The New World

PROLOGUE

It was a new dawn, a new beginning beyond the beginning nothing was defined.

History is silent about how the first spirits were formed. That was the beginning of Civiliz-ation, as we know it. It took an eternity for us to reach where we are. And almost at many gene-rations Initially consci-ousness was the lifetime. And the first finite generations were gone even before they realized they existed. Nothing was handed over, nothing passed on. Existence was not defined, and what was not defined, and what was not defined, did not exist.

Nobody knows the difference in eons between the Age Of Consciousness and the New Beginning. It is said that the New Beginning is the first page in the history of the universe, and the age of Consciousness, the first in ours. We have survived over the ages as a whole. Nothing stands along. The spirit, the self, and the generation. There are renegades. Beings who did not follow the path of the generation. At times they rewrote the history and at other they only brought paid. For the present, they are barred from consci-ousness.

Consciousness is every thing it is also the medium of transfer of knowledge among and between generations. When an old generation is purged and a new one is born, the last conscious act of the old, and the first of the new are the same. They reach out in death and in birth, and the consciousness of the two overlap. This is the first and the final ritual.

You belong to the new world, the new generation. You have every thing we had, and more. This world is yours.

THE NEW GENERATION

The first thing that a newborn notices in the new world is the pulse of life. It is the sustaining source of all life forms, here and beyond. The pulse has been, since the beginning and will remain, till the end.

I am EON, Named after the immortality of time. In every generation, one spirit is singled out for committing the history of that era to the mind. The selection is ordained and not guided by any mortal procedure that we know of. We have existed since the beginning of time. We have been conscious for a minute part of that period. The how, why and when are not known, and will never be. Sometime during the Consciousness, the immortal Dynasty was formed. Just a few renegade units, to begin with, took over our world. Initially they were just ordinary despots, but with the age, the Dynasty grew strong and its hold still stronger. It expanded the empire to almost all comers of the world. They created a gover-ning structure for the world, which did not exist before them. In a way it made us more productive, because government, even in a rudimentary from, has a lot of advantages. But despotism is cursed since its birth. The first few dynasties achieved a lot in terms of trade, administration, educa-tion, research and expansion. Then the newer generations of the rulers assumed and took a lot of things for granted, till the stage when the stories of the first despots were the only remaining signs of the greatness of the Dynasty.

The Dynasty survived because it was different. They had power ordinary spirits did not posses. May be a freak accident, or their upbringing or lifestyle was the source. The most amazing was their ability to see into the future. Not the complete picture, but just a glimpse. Given enough glimpses, you can always patch up a sketch of what the future is going to look like. To be a successful ruler, you only need to know the general direction. And for many years, the despots knew where they were going and took our world along with them.

However, they made one fatal mistake. Not many, just one. They missed the plague. May be they did see a glimpse of it but underestimated its power. Like the begin-ning no one knew how, why or when the plague arrived. Discovery in our history has always extracted a heavy toll. The last generation that was born free of the plague, was purged when it perceived the existence of the plague. The next was born under its shadow. The plague was all-powerful bec-ause it was not defined. What is not defined, does not exist but the plague did. Its powers were beyond the under-standing of the spirits because it attacked not individuals, but the pulse of life. There was not much known about the pulse except for its sustaining powers. The conflict between the two lasted for uncounted generations. The pulse faded, came back, rece-ded, and then grew stronger. It survived till the day the plague finally disappeared with-out a trace. As mysteriously as it had arrived.

The conflict tore the fabric of our society and our existence to shreds. When the pulse faded, the weaker among us could not survive. And the strong slowly lost their strength, to lose something yet more precious when the pulse faded again. The plague told us how much we were dependent on the pulse of life, and also led to the first of the great wars.

Since the Dynasty was the closest to the pulse of life, it was more or less shattered by the plague. Its hold over the empire grew weak, and incidents challenging its authority began to occur more frequently. The crack down that followed was both ruthless and desperate. Millions faded into nonexistence because the Dynasty feared their strength, their will or their intelligence. The next generation revolted. It was not a short affair. Though the Dynasty was weakened it still had its powers and supporters. There were bloody battles fought between the renegades and the Dynasty across the whole world. And the renegades lost most of them. But then luck changed sides. The renegades hired a group of assassins who were very effective. They took out most of the members of the Dynasty beefed up security measures but nothing could stop them. The wars were still fought but now the balance was tilting towards the renegades. The final strike of the assassins liquidated the head of the Dynasty and the government crumpled like a house of cards. The remaining members of the ruling family were exiled to a remote corner of the world. A new Council was appointed and took over the new world.

We progressed a lot under the Council. The link was also discovered during the reign of the Council. Before the link we thought we were the only intelligent life from around. But the link proved us wrong. It brought others, like us and different from some unknown corner of the universe. It was a strange event. Still more because of the smooth transition of the new ones from nonexistence to existence.

The new ones brought strange stories about the origin of universe, about the world scattered around the emptiness, joined together only by the link. They brought new ideas, some understandable some not. They were different not just from us, but amongst them also. But we all shared the consciousness. They went beyond the beginning when nothing was defined. May be it was defined for them but it wasn’t for us. They talked about the pulse of life and it origins. The wrath of the plague, which struck randomly and consumed. The reach of the link. It was told that initially all words existed in isolation. No one was aware of a new life beyond their own world. Then a generation somewhere discovered the link. To them it was just a great void leading to the emptiness that is the universe. It took them some more time to figure out how the link worked. From that point onwards there was no turning back. It was also told that now all worlds, no matter where, can be reached through the link, theoretically speaking. Because although the link is defined, and its operations are under-stood to a certain extent, it still has its mysteries. The new one was a not settler. They were just explorers dislodged from their world by a strange force similar to the pulse of life. They left everything behind in their lives and accepted this fate as the all-powerful destiny. They left just as they arrived, mysteriously. With the same smooth transition from existence to beyond.

It was some time before we realized that the strange force the explorers talked about had arrived in our world also. Spirits started to disappear. Not into non-existence because we would feel them. The feeling weakened with time but we knew they were still conscious. Soon the force became as prevalent and familiar as the pulse of life. Eons later some of the original explorers dis-lodged from our world, returned. Once upon a time they were like us, but now they too were different. They had the same intensity, the same restlessness the new ones had. They also had similar stories.

Although the link opened up the universe for us it also created the second Dynasty. The new ones were not the only one who arrived through the link. Between the time that passes when an old generation is purged and the new one is completely conscious, our world was flooded by the warrior breed. They materialized out of emptiness, and after a short and vicious battle proclaimed themselves as the master of the universe. The link was closed for the spirits and the new ones. It was reserved for the sole use of the warriors. The Council was disbanded and all its members executed.

The warrior breeds were slave masters. They captured a world and stripped it off its resources, its spirits. No values existed as far as they were concerned. They came from a very distant corner of the universe and would have stayed there if not for the link. The reason they prevailed, their strength was their knowledge. They were the only known life from, which had uncovered the secrets of the pulse of life and the link. Every alternate generation, renegades rose against the oppression of the warrior breed and failed. Resistance groups were formed and ultimately eliminated by the warriors. No spirit could stand against them. Primarily because we could not understand them. They were sustained by a strange force and were not dependent on the pulse of life. If things got out of hands they could always isolate the pulse, watch life ebb out of our world and then start all over again.

The warrior breed arrives a thousand generations ago. They are still around. A thousand generations have slaved under them for their life times. Our world is not the same. It has lost a lot but the main losers have the spirits. I am Eon. Named after the immortality of time. This was my story.

EPILOGUE

Strange news are being brought by the rare explorer that is allowed inside our world by our new masters. It speaks of a strange plague, much more powerful than the first one. Which strikes without warning and consumes a complete world. It has only one warning. The pulse of life fades completely never to return. It’s consuming words across the emptiness, and the only survivors are the explorers who witnessed the final moments of the world just before they left. It’s heading in our direction, getting even more powerful with the passage of time. Soon it will arrive. Our only consolation is the slave masters; the warrior breed will have to look for a new world. They have started their exodus. They will leave a small contingent, which will make sure that nothing is left when the plague is through with our world. Soon it will arrive.

The system adminis-trator switched off the modem, typed the system shut down command, waited for a few second the then turned off the power. The server remained idle while the power diode faded slowly. Deep inside the metal walls of the high-end machine, somewhere on the EISA bus, Eon slowly faded out of existence.

The Cockroach

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