The Orion Mechanism
Dedicated to my Angelica
Prologue ...
In 1473 Rogerius Acticus built a singular device bearing a resemblance to a clock, but which reflected the time of no culture ever spawned upon the face of the earth. When he first constructed the device, it was thought to be a mariner's tool, for it sat upon a pedestal resembling a great sailing vessel and was defined by two protrusions which seemed to be the axes of a complex compass. But when utilized in the manner of a navigator, it could find no stellar reference known to humanity. No one knew for whom the device was built and Rogerius never explained its function. In fact, the only reason it was known to exist at all was due to the passing of Rogerius Acticus in the year 1481 at the hands of the Catholic Church for the crime of heresy. While the exact reason for his execution was vague, it was noted by all in the scientific and religious communities alike that when the home he had built and lived in for 100 years was burnt to the ground by the men at arms from the Church of the Immaculate Heart, the only work of Rogerius Acticus which survived was the very device - scathed by the flame in no manner discernable by eye or by microscope. Had the soldiers not left long before the home had burnt to the ground, the very existence of the work may have been overlooked. But Borealis Acticus, son of Rogerius, knew of the passage his father had built years ago when the Catholics had first invaded their small community. Borealis had played there as a young boy and knew the way was well ventilated. He had scrambled through the passage, praying as he went that it would not be too late to rescue the volumes of journals he knew lay just beneath the floor boards. But to his dismay, when he smashed free the door leading to the basement just beneath the home, all was aflame. He had barely enough time to reach blindly in and fumble about for anything solid or not burning before the whole house collapsed. When he emerged from the passageway, it was night. His arms were burned terribly and he clutched the device he had felt in the rubble close to him. He did not know what it was, nor could he see it for he was blinded as well. But Nicholas has been waiting for him and took him into his awaiting blanket quickly. They stood breathing heavily in the night, Nicholas watching the distant flames die slowly. Only after they had completely disappeared did he notice two things: Borealis had passed away in his arms, still clutching his father's work to his chest and that somehow the arms of the thing moved slowly, sliding into place and clanging loudly in the night air. Even a man of science knows when a thing is not right and that night Nicholas Rimkovsky knew that something terrible had been let into the world.
1 ...
There were 100 leather-bound journals lying on the table in front of Catherina. Each one was the work of an astronomer she had personally interviewed for the position her grandfather Nicholas was offering in his conservatory. From the manner in which he had flung each one there, she suspected none met the requirements he had set forth in the letter he had sent out to each of the great universities requesting the talents of their esteemed astronomers. She knew he had been conducting this search since the death of his dear friend Borealis in 1481 to discern the function of a singular artifact discovered in the burning ruins of Borealis' father's home. Nicholas had given up the task when he married Maria Acticus, Borealis' estranged sister, in 1510 and bore a child almost immediately afterward. For the next 15 years he dedicated his heart and soul to his daughter. And then one evening, Catherina recalled her mother telling her the story, there came from Nicholas' study a great grinding noise. Nicholas, his wife Maria and daughter Francesca all ran into the study to see what the matter could be. All that could be remembered was that somehow Maria tripped upon her gown and forward upon Rogerius Acticus' device and was pierced through the heart by the great protrusions thought to be some strange navigator's compass. Her blood flowed in great quantities upon the device and what seemed at first to be her body slipping to the floor was soon revealed as the movement of the great mechanism clicking three times into a position far from its original state. Maria slid to the floor and Francesca simply stared at the table from which the grinding sound still emanated. Somehow it didn't occur to her to run to the floor where her mother lay. She simply stared at the device, feeling oddly as if she knew into what position it would someday move into.
Francesca was an odd individual, even before she was born. For the entire 8 months of her pregnancy, Maria swore to her husband that her dreams were more and more agonizing and that only the abortion of the child would give her peace. But Nicholas was a scientific man and tried desperately to calm his wife and encourage her to have the child, perhaps finding solace in her dreams by drinking a touch of absinthe each night before her sleep. But the dreams became worse and one evening Nicholas barely saved his child from the blade of his incensed wife. Maria had taken a blade to her belly and begun to cut the child out, obviously to kill her daughter in the process. Nicholas took the knife from Maria and completed the process and quickly took the baby to his study to rest on the table next to the mechanism. When he returned, he bound Maria's wounds and set her into her room, all along understanding that she would never take care of this child and that he would have to set all his work aside and raise her on his own. From that moment on Maria became a visitor to the home, and was in heart and spirit no longer wife or mother.
It was 1527, a special date to Nicholas because it was the mark of his 80th birthday. When he had been younger and Borealis had been alive, he had met an old fortune teller on the road to the university. She had been so weak that he took pity and gave her food and coin in exchange for his fortune. She told of a great key that would open the very gates of hell if used improperly. She foresaw his wife and the birth of a child that would seek to use the key to bring harm to the world. And she saw him dead at 80, no longer able to care for his daughter or able to outthink the women which would bring the shining star, Lucifer, to the world's feet. A scientific man, Nicholas laughed her aside and soon forgot about her tale. But he never forgot the date of his death. He was intent on seeing it disproved.
Almost 17, it did not seem odd to Francesca that her father was so much older than her. In fact, he barely looked a man of 60. But his constant protective nature around her in regard to his work with his friend's mechanism had annoyed her to no end. She remembered sleeping next to it for almost a year because her father could put her no where else in the house without her screaming. But when she lay next to the huge device, she would stare quietly at it and smile, often laughing aloud. Nicholas marveled at this only briefly and soon accepted it. It was on her first birthday that he took her from the room and the sight of the device forever. He had awakened to the sound of grinding and leapt quickly to the door of the study. Francesca was standing upright on the table, holding one of the great metal arms of the mechanism. From somewhere in the room a warm emanation was pulsing but he could see no candles lit. The grinding came louder and he gasped as the cubed central axis of the piece began to glow and shift in its place, seemingly sliding in upon itself. Then all was silent and the girl fell to the floor, crying. All in an instant the words of the old fortune teller came to him. He spit in disgust of himself for being so superstitious, but nevertheless grabbed his daughter and swore she would never set eyes upon the thing again.
Francesca stared at her father's red eyes as he threw the last of the journals upon the table in disgust and sighed.
"I have decided, Francesca, to destroy the device and to end this foolish search for an astronomer to define the purpose of this thing. From the moment it was given birth by Rogerius Acticus it has seen ill upon the earth and I will not have it any longer. Please, write to all these so-called learned men and inform them their fantastic and ridiculous diatribes are worth more to me as fuel for my stove than in aiding me in the unraveling of this great mystery."
Nicholas rose without another word and began to walk toward the door of the study. He had brought up from the basement his hammer and Francesca saw the thing hanging firmly from his hand as he strode. She could not have known why she did what she did, nor even suspected the desire could have existed within her, but she rose quickly and stood facing her father, blocking his way to the door. No words were spoken between them but in the moment he stared into her eyes, at first not comprehending what was occurring, there was a heat that came from under the study door. He never looked away from her eyes, but he suddenly understood all too well. He grimaced as his heart swelled up and he knew that somehow his life as a scientist was something he had misunderstood and taken for granted for too long. Now it was time to meet the life beyond life and he was completely unprepared. He forgave his daughter with his last breath even as the hammer fell upon his head.
2 ...
"Please identify yourself to me."
"Theresa Rimkovsky, Artificial Intelligence department."
"For whom are you calling?"
"Daniel Acticus, Antiquities Department."
There were 10 other lifts
behind her, yet somehow they had all entered the compound long before she finally
was ushered in by the chrome attendant which hovered lightly to the side of
the lift as she cruised through the gates of the
She stood at the shimmer that was the portal to the conference room for the antiquities department. She spoke her name and with a light touch of static electricity, stepped through the shimmer to find a room packed with people. She almost stepped back through but remembered just in time she had not spoken her name to exit. She apologized and quickly sat at a nearby vacant desk. The monitor at her desk bore the title of the presentation and a collection of dates. She began to read the display and felt a strange movement in her stomach. Her family name was here, as was the man's she came to see.
History of Orion's Mechanism
1385 Rogerius Acticus born.
1447 Nicholas Rimkovsky born.
1473 Rogerius Acticus builds the Orion Mechanism.
1481 Rogerius Acticus is executed by the Catholic Church as a heretic.
1510 Nicholas Rimkovsky marries Maria Acticus.
1510 Francesca Rimkovsky born.
1525 Maria Acticus dies.
1527 Nicholas Rimkovsky dies.
1527 Francesca Rimkovsky presents the Orion Mechanism to the Vienna Science Conservatory as a stellar navigation piece. She proposes the stars by which the piece is intended to navigate are not seen from our planet but rather a planet located in the constellation of Orion. She is laughed out of the Conservatory.
1530 Francesca Rimkovsky is sought by the Catholic Church as a heretical criminal, but both she and the Orion Mechanism are nowhere to be found.
Theresa read further down the 3 or 4 pages worth of dates and was amazed to see her family tree so well detailed and in such concert with the Acticus family. She had never followed her family's history and many of these names, even recent ones, she was seeing for the first time. She stared down at the last three dates and her heart stopped. Two were recent, the other one was yet to occur.
2206 The Orion Mechanism is discovered in a tomb thought to be that of Francesca Rimkovsky herself. There is no evidence of who buried her or why the Orion Mechanism was placed in the tomb with her.
2210 The Orion Mechanism is shipped from Earth to Mars into the care of Daniel Acticus, the only surviving relative of Rogerius Acticus, to study the mechanism and present it to the Society of Romantic Antiques.
2226 The interstellar craft Slipstream arrives at the nearest star of Orion's Belt, Betelgeuse, and begin the navigational path mapped out in the Orion Mechanism.
Two things, Theresa thought to herself. No one even knows about Slipstream except me and NASA ... second, how in hell could that ship arrive almost 600 light years away from Mars in just 16 years? Humanity had barely achieved light speed, and as far Theresa knew, there was nothing faster being developed anytime soon. Something was very odd here, and as she looked up from the display she realized that the room had emptied and only the professor remained. He stood quietly, hands clasped behind his back and gazing intently upon her.
"Do you see? I am Daniel Acticus. This is the Orion Mechanism. If you have the time, nay, whether or not you have the time, I suggest you and I talk at great length for the next couple of days. I believe everything you think to be true about your life is about to change. And, everything you believed about your work will cease to have consequence."
She stared at the huge device upon the pedestal. Was that warmth she felt coming from it? What was this strange feeling in her that was growing as she walked closer to it?
"Do not touch it, please. It will react to you. And if you bleed upon it, it will begin its cycle. We can not allow that to occur until you have arrived in Orion's Belt, off the orbit of the sole planet circling the sun of Betelgeuse."
As absurd as the comment was, all she could think was 'There is no planet orbiting around Betelgeuse. There can't be.' Daniel's eyebrow rose slightly.
"But there is. It hides from our sight because it's elliptic places Betelgeuse's solar partner between it and our field of vision. But we know it is there now. I don't claim it still lives or that the culture which designed the Orion Mechanism still lives, but you will go there and you will let blood upon the device. And then, when the map begins to unfold, you will follow its path and the history of Earth will change forever."
Daniel paused, letting all his words sink into Theresa's head. Then he stepped closer, his black leather coat scraping slowly upon the sterile floor. His hands still clasped behind his back, he stood very tall and stiff, his skin so white that he looked like milk had taken the shape of a man. Theresa saw him in full detail for the first time since stepping into the room and realized he had absolutely no hair. His eyes were pitch black and he leaned slightly forward for the first time. His breath smelled of burnt matches.
"Do you know the history of the Cenobites, Theresa?
3 ...
A female voice penetrated the dead calm of the presentation room. Even Daniel seemed startled for a moment.
"Entry: cen·o·bite
"Pronunciation: 'se-n&-"bIt,
esp British 'sE-
"Function: noun
"Etymology: Late Latin coenobita, from coenobium monastery,
from Late Greek koinobion, ultimately from Greek koin- coen- +
bios life
"Date: circa 1500
: a member of a religious group living together in a monastic community
- cen·o·bit·ic /"se-n&-'bi-tik,
"sE-/ adjective"
Daniel stood back slowly, a slight smile appearing.
"Indeed. Thank you computer, that will be all for today. I believe I have dismissed the class."
"Until tomorrow, Professor Acticus."
Theresa turned to him and raised a hand in the air, as if commanding an imaginary audience.
"I understand your research can be very interesting. I have to admit seeing so many of my family tree on one page, and in conjunction with your own as well ... I guess ... it intrigues me. But you have to understand. I am a research scientist. Not even in the filed of space exploration. Simply AI. I don't care at all about the exploration of the stars or about my own history. This ... this THING is a curious object, and simply from a mechanical point of view I must admit it is interesting. But you are coming off like some old adventure movie. Frankly, you sound a bit off."
She felt her sanity coming back to her. Theresa started to gain momentum again, and she looked at this leather-encased man as the oddity he truly was. He was the one who did not belong here. The one that was crazy. Why did she even answer the summons? She had no idea his family and hers were ever linked. She had never even heard of this Orion Mechanism before.
And then he shattered her reality completely.
In a moment of stunned silence, she watched as he dragged his lengthy fingernail across his palm. As the blood from the wound began to flow, he squeezed his had into a fist above the cubical center of the axis within the Orion Device. As the blood dripped into the recesses there, shaped strangely like a Chinese Puzzle Box, the device began to move ... to illuminate the room. The arms of the mechanism began to move slowly. Arms she had not even seen before appeared. A panel arose from seemingly nowhere and within that moment, a glowing and understandable console sat before her. What had appeared as an antique mariner's compass now sat glowing light the console of the Slipstream. A flat panel with intricate patterns describing arcs and ellipses.
"Two things you should understand about this device. First, it is no mystic antique sent to the Earth by Satan. Rather, it is a machine left here by beings whose origin is that galaxy from which this navigation console was set to look outward from. Second, it exists in more than just our dimension - that of physical matter. It resides in many places, but chiefly upon the planet that even now spins in the ether around Betelgeuse. Do you understand? This is our first exposure to alien technology and all along it has been treated like some trinket created by my ancestor Rogerius. I am not some occult-minded freak who is determined to track down the secrets of God and Satan, but a realist who has stumbled upon a grand and terrible secret. There are only two genetic signatures in our entire human race that this device responds to in the process of unlocking its function. My side of the family places it in this mode; console, ready to operate in conjunction with a ship. Your side of the family places it within navigation mode. Once started, it will follow the original path of the explorers who came out from the planet in Orion's Belt and eventually settled here on Mars, and then populated the planet Earth. This is science, Theresa, not magic. It is only fate that caused the two families to intermingle and join bloodlines. It was not anticipated. Somehow we are tainted in our genes now, and we cannot complete this task without each other. Merely opening it does no good ... your blood must join with mine to expose it's full potential. 5 years ago, we discovered an underground compound buried deep under the earth here on Mars. Within that compound was the collected navigational database for the species that populated this world some 100, 000 years ago. I believe these creatures are what became known to our early ancestors who encountered them as Cenobites. As our over-helpful computer was so quick to note, the word cenobite originated, or at least was in wide use, around 1500 AD. But the popular usage in reference to monastic individuals is not the sense in which I utilize it. Do you remember a man once mentioned by your grandfather before he died? Lemarchand? Phillipe Lemarchand? Well, it was our ancestor's lost journals that that man used in the 1700's to create the puzzles and toys for which he was so well known. How could he have known what terror he would bring upon the world? I believe these Cenobites that came through the wormhole - yes, wormhole - he opened with this intricate key for unlocking the dimensions were no more than the insane reflections of a great race of travelers born before the Earth was even conceived."
Theresa could not even breathe. Who was this mad man? Could he hear himself? Yet, there it was, upon the table in from of her. And Phillipe Lemarchand was well known to her. She had inherited all the family journals from Andronicus Rimkovsky, her grandfather, when he died. There were many from both families and they spanned the centuries. She had read all she could and knew the history of Lemarchand's puzzle box and the myth of its powers to open doors to other worlds. Even the terror of the Cenobites was known to her, but she always believed they were the words of crazed men, too involved in their work to see reason. She took a chance.
"How do you know all this? Was this written somewhere in the compound you discovered here on Mars?"
Daniel laughed so deeply, Theresa was astounded. She sat down quickly as his laughter turned to rage.
"You fool! Of course not ... we could not decipher their language given 100,000 years of our own to attempt it. Can you not guess from the feeling you have when you are near the Orion Mechanism? We are Cenobites, you and I ... by blood and by right."
4 ...
It had been a random date, Theresa later learned. 2226. And the group of what she had believed originally to be students that had sat so intently listening to Daniel speak about the history of his and her families and the Orion Mechanism's origin and purpose, were actually UNM professors and intellectuals involved in the digs that had revealed what they now referred to as the Cenobite Catacombs. The date had been random, she learned, by pointing out to Daniel when they finally did arrive off the horizon of the Orion systems that in fact they had taken 65 years to arrive there. Daniel admitted that nobody could have guessed how quickly the engines they had been developing in secret for the last 100 years would get them to Orion's Belt. The number was an arbitrary one, chosen for its ability to withdraw money from the pockets of investors.
From their orbit around the heavy sphere which Daniel had stated with such certainty existed, they could understand the immensity of what they had been brought to this place to accomplish. Though Betelgeuse was a super giant with a widely orbiting solar partner, the planet still survived, barely clutching at an orbit terribly ancient. It was so far out from the sun that had once given it sustenance that it appeared as a giant black coal circle, sitting dead in space. But as the cameras and the sensor equipment incredibly illustrated, there upon the surface of the planet stretched the remains of an immense civilization. No part of the planet was left uncovered by vast, black metal constructs. So terrible in aspect were the geometries and architectural varieties that the crew of the Slipstream often gasped in horror at what they were seeing. Theresa was the first to express in words what everyone else was thinking.
"It is as if the entire Catholic mythology of Hell had been written from the descriptions of this very planet's construct. Nothing remotely resembling humans lived here. They could not have."
The planet was the size of 100 Jupiters. And if
the buildings had any comparable counterparts on Earth, perhaps nothing less
that the
Theresa was suddenly enraged.
"How could you insist we are of this monstrosity? We could not possibly be related to the beings that created this horror!"
"But we are, Theresa. You feel it in your genes ... the ache to go down there; to rejoin those who bore our ancestors in their tepid wombs."
"No. These are vast beings ... they are infinitely larger than we. We are lice to them. We could not possibly bear relation to these beings ... you're mad!"
And the truth was revealed at last.
As the ship circled lazily about the dead planet, light began to slowly expand upon the viewport of the craft. Theresa stopped and stared at the spectacle before her. Daniel stood fully erect and slowly raised his hands outward, his palms upturned and the burning image of a familiar puzzle box burning brightly in the center. His eyes, so black and furious penetrated her own with ferocity.
"Give me your hand, human bitch."
The human vulgarity was said sardonically, intended to mirror the duality of her attempt to hold on to her humanity while the fierceness of her Cenobite blood tore at her soul.
The searing intensity of the voice ripped through her mind as she tried to focus on the other people in the ship. Slowly things melted away and were replaced with black architecture. Faces she could not recognized glared back at her with thin lips, pale faces and coal black eyes.
"I am not human ..."
She pleaded, knowing that it was true, though in her mind she was still a human being.
Daniel took her hand and dragged a black nail over her palm and squeezed the blood from her hand over the Orion Mechanism, filling the recesses of the bowels of it with her life.
"It isn't a navigational device at all, is it? It's just another key, like Lemarchand's box. This whole effort was nothing more than your attempt to return home ... and do what?"
Already the mechanism was unfolding and expanding, creating a form and evolving into something that almost seemed familiar to her.
"This is not some simple key. If it were, I would not have had to exist in so many forms over these last 8 centuries to develop this technology the way that I have. If I was still in possession of Lemarchand's box, I would have walked here with the Orion Mechanism in my hands! Cenobites we are, yes. Fallen angels? Of sorts, perhaps ... Don't you understand upon what you are gazing? This is the home of your God. This is where God ruled for 200,000 years before Lucifer decided enough was enough. But the revolt failed and we were banished. He did not even give us a ship ... simply threw us into the dimension where Lemarchand managed to find us. If it weren't for the Orion Mechanism, we would never have been able to return home again. When we came to earth, not even dinosaurs walked it. We waited eons for humanity to mature and grow into the beings we needed to get home."
Now the whole deck was aflame with electricity, black and smelly. Theresa could see the entire planet was awake and that something was coming from the surface of the planet toward them. She squinted, aghast. Angels soared upward, but not the angels of Catholicism. Terrible, hideous beings bathed in white with their arms raised, bearing flaming swords.
"How can this be? I don't understand what side I am supposed to be on. You say we are Cenobites, but this is not our world. This is a world of angels, and we are not angels but demons."
Daniel stepped beside her as the final shape emerged from the Orion Mechanism that had been activated by the key which was her very genetic material.
"Indeed. We are not angels. Not any more. Collectively, you and I, we are the morning star. We are Lucifer, and these are the gates of Heaven. Theresa, you have just opened the only weapon that can destroy God. This is end of all that is human or good in existence. Take a moment to consider this. And tell me when you're ready to take back what was rightfully ours."
Epilogue ...
From the
Secrets better left hidden.
Mysteries better left unsolved.
And damn the race that tries to think grand thoughts about its place in the scheme of existence. Humanity is just a grain, and in support of that theory, the Cenobites appear without restraint to melt it into a glass sculpture to remind the would-be archaeologists of races to come that history holds dark things.
And that God is just a name without a race to bow to it.