The Last Bequest & The Sleeping Kings

This page is an archive for a contest entry that was hosted at a special URL. The article has since been ported to the main site as RPC-001: The Last Bequest & The Sleeping Kings.

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RPC-001 Level 1 Containment Document

Registered Phenomena Code: 001

Object Class: Alpha-Black (Utility)

Hazard Types: Ontological, Teleological, Eschatological, Epistemological

Containment Protocols: All RPC Authority personnel of level 1 clearance and higher are to be given access to and briefed on this containment document and the Sleeping King Protocol.

RPC-001 is contained in a secure Authority facility whose exact location and nature are classified Level 5/Administration. Every Authority facility with an operating staff greater than 300 persons must contain an instance of RPC-001-A in a general-access common area, contained within a Black-level secure containment unit¹ integrated into the foundation of the Site.² These containment units, and their connections with Authority Administration central control servers, are to be fault-tested every 6 months by personnel of clearance Level 4/Administration or higher.

In the unlikely event that the Directorate should declare the initiation of the Sleeping King Protocol, every site's RPC-001-A containment system will unlock, exposing the instance of RPC-001-A. It is the primary duty of all Site personnel of level 1 clearance or higher, regardless of role, to ensure the activation of their local instance of RPC-001-A as quickly as possible. Personnel are authorized to enlist the assistance of Level 0 personnel, and members of the general public to do so, regardless of standard information security and clearance procedures.

RPC-001-A may be activated by depressing the red cap on the device, rotating it 90 degrees counter-clockwise, and exhaling strongly into the slot that opens in the top of the cap. The activation of the green indicator light indicates that the device is functional. Once a Site's RPC-001-A instance has been activated, personnel should follow the instructions of their Site director to continue the Sleeping King Protocol.

Containment Addendum: Sleeping King Protocol: The Sleeping King Protocol is an Authority-wide readiness state that assumes the presence of an anomalous threat of Omega-Black danger or higher which has caused the destruction of the majority of sentient life on Earth, or the alteration of sentient life on Earth, whether through spatial, teleological, temporal, philosophical, emotional or conceptual means, in such a way that human society cannot continue to exist in its normal form. In the event of the Sleeping King Protocol being declared either by a majority vote of the Global Directorate or the confirmed destruction of a sufficient number of Authority facilities and/or major population centers, all remaining Authority facilities are to direct all efforts towards the activation of as many instances of RPC-001-A as possible, thereby maximizing the chances that RPC-001 will activate successfully.³

Description: RPC-001 is an artificial device which, when activated, possesses the ability to nullify or destroy existential extradimensional or extraterrestrial threats to the Human species. RPC-001 was developed by the Auctoritas Impertus in the 17th century.

RPC-001-A is the designation for a series of devices developed by the Authority designed to remotely activate RPC-001. All further information on RPC-001 and RPC-001-A is classified Level 5/Administration.

Addendum: A Message from GD-CMDR:

You will never be drilled on how to enact the Sleeping King Protocol. It is not a complicated process, and explaining exactly what the activation of RPC-001 does would be counterproductive. Just know that if the call comes and Sleeping King is invoked, you must strive with every fibre of your being to activate your nearest RPC-001-A. Do your duty. Act. The survival of Humanity- of art, culture, history, truth, reason, love, all of it, everything that makes us, us, depends on it. Once RPC-001 is activated, do not worry. Help is on the way.

Main Menu

| OAS-ADMIN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM
| THIS TERMINAL IS SET TO CLEARANCE LEVEL 5.
| UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS PUNISHABLE BY MEMORY ALTERATION.
|
| Accessing File…
| AUTHORITY GLOBAL PROTOCOLS/SLEEPING KING/RPC-001
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| Directory.qef
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| SLEEPING KING PROTOCOL
| 1. Overview (205 pgs)
| 1.1. Definitions
| 1.2. Protocols
| 1.3. Security Concerns
| 1.4. Information Security and Dissemination
| 2. Introduction (45 pgs)
| 2.1. Update to Introduction ██/██/2021
| 2.2. Recommended Reading
| 3. Section 1: RPC-001 Overview (357 pgs)
| 3.1. Contextual Documents: Auctoritas activities in India
| 3.2. Contextual Documents: Auctoritas diplomatic involvement with the court of Emperor Ackbar the Great
| 3.3. Contextual Documents: Antoni de Montserrat (Biography)
| 3.4. RPC-001 Discovery and Chronology
| 3.5. History of RPC-001 Containment Protocols
| 3.6. Contextual Documents: Ritual Thaumaturgy/Rite of HaMe'agel
| 3.7. Anomalia Supernaturalis CXIII Containment Logs (Transcribed)
| 3.8. RPC-001 Initial Containment Document (1834)
| 3.9. Contextual Documents: Papal-Authority Relations in the 19th Century
| 4. Section 2: Political, Philosophical, Security Consequences of RPC-001 (282 pgs)
| 4.1. Selected GD Meeting Transcripts: RPC-001 (1834-1989)
| 4.2. RPC-001 Destruction Efforts
| 4.3. RPC-001 as a Theogonic Entity
| 4.4. Projected RPC-001 Release Outcomes
| 5. Section 3: RPC-001 OAS/Black Site Analysis (46 pgs)
| 5.1. RPC-001 Memotic/Information Analysis
| 5.2. Applied Containment Release of RPC-001
| 5.3. Contextual Documents: SLEEPING KING PROTOCOL
| 5.4. Selected GD Meeting Transcripts: SLEEPING KING PROTOCOL (1989-2021)
| 6. Section 4: SLEEPING KING PROTOCOL Overview (133 pgs)
| 6.1. SKP Activation Conditions
| 6.2. SKP Activation Corollaries
| 6.3. SKP Contingency/Alternate Planning Documents
| 6.4. SKP De-escalation Scenarios
| 6.5. SKP Casualty Estimates
| 6.6. SKP Infrastructure and Scalability
| 6.7. SKP Reality/ACS Impact/Outcome Scenarios
| 6.8. Log of Unlawful/Attempted SKP/RPC-001 Release Events

| Addendum: For your own sake, read this first, Director.

| Original Author: GD-SCHL
| Date Created: 07/13/1845
| Last Updated: 01/12/2021

Dear Director,

Throughout your career in the Authority you may have been vaguely aware of the existence of RPC-001, or perhaps conducted maintenance on an RPC-001-A instance and gained some hint at it or its purpose. Upon your election, you were told to learn everything there is to know about the RPC-001 anomaly.

In truth, the history of RPC-001 dates back nearly to the founding of our institution. The full file can be accessed through the Level 5 OAS database under the directory listing AUTHORITY GLOBAL PROTOCOLS/SLEEPING KING/RPC-001. Regrettably, it is long, esoteric, and in many places tortuously dull. Several of my predecessors felt the same way, and we have worked over several generations to produce this condensed document, which we strongly recommend you read before embarking on the more detailed file.

The following represents a heavily summarized and edited description of the history and nature of RPC-001, from its discovery in 1600 to the present day. Where possible, we have included primary-source documents in excerpted form.

If the contents of this document shock you, anger you, or cause you deep religious fear or umbrage, take heart; we all feel the same way.

God be with you,

GD-SCHL

The Bequest

Letter from Antoni de Montserrat to Pope Alexander VII, September 1599

In 1599, Antoni de Montserrat (1536-1605), a Jesuit missionary and Auctoritas agent stationed in Portuguese Goa in Southwestern India, dispatched the following letter to Pope Alexander VII, head of the Auctoritas. De Montserrat had spent many years as a Jesuit ambassador to the court of the Mughal Emperor Ackbar the Great, and had struck up a personal friendship with the Mughal ruler.

Your Holiness,

I have sent you this missive directly, with a copy sent along to Superior General Acquaviva⁴, and have, with your forgiveness, acted of my own accord in this matter.

Two months ago, I received an urgent letter from the Emperor of Hindustan⁵, written in his own hand. […] In it he spoke of a most urgent supernatural matter threatening "all the peoples of all kingdoms, be they Musulman, Christian or heathen," and requested consultations with whatever demonologists, alchemists and experts in the dark arts our organization might have on hand in India. I know that, in spite of his heathen faith, Ackbar is a wise and learned man, not prone to fits of fancy, and it was evident from the tone of his letter that he was greatly distressed, and indeed frightened. His messengers indicated to me that I, and any assistants I might assemble for the task, would be guarded and protected by the Emperor's seal itself, giving us safe passage at the swiftest speeds to the capital in Agra.

[…] hastily gathered to my side Brother Dettwald of Ulm, whose alchemical exploits are no doubt familiar to you, Roderigo Salazar Fradegundia, a baseborn Castillian mercenary who proved of great utility in suppressing the Goan snake-cult six years past, the Hindu holy man Dev Manjarekar, and the Goan mission's exorcist and demonologist Brother Pierre de Valois. We conducted the journey in great haste, accompanied by a small number of servants and bearers, and what useful artifacts we could transport from the local vaults. The Emperor's messengers required that all present be sworn to secrecy, and insisted that none of us speak of the nature of our mission.

[…] The Emperor and his courtiers were in a state of disarray such as I have never seen, and it seemed to me that they were preparing for an invasion, though there were no evidences of an approaching army. Greeting us, Ackbar regaled us with a tale that I could scarce believe, but since that time I have seen countless evidences confirming its verity. It would seem that, a few months ago at the temple of Raghunathji, which is the source of the sacred river Ganga, certain signs were seen by priests that would indicate the ending of what the Hindus call the Kalijuga, in their beliefs the coming of the End of Days.

The lights in the sky, strange groanings in the earth and bizarre dreams that plagued the priests of the temple were most concerning as the Brahmins had predicted that the End of Days would not occur for more than twenty score centuries or more. Ackbar's advisors, both Musulman and heathen, feared that this might be some false ending of days, or some demonic portent to the will of Satan himself.

[…] The temple and its environs were in a state of great disarray, and the sky was rent by a descending pillar of fire, with at its center a beast resembling a horseman upon a horse of shining white, raising a fiery sword aloft. Those among our party who were Christians all thought immediately of the Revelation of St. John. Was this not the first Horseman as spoken of in the Holy Book, we wondered aloud.

Ackbar's holy men confirmed that the figure on the white horse was the rebirth of their god Vishnu, and that when it touched the soil, all of the lands of the Earth would be cleansed of evil and the wicked destroyed, but they were confused, since by their own holy teaching the descending creature was much too early. The Musulman clerics of Ackbar's court were equally distraught, for in their heathen teachings their prophet and savior, too, would return on a white horse, but only in a time of great tribulations for the Musulmans, when their faith was forgotten. How, they wondered aloud, could Mohammet be forgotten and the people suffering when a ruler as august as Ackbar led the greatest kingdom of Musulmans on this Earth?

At this, I confess, we set about to arguing, though much beset by the heat and the blasts of fire radiating from the descending creature. Only Emperor Ackbar, to his credit, kept his head; calling for us to be silent, he concluded that the one point we could agree on was that this was not the end of times that any of us believed in, and that allowing it to continue in a manner not obviously predicted and called for by the Word of God was obviously blasphemy against our creator. He entreated us to stop the descending creature with whatever arts were known to us.

Consulting amongst ourselves, we agreed that the Judaic Rite of HaMe'agel⁶, wherein time stands still, would be the most appropriate. And so, with the assistance of sundry Musulman holy men who were familiar with the incantation, we carved the circles into the yard of the temple and enclosed the descending beast.

A 16th-century depiction of the Qabbalic inscriptions utilized in
the Rite of HaMe'agel, as it would have been performed by de Montserrat.

So, with characteristic understatement, de Montserrat and a group of unnamed Muslim courtiers to the Mughal Emperor began the containment of the entity we currently designate RPC-001, and set in motion the process that would lead to the construction of its containment system. The anomaly, frozen in time, remained buried below Ragunathji Temple until 1706, when local Auctoritas agents, fearing that political instability under the reign of Emperor Aurangzeb might lead to the destruction or release of the entity, covertly removed it from the area.

The "Beast on the White Horse," as it was then designated, was briefly stored in Goa, where its bindings were reinforced and several other thaumaturgic rituals were used to temporarily reduce it in size, before it was transported to Rome in 1707.

Excerpt from a Papal briefing by Chamberlain Bianchini, 29 August 1707

It was during its initial emplacement in the Vatican Library⁷ in the late summer of 1707 that Auctoritas scholars noted that RPC-001, which they designated Anomalia Supernaturalis CXIII, continued to demonstrate the ability to change form depending on the personal beliefs of those who viewed it, despite its containment. On the 29th of August, 1707, Francesco Bianchini, then a senior officer in the Auctoritas and Papal chamberlain to Pope Alexander VIII, compiled a brief summarizing the observations of the philosophers and scholars of his organization.

Thus, seeking by observation to determine the true nature of the seeming changes to the form of the creature, it was arranged by Qualifier Adso⁸ that all of those engaged in the study of the artifact would make their own separate observations of its appearance, that by comparing them some logical study of the nature of CXIII be accomplished.

The results were regrettably confounding, but in their disunity permitted some conclusion about the nature of CXIII. Some claimed to see in it the image of Christ risen, others the Whore of Babylon. Still more saw it as Satan, or an Angel, or other figures of Biblical significance. All those who made such claims were Christians, or of Christian heresies.⁹ Those who professed little faith, however, saw visions of considerable variance. An Englishman saw CXIII as the legendary King Arthur, while his comrade, a Welshman, disagreed with vehemence, claiming that CXIII took the form of the great Welsh legend Bran the Blessed. The Muslims of the organization insist that CXIII takes the form of the Mahdi, though among themselves each describes the entity differently. I have appended a full list of CXIII’s multifarious forms to this document.

[…] Whereby it seems logical to conclude that CXIII takes the form of whichsoever figure of faith or legend that the beholder believes, once believed, or has been taught will someday return to right wrongs or bring about paradise on earth.

Fortunately, despite the Auctoritas’ growing worries about the theological scope of RPC-001, their knowledge of thaumaturgy remained competent; over the next century the temporal bindings on the object would be strengthened, reinforced and strengthened again, leading its containment to assume the thankfully secure status that it maintains to this day. As the Auctoritas grew in scope, new observers saw their legends and myths in RPC-001, and researchers came to appreciate that the anomaly was a mirror to the near-universal cultural concept of the “returning/sleeping king”, the former savior prophesied to return to their land to set right wrongs and restore the traditional way of things.

Transcript of a Meeting between the First Directorate and His Holiness Pope Gregory XVI, Date Censored

The entity came to assume its modern significance at the very birth of the Authority; despite repeated protests from Rome, when the secular coup de main that led to the end of the Auctoritas became a matter of fact and not speculation, Pope Gregory XVI arranged a meeting with the newly-established Directorate to arrange the transfer of control of the anomaly to the Authority.

Partial transcripts of this first meeting have been maintained in the archives of the Administration Division since 1834. This document, translated from French and Latin, is typical of Administration records from the earliest days of the Authority, when formal protocols of information security were still being developed; it was customary at the time to refer to Directorate members simply by their numerical identifiers.

Pope Gregory is simply identified as “G-”. The initial filing notes of the document establish that this version of the transcript has been heavily edited for brevity; it appears that numerous other Auctoritas members were present, but their recorded speech has been excised from the text.

G-: There you have it, my dear Directors. CXIII. Our greatest and most terrible treasure.

5: I cannot- but how-

G-: Speak, my child. What do you see?

5: This is your great secret? You keep the risen Christ in this vault, locked away?

G-: I, the humble servant of God on Earth, would not be so bold as to make such an advanced theological assertion. Perhaps your fellow ironmongers and philosophers would care to advance their own hypotheses?

1: Christ? Nonsense, And why do you see one figure? I know those faces- I’ve known them since I was a boy! It’s Csaba the Hun and Vlad Tepes! It’s said that in our time of need they would come and drive back the Turk!

2: Explain yourself, Holiness; why is Charlemagne here? Don’t the legends say he sleeps in the Untersberg?

3: Why would- it’s clearly the hero Fionn!

4: Are you blind? It’s Krishna, god of the Hindoos! He’s blue, man! See for yourself!

6: So you’ve found some demon or creature or Anomalia that changes form to reflect belief, then? This chimera is your secret?

G-: Ah, finally your “Authority’s” much-vaunted objectivity rears its ugly head. Yes, so it appears. But it’s more than that. When that thing touches the earth, the End will come.

1: The End? Of Days, you mean?

2: So by containing it you hold back Judgement? Hardly a sensible position for Mother Church, no?

G-: We do not know what End. We have been struggling, racking our minds to determine what end for more than a century now, and the only certainty seems to be that it is coming. So, you wheelwrights, you cheesemongers, you usurpers of the holy prerogative of the Servants of God, I can with great pleasure and relief proclaim… this thing, be it for good or for ill, is your burden to bear, now. Not ours.

The oldest known photographic record of RPC-001; a daguerreotype image, dated 1840. Early Authority researchers sought to "demystify" their understanding of RPC-001, with little success.

The transfer of all guardianship over RPC-001 and all Auctoritas records relating to it to the modern Authority caused consternation on a grand scale, and disagreements among the Directorate that nearly broke the fledgling organization. It rapidly became clear that the “Bequest” of Pope Gregory was not given out of some desire for human progress or safety, but rather as a last spiteful gesture from a Pope known for his deeply anti-liberal sentiment.

The subsequent 150-odd years of squabbling over the fate of what was eventually designated RPC-001¹⁰ are an embarrassing topic for the Directorate even to this day, and thankfully need not be covered here in any detail. The original Bequest included detailed instructions on the maintenance and, if need be, deactivation of the thaumaturgic containment systems for RPC-001 which are still employed in the entity's containment today.

Containment of the entity within the deep vaults of the Vatican was maintained through the political unrest, conflicts and instability of the 19th and 20th centuries largely due to the resilience of the thaumaturgic rituals employed, and the willingness of subsequent Vatican administrations to allow Authority personnel to employ the original containment spaces, albeit while imposing significant financial and operational costs for doing so.

Authority and Auctoritas records indicate that, since the beginning of containment, attempts have been made by disgruntled or rebellious personnel to breach the entity's containment no fewer than 8 times; thankfully, the rituals binding it are exceptionally difficulty to deactivate quickly without the use of the Sleeping King Protocol, and all attempts have failed.

Suffice it to say that only relatively recently, with the growth of the study of memotics, have we come to realize that, far from being a grave danger to all of human existence, RPC-001 might be of considerable use. It is an apocalypse, but at the very least it is ours.

RPC-001 Level 5 Containment Document

A filtered and image-stabilized photograph of RPC-001. Variance in shape, surface texture or size on the part of the object do not affect its luminescence or subjective change in appearance.

Registered Phenomena Code: 001

Object Class: Alpha-Black (Utility)

Hazard Types: Ontological, Teleological, Eschatological, Epistemological

Containment Protocols: RPC-001 is contained in a secure vault in the fourth sub-basement of the Vatican Library.¹¹ RPC-001 is kept in a state of temporal stasis by the action of an octuple-reinforced Rite of HaMe'agel, which reduces the passage of time within its boundaries by a substantial factor.¹²

This binding is further secured by a quadruple-thickness thaumaturgic circle based on a dually-redundant Sumerian Ka-Inim-Ma Zi-Sur-Ra (Modified) runic design.¹³ These bindings are to be checked and secured on an annual basis by thaumaturgic personnel from the Black Site.

Containment Addendum: RPC-001-A: RPC-001-A is the designation for a distributed thaumaturgic rune array incorporated into every Authority site with a permanent population of 300 individuals or more. RPC-001-A's network is centered on RPC-001's containment chamber. The array is powered by human bioelectricity; breathing on the thaumaturgically-prepared Runes of Naudiz¹⁴ contained within each RPC-001-A capsule instantly transfers, by correspondence, the entire bioelectrical potential energy of the subject into the containment runes in the center of the array.

A minimum of 144 RPC-001-A activations, collectively designated the Sleeping King Protocol, and consequently human lives¹⁵, are necessary to suitably energize the overlaid runes of Sowilo and Kaunan¹⁶ that constitute the center of the 001-A array. Due to the conflicting thaumaturgic signatures of these runes, a sufficiently powerful surge of human bioelectrical potential creates a brief thaumaturgic "shorting" effect, which will likely disrupt RPC-001's containment sufficiently for it to reenter regular time and become active.

In the event of an accidental or unneeded activation of the Sleeping King Protocol, the RPC-001-A system can be earthed by means of two manual switches within RPC-001's containment chamber, which must be activated simultaneously to siphon energy from RPC-001-A.

Containment Addendum: Sleeping King Protocol: Containment of RPC-001 may be remotely breached via a ritual of remote thaumaturgic correspondence designated the Sleeping King Protocol. This protocol is considered to override and supercede any other Authority emergency containment measures, due to the presumed likelihood of the release of RPC-001 destroying or irrevocably altering the fundamental nature of reality.

Description: RPC-001 is a semi-stable memotic singularity possessing theogonic properties. RPC-001 is incorporeal, and varies widely in appearance depending on the personal beliefs of those who observe it directly. The object constantly emits white light with a spectral signature identical to that of the Sun and a luminance of 120,000 lux. Photographic observation of the object reveal it to be approximately spherical, though its surface regularly develops protrusions, bumps or other amorphous shapes.

The exact physical nature of RPC-001 is unclear, due to limitations on observation imposed by the field of slowed time the entity is currently contained within. Time lag prevents all but visual observation, and it is unclear whether or not the bright light emitted by the object originates from it or is a result of the interaction between the anomaly and thaumaturgically-altered spacetime.

Conscious human observers who view RPC-001 directly report that it assumes the form of religious, legendary, mythological or cultural figures or groups of figures they most strongly associate with the concept (conscious or otherwise) of a sleeping king narrative. While observers with similar cultural or religious backgrounds may report seeing the same figure, their exact descriptions invariably do not correlate; RPC-001 is thus unique to each observer.

RPC-001 functions as a previously-unknown form of memotic singularity. Though the exact nature of its function is still under research, the anomaly absorbs or collects energies derived from close exposure in the infoplane to beliefs in apocalyptic sleeping king figures or folk heroes whose myths and legends foretell their return. The theoretical absorption radius, or memotic well, of RPC-001 has been calculated to extend to at least 15 AU¹⁷ from the Earth’s surface.

The unique nature of the RPC-001 singularity manifests as its capacity to derive energy from memotic vectors without influencing their velocity. In this way, it resembles a memotic cyclone¹⁸, but is anomalous for its great size, large memotic well, and tendency to increase, rather than decrease, in cyclic memotic potential over time. RPC-001 continually derives cyclic potential from every memotic ground on Earth, most notably every human being who has lived since the anomaly’s first appearance in 1599.

While the exact effects of the release of the memotic potential stored within RPC-001 remain theoretical, it is believed that breaking the thaumaturgic seals around the entity would immediately cause an Informational Collapse Scenario, whereby the memotic “momentum” stored by RPC-001 would cause the sudden and irreversible direct intersection of the infoplane with conventional reality. In this scenario, the intersection of this volume of stored reality would have several simultaneous effects:

• The reduction of the ACS of the area contained within the memotic well of RPC-001 to 3 or below.
• The release of memotic scalars with sufficient energy to propagate achronally, resulting in information being sent backwards in time.¹⁹
• The release of a quantity of theogonic, or belief-based thaumaturgic energy sufficient to alter reality such that some or all of the mythological, cultural and theological figures “stored” by RPC-001 are immediately “imprinted” on to baseline spacetime.

Addendum: Excerpt from the dream journal of Dr. Alessia Carvalho

Dr. Alessia Carvalho is the current Senior Researcher assigned to RPC-001 within the Black Site. On 06/03/2022 she, along with several other members of the Black Site, including personnel not assigned to RPC-001, experienced vivid nightmares, all of which were remarkably similar in their format and content.

In light of the similarities of the contents of these dreams with hypothesized scenarios involving the activation of the Sleeping King Protocol, and the capacity for RPC-001 to potentially transmit information backwards through time, inclusion of a record of these dreams in the RPC-001 containment file was deemed necessary. The contents of Dr. Carvalho's dream journal for the night of 06/03/2022 represents the most detailed and vivid recollection of the event.

The following document has been translated from Portuguese.

I was up high, looking down at the world like a bird, but higher still. Everything was distant and hazy under clouds of smoke and flame, but if I looked I could see details with perfect clarity.

It seemed biblical, at first. The risen Christ walked the Holy Land, the true believers in his wake. But they warred against the Mahdi on his white horse, his head a ball of flame, and so many others. I knew each of their names, as if they were imprinted on my skull. I remember names I never learned. In Persia, the sacred fires had scorched the land, and the Saoshyant and Kay Kosrow, his champion, did battle with the forces of darkness amidst rivers of haoma and blood. I looked east, and in the high Himalayas saw where Gesar of Ling had resurrected his empire, and the horse-peoples of Mongolia and Tibet and Nepal and Bhutan and a thousand other lands had flocked to his shimmering banner. To the south they warred with Kalki, who had made India a sinister paradise, the kingdom a glistering land of inhuman radiance and perfection, beset by rebellions led by the spirit of the Mahatma.

I saw Buddhas meditating under burning bushes. Forgotten gods hung from gibbets with spears in their eyes, torn by ravens. And the kings and lords… All of Europe was at war. Arthur and his Knights, Excalibur gleaming, drowned Chu Chulainn in his own blood while Bran the Blessed watched. Great Caesar and Garibaldi and Saint Peter were the new Triumvirs. Charlemagne and Barbarossa tore Germany apart with their warring, pausing only to unite with the princely Tepes and the Two Stone Constantines to send the Turks howling into the sea. Väinämöinen had shattered Suvorov's armies along the Vistula, staining the winter snows red.

To the south, Africa was a tumult of gods and spirits, too many to count. Paul Kruger and Scipio Africanus led great armies against the legions of Mandela reborn as a saint, with Cinqué at his side, spear bloodied. Across an Atlantic shimmering with ghost ships and lost treasures a new golden king rose in the Andes, shaking the mountains as he cast out centuries of Spanish infestation. Lampião and Moreira rode the sertão and the pampas, hunting evil in the name of Emperor Pedro. Juan and Evita returned in their black airplane, bringing glory to the poor. To the north, Zorro and El Santo stalked the streets of a Mexico alive with the dead, righting wrongs as reality burned around them. The Mi'kmaq sought out Glooscap, and found him.

Over the Pacific, Juan Bobo and Bernardo Carpio, who had finally broken his chains, joined Hone Heke, gazing skywards as a thousand thousand B-17s roared overhead, bearing John Frum and the return of his long-promised cargo. In Australia, the outback rang with the gunfire and spear-stroke as Ned Kelly and Pemulwuy settled, once and for all, who would own the Dreaming.

And then I saw America, its myths like a hurricane, gods becoming men becoming legends becoming the stuff of jokes and lunacy. Uncle Sam and Emperor Norton and John Henry and Paul Bunyan and Elvis and the Founding Fathers and Johnny Appleseed with Joe Mufferaw hurling trees aside like matchsticks, drawing the state lines anew as the bugle called to rally the Rough Riders once again.

I saw the deaths of billions, and cities reduced to ashes, and whole countries thrown into the sea. It was beautiful.

Dr. Carvalho has applied for, and been granted, indefinite stress leave from the RPC-001 project.

Return to top.
To do: watch the world end. Later. -D.

Footnotes

1. The exact nature of an RPC-001-A containment unit may vary depending on local resources. The recommended bare minimum degree of security for RPC-001-A entails a quadruple-walled safe fitted with case-hardened armour plating, ceramic heat dispersion layers, and a multiply-redundant electromagnetic lock plus a quadruply-redudant mechanical backup with codes accessible to senior Site staff.

2. Containment units for RPC-001-A must also contain a multilingual manual describing the functioning of RPC-001-A, as well as braille and audio instructions for the device, and a copy of this containment document.

3. While the exact number of RPC-001-A instances needed to enact the Sleeping King Protocol is classified, RPC-001 has been designed to ensure that no one single regional command can independently activate it.

4. Head of the Jesuit order in 1599, and nominally de Montserrat's direct superior in his public-facing role.

5. What would today be identified as the Mughal Empire, a semi-ahistorical term which came into use in the 19th century.

6. Honi HaMe'agel, a Judean scholar during the first century BCE, famously discovered the ritual thaumaturgy that bears his name, which employs a complex series of magic circles to drastically slow the flow of time within a constrained area.

7. Headquarters of the Auctoritas Impertus as of 1590.

8. By the 18th century the Auctoritas had borrowed much of its complex organizational structure from the Spanish Inquisition; personnel at the rank of Qualifier were assigned the direct oversight of particular anomalies. The rank can be considered a rough equivalent to a Senior Researcher in the modern system.

9. The Auctoritas employed numerous Protestant, Reformist and Orthodox scholars and experts, though their relationship to the Papacy was kept indirect and secret for obvious reasons.

10. A designation which actually overrode several preexisting objects, largely due to the perceived existential danger presented by the Bequest.

11. The four sub-basements of the Library are not public knowledge; sub-basements 3 and 4 are the premises of Black-Site-001.

12. While the nature of the Rite, and its heavily over-engineered bindings make exact measurements unfeasible, it is theorized that RPC-001 experiences time ten duodecillion (10⁴²) times slower than the rest of subjective reality.

13. The Ka-Inim-Ma binding is one of the most ancient thaumaturgic rituals known to the Authority, having been invented in approximately the 3rd millennium BCE. Though not particularly potent in terms of its capacity for sealing thaumaturgic entities, it is employed in the containment of RPC-001 due to its simplicity and robustness. The fact that the runic circle can be displaced without the loss of containment by simply submerging it in a sealed vat of fermenting barley beer provides a useful contingency in the event that RPC-001 should need to be relocated.

14. Elder Futhark: "need/distress".

15. For reasons of morale, this side-effect of the activation of RPC-001-A is not included in the RPC-001 Level 1 document.

16. Elder Futhark: "sun" and "torch".

17. 2.244 x 10⁹ km, near the orbit of Neptune.

18. A natural formation within the infoplane caused by the repeated and simultaneous movement of large numbers of informational vectors of similar energy state. Memotic cyclones are believed to the source of collective informational consciousness between memotic grounds, and tend to form in the presence of large-scale release of theogonic thaumaturgy.

19. This method of detecting the future activation of RPC-001 is currently being investigated by Black Site researchers, as it is unclear exactly what information would be preserved in this way or how it might be identified.