Echo Future Truth

D.P. Maddalena
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  • SCIENCE FICTION
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

A serialized audio presentation of D.P. Maddalena's literary science fiction novel, new chapters weekly echofuturetruth.substack.com

  1. Episode 20: Resistance Six

    1D AGO

    Episode 20: Resistance Six

    At the world headquarters of Medalion, Inc., the company that was both heir and executor of all the promises Silicon Valley ever made, the mood was more tense than usual. Today’s crisis was ostensibly concerned with reference frameworks for empathetic interaction between the subjects and what the Director called VIEPs (for Virtual Intrinsically-Encoded Persons), but what others had taken to calling creeps behind his back. Medalion’s first product was a plasma of microscopic robots that could repair pretty much any problem inside a person; today the company was using its deep knowledge of the workings of the human body to build a believable substitute for it. The hope was that these VIEPs would serve as a kind of society for the remnant, when everyone else was gone. The big question was how to make the VIEPs a vital, comforting, encouraging presence, and not just a herd of cattle in the middle of the road stupidly blocking the way. How do you teach an empty vessel to respond to a living person in a living way? The question for the engineers of Medalion, really, was how do you teach empathy to a creep? The original promise of the company’s health tech was so profound that they’d been flooded with resources, and remarkable advances were made in many areas that at first seemed tangential to the original vision. Not many were around to witness it, but those who did were stunned when the company produced a convincing artificial person, one that appeared to live and move in the way of its creators. But it was an entirely different matter to make these things appear human. A failure in this latter effort would effectively kill the VIEP program. There were many reasons why it might fail: the complexity of building a community out of a swarm of hardware mites for starters. Also, the fact that the builders themselves were dying off at an alarming rate – they were running out of time. And for those that remained, the work itself was reassuring, but hope that they would be successful was fading. At least, the Founders told themselves, the children would live a good long time, whether asleep or awake and alone; they would survive with their basic needs met. The Director wanted more. He believed that surviving alone wasn’t enough and that long life didn’t count unless you could really live it. So he insisted that the children be woken up regularly, and that, on waking, they would be greeted with a community to be a part of. The technology was mostly there, though so far it was just that – technology. A decent language-based interaction was possible, but the overall effect of sharing anything more complex than a math problem with a VIEP was one of distance; as if you were trying to communicate with a bookshelf, albeit one that could look up a satisfying response by itself. For it to work, the action of his Encoded Persons had to be as genuine as possible, based on what’s happening in the moment. The more remote the reference – emotions based on a fixed database of relational patterns, for example – the less authentic the interactions would be. Everyone recognized the difficulty: even real people struggle with emotions in relationships, struggle to decouple what is essentially their own historical database of interactions from what is happening in the present. Our drive to survive is tied to primitive defense mechanisms, by which we interpret everything through a threat-filter rooted in past experience. This makes empathy difficult even for the best of us. Long before anyone at the company would take seriously the idea of an artificial future society (let alone an emotionally engaging one), Dr. Brigid Tobin made her first appearance on a team call to argue for a little more empathy among the living. The engineers were having trouble with the human subjects, that is the three children that were spread across sites around the country, whom they characterized as being oppositional and defiant. Brigid was able to help the team see that the kids were only resisting because they were stressed and scared, even if they showed it in confounding ways. It can be hard enough to deal with the fact that your customers might not appreciate your efforts on their behalf, without taking into account that your whole user-base is made up of three children at the end of the world, chosen for unknown reasons to represent all of humanity to the future, alone, with nothing to reassure them but your high-tech promise that that future is full of wonder. It took Saint Brigid to suggest that this might not be only a marketing problem. Her advice was simple: they had to spend the day on the floor. Sit with them; stop talking at them, except to offer words to reflect their experience. Essentially, the advice, as interpreted by the engineers, was to make the children the emotional reference-point for interactions. Do they seem sad? Don’t argue that they should be happy, or that they should be honored to be a part of this historic moment. Acknowledge that they have every reason to be upset, or confused; after all, confusion was a perfectly legitimate response to the madness of the moment. Work from their perspective – argue for them. Her advice turned out to be a significant help for those technicians whose expertise did not extend to working with kids. As attention shifted from keeping the subjects alive to actually providing them something closer to a life, the Director took a particular interest in Brigid’s perspective, but for reasons different than the others’, and for reasons that remained hidden to her: he was trying to build more emotional machines. As the engineers on duty this morning described it, the first steps taken in this direction were shaky. They had spent a couple months training the VIEPs to respond to and progressively match the affect of human subjects. It was delicate work: they didn’t want to mirror emotions too precisely, because that would be weird, especially coming from a computer. So they were playing around with a more fuzzy response. But, the fuzziness of the logic was presenting like sloppiness, and imprecise in the wrong kind of way. The human subject for the day’s testing – a volunteer from Software named Brett – woke up already in a bad headspace. Like everyone, he was worried about the pace of the project, which is another way of saying he was terrified at the pace of events in the world. But while nobody could escape the effects of the now unrelenting stress, Brett seemed to feel it more than most. To anyone assessing his mental health, he would present as the kind of person for whom the extra support of pharmaceuticals, or possibly other more intrusive interventions, would be indicated. He was also the kind of person who would try anything ... once. He got new injections whenever there was an experimental update to the swarm; he would go a week on an entirely synthetic diet before most people had been willing even to taste artificial salad; and, he was first to volunteer for ten weeks in the CRIB system. Being the first to sleep that long established his reputation as a willing, and brave, test-subject, but all he wanted was to get some rest and relief. It didn’t really work, but everyone knew that a couple months offline wasn’t enough to effect real change, considering the constraints put on the machine when dealing with the mind. He woke up from his extended nap feeling deeply rested but any psychological relief he might have hoped for wouldn’t come close to matching his expectations – and couldn’t last anyway, especially when he was bound to wake up in a world that was, not surprisingly, worse off than the one in which he had fallen asleep. Today, he wanted to get away from the computer and do a little field work, as it were. He wanted to have a real conversation with the characters he’d been working on; he understood that empathy was going to be the killer feature, even if it was only a coded response. He’d been finding precious little compassion from his coworkers. As he stepped into the courtyard for the test, he was told, ‘Just act natural’. Things started fine. The VIEP registered Brett’s emotions and calculated a meaningful response, modulating its own affect. The things were remarkably expressive, and sometimes they even got the expression right. Subtle adjustment was key. The team had given a lot of thought to how reflective empathy works with people. A good listener never feels exactly the same thing as the speaker, but when they sense emotion, the observer will be connected to their counterpart’s feelings by a system within the brain’s network of mirror neurons that makes it experientially real to the listener. By a kind of intrinsic imitation engine, we feel with each other. This borrowed emotion might be felt more or less strongly, but a modulated reflection helps the speaker acknowledge the relative power of their own feelings, as their own mind reflects on the reflection. In any case there is a very subtle back and forth, a vital connection – between the living. Unfortunately, on this day, during a brief interview between a living human and an earnest machine, the imitation of the imitation engine failed its Turing Test. The question would be asked later in the day whether it is possible to have a little too much empathy. At first, there seemed to be no real cause for alarm; the creep’s responses provoked amusement in the observation room. But within moments, the failure cascaded into disaster: the initial, uncanny, duplication of the subject’s discomfort, amplified in the system by degrees, prompted a subsequent increase in Brett’s own discomfort. This, in turn, elicited a further attempt on the part of the VIEP to adjust and respond; inexplicably, it once again amplified the affect according to an imperfect machine-logic which really came down to stupidly responding to a negative emotion with a little more of that negative emot

    23 min
  2. Episode 19: Resistance Seven

    APR 30

    Episode 19: Resistance Seven

    At the rickety folding table sat Brigid – presumptive patron saint of medicine, midwives, b*****d children, and beer – rigid with her hands crossed between her knees. She anxiously surveyed her new environment. Its furnishings – brand new, bargain basement – glowed white in the diffuse brightness of some hidden source of illumination. Her senses were on high alert after months of deprivation in her brother’s slowly dying suburban neighborhood. Her nerves jangled with every hideous squeak released by the table’s matching plastic folding chair. Twenty-four hours before, she would have guessed that she was going to spend the rest of her life looking out over Angel Island and Richardson Bay from a rickety, home-built back porch. Then her world changed – again – and almost before she knew what was happening she found herself in a military transport rolling south across the empty bridge, through a nearly-empty, tension-filled San Francisco, and down the Peninsula. After ninety minutes of bone-rattling noise and vibration, heavy-gloved soldiers’ hands passed her off to sterile-gloved medical techs. In sharp contrast to the profane and morbid conviviality of the marines, the technicians gave off a weirdly remote and antiseptic vibe. After a short, unnerving interview and a blood-draw, they sealed her into this hermetic mobile environment, where she sat in a silence so strange she felt as if she could be floating in orbit. Alone in the quiet, with nothing to distract her, she took a shaky breath against the tightening in her chest, and closed her eyes. As her breathing slowed and she could look at her surroundings again, she reassured herself that the universe was not collapsing around her, at this moment. The room she was in was clean, confined, and ugly – a temporary space. She was briefly annoyed: was there not a proper office in the whole place that she might work in? A rapidly shrinking population and still Valley real estate is in short supply? With a tight smile, she acknowledged the death-rattle of entitlement that seemed now to echo through the abandoned places of her own once-busy interior. But she did wonder: was her presence at the site meant to be temporary as well? A silly thing to worry about – everyone’s presence here was temporary. Apart from her table and chair (and their counterparts, seen on the other side of a clear vinyl curtain), the only other object in the room was a fruit-sized foam rubber ball painted to looked like a little Earth. It had been branded, over the Pacific, with the name of an unfamiliar drug and its incomprehensible slogan: Prozyma! For the unexpected. And everything in between. She rolled the soft planet between her fingers stopping only occasionally to give it a half-hearted squeeze, though any capacity the object might have had to mitigate stress had long before been proven not to be remotely up to the task. She had been feeling increasingly unsafe in her brother’s neighborhood. Only recently, the momentum in their home had shifted from sheltering in place to heading for the hills. At first, it was less about escape than it was about choosing the place in which to finish out your days. Her sister-in-law had passed weeks before, and her brother was in danger of drifting away in a passive fugue. His kids wouldn’t let him go. They surrounded him, to spur him on to one last act of courage. They wanted her to come with them: north to the redwoods to find a spot along the ancient coast and spend their remaining days under the shade of trees that had been keeping watch over the expanse since the beginning. A beautiful idea. She was surprised at her own reluctance – she wasn’t ready. She had to admit they were leaving at the right time. The day before, some guy drove his oversized truck along the sidewalk and through front yards, knocking fences and mailboxes down, for blocks – her cheeks flushed at the memory. Was this guy just a nihilistic idiot having his moment? Or was he a nihilist-savant who understood that the final task of Homo Sapiens was to speed along the decomposition of the built-world in anticipation of whatever came next? She thought, when the nihilists are winning every argument by forfeit, then maybe it doesn’t matter what kind of nihilist you are. God. What was she thinking? This is not what she believed. But History was pulling every perspective along in its wake as it raced off the edge of the map to meet the dragons. Even the believers had to admit something good was coming to a terrible end. The Void had come to town and moved in next door in a kind of diabolical gentrification that robbed the joy from healthy homes. She knew several houses in the neighborhood were empty. With others the story was less clear, though she avoided close inspection. And some, doors open to the weather, gave her a creeping dread. So it was, when another giant truck rumbled down the street in the middle of the night and slowed to a stop in front of their house, she understood, finally, that she would not be traveling north, but south; away from the giant elder trees and toward something far less certain. Now, as she slowly adjusted to the small, sterile space and her presence in it, Brigid sat looking through the room-divider at the dimly lit space on the other side. With nothing there to hold her attention, she was left to consider her own face, reflected in the wavy screen, looking bleary-eyed and dark in the shocking white of the place. Tendrils of her salt and pepper hair escaped from corkscrew curls, insisting on attention after a long period of neglect. She took a deep breath and pulled a tangle of grayed hair back to bind it. Her ears must have popped because now she became aware of a low, intermittent noise around the room, in the walls, like wind, almost like breathing. Just climate control, she thought. But it sounded uncanny, nothing like the familiar, monotonous drone that one expects from a ventilation system. She was painfully curious to see where she was, that is, where this place was, to understand her situation, to see past the mystery of the breathing walls. But right now, her world was shrunk. She was glad for the ball, the only interactive part of the room. Her thumb and forefinger rocked on opposite sides of the little Earth, back and forth, the planet taking her fingerprints. She rolled it forward – from the deep blue of painted seas to the bright green of lumpy, misshapen continents, and back again from green to blue, and forward again and back. With the vision in her head of a Movie Star Superman flying around the equator so fast the Earth reversed direction and time turned back and Lois was saved, she toyed with the idea that she could tempt the globe with a gesture to spin down and then reverse, and maybe change the inertial flow of history. Go back the way it was. She was interrupted by an undistinguished buzz that signaled the immanent breach of her sealed space. The door on the other side of the trailer opened with a sucking noise, and her ears really did pop this time. The heavy vinyl curtain bowed convex, nudging the lightweight table with a slap. Through the divider, she watched the Director enter the room as the lights flickered bright above him. She was confused by a flood of feelings at his sudden presence, when for so long she had only encountered him virtually. Competing inappropriate desires: to run from the room or to smother him in an embrace: he was so much more alive than when he only took up a small part of her computer screen. He stood smiling weakly, shrugging in surrender to the madness of the circumstances. He blushed a little though she didn’t see it, and said, ‘You have everything you need here?’ He blushed a little more, shaking his head, with a thin chuckle: ‘Sorry.’ Then earnestly, ‘Would you like another folding chair? We want you to feel completely at home! Choose from our extensive catalog.’ She smiled, and he laughed with relief. ‘Hello Albert.’ She had a habit of using first names, no matter the circumstances. It was, for her, at least in regular times, an act of resistance. Today, it felt more like an act of intimacy: not a rebellion against the secular powers, but against the threat of annihilation. She spoke quickly to resist a flood of emotion. ‘I’m fine here. What’s happening?’ ‘I think our timing is good. We’re going to bring her to you now, if that’s alright.’ ‘Yes of course, I have managed to clear my calendar! Bring her over.’ ‘Thank you, Doctor.’ ‘Brigid, please.’ He showed a brief excitement, ‘That’s right! Saint Brigid, is what Ken told me. Something about your mythical healing powers?’ She nodded, smirking. ‘Kenny was nosy. Mom was Irish and ... a bit more religious than I: Brigid was her favorite saint, and a healer as well, though she and I appear to work from different modalities. Also ...’ she added with learned enthusiasm, the part of the story everybody loved: ‘She could turn water into beer.’ ‘Well! We’re going to have to explore the rest of your resumé now that we’ve got you here. Okay. Ten-fifteen minutes. Has someone told you what to expect?’ ‘Yeah. ... Albert?’ She had so many questions, decided on one. ‘How long? How much time ...?’ He took a deep breath, held it briefly before speaking. ‘Two or three months.’ After a moment, he looked at her. ‘How are your numbers?’ She didn’t answer the question. ‘She knows?’ He paused, then spoke like he was in a confessional, looking at the door: ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. I should know. I mean she should know. Probably. ... She probably does.’ With a quick look back at her and a tiny smile, ‘I’ll be asking for your opinion on the matter at the end of the day, Doctor. Brigid!’ He left, and she let out a long breath through tight lips. She flattened the stress-ball under the palm of her hand. It took little effort

    29 min
  3. Episode 18: Resistance Prologue

    APR 23

    Episode 18: Resistance Prologue

    When explorers of this latter age arrived at the western edge of what would come to be known as the North American continent, followed quickly by conquistadors, missionaries, and miners of precious metals, they came as vanguard of the manifest destiny that would be embraced by a new nation eager for justification ... to circle the planet, claim it all for their cause, and leave nothing undiscovered. What these explorers could not see clearly at the time (besides those peoples already settled there) was that the frontier would never be conquered, could only be extended, and that the grandchildren of emigrants would never be allowed to rest. Here, in the coming years, were ships conceived to breach the boundaries between planets, and occult mechanisms made to probe the space in between the smallest things, smashing atoms into strange and charming lesser parts. And when, desperate for new trails to break, the conquistadors made to circle back around the planet by virtual means, new paths were opened up until all that remained were noisy tracks crisscrossing the wilderness of silence. Finally, when death came speeding along the Via Romana and its asphalt heirs, these new ways provided no escape. The spirit of the new frontier would have to wait – for the destroyer to pass through the cities, and for the remnant to pass between the waters – before it could resume its search through the wide open spaces of the coming age for something like an answer or an end. The great migration that peaked with the discovery of gold in California never really concluded, even after the gold ran out. Searchers kept coming to pierce each new frontier in turn. ... Space. Fame. Silicon. Capital. And as each of these was rendered meaningless, and only one frontier remained, the migration slowed but didn’t stop; the last surviving scientists and technologists made their way west to work the problem of death. On this day, if anyone had been keeping count, a final migrant completed her own journey west. A middle-aged Irish psychologist, youngest child of a Catholic schoolteacher and a gaeilgeoir Somali; this daughter of the old world arrived by way of studies at Cambridge and a recent professorship at Berkeley. She came to take her place at the California company that was both the greatest failure of its era and also its greatest hope. Neither she nor any other was aware that she would be the last to arrive. Nobody was keeping count. The woman did understand that she would be taking part in the final act of the Great Story: she knew the role she’d been cast in, and she knew where to stand on the stage. But what she did not know – what she could not know – was the true nature of the play. Whatever destiny had been made manifest in ages past was no longer accessible to plain sight. The veil had been dropped once more to shroud the doom of humankind. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit echofuturetruth.substack.com

    6 min
  4. Episode 17: Isolation Epilogue

    APR 9

    Episode 17: Isolation Epilogue

    Arpaxos sat quietly in the shade of a bright plane tree, tried to slow his ragged breathing, and listened for sounds from the outer edges of the square. A throbbing in his left leg fought for his attention. He ignored the pain but reached down gently to lift from behind his left knee and set his useless foot on the cross-bar of the chair, kicking with his good leg to lean back against the doorpost. He began to cough and spat out a throat-full of rusty humor. Before long, he was settled again, quieted his breathing, said thanks, and closed his eyes so that he could better picture their faces. He waited in silence for their return – the buildings that outlined the square, he knew, sat vacant; every facade an empty promise from a busier time. His attention was fixed further out; he would be able to hear his people when they were still a couple blocks away. Arpa was one of a shrinking tribe who were committed to stay together until the end. Every time their parish shrunk by one – with every loss – he worried that hopelessness would set in. How few humans is too few? Turns out three is enough to keep from losing faith entirely ... a single person can despair, and might be able to withstand the hopeful words of just one other, but when two witnesses gang up on you, it’s harder to resist. There had been frank philosophical and theological discussions about what it would mean when only two were left, and whence the fraying cord might achieve its third strand. He had come back to the city to be with others, and worked hard to be one of the safe ones. He’d become generous, the better to bring folks out from their hiding places. And he was hopeful, which confused people; they thought hope was only about the future, and for most, that was a thing they could no longer see. But Arpaxos was wrestling the future into the present, and so understood the sacred transactions still available to him among the remnant. He knew it would be over soon, but he also believed that as he gave himself to others, he was thereby trafficking in eternity, in a future worth investing in, one he felt was increasingly echoing in the present. He had been told many times, in the last several months, that he was wasting his time caring for dying people ... both for others and for himself; he heard this more than once from the very people to whom he was showing kindness. Arpa had simply chosen the perspective that he was not in the presence of dying people, but living people, and in that spirit, he was aware of a greater communion, in suffering; and, he hoped, in glory. But right now, there was quiet. Nobody came. He hadn’t been able to move far from his spot in front of the taverna for several days since his leg had become a problem. He did not like being stuck here. The other two insisted on going out for food, though they also were getting sicker. He opened the sketchbook, which he had pirated from the cave on the cliff-face, and flipped through the pages until he came to the new portraits. The first artist was better than the last, but Arpa’s drawings were special, if only because he had been able to draw from life. His life. And now, he focused on two pictures in particular, holding on to them with a stubborn mental resolve to resist the threatening solitude. In the silence, Arpa began to hear things, as if the place was waking up. Eyes closed, he heard the gentle rise of voices and clinking of plates loaded with fish and lamb, giant beans, potatoes, and grilled cheeses. Waiters charming tourists, promising the most authentic cuisine ... old men passively debating local news over game boards ... young people laughing, huddled together as they walked down the street. The plaza seemed alive with a tranquil, but resonant energy that recalled his best days in the city. He understood that the square was as empty as the surrounding spaces, and that he was ... alone. But memories were like cash in the new economy, so he let them come, experiencing the city and its ghosts, listening to their sounds, seeing it all as it should be. It was as though he could populate the place with the best lives, the best sounds and sights from a long history. It was perfect – he smiled ... there is a way of remembering that cleanses the past. But, maybe this wasn’t about the past? More echoes of some future truth? As he debated the qualities of a perfect day in the city against the soundtrack of a peaceful evening bustle in the square, he was jarred out of his reverie by the noise of an approaching vehicle. This was especially disconcerting because the sound had no part in his fantasy, nor lately in his reality. He listened with a growing unease as the rumbling machine came closer and closer. Finally (he shouldn’t have been surprised but was), a truck actually appeared from one of the wider side streets. It was a heavy military transport, towing what looked like a small power station bristling with antennae that had Arpa wondering what was being broadcast, and who in the world was on the receiving end. Heavy tires came to a stop in the gravel with a crunch. A man stepped down from his seat behind the driver and approached with care. He was not a soldier, nor did he look at all like somebody who should be chauffeured around in a tank. He looked ... familiar, like someone Arpaxos might have known at one time. He was dressed in that style that Nicola used to call Baggy Professor, a label she gave to her brother when she wanted to chastise him for his lack of fashion sense. Eva had copied her mother’s taunt to annoy her uncle; he didn’t mind, because in the end, the girl would copy his style. The stranger appeared clean and healthy, which seemed odd. Another figure emerged, from behind the wheel; after a quick look around the square, he reached back inside the cab to kill the engine, forcing a final silence on the city. This one was dirty, thin, and pale – as expected – and was dressed (and armed) in the style of an occupying army. The driver took up a position next to his truck, with a medical kit by his side. The Baggy Professor came to a stop a respectful distance from where Arpa sat. Standing still as a picture, he gave the impression he was equal parts calm and alert. This also was odd: no matter what company you kept, no matter how much hope or faith you could muster, calm was not one of the qualities you expected to see in people these days; and anyway, the armed escort was giving off a very different energy – more tense and intimidating, but more familiar, so less unsettling. The stranger looked at him with a slight tilt of his head, and with a subtle expression of curiosity. Or was it concern? He was staring attentively at Arpaxos, like he was studying him. And Arpa, looking back and trying to make sense of the intrusion, wondered whether this new character belonged to his fantasy of the re-populated square (an apparition from happier times?). It was easy to imagine that the two of them were meeting to share a drink and talk philosophy, or debate some more practical matter. Did the man belong to the past? Was he a memory like all the rest? Or did he belong to the future? He didn’t seem to fit in the present. Arpa was confused, and had to fight to resist a creeping disorientation. He understood the man’s style well enough, but beyond that, he could make no sense of his presence, here, in this place. The air itself seemed energized in anticipation. And the stranger, who’d been surveying Arpaxos and his surroundings, and who’s searching eyes had briefly settled on the sketchbook in the seated man’s lap, finally lifted his eyes, took a decisive step forward, and spoke. ‘I have a message from your daughter. She wants you to know that she is well, and that she loves you very, very much.’ And then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, a waiter appeared from inside the taverna to place a small table between the two men, and set out food and drink. Arpa hesitated, then reached out to gently touch the warm bread that filled the plastic basket; he took a single piece into both hands and held it, uncertain. A nearby couple watched this ceremony absentmindedly, then turned away to resume their conversation. From inside the restaurant there echoed a laugh and a rattle of dice. And, as the city itself seemed to get back to whatever it was it had been doing before the end of the world, the waiter brought a second chair, set it to face Arpaxos, and invited the stranger to sit. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit echofuturetruth.substack.com

    13 min
  5. Episode 16: Isolation Seven

    APR 3

    Episode 16: Isolation Seven

    He returned often to the pile of stones behind the bushes to look at the Faiyum portrait – the hope, barely acknowledged, was that this icon might prove a window ... that something of the spirit of the hospitable monk might smile on him. His relationship to the images of Mani had been rocky of late, especially before his fall from grace. He regretted defacing the Christ icon in the church above, but life mediated by images had become hard to bear: he was losing the memory of what a real face looked like. He judged it unfair that his first human contact in ages was with the hirsute holy man, a (presumably) living image cloistered behind locks of dirty black hair. Why was this portrait different? He was honestly stirred by the act of devotion showed by the pirate, but the image itself was moving too. He wished he could talk to this face, wished he could unburden himself to the priest in the picture, not really because he had so much to confess (though he really did), but because he shyly imagined that repentance was the cost of entry with such a one as this. Arpaxos thought about the time that was left to him. There were many things that one might do before The End ... most were unavailable to him, but a single act of service remained that he might perform. He would take a cue from his predecessor and prepare the sanctuary for the next wave of pilgrims, who would never come, at least not in the flesh. He began to order and clean the chapel. He swept the floor, burned empty boxes and wrappers, and buried the unburnables. With that done, Arpaxos took up the duties of prior acolytes, and arranged the altar for a last service: he trimmed the lamps and prepared the incense for burning. But there was no coal for lighting under the resin, and every other piece of fuel had just been burned as trash. Frustrated, he began to search ... under the fringes of the carpet, along the edges of the cell, behind the icons. He looked at the small box of books and was a little ashamed to consider burning one of them for fuel. He ran his fingers along the bindings, and, out of curiosity, took up one of the leather-bound volumes. It had no title, and a quick flip through the pages revealed that It was largely blank ... except for the sketches that filled the front third of the book. Behind it, wrapped in newsprint, a stash of charcoal. With a shock of recognition, he understood that he was holding the pirate’s portfolio. The drawings were in the same style as the one that topped the monk’s grave, and – now he could see it – of the icon at the center of the altar. The discovery meant that he now had something that could be burned for worship: he lit a small pile of the artist’s charcoal in the censer and placed a few pebbles of sacred sap over the embers. As incense filled the room, he lit a candle, and opened the book of images to the beginning. The dedication page had several inscriptions: a child’s handwritten words για τον μπαμπά ... for daddy, next to a rough drawing of a stick figure holding a pencil aloft like a great sword. There was a name, A. Λογοθέτης, and an address in Mezapos. And also this – a pirate’s song for the dead from Deep Mani, written without the skill of the miroloyistrias, but with all the reverence of a witness: O Cyprus Tree of deepest root,O flow of holy water!Thy ruined church(with quaking dome)yet bore a beaming welcometo thy warm and humble hutch;to host a prideful sinner,to cleanse of direst soot. Arpaxos held the book tenderly, like an ancient manuscript, and with gentle reverence began to turn the pages. On each were icons of the sublime, or the mundane; every picture sacred. An urban square filled with couples dressed for spring. A small metal table on three legs overburdened with delicacies for an afternoon meal. A chapel in the shade of an impossibly great flower. A cemetery framed by an overgrown plane tree. Saints and Angels .... In each drawing he found himself before a familiar face. All the characters from his life and from his journey into exile were represented here. For so long, he’d been so focused on Evie: he understood that he had stopped seeing, stopped acknowledging those around him, and that he had really stopped seeing her as well. It was only when she was gone that he began to realize he really had no memory of her. Arpa could imagine her face, but now even hers became the face of a girl looking for something she would never find in him, because what she wanted was to be seen, truly, as a person, not as a priceless treasure to be locked away. With an aching heart, Arpaxos turned through this series of images, each of them resonant with qualities he had become blind to. Each portrait was a window into a reality that he’d ignored, or rejected, for too long. He found Eva in a sketch of a young girl; with a look of sad understanding, this face become the face of the Virgin. He could see now that when she looked out from the page, it was with a heart pierced to know that her loved ones were all doomed to die, and that she would have to carry on alone in some secret upper room to bear inside of her the story of humanity in hope of a new Pentecost, some future day when words would have meaning again. Also there, a widow in black, cast in the role of Wisdom: long-suffering, creative, sheltering. She was as old and unchangeable as the hills, but also quick-witted, serious, and able to shape or move the hills when necessary, with a word. Next, the adolescent boy from behind the church who’d watched Arpaxos steal a can of fruit. He’d insisted at the time (to himself) that the boy had no cause to complain. But now he was forced to admit that this face – of an angel, one of the holy ones – would not be denied. Today, this image was a window letting in a righteous complaint from the world outside his cell. Was it a rebuke? A call to repentance? A challenge to forswear robbing his fellow refugees, coveting their perceived abundance, or murdering with hatred those who dared reveal weakness? He was chained in the dock, could not escape. The presence of the boy was growing now, his face becoming the face of Christ seen in the stranger, the beggar, the broken one. Now plaintiff, now judge. Arpa couldn’t defend himself. Nor did he want to: he felt the same painful longing as at the priest’s grave – to meet the living face behind the portrait. His heart was thumping, and he felt an air of invitation in the space. With a freedom he hadn’t known in ages, he began to speak. Tenderly, to the page in front of him, he asked, ‘What’s your name?’ He felt his attention drawn to the painted icon nearby, where Christ from his nimbus replied, ‘Ὁ ὬΝ’. The One Who Is. ... I am; I exist. Arpaxos was set reeling by this, not only because of his concern that yet another icon was coming to life to provoke him, but because now he felt that windows were being thrown open all over the room. The boy was alive, and he could feel that this was no simple, spiritual affirmation – somehow he knew that in the world, today, the boy existed, and that he still waited .... That Evie was also out there, and many still lived that he had secretly sped on their way to the grave with his indifference. He felt the air warm and close in the room, but in his stomach he felt cold. He felt all were waiting, holding their breath. Quietly, with an unpracticed reverence, he continued the conversation in the only way he could: acknowledging the presence behind the portrait, he asked in a rough whisper, ‘Where are you?’ The question was addressed to the boy, whose image was still laid open in his lap. ‘I am with you’, came the gentle response. More quietly, almost wincing as he worked out the words ... ‘How?’ ‘I am’ He shook his head, ‘You are ...?’ ‘With you’ ‘How??’ ‘As I am’ Though this conversation was bound to the portrait of the boy, he knew that it belonged as much to the Christ icon, and there hung a holy confusion in the air. As if he was being carefully but forcefully rebuked in his desire that God would tear the top off the churches or the mountains, and come to him on a thundercloud, when such as this young boy still existed in the world, unmet. ... I am with you as I am. Arpa was willing to receive the reproof that came by means of the image, because of the irresistible presence he felt, and the grace revealed in the eyes of the youth, in whose presence he sat for some time. He began to feel profound sadness at so many lost opportunities. At the same time he felt some gratitude to know the charges against himself, and he resolved, if need be, to accept death cut off from all others and from the true image of God, at least until the end. For now, he would turn his face to the open windows. He moved to the altar, took up the prayer book, and completed the liturgy of Agia Eleóusa for the last time. Arpaxos imagined he ought to approach death with a measure of dignity, though he really had no idea how to pull that off. He decided that a good start would be to work his way to the bottom of a bottle of tsipouro. He saw no reason to put off the inevitable, and spent hours drinking, and eating through the last of the supplies. Tomorrow? Maybe he would throw himself off the ledge to die in the graveyard of broken ladders. Smiling, he thought, no more need for climbing or descending – ‘We’re all dying where we stand, now. Who we are is who we are.’ But, no, he still couldn’t stomach the thought of harming himself (and, truthfully, he wasn’t entirely confident in the state of his soul, here at the end). What he would do is tidy up one last time, and celebrate his life with a last meal before it was spent. Then, when the time came, he would lie down between the old priest and the cliff wall, and trust the winter rainstorms to bury him under red Mani earth, washed down from the cliffs above. So he danced, unsteadily, and

    24 min
  6. Episode 15: Isolation Six

    MAR 26

    Episode 15: Isolation Six

    She was right to be angry. She was right to be angry at the machine for grinding her down until she could be made to fit into the fearsome hole at the center of the world. She was right to be angry at Arpa for his selfish, monomaniacal protectionism. She was right to be angry at being told how to bear the burden that nobody but she would have to bear. His heart was more broken than the rest of his body after the dream encounter. It all felt so real that he was certain, ‘If only I had reached out, and held on to her, I could have stayed with her forever’. But now he was awake, and alone again, and he really didn’t know what was real. Maybe Orpheus never had a chance. Grab ahold, or don’t. Eurydice was lost. It was time to consider his own circumstances. Getting up took him more than an hour, and when he finally rose to his feet he stood for some time in the midday sun, unsteady, warming his bruised limbs, and slowly moving his jaw to reassure himself that he could depend on it should he ever need its services again. He surveyed the boundaries of his perch: he was able to see his position more clearly now and was not encouraged. A brief anxiety drove a frenetic attempt to spy out an escape (he still valued his freedom!). Some evidence of a path down to the water remained in spite of the damage done by his avalanche. Even before the slide, the descent would have terrified him. There were no visible steps, but a stream of loose earth and rocks along the fall-line spilled first over the north lip of the ledge where he had been deposited, then descended rapidly to a stony cove with a chaos of broken planks and pulleys once capable of lifting a small boat out of the water. There was no boat today, nor was there access. He could not trust the way down, and even if there had been stairs, all possibilities were governed now by new rules that said that cliffs are not stable. He also saw no way up. It seemed he really would have to find a path through the underworld, if he was to ever return to the land of the living, such as it was. When he finally turned toward the darkness and risked the narrow passage, the news was better than he could have hoped for, at least on the lesser point of whether he would be starving anytime soon. Where the cave opened up, he was not surprised to see evidence of habitation; he was surprised to see evidence that monks and pirates each had taken their turn in the cell, though it was hard to know who was resident last. In many ways it boasted finer ecclesiastical trimmings than his little church up above. But, more importantly, the furnishings included a case of liquor and other boxes with cans of fruit, jars of olives, and tins of fish. There was honey from Kalamata. Several unopened boxes of crackers may have been old, but were worth the risk. He tore into one, opened a jar of olives, took as deep a breath as possible, and broke his fast. After an intense (and careful) meal, during which he was forced to stop more than once so that he could let out a groan of tearful joy (and a few tears associated with the sharp pain of loose and missing teeth on his wounded side), he finally allowed himself to take a break; he turned with a mad grin and oily chin to the alcohol. Here he was not so lucky. The case was filled with tsipouro, a Cretan moonshine made from grape mash left over after all the good is wrung out of it. He chose gratitude, and drank in several deep swallows, grimacing as the medicinal spirits washed over his wounds. When his belly was full and warmed, he began to survey the room. It was lived-in, and rich with byzantine details. There were old but still colorful woven rugs laid across the floor, and another hung from the ceiling on the north wall to drape over a low, rough shelf. There were brass candle-holders, censers, and other accessories. Toward the back of the cave was a wooden box with faded beer slogans on the outside (“Το Υπέροχο Ποτό!”) and old prayer books on the inside (υπέροχες λέξεις). Two icons centered the altar: the Lord, and the Theotokos, the tender one, Ἐλεούσα. Shame returned to him: his last interaction with a holy icon had ended in violence. But he felt reassured by these two that the windows into heaven were still open – he smiled weakly and made a mental note, this time, not to touch the art. This Christ was a surprise: there was a kind of charming innocence to it. As an icon, it was rougher, but the image was more playful. It was painted by an artist who was clearly no master of the form, but who also, clearly, had something to say. The icons sat on iron easels along the carpet-lined shelf. Brass incense burners bookended the altar and a small six-sided wooden box held a stash of resinous olibanum. Though there were no frescoes on the walls, it was a colorful room, with the feel of life in it, especially when the sun was in the west. Apart from the pirate’s stash, there were baskets with some old bread. Salted fish hung near the entrance. In an alcove past the tiny library, the floor was worn in ways that suggested a long history of reclining men. Who were they? At one end of the blanketed bedchamber a marble box held a tarnished metal cross, crusty amber beads from an unstrung kompologia, and bones – the collection indicating the presence of at least one priest, this one long gone. As for the other tenant? It was only relatively recently – a matter of a few hundred years – that the pirates of Mani began to hide out in caves along the western cliffs, and there were signs of their chaotic hermitage everywhere. The pirate who’d climbed to this cave had the respect to keep the place clean, and the altar organized for worship. But, how could it be that this scoundrel served the spiritual needs of the parish, while pillaging the yachts of tourists on the open water? How did the man reconcile these two parts of himself? Or was it in fact two men? Arpaxos considered the surprising possibility that the priest and pirate lived side-by-side. Could they have shared this room, the holy man and the villain? He smiled and took another drink. The Mani conundrum. One thing he knew: the pirate would have been the only parishioner to the old monk. Who else could find their way to this retreat? You either climbed from the hidden cove below or were cast from above like Satan. A week passed in the hole. Arpaxos made some enthusiastic attempts at finding a way up the slope. Climbing along the runout, which was still active with a drizzle of little stones and dirt, was really out of the question. That there used to be a way down started to make a little more sense when he pictured the descent spanned by a series of ladders, several of which he could now pick out dashed on the rocks below. The tiny flow of water, which first alerted him to the opening in the side of the mountain, ran along the south wall of the cave via a roughly carved channel in the floor. At the rear of the cell, closer to the source, water pooled into a round basin that reminded him of the stone hollow at the rear of the cave on Patmos, believed to have cradled the head of St. John. The pocket before him now contained no obvious prophetic treasures, only distracted the current briefly, until it spilled over the rim and continued its journey to the sea below. He himself became distracted by the stream, it being the only dynamic feature in the place. He dug his way back toward the source and cleaned the basin of a decade’s accumulation of silt. He spent hours contemplating the long journey taken by the river through the dark before it escaped the mysteries of the underworld to pass through his cave. He fell into a reverie. The water was an object-lesson, a map, a timeline of life on the planet: it was the story of humanity, hidden for ages in the dark recesses of time, invisible, prehistoric, until ... as the water gurgled its way into the dim light of this chamber, he saw the beginnings of human self-awareness – a flurry of activity following what had been an extended prologue. The carved basin, which slowed the stream for a spin before releasing it, was like our first efforts to capture a history, to shape a narrative, to help us remember how we got here. But any attempt to resist the now quickening passage of time could only be momentarily successful, before the living flow of history breaks free to spill into a narrowing channel and race toward the brightening light, unconstrained, authoring new and more fleeting stories until finally we escape the dimness of the cave to bask in the enlightenment of the present moment, under the open sky. Arpaxos recognized, with little emotion, that the stream, like humanity, was doomed after only a short time under the sun to pour over the edge of the cliff and disappear into the endless sea. Nobody who knew him would have been surprised at this obsession with wringing philosophical meaning out of the simplest things, nor that the results of his explorations tended to be depressing. On the other hand, there would have been some surprise to learn the number of hours he spent launching tiny leaf-boats downstream for an epic series of races, during which he served in the dual roles of competitor-champion and exuberant announcer. Some of the mystery of the previous tenants was solved with the discovery of a burial mound concealed behind some bushes and small trees to the south where his ledge narrowed. The site was covered by soil and rocks, not very long ago by the look of it. Atop the mound lay a charcoal portrait made on a plank of wood. Arpa guessed that the monk, whose face it was, had been buried by his roommate. But where had that one gone to die? Why did he not stay? Probably this was not his only home: maybe he’d returned to a family who believed he caught fish for a living. Arpaxos wanted to believe the man got his reunion, and hoped he’d found peace after all. The thought of a good end broug

    20 min
  7. Episode 14: Isolation Five

    MAR 19

    Episode 14: Isolation Five

    In his dream, Arpaxos was in a cavernous, cold, and sterile room. He wasn’t alone. Two men in flowing lab coats could be seen, sitting opposite a child. The two leaned in, clutching their clipboards, and showing intense interest in their subject. The taller one looked nervous and frustrated, biting his thumbnail and glaring at the child from under wild and scowling eyebrows. The shorter, and younger, of the two appeared more focused and confident in his task, an effect only a little undermined by his overgrown crew cut, thin beard, and disheveled appearance. The setting was a clean room, a room within a room – double doors, raised floor, sealed and separated from a womb-like larger space by a tangle of umbilical cords, hoses, and ventilation tubes serving to mediate between the inner and the outer chamber. Through the glass, the surrounding edifice revealed details as he looked up and out from the scene at the center: a monumental stone enclosure whose perimeter was described by giant square columns supporting an ornately carved ceiling. Rich saffron-yellow beams of light streamed between the columns and through the larger temple-like space, and floating particles highlighted the rays of a late-afternoon sun. But inside the fluorescent and dust-free atmosphere of the interior room, there were only a few objects half-lit in the warmer cast. The temple space was ancient. The interior room was, Arpaxos could tell, very much in the present. The two men were animated in their interaction with the younger one, who did not move, and sat bolt upright. Something in each character’s bearing made Arpaxos believe that this dialog had been going on for days, or maybe for far longer. In his dream-confusion he wondered whether the interview belonged more to the greater, surrounding space, or to the smaller sterile box. The tableau in the center of it all paid no respect to any boundary – it belonged to them both: it was a staging of the Disputation of The Young Christ Among The Doctors, only these doctors’ costumes suggested that they were more concerned with infectious disease at the moment, than with discussions of the ancient law. Then they began to speak. The shorter one began. ‘Young talmid, you have answered many questions well. Your knowledge of these matters is ... is ...’ With a toss of his eyebrows, the tall nervous one said, ‘Impressive.’ ‘Impressive. ... Who did you say your father was?’ The youth spoke, without moving. ‘I’m adopted.’ At the sound of the voice, Arpaxos realized, with a shock, that the speaker was a girl. He knew that this girl would be about twelve, because he knew that it was his daughter Eva who had been taken from him two years before. His adopted daughter. His heart pounding in his chest, Arpa perceived that in this dream space he was seeing her exactly as she was in that moment, wherever she was. But where was she? And what were they talking about? ... He felt he was watching an ancient drama staged for the modern theater according to an unchecked avant-garde sensibility. ‘Well,’ said Crew-cut. (‘Well!’ chimed in Eyebrows, with a congested and non-committal grunt) ‘It has been three days since the end of the Passover feast ... my esteemed colleague and I have been discussing the arrival of the Messiah and in what month he should appear.’ The tall one released a cough, and in a tone that suggested the question had not adequately represented the relevant details of a discussion that was, in matter of fact, concerned with many irrelevant details, added, ‘Also in what year the Anointed will come.’ Crew-cut nodded and leaned into the question, ‘What do you think, child? Will the Messiah come in the month of Tishri or the month of Nisan?’ She was silent, and with a heartbreaking look of confusion she searched the corners of the room for answers, or for an escape. What her eyes settled on was the earthy beam of light that pierced the dusty atmosphere of the temple on the other side of the glass, and, in its purified form, illuminated her upturned face. She spoke, and it was Arpa’s turn to be confused. ‘Can the months or the days of the messiah be known ahead of that time? Days come and go. Their final meaning cannot be determined by their place on the calendar, nor months by their constellations, but time is given meaning by what is done to fill it. Should we not rather pay attention to the comings and goings of the people of God, to the works and words of God’s children? Isn’t this how we should look for the appearance of God’s Righteous One, who will be known not by the measure of stars and their trajectories, but by the measure of fruit in the balance?’ After of moment of pained silence, the teacher rebuked the student: ‘When you are older, child, you may be able to supply a wiser response!’ His colleague, who almost smiled, said, ‘I think that was a pretty wise response.’ The younger kept his eyes on the girl who, with some exasperation, provided the correct answer. ‘But if we must look for the month of God’s deliverance, we should look for it during Nisan, the time of the Passover, when God rescued our ancestors from slavery.’ Crew-cut recovered his composure, and said to his colleague, ‘A good answer, don’t you think, Doctor?’ ‘Yes. But I am not sure your question was answered willingly. Child, what do the teachers say about the year of the coming of the messiah?’ ‘Some teachers pick a year when the world is old enough. Yet, doesn’t the Prophet say that when the time is right, then the promise will be fulfilled? Does the age of the earth make the time right? Or is the time right when the hearts of the children are rain-soaked and ready for seed? Do we think that God is waiting for the old trees to grow tall enough ... so the redeemer may descend through the branches to the soft earth below?’ Eyebrows took his turn to rebuke her. ‘You might consider your answers with more care!’ And the other said, with a curious expression, ‘I thought that was a pretty well-considered answer.’ Then, she gave an answer calculated to satisfy: ‘But some teachers say that the Messiah will come when the world is 4,250 years old.’ ‘And when do the teachers say that the world will reach that age!?’ She again searched the spaces on the other side of the glass enclosure, and with a sigh, she spoke: ‘These teachers propose that only after 450 more years have passed will the world come of age.’ She faced her questioner. ‘Then the messiah should arrive; and in that year, one ought not pay a pound for a field though it cost a thousand.’ He recovered to form a satisfied smile. ‘A good answer, don’t you think, Doctor?’ ‘Hmm ...’ She straightened in her chair and extended an open hand: ‘But what if somewhere buried beneath the dust of that field was a treasure worth risking it all for? Wouldn’t you give anything to have it? ... If your plow turned up a fortune on Friday as the sun went down ... would you cry out, “Sabbath”, and walk away? ...’ And, shifting to face the younger, she said, ‘If the savior came before you, and announced the end before the stars lined up, would you say, “Please come back next month!”?’ Suddenly the walls of the inner room became opaque and chilly white (the ancient space receded), and the room also became colder. Though the space felt closer, more contained, Arpaxos felt suddenly more exposed. Light filled the space and became so bright as to make it nearly impossible for him to see. The last words of the ancient Eva came clearly, but sounded flat across the space: ‘You’re casting for your masterpiece, a golden child – straight from the mold, perfect and polished ... and your fingerprints will be all over her. She’ll be just like you, and you’ll be just like her: blind and deaf; the last good words of this good planet doomed to echo in her hollowness, and no one to hear, until there’s nothing left but silence.’ Then the two men were bickering quietly, and the look on her face reminded Arpa of the resolve she showed on the day that she was taken. No. it wasn’t the same: at this moment her face, flush in the fluorescent light, had no love in it. ‘What are you so afraid of?’ And Eva, as Arpa knew her, was back. ‘Sorry, Eva.’ Suddenly the younger of the two was slumping forward, and his hand went to his face. ‘Sorry. We ... um, we have to ...’ With a violent adjustment of his lab coat, the older spoke with severity: ‘You understand we have to be sure! This isn’t a game.’ And to his colleague, his lowered voice betrayed a greater fear, ‘Finish the damn questions.’ Crew-cut spoke, weakly. ‘Remember to provide a “true” or “false” response to each statement.’ ‘Why?!’ He chose to ignore the question he knew she was asking, and he read from the paper in front of him: ‘The, um, the items elicit a wide range of self-descriptions scored to give a quantitative measurement ... of an individual’s level of emotional adjustment and, um ...’, a cough from the tall one, ‘... attitude toward test taking.’ This got no visible response from her. His eyes now fixed on a spot on the floor between them, he stumbled, ‘We’ve been ... concerned about the level of ... of the significant increase in dysphoria we, um, we’re seeing ...’, here he glanced up at her, ‘... with you ... sometimes.’ Eyes down. ‘It’s a simple assessment, just to get a look inside ... as it were.’ And Eyebrows, with none of the obvious affection or care of his younger colleague, said, ‘This precocious rebellion, this resistance has to stop! This is not going to get easier, and whatever advantage you are pressing for, you will not win. The sooner you give it up and submit to the process the better. For all of us. Do you not understand what’s at stake here?’ Again she gave no response to this, and remained unmoved. Crew-cut

    19 min
  8. Episode 13: Isolation Four

    MAR 12

    Episode 13: Isolation Four

    He stumbled out of the church, down the marble walkway, and moved with increasing speed toward the top of the high cliff to the west. He arrived at the edge with no respect for the drop, repeatedly advancing and retreating, as if picking a fight with the open expanse. And the wind whipping up the face of the cliff and stirring the waters of the Mediterranean before him seemed to call his bluff, buffeting him, exposing his impotence, like a smirking schoolyard bully gently pushing open fingers against his chest, softly, repeatedly. He felt the buttresses of his fatalistic tower crumbling, revealing the folly of his belief that he was secure in his isolation, that nothing more could be required of him, that he would simply cease to exist in solitude, that there was nothing left to say. These facts he had long ago accepted and takens as a comfort. But no more. Alone! ... Not alone! Barking anger, he punched and swung at the vast openness, and bellowed a final agitation. ‘I’m dying! Let me be!’ This was as close to a prayer as the solitary figure could manage, before falling to his knees. The ground beneath him, damp from the sea air and a recent storm, surprised him with its softness, provoking in him a sense of wonder. It was open, breathing, like fresh-turned soil, and he thought in that moment that the earth had chosen to receive him in answer to his nihilistic prayer. He felt his arms lift, allowing a moment of gratitude (of worship?), as he reveled in the feeling of unexpected release. That is what it might have looked like from a little distance: like relief, like worship, until the figure disappeared from view. Because within one horrible instant, Arpa realized that he hadn’t lifted his arms at all, that they were only floating up beside him, while the rest of his body first sunk, then tipped forward, as the edge of the cliff quietly gave way. ... Not received by the earth after all, but shaken off. He flung his hands behind him like a mad bird only able to flap backwards, and flailed once. As he cartwheeled to meet the churning ground below the cliff top, his arms, first, were pinned to his sides, useless, as he launched down the slope; then, desperately he paddled to keep himself atop the wave of moving earth. The chaos of the slide allowed no further petition, became everything: he rode the fall, it seemed, until the world itself came apart, turned inside out, and a burning hell broke free of its prison to swallow the sea and mountain and him with it, to steal him and everything from the light. He lost consciousness. Arpaxos woke in the early morning darkness to the fading sensation that he was the last solid piece in the mouth of a chewing demon. His own mouth was packed full of dirt. His right arm was numb and cold, while he felt as though the rest of his body were on fire. He had the irrational sense that he was still sliding: it took a long time for him to feel certain that he had come to a stop, that he had not died, though this was only a small comfort. He did not know how long he’d been asleep. The left side of his face felt swollen and useless, but through his open right eye he could see a half-dome of stars overhead. In his new reality, he understood that the other half of the sky must also have been swallowed up by the earth demon; he did not, however, know why he himself had been spit out. There was no wind. He could hear the sound of water washing over tiny stones somewhere nearby. Lying there, a bitter feeling of defeat came upon him. It was like the feeling he’d had when news of the disease broke. Back then, it only felt like falling, like the whole planet had gone off a cliff for an epic plunge that had yet to end. Today’s sharp hurt surprised him by its unfairness. He had been alone and living in quiet resolve for months, almost wishing he could feel the pain, even to die. But now he had to reckon with the wrath that came quickly on the heels of other feelings. He couldn’t tolerate that such (relatively) simple humiliations still had power over him. The world was ending. He’d made every effort to get away from the prosaic follies of humankind to die alone in peace. Now he was tortured by the realization that he had not really gone far enough – the appearance of the priest had ended that fantasy. Nor, apparently, was he prepared for death. It frightened him, maybe for the first time. Something in the experience of being very nearly buried alive, maybe. Buried, unburied, and buried again, twisted into every shape recalled in plaster at Pompeii (but Arpa’s final shape had not yet been discovered). There was no feeling of release for him in the moment of death, no peace in it, just a child’s horror, which embarrassed him. Grief piled on top of grief with the final realization that he couldn’t pretend to welcome the end any more, as if he knew what it meant; nor did it appear that his opinions on the subject mattered in the slightest. He let out a small muffled whine, and his face scrunched around his mouth, wincing in protest against each muscle’s attempt at movement. His mouth began to work, automatically, to expel the dirt and pebbles that had collected there. His arms were of no use at the moment. He turned his head gently to his right. His tongue, which itself felt an icy-hot burn at the slightest movement, slowly began working the ball of earth around, while his jaw clenched involuntarily with each contraction of his facial muscles. He directed all of his willpower against the impulse to throw up; he was getting barely enough air through his nose as it was. As he accepted the fact that one of his teeth would be coming out too, he worked his tongue harder, crying out as exposed roots grated against the stone slurry being pushed out of his mouth. Finally it was free, and he resisted the urge to swallow gulps of air until he could work the dregs out. As the night sky gave way to a pale dawn, his situation slowly came into focus. He could now see the stony ledge he’d landed on, and that he was on the bank of a tiny stream that emanated from within a dark cleft in the surrounding wall. To see details in the looming cliff face awoke him to the fact of it again – and he chided his assumption that half the stars had been eaten; now he felt prepared to concede the likelihood that the missing sky was behind the cliff itself. Probably, he thought, wisely, a demon had not consumed any stars in its ravenous attack on Arpaxos. He tried to learn more. His right arm was submerged in the frigid water, which explained the numbness. He lifted it out, and carefully raised his head to look around. He could see the earthen chute by which the cliff had delivered him – more gently than he deserved – to this spot; a pile of soil to the left was peaked like sand at the bottom of a giant hourglass. He was trying to work out how he survived the fall, and how it was that the mound of dirt was not on top of him; he had no memory of moving himself from the base of the cliff, nor any clear memory of the fall itself. But he felt encouraged in this moment to respect the proverbial wisdom of forgetfulness. Finally, looking past his feet, he saw that the cleft in the wall enclosed a narrow, whitewashed archway formalizing an entrance to the dark space behind it. An uneven cross-shaped embrasure, like a keyhole, topped the passageway. It was a cave. A cave. Perfect. His Hero’s Journey was about to take a turn. He would descend into the darkness and confront ... his fears!, or himself!, or something, and he would learn the Valuable Lesson. Then he would be permitted to return ... to return .... His head lay back. He laughed quietly until the pain became too great, at which point the exhaustion and the trauma of the day, and all the years, overwhelmed his consciousness and he passed out once more. And he dreamed. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit echofuturetruth.substack.com

    12 min
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About

A serialized audio presentation of D.P. Maddalena's literary science fiction novel, new chapters weekly echofuturetruth.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    D.P. Maddalena
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © D.P. Maddalena
  • Show Website
    Echo Future Truth

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