The Nebuchadnezzar magazine

DRAFT #1
E.K. ANDERSON


THE KEEPER OF THE SUN 

In my youth, I was a Keeper of the Rising Sun.

Believe me.

If I could explain my previous occupation I would, but the specific processes are nebulous – beyond comprehension.

All you must know, is that my job was an important one – that I once set the pace of planetary alignment, by placing the cogs, and gears of the Present and adjusting the Now so that you exist.

I do not know which mechanisms altered the affairs of things, nor do I know why I did what I did. All I could fathom was that my actions resulted in a proliferation of events that led to the Present. Foresight goaded me on through tedium.
No manual exists on these technicalities – as they can only be taught by the Master.

What I can say is that I — along with others of my kind–lived in The House of the Rising Sun, and that we feared the Master.

Ours is a house, unlike any other. The Rising House is made entirely out of Time.
Take a point in space, any point, and you will find it here. Move an inch through the Z quadrant, and you will have taken a step through millenia.

When I speak of time, I do not speak of it as you do. The house with its billowing banners, It is a house wrought of time itself. Every brick, beam, and rafter laid upon years, and age.

We took our mortar from stardust, and solidified the bricks in the heart of stars. We toiled away in those days without end, or respite.
We worked so as to appease the Master, for he toils and rests at its Setting.

We feared the Master. 
And so to allay our fear we have made a play of time, for our own amusement. Walk through the Vestibule, and you will find a museum, set in a semi-precious, jasper continuum – a medium we use to encase eras.

You might call it our zoo.

If you were to walk in its halls you’d see the Cretaceous periods and the mesasoic all encapsulated in jasper slate. If you were looking in another quandrant you’d see the dinosaurs – their maws agape. In another quandrant still and the shelled cepholopods. Here: each man of his time upon his mount. There: an apocolypse, being one of many.

But only if you were looking, would you see them.



I was looking elsewhere.

I couldn’t tell you a day, as our metriculations would not make sense to you. How, I can describe it is that I heard an inner turmoil from within, a high pitched tintinnabulation within my vessel espiritus.

This din, came to me in the form of a question.

What else existed beyond the House of the Rising Sun?

None dared to ask, nor even entertain the thought. To entertain the thought was deemed madness, a departure from our tasks at hand.

The consensus, as far as I wagered, was that there was nothing beyond the House worth looking at.

The work we had at hand was paramount to the happiness of the cosmos, and therefore our happiness.

But still, the thought lingered, and I could not abolish it from my mind. And so when I had rested from my task, I sought solice in the great Vestibule.

I gazed at the first specimen my kind had collected: a comet. Our surveyor had encased it in a cube, housing the firmament in quanta, we’d snipped it from its solitary existence out of space and time. What made this comet a chief cornerstone of our exploration, was the fact that it housed the vestiges of organic life.

Panspermia, as you know it, is the term used to indicate the harrowing of life to your nascent planet. And that, life came from us. We let it propagate then until refinement. As we continued our tasks, we let you age as a fine wine – allowing your pride of civilization to rise, and fall.

I ventured further into the Vestibule, past the Expansion  until I saw you.

There you were, resting in a forest – bathing in the sunbeams. Then, the woman came and she rested her hand upon your shoulder. The two of you ‘made love,’ or copulated and the woman conceived a son.

Even then I could see it. I could see your naivete – not just in your eyes, but in the way you went about your menial lives.

I could see that you did not know; that you did not see or perceive the expansive nature of Our task.

Should I leave the house of my Master, and forsake the great work upon which his shoulders rested? Yes, there were other stalwarts of time; other sons, other daughters to continue the task.
Suppose, I left when the Sun set, and returned before it rose?

Then, I would have nothing to fear.

And so, I did what my thought desired, and my desire took precedence over my task. I descended into the world of Men; materialized as one of you into a corporeal body, on your plane in a separate form – a manifestation which you did not perceive then.

Under a renowned modus operandi, I spoke to the woman, for I wanted her to see and acknowledge me. I wanted her to understand her work apart from the House – though I could not fathom mine.

I showed you fire, and metallurgy, swordsmanship. Once, I showed you the technology of ages; what you would see before your time of toiling. In turn, I tried to learn from you, and lost all sense of time.

But to the woman, I took a special interest. I wanted her to understand that she was free.

Thus, I planted a seed, one I was certain, your kind would come to realize in time.

Return, said the Master’s voice. It was brazen this time, as if its essence had been snuffed out. He had seen that I had not returned in time for the Rising, and so left my post.

Then, I departed from the world of Men and transfigured through the zephyr that led to Our House once more.

There, I stood in the Vestibule again. But it had changed. Here, the Streams –  encased in jasper had been rent apart – had intersected. They were bound in flux, as intertwined capillaries. The bright jasper, had faulted and cracked into an obsidian, and I could not see you any longer.

Then, I heard a sound like the rushing of the wind. It filled the House, and I grew afraid that The Master of the House had returned.

The Vestibule grew dark, and I hid away. I tried returning to my post, but my post was taken by another Keeper – this one bound in chains and fetters.


And so I was ousted from that House of the Rising Sun. I was sent to live among you. Now I have outstayed my welcome. I have taught all there is to know about the ways of the Sun – though I do not think you were meant to know it.

I fear the knowledge I gave you was meant for Us the Keepers.

But my end is not yet and I – I will return to the House, for where I had come.

I, Prometheus, am a Keeper of the Rising Sun.