The Starry Wisdom

by D. M. Mitchell

  At first, none of us spoke. It was a scene of such enormity and horror that words were rendered meaningless.

  It took a matter of some minutes, perhaps, for the realisation to sink in: this was not the aftermath of some fatal pestilence, but a deliberately orchestrated mass-suicide. The ritual dimensions of the act were inescapable, the trappings of mystical arcana pre-eminent and ubiquitous.

  Piece by piece, gripped by the kind of morbid fascination that compels one to return again and again to pick at an unhealing scab, we began to reconstruct the events that had culminated in this atrocity.

  We counted sixty-five bodies in all; twenty-three initially unaccounted for. Each had been systematically laid out in its own, individual, hermetically-sealed, plexi-glass cocoon, resembling the prototypical stasis pods designed to maintain cosmonauts in suspended animation, a process widely believed at the time to hold the key to manned deep-space exploration. The pods were arranged in tiers, starting at ground level and climbing the curved walls of the observatory. Considering the condition of the bodies inside – skin blackened, bellies vastly bloated with the pungent gases of decomposition – I was struck by the irresistible image of a gigantic insect colony’s incubation chamber. The ravages of corruption conspired to contrive the putridly forceful illusion of an emergent, pupal metamorphosis.

  Perversely, though, in spite of the frankly unfathomable horror of what we were seeing – the sight of so many rotting corpses, obviously weeks old – there was something else all the more alarming by virtue of the fact that it was apparently inexplicable. Each of the bodies – without exception – was fitted with what appeared to be something resembling a Virtual Reality headset: hologramatic, laser-optic modules stuck fast in the slick mire of decaying eyeballs; withered genitalia and key neural clusters studded with electrodes like glutted leaches. The implication was as obvious as it was baffling: the Copernicus observatory staff were participating en masse in a Virtual Reality scenario at the moment of their deaths. To what end? At this point I did not care to speculate.

  And then, of course, there was the most macabre and, to my mind, telling aspect of the entire conundrum. The arcana.

  Everywhere one looked there were the timeless symbols of mystical devotions. Many were immediately recognisable: the ankh, Celtic cross, pentagram, swastika.

  But there were many – arabesque hieroglyphs, what appeared to be quasi-mystical, pseudo-scientific equations scrawled in the incomprehensible lexicon of an unknown numerological system – that defied recognition or understanding. It came as no surprise that much of the daubing had been done in blood – animal or human, it was too early to tell.

  As a scientist I could not shake the feeling that there was something ... obscene in the sight of this: the cool disciplines and disinterested calibrations of pure, logical research; the quantative meditations of prosaic, cybernetic intelligences; succumbing to the irrational malaise, the ritual barbarity, of resurgent primal mysticism. It was like watching, helplessly, as the primordial jungle reclaimed some pristine metropolis, the cradle of technology and civilisation. The hungry darkness.

  I could not tolerate it. There was a solution to this enigma, and I was determined to find it.

  Over the following weeks I immersed myself in Copernicus’ extensive library of computer-based data. In the history of the project and that of its founder, Reinhardt Stahl. And, ultimately, the madness which had claimed him.

  Reinhardt Stahl had been at once the most celebrated and notorious enfant terrible of the scientific community in recent years. It had been his quantum leap in the field of bio-molecular intelligence that had been directly responsible for the first self-replicating computers and the development of synthetic enzymes capable of storing, processing and interpreting data in such a way as would eventually consign silicon chips to the junk-heap of obsolescence. Needless to say, the revenue generated by the patents, of which he retained sole copyright, made him stratospherically wealthy.

  That Stahl should choose to divert his resources into the field of radio astronomy may have seemed unorthodox, but hardly surprising. His interests were as varied as his talents were prodigious. We had, in fact, studied together many years earlier and, for a time, had become close friends.

  We had much in common, sharing not only a fervent passion for the pioneering spirit that characterised the new breakthroughs in quantum physics; chaos and anti-chaos dynamics; the exciting potential of artificial intelligence; but also for more esoteric matters: the occult and all its associated trappings. Stahl, I recall, was particularly interested in the arcane symbolism of prehistoric pagan cults, the anarchic principles and ritual practise of chaos magic.

  Stahl’s wealth and influence was such that he soon became the director of the ill-fated SETI III project.

  Originally founded in the 1970s, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) had largely been established to satisfy what was, in effect, a millennial yearning: the need to reach out and commune with our supposed cosmic brethren, a plea for help, a subconscious bid for salvation. The fact that subsequent years saw the project’s radio telescopes detect nothing more exciting than the deceptively regular transmissions emitted by pulsar stars and the endless dissonance of natural radio static – echoes of the Primal event reverberating around the galaxies – ensured that both public and serious interest quickly evaporated.

  In its third and final incarnation SETI III occupied two major radio telescope observatories: one high in the hills of southern California, the second in the arid wastes of the central Australian outback. Both facilities, operating under the personal supervision of Stahl and his hand-picked team of technicians, were fully equipped with the most highly-evolved prototypes developed from his original neural processors. These bio-molecular computers added a new, conceptual dimension to the interpretation of the data received. And it was these very interpretations – and Stahl’s own controversial conclusions – that precipitated an irreparable schism between not only himself and many of his SETI III collaborators, but with the greater scientific community as a whole. The ensuing controversy resulted in the abandonment of the SETI III project; Stahl’s ostracism.

  And, inevitably, the foundation of Copernicus; Stahl’s subsequent madness; and the tragic, horrific denouement of the entire episode.

  And so it was, surrounded by the trappings of an insane obsession, that I uncovered the key to the Copernicus atrocity.

  Stahl’s private quarters – the literal nerve centre of the establishment – resembled the inner-sanctum of some post-technological magus. The place was crammed with the artefacts and fetishes of the most obscure paganistic cults.

  Most significant of these were two monstrous statues sculpted in what appeared to be soapstone, dirgey grey-green, veined black like Connemara marble. What they depicted were demonic grotesqueries whose physiognomies combined such diverse characteristics as those of octopod, simian and saurian evolutionary models. Ragged bat-wings enfolded their hunched shoulders like tattered capes, apparently too frail to have afforded these corpulent behemoths the faculty of flight. The faces – or what passed for them – were especially hideous: many mouths equipped with lethal prongs and spikes for teeth; bulging composite eyes arranged in numerous clusters; the bulbous malignancies of their vast crania framed by tangled manes of medusan tentacles and tenebrous ganglia.

  Sifting through Stahl’s extensive computer files, I discovered that these monsters had apparently been the totems of a prehistoric pre-Polynesian cult, representing omnipotent sea-gods of allegedly extraterrestrial origin.

  These particular specimens had been blasted out of the Antarctic permafrost during a secretive expedition Stahl had undertaken several years previously. According to his records, they were in excess of 500,000 years old.

  The sea. Again. Always the sea.

  By now, after some weeks of ceaseless investigation, I was succumbing to an unshakeable fugue of depression. Picking apart the minutiae of Stahl’s painstakingly chronic
led madness was bad enough in itself. But the constant proximity of the ocean and its pungent reek of brine – its chilling resonance with the dark secrets I was unearthing – fuelled my own morbid aversion until it positively festered.

  And then there was the pervasive, oppressive presence of death: the bleak charnel house of the central observatory.

  And one thing more... – It had been quite by accident that we had stumbled upon the sealed compartments in the observatory’s lower levels, buried deep in the volcanic rock of the island itself.

  Upon discovering the initial corpses, twenty-three bodies had been unaccountably absent. This was where we found them.

  At first, it seemed as though the stories of epidemic may have been true, after all. The bodies were quite badly decomposed, but even the ravages of putrefaction could not fully disguise the fact that they had been somehow ... changed. The signs of anatomical mutation were unmistakeable.

  Post mortem examination of the bodies proved inconclusive in determining the cause of these aberrations.

  However, one thing was absolutely clear. The transformations had been occurring on the most fundamental level: a non-human element had been introduced, precipitating an irreversible genetic deviation.

  Entire organs had atrophied. Correspondingly, new systems, it seemed, had spontaneously evolved; there was no evidence of surgery.

  I was at a loss to explain the ghastly phenomenon.

  But Ehrlicson commented that the mutations – particularly those of the pulmonary and cardio-vascular systems – suggested an amphibious adaptation. What-ever the truth, one thing was obvious: the process had killed them. And not only that. Considering what I was beginning to understand of Stahl’s warped theories – his fascination with the cult of the sea-gods – the implications were at once startling and grotesque...

  All the pieces were finally falling together: the entire canon of Reinhardt Stahl’s crazed and fatal ethos.

  It all began when Stahl was coordinator of the ill-fated SETI III Project. His team intercepted a series of transmissions emanating from what had been largely acknowledged as one of the most ancient quadrants of the known universe, light years beyond the spiral arm of our own galaxy. Conventional analysis recognised these as possibly interesting but fairly run-of-the-mill pulsar emissions.

  But Stahl disagreed.

  He maintained that his advanced processors had constructed a holographic model of the star’s projected behaviour and structure that demonstrated significant anomalies inconsistent with that of a conventional pulsar.

  He claimed that the transmissions actually emanated from a secondary source: a conglomeration of dark matter, light years wide and immeasurably dense, which he dubbed “Maximus Prime”. This galactic enigma exerted a tremendous gravitational force which effectively bent the pulsar’s orbit into an ellipse. The practical result of this was to maximise the intensity of the transmissions at the star’s broadest vector; the Maximus Prime transmissions were, he claimed, being literally bounced off its companion pulsar – much in the manner of our own, earth-orbiting, tele-communications satellites. This meant that the signals were directly targeting a specific stellar region: the quadrant that contains our galaxy.

  As for the transmissions themselves, Stahl maintained that they occupied frequencies beyond conventional radio and microwave spectrums. These unknown frequencies – black static was the term he coined – held the key to understanding the true nature of the transmissions. And, ultimately, to deciphering them. That the signals derived from a guiding intelligence he was in absolutely no doubt.

  It was pure idiocy, he declared, to expect a truly alien intelligence to communicate in the banal tic-tac-toeisms of repetitive binary sequences; arrogant in the extreme to assume any such transmissions were intended for our ears.

  If, indeed, for ears at all.

  The seeds of insanity, it was all too plain to see, had fallen upon fertile soil.

  The culmination of his fanciful delusions was achieved after years of isolation and fevered research at the helm of Copernicus. And with it his crescent into the wilder excesses of mysticism.

  The Ultrasphere and Quantaplex represented the pinnacles of his pseudo-scientific iconography, the lynch-pins upon which hinged the irrational symbiosis of logic and superstition.

  Stahl characterised his hypothetical model of the conceptual universe in the form of the Ultrasphere. Its curvature, he postulated, represented the synergetic bond of matter and energy; within its circum-ference, diameter and area would be accommodated the infinite concentric possibilities of temporal relativity. In other words, it was a model of Time.

  The Quantaplex, by way of contrast, hypothesised the ultimate expression of spatial potentialities: a polyhedron whose complex geometry would occupy the anti-Euclidean planes of alternate dimensions as well as our own, encompassing the sub-atomic architecture of nuclei and the kaleidoscopic anatomies of galaxies. It would, Stahl asserted, be the ultimate computer. Its multifarious angles, the ceaseless shifting and tectonic realignments of its infinite facets, would facilitate direct interface with – and conscious manipulation of – the Ultrasphere.

  Here would be realised the apothetical goals of science and the occult: matter, energy, thought indivisible.

  Dominion over time and space. The final ascent to godhood.

  I would have to admit being bewildered by the sheer breadth of Stahl’s delusions of divine grandeur. But there was worse yet to come.

  Stahl resorted unashamedly to the occult for corroboration of his wild theories. It began with a simple diagram; allegedly a description of the orbit of Sirius B and its companion star, Sirius), as demonstrated by the “primitive” Dogon tribe of North Africa to Western anthropologists in the 193Os. It had been part of their mythology for millennia. Modern astronomy did not discover it until 1926; it was not photographed until 1970.

  According to Dogon tradition, this – and a good deal more astronomical knowledge – was passed on to their ancestors by creatures they call the Nommo: an amphibious race of extraterrestrial origin responsible for the introduction of civilisation. Stahl drew parallels between this legend and Babylonian descriptions of the Annedoti (“Repulsive Ones”), ocean-dwelling deities from the skies, also credited with imparting the secrets of science and the arts to mankind. And, inevitably, the barbaric cult of the prehistoric sea-gods with which he had become obsessed.

  Stahl disputed the popular interpretation of the Dogon model. He was convinced that it did not represent the Sirius system, but that it was, in fact, an illustration of Maximus Prime and its companion pulsar. He further identified its key components of curve and angle as having provided the basis for all the major occult symbols: the ankh, celtic cross, pentagram, swastika. According to him they encoded the funda-mental equation: time curves/space angles. He perceived them as arcane illustrations of the seamless continuum of infinity, its symbiotic relationship with solid geometry – anti-geometry – and their inherent potential for spatial and temporal manipulation.

  His explanation for the recurrence – the irresistible appeal and subconscious resonance – of such symbols down through the ages was simple: primal memory. They were imperfect recollections, dredged from the mass-psyche, of the iconic symbols of an ancient, non-human superscience in which technology and the occult co-existed in harmony...

  – The Ultrasphere and Quantaplex.

  The basic core of Stahl’s risible mythos was as follows:

  – Countless millions of years ago there existed a race of beings in a galaxy light years beyond our own.

  Hyperbreed, he called them, although he acknowledged ancient texts which referred to them variously as the Faceless, the Nameless, the Undying. So advanced were both their occult and technological sciences that they had gained some control over the forces of time and space.

  Eventually they came to colonise the earth, the most remote outpost of their galactic empire.

  As previously suggested, the Hyperbreed’s ultimate goal
had been to achieve total mastery of the universe on a fundamental, quantum level. And they almost succeeded.

  They devoted millenia to the construction of the Quantaplex: planets, suns, entire constellations forming an integral part of its matrix. But something went wrong.

  On the eve of its completion the Hyperbreed were overtaken by some nameless, unknown catastrophe of devastating proportions that flung the Quantaplex into disarray. Their civilisation was decimated; the survivors imprisoned on an alternate plane of fifth dimensional anti-geometry inaccessible to our universe...

  – Except, that is, via the collapsed heart of the Quantaplex: the desolate, pan-dimensional threshold of dense dark matter Stahl had called Maximus Prime, its astronomical location betrayed by the elliptical orbit of its companion pulsar.

  However, whilst the galactic Hyperbreed were either exterminated or imprisoned by the destruction of the Quantaplex, their earthbound counterparts were condemned to terrestrial exile.

  The cosmic disaster unwittingly precipitated by their quantum manipulations resulted in all manner of global cataclysms, rendering the planet – or its surface, at least – inhospitable to their habitation. This was the time of the mass-extinction of the dinosaurs; geological upheavals; oceans rocked from their beds; volcanic activity of apocalyptic proportions.

  And so the earthbound Hyperbreed, descendants of an amphibious lineage, sought refuge in the seas. The process of evolutionary degeneration, once set in motion, was irreversible. As the millennia rolled by, the Hyperbreed – once gods – became monsters... All, that is, but in the eyes of the first species of humans and proto-humans.

  Stahl described at length a prehistoric scenario wherein the degraded survivors of the Hyperbreed were worshipped by an ocean-going, pre-Polynesian tribe who, he claimed, practised all sorts of vile, sacrificial rituals and even interbred, producing a hybrid species of humanoid amphibians. The racial subconscious still harboured memories of these beings, giving rise to myths of sea-monsters the world over. Of behemoth and leviathan.