The history
In 2000 on the hard drive of one of Nikita's computers were discovered mysterious files which were not put there by any of our company's programmers. These files were in fact fragments of a programming code which generated random numerical sequences in the computer's RAM. When perplexed engineers started the program they discovered a remarkable thing: in addition to numerical sequences it also generated information which could not be traced to any of the software installed on that computer. The information was in the form of BMP images. The pictures showed medieval cities, fabulous creatures, an old man dressed in white cloak with a long white beard and enigmatic scripts cut in stone. Scores and scores of the enigmatic texts were collected. When a professional linguist was summoned he said at once that the texts were in Old French. So the mysterious writings were read and here is what they say.
The beginning of the illusory world
Year 1203 AD. A Greek pilgrim Theophilus, who spent the last 15 years of his life in India and picked up a number of heretical ideas there, passes through Constantinople on his way back to Europe, carrying an ancient Indian Lokashastra manuscript in his bundle. In the manuscript is recorded a detailed instruction how to create illusory worlds. While in Constantinople, the pilgrim falls ill and, weakened by the severe deprivations of his long journey, dies. Writing materials at that time were valued very high because of their scarcity. A piece of parchment could be used and reused several times, erasing an old text and writing a new one. Before he dies, Theophilius, to save the precious text from being lost forever, lies to the priest who receives his death-bed confession, that the parchment contains several chapters of the Holy Scripture translated into Sanskrit. As a result, the manuscript is put in the library of the Constantinope Patriarch. But as the future proved, this deception brought nothing but catastrophes and wretchedness.
Year 1204 AD. The IV Crusade against the Muslims. After a long siege the crusaders finally capture and destroy Constantinople. Pope Innocent III in Rome receives the gold-trimmed manuscript as a trophy. In 1244 another pope, Innocent IV, fleeing from his bitter enemy Emperor Frederick II, takes refuge in the Saint-Just monastery in Lyons, France. With him he carries a part of the papal library, including Lokashastra, which remains in Saint-Just.
In 1345 the manuscript is discovered by an old monk Batist, secular name Viscount De Sou. As a young man he, like Theophilius, traveled widely and spent several years of his life in India studying Eastern philosophers. When he returned back to France he discovered that people turned away from him as a heretic and so, to escape the horrors of inquisition, he first became a novitiate in a monastery and then took the vows.
Brother Batist stumbled upon the manuscript in his monastery's library and, knowing the language, was able to read it. And here is what he learned. A world is created by meticulous and diligent recitation of mantras which takes several days to complete. The mantra reader may change the sequence of mantras in accordance with certain rules and thus create different mantra patterns. Because of the complexity of the task and the long time required to make a particular mantra pattern, the person who reads the mantras and creates a new world is called Weaver in Lokashastra.
Different mantra patterns create different worlds. Weaver's concentration and his emotional state during the reading also are very important. When he reads the mantras without worry and anger, the weaver creates an illusory World of Happiness or Sukhaloka, where you can take a temporary refuge from natural disasters. The World of Happiness, connected to the External World by a Umbilical, not only serves as a refuge in times of troubles but also softens the disasters which happen in the External World. The time in Sukhaloka is 12 times slower than in the External World so that one month in Sukhaloka equals one year in the External World. After a month or two of its own time Sukhaloka dissolves without causing any ripples in the External World and all who were inside return peacefully and happily home.
On the other hand, if the Weaver is distraught and abstracted while reading the mantras and makes mistakes, the result is just the opposite and a Word of Sorrow is created or Dukhaloka.
The World of Sorrow is deceptive. Indeed, at first you can find protection from external troubles there but gradually this place of refuge becomes a source of misery. Through the Umbilical which connects it to the External World, the World of Sorrow sucks the life force out of the External World and grows larger and larger. The time is 12 times faster in the World of Sorrow and one month in our world equals twelve months in the World of Sorrows. However, the lives of the humans and animals inhabiting the World of Sorrow do not increase very much, they start to lose their memory, their appearance changes and after a while they lose their ability to return back to the External World altogether.
After 8000 of its own years (or 666 years in the outside world) Dukhaloka finally hardens, the Umbilical snaps and all the inhabitants of the Wold of Sorrow die. And just before this happens the External World is struck by a series of disasters.
These are the secrets Brother Batist learned from the manuscript. He translated the text into Latin, with the intention of passing the dark knowledge to his future pupil and spiritual successor. Brother Batist did not intend to use the knowledge himself, partly because in his opinion there were no calamities in this world to justify such and action and partly because he was scared of the evil number 666 mentioned in the text.
However, in just three years, in 1348, Europe was laid waste by a terrific epidemic of a bubonic plague which came from the Gobi desert. Millions of people died and France was especially hard hit. The gates of Saint-Just were closed to all external communications to avoid the ravages of the epidemic but in vain?. Each day several monks fell victim to the horrible pestilence and the Superior was among the first to die. The brothers were in panic, only very few of them were able to keep their self-control. In neighboring villages the frightened peasants burned not only the corpses of the plague victims but also alleged witches and magicians whom they blamed of invoking the pestilence.
Brother Batist decided that it was just the time to become a Weaver and create an illusory world where people may escape from the ravages of the plague. For two days he intoned the mantras in his cell without other brothers noticing anything. The severe self-discipline of the monastic life helped him to keep in check his emotions and to concentrate. Unfortunately, at that time of trial, the brothers were very suspicious of one another and on the third day one of the monks overheard Brother Batist reading magic spells. He was instantly accused of sorcery, tried by a civil court, found guilty and condemned to death by burning the very next day. Meanwhile he was put in a dungeon. The justice in the time of pestilence was swift.
Brother Batist, however, kept his self-control and continued to intone the mantras, which he learned by heart, until the smoke from the fire filled his lungs. At that moment he saw the Umbilical stretching up into the sky and he had only a few more words to whisper to finish the web and he did whisper them but the smoke filling his lungs distorted the magic sounds and the Umbilical became unstable. It sucked in Brother Batist together with several other people standing nearby and started to dance madly all over France and England moving from place to place with tremendous speed and drawing in people, animals, trees and even buildings as it went. Then it made the last tremendous leap into the Atlantic, slowed down and disappeared somewhere in the ocean within the Bermuda Triangle. And because of this the connecting passage from the newly created illusory world to the External World became flooded with water with it entrance buried at the bottom of an internal sea.
Thus, because of the fear of the monks who decided to burn Brother Batist, the fabric of mantras became flawed and instead of a World of Happiness a World of Sorrow was created.
The history of the illusory world
But what about the people who were sucked into his illusory world? They saw a world with several fresh-water lakes and an abundance of edible fruits. The sun progressed across the sky at a steady and regular pace, the length of the day was exactly the length of the night and there was an eternal summer. The earth within this illusory world was in the form of a huge disk floating in the middle of an infinite void ? later the disk was named Hyperion.
At first people were very frightened, some believed that they were in the purgatory or even Hell itself, others ? that they were elevated into one of the celestial spheres. Some lost their sanity from shock and it was only several months later that they adapted to a degree to their new and strange surroundings. Domestic animals, which were sucked in together with humans made their life much easier. The world of Duhkaloka was at its very beginning and there were no signs of any disasters yet. During those first quiet years the inhabitants built a town called Sheepstone and started to refer to their world as the Sphere. The majority of the inhabitants were English since it was in England that the Umbilical reaped its richest harvest. In all there were about twenty thousand inhabitants.
Brother Batist kept his secret fearing violent attacks against himself from outraged and distressed people, especially since the only exit from this world was buried deep under water. Later Brother Batist realized that the blocked exit was not an accident but the natural result of the internal workings of this World of Sorrow.
Brother Batist posed as a Weaver from Saint-Just and settled on the outskirts of Sheepstone. The Weaver resolved to find the exit even if it took him the rest of his life. He discovered that this new world was receptive to magic and using the mantras from the Indian manuscript as a basis, learned nearly all the laws of this world of his own creation. He had a lot of time for that since people who were transplanted into this new world now lived much longer. The Weaver established that the aging of humans in this world was 12 times slower and was close to finally opening the door to the External World when various unfortunate events started to happen within the Sphere, giving justice to its true name" the World of Sorrow.
The trouble was that the Weaver was not the only person who learned how to work magic, some other people had also acquired that ability. At first they only knew how to make the simplest of magic but gradually their skills grew until finally they developed really amazing powers. All the magicians split into two hostile groups" those who wished to return back to the External World and restore their former peaceful pattern of life if at all possible (they were called the Outgoing ones), and those who wanted remain in the Sphere and acquire still greater magic powers (the Remaining ones).
The Outgoing established a School of Mantras, which stressed long and laborious development of magic skills through the use of mantras and constant self-improvement. The Remaining ones established a School of Alchemy using which methods they could get much faster results although their magic was not as powerful and depended on the availability of alchemical substances. In time both schools started to use the methods of the opposing group to a certain degree. The carelessness with which some of these mages used their newly-acquired skills destabilized the precariously delicate magic web made by the Weaver so that the door to the External World which he all but opened was again destroyed. The Weaver refused to join any of these two warring sides and went to live in a desert like a hermit perfecting his magic skills and hoping someday to weave a pattern of mantras resistant to external disturbances and interference.
Years went by. Children were born who had never seen the External World. And with the war between the two factions always on their minds and other troubles, people started to forget their original homeland and with their memory to lose their former human appearance. What's more, those who were born in the Sphere lived only 500 years instead of normal 1000 for the original settlers while the third generation lived only 60-80 years" exactly the same as people in the External World. Thus, after a thousand years of its existence only a handful of original inhabitants remained alive in the Sphere" all of them powerful mages.
By the time of Transformation there were several cities and quite a large number of smaller settlements in the world. Each city and settlement was run by one of the two hostile groups. The Remaining ones were affected by the horrors of Transformation more than others since they intentionally tried to erase all the memory of their former habitation in the External World. Humans were turning into mythical monsters" the creatures that never really existed on Earth but whom medieval people nonetheless feared. The first lycanthropes and dragons appeared in 1005 by Sphere time (only 83 years after it was made by Earth time). People also were turning into gnomes, elves and mermaids. The people-turned-monsters left the cities for the surrounding forests. At first they did not attack humans, but as the transformation went deeper and they forgot not only Earth but also their former way of life in the Sphere, humans became their enemies and these monsters started to raid and lay waste human cities and settlements.
There came a time when virtually all the territory of the Sphere became occupied by monsters with humans confined to the very edges of the disk. Finally, both the Outgoing and the Remaining ones awoke to the danger and united in their fight against the monsters. The allied forces won back nearly half of all the territory. To nail down this success, they broke off part of Hyperion held by humans and suspended it at a height of about a kilometer above the rest of the disk. Thus, in 1015 was created the second continent" Helios. Its area was only slightly less than the area of Hyperion. The humans who remained down on Hyperion continued to suffer from the depredations of the transformers.
This war was the first successful cooperative effort of the two opposing magic schools. However, the relief it provided to humans was only temporary. Very soon transformations started even on Helios. In addition, the most powerful monsters from Hyperion, who knew the rudiments of magic, were able to climb even to Helios. A group of alchemists supported by the top nobility conspired against King Valentine who they believed was unable to rule and defend the world. They met in secret and using alchemy again split Helios in 1025. The newly formed continent was named Rodos and its new ruler King Katon proved even more faint-hearted than his predecessor. He was panic-stricken and ordered an immediate split of the new continent as soon as the first dragon appeared there in 1031. However, due to a mistake in calculations, the magic went wrong and only a little portion of the continent was broken off while the King together with a group of his mages who performed the magic were killed.
The new island was called Feb. For twenty years only anarchy reined on the four continents of the Sphere. Gradually the monsters filled all the continents. Humans were crowded into a few small cities separated by wide stretches of wild, monster-infested territory. In 1051 a little-known baron Leon managed to unite under his command the troops of several human settlements on Helios. His war campaign was very successful" in just 5 years he had all the main cities of the Sphere under his control driving the monsters out.
Then, the second (and the last) council of the Outgoing and the Remaining mages was held and Leon was unanimously elected the King of the Sphere. The council also adopted the constitution of the Sphere. According to that constitution the King was to have as his advisors the two most powerful mages from each of the two magic schools. Leon, just like his predecessors, ordered for a piece of land to be broken off from Feb. The new little island was named Leon in honor of the new King and a magnificent royal castle was built there which survived even to our days. The separation magic was again far from perfect. Together with the intended result there was another one, totally unexpected. A part of the oldest continent Hyperion separated from the main body and descended below it. Luckily, it was populated almost exclusively by monsters. The monsters multiplied on Haron (the new island) so rapidly that very soon the island became totally unfit for human habitation. Leon's successors used to expel outlaws to the island.
Little by little human population of the Sphere adapted to their circumstances and there were almost no new cases of transformation. In that way" without any new transformations but torn apart by never-ending wars and conflicts ? humans lived for hundreds of years. The Weaver whose life was now drawing to a close even though he was an original settler and a powerful mage, spent most of his time in a kind of cold sleep or hibernation with metabolism almost at a standstill so that he did not grow any older. He remained in total seclusion and away from the main cites for hundreds of years. His magic powers were great, he was more powerful than all the rest of the mages put together. But still he could not weave a door out of this world because there was some mysterious magic in the world, which interfered with all his efforts.
However, the Weaver always remembered what the ancient Lokashastra said about the World of Sorrow:
The existence of the World of Sorrow is divided onto 3 stages:
•Eits first stage of existence, continuing for 1000 years of its own time is the stage of development and revelation of all its inner properties. And indeed it was exactly after 1005 years of its existence that the Sphere was finally formed and started to transform its inhabitants.
•Ethe second stage, lasting for 6000 years, is the stage of stability. True, at that time there was no development at all and even the population remained at exactly the same level.
•Ethe third stage, lasting for 1000 years, is the stage of destruction. The Sphere will destroy itself and all of its inhabitants, it will first harden and then die killing everyone within and causing a wave of disasters in the External World.
So, the Weaver had prepared for the destruction stage. He had been hoping that this stage so full of dangers and disasters would provide him with yet another opportunity for opening the door back to Earth since the destruction must also affect all the mages so that their magic wouldn't interfere any more with his weaving. In 6800 he went into hibernation to wake up after 200 years of sleep just before the beginning of the Destruction phase.
Destruction of the illusory world
In the year 1934 Earth time the Sphere began to crumble. At first, the effects on the External World were almost unnoticeable but the majority of conflicts and disasters that have happened since then, including the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, were caused by the destabilizing influence of the World of Sorrow. Naturally, the Sphere itself has also been suffering from a wave of disasters and calamities. Despite all the efforts of the mages more and more humans were transformed into monsters, it became so bad that even mages themselves were not immune from such a fate. The decline went slowly but inexorably, within 800 years nearly all the cities were destroyed, the countryside was teeming with hordes of unimaginably horrible monsters, which fought each other continuously. The magic now was used only very rarely. The King kept his thousand-year-long rule over the Sphere but his power was very much weakened.
In the year 7824 Sphere time, the Weaver finally succeeded in creating a link to the External World. This link or door was very imperfect and only very sensitive electronic equipment such as computers were able to detect the extremely weak signals coming from the Sphere. To make this very unreliable link between the Earth and the Sphere more secure, the Weaver created several portals in different locations within the Sphere.
And because the space was now clear from interfering magic, the Weaver was able to make an important discovery not mentioned in Lokashastra: the woven illusory world had several Nodes. What a Node looks like the Weaver was unable to establish but he learned that control over one of the Node gives you an enormous power over a large portion of the Sphere and further, if you find and undo the Master Node you can painlessly unravel the whole fabric of the illusory world and return all of its inhabitants to their initial state, i. e. back to the year 1346. On the other hand, control over the Master Node is a great danger and temptation insomuch as it gives the person who controls it an absolute power over the Sphere. Using this power you can even extend the life of the illusory world by multiplying the wave of disasters and catastrophes on Earth. Perhaps that was why the Nodes were not mentioned in Lokashastra at all.
The Weaver has realized that he won't be able to find the Master Node alone and used his Portals to ask the residents of the External World for help. By that time only 140 years remained to the final collapse of the Sphere, which must occur in the year 2014 Earth time. What has happened to the Weaver since his appeal, we do not yet know.
Using the discovered programming code, Nikita's programmers were able to open and maintain a kind of communications portal to the world of Sphere. Although it's impossible to establish a physical presence in the Sphere, nonetheless we can see what happens there and even influence the events through the illusory objects which are automatically created by magic. The Sphere is represented on our screens very imperfectly since the capabilities of our computers are limited. One of the Weaver's requests he sent to us in his writings is to provide access to the world of Sphere to everyone who wish to help. Perhaps somebody will be able to find the Master Node. And we hope that it will be the person who will use the Node to unravel the fabric of the illusory world not to establish his dominance over the Sphere. |
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