18

The day that Cain and Abel would visit the library came not too long after the torrential downpour. Once the rain began to clear and the streets’ water level receded to about average levels. The sun returned to the sky and the clouds began to part. It wasn’t a particularly warm day—the spring was still used to becoming summer. It didn’t bother Abel much, he loved being outside any chance he could get. It didn’t cease Cain’s complaining on their journey, however. The two brothers lived half a mile from the library on the west end of Salem. It wasn’t particularly rare that inquisitive kids would find themselves magnetized toward the library from their homes—whether they walked, biked, or even rode the bus. Salem was a town of independence. Cain would always walk beside his brother—Abel always took offense if he had started to push him first, so Abel would had begun the first stretch of their journey rolling himself along the sidewalk—albeit, at a much slower pace than Cain’s regular walking speed. It wasn’t that he couldn’t go faster—he didn’t want to. He loved looking up at the trees that lined the sidewalk. They engrossed him. They would reach the library in time, Cain would be the first one to get a good look at the building as they approached. Once inside they could feel the air conditioning and each relaxed a little more.

"What section are we going to check out?" Abel looked over to Cain who had just pressed the button to the elevator. He looked down to Abel with a smirk. "It’s time I show you what I’ve been reading when I come down here."

They stand next to an older woman with two books of her own under her arm. She looked down toward Abel and shook her head, thinking that nobody else could see her motion. Poor boy, the look said plainly. The elevator opened and the woman dashed out to continue her day without the thought of a boy in a wheelchair. Abel chuckled as they made their way out toward the third floor.

"Sick sense of humor man," Cain said.

"I can't help it. Older women are the best. They always get that "Oh that poor boy" look on and it’s like their minds turn off as they think how to approach the situation."

"Devious man."

"Devious? Hardly, I didn’t do anything."

"No, but you saw an opportunity, and that’s exactly the thing that I’ve been reading about."

"Could you just tell me already and stop being vague?" Abel asked as they move their way past the rows of adult fiction.

"One moment..." Cain said, pushing open a door that led to a deeper section of the second floor.

A girl a few years older than either of them brushed past, avoiding their gaze. "Not too many other dudes here, is there?" Abel asked.

"Think of it like fishing. Different kinds of fish come out during different seasons, times of day, correct?"

"Well, yeah."

"Same concept. It’s spring, most guys around here don’t want to be cramped up in a stuffy old place sitting still for hours."

"Huh, you’d think at least some would come out if they knew about the boy to girl ratio."

"You’re sounding a bit like Dad, you know that?"

"Well, I mean I can afford to just a little bit. I mean, even you met Sophie here."

"Yeah, but we’re not here to pick up girls, dude. We’re here on a mission."

"Would be great if I knew what this mission was."

Cain made his way to the very back of a larger room, scanning across the different lined bookshelves. They were so deep into the innards that they were in what Cain would call the Undesirable Section. This was a whole sort of books that were taken out so infrequently that they hadn’t bothered to filter them in with the other—more commonly read books. It was the one thing that Cain wished he could change about the Salem Public Library, but it wasn’t like he could force people to read the books. There were too many of them to even count. However, it did make it so that he could read them whenever he wanted to, guaranteed.

The went to the far end of the Undesirables and grabbed a thick black book out. Gravity almost took it to the ground, but he swings it back upright and places his other hand under to keep it upright. Cain carries it over to the desk where Abel had parked himself. There were two other people scouring the Undesirables for new reads, Cain put them out of his mind.

"This...is the Eye of Timaeus." He lets the book fall flat on the desk, catching the attention of the other two vultures before they return to their own work, shaking their heads. "This here is the good word if I’ve heard any."

"You make it seem like it’s the next Bible," Abel said, curiously studying the outside of the text.

It had certainly looked the part of some ancient forgone tome. Black blinding embossed with thick letters. He hadn’t thought such a thing would be used for reading at first—maybe bludgeoning someone to death with how much it looked like it weighed.

"You wanted to know why God does the things he does? Bible won’t tell you that. It’ll only tell you how it’s good even if you think it’s absolute shit," Cain said, making the effort to poke Abel’s legs as he said so. "This here’s your answer."

"What’s in it...? I honestly don’t think I could read even a fifth of that without dying of boredom," Abel said.

"This is by some old philosopher named Timaeus. He wrote his life’s encounters with God and he thought the same exact things you were talking about the other day. It flashed in my mind as you said them."

"Okay...well, that’s still way too much to read in one day. That’s crazy."

"Dude, I’m definitely not sitting here all day watching you stare at a book for three hours. No, I’ve got a dinner date with Soph later. I’m saying you’re going to be the very first person to check out the Eye of Timaeus in like...well, forever. Here, you could just sit it on your lap like this and..." He dropped the book into Abel’s lap, his left leg bobbed a little from the recoil. "...There. We’ll go sign it out with my card and we could head home. I don’t want to spoil any more than I’ve already said. You don’t have to read the whole thing, but once you start it I swear you won’t be able to leave it unfinished." Cain puts his hands in his pockets, looking down at the book.

"So, you read this whole thing?" Abel asked.

"Yes. It didn’t catch my interest at first, it’s a bit hard to get into, but I know you’re a smart kid, hell, probably smarter than I am. You’ll probably blaze right through it."

"And this will help?"

Cain looked away from the book into his brother’s face. "I felt like you did...like absolutely nothing was going right here. Like we were fucked from the second we were born, but nobody wanted to step away from pretending that everything was okay. That there," he nodded to the book, "That gave me some perspective."

"And how did you find this out? I’m sure you weren’t just choosing to randomly stroll through the Undesirables?" Abel asked.

Cain grins, "Soph, of course. I told you about how we first met. She was the only person I’d seen at the time actually enter here with something in her eyes. She was searching for something. Curiosity’s my weakness, so I just had to know what she was looking for."

"And it was this book?"

"The very same. I couldn’t tell you what made her look for it, that I’ll see if I could ask when I see her later, but I’m sure she won’t remember. It was two years ago that she was looking for it."

"Right," Abel said, looking back up to Cain. "Well, I’ll take a look at it, but no promises it won’t land in the trash could if it’s too boring."

"I’ll take that bet."

19

The boys went home a little after noon. They spent more time walking to and from than they had actually spent at the library. This was of course the norm for Cain. He typically knew what he wanted and where to find it, the bulk of his time then became reading the actual book. This time, however, he would not be the one reading. The boys separated as they entered their home.

Cain greeted their father who was sitting in the family room reading the paper after his long day of work. He celebrated his days off as he worked long stretches away from home. During the front half of the week on the night shift he would be out of the house writing up reports based on the findings of his team. Their father worked as a marine biologist for the Genros Foundation, a Japanese based firm that was established long before even their father was a kid, but only more recently have they branched out as an international organization. They specialized in technology development, but have branches in medical, automotive and even biological researching. Their father was hired straight out of college after sharing a room with one of the now-heads of the marine research branch in his senior year. The man’s name was Wayne Banner and was very generous on hiring their father straight out of college. Their father always strived to work hard to earn his position, but the truth of the matter was that Banner needed feet on the ground

His days off kept him home and busy always working to update and upgrade bits and pieces of their home. He'd start a project one day to leave it sitting until the very last moment before he would return for work. This week's assignment was fine-tuning the sink, but he would sit in his chair until the paper was finished, and that would be that. Cain moved past his father with a nod of his head and moved through the kitchen toward the pantry. There he found his mother ironing a blue dress shirt. He'd asked her if she could help him out with his clothes for his date later with Sophie.

They'd been going out for two years, but he still felt the nerves that he had approaching her for the very first time. He knew that they had clicked when he approached her in the library that very first day, but there was something very...intimidating about her. She always wore her hair down, that much he knew now because she thought it was always such a pain to wear it up all the time. He asked her if it ever got in the way while it was down—it was down to the small of her back—and she had said that whatever annoyances that brought, it beat tying it up. The answer made only a little bit of sense to Cain, but he shrugged it off. He didn't know much one way or the other, his hair had always been cut close to his skull.

Sophie always had a way of silencing that tiny filter in her head; it didn't have to be if something frustrated her. If she had something on her mind, Cain would hear about it no matter the time and place. Cain didn't feel this was a bad thing—he actually appreciated her blunt nature. It made it easier to know when something was wrong. His parents kept the way of the halfie—smiling when something was wrong. He's sure they hid a lot of their problems from him and Abel. Sophie wasn't like that. She was exciting—like an unlit firework. She kept him on his feet, and he found it very alluring. It's why it was so easy for him to get so absorbed in the book she'd been looking into—The Eye of Timaeus. Cain hadn't been fully truthful with Abel, he knew in part why Sophie had been looking into the book, but that wasn't something he could tell his brother quite so easily. He'd have to find it out for himself. He knew Abel, and he wouldn't be too angry with the lie once he understood. That was all he wanted.

As Cain's mother finished up with the shirt he heard his father calling for her. She left to answer and Cain grabbed the shirt and moved to get changed. He wasn't leaving for another hour, but he started to feel the anxiety crawl into his legs. There was still a lot that had to be done and the time to do it was shrinking minute by minute.

20

Abel was outside for a time longer than Cain. As Cain went back inside Abel took notice of how the sun looked in the sky. There weren’t any clouds in the sky. It was a very nice day, but there was something in him that felt...unappealing. He couldn’t fully describe the feeling. The day was set up perfectly for him to enjoy, a nice day out with his brother and a chance at reading something new. Maybe it was the look that he saw on Cain’s face when he woke up. He’d been seeing it every so often, now. It was most prevalent during the storms. He’d wake from a nightmare and go to the bathroom, thinking he didn’t wake Abel. He always did, but he figured that he’d want the time to recover and not be embarrassed by his kid brother.

The sun shone extra bright for a moment as if it were stretching itself out. Abel nodded slowly without understanding why. It just felt like the right thing to do. He wheeled himself to the door and pushed it open. He found his father standing up from his chair and setting aside the newspaper he had been reading. Abel stopped just beside his father's chair, "Hi Dad, what’s up?”

He regarded Abel with a smile, “Hey there. I’m just gearing up to go take a look at the sink again.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, I think it’s the danged garbage disposal. I swear the thing acts like I’m there solely to fix it up.” He walks over to the thermometer and turns it down a few degrees, “Gonna need any bit of saving from the heat as I can,” he chuckled. “You find something you like from the library?” He cocked his head back toward his son.

“I think so, I might need some help lifting it onto the desk, though," he said, nodding toward the book in his lap.

“Hey honey, could you come and help Abel up to his room?” He called.

“Sure thing, be right there,” she said.

His father hesitated a moment and then worked his way into the kitchen, passing by his wife coming the opposite direction and planting a kiss on her cheek as they passed. She blushed and smiled as she saw Abel. “Hey sweetie,” she began. “...Did you find something good with Cain?”

“Yeah, right here,” he clapped the front of the book with his hand.

She made her way over and looked down toward the cover, “The Eye of...Tim-ee-us?” She looked confused as the words left her mouth. “Don’t think I’ve heard of that one before. It looks incredibly thick, you sure you’re okay with that?”

“Cain pronounced it Tim-eye-us, like how it’s called the eye on the front.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll help bring you up now. Maybe after you’re done you could look at a book I’ve got next to my bed, I believe it might match yours! Hahaha”

Abel knew she was talking about her good book. Abel could sense quite a bit of irony when he had been holding onto Cain's supposed good book. He only offered a chuckle of his own that was tinged with a bit of awkwardness. “Uh, thanks. I think I'll be good with this, maybe some other time...?"

"All the same," she clapped her hands together and wheeled her son over toward the homemade wheelchair lift that had been his father’s previous month's project at home. He finally completed it and it had made their household a much easier place to live in without the need to physically carry their son up and down the stairs every single time. All that would be needed was assistance connecting and disconnecting the chair to the lift itself. It worked almost like a conveyor belt. The only downside is sometimes the track would get caught in itself when trying to disconnect the wheelchair before turning it off, but his father had gotten pretty good at keeping the order straight as to not bung up the whole thing.

His mother on the other hand seemed to continually make the mistake and hand wave it off as something that her husband had forgotten to test. This time, though, she remembered to turn the track off first and disconnected the chair with as much ease as could be.

“Huh, he finally got around to fixing that,” she said, more to herself.

Abel couldn’t help but suppress his smile. As he got into his and Cain's room she took the book from his lap, muttered an “oh bejeezum” at the weight of the book and set it down on his desk, brushing some imaginary dust off of the cover.

She left with the door still open—one of Abel's biggest pet peeves. He wheeled his way over and closed it tight before making his way back toward the book. From the side he could see that the pages all look like they had been stained with all kinds of coffee over the probable several years it’s been at Salem Public. He turned the cover open, not knowing what he would find inside. It was time to begin, a voice in his mind said. He wasn't entirely sure if he recognized it. Abel looked as he flipped the cover open—there was a dedication scrawled on the inside with bright silver ink. A large chunk of it had been scratched off, but what he could make out was as follows:

If found please burn-

That certainly didn't do anything to calm his nerves. He moved onto the next page, it seemed to be a foreword written by the author...or in this case, the translator, as something from an old philosopher must have gone through several translations through the years. He began to read.

21

THE EYE OF TIMAEUS

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

This book shall not be reproduced in any capacity or be taken from ARCTIC SYSTEMS premises. You will know if you have proper clearance by asking your supervisor found directly in your employee records. If you have no supervisor, congratulations boss. You are cleared to continue reading. If not, please burn this book immediately and without hesitation. Read no further if you’ve not been given clearance. Offenses punishable by termination and sentence to death. There is no negotiation for this.

These works inside have been translated from text older than any of us so any clerical errors must be taken as such—the translation team is naught but filled with humans made to err. Thankfully, we believe that the writings that follow are—to our knowledge—as accurate as we may possibly get. These writings have not to this point been published, translated, or much even so read outside of the ones who had written inside them. They have been long since lost to history from the annals of Timaeus, a philosopher largely forgotten by history who lived in the fourth century.

Our department has worked tirelessly for these past five months translating this book in full. While there are several faces behind the work in this book, the brunt of the writing is the work of one, so you shall have no worry about the tone of the work—Timaeus’ ideas shall be kept as pure as can possibly be. I have studied Timaeus’ work and compared it to other philosophers of the time...their language, pacing, even some of their slang that they attribute from their root language. What has resulted is an ultimate translation for the magnum opus of ‘Heaven’s Lost Angel’. Before I introduce the text in full I wish to give some context in which The Eye of Timaeus came to be.

Timaeus had been born to a time long before his work could be fully appreciated and analyzed. As with most in his time he was born to a poor farmer’s family off of the coast of Greece near the end of the fourth century BCE. He had five brothers and sisters all his elder. He was born the run of the family—a misshapen foot had almost guaranteed his early death to his parents. Their family suffered much and rejoiced little. What they could rejoice came from the fact that Timaeus lived far past the time his parents would have thought. He outgrew his conditions. Each of his brothers and sisters would pass to sickness or starvation before Timaeus himself would reach ten. He then became the sole heir to his father’s name. This left a lot of strain on the family as both of his parents had long expected Timaeus to pass as his siblings had. They fed him the bare minimum using their defeated logic as justification. They had long accepted it by the fourth—his eldest sister—had passed on.

But he did not pass.

By the time he was a young adult he had taken over his father’s share of the work on the farm, proving to them that he wasn’t going to immediately fall to illness. He had made it farther than any of his brothers or sisters by this time, but unfortunately his father had too passed from this world due to a sickness to the brain. It was a genetic poison that had similarly flared up in each of Timaeus’ siblings and it had been by mere chance that the condition hadn’t ended Timaeus’ life yet.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

For the coming years after his father’s death Timaeus fell into a depressive rut that consisted of little else other than farming and worrying. From before sunrise to near sunset he would tend to the fields as his father had shown him to put food on the table for his mother. By nightfall he would tirelessly wonder which night would be his last, stranding his mother for good. She wasn’t faring much better in those years, a battle with pneumonia almost silenced her heart, but a healthy harvest moon helped her regain her strength. All of what had encapsulated farm life seemed much too mundane for him.

Often Timaeus would find himself staring at the sky wondering what kind of worlds could exist among the stars. One day while the sun had been out for longer than it normally would have, Timaeus had found an old beggar crawling the fields which he had plowed. The poor man looked like an animal asking to be put out of his misery. Instead of yelling the beggar away, he walked toward him with an odd curiosity. He had never seen the beggar before and while there certainly was their fair share of hooligans on the island that would try to steal from their farm, this old beggar didn’t seem to be much for stealing. It seemed he was watching the crops, visualizing how they would look when they had matured.

Something about the way he envisioned the crops like some great art piece had intrigued Timaeus. He didn’t know if it was something fully within him or the pull of some higher power, but he walked toward the beggar and offered to treat him to a hearty dinner. The crops were doing really well this time of year, Timaeus had really gotten the hang of his father’s work. He wondered what he would do if their roles were swapped, if Timaeus had wandered onto the farm of some luckier fellow than he. It was the first time that he had viewed anyone else as less fortunate than himself. The beggar happily accepted the invitation and revealed himself to be an old monk from up top of the mountains who had lived alone for the most of his life—he had stepped down to share his infinite wisdom with the people below and Timaeus had been the first person to accept him into their home.

Timaeus’ mother, Demedrora, had initially been wary of the stranger in her home—this was a fact she had not let slide into secrecy. The beggar named O had offered to teach Timaeus his infinite wisdom in exchange for his hospitality to which Timaeus had happily accepted. This had been the break from his normal life he had been looking for. On that same day he would follow the beggar back to his mountaintop home. Timaeus showed very little qualms about leaving the farm behind as he knew his mother was growing older by the day and that she, too would pass like his father. Had experienced enough tragedy in his life firsthand that he could not bare to witness any more. He left his mother with all the money he had, knowing it couldn’t fully make up for taking away the work source for their home, but it was all he was willing to give.

The journey to the mountaintop had taken them a total of seven days and seven nights. Timaeus had been a thin man as it was—the majority of the food going to his aging mother—so it became more of a struggle come the end of the first day when hunger began to swell in his stomach. O seemed to not care for his appetite, for kept on walking, never slowing to allow him to stop. Somehow he found that the journey became easier. He almost accepted his death come the end of the third night. He hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in almost three full days. His body became too weak to keep up with O’s pace. It was at this point that O stopped—and this would be the only point on the entire journey that he would—and he reached out toward Timaeus, placing a finger first on his forehead and then shifting it down toward his lips. O slid his finger into Timaeus’ mouth and suddenly a cold liquid began to works its way down his throat. He spoke not a word and it only lasted seconds at the longest. After it was finished he turned around and resumed his pace. Having the issue of his thirst resolved he stood back up and pushed back on the looming feeling of hunger still in his stomach. If the knowledge that O could give could lead to such miracles then he would have to find them out.

The two of them finally reached the top a day after Timaeus’ mother’s passing down on the surface. She’d been hiding a sickness from him for weeks and when it came time for him to leave their home she gave up on living.

Timaeus learned as he reached the top the true meaning of sacrifice as he gave everything to finally reach the end of the journey. What awaited him inside was library filled completely with books of all sizes. The collective knowledge contained in these books is eventually what come to be known as Το μάτι του Τιμίου, or “The Eye of Timaeus”. He had begun by staring incredulously at the large amount of books that lined the interior of O’s Library. It seemed to extend for half a mile outward into what must have been the interior of the mountain. He walked and passed book after book...the each of them was thicker than any he had seen before. They looked alien with their bindings so perfectly laced. Each of them had bold words on the spine to denote their name. Timaeus made his way back toward the entrance to search up the name of the first book, ΖΩΗ, or more simply, “Life”. His curiosity would not allow him to begin without first confirming the title of the final book in the line and as he ran down he had seen that it had been given the name of the Greek God of Death, Θάνατος, “Thanatos”.

The only rule that O had given him was that he had to read each book in order, there could be no skipping around. The end of each book would lead him to the next so he should not ever get lost. The reason for the rule had been that the books were laid out in a very specific order. The information would be too much out of context and it could very well kill him. Timaeus had agreed to the stipulation and he had begun reading at “Life”. O then took his leave from the library forever. Timaeus would not see him ever again and his mysterious connection to the great library would hang in Timaeus’ mind before long.

He would then dedicate the next few years working his way through the books as quickly as he could. He cultivated a fascination with the information that he learned and realized before long there would be no conceivable way that he would be able to finish the books before he himself had passed. As he too had grown older Timaeus had realized that it would simply be impossible to fully understand all of the books that had been provided to him and manage to keep a surviving record of them. The month before his own passing Timaeus made his way down toward the people below him for the first time in years. His health had been deteriorating quicker than he had hoped. He still had so much to learn from the books—of which he had only been able ever to make a small dent out of. He carried under his arm his manuscript—The Eye—I shall refer to it from this point as. He needed to ensure that the information kept within The Eye would be safe and passed down to a future generation. If he had died inside the great library then he was sure that the knowledge would die with him. This could not happen. And just before his death he had managed to find someone who had the same visions of grandeur as he had. Someone who had wanted to learn the truth of the universe. It was a student, a young boy willing to learn what The Eye had to offer and then some. He would take this boy far from his family all the way back to the home on the mountain tops. The boy’s family would have nothing to do of Timaeus’ speak of prophecies and libraries, so the first meeting was naught but a lost opportunity. It became Timaeus’ mission to pull the boy’s desires from his family who had obviously not appreciated the concept of furthering one’s knowledge.

It is from this point that Timaeus would steal away the boy in the night and he brought him up toward the library just as O had brought him years prior. He kept up the same pace that the old beggar had where the boy—Adreus—showed much restraint after the first hour of the journey up. The boy was nearing adulthood, so he understood patience, but he also thought he might have understood regret in those moments as well. Nearing the top of the journey the boy realized he had wanted nothing more than to return to his family, but the moment that he caught sight of the great library everything but the hunger for knowledge had melted away.

Timaeus hadn’t expected that Adreus would finish the work that he started. He made that very clear to the boy when he took him inside. There were simply too many books to fit in a lifetime, maybe even two. If it was something he wished to do, it would be likely that he would have to take his place someday and add the knowledge that he receives from the books to The Eye and in turn pass it down to the next generation. These were words he shared often with Adreus—expecting to be able to finish the job would only lead to stress and doubt. They became his untimely killers and he wonders if he could have made further progress without them. So it had been set. Beginning from that day began a cycle which would culminate into the book you carry now. The title of this book may be “The Eye of Timaeus”, but really it ends up only being a half truth. Without the proper context it wouldn’t have made much sense, so for that facsimile I apologize.

The Eye is a culmination of generations of hermits and their collection of knowledge from the original beggar’s library of vast and seemingly infinite universal knowledge and stories. Nobody knows the true origin of the books, their authors, or even who was able to construct the library without a single soul letting loose the information. Our best guess leads only to the original beggar, O, that Timaeus had made contact with. It is unknown to us what had happened to O after he introduced Timaeus to the Library. It is also unknown how Timaeus and all of the future hermits had been able to survive on their quest without proper food, water and personal upkeep. They spent their time according to The Eye completely and wholly focused on seeking out O’s knowledge. The best theory we have comes from the tale Timaeus tells during his climb up the mountain originally. O’s mysterious power to produce water from his fingertips warrants some skepticism, but seeing as the original writings are here for us to translate...we have no choice but to believe the authenticity of his words.

To date, countless souls have written their fair share of excerpts from the Great Library in hopes that the baton would someday be passed for the final leg of the race, but unfortunately along the path at some point one soul had abandoned their post from the mountain top to sell The Eye for profit and thus began a long history of it changing hands before eventually succumbing to legend. Fewer and fewer people believed in the original source of The Eye and fewer believed that the tales about the man were even true. As such, Timaeus was a name that would not go down in history as the world’s recognized philosophers as Plato and Socrates. The text would remain hidden to history until 1976 where it had been uncovered by our excavation team in a small stone home off in a small village in Eastern Europe. The village had maybe less than ten people living in it, all a close knit community—closer than most that we know to this day.

We seized it during an operation were our soldiers were to raid a small village where we had readings of something big. I know not of the exact details of the mission, only what I’ve been told second hand from coworkers that had participated in the retrieval mission. Someone either must have loose lips, or they’ve exceptional spies in the fact that the entire village had been vacated before any of our soldiers had arrived, but it must have been such short notice that they did not have time to hide any of their valuables.

Do not worry for we are not savages. What had been taken had not been their gold or their furniture—what little of each there was, that much I am certain. I know our people and when they are given a mission they follow it to a note. No more no less. Just how you like it. There were tales of an old book showing up in this village and when one of our men—Pontef Sezaro—had managed to find the tome that had been enough for them to leave the village well enough alone. I fear I do not know if they’ve returned to their homes or have fled altogether—fearing another invasion. I do know that the book that they have found—the book we have spent the last five years working to translate had been nothing short of the real deal. I had become fascinated with it immediately. Diving into it we could sense the emotion and the excitement that each individual person had scrawled down. Each of their different styles running to the book as soon as they found something that made their hearts flutter like nothing they had ever experienced. We didn’t know much of the language that they used, but five years with that book showed its inner patterns. The book was passed from person to person intermittently as we tried to break the initial barrier that became this book. Now, the year is 1981and this script here is the closest thing we shall have as a full English translation of the original work. I know not what purpose this information will be of use for humanity, but I can say with utmost certainty that this is going to be something not like anything we’ve ever seen.

The original text I’ve disposed of—burned. We’ve had some...incidents surrounding the original that I can’t bear to write down. I shall keep them to my own mind. They are my secrets to lie with...but the reason isn’t for a pride in secrecy or anything similar. I’m afraid I cannot mention it here, for if I do then all of this will have been for nothing. For those that wish to know, keep reading and you shall know, but you shall also know why I am unable to talk about it here. And now finally, to everyone in my life that I’ve done wrong, that I’ve gone against, I am sorry. I had thought that knowledge about the world was the ultimate goal—that nothing else had mattered. I’m afraid to say that I’m at the end here—after this book I shall be no longer. There is a beauty to the curse that is infinite knowledge and it is for that reason that I have looked upon its pages and smiled at its face. The Eye of Timaeus shall never be a widespread book—that is not the purpose of this translation. Consider it a warning. I have done my part and with this the text may be started proper, but be warned that there is powerful knowledge in those that follow. Do not read for spite. Do not read for pity. Read only to learn and only to pass on. Nobody knows what sorts of demons reside in knowledge of the infinite worlds.

W.B.

CONFIDENTIAL PROPERTY OF: ARCTIC SYSTEMS

22

Abel kept on reading throughout the Eye. The book started with some bible level god-speak of supposedly how the world came to existence. Abel didn’t care much for any of that—the result was the world he lived in now. How it began didn’t so much concern him to a point and it was to that point that he cared for. Once he got past the first few passages he found an entry that caught his attention. It spoke of some monsters of the dark...almost childish tales of the boogeyman. He looked up from the book, questions buzzing in his head. Why had Cain been so adamant that he’d enjoy this? It were as if he were told to fear the monsters waiting underneath his bed, waiting to grab at his legs. They could have them, he thought. Wasn’t much use to him as it stood. With a bit of spite he turned the page to see what this Timaeus fellow had to say about these supposed creatures of the dark. The next heading read simply of a terrible creature—draconian in shape with the blank face of a human. Abel studied the face—it almost looked like a stone statue of some Greek hero. The expression was plain, staring out into nothingness.

He wasn’t sure if the drawing was accurate to whatever this Sakonna was or if it was on the part of the translator’s imagination, but there was certainly enough detail in it to give him a mental image of how this creature would stalk in the night. He followed down to see the Eye make mention that Sakonna was the first creature from Noctem to arrive on Earth after something called the Darkbright was shattered. Whatever that had been he didn’t know, he had only skimmed the portion above.

He backtracked until he saw the term again under the previous heading. He traced the line with his finger, reading aloud, "Our world of light had begun to expand farther than The Craftsman could control. In order to avoid the complete overtaking of Noctem, Luxmund had to be sent far enough away so that it could grow into its own. This is when the Darkbright barrier had to be formed—an invisible wall that could stop Luxmund from overtaking Noctem if it expanded too large. This is how our universe continues to expand—and shall continue to expand until it cannot anymore. There are only theories to rest on what will happen to our world once the expansion had fully taken place. We could know now that the expansion had fully been an accident on the play of The Craftsman."

Our world was an accident, huh? Abel begun to think that this Craftsman should have left well enough alone. He’s caused so much pain sadness. He took in a breath and pushes himself backward from the desk, propelling himself to the center of the room, staring up at the ceiling. Well, maybe if this was as so then they’d be able to get their fair share if our world were to keep expanding. It would shatter this Darkbright thing and teach that Craftsman a thing or two about pain.

He shook his head, silently letting off a single curse. No, no. He mustn’t get too angry. This was all just gobbledygook that some fraud wrote over a hundred years ago. Cain must have just known that he liked to read and thought it was a good story to read up on...but then his brother flashed in his mind. "I felt like you did...like absolutely nothing was going right here. Like we were fucked from the second we were born, but nobody wanted to step away from pretending that everything was okay. That there gave me some perspective." No, Cain had sounded serious about this book, like he really believed that whatever nonsense he was going on about had helped him come to terms with what we were going through. He turned to stare toward his door, imagining his mother and father’s room just outside at the end of the hall, imagining what could be going on in there now. He shook it off and wheeled himself back toward the desk.

Reading it as a skeptic wouldn’t do him much good. It wasn’t like he could debate the translator on his points or even question his intentions. He might as well start from the top and see what his brother had meant about this book—The Eye.

23

LIFE

Life is an experience. Consciousness is the experience of experiencing. They are joined by the sight of seeing, the smell of smelling. It is so very complicated to some asked of the question, but it is not so strong to match the experience. Life is fragile and can be ended for almost any reason at all. It is not so by accident as we have a creator who we may point our frustrations and our blame as well as our thanks and our praise. This is a fact that many will find difficulty with. The existence of a creator implies that our imperfections are intended that of imperfection itself, intended through negligence, or that we as imperfect creatures are meant to suffer unquestionably. This is okay. These questions’ existence shall persist no matter what I write down here, and I have come to terms with that. Their existence shall persist whether it is difficult or not. Whether it is fair, just, or even welcomed. To such a creator we extend such complicated feelings because we ourselves are complicated. We experience joy, sorrow, love, heartbreak, life and death. A juxtaposition of these two expressions is nothing that we cannot expect.

You might exclaim to Olympus that your prayers have been unheard or for your son to be well, but it shall be known as a first truth that these two activities would be just as well as tossing sand in the air and expecting it to rain fortunes from your roof. Our creator is not one of the sky or of words. They are one of experience...a separate, darker experience. Our ‘verse is but a half of its own whole, and but a fraction of even its own half. There exists a realm outside of our own. The Creator—The Craftsman—I shall label him for the purposes of purpose—made very deliberate choices with which substances would originate our universe, but they would also bring the beginning to a manyverse.

Air, water, fire, earth...these substances are all born from a weightless nothing floating in the darkness before there was light. They did not exist with physical bodies as with everything within the darkness, but with waves. Waves that rippled across the cosmos that yearned to touch one another. The Craftsman brought these four waves into the world with but a microsecond of imagining them. He had felt an immense and overbearing coldness in the darkness that existed outside of all time—all space.

A quick aside—the Great Library makes reference to this great darkness many a time, Noctem. It makes a very important distinction that Noctem and our world—referred to as Luxmund—are two separate entities entirely. It can be theorized that Luxmund is our world of light while the world of the night, Noctem, is the true origin point of the universe. From darkness is a world without light—without physical form. The forms exist as waves until they cross over into the light where they may have physicality—as with the elements that shaped our world. They began without shells to inhabit. Before they entered our world as substance they were without substance. Such is the same with life.

Life begins as nothing but waves inside Noctem—a dark nothingness which The Craftsman inhabits. Whether through benevolence or through malice, light was created. Light fused with more light to create sentience. The light could not survive in Noctem without being suffocated wholly and fully, so The Craftsman had to create a new universe for the light to inhabit.

Fire, water, earth and air. They began Luxmund with a roaring bang that echoed throughout Noctem. Fire would batter the Earth until it had cooked. Water would douse the flames on the surface and air would mold the remains into a single, final sculpture of imperfections and scars. It had been all wrong from the beginning. Luxmund wasn’t ever perfect. It had been a mistake on the part of an imperfect creator from the beginning. Our world of light had begun to expand farther than The Craftsman could control. In order to avoid the complete overtaking of Noctem, Luxmund had to be sent far enough away so that it could grow into its own. This is when the Darkbright Barrier had to be formed—an invisible wall that could stop Luxmund from overtaking Noctem if it expanded too large. This is how our universe continues to expand—and shall continue to expand until it cannot anymore. There are only theories to rest on what will happen to our world once the expansion has fully taken place. We can know now that the expansion has fully been an accident on the play of The Craftsman. In an attempt to restart Luxmund millions upon millions of stars were placed in the sky—exploding infinitely as The Craftsman grew infinitely more annoyed with his own failures. It had turned out that the stars had done little to restart the universe, they had rather lit the sky from which the beings of the universe could look out toward.

The Craftsman of course had created the light, but as any artist would tell you that when a piece created spirals out of control and threatens to be the death of everything that you know...there is a form of regret in the creation. Once Luxmund had escaped The Craftsman’s grasp he could no longer adjust the new worlds he had created. It had forever been out of his reach. He knew that he would not be alone in his despair for there were other creatures of the night that had felt even more threatened by the light than he had. These were beings without form until they would cross over into our world...and for a few of them, these volumes have terrible descriptions for these monsters.

Noctem isn’t a lonely place only inhabited by The Craftsman—no. Far from it. It exists a realm of beings and creatures that live through the waves of the darkness. The human mind couldn’t begin to comprehend their original forms. They each have their own wills and are but one that share existence with The Craftsman—another of the creatures of the dark. An important fact must be learned about these creatures—there is no such thing as true evil or true good. Goodness and Evilness exists on a scale which is wholly human-made. In our world there is only survival.

Thus, to the creatures of the night, once Luxmund came into creation they immediately perceived the threat of light within Noctem. If the universe The Craftsman had created expanded to its fullest size—they would be engulfed in light and extinguished completely. For as long as they knew existence there was peace. They received a calming notion when they saw the separation of the two worlds and the creation of the Darkbright. Luxmund was free to expand as much as it dear long needed to and they could exist as they had in peace.

Things had not remained as such. Luxmund would soon grow larger than even The Craftsman could ever imagine—and he could imagine infinite expansion. As Luxmund grew and grew there became a tear in space as the energy the universe had been creating had been too much to sustain itself. There had been so much excess energy that a second, identical Luxmund had been created just beside the original. As the two of them continued to grow and enough energy built up they would in turn split into their own, near perfectly identical universes. This was not what The Craftsman had wanted. It had not what he had imagined when he had created Luxmund. He couldn’t have seen that it would expand in such a way and now with every separate copy that would be created, the Darkbright would be assaulted with another blast of light. If left alone there would be no Darkbright left and they would all perish.

The Craftsman realized he had to do something to stop the expansion before it had enveloped them all. He had moved to step into the light—the first time any of his kind had done such a feat. He had to use the largest of his energy to cross the Darkbright—even with the damage from the light it had been a strong force created from his own will to be unbreakable. As he touched the light he began to scream. He had flesh—and it began to burn. He experienced pain for the first time. It burned him with fires greater than the Earth’s core. His screams echoed in the form of cosmic waves that shook the galaxies into motion, sending planets and asteroids that were previously sluggish into full motion in their orbits.

One of these asteroids hurtled toward the Earth—still in its infancy. The collision was massive and had decimated a large portion of the life that had made its home on the planet, but it would not be enough to ensure the end of life. Far from it...life would truly start here for those that would consider this planet home. Luxmund faced a near death after The Craftsman’s excursion...is a falsehood in its own right. Never before was there any such danger of complete destruction by its creator’s hand. It had been multiplying too quickly for if The Craftsman were to totally annihilate a single universe, three more would take its place. It had been spreading far and wide. Initially, The Craftsman had believed that it was the immense energy growing from the universe that had caused the multiples to appear, but this wasn’t a whole truth either. Choices what were drove the multiplicity of the universe into the manyverse. Would the wind blow this way...or that way? Would the butterfly choose to rest on this particular flower or the next? Would it choose to do so again the next day, or would it be eaten by a lizard prowling the grounds?

Everything and anything made choices based on the environment around it and the light knew this. The light gave room for all of these choices to exist parallel to one another. For each choice that was made a separate but almost equal universe had been created to accompany any result from those choices. The inhabitants of one universe would not be able to cross these universes—especially not to know of their existence. The knowledge of parallel existences would overload any mind with analysis paralysis. Any person in this position would spend an infinite amount of time pining after their desired universe and die before they ever see it. Their death would mean nothing to the cosmos...but it would mean everything to them. They would build civilizations around the fragility of their own life...as we of this world have. The creatures of the night—those that The Craftsman had left behind in Noctem to combat Luxmund—they despised everything that our world had come to stand for. Their darkness was singular, stagnant. It had not expanded a micrometer since the creation of Luxmund—it had never previously needed to, but in comparison to the light, which had been expanding effortlessly and continuously growing...it had become too much. Each universe created launched its own attack on the Darkbright—through no fault of the inhabitants that existed within, but that didn’t matter to the creatures of Noctem. Their home was being attacked. Again and again and again and again. Something had to be done.

The creatures of the night banded together and broke through a weak point in Darkbright, allowing a spillage of both worlds into each other. Now that they were free to, the creatures of the night began to roam Luxmund. This is the last of the linear tale that the books seems to tell. I have done as my mentor has bid me and not spoiled myself the contents of the future books, but I cannot promise their contents. After Manyverse, the books seem to go into detail on the various creatures that exist within Noctem. The oddity is that it doesn’t seem to tell of just our world’s history—it even gives light to our planet’s future. To change subjects so quickly and without notice is jarring, but I must follow the order the books are given as, so I hope you can forgive my resilience, first comes the tale of the horrible Sakonna.