Chapter 49
Secure Archives
In the vast Monitoria Archives, the Religious Section of the I double E kept a detailed record of all esoteric societies, friendly and hostile, within and outside the Technocracy. Just as the magicians had undertaken profound studies to rediscover the true names of the gods and their exact pronunciations, in order to better invoke and honor them in their rites and workings of High Magic, they were similarly concerned with finding out how many members each society had, what occult specialty they practiced, etc. There were even astral surveys related to entire periods in each master's life.
But, since there was no selection process in Armored Archives and absolutely everything was there, it was very easy to get lost or disoriented, unless you knew about all the charlatans who had ever existed: fake healers, pseudo-psychics, crocodile-like faith healers, merchants disguised as astrologers, incompetent palm readers and swindlers, etc. Thus, they covered up the real information with mountains of useless material.
From a randomly drawn electronic card:
Forgive me, guru! Do not throw me into the pit of venomous snakes, oh chief of the Bombay Stranglers! . . . Epic poet of the Kali Yuga!
The master, gently rejecting with a wave of his hand:
----Praise will be of no use to you if you make another mistake.
There were hundreds of tons of data like that. What really mattered, though enormous, was an insignificant fraction compared to the rest. It could only serve a writer, as material. All these records, kept in large machines with sealed defenses and lead plates to prevent the passage of Akashic rays, were guarded with as much care as the important ones, since they were not There were times when they could be useful. But there was another reason: De Gaula hoped that one day a writer would be able to write the novel of Technocracy: a comprehensive work, with all its dreams and alternatives. In such a work, whose aim is plenitude, asceticism would necessarily have to be absent; the images, countless. Those delirious images of Armored Archives, with their high, medium, and low energies, would constitute the raw material of the endeavor.
To complete the idea about the exotic materials that could be found, let's take one last card:
Trafalgar Iseka the Pelican. He was so fed up with the famous phrase "to spare no expense" that he decided to annihilate it within himself forever. He chopped up all his furniture with an axe and threw it out the window. Then he lifted the pavement and, piece by piece, expelled the entire floor. Next, he tackled the ceiling.
Next came the back wall and the side walls. Near the end, he carefully began to dismantle the one containing the very opening he had repeatedly mentioned—surely, those who built it to let in light and ventilation never imagined it would be used for these purposes—and he threw all the pieces out. Finally, only the glazed wooden rectangle and the panes of glass remained, which were immediately expelled from the sacred community.
The supposed purification didn't stop there: while holding the fragment of myarch in one hand, he dismantled the support of bricks and other materials, which promptly suffered the same excommunication. As an epilogue, faced with the contradiction of having to throw something away on its own, he did what Alexander did when he cut the Gordian Knot: with his arms he took the scattered remains and in a single motion sent them flying a great distance, after forcing them to pass over the place they had previously occupied. No one would ever again be able to nag him about "spending a fortune." Then he made a bundle of his few belongings, took the beggar's staff, and transformed himself into a magical animal.
Oddly enough, the old vagrants weren't very happy with their new companion. They treated him well, but they didn't open their hearts to him. According to them, abandoning the earthly world was an abomination and a mistake. "But how?" he asked, surprised. "Isn't that what you do?" "There's a difference: we don't renounce material things, like you do. We aren't saints: we're tramps."
Secure Archives
In the vast Monitoria Archives, the Religious Section of the I double E kept a detailed record of all esoteric societies, friendly and hostile, within and outside the Technocracy. Just as the magicians had undertaken profound studies to rediscover the true names of the gods and their exact pronunciations, in order to better invoke and honor them in their rites and workings of High Magic, they were similarly concerned with finding out how many members each society had, what occult specialty they practiced, etc. There were even astral surveys related to entire periods in each master's life.
But, since there was no selection process in Armored Archives and absolutely everything was there, it was very easy to get lost or disoriented, unless you knew about all the charlatans who had ever existed: fake healers, pseudo-psychics, crocodile-like faith healers, merchants disguised as astrologers, incompetent palm readers and swindlers, etc. Thus, they covered up the real information with mountains of useless material.
From a randomly drawn electronic card:
Forgive me, guru! Do not throw me into the pit of venomous snakes, oh chief of the Bombay Stranglers! . . . Epic poet of the Kali Yuga!
The master, gently rejecting with a wave of his hand:
----Praise will be of no use to you if you make another mistake.
There were hundreds of tons of data like that. What really mattered, though enormous, was an insignificant fraction compared to the rest. It could only serve a writer, as material. All these records, kept in large machines with sealed defenses and lead plates to prevent the passage of Akashic rays, were guarded with as much care as the important ones, since they were not There were times when they could be useful. But there was another reason: De Gaula hoped that one day a writer would be able to write the novel of Technocracy: a comprehensive work, with all its dreams and alternatives. In such a work, whose aim is plenitude, asceticism would necessarily have to be absent; the images, countless. Those delirious images of Armored Archives, with their high, medium, and low energies, would constitute the raw material of the endeavor.
To complete the idea about the exotic materials that could be found, let's take one last card:
Trafalgar Iseka the Pelican. He was so fed up with the famous phrase "to spare no expense" that he decided to annihilate it within himself forever. He chopped up all his furniture with an axe and threw it out the window. Then he lifted the pavement and, piece by piece, expelled the entire floor. Next, he tackled the ceiling.
Next came the back wall and the side walls. Near the end, he carefully began to dismantle the one containing the very opening he had repeatedly mentioned—surely, those who built it to let in light and ventilation never imagined it would be used for these purposes—and he threw all the pieces out. Finally, only the glazed wooden rectangle and the panes of glass remained, which were immediately expelled from the sacred community.
The supposed purification didn't stop there: while holding the fragment of myarch in one hand, he dismantled the support of bricks and other materials, which promptly suffered the same excommunication. As an epilogue, faced with the contradiction of having to throw something away on its own, he did what Alexander did when he cut the Gordian Knot: with his arms he took the scattered remains and in a single motion sent them flying a great distance, after forcing them to pass over the place they had previously occupied. No one would ever again be able to nag him about "spending a fortune." Then he made a bundle of his few belongings, took the beggar's staff, and transformed himself into a magical animal.
Oddly enough, the old vagrants weren't very happy with their new companion. They treated him well, but they didn't open their hearts to him. According to them, abandoning the earthly world was an abomination and a mistake. "But how?" he asked, surprised. "Isn't that what you do?" "There's a difference: we don't renounce material things, like you do. We aren't saints: we're tramps."
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