ATLANTIS and CATACLYSM...

External Since: May 09, 2007 Posts: 178

LATER.

Why was Vylyrades important? Among other reasons, because he was
involved in the project to develop and perfect the symbiotic crystals,
and the knowledge he gained in that project percolated in his mind,
nagging at him with the potential hint another idea, another concept.
Like many creative minds, Vylyrades often had no full idea how he
reached his ideas, where his inspirations came from, and he had little
ability to hurry them, the concept was nagging at his brain for over a
year after his role in the symbiotic crystal work ended, and he was
never quite able to tell himself what it was he was mulling.

At the same time that Vylyrades was engaged in mulling over his half-
formed conceptual ideas, he was also engaged...literally. In 4784 BC,
Vylyrades was about ninety years old, early middle age by the
standards of his time and people, and he had already been married
once, but his first wife had perished in what looked to be an
accident, but which Vylyrades had other suspicions regarding. She had
been a minor aristocrat and her family had been involved in a feud
with another aristocratic family, and Vylyrades strongly suspected
that she had been the victim of a politically-motivated assassination.
[1]

This was actually fairly routine behavior in Atlantis in those days,
and if the people of the north country were not _quite_ so blas� and
hardened about it as those of the metropoli and the south, they were
far from unaffected by the Unity�s long-term effort at corruption.
Still, Vylyrades was bothered at a deep level, not just by the loss of
his wife, but by the implications of her loss. In fact, his first
marriage was more-or-less an arranged match, between a minor
aristocratic family and Vylyrades� parents. Vylyrades� had no
aristocratic pedigree whatever, born of commoners, but his visible
talents with the Flux made him a valuable marriage prospect to minor
aristocrats with daughters, trading social and political status in the
aristocracy for status and connections in the ever-more-influential
Flux guild.

Vylyrades was more-or-less content with this arrangement, it would be
false to say that he was madly in love with his first wife, but they
had a workable relationship, both were pragmatic about matters and a
mutual respect grew between them during their time together. Neither
was fully faithful to the other, but that too was more-or-less
accepted and expected in late Atlantean society. When after over
thirty years of marriage his wife apparently died in an accident,
Vylyrades mourned the loss of a friend, if not someone for whom he had
ever felt passionate romantic love. Had he known who to blame, he
would have been inclined (and equipped!) to seek revenge, but he had
only some general suspicions in that direction, and unlike some of his
fellows Vylyrades was not brutal or indifferent to life, the legacy of
the north country.

On some deep level, however, Vylyrades was disturbed by his wife�s
death in the abstract, it set him to thinking, _hard_, about the way
life was lived in modern Atlantis and her colony-states, and about the
archaic values that had once made life so very different a few
centuries before. Those values were still remembered, still present
in old stories, lip service was still given to them in lessons to
small children, but they were treated as a joke by older children and
adults, as proof of the �naivete� and impracticality� of their
ancestors. This was ingrained in the society, a view that had been
growing for generations�but not Vylyrades was questioning it more
deeply, in ways most people never did.

In any society, most people most of the time accept the basic rules
and nature of their society and just live their lives. Some people do
give such matters some thought, but only a small percentage take their
mental analysis to great depths. Vylyrades was one such, asking
himself questions he had never given thought to before his first
wife�s death but which seemed obvious and important to him now.

Over the course of several years, Vylyrades� musings went from casual
thinking to deep thought, and then to a serious historical research
project. Vylyrades began delving into Atlantean history, with a heavy
emphasis on first-hand accounts and contemporary (with the events)
sources, trying to put himself into the mind of his ancestors, to
understand how they _really_ thought, how their _silly_ and
impractical values worked, generation after generation after
generation. The more he studied the matter, the more fascinated he
became, and the more disturbing the conclusions he kept reaching
seemed to become.

Vylyrades� first wife left our world in 4823 BC. His musings did not
follow this all in one sudden flash of insight, they were a gradual
thing, over the course of several years, thoughts and questions
pursued by a very busy and active man. Gradually, though, Vylyrades
came to the conclusion that for the most part, his ancestors had been
neither na�ve nor unsophisticated, but rather that they had been,
basically, _right_.

Vylyrades found this conclusion both paradoxical and deeply
disturbing. The paradox was that like most of his generation,
Vylyrades did not take the ancient religious basis of the former
societal morality seriously, yet he was self-honest enough to see that
those �na�ve� values has worked to hold society together generation
after generation after generation, for many thousands of years in a
society that lacked technological and paraphysical sophistication.
Part of that, Vylyrades recognized, was due to the presence of the
Eldest, a single, immortal ruler, but part of it was that that those
�irrational� values guided individual behavior in ways that
contributed to a society that had been, objectively, more internally
peaceful and more �functional� than the one into which Vylyrades had
been born.

So used was Vylyrades and his generation to the sort of political
assassination that he believed had ended his first wife�s life that it
was taken for granted. Vylyrades could see from his delving into
history that there had been a time, not so long before, when such
things, while not unheard of, were seen as horrible aberrations,
serious crimes worthy of upending entire political alliances and
imprisoning or executing powerful people. There had been a time when
death over family disputes had been rare, and those usually in formal
duels or the like, secret killing had been condemned and they had
_meant_ it.

The paradox taunted Vylyrades, he found himself faced with the
difficulty of explaining why anybody should follow any values without
a reason, and yet the universal assumption of his society in his time
was that the only basis for any action or choice was pragmatic self-
interest. The question, when matters of motivation were considered,
was _always_ formulated as �What�s in it for me?� or �What�s in it for
a hypothetical individual?� This was certainly a rational question,
but it seemed to Vylyrades that it could never be _sufficient_, that
self-interest _alone_ could never be sufficient to hold any society of
individuals together, that without something else such a society could
not remain viable.

Yet Vylyrades could see from his studies that not so long before, many
institutions of his society had once worked better than they now did.
Trust had made up a far greater component of society only a few
generations before, trust not guaranteed by exchanged hostages as it
was between modern aristocratic families, not by threat of
retaliation, or not mainly by such, but simply trust routinely
extended and kept. So steeped in the attitudes of his society was
Vylyrades that he found this almost incomprehensible�and yet it had
_worked_ for thousands of years�and that led him to the recognition
that to a large extent such arrangements _still_ worked in the non-
Atlantean societies.

Oh, the values and customs of those societies _were_ different than
those of his ancestors, some of them radically so�and yet these
�primitive� societies functioned in ways that would be unthinkable for
�practical, sophisticated� Atlanteans. Something was clearly missing
in the Atlantean world view, their way of thinking simply was not
addressing the questions Vylyrades now was asking himself.

Vylyrades began, quietly, seeking other people who found the questions
interesting, and he found that there were some such people. He found
more of them in the north country of Atlantis (when he visited his
former home) than he did it the great metropoli, but such men and
women existed in both places. What Vylyrades did not realize was that
his studies and questions were leading him toward further questions
that were not merely disturbing, but actively dangerous to his
personal safety

The reason for this was that Vylyrades, one day, asked himself a
fateful thought-question: which might be expressed as 'How did we get
from what we used to be to what we are now?'

Once he asked it, Vylyrades found he could not let it go. The more he
studied the social and political and cultural changes since the time
of the death of the Eldest, the more convinced he became that somehow
it did not quite make sense. The change was too...fast,
too...efficient, for want of any better way to express it, Vylyrades
began to have paranoid thoughts that it was almost as if someone had
_planned_ it that way.

The first time Vylyrades had this thought, he dismissed it as
paranoia, but it kept coming back, and as he continued his studies it
seemed more and more plausible, even inescapable. He had no way of
knowing that what he was thinking, the questions he was now asking,
were potentially life-threatening.

MORE LATER.

[1] As it happens, he was right, though his top suspect was actually
innocent (of that particular killing, anyway).

External Since: May 09, 2007 Posts: 178

Vylyrades' first wife died in 4823 BC, and that was when his gradual
questioning of the established Atlantean cultural worldview began, it
took many years before he finally reached the point of suspecting that
some agency was _intentionally_ shaping the changes that had occurred
over the last few centuries. In fact, he did not begin seriously
contemplating that possibility until about 4800 BC, or close enough.
He himself could not have said precisely when his ongoing chain of
thought led to the specific idea of an intelligent actor, but it was
close to that year.

What Vylyrades did not suspect, then, was that he was being watched.
His studies, his questions, the discussions he had had with like-
minded others, all innocent in themselves, had come to the attention
of a 'component' of the Unity, which kept a general watch on the
doings of major fluxons and up-and-coming members of the Flux Guild.
As Vylyrades came closer and closer to matters the Unity preferred
kept hidden, the Unity debated killing him, and in fact would almost
certainly have done just that with most people who were getting that
close to the truth. What protected Vylyrades was that he was also so
_useful_ to the Unity.

His work on the ongoing project of the symbiotic crystals, for
example, was just one of the things that Vylyrades was involved in
that the Unity wanted to see succeed. Among other things, the Great
Project drew heavily on work Vylyrades had done in his Flux
researches, and the Unity was heavily invested in the Great Project.
The Unity was concerned about the potential security breach Vylyrades
could eventually represent, but hungered to make use of the special
genius with which Vylyrades was so clearly gifted.

The Unity settled provisionally on keeping a close watch on Vylyrades,
so that if he started to learn too much the collective remove him, but
otherwise his skills could still be useful. Vylyrades had no
suspicion that several of the people he encountered every day in
Bermuda were actually agents of the Unity, and occasionally he met
people who actually _were_ the Unity, which had become very adept at
pretending to be human through its component individuals.

The attention the Unity was paying to Vylyrades, however, in its turn
captured the attention of some other beings, specifically the secret
society known as the Rhaemyi, dedicated to opposing the Unity, and
through them the immortal Avatars who worked with the Rhaemyi,
Zadatharion and Aradel. Curious to see what was so important about
this particular fluxon that the Unity was so carefully watching him,
these beings also began covert observation, of both Vylyrades himself
and the Unity agents who were watching him.

When they realized just how impressive the creative genius possessed
by Vylyrades was, Zadatharion and Aradel became determined to make
sure they were not caught by surprise from anything he produced.
Also, both Avatars were fascinated by the implications of the
symbiotic crystals, and began to study the techniques for their
creation on their own part.

As for Vylyrades himself, he found that his equilibrium was disturbed
by other things as well as the weird implications of his meditations
and studies of history. One of the things that began to worry the
mind of the most brilliant theoretical fluxon of his age was the Great
Work itself. Vylyrades was not _directly_ part of the planning or
execution of the Great Project, but his theoretical work underlay much
of the work, and he was fascinated by the scale and intricacy of this
immense Flux project, and followed it avidly.

Unfortunately, Vylyrades began to perceive little things about the
Project that disturbed him. As he analysis the intricate mathematics
that formed the foundation of the design, he found that the
mathematical models incorporated assumptions and premises that were
not, in Vylyrades' view, entirely proven. The problems were subtle,
but definitely present, and even in the substantiated parts of the
math he found subtle implications that seemed to have been ignored by
the designers. It was not clear to Vylyrades exactly what all this
indicated, but given the scale of the Project, and the potential for
problems if it was not properly planned and executed, Vylyrades
considered the gaps to be important. Unfortunately he was not in any
position to bring any pressure to bear to examine the matter.

The Great Project had a tremendous inertia, millions of people were
directly involved in it, the planning had been done at high levels,
and enormous political and social pressures existed for rapid
completion. Vylyrades was politically na�ve to a point, but he knew
perfectly well that questioning any aspect of the Great Project would
be dangerous, it cut too close to the Destiny Movement and the
interests of the Speaker who was the real ruler of the Atlantean
empire in those times. Vylyrades did ask some discreet questions, but
he did so with considerable caution�and he found the answers he got
less than satisfactory.

As he delved deeper and deeper into the math, Vylyrades began to get
the same slightly queasy sensation that his historical studies had
produced, the gaps in the work, the overlooked implications, the bits
and pieces that just did not seem to fit, started to look as if they
were falling into a pattern, not clear enough that he could make out
what was being hidden, but there _was_ a discernible sort of shape to
what was not being considered, as if someone were deliberately
covering up the subtle implications that Vylyrades was not seeing.

Vylyrades might have figured out what he was seeing sooner, but he was
distracted by something that can be very distracting: he fell in love
for the first time in his life, with a rather improbable person.

Vylyrades met this woman during one of his periodic visits to his
former home in the north country of Atlantis. Vylyrades still enjoyed
long winter hikes through the lower slopes of the north country, but
at the age of 85 he was now in early middle-age, and he had been
living a rather sedate life, so he was not in as good a physical
condition as he had been in his teens and twenties. While trying to
navigate a snowy slope he slipped, fell, and slide downhill to come to
a stop against a huge fir tree, breaking his left leg.

A telepathic call for help brought assistance fairly quickly, and
Vylyrades had sufficient Biopsionic Power and Healing skill to keep
the damage from getting any worse while he waited, and sufficient
pyrokinetic skill to light some nearby wood on fire for heat. All in
all he took remarkably little harm from a broken leg in a snowy,
subfreezing environment.

The physician who treated him was a woman named Crynaria, and she and
her temporary patient �hit it off�, and began to see each other
socially. Crynaria was an odd match for Vylyrades in some ways,
highly practical, very much younger (she was only 34), very
intelligent but not much interesting in theoretical matters, with a
lively sense of humor in contrast to Vylyrades� sober manner and
mood. As a master fluxon who had formerly been married to an
aristocrat, Vylyrades possessed social rank far above Crynaria, who
was a pure commoner (Atlantean commoner, that is, not a �commoner� in
the colonial sense).

Yet a romance began between them that soon became quite intense. It
was 4790 BC when Vylyrades and Crynaria met, and he and she became
engaged for the Atlantean version of marriage in 4788. This produced
something of a scandal, while a liaison between them was no big deal,
_marriage_ was quite another matter, bridging a large social gap and
creating a considerable amount of surprise and disdain.

The Unity was utterly uninterested in the social implications, it
could not have cared less about whether a commoner was getting above
her �station� or an aristocrat had embarrassed himself. The Unity did
care that Crynaria was dangerously outspoken and embodied much of what
the Unity considered �worst� about the north country attitudes, in
some ways her worldview would have been more at home two centuries
before.

When the symbiotic crystal project was finished, the Unity began to
consider that it seemed likely that the value Vylyrades provided was
no longer outweighed by the security threat he represented. In 4784,
the Unity decided that the time had come to eliminate Vylyrades.

MORE LATER.