges on Saturn’s arc I mark, fortune checked

by peril, child-like in cradled arms. What

world is world – minus Earth’s self-reference?

There is new color on my eye. I count

episodes from freeze-dried Kuiper belts,

threads of spider’s fate from Jupiter’s loom,

prefiguring breath, my lung rising, then

falling back, weightless, on my lips. Resolved,

I hold my words up to the light. What is

my oldest and most essential essence?

Speak – that I may find my clearest page.

I stir the flashing cauldron’s eye. In light

gravity liquid mercury quickens. Pictured

between the tripod’s legs, dreams resemble

in my mind. I reject speech known. Speech new

cut sounds eccentric structure in my ear.

I check these voices against alien prospect,

suspicious against all possible misprision;

the near planets at my birth cannot reach me.

(With his implements assembled, Aaron channels prophetic voices.)

ii

Mercury pools a lead mirror in the

disk. Shapes appear glassy, opalescent.

I count in procession archaic mannequins.

Suddenly – they appear! Stretching shapes, once

mere lines, widen into contours known to men.

In silver-pooled crucibles stand a clutch of

prophets. They pass from room to room, each

grasping objects, unforeseen, some natural,

yet unexplained. What rooms? What eon of

vestibule? What stage of cloaked vestments?

Saada, the mother Murmur, is next to me.

She says into the glass, "Show me proof of

life!" The first figure in the glass turns to

us. From her arms a golden honeycomb

is raised to my eye. Peering at the object,

I hear the voice, spoken by Saada in trance:

(The Murmur, Saada, in trance, reads aloud the voice.)

"The bee and the honeycomb refute lies

told by profane men. The perfect hexagon

never witnessed a prior eon of gestation,

progression, or regression. No era

of lame, halt, or malformed hexagons."

Before I could study the challenge and speak,

the prophet passed adjacent chambers – when

a second, dressed in silver, entered from

the same room. She carried, framed in gold, the

nautilus shell from prehistoric seas.

"This common shell frames the golden ratio:

intelligence before form. The perfect

ratio never witnessed a past hour of

gestation, progression, or regression;

no rude age of lame, halt, or malformed shells."

Hairs raise on my arms. Specters frontal and

unforeseen freeze my spine. What shaped miscue

is wedged in my mind’s assembly? What

chill-composed prophecies? I asked, "How are

these specters complex to my fortune?"

A third figure approaches the glass with

twisting objects I cannot name, horrific in

tissue and workmanship, not crafted by

human hands. I ask, "State your name, intent,

and location. What is the object held

in hands? A wet membrane still unformed?

An embryonic creature extract, unborn?"

Too soon she moves into the next chamber.

I cry out, Wait, give me the sign I seek!

And then – looking again – behind her a

girl remains. She motions to me. At once

I