The Sacred Era: A Novel (Parallel Futures)

by Aramaki Yoshio

  Why? Why did I kill her?

  Again and again, K returns to this question, as if to remind himself of what he’s done, before his memory of it becomes ever more faint, ever more obscure.

  The days pass without end.

  In the incessant darkness of Loulan, K gradually loses track of the difference between day and night. The black sun of Loulan rises and sets every thirteen hours—not too different from the rhythms of Earth—but it makes little difference to him. The air supposedly warms up during Loulan’s dark daytime hours. At least, that’s what the steward says, telling K that the black sun releases rays of heat invisible to those from Earth. He, however, can perceive these rays. K can only imagine how it is that the steward is able to detect such subtle changes in temperature, but perhaps it is because, as the Lord once mentioned, he too is a mechanical doll.

  Only twice each day—during the rising and setting of the black sun—does the color of Loulan’s sky see a dramatic transformation. From the veranda of his room, K has a view of this splendid sight they call the Loulan Aurora, when the emerald glow of the air is so bright that every so often the inverted image of the city reflects in the sky like a mirage. Other than these moments though, Loulan’s sky is constantly shrouded in a curtain of darkness, with an atmosphere so thick it is almost narcotic in its intoxicating quality. Is this what the Lord meant when he told K that Loulan was a sensual city? Is there something infernal, something unholy about the planet’s atmosphere?

  As long as you breathe this air, you cannot escape from Loulan. Again and again, the Lord idly repeats these words to K.

  K once tried to determine the truth hiding behind this mysterious, ageless Lord. But his will to do so has since faded away. Could this too be an effect of the unique atmosphere of Loulan?

  Yet deep in the recesses of K’s mind is a thought he simply cannot completely bury away, a suspicion that this Lord is none other than the enigmatic heretic Darko Dachilko. Mere happenstance planted the thought in his head when by accident he came across a pair of detached fingers—one left and one right—kept hidden away in a small case in the Lord’s parlor. At first glance, they appeared to be made of wax. But a closer inspection revealed that these were artificial fingers that incorporated a highly complex technical mechanism. Seeing this evidence of his suspicions gave K quite a shock.

  Could these be the sixth fingers of Darko Dachilko’s malformed hands?

  All of K’s instincts told him that these were indeed the legendary “Fingers of Light.”

  8

  K can always sense Amalia’s approach. The mechanical sounds of her gears turning always give her away. The mechanical doll places a bowl of fruit from the Tree of Enlightenment in front of K. Then she just stands there in silence, awaiting his next instructions for her.

  “Will the Lord be joining us?”

  “The Lord is in his laboratory.”

  “What is he doing? The usual thing?”

  “Yes. The usual thing,” Amalia repeats after K.

  More sophisticated conversations exceed her abilities, which amount to little more than perfunctory answers to K’s questions. Otherwise, she does not speak at all. Nonetheless, there is something unnerving about the authentic, all-too-human quality of her voice.

  Day after day, Amalia goes about her business wearing unnecessarily risqué outfits. This time, all she wears as she serves dinner is an apron over her naked body, displaying the exceptional simulation of skin that covers her mechanisms. Although appearing rather tough at first glance, a single touch of her skin is all it takes to reveal a suppleness like that of rubber.

  K recalls that the Lord told him once that he constructed Amalia’s skin out of some kind of rubber that can only be obtained and refined on Loulan. He also explained the mechanics of how she operated, although K barely understood any of it. Sure, he could grasp the general structure of her anatomy, but the technology that breathed life into her, that part he could not grasp at all.

  K was telling the Lord about the perfect proportions of her body that day.

  “She’s like a goddess in her beauty. Just perfect.”

  The Lord seemed quite pleased at hearing this.

  “You really think so?”

  “Yes. I was wondering though—Amalia’s body was based off a real person, right?”

  The Lord blinked.

  “No, not at all. She was based on a generic model,” he said.

  But K caught a momentary glimpse of hesitation in the Lord, just enough to expose his lie. With probing eyes, he watched for the Lord’s expression as he spoke.

  “There’s this black spot under Amalia’s left breast.”

  “What about it?”

  “There’s also a birthmark inside her left thigh.”

  “Your point?”

  “If you made the mechanical doll without basing it off a human, why bother to put the dark spot and the birthmark on her? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Well, there’s no reason in particular, really.”

  Their conversation ended there. But K was confident that his suspicions were on the mark.

  Later that night, as K holds Amalia’s body in bed, these lingering suspicions circle his thoughts, making it difficult for him to find any sleep. He is now almost certain of it. This nameless Lord was none other than the mysterious heretic, none other than Darko Dachilko himself. He has but one piece of evidence, the set of left and right fingers that he found hidden in a case. Yet there is no other explanation that makes sense. These had to be Darko Dachilko’s infamous sixth fingers, his so-called miraculous shining fingers.

  Could Amalia’s model be the girl from that book?

  Of course, without any conclusive proof, all of this amounts to little more than K’s suppositions.

  What was her name again? Barbara. That’s right. The object of Darko Dachilko’s illicit affections. The daughter of a wealthy family.

  Such are the thoughts that distract K as he has fumbling sex with the splayed-out artificial body of Amalia.

  Strange . . .

  A vague memory that somewhere, a long time ago, he made love with someone like this before.

  “Barbara,” K whispers to the mechanical doll. “Barbara, what were you up to with the master after the daily gathering at The Orchard?”

  “Nothing’s ever happened with him, Gilgeas,” says Amalia. “Barbara is innocent.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “It’s not a lie, Gilgeas. Please believe Barbara.”

  “Liar!”

  “No, stop it, Gilgeas!”

  It all suddenly comes back to K. This girl, this Barbara, she should have been dead for over seven hundred years now. Yet he knows her. He knows her very well indeed. And he burns with white-hot jealousy over Darko Dachilko. The shock of memory overwhelms him.

  K flees from the castle, losing himself in the winding, topsy-turvy streets of the city. He wanders without knowing where he’s going. By the time he comes to his senses, he finds himself next to the port where the Hades was anchored, in an area where several stone structures—warehouses, most likely—quietly line up in neat rows, like headstones in a graveyard.

  K ends up in a dimly lit corner inside some shabby-looking bar with only a few customers inside. A man so skinny he may as well have been a shadow approaches K’s table, asking for his order.

  “Pick something for me,” K says, already too exhausted to think.

  “Might an Amber Drink be your pleasure?”

  “What kind of drink is that?”

  “A special drink of Loulan. Sir, I guarantee you that this drink will help you forget all your worries about the world.”

  “Fine. Let’s try it then.”

  The waiter leaves with a nod. Two girls then approach K, intent on seducing him. But K rejects them without a thought. Prostitutes, no doubt. Their overly revealing clothing tells him that much.

  A somber atmosphere pervades the interior of the bar. This is no help at all. If anything,
it’s only making K ever-more despondent. Nothing makes sense to him anymore.

  How do I know this girl named Barbara? Why did I mistake that mechanical doll for her? Why did I try to strangle her?

  There is only one answer. K knows this. And yet he refuses to acknowledge its truth.

  Feeling as if his heart has been hollowed out, there is little K can do now. He looks around the bar. Various tables are scattered about, shadowy silhouettes of customers clinging close to them like dark specks of dirt. Twisted bottles have been set before many of them. Heated by a small burner at the base of the container, the liquid inside these bottles evaporates into a purple gas that they inhale through a tube. The flames of the burners flicker like lights inlaid onto an altar, lighting up their pallid faces as they suck the gas out of the tubes. Not a single one of them says a word, as if they were all already dead.

  K’s Amber Drink is equally strange. Several small brown bottles, each one containing a gold-colored metallic substance, are lined up in a row. The flame of a burner turns the liquid to vapor, only for it to cool down as it passes through a complex set of twisting tubes, until it slowly drips into a small, clear glass, accumulating into a drink.

  At the server’s suggestion, K takes a sip, enjoying the strong, stimulating flavor.

  Is this some kind of chemistry lab experiment?

  Each one of the bottles has a screw. Twisting these adjusts the mix ratios, changing both the color and flavor of the drink. K fiddles with the apparatus for a while, until a young man close to K’s age seats himself in front of him.

  “You’re not doing it right. Here, let me show you.”

  The young man moves next to K to adjust the settings with nimble and practiced fingers.

  The color of the liquid changes.

  “See, isn’t that color more striking?”

  The liquid flows much more steadily as well.

  “Yup. This looks good.”

  Although the young man is done with his fiddling, he does not leave his spot next to K.

  “If I may be so forward, might I ask you where you are from?”

  Perhaps he was just looking for an excuse to talk to K from the start?

  “I’m from Igitur,” K answers.

  “So you are from the capital on Earth. Just as I thought,” the young man says as he eyes the medal pinned to K’s chest. “Oh, are you a member of the Sacred Service?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am. And you?”

  The young man tells K that he also came to Loulan from Earth a long time ago.

  “So, what brings you here?”

  More questions for K.

  “Just following my orders. I’ve been sent to Planet Bosch.” K pauses briefly, as if deciding whether to continue. “I’m actually waiting for the Emissary to return and take me there.”

  “Oh, the Emissary, eh.”

  A hint of sarcasm hides in the young man’s voice. His eyes fix themselves on K’s face, studying him as he continues to speak.

  “If you’re in the Sacred Service, that means you should have read the Southern Scriptures, right?”

  “Yes, I have. What’s on your mind?”

  “By any chance, would you mind listening to a theory of mine?”

  His request catches K by surprise. Not knowing what else to say, he agrees.

  “Sure, I guess I could do that.”

  K locks his gaze on his counterpart’s eyes. Dark beyond description, they somehow remind him of his old friend Hoffman’s eyes.

  “So,” K says. “Tell me about this idea of yours.”

  The young man speaks slowly, keeping his voice low, making sure to get the words just right.

  “The thing is, it’s about the ‘Book of the Seed,’ you see.”

  As K listens to the young man, it dawns on him that this man must have studied the subject quite closely. K has already read the infamous “Book of the Seed” of the Southern Scriptures many times before coming to Loulan, yet much of it still perplexes him. Perhaps it is precisely because of his own inability to fully understand the proper interpretation of many sections of the book that he finds the young man’s ideas rather compelling indeed.

  According to this young man, the concept of transcription is what’s at the heart of the “Book of the Seed.”

  “So, something like reproduction, then?”

  “That’s right. The notion of the copy. Photographs and prints constitute the theoretical frame of the text, don’t you think?”

  “That makes sense. Please, do continue,” K urges the young man.

  The young man continues in his usual whisper.

  “The truth is that I once dabbled in the fundamentals of Divine Genetics a long time ago, despite knowing it was against the law. From what I learned, the notion of the copy can also explain the principle of the heredity of living things. In other words, all the information parents have is embedded into what are called genes, and not unlike the relationship between the matrix and the type itself in movable-type presses, a series of copies of this information can be made. The same thing can be said about us humans. If we were to ask what our ancestors were, the answer would be the early primates, with we humans evolving from them. However—”

  K interrupts the young man’s rambling.

  “Sure. You’re talking about the theory of evolution, correct? If I recall correctly, it was a man named Darwin who formulated this theory. His followers subsequently popularized the doctrine, and it became a foundational idea organizing much of the scientific knowledge of the Twilight Era.”

  “And yet, the field of Divine Genetics flatly rejects the theory of evolution.”

  K nods.

  “Indeed. Current scholarship would have us believe in the notion that human beings descended from God.”

  “That’s right. Not surprisingly, the mission of Divine Genetics was to produce the research explaining the genetic mechanism through which human beings descended from divine incarnations. They used the example of wear and tear of movable-type presses to articulate the phenomenon of gene regression. So, the rough mechanism was already understood, but the most crucial element—concrete evidence that divine incarnations walked our Earth—still couldn’t be found.”

  The man pauses to catch his breath.

  Now, K too feels his mind stirring.

  “Right,” K says. “You’re exactly right. And this is why there’s so much significance placed on the discovery of Planet Bosch.”

  For some reason, K recalls the conversation he once had with someone at the cafeteria of the Papal Court.

  His interest piqued, the young man begins speaking louder.

  “It must be. But what exactly is the connection between this and the theory of evolution?”

  This was what K himself wants to know. He listens as the young man speaks for a long time in hushed tones. But whether it’s simply his own exhaustion, or the intoxicating effects of the Amber Drink beginning to hit him, K doesn’t quite catch several details of the young man’s words. Nonetheless, he manages to grasp the central point he wishes to assert. He believes that Planet Bosch is most certainly an exact copy of the images from Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights.

  “But just who is it who . . .”

  “I don’t know. What I’m sure of, though, is that whoever had the power to make such a thing possible cannot be a mere mortal.”

  “You mean he’s some kind of divine incarnation?”

  “Probably. I mean, reproducing himself to create the human, or making Planet Bosch out of The Garden of Earthly Delights, you would have to be a being who possesses the highest levels of intelligence to be able to do that.”

  “But Hieronymus Bosch was an artist who lived during the Twilight Era,” K says.

  “Yes, I know. That’s why I believe that these divine incarnations must have secretly mingled among human beings on Earth.”

  Just this once, the young man appears quite confident in his statement.

  Soon after his conversation, K l
eaves the bar. With the young man’s bold theory still fresh in his mind, K ascends the hill back to the castle, even as the rickshaw he rides makes its way down the slope.

  Could Loulan also have been copied from something, just like Planet Bosch?

  The memory of another strange painting prompts this thought in K. It depicts exactly this scene before him now, a path ending up on top even as it continuously goes downhill. The name of the man who made this strange painting was M. C. Escher, also an artist from the Twilight Era.

  This thought suddenly unsettles K. He raises the roof of the rickshaw, revealing a similarly unsettled darkness in Loulan’s sky. Once again, the black rift slicing across the sky draws in his wandering soul.

  Space Clock

  1

  K slowly grows accustomed to the vague darkness of Loulan. With each passing day, the darkness begins to feel familiar, almost like an old friend, even as Loulan’s ceaseless darkness conspires with his own dark thoughts. They fuse together into one, then divide, growing into a mass of darkness nestled deep within him. Resigned to a listlessness that is all too sweet, he can only look on, unable to stop the illicit union between the darkness outside and the darkness inside him.

  Yet another day in Loulan idly comes and goes, with nothing for K to do but wait for the appearance of the ship known as the Emissary, whose return from beyond is impossible to foresee.

  Until one day, during another of Loulan’s black sunsets, something happens.

  K has made a daily habit of viewing the Loulan Aurora from the terrace of the castle. Twice a day—in the morning and in the evening—he waits for its appearance while reclining against the stone railings. Twice a day, the glorious colors suddenly immerse the sky, only to just as quickly fade away, haunting the sky with the radiance of emerald, with an occasional hint of sullen purple.

  K watches as the colors light up the city, projecting its reflection onto the dark sky.

  As always, K loses himself in utter fascination at the exceptional beauty of the ever-shifting aurora on this day.