The Sacred History

         What would they do if they knew?
         They would stop me, of that there is no doubt. They would denigrate me, absolve me of my humanity, reassign my many achievements and label me a heretic.  They would cite the 'natural instability of my uncoloured mind' and lock me in a madhouse for the rest of my life. Or maybe not, how can I say for sure? Certainty is an abstraction in all but the most ignorant of minds, the ones that truly belong in a madhouse. Such will be the way of the world when my work is finished, or so I dream, but if the sacred history is to emerge, pure and righteous, then I must stay awake and concrete for the time being.
         Upon further thought, I instead suspect they will throw me into a gaol. Evil men are sent to gaols… ah, but again, an abstraction, and so I will say men whom threaten social order are sent to gaols. My threat to social order is the 2nd greatest in all of human history; am I thus an evil man? I am a volatile man, a lonely man, impetuous and sullen; externally hostile, internally chaotic. My work requires this chaos whereas my life requires that I contain it, and I am forever fractured by my successes with the former– a theoretical physicist of preeminent standing in the latter 12th century, a genius, a nobleman, a triumph– and my tortuous, brutal failures with the latter. I am a  minority of one, despised and alone, and with excellent reason.
         At present my habitat is the University of Onondaga in Onondaga City, the shining gleaming Capitol of the Third Province of the Iroquois Heartland-Confederacy. My office is an oppressive mess of papers and half-working gadgets I tinker with endlessly. My laboratory is pristine; my real laboratory is not. Like a madhouse or a gaol, the University has its restrictions, but they are passive and flawed and easily circumvented by a man of my prestige and, more importantly, my conviction. For ten straight academic seasons I have exceeded my annual research budget tenfold and in complete secrecy, accumulating machines and equipment hitherto unknown to all but the top minds on Earth. They all wonder what I plan to do with the state-of-the-art atom-splitters and supercomputers looming in the dark west chamber of the University sub-floor. I answer them with complexity and they are satisfied, but the true answer, the one which satisfies me, is exceedingly simple.
         I am also sick, physically; I suffer from chromaria. It is chronic and less of a bother to me than it would be to a man of physicality, but it is there nonetheless; a treatable but incurable disease, highly contagious, eventually terminal. Every so often my blood runs cold and my vision becomes spotted; my head throbs with fever and soon days of my ever-shortening life are lost to recuperation. There is nothing more to say, it is what it is, and I fear far graver challenges to my machinations before the disease takes me for good.
         Now let me begin:

HYPOTHESIS: History is polluted. What should be is not.

         Monoliths of bronze and gold and, later; cement, glass and steel, erected by man throughout the centuries, honouring heroes and civilizations of the dreamy past and sober present, from Haida and the Pacific Rim to the whole of Africa; all pale in significance to a 3 meter tall by 1/2 meter wide stone that juts awkwardly out of the ground not 200 miles east of Onondaga City. Oneida, the capital city of civilization itself, surrounds the original monolith for miles on end. It is an ancient tribute to the social and technological advancements spurred by the man, the face, carved crudely into the peak of its dull gray exterior. His memory is not limited to the halls of academia or the castles of the elite; all of Earth’s children know the face, the feats, the words, and the name: John Edward Egassis.
         The Egassis Confederacy, or so would it have been had the Ancients had their way. He was an uncoloured man, like me; another like him was not seen for 500 years, when the early steam ships of the Iroquois and Huron nations pushed boldly across the Great Eastern Sea to discover, much to their astonishment, the vast rocky lands of Europa and the pale-skinned hunters and gatherers who inhabited them. (Some would call what followed an exploitation of epic and unforgivable proportions, an opinion I am often inclined to share; to bristle at old depictions of “ghost hunts” and Caucasian zoos with the righteous fury and shame of a victim 900 years old. But head above heart, always, especially on the eve of rectification.)
         He preached love of the Earth and all its creatures save one. The wrath of humanity upon only humanity, intensified as centuries passed and means progressed; the paralyzing sting of a bullet (the European Enlightenment, 5th century); the toxic burn of napalm and/or hydrogen cyanide (Mesopotamia, 7th century), or yet later still; the horrific incineration of a nuclear detonation (the “Existential Apartheid of the Orient”/Oriental Genocide, 10th century):

A peaceful people of cultural and technological prowess, the Orientals eschewed the Word of Egassis in favour of aggressive industrial policies that exploited the natural world around them. Mining and logging operations, championed by politicians, blighted their earth and vanquished ecosystems. Indigenous animals, holy creatures in the eyes of Egassites, saw systematic slaughter in efforts to quench social thirsts for high cuisine and higher fashion. Pollutants choked the air and malformed climates. Populations ballooned, the situation exacerbated; for years, decades, the dragon, fed and fed, its appetite more and more voracious, always growing; a century, two centuries, ridiculously, irresponsibly, until finally, justifiably, even heroically, the Egassi-Iroquois leadership said 'Enough!' ...

A button pressed; the dragon slayed. Its corpse remains, 200 years later, rotting in ash and radioactivity. Mongolia; shrouded in perpetual nuclear winter, empty and silent beyond the ubiquitous chirps of Geiger counters. A region of Eastern China is famous for its 12-meter Panda bears. But bleeding hearts aside, Majestic Father & Mother Nature of today's 'habitable Orient' receives proper respect from its entirely immigrant population.

         John Edward Egassis. A tall man with a slight build; a world that viewed him as something less than a God might note he was awkward, lanky. Piercing blue eyes, delicate features and a seemingly natural affability, he carried himself like a God might; indomitable temperance, serene, aloof, mysterious. Within one season of his appearance the fields of ancient Oneida were sliced with trenches that diverted water from the nearby river and, miraculously, caused greens to emerge from the ground. He took their weapons and turned them into tools, and many centuries of nomadic living ceased in an instant. He disappeared for a short time only to dramatically re-emerge with the chiefs of the neighbouring Onondagans, Senecans, and Mohawks; fierce rivals turned to brothers, awestruck with their pale-skinned messiah, ready for peace. 
         Oh yes, Egassis the Magnanimous. A localized, newly-formed confederacy, consolidated in leadership and, soon, worship. But he resisted the mantle before him, to become a living God, preaching instead of the Lord that was all around, the earth and trees and the many beasts within. Hard Father Nature, in harmony with soft, soothing Mother; the skies and seas, the latter of which it was stipulated must be bathed in once a day – to “cleanse the spirit,” or some such notion. Many years passed before science uncovered the true wisdom of such a commandment; it was regarded only as further proof of the timelessness of the Egassis Doctrine.
         Imagine the world without his influence! Mankind forced to putter along throughout the centuries, crawling like infants in the darkness of pre-civilized society, losses indistinguishable from gains, painstaking trial by error, until someday, maybe, a breakthrough; and thereafter some random circumstance resembling modern civilization as we know it. Ignominious, shameful, a fate too hopeless to contemplate…
         I look upon his face at this moment, atop a statue in the clearing below my office window. A replica of the Oneida original, it watches over our campus just as countless others peer stoically over every square kilometer of the civilized world. Egassis the Magnanimous! The Magnificent, the Wonderful! Our hope, our saviour! Every bit the rock of his hallowed depiction, the man of all time; a God whom clothed himself in the mortal trappings of man and masqueraded about, teaching and guiding his children in the hopes that they might join him someday, presiding over all of creation. Past, present and future; the gift of eternal love, the gift of our Lord and Father.
         Father. John Edward Egassis. Certainty is an abstraction, as I noted earlier, but forgive me one such abstraction, as it will soon define my very existence.

         John Edward Egassis. Fraud.






         Fraud.





PROCEDURE:

History is a tree that grows in perpetuity. At its top is the present, where we sit, corporeal passengers forever levitated into the future, steered to and fro by burgeoning branches and branches upon branches that sprawl into the sky like threads bursting from a weave. We can ascend no higher than the tree will carry us, and so to skip forward in time is impossible. We can, however, move backwards. Swing an ax at history, strike precisely where we want time to begin anew; the trunk and branches beneath remain as they were, unharmed and unchanged, while everything above is obliterated, cast into eternal nothingness. We relinquish the power of God and return to our proper perch atop the re-forming tree, only now, in accordance with the laws of probabilities, it will assume an entirely new shape, moment after moment after moment...

         Rewriting destiny. Forgive me for omitting the technical details; the analogy above should suffice. Eternal nothingness. Obliteration. All of time, all of history, all moments and thoughts and words and actions, from thousands of years past; breakthroughs and revolutions, births and deaths and lives lived, never to be repeated… erased. Gone. A holocaust of the tallest order; genocide without prejudice; races, ages, genders, species, worlds; existences stripped and replaced with inconceivable odds of resurgence from a great sea of fortune… whatever the future may bring.
         My threat to social order is the 2nd greatest in all of human history because I will repeat this atrocity. 10:42 tonight I will travel 1231 years back in time to approximately 1 year before the first recorded sighting of Egassis. I will head 200 miles east and find the grand stone, and view it in its natural, unaltered state. I will live in perfect seclusion and wait. When the process is repeated, red smoke will fill the sky, and I will witness the beginning of my own history. And with one final atrocity, I will end it.

* * * * *

         Not exactly red. Crimson perhaps, like blood. With the tinge of condensed blood the smoke billows furiously into the air, savaging the night sky and sending pangs of revolt through my system. It is simply science, that I know, and while my year of solitude near Ancient Oneida has not erased that knowledge, it has unearthed something spiritual in me, a sense for the mystical, a feeling of more... more to all of this, more than what I can see. Tonight the Earth is bleeding into the air, a gruesome spectacle; I imagine a dying God, mortally wounded, His creation usurped, His purpose gone. It emboldens me, focuses me, strengthens my resolve. My hypothesis was correct. Egassis has arrived.
         There is a small empty column between the giant pine trees that stripe the horizon, over which the burst of crimson smolders into the black sky. Trudging through the crease in the green curtain I begin a short, dark hike through the wilderness along a jagged path I first carved one year ago, from the remote clearing in which I was delivered, shrouded in the red mist. It was a night sky then as well, and as the crimson dissipated it emerged to me most spectacularly above the treetops; a vast canvas of beaming stars, more stunning and elegant than anything I'd ever seen. Enraptured, I was patently assured of my success before my analysis of the ancient constellations confirmed that I had, indeed, traveled 1200 years into the past.
         Egassis is there, right where I was that night, right now, stretching his limbs and rubbing his eyes, holding his breath until the smoke clears. When it does the majestic sight of the innocent world he has come to corrupt will not greet him so much as the business end of the pistol I brandish in my right hand, my steady hand, waving in front of me as I climb the last few steps towards my chosen perch atop a flat rock face that overlooks the clearing. I reach it and drop flat to the ground, both to conceal myself and to rest. A steady hissing noise, like steam, fills the air overhead.
         Idle for the moment, my nostalgia turns to anxiety. But only once more. The dangers before me and behind me, the gravity of the situation... What if I fail? What if I succeed? What if some third party, some curious local, enters the looming confrontation? Will I be fast enough, sharp enough? Can I look a man in the eye and end his life, a fellow human being, a man of science, a man like myself? What will become of me? I feel my resolve beginning to fade, and the steady hand begins to rattle hopelessly. A plethora of sounds common in the nighttime forest suddenly cause me terror, and I twitch and shudder endlessly and draw my pistol on imagined threats, and feel intense heat in my head and chest, and intense cold from the rock I lie against, and my brow is soaked in sweat, and my heart beats in my eardrums, and finally I imagine a future infinitely worse than the one I abandoned, the one I eviscerated, and then... Enough.
         I crawl over to edge of my perch and see the ubiquitous crimson, with shades of orange and maroon, glowing in its ascent from the floor of the clearing, a small dark figure in its center.



RESULT:

         The loud hissing subsides but the pervasive red cloud remains, and the dark figure, focused to the form of a rangy human silhouette, begins to speak:
         "My name is John Edward Egassis."
         He pauses, almost as if he's aware of his audience. His voice is hoarse and has a tone of bewilderment that surprises me. He clears his throat and continues:
         "John Edward Egassis, First Temponaut of the United Nations Historical Correction Initiative 2172 A.D, yet to confirm Objectives one and two..."
         The words tumble obtusely from his mouth, obstructed by frequent shallow breaths. He is anxious, but more importantly, he is breathing, which means the mist has nearly dissipated. I still see little through the translucent fog beyond a cloudy form; lean, motionless, head tilted upwards. The constellations.
         Minutes pass, and I receive my own confirmation. He wears a jet black body suit of some plastic composite that gleams even in the pale evening light. It adds little to his lean shape, and with one foot bent inward he stands with peculiar posture, legs straight, arms hanging nondescriptly from drooping shoulders emblazoned with twin blue and red patches. A thin seam in the suit runs from waist to neck, detailing the symmetry of his form and accentuating the pale Adam's apple and clean-shaven chin visible to me as his head cranes towards the stars.
         Suddenly, he explodes with glee, arms lurching into the air as he exclaims:
         "Objective one is a certain success! Temporal displacement of 2100 years has been achieved. Mark Orion, mark Aries, mark the Earth moon. Objective two is likely... New York New York New York..."
         And he whirls about with two awkward steps, following "New York" somewhere in the night sky, turning away from my direction. I have my chance, but I hesitate: Temponaut? Historical correction? New York?
         "New York! Mark the North Star. Plus or minus two, three hundred miles. Ancient New York! Objectives one and two are satisfied." He sinks to his knees in exhausted bliss. Now. I rise to my feet, and the moonlight casts my shadow faint into the clearing.
         And he knows, somehow, without seeing, hearing... he knows. He feels some nameless, invisible tension strangling the mirth from his triumph, the crowning achievement of his life, soon to be trumped by the culminating moment of mine. He slowly rises to his feet, and his gaze shifts downwards, and his breathing becomes extremely deep, a rhythmic pulsation of his otherwise still figure. I stand above him by perhaps a meter, with five or six meters of clear ground separating us. The higher functions of my brain and nervous system are inert; their messages lost in some queue within my body. I am simply, finally, acting. I begin to speak and the words stream through me, as if from somewhere else, someone else, myself in fact, myself from the preceding weeks in which I mused, again and again, about my farewell to Mr. Egassis:
         "It would seem proper that I introduce myself. I am Professor Deeks. I am an outsider here, like you, and I stand here tonight as a consequence, sir, a consequence of your vanity, your audacity and your shortsightedness, a consequence of your actions here today, and tomorrow, and the next."
         Silence, stillness. He turns to face me, and as the moon casts its pale glow over his features I see him clearly for the first time. Calm eyes, fixed upon me, betray no emotion. Deep creases in the skin around his eyes, the large forehead and high cheekbones, sharper than I expected, framing an expectant face that fills me, momentarily, with awe; the most famous face in history. And so young. Stoic as the Oneida stone he views me and now, in the darkening woods, it is I who am the messiah, the possessor of ultimate knowledge and power. That power, quite literally, rests in the right hand I extend in a swift motion, and with the pistol now trained on him I continue:
         "You're an imperfect God for a fatally flawed world, a world perverted by your influence. I am here to fix that."
         Silence. I wait for some recognition on his part, and it comes:
         "You're making a mistake," he utters ominously. "You're about to do something terribly foolish."
         "The world is not yours to inherit..."
         "... nor is it yours to protect. I am doing my job."
         "You aggrandize yourself. You insert yourself into something you have no business being in, skewing it, polluting it, planting the seeds for a world of staggering injustice and pain. The words you'll so carelessly flaunt to these people, they become gospel, law. Seas of blood spilled in your name, monstrosities you can't possibly fathom, even with the intellect of a man who's mastered time travel."
         "Do you think it is an accident that I landed here, in this time, near these people?" He stammers with a flash of anger. I am unmoved.
         "Do you think I did this on my own? Hundreds, thousands of people brought me here. Trillions of dollars, countless years of research, of experimentation. And before that? Millions of people brought me here. Millions, trillions... all the people that ever existed brought me here! Their decisions, the trajectory they set and followed, in their ignorance... they created a world destined to destroy itself..."
         ... and suddenly the steely countenance is gone, replaced with an escalating mania. I cannot interrupt him even if wanted, and his hands flail violently about as he continues, nearly in tears, half-pleading, half-vengeful, spitting the words of his farewell with a profound and seemingly genuine frustration:
         "Colonize space! The fools, they thought that would solve it all! Year after year of degradation... the poles melted, the coasts flooded, we lost 90% of our farmland! 20 billion people, NO FOOD!!! ... AIDS, UV exposure... it was gradual apocalypse. A speck, a smear of humanity, the wealthy, the powerful, they thrived! 'Colonize space, we'll simply colonize space' ... all they put into space were the weapons they used to obliterate any light, any force of change, and on and on...  50 billion tonnes of CO2, 50-BILLION-TONNES, pumped into the air the year after California was evacuated! Fresh water, more valuable than gold, traded on the stock market... Air, oxygen, breath, LIFE... half the planet without it, but only until we colonize space, or, OR..."
         I am enthralled, or no... my head feels as though it's floating.
         "... or we fix it. We study, EVERYTHING, and we fix it. We start over, and give the power, the evolutionary edge, to a truly civilized people, a people with a love and reverence for this planet, and we see what comes. The Native Americans, a beautiful people, a beautiful start..." 
         And at precisely the wrong moment it comes, as perhaps it was always destined to. Instant dizziness, weakness... my eyes are open but black spots creased with reds and whites are all I can see. My head throbs with excruciating pain, and with my last flicker of consciousness I drop the gun rather than pull the trigger.

* * * * *

CONCLUSION:

         No conclusion after all.
         No farewell. No decisive ending, one way or another. A lifetime of anger to a blink of uncertainty, and after?
         If you, dear reader, are inclined to believe in a God than believe He was there that night, neither wounded nor dying, smiling upon an old man as a would-be victim showed divine benevolence in treating his would-be executioner. I was recovered from the chromaria attack within hours, and Egassis was to thank. The gun was disposed of– he took that much– and without impediment he continued on his mission, ingratiating himself to the ancient locals while I remained quarantined in the woods.
         It is said that the Eastern forest is cursed. By Word of Egassis, an ancient spirit, impetuous and sullen, roams its corridors, bringing calamity to all whom dare enter. John, of course, would enter quite frequently, and in our all-too-familiar meeting place conversations of deep meaning were conducted. Arguments fought, jokes shared, minds changed; joys and pains and whatnot; feasts and epiphanies and stargazing (endless stargazing, each time like the first); the sum total a great friendship, the first of my life. My convictions broke in the face of his quality, ambivalence turned to acceptance, and for five years now I have supported what I once swore to abolish. My mission, as it was, resulted in failure, but I am not troubled. I've shared in the growth of a King, a saviour spurred by inconceivable responsibilities towards his fellow man and, I humbly state, by the tutelage of a dear friend who loves him like a son.
         So history moves forward, with Egassis' influence, for better or worse, stamped indelibly over it, in it, through it. His legend now spans the continent, and the demands of a messiah leave him little opportunity these days to visit me. Restricted to the confines of the forest I live a life not dissimilar to the one I left behind; simple, regimented, and hard. What's left of my physical and mental faculties are consumed by the endless challenges of survival. The sickness grips me with increasing intensity and frequency, and in my few good days I am wrought with fear that I may be discovered, that chromaria may become my lasting contribution to mankind.
         But I am not alone, nor am I forgotten. A stone rests 3 meters out of the ground in Oneida Village, a future monument to all of civilization. Under the careful direction of Egassis, a team of workers cracks and carves and rasps at its peak, for hours on end, days upon days, until it is flawless. A perfect depiction of an imperfect face, forever captured; an old face, my face.