The Nexus Crown by Christoffer

September 1827, personal note of Dr. Benedict Greystone.

Drifting at sea, no wind in sails, and those oscillating mechanisms circling high above our ship. Our sailing master, Samuel Fenwick, gave up about a fortnight back. Been drinking himself to sleep far below and away from open skies, deep down in the lower decks.
“It’s them, those cursed fiends! They stole the breath from our sails," his drunken chords echoing through the hallways and decks.

Captain Francis locked himself in his cabin. I and the remaining science team, still debating our next course of action, no solution yet in sight.
“We never should’ve dropped anchor here! Those heathens and their devilry!” I heard a quartermaster scream. Rubbish! I thought. There are no heathens here but us. The uncultured savages, the children in need of enlightenment by this lost paradise.

Have I fallen to madness? Why does this strange urge pull at my reason, urging me to return?

By the stars, give me sanity.

—

Around two fortnights ago a storm hit our sails. It howled holes in our ship, as fierce as the old testament. Most of our equipment broke, and Jonathan Penrose’s freshly painted observations were lost to seawater. I choked on salty air as my stomach crashed against the flow of rising and falling cabins. Roaring flashes of light glistened on the eyes and sweat of our crew.
“Blast it, men, the ship’s near breaking. Hold fast, or she’ll roll us under!” The first lieutenant’s commands echoed between black waves.
“Triton’s turned his back on us, can’t ye see?” a crewman shouted back.

We thought the main mast had creaked its last strength when as sudden as it came, the storm calmed to a halt. Wind and waves no more. Like smoke from a gunshot, only dense fog remained.

A three year expedition had turned five. My purpose, as officially stated by the Royal Society of London: to find anthropological evidence for monogenism, or in common tongue, to trace how humanity sprung from a singular source.

Blasted, what a deplorable waste it had been. Pride and confidence had turned a brittle mask, and the others saw the cracks. They awaited the moment to punish me for my fruitless efforts, this storm had surely become their last straw. As we gathered on the foggy deck, I sensed the will to violently throw me in the deep dark below. Oh the tragedy of our great leader, lost to the storm, I figured would be their lie.

But like sirens turning angels, we heard seagulls above. The fog spiraled away, revealing something beyond.
"Land! Bloody land at last!" our lookout yelled. Fenwick ran to the highest point as he jacked up his telescope.
“Impossible,” I heard him mutter as he scanned the waters ahead.

We drifted closer to the island. Its white cliffs resembled the seaweed-scented shores of home. Yet no nostalgia held its might against the view above its autumn trees. The crew wiped their eyes as if sea salt had pulled a jest on their minds, yet, it remained. Mr Penrose quickly scribbled the scene on some half-moist sheet.
“I’ve never observed anything alike,” he gasped.

Shading the sky stood a broken hollowed out mountain that raised itself like a crown. A stony rough and broken dawn-waking flower, its cliffs converged high above the island’s center point. Captain Francis lowered his telescope and turned to me.
“There’s your prize doctor,” he said and thrusted the telescope into my chest and hands. I looked through. On the shoreline stood a sturdy man-made pier. Fenwick, struck with fear.
“I’d rather battle Neptune once more than setting foot on that rock,” he yelled as he stormed down below. Some tall tale seemed to have spooked the man, but I smiled. This was surely the thing to finally mark me equal to James Cook himself.

—

We made landfall on the pier. I, Captain Francis, Penrose, the first lieutenant and his crew stepped ashore. No sound but the calm sea and slight breeze stirring the tall trees smelling pine resin and oak. The pier continued into a road through the dim forest. The crew put up a provisional camp while Penrose worked the surrounding observations into coal. My heart stirred with childish excitement as the yet undiscovered beyond called my name.
“Captain! This land seems calm enough for an afternoon stroll,” I said. He looked around at the men and walked up to me.
“The crew needs a drink,” he said.
“Then I shall begin the work myself,” I said while the captain grinded his teeth and spat salt. He looked back and called for one man to get up.
“Bring a sea musket,” he shouted to the crewman.

I gathered my bag stuffed with my worn out field journal, coin purse, compass as well as a collection of tobacco, beads and fine decorated mirrors as gifts for showing my peaceful intentions to any uncultured locals.

—

The further we got, the more sickly the trees seemed, losing color and vigor. A strange bird shrieked in the distance as I stopped and kneeled down, touching the road.
“What a peculiar material,” I said. A smoothness like fine white granite, without connective stone, blocks or uneven polish.
“Remarkable craft,” I continued, though the captain was still in spite.
“It may yet be another abandoned post,” he chastised.
“Heal your melancholia, Captain. I promised you fame, did I not?” I said and he sighed.
“Only by revealing some infamous atlantean could you keep such promise,” he remarked as we continued.

We thought to have arrived at a glade as the trees thinned out, yet instead were awestruck by an epic vista. Open country stretched far into a canyon beneath those large thin shell cliffs of the enormous mountain. Around us, dried up fields of withered wheat crops cut through by the path of the white granite road. Yet the most remarkable view laid straight ahead. At the far end of the road sprawled a large symmetrical town. It encircled a hilltop holding a massive black castle and within, an impossibly tall tower that reached up towards the converging mountain tops.

"Good heavens, Dr. Graystone! By what chart or reason did we arrive here?” the captain gasped at me. Our crewman squeezed his grip on his musket.
“Fame and glory dear Francis,” I smirked.

Ahead across the field we noticed some half-rusted cylindrical mechanisms. They towered like fat scarecrows as we walked past, linked together by spiraling pipes and cables throughout the fields. I had seen similar wonders of our industrial ingenuity back in London, even requested our journey to be made on one of those new coal steam ships that were making fresh headlines, yet these things were beyond even the Royal Society’s wisdom. Unknowably complex, yet appeared dead and abandoned. Ancient relics, as some overgrown armor after a forgotten skirmish.

“Halt, over there,” the captain whispered. Our crewman aimed his musket and I calmly pushed it down. Up ahead in the field, a middle-aged woman in worn down clothing picked whatever wheat still lived in the otherwise rotten, dark field. I approached as she looked up at me showing no fear or hostility, only the dead eyes of famine. I took out the beads as my offering gift. She only looked at it and then at me before she said something in a strange, unknown language. It sounded like something known, yet mixed up, together, as all languages spoken at the same time. As my demeanor showed my inability to understand she turned and pointed towards the town.
“Machyrios,” she said and then continued picking her wheat. As I carefully backed up I stepped on a pipe and my head felt resonating by some rumbling notion. I kneeled down putting my hand on its uneven metal. A faint pulsating rumble, like when I felt the faint heartbeat in the hand of my dying father.
“Though grand I sense all this has fallen from grace,” the captain remarked as I squinted my eyes towards the town. Something on the side of the road caught the low sun.

Our crewman seemed affected by some unknown ailment as we approached an odd rusty and horseless chariot. No straps or reins, just a turning stick inside. Leaning against sat an old man with an obscuring hat. Half asleep, he puffed smoke from a metallic pipe. I cleared my throat.
“M… Machyrios?” I inquired. The man raised his head revealing piercing blue eyes that studied me as I approached. He cranked a smile as if by some jest.
“I’m not the king, stranger,” he said and we all looked at each other in confusion.
“I didn’t expect to hear the empire’s tongue in this place,” I remarked.
“No surprise there lad,” he answered and puffed smoke.
“We’re with the Royal Society of…”
“What’s your name lad?” he cut in and I gathered my composure.
“Benedict Graystone, sir,” I said with pride.
“Erasmus Brightwell, at your service,” he said while nodding a touch on his hat before he raised up on his feet, walked over to the chariot’s back, grabbed a tool and began tuning its innards.
“Might you enlighten us as to our current whereabouts?” the captain asked. Erasmus stopped tinkering and looked around the land, waving his tool towards the scenery.
“I came here around forty winters past. Missionary expedition. Twas to bring the lord’s teachings to the heathens of the Pacifics, or so the saying was.”
“The Pacifics?” the captain remarked with surprise. Our crewman squinted and touched his temple.
“I reckon you, as well as I, came upon a fierce storm, ending you up on these shores?”
“You are correct,” said the captain. Erasmus stopped his workings and leaned against the chariot. His eyes wandered away, far past the chariot and the land, into some distant past.
“I was the missionary superior. Nose deep in the scriptures. A respected scholar demanding the respect of the yet to be blessed. Filled with all that childish arrogance,” he said and turned towards the town.
“All those foolish expeditions, believing ourselves standing taller above what we don’t even know or understand. Servants of fools, we’re small children dancing to stupid fairy tales,” he mumbled. The captain stepped forward.
“Where are the remainder of your brethren?” he asked and Erasmus studied him.
“They returned home,” he said in passing and continued his chariot tuning.
“Yet not you?” the captain inquired further.
“It was the price to pay, and I paid mine freely.”

—

The sun was about to set. Most light came bouncing down from the inner walls of the mountain shell, soft as a warm pink cotton. Erasmus continued his tuning as I noted down all I had witnessed. My thoughts wandered. Did his crew return back to London? Why did we not hear any tales of such a journey? Our crewman had collapsed by the wayside, apparently afflicted by some unseen malady or debilitating seizure of the mind. The captain brought him to feet.
“The men must be briefed,” the captain said to me, jacking me out of my wandering thoughts. I pitied the poor fellow crewman for his untutored mind that yielded so swiftly to the strain of these inexplicable sights. I gazed down the road at the distant town and thought, I couldn’t risk returning empty handed due to weaker minds fleeing this wondrous destiny.
“I see no rush, these people seem civilized, are they not?” I said to the captain. He stepped closer, glanced at Erasmus, then our crewman and whispered.
“I fear we may have docked in a place one should not.”
“Then go and brief your men and await my return,” I said while straightening my back. The captain ground his teeth and turned, walking away with the crewman right behind.

—

Erasmus seemed pleased with his tinkering. He put away his tools and closed the shielding to the machinery.
“Why are you out here, alone?” I asked as he walked around wiping his hands clean from soot.
"The storms often deliver new visitors to these shores. I was meant to welcome you, were it not for this wretched piece of junk," he said, kicking the chariot’s side with a thump before he got into the seat. A buzzing electrical hum came out of the chariot as Erasmus flipped some switches. I was stunned.
“By what alchemy does this run?” I asked.
“By the work of our intellectuals. Although these things tend to break at a cycle’s end,” he said and prompted me to get on board. I stood there like a fool. He leaned out from his seat.
“Did I not take you as the curious one?” he asked and I carefully got into the chariot. As he pulled the lever the whole thing moved, without a horse or anything to pull or push, he turned it around and the wind began roaring through my ears as it sped up towards the town. The electrical hum increased in strength and my heart raced. But Erasmus calmly lit his pipe and steered forward.

As we closed in, I spotted an increasing number of small residential houses. People tended the gardens and worked their broken backs. A man’s eyes met my own and there was little there but cold suffered surrender. Scattered between the houses were large strange mechanisms. Not cylindrical as the previous, and without cables or pipes connected. They looked like dead insects covered with decades worth of dust and moss. Some fruit trees stood slumped over while people walked the road back to town carrying half rotting food in the bottom of their baskets.
“This is famine, how can you possibly endure such conditions?” I gasped in horror.
“We starve only for a week, it is customary before season’s end,” he said.
“I do not understand any of this,” I said and Erasmus prompted me to look up at the castle tower increasing in size as we came closer.
"When the bell tolls, by nightfall, the ritual shall commence, and our cycle will be renewed once again."
"And what of your intellectuals? Shall they not produce a remedy for the people's suffering?" I asked.
“They cannot, as they prepare themselves for the coming ceremony,” he answered and I watched as the town approached, feeling even more lost than before.

The town’s outer rim of houses towered four stories high, a blend of seemingly natural rock and metallic structures. The designs evoked the refraction of a prism, blending all known architectural styles into a dizzying spectacle. Webs of cables and machinery connected everywhere. Their metallic surfaces worked some function, like gears of a clock.

Any living green, any bushes and trees, any vines that had once grown on the walls, every plane of grass that rushed by, had all withered away. It felt like abandoned decay, yet people wandered around without a care.

We stopped at what seemed like a hitching post for the horseless, and as we then continued down the street I witnessed the roads circled around, intersected by a main road that went straight to the hill and castle. As the sun set and light fell, I saw the tower and the machinery spreading a strange radiant glow, electrical, like those arc lamps I once saw, yet in rims of some artificial tint which gravitated from the inside.

I walked up to a machine attached to a wall and Erasmus followed. It pushed its moving parts slowly up and down, I felt a warmth radiating. My thoughts succumbed to the machine’s pulsating rhythm, drawn in by its haunting, soothing hum. Erasmus placed his palm on its metal and prompted me to do the same. It was warm, like a hot iron cooling off. Through my hand I clearly sensed that pulsating hum, like the pulse of a heart. Some distant waves of a dying breath.
“What’s the purpose of these?” I asked him.
"We cannot say whether it was the people who arrived first, or these structures." I felt dizzy, like the machine probed my mind, my memories, my very being.
“The mystery of the machine has lost its meaning over the ages. But what we are certain of, is our harmony with it,” Erasmus said and smiled, stroking the metal surface with reverence. I jacked back my hand, releasing myself from its soothing pull.
“Is this not some devilish scheme? As a servant of God, by what reasoning do you hold this blind trust?”
“I’m a priest no more,” he said.
“What made you abandon such sacred calling?” I challenged.
“The same as you. As a naturalist, roaming the world in search of answers, did you not find nature where others sought God?"
“This is no natural law,” I stated and turned around to observe the people in their dismal state. There were no laughter, no fights or meetings, no friends or foe. A man sold a half rotten apple to another man, a woman pruned bushes with no leaves. It appeared a simulacra of a town, a confused memory of something once living, moving parts without a soul.
“What happened to this place?” I asked Erasmus.
“Tis the end of our cycle, and little left but the wait,” he answered.
“Waiting for what?”
“We live by seasons, in all things. Spring into summer, into autumn and winter. Day turns to night, life to death. This land suffers decay when our king suffers on his deathbed.”
“Does no one rule in his place?” I asked.
“There is only the one king, until the next.”
“No royal family? Aristocrats? Gentry?”
“Only our intellectuals, our artists and scientists, but we all serve natural law. Everything repeats, everything recycles. An eternal process, sustaining the balance of all of existence,” he said.

And then the bell tolled.

—

The streets swelled up with people, wandering in a half-trance towards the hill and castle. Erasmus followed them and I followed him.
“The ceremony?” I asked.
“It is a wonder to behold,” he said. My heart pounded harder as the captain’s worry echoed in my mind. Had I been fooled by Erasmus' civilized manners? Are these just heathens masqueraded as cultured folk? Tricking me into becoming part of some devilish ritual? I looked back thinking I should run, return to the shore, back to security. Yet I followed.

Above and ahead the obsidian-looking castle loomed. A massive monolith built by forgotten hands. As we reached higher I saw back down at the town’s perfect circular symmetry. Each ring lost a human touch as iterations grew outwards, copies upon copies of itself that progressively lost any human meaning for the concept of a house.

All mechanisms and machines, pipes and cables all converged towards the castle. In the dim night light I saw the fields in the distance, those pipes and cables grew out in all directions. Did they continue further? Did they go up the inside of the mountain above? Did they reach the mountain tops above the tower? I felt sick to my stomach trying to make sense of it all, dizzy and afraid, I felt like a small child getting lost in a crowd.

All I had seen featured round shapes and circles, but the enormous center courtyard appeared traditional. Squared and fitted all townsfolk with ease. At its center, the large tower stretched hundreds of meters up towards the converging mountain tops. Built out of an unfamiliar alloy, its base held a massive machine with cables and pipes that sliced through the courtyard walls. It looked like some dark metal weed that had sprouted from the machine and out through the dark stone walls. Centered in front of us a large wooden stage with four human sized plates connected to the machine. Each had straps for arms and legs, and looked like some medieval torture method. In the middle stood an extremely large throne, featuring similar straps for arms and legs. At ground level, in front of and spliced into the front of the stage, stood a large four meter tall metal container with a closed vertical lid facing the crowd. Thousands of cables and ten large pipes connected from it to the main machine.

Whatever was about to transpire, this was expected to be the centerpiece.

A man in a ceremonial robe walked out on stage facing the crowd. He rolled out a scroll and spoke with authority. His words spawned tears of joy, some joined their palms in prayer, some fell to their knees. Erasmus leaned towards me.
“He speaks of time, how decades ago we sowed questions and now, at last, we will harvest our wisdom,” he said. I had seen many rituals by savages dancing around fires and primitive sculptures, none compared to the scale and impact of this.

Large castle doors opened and out walked three individuals dressed in similar celebratory clothing. Sashes around their necks marked with crests of a shining star. After them, out from the penumbra of darkness rolled a large wheelchair with a slumped over and coiled up, extremely tall, sickly thin man. Barely he held up his neck as he looked at the crowd.

Pale-skinned and swathed in a blood-red drape, he shakily raised his arm greeting his people. All now fell to their knees shouting
“Machyrios! Machyrios! Machyrios!”

He was their king.

As I stood there, the only one not kneeling, the king noticed my sight. His watery sick and dark black eyes pierced through my heart, a cold wave washed over me as if I was looking at something I was not supposed to see. He studied me as I reckon I've studied other subjects on my expeditions, and it dawned on me, by the horror, this was not a man, this was no normal human being. I froze in terror. The servant turned the king’s wheelchair towards the stage.

As he rose up he reached at least two and a half meters tall. He looked like a pale human spider on two legs with pointy vertebrates that pushed out his thin-skinned spine. He barely held his garment as he slowly used what seemed to be his last living strength to walk up the stairs. As the people got up on their feet I felt a relief for no longer being his center of attention. The king walked over to the metal chair and willingly let his servants strap him tight. On his head they placed a crown-shaped contraption with a translucent hose that connected to the machine. Black cables were inserted into his skin, on his arms and legs.

The man with the scroll spoke once more and Erasmus translated.
“As the land has fallen to the neglect, we begin our revolution.”

Two men in dark hoods, each on opposite sides of the machine pulled levers in sync. The tower’s humming intensified, dim lights glowed brighter and the machine roared like a buried dragon. The king’s body convulsed as electrical arcs cracked around. His body liquids and brain matter flowed into the machine through the translucent hose, compressing him into a husk of hanging skin. The crowd cheered with joy and Erasmus translated their shouts.
“The king is dead! The king is dead!”

The man spoke once more.
“Thus we sculpt our new rule.”

The other three who walked alongside the king, stepped up the stairs and placed themselves each in front of three out of the four plates. My heart sank as the man with the scroll spoke once more, I felt the crowd's eyes upon me, waiting for me. I couldn’t move. I was trapped.
“Gathering our greatest intellectuals and artists, we the people, by the tradition of old, honor one who bears with him knowledge from the beyond…”

Though the man continued his speech, Erasmus stopped translating. He turned to me in shock, his bright blue eyes teared up as he smiled. My legs were about to cave when things took a turn and Erasmus walked forward, through a gateway that formed in the crowd, and up the stairs. Greeted by the other intellectuals, everyone cheered. He cried tears of the highest honor and love. All I could do was watch this theatre of horror.

Each was given an introduction before being strapped to their plates. Erasmus willingly and joyfully smiled all the way through. The men on the side of the machine placed their hands on the levers, and the crowd cheered loudly as the men pulled once more. The four men went through the same agonizing ordeal as the king. Erasmus' body compressed, his blue eyes sucked inwards as the liquids flowed into the machine and I felt my stomach turn.

Once completed, people backed away from the centerpiece container. The machine slowed down its rattling and the pulsating hum I had heard before increased in volume. Smoke formed, electrical bulbs lit up, arcs sparked. I looked up into the sky as the tower glowed even stronger. A star had formed beyond and in between the convergent points of the mountain tops. It received some signal, or transmitted away, I couldn’t make sense as my head began to hurt.

It powered down and the container door slowly opened. Smoke sprawled out across the ground. Inside appeared an indentation with a pale, hairless man, some three meters tall. As he fell forward to a crawl, the servants wrapped him in a green cloth. He rose to his feet, showing muscular arms and legs, and a powerful demeanor able to spawn tales of giants. The crowd mustered a chant, riled up by his appearance as he opened his eyes holding out his hands.
“Machyrios! Machyrios! Machyrios!”

They dropped to their knees and as such, Machyrios saw me standing alone. I once again felt that chill, the horror as this new form of him gazed through me from something beyond all human reasoning.

With heavily pounding footsteps he approached. I couldn’t look up as I felt eyed by a dangerous beast. I saw his large naked feet in front of me as he stopped. His voice vibrated darkly with the strength of a cannon blast bouncing inside my skull. My senses were dimmed by the sheer volume of his words.
“Come and serve the eternal weave” flowed into my head. In my immediate horror I barely had the intellect left to notice that he spoke my tongue. Holding out his hand I looked up and met his piercing gaze. One dark… and one bright blue eye. His close proximity pulled my soul towards him like gravity around a star. In what I believed was my last desperate breath, I tore myself away and ran, punching through the crowd and down the hill. I sensed his pulsating energy reaching for me, clawing at my back without any need to follow.

As I ran through the town I saw the machines glowing brighter, healing themselves of rust and dust. Bushes and trees sprouted fresh green leaves and all flowed a luster. Color returned all around as the king’s voice spread after me through the machines’ vibrations.
“Do not flee the destined crown” His voice rattled my brain with the strength of a thousand volcanic roars.

Running out of town I witnessed the metal cylinders as they now worked the fields. They lifted themselves up and hammered down with a deep “thump” that echoed over and over while the wheat crops rose from deadly dry to invigorated yellow. The insect machines powered up and turned whatever eyes they had towards my desperate rush.

As I glanced back, the entire town shined bright with unnatural light, arcs of electricity sparked towards the mountain tops. I had to make it, so I ran till my blood boiled fire.

I reached the forest edge and I was greeted by the crew, mesmerized by the distant glow. Penrose blathered and pointed with fascination towards the strange electrical arcs.

I heard the rumbling sound of metal thumping the road behind.

“Go back! Run!” I crashed into their midst, screaming at them. The captain noticed first, and he and the crew took to their heels. Penrose battling to hold onto his brushes and painting stand seemed oblivious to the approaching threat. By some unexplained idiocy, he refused to let go of his gear. Falling behind, I heard the machines catch up with him. I turned back and saw the thing drag him away.

It gave us time to push the rowboat out to sea. We jumped in, and as the crew rowed like they never had before, another machine halted its pursuit on the pier. Behind it, beyond the treeline we saw flashing arcs bounce between the insides of the mountain, like a thunderstorm dancing beneath a clear, starlit sky. The unknown energy radiated outward and felt like Machyrios himself breathing under my skin.

My heart hammered like I’ve never felt. Sweat pouring all over. The captain stared in shock at the machine on the pier.
“What devilry is this Dr. Graystone!? What is that thing!?” he asked in an exhausted panic. I could not answer.

—

Here I am, shut in my cabin, drifting in circles around the island. There is no logic from which we operate that will save us from our predicament. This is the king’s doing, and to fix it, there is a price to be paid. No blood, no silver. No trade, no slaves. No culture or faith we brought with us will suffice. It’s a price only I can pay.

If I do, perhaps the crew and captain will find their way home. And yet, a thought scrapes inside my skull, pulsing like a headache, a peculiar pull. Returning home, I would only ever be able to muster tall tales to be laughed at. But that’s not who I am. I am a naturalist, seeking knowledge, not one to turn my back on it.

Fearing no God, I will ascend the deck in the morning and greet those terrifying fiends. I believe it is my destiny after all.

Benedict Greystone, signing off.