User:Najawin/Sandbox 3
Newtons Sleep
Plot
Book One: The Rituals of the King
Chapter 0: The Waste Book
As above, so below, War on Earth has begun to mirror the actions of the War in Heaven - the struggle of the holy houses of Christ and their their eternal Adversary shape worldly events. In all things you may read the influence of the divine and of the damned.
A boy sits under a tree, dreaming of the near future, of books and writing, as something falls onto him. Not an apple as it would later come to be told, but some sort of unknown substance. As he examines the unknown substance, his mind flashes forward to the life his life would become, not mere books and writing, but coins, and a king who does not yet exist. He looks upwards and sees a tangle of limbs. Climbing the tree, the boy finds a man as black as night with no face, his head a solid sphere, with branches struck through him. No, not a man. An angel. He touches the angel, examining it, kicking it. The angel clings to him, envelops him, swallows him whole, and the boy once again catches glimpses of his life to be - parliament, coins, infinitesimals, optics. Looking at parts of his life, the boy is repulsed, but as he sees the entirety of his life he asks the angel what is to happen. The angel says that he has but one mission given by his creator, the destruction of the Adversary. The boy offers to help. All he must do is live his life, letting the angel live in his shadow. The angel insists that others would dare not strike him. The boy awakes, with all memory of what was found in the branches gone, left only with his dream of a perfectly ordered book.
Chapter 1: Killer of Sheep
Nathaniel Silver stood in the crowd on a dreary January morning, happening to be in Whitehall during the execution of Charles I. He didn't wish to come into town on that day, but the wound on his head had gotten worse, requiring him to be in the area. It was his duty, so he thought, as one of the soldiers who fought and killed to make this happen to see this through. As the king was theatrically killed, there were cheers and wails, people would claim that there were portents of various types, falling stars, beached whales, the severed head talked for minutes afterwards. In later years Silver would write that the last was certainly false, having not noticed it at the time, along with his other writings on history and philosophy. Finally, after spending some time in contemplation, he returned to his troop. As he went, he carried with him three things as he ever did. The pain in his head, the scraps of paper with his thoughts and musings about life, and a small wooden box.
Silver travels out of London for a few days, though it feels like it stretches on for much longer. At last, in the twilight fog, he meets up with Sir Denzil Lynch and is fondly ushered back to the latter's estates. Sir Denzil informs him of people appearing recently, in dribs and drabs, calling themselves Silverites, followers of his. Silver is surprised, and denies it - he has no followers. But Sir Denzil insists that they call themselves such. The two dine at Lynch's manor, and Silver is introduced to his young daughter, Alice Lynch, Sir Denzil telling her that him and Silver are going to conduct an experiment together on this land. [--Comment about how Silver mentions his secret is Alchemy and Denzil laughs it off? P15--] After dinner the two of them discuss business; Silver thinks that Sir Denzil is underestimating the risk - that even though the fighting is over the two may very well be caught - previous experiments were tried and crushed. Silver brings up the possibility that he preaches blasphemy or sedition on accident, as it's easy to do. Denzil waves it off. He trusts that Silver is a good man on this earth, and so long as Silver is discrete these charges can be made to disappear. Finally, with trepidation, Silver relents, and the two negotiate terms for a settlement on Denzil's land.
As the pair begin to tour the compound granted to Silver the next day, Silver's self proclaimed followers arrives to great them, a group comprised of all different backgrounds, brought together by their interest in his ideas and their shared trauma from war. One of the Silverites in particular catches his eye, a woman named Ann Brownlow who he regards as quite beautiful. Not long after Sir Denzil began to raise walls around the compound, turning the compound into a stockade, as the Silverites built up other necessary structures - Alice Lynch often coming to visit, to watch the group. One night, after a long day of work, the Silverites begin their merriment, stopped only for a few minutes by Nate elaborating on what he thought this commune should be - a place of love, and how in love no bad can come, no sin. He slips away from the party, wishing that Ann would follow, but instead Alice follows him. Upon hearing his disappointment, Alice tells him that she'd like to live in his world of love, and he confesses to her that he almost died in battle, shot in the head. As she falls asleep, he carries her back to the commune, expressing his trepidation at sharing with anyone what he truly experienced on that day. Heaven opening before him, cloaked giants reaching into his self and stitching him whole. As he goes to sleep he glances in the small wooden box he kept for what he was found clutching on that fateful day - a small egg that gave off a strange glow.
As the year marches on into the harvest, Nate resolves to learn the art of butchery. All of his followers, save the infirm, were working the fields, and so he insists upon making himself useful and learning to slaughter sheep. Before the year is out, he and Ann marry. Some good news to water down the bitter taste of the poor harvest. Still, Silver holds out hope, they only had to live one winter. On the first of January, the first Silverite was found dead from disease. Within a week three others. Ann died on the tenth.
Nathaniel wallows in his misery, insisting that this is his fault, his denial of sin caused this, God has punished Ann and his followers for his flaws. Alice seeks to comfort him, tells him that she loves him, tries to kiss him. He shoves her away - she's far too young and his wounds are far too raw. That night he decides what he must do. Destroy the egg. But as the hammer arcs downwards it's lurched from his grasp. Three of the robed giants from before appear, angels cloaked in white. They tell him that they're not angels, though he refuses to think it, they're pilots and they wish to bargain. He begs for Ann back, be them Angels or Devils. They insist that this is something they will not do. But the two sides agree that he will learn about the world. Become a natural philosopher. In exchange for, at the end of his life, his soul. The egg is a distillation of their souls, and he may use it for this purpose through his life. The next morning he finds Alice outside his door and apologizes to her, expressing that the book he was working on must be rewritten, and her father will have to delay publication.
Nate redevotes his attention to the commune and to the book he is writing, but he cannot staunch the bleeding of the former. When spring comes, people slowly trickle away, unwilling to work for Sir Denzil to survive - a betrayal of their ideals, and to get away from the commune. It slowly becomes a ghost town. In May, a friend of Silver's from his time as a soldier, Donald Taylor, comes to visit. At first Nate thinks he's there on the orders from Cromwell and mistrusts him, but Don clarifies that he's just carrying messages. He's really here to warn Nate that his book, already published in London, has drawn attention. Some are accusing it of blasphemy, some are frustrated that it doesn't pick a clear ideological stance. He warns Nate to be wary. He also suggests that Nate's current methodology, of observation, is outdated, that the modern day is the day of the experiment. At the suggestion that this commune might be Nate's experiment, Taylor merely winks before leaving.
Mere days later one of Sir Denzil's men came to the commune to warn Nate that Denzil has been arrested for forgery - a brief stop before he flees with Alice to London. Alice insists that she wants to stay with Nate, but he agrees that she needs to leave. As they left, he tells his seven remaining followers to flee, holding a silent mass for himself as he waits for the soldiers to come and pick him up.
Chapter 2: Mistress Behn's Holiday
Aphra Behn, seasick and miserable, languishes on the journey home, to her masters in The Service. Or. No, she dreams. She dreams of this voyage, and of something she's forgotten, a green pillar, with carvings and masonry, floating from the sea. The others in her dream place it to the side, dismiss it, and she wakes up to find the much younger man she was in bed with leaving her alone and disappointed that night. In the light of day she strolls through Paris, bookstalls and cafes and churches, until an old acquaintance of hers, Sir Samuel Morland, notices her and chases after her. Oh. Fuck. No, Aphra dances away, trying to avoid Sam, worrying that he might be her contact with le Pouvoir. Ah, but Morland catches up to her, and steers her to a nearby caffe where they toast his dead wife. The two discussed politics, talk bordering on treason, and how Morland has set his mind on building an engine to travel to the moon before Sam tries to pry out of Aphra her purpose in Paris. She relents slightly, admitting to be here on Service business as he suspected, but tells him no more than that she's delivering a letter.
Aphra treks back to her room to find two whores blocking her path. Surprised, upon confronting them it becomes apparent that the pair is her contact with le Pouvoir. Aphra, placing herself in the mindset of Astraea - her patron and code name, is taken to a carriage and driven blindfolded to meet a man who names himself Monsieur Pantaloon. He takes the letter that is delivered, though expresses his disdain for the English and their failed rebellion, unleashing forces that will in a hundred years turn against the French in turn. Pantaloon and his retainers leave Aphra alone in the room, and she promptly decides to explore it, as any good spy would do, stumbling upon three shapes draped in cloth. Uncovering them she finds a trio of mirrors, and the candles snuff out, but light remains, flickering from the glass itself. The mirrors showed Behn possible futures. Visions of black suns, of Pilots, of armies built to fight an implacable Adversary, and of a nymph reaching out to her. Aphra is rudely awakened from her trance by M. Pantaloon who insists she tell The Service that le Pouvoir has the windows of divination and they'll not be taken or duplicated. But as a response for the letter, he's amenable. He'll deliver the rat to her lodgings.
Aphra is taken back to her lodgings blindfolded, where she finds a man gagged and bound in her bed, other members of The Service slowly creeping up after her to take care of him. Surprised at their presence, she asks who the man is, and learns they consider him one of the most dangerous men in the world before heading to bed. Right before she falls asleep she remembers. She's seen him before, twelve years ago at the Salomon House, the last time she'd encountered [her] (insert here in revision, believe Carola).
Chapter 3: The Family of Eyes
Mistress Piper thought back to the day she was married and her dreams. A dream for a respectable hour and husband, a small house, a nice little garden. Perhaps children in the future. And for a time all of this was fulfilled. They married two years after the return of Charles II, had a nice house, and he had a nice job. But those times were past. Thomas is dying. Everyone is dying. Piper treks to her front door, with great difficulty, herself half starved, and calls out to the guard she hopes is nearby. She begs for food, says that it was promised to them. But the guard says that there's nobody left to bring food, and he himself dares not break quarantine. She begs and begs, but he walks away. As Piper collapses, crying, the door opens and a trio of figures carry her to a chair, giving her food and drink to build up her strength. When she at last opens her eyes she sees that the trio are wearing masks of deformed bone. One of them, who calls herself Cousin Hateman, examines Thomas and Piper, explaining that a thousand people have died in London from the plague today alone. She gives Thomas something to ease his suffering as he dies, but tells Piper there's nothing more they can do for him. They're here for her, the loa need her.
Piper sinks into sleep for some time, attempting to build up her strength, and in her dreams dreamt of a nest of black serpents covering her, the loa, and a rooster, come to protect her. She asks the rooster who it is, and it claims to be her, to be the house, to be the Golden Age of England. It says it too is a loa, but it will protect her from the others, and ride her instead of them. She asks what loa were, not just in her dream, but with her voice, waking herself up. Cousin Hateman and Cousin Amphigorey are nearby and are able to answer - spirits that watch over and protect them, sometimes each side in the arrangement does favors for the other. Mistress Piper asks if they're witches, and the pair insists that they're not, that they worship nothing. Piper heads back into her lethargy to build her strength up once again.
Days pass, and Piper awakes to a cacophony downstairs, which she creeps down to spy on. She hears a conversation about how the Empire had abandoned the group, how the current mission was supposed to be passive, but things had gone wrong with horrible anomalies, and so they need to retreat. Piper looks down further to see a figure, unable to tell if it's a man or woman. The figure asks why they're not using the boy (for the edit. Could be Newton instead. Probably isn't) instead. The answer is that he's too perfect - already aware that there are great powers in play, so has already tried to contact them. As the group argues, the newcomer, Father-Mother Olympia, rushes over to Piper and grabs her, Piper feeling an invisible blade on her neck. With some thought, Piper looks at their shadows on the wall, and, without moving, separates them. Olympia walks her outside and explains that the group wishes to recruit her. Piper is shocked, she doesn't share their faith. Olympia explains that it's not that sort of group - the goal is to bring energy, change, to all places, even to the oldest of worlds. But they're in a war, and they're losing. Piper says she'd be willing to join, even as Olympia expresses that it's a bad idea - as soon as his-her arm has grown back he-she is leaving. Piper goes back inside and works with Amphigorey and Hateman to dedicate herself to the Faction, falling asleep and finding herself with the rooster, herself and her old life, once more. In her dream she kills the rooster and feeds it to the swarming snakes surrounding her, renouncing her old name and old life, as the snakes whisper out to her the new name they know her by, Little Sister Greenaway.
Book Two: At Salomon's House
Chapter 4: Annus Mirabilis
Nathaniel Silver rots in gaol, condemned as guilty, almost as an after thought, in association with Denzil Lynch. As he lies there, day in and day out, his egg taken from him, racking up debt, abandoned, he becomes sicker and sicker, before falling to the floor half dead. When taken to the chirurgeons they discover a metal ball inside his head, lodged there from his time fighting. They take both it and Nate to show to the newly reinstated King Charles II. Charles delights in the novelty and lets him free, along with a small stipend.
A week after his release, his friend Don Taylor arrives, delayed by wrapping up business to do with reinstating the monarchy. Taylor offers to make introductions to the Invisible College, since Nate still wishes to be a scientist. The pair head to a lecture where they watch a man attempt to perform surgery on a dog, ultimately failing and killing it. As they depart, walking through the streets, Nate expresses his distaste with these methods before a man runs up to him, screaming that Nate Silver has been haunting him, and that he must take this back from him. The man shoves the egg into Nate's grasp and runs off. Nate takes this as a sign that he's on the right path, the path of experimentation. The egg encourages this, indeed, encourages Nate to experiment with the egg itself; dissecting it, manipulating its shape, Nate finds that the egg seems to be made of the same material in uniform consistency and is almost uniformly malleable. Nate is given a few introductions from Don as to scholars he knows, and Nate begins to learn more about the subjects from books, consulting the egg when he can and where to go next, growing his contacts and slowly expanding.
Pages to create
Sir Denzil Lynch - And old knight who offers to let Silver live on his land and grants him and his "followers" protection.
Alice Lynch - Daughter of Denzil Lynch.
Silverites - a group of people that considered themselves the followers of Silver. + called Church of Christ the Sublime
Donald Taylor - Friend of Nate's, works for the espionage service.
Sir Samuel Morland - wikinfo. Cromwell's chief spy, Charles' master of mechanicks, tutor, postmaster, constantly changes loyalties, visiting engineer to Versailles.
le Pouvoir - Intelligence service? Run by M. Pantaloon. Wishes to convert to a set of ideas so they can survive and migrate. Has windows into the future.
