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Lucid Dreaming (A Palimpsest) (REWRITE)
By Andy Thomas
2004

Lay upon the wheel
Spin and you will feel
All of the things that used to be
Back when you were free

Walking through the woods
Far outside of Hollywood
A certain part of you is a luddite
But not borne out of spite

But rather pure frustration
At your hopeless situation
And corporate welfare reigns
And causes much of your pain

The queen of the school prom
Was simply ultimately wrong
What do you care any more
At least you were rarely a whore

If you could just have someone like Magdalene
The world would be fair again
And all of the cruelty would fade
Leaving you only jaded

But now those days are gone
And you're the chosen one
And all those days are past
And you're contented at last

12) Matter is without substance. Substance is without matter.

Not that it mattered, but Yaacov had ostensibly found the secret of the 
star. In any event he could hope that everything would change and nothing 
remain the same.
As for the mark of cain; how funny it was about the star and its hidden 
meaning. Of course those other than Yaacov who also knew could rest assured 
that his knowledge of such - assuming he were correct - would nonetheless 
remain invisible to whole of uninitiated humanity. And of the initiation, 
who but a zero could - or would even dare - face it?
In any event the Tetragrammaton was not the demiurge; not that such 
necessarily had much of anything to do with the star. Yet somehow within 
Yaacov's battered psyche the two had intertwined.
In Yaacov's day the democrats would all argue about freedom. Yet though 
democracy was ultimately a lie, its ideals were corrupted yet further given 
that it was as in the days of Shamgar, Son of Anat - and all high roads had 
been forsaken. None of this had given pause to those who had sought 
culpability in the actions of their "elected" leaders.
And of poverty - that thing which democrats without exception ostensibly 
seek to eradicate: there are ways other than material with which to be 
stricken with such; and perhaps no one can say whether any personal 
shortcomings are - be they animal, vegetable, or mineral; chemical, 
particle, or wave - ever ulimately externally induced; that is to say 
poverty really comes from within; and it takes many forms, perhaps in truth 
the least of them being a lack of running water.
Nonetheless the fanatical belief in such tomfoolery as "democracy" or "free 
health care" for example were endemic to Yaacov's day and age; and for that 
he had suffered. Nonetheless, after a time one simply stops throwing pearls 
before swine and instead finds initiation within the only true sect.
Yaacov was in a passage. Ever since the discovery of the j x eleven 
twenty-seven cult - and perhaps from even before that - some part of Yaacov 
had been there in those darkened and dreary confines; only now it was real 
whereas before it had been but an oft-forgotten phantasm; and the knowledge 
of the containers had not been erased from his consciousness.
Thus the Process; the Chemical Christiana; the j x eleven twenty-seven cult 
(cult of nine); without exception these had been all too real. Of course it 
was nothing of import; at least once one had accepted it; which for better 
or worse was not entirely the case with Yaacov; thus his from time to time 
seemingly unmitigated terror. At least the beauty provided some small 
solace. Of course we need not ponder suffering for it is simply a given in a 
universe of motion.
And of the diary Yaacov had once found and purused; the one which wouldn't 
escape his mind; it had all simply been the ravings of a madman; or so 
Yaacov would tell himself over and over again.
There beneath the desert - and it didn't matter where that desert might 
"really" have been - Yaacov fathomed the corporation and the secrets of 
building seven; and building seven was never to be confused with gary seven.
In any event, in the end what was anything corporate other than a charade? 
By then Yaacov gave legitimacy only to the cult of nine. But the cult of 
nine was from the other world. And the teachings and their ultimate meanings 
were only to be gleaned through the sightings of spectres belonging to the 
cult, though however fleeting amidst the confusion caused by ongoing 
situation with the memes.
And the memes of the priests have always - at least through recorded hystory 
- worked fairly well, for nearly all if not everything of this, the ersatz 
world exists only to oppress, all the while pretending to enlighten or 
liberate. Certainly many throughout time had been enlightened and liberated 
from the fruits of their labors, not to mention their very lives.
Yaacov thought that perhaps someday everything might change and nothing 
remain the same. Of this world, one thing is for certain; for throughout all 
of recorded hystory, and right through the present times; the greatest evil 
will always ultimately win.
He thought of his own civilization; the greatest propaganda machine of 
recorded hystory but not necessarily all time; a civilization perhaps itself 
the embodiment of the fabled antichrist; but in contrast the beast would 
have been too benign; too foreign. No, it was something more terrifying; 
something more elaborate; something only true faith in the laws of man could 
bring. Nonetheless Goebbels would have been proud, especially at the 
Hegelian aspects; the "dialectic" - to put it simply - of it all. By then 
They had covered Their tracks; still that wouldn't save Them. Some could 
see. Nonetheless sometimes it appears the YHVH is nowhere to be found, when 
to simply wrestle with Such would have been of greater comfort than complete 
abandonment by the Same.
Among other things the salvia had shown him the snake. Also that delicious, 
dark yet glowing mischief beyond the experience of the mere plebian had been 
unmasked, along with his own futility of course.
In any event his world had simply once been woven out of the spiraling, 
snaking fabric of both the light and shadow of nothingness. And of course it 
would one day return to its own original form. And what was IT aside from 
yet another term for the seeming chaos which underlies all of this world of 
illusion?
The snake would certainly eat its own tail. And of the god Yaacov had so 
long before been given, he could only curse. One of the most fascinating 
things to Yaacov was how so many people knew for certain that so many other 
people had either already been - or would yet be - sent to everlasting hell. 
At least adventism had been different in that regard; and the adventist 
damnation had given Yaacov hope in the end to suffering; the lack of motion; 
the ultimate unconsciousness.
Yaacov thought of the zeitgeist of "saving lives," then he wondered what 
exactly those lives were being saved for. He thought it odd that none would 
ever say; perhaps stranger still was the fact that no one of his day and age 
had ever even bothered to ask. But conventional wisdom was that the "saving" 
of a single life was always worth abrogating the rights of everyone else; 
this belief being in and of itself merely yet another golden calf.
It interested Yaacov that the world could rise up out of the sprawling 
interactions between - for lack of better terms - Thoth Yagog and Erzithoth. 
Was the YHVH simply the sum total of these other two? Was the YHVH even the 
YHVH at all? Further, who would ever care save Yaacov himself? Perhaps that 
was the mystery of the cult of nine; that from the ranks of humanity only 
Yaacov would ever join it; and even in that joining he would never have 
anything more than a hazy understanding of the inner workings of the cult. 
Of course perhaps it had always been this way with secret societies and even 
"mainstream" religions; perhaps it had always been that such had never been 
understood - realized in all their ramifications - by their human 
practitioners. And for all he knew this was the way things were meant to 
ever be. At least there was the church of the sub-genius from which Yaacov 
might theoretically draw compatriots. For again what ultimately was the cult 
of nine but a facet of the other?
What human sense will detect that spiraling background upon which our world 
of illusion is built? How will such ever be seen outside of helpers like 
Salvia Divinorum or DMT? And how many humans would ever dare wander outside 
the arena of intoxication prescribed for them by their earthly authorities? 
Perhaps long ago - or far in the future - it would have been or might 
someday once again be different - but in Yaacov's day and age the sheep 
would only be fleeced. For it was in Yaacov's day as it had been in the day 
of Shamgar, son of Anat - all high roads were forsaken.
Yaacov had his own chants, sacraments, and icons. He knew that the Process 
had weaned him of the mundane world and that in truth he had been a lifelong 
devotee of next the Chemical Christiana and presently the cult of nine. Only 
in his thirty-ninth year had he come to discover the existence of the cult.
Something had driven him into membership in the cult. He could have so 
easily died when he was eighteen. Perhaps in truth he had died, and the past 
twenty-some years had been but a sort of purgatory or even hell. Certainly 
some spiritual force had kept its proverbial knee upon his neck. By then 
though it didn't matter. Whether already dead or not; Yaacov was ready to 
die; again if need be.
Too bad for he and his compatriots; too bad for their enemies. In any event 
the stellar wars (ragnarok) were about to heat up again, and for several 
months previous, Yaacov had nightly been trained by the unseen leaders at 
the center of the cult of nine. They would come into his dreams and shatter 
him; then remake him again; over and over. At times, when Yaacov would get 
too close to the ultimate state of being, something would inevitably awaken 
him; it might be a knock on the door of his room; or a helicopter or train 
passing by outside his window; but whenever that moment of truth would 
arrive something would always awaken him first; as though that ultimate 
psychic orgasm were simply outside of his mortal reach.
Nonetheless he knew that the end of civilization was at hand; and nothing 
could stave this off; neither the willing obedience of the sheep nor the 
greedy machinations of their all-too-ready masters; even the two combined 
could not stop the slaughter which was to consume the very reality of this 
world and plunge it once again back into its primordial mode; and of course 
that would mean that the snake had eaten its tail. Yaacov could only hope 
that it would then follow that everything would change and nothing would 
ever quite be the same.
But what of the chilling possibility that the earth was - and continues to 
this day to be - simply a laboratory for alien scientists; that many 
varieties of "man" - or to generalize, bipeds - had come and gone, each one 
having proved unsatisfactory to "The Creator" and having been replaced each 
time by, "a newer and better model?" It would simply be another way for the 
snake to eat its own tail; at least as far as humanity were concerned.
Yaacov was daydreaming within his dream. Inside his dream, Yaacov caught 
himself; bringing his mind back from its meandering and perceiving instead 
that directly confronting him.
Quickly drifting again, Yaacov pondered how an astral scientist such as 
himself could never truly know the current state of Aiwwai; or for that 
matter, any of the other gods. The being some call "YHVH" or "god" was 
known, not only from Yaacov's particular upbringing, but from ancient and 
maddeningly circumspect transcripts as having been the only one a human 
could know outside of the usurpers - at least in those hazy days of yore, 
where admittedly the texts had perhaps been written by at once diabolical 
and alien pens. Nonetheless, there was the rumor of the Sphere - IT. Perhaps 
it was only that the Sphere was the key to the bottomless pit and somehow 
Yaacov had been chosen to play the part of the star who had fallen to earth.
Yaacov knew by then that one goal of the cult of nine was the eradication of 
the world. Perhaps "eradication" is too strong a word but at least the onset 
of ragnarok was a chief goal of the cult. Thoth-Yagog was one-hundred and 
twenty-six and Erzithoth was one-hundred and twenty-nine. Together they were 
two-hundred and fifty-five and averaged they were one-hundred and 
twenty-seven point five (six apiece).
Yaacov knew that there would always be a world; one or another race of 
bipeds; as before and as in the future, intent upon religion, ceremony, 
civilization, and sacrifice. It appeared to him only that his own world had 
run its course. For as in the days of Shamgar son of Anat - all high roads 
had been forsaken.
None of that would alter the knowledge that the Tetragrammaton is not the 
demiurge.
As for Yaacov, for much of his so-called life had he experienced being like 
a piece of metal bent back and forth, made weaker and weaker until he might 
- according to the allegory - break. By then he was in many ways malleable 
to the terrifying ways of the universe. Diminishing social status was no 
longer a threat; there was no great loved one whose potential loss might 
cause him pause; there was no way to embarrass, ashame, or humiliate him any 
further for he had been through all of that. By then he was simply a vessel 
for the machinations of the cult of nine. Perhaps he was perfectly 
demonically possessed.
One thing was for certain; the gods were teasing him with obscurity and 
poverty; at least he could laugh about it some of the time; especially in 
light of those who had actually been chosen for fame and adulation.
No matter what the case, Yaacov knew that "the answer" was there, deeper 
within the confines of that tunnel, with its mossy walls broken up by alien 
markings and made all the more foreboding by the subtle yet constant 
dripping of the water from its ceiling. Even the volumes of water, dripping 
down the walls and running in little rivulets along the sloping stone floor, 
were a mystery to Yaacov. This was supposed to have been dry bedrock. He had 
not known of any water tables in Sedona, or for that matter Cydonia. Then 
again what could he have possibly known of Cydonia?
How would Yaacov stand in the face of the challengers, should such an 
encounter arise. Were the minions of those ancient ones already meandering 
there in the depths before him?
The power of IT was worth the risk of any encounter. And even if he had been 
reluctant to forge ahead down the passageway, there was that aforementioned 
"something" compelling him all the same. Free will was not an option at that 
point; as if of course it ever had been; which it had obviously not. If 
Yaacov were to have IT, then IT would also belong to the cult of nine. Of 
course Yaacov was spooked but he wondered again when such had ever not been 
the case.
The memories came back; thoughts of tortured social settings; unrequited 
love; and his own conversion.
What of all the burned bridges; the Satanic pact; the Process and then the 
Chemical Christiana? It was all coming back. In a way neither it nor she had 
ever left him; even though perhaps the reciprocal had not always held true.
There was more to his story; the high school and college teachers from the 
secret occult societies; the corporation based secretly upon some ancient 
mysticism, contained there within the walls of the ostensibly invisible 
building seven; his dream encounters with IT or those from the hierarchy; 
the ongoing experiences leading to the initiation and ongoing membership as 
the "earthly founder" of the cult of nine.
Of his music the demons had truly loved it. Outside of the music he was 
simply another statistic; another survivor from the early days of the advent 
of the personal computer; another once decently-paid American having lost 
his job to an overseas market; by then competing for menial jobs with hoards 
of immigrants; latin americans, eastern europeans, africans, and asians. 
Fortunately for him he held none of his own circumstances against them. It 
was simply a fact that once the information industry had begun its 
international outsourcing that competing in the lower end jobs had become 
more difficult due to the ever-more-crowded field of job applicants.
Of course he was at least partly to blame; he could have kept the mysticism 
at bay; could have pounded his keyboard all day, every day, and into the 
night, every night, and thus retained a job in information technologies; of 
course that was a joke. He knew in his heart that nothing could have been 
any different. And even if it had; pounding the keyboard might not have 
saved him in any sense of the word. For what is life but decay; for some 
instant and for others such as himself a meandering, mostly downward spiral 
unto death? And what is death but exquisite sensual pleasure?
Yaacov knew the corporation to be a sham. What galled him even more was that 
he had in large part helped build it; and almost no one had ever 
acknowledged his contribution. He realized though that the success of the 
corporation - and others - was based upon the need of the sheep to be 
fleeced; but the secret in building seven had certainly assisted the 
ostensibly zionistic, autistic figureheads of the corporation in their 
rising to "prominence."
In a way Yaacov felt used and then spit out; but in another way the whole 
thing was simply hilarious. Perhaps it is a great gift not to take oneself - 
or anything or anyone else for that matter - too seriously.
In any event Yaacov's humiliation at the hands of the corporation, and the 
subsequent and precipitous loss of social status - assuming he had ever had 
such to begin with - had been at least sometimes tough to take. Regardless 
of all of that he was then exactly where he needed to be, there at that 
moment in that tunnel.
So the thoughts came and went; the realizations about the media; the 
remembrance of the defrocked priest; the accusations and insinuations of 
demonic possession and exorcism; the lsd trips; on and on.
Of course there had been the drugs and the prostitutes; and after entry into 
the Process and encountering the Chemical Christiana nothing would have 
changed any of that. But of the drugs and the whores, Yaacov knew which of 
the two he preferred in the end; Yaacov knew who his best friends were. 
Either way his debauchery as a youth, then as an employee of the 
corporation, and even after that as he fell through society's cracks; all of 
it had been fairly extreme. But it was never as though humanity itself were 
not in a state of constant slaughter; and that thought put everything else 
into perspective.
Of course the use of psychedelics might be considered by some to be 
debauchery, but perhaps in truth it is "wrong" only outside the context of 
the Process, or the Chemical Christiana, or the cult of nine.
Who was he kidding? Psychedelics had done so much to make him who he was; 
and even if he were to be the all-time loser his perhaps greatest gift was 
in knowing that in the end he had no desire to be anyone other than himself; 
which is not to say that he had always been the same, for life has a way of 
twisting and tearing at people; constantly changing them.
Yaacov had taken recourse against the world of the demiurge. He thought of 
Azathoth and ninety-nine; YHVH and sixty-three; computer, mark of beast, 
chris g'ines, slaughter, vaccination, kissinger, tyra banks, and tinkink as 
one hundred and eleven; persephone as one-hundred and twenty-one. Current 
events were the same racket they had always been, yet scarlet garden was 
one-hundred and twenty-three.
CIA, GRU, or the Mossad: They were all part of the mob. Of course the mob 
could not for a moment survive let alone thrive without the willingness of 
the sheep in their own fleecing. And what was nine one one but a singular 
precursor to the fleecing of the sheep on an unprecedented scale? And of the 
mob; for as long as there will be egos involved, such will never be 
monolithic. Perhaps that was what made the cult of nine different.
Waxing philosophically, Yaacov pondered that freedom was non-existent; in 
its place were but consequences; and that in the end only the 
inconsequential could be free. Perhaps this meant that unconsciousness was 
the only real freedom; but was death unconsciousness or simply a rebirth 
into this - or perhaps some other - world of illusion?
What of the witches which littered his own path? What of their curses? He 
thought of Juliet Landau and how if "a" equaled negative thirty-three and if 
one incremented every letter after "a" by nine that letters comprising her 
name would total six-hundred and sixty six. Whatever the value of that 
knowledge she looked so like someone he had seen before; someone he had 
always wanted; would always want; someone he could easily die for; over and 
over again.
Would the beast know the identity of the beast? Would the beast instead 
wander, always empty? Just as the quist might be full, might the antiquist 
be empty? And of the quist - in all his fullness - advocating a welfare 
state, democracy, and fawning obedience to said state where taxes of course 
must always be paid; isn't the beast at least somewhat preferable even in 
his own empty way? If the quist wants to take away the salvia and the 
mushrooms and the weed; and instead replace it all with prozac; is not the 
beast better than that? Who needs a quist who advocates democracy, 
prohibition, and the welfare state; a quist who wrings his ostensibly holy 
hands over cigarettes; a quist who wants to throw away all of the guns? 
Isn't a beast superior to that?
Perhaps then the Chemical Christiana is sublime; or if nothing else 
eminently preferable to a quist. Indeed, a Chemical Christiana is far 
superior to a prohibitionist quist; and a beast is simply a way of being.
Yaacov knew that somehow the Chemical Christiana was part of the Process; 
part of the cult of nine; he was definitely going her way. For quist may 
have been ruler of the universe, but as a matter of principle Yaacov could 
not go along with democracy; and the quist was a democrat or so Yaacov had 
been told.
So who indeed was the beast? Were she - the Chemical Christiana - and it one 
and the same? Of course how could the Raven be the beast?
In his time Yaacov himself had met - or at least stood face to face with - 
three or more self-described beasts. They had without exception been at 
least as insane as he. Yet perhaps he understood and they apparently had 
not; on the other hand it may have simply been a shared madness resulting on 
all of their parts from individual encounters with a sprawling meme.
Nonetheless how could they have known the emptiness? Yaacov was certain that 
he himself had always known the emptiness inherent to the antiquist; and 
quist could keep everything as long as Yaacov could hold onto nothing.
Once again cognizant of his immediate surroundings, Yaacov realized he had 
earlier caught a glimpse of the monster. He had known intuitively that it 
was one of the "Cemonculus," but Yaacov could not fathom where he'd gotten 
the word from; how he could have possibly even known of such a creature, 
servant of ToZ. Even the name of ToZ and how he'd come to have known that; 
all of it remained a riddle.
Why did Yaacov suddenly know the names of ToZ, Llethrotep, and Vutvko? These 
were so alien yet so familiar. Could he indeed have had a past life or could 
the information have been passed by some spirit, from the so-called ether 
and into the flailing neurons within his own mind? Perhaps his experiments 
with psychedelics had permanently altered his brain chemistry to where he 
was no longer all here; wherever "here" really might have been in any event.
Yaacov had to doubt his own sanity - of course sanity is almost never 
anything more than a given social or behavioral code within a 
"civilization." Nonetheless, there in the tunnel he was seemingly the prey, 
in danger of being consumed by the riddle. Perhaps even so his luck might be 
with him and there below would be some answer to his lifelong intellectual 
and spiritual thirsting and consequent torments. The riddle was there before 
him: The Tetragrammaton is not the demiurge. Why did Yaacov wear the mark?
It was clear that only the terror and beauty would survive society; or 
indeed there might for even just a moment once again be motionlessness.
The malevolence was overwhelming just then. But it no longer held Yaacov 
firmly within its grasp. There was something greater which drove him into 
those ancient, inhuman depths.

10) The sheep must be fleeced.

Some journey; some quest had driven Yaacov away from the gilded cage of the 
corporation; there with its insipid malefactors of great wealth and the 
hidden Thing which drove them; those symbols and artifacts occupying 
building seven.
Yaacov had been introduced to that corporate sect; welcomed at the party as 
a minion; and Yaacov had puked on the proverbial carpet which had there been 
laid out before him; cast to the winds of fate the fortune it had attempted 
to bestow upon him; and all at such a social cost. Of course the price of 
staying put would have ultimately been greater; for the monster in building 
seven does not sleep; and ultimately it devours its supposed beneficiaries.
Nonetheless the sheep needed their fleecing yet Yaacov was not the one to do 
it. Of course in his more base moments Yaacov would look upon much of 
humanity with contempt; for the mass media had done such a good job of 
convincing everyone of their need for the state; of their need for "safety" 
and "guarantees" and regulation. In the end though the state really served 
to devour their dreams. But by then it was too late. Civilization had 
devolved to the point of no return; only the destruction of the current 
model would do. Whatever his own regrets or misgivings, Yaacov knew that the 
goal of the cult of nine was the destruction of the old model and the 
introduction of the new; at the very least, ragnarok.
On the one hand the reality of that was hideous; on the other it was simply 
the snake eating its own tail; and the snake eats its own tail over and over 
again; forever and forever. And the Tetragrammaton is not the demiurge but 
it doesn't even matter. At least sadness will always be a person's friend.
There are things outside the realm of normal human sense; things which if 
they were to be known would - within an instant - drive most people truly 
mad; insane beyond any social sense of the word. Some had seen; most of 
these had gone mad indeed; only a few could withstand the bludgeon of 
ultimate reality. Terror and beauty are preeminent; only the suffering gives 
clue to this. For as long as there is motion, the suffering will never 
abate. What would drive a person to deny this? To those who know, pain is 
but a gift. This is why they remain in motion. And as for most all of 
supposed madness; it is but more or less the loss of social conditioning; an 
ultimate refutation of the high priests of any given age.

9) Without booty there cannot be a proper war.

Yaacov stood in the dampened hallway, pistol in hand as he stepped forward, 
after the monster. Yaacov thought of the ancient burial grounds ostensibly 
above him. Yet again he could not force himself to turn around and to go 
back upward and toward the entrance. Perhaps in some phantasmal fashion he 
were beneath both Cydonia and Sedona at once.
But how could that have been? Of course, it being at least somewhat of a 
lucid dream perhaps he himself could decide upon the milieu. Certainly 
during his waking hours his likeness had never haunted either Arizona or 
Mars - at least not outside of his own remote viewing experiments.
As for that bizarre corporation: Where is it written in the laws of the 
universe that binary media has any intrinsic value? And what of binary 
media? The universe itself is binary; only the fine granularity of it all 
disguises this fact and has scientists calling it "analog." Regardless of 
any of that, who but the YHVH holds the copyrights on any of it, whether 
ultimately binary or analog?
And of the corporation, only the secrets of building seven actually held 
sway there; and how does any corporate body ever succeed, without first 
having the blessings of They?
But in the end even the blessings of They and the illusory laws of the 
culture could not surmount the strangeness of Yaacov and his ilk; not even 
haarp could ultimately forestall the inevitable; and Forrestal had known of 
the plot and they had killed him for it. Certainly he hadn't been the only 
one.
Nonetheless the star would fall to earth and find the key to the bottomless 
pit. Then perhaps everything might change and nothing remain the same.
The lady from the East had been one of Them. As a matter of fact, Yaacov's 
path was literally and liberally sprinkled with the memories and the ghosts 
of members of the clandestine luciferian freemasons.
Yet in contrast the members of the cult of nine had by then only appeared in 
his dreams; in any event the cult of nine should not be confused with Them; 
rather a more apt association would be with the church of the sub-genius.
Regardless of all of that, a man who is also a sire cannot be the Beast. 
This is what made so many of them fools. A being given any more than a shard 
of female affection cannot ultimately find the key to the bottomless pit. So 
in his own personal insanity and in pursuit of the key Yaacov had foregone 
his most favorite of all things; female affection. Certainly that had been 
his curse. And the Process and interaction with the Chemical Christiana; all 
of that had over time impressed upon him the mark of the beast. He had given 
up so much just to see; sometimes Yaacov longed for the ignorance of the 
happy people.
During the passage of certain silent moments, Yaacov would almost miss his 
most bitter rivals from the past; for many of them may have died but perhaps 
he, Yaacov had suffered a fate worse than death. In this way his victories 
over them were bittersweet at best. And the battle against the clandestine 
luciferian masons was ongoing; for they were everywhere and involved in 
everything; one would be vanquished only to be replaced by another; and 
until then Yaacov had been on the wrong end of hystory.
They worshiped the architect; Hiram Abiff. To Yaacov Abiff's plan was at 
fault. Perhaps it was only Yaacov's insistence on being - for lack of a 
better word - iconoclastic - that he could see the sheep needing a good 
fleecing yet by the same token refusing to himself participate in any of 
that; perhaps he was a eunuch.
In the end there is only predestination. In all of that there are only 
terror and beauty; and when terror and beauty are combined there is only 
suffering. And without motion there is no suffering.
The civilization in which Yaacov had once lived had been the mere figment of 
someone else's imagination; for the earth will always get its blood; and 
poverty and starvation are the result of procreation; related to but not the 
ultimate machinations of They. And in his day, all of the talk of freedom 
and democracy was just so much luciferian sophistry; right up there with 
concepts such as "free health care" and - whether enforced or simply coerced 
- "compassion." Ultimately, procreation begets violence and vice versa.
Yaacov looked at his hands; one palm bare and the other grasping a CZ-52 
pistol. He was in a dream; or was he dead? Perhaps he had killed himself and 
was in some kind of afterlife. Of course all of us without exception kill 
ourselves, for in life, every action leads only to death. It is all a simple 
matter of choosing one's preferred poison. Some people call it "passion" but 
death is no less the ultimate result. Perhaps indeed death is ecstasy.
As for Yaacov, his life could have only been described as Lovecraftian. Ever 
since his introduction to the Process - and more than likely since his 
ostensible birth - he had lived the horror every minute of every hour of 
every day. Even in his moments of joy and appreciation of beauty, the horror 
had always lingered there at the edge of his consciousness. At best it was 
simple anxiety. But it rarely had it ever entirely left. Yaacov attempted to 
salve his suffering by supposing it was due to his own blasphemy; and of 
course he savored those moments of actual peace of mind; where he rode that 
wave and needed nothing; just for a single moment here, a single moment 
there. That kept him going.
As for the "good things in life," Yaacov had once - for just the tiniest 
fraction of a moment - tasted the sweetest honey. And after tasting the 
sweetest honey how can anyone ever again settle for aspartame? Let the sheep 
have their diet soda drinks; Yaacov needed ambrosia; and without it he 
sometimes wondered if he were dying. At least his demons were always there 
for him. He was careful to keep that to himself. Hopefully the haunted look 
in his eyes would not awaken anyone from their sleepwalking state.
The guitar was sounding in his head; it was one of the only things which had 
perhaps ever mattered to him. When Yaacov played the guitar he would listen 
and tell himself, "take me home." Sometimes his dreams held such at once 
sensual and ethereal soundtracks; when he was lucky he would remember parts 
in his waking hours. In any event, whenever Yaacov would play, his demons 
would gather about.
The demons really liked his music. As Yaacov's life gained in years, he had 
played and sang about the cult of nine. Perhaps he had yet fulfilled his 
purpose; this despite the emptiness of craving liberty in a world of the 
enslaved; and at that, enslaved pretending to be at liberty. Perhaps Yaacov 
had always purposefully made music only for the consumption of spirits as 
lost and as empty as he sometimes sensed himself to be.
Regardless of whether it were the dream or an afterlife, something was 
egging him on, whispering in still silence that he must continue onward, 
downward; through the passageway. Even with the monster lurking below, 
Yaacov needed to descend; delving further into that dripping, moss-covered 
abyss which itself stood in stark contrast to the desiccated lands on the 
surface above him.
He knew it was a dream yet everything was crystal clear. Bits of his past - 
the life he'd lived in the "real world" then and there so distant - seemed 
to come and go with regularity, passing through his mind like so many 
will-o'-wisps. However, like no other dream, this was real; perhaps it were 
purgatory instead. If he were to die "there," would he somehow awaken "here" 
in a place of his "real life," or would he truly be dead in every sense of 
the word? If he were to truly die, what would that mean in any event? Of 
course if he were already dead, then the unconsciousness - the adventist 
damnation of his humble upbringing; the motionlessness - he had so often 
sought had again eluded him.
One of the oddest parts of the experience was simply that Yaacov was also 
having memories of previous events from his dream world. So while the whole 
of such recollections flashed - sometimes one by one and other times 
simultaneously but always with rapidity - all of it seemingly at random 
through his mind; of course none of it was real; or perhaps it should be 
written that none of it was any more real than anything else.
Of one thing Yaacov was certain; no matter what event or where it ever had 
occurred, there were nothing more to his existence than - at its core - 
terror and beauty; and in the end, perhaps suffering. Despite all of that he 
had remained in motion.
Yaacov smirked as the phrase "war on terror" passed through his mind. Then 
the thoughts of "freedom and democracy" and "security" gave him more laughs.
Yaacov gripped the CZ-52 as though his very life depended on it. Perhaps - 
even within the realm of the dream or the thereafter - it did. The slim 
reliable piece - the most accurate high-powered pistol in the world - might 
then and there have been his only possible "material" salvation.
How could he have foreseen that terrifying turn of events? Yaacov should 
have known all along; given his own predilections and his subsequently 
having acted upon them, the ensuing pursuits could have had no other 
outcome. He had joined the Process - or it had absorbed him - at the age of 
eighteen. Only later had he realized he was the human founder of the cult of 
nine. Of course in the meantime he had been a follower of the Chemical 
Christiana. Some have said that the Chemical Christiana is the high 
priestess of both the Process and the cult of nine; others have speculated 
that she might have been Tyra Banks; or that when the day is ripe she will 
inhabit the spirit of most every woman everywhere, all at the same time.
Most likely the Raven lived within many women; those who know how to ignite 
male desire without ever fulfilling it; leaving the unrequited lover with 
eternal want for that exquisitely sensuous female flesh, adorned in satins 
and sheers like a haughty courtesan; serving no purpose but pleasure yet 
always one step out of reach as a featured component in someone such as 
Yaacov's ongoing and never-ending delicious misery; She given over to her 
sensual and sexual whims; he as her humble eunuch.
Terror was but natural; Yaacov knew this. Facing The Terror; embracing the 
terror is one of the few acts of meaning in a person's life, for each of us 
will eventually meet The Terror; it is an inevitability which no human law - 
no fine-sounding words uttered or written by priest or politician within a 
culture of lies - can ever alter. Perhaps being who he was Yaacov had an 
advantage over the "average" plebe in that regard. Of course it is a huge 
mistake to believe in such as thing as, "the common man."
In any event, for as much as Yaacov had pretended during so much of his own 
life to have been nothing more than white trash, there were those there and 
about who had whispered to themselves that he and the fallen star in search 
of the key to the bottomless pit were really one in the same. Ultimately 
there could be no doubt by then that members of the clandestine luciferian 
masons had at times tried to gain his allegiance and at other times 
attempted to destroy his very soul; not such were necessarily mutually 
exclusive.

11) The Tetragrammaton is not the demiurge.

Ever since having been taken into the confidence of the rabbi; ever since 
the rabbi had revealed to Yaacov the legend of the ancient Lost Sphere of 
the Tetragrammaton, Yaacov had become obsessed with the thought of finding 
and "possessing" IT; that rumored timeless fount of ultimate power; a 
virtual perpetual motion machine; the thing which at once both 
differentiated and separated the divine from the demiurge; that is to say 
assuming such were possible or even desirable.
Playing at the star who had fallen to earth, Yaacov knew the Sphere to be 
what he had always sought - the key to the bottomless pit. With it perhaps 
nothing would be the same and everything would change. Perhaps the pharisees 
- those priests whose pronouncements had haunted and enslaved mankind since 
the dawn of recorded hystory - would finally meet their "end." Of course 
Yaacov wasn't going to bet on that, chief among his reasons being that most 
people were simply happy to be out of their other containers, and in these 
ones instead.
In any event Yaacov had wondered if indeed he really were the key to the 
bottomless pit. Perhaps the star who fell to earth and the key to the 
bottomless pit were one in the same. Perhaps Persephone was the star and he 
the key. Perhaps he was lost in his own schizophrenic world of delusion; 
that certainly would have been the most logical explanation.
Regardless of anything, Yaacov had always ultimately known himself - or at 
least had pretended as much - and in that knowledge he had always thrown 
caution to the wind; for destiny - even a destiny which is a caricature of 
itself - would never be denied, regardless of its inherent meaninglessness.
Yaacov was again awash in a flurry of new recollections. More than anything, 
the beauty of the female form came to haunt him. Waves of curved flesh 
passed through his mind, draped in shiny and sheer fabrics - the properly 
adorned female - and with sweet-scented words whispering unearthly pleasures 
while the clicks of stiletto heels and painted nails rolled onward and 
lilting voices sang at once a song of ultimate seduction and male 
self-destruction.
So much magic Yaacov had spent on procuring a reliable supply of female 
pleasure; all in the end for naught; for how many men other than kings have 
ever had the female - any and every female - on demand? Yaacov was no king; 
if anything he was the star who had fallen to earth in search of the key to 
the bottomless pit; and for that perhaps he was the king of nothing; and 
perhaps that would have been something; but it certainly had not gained him 
the favor of women he'd so often at least feigned interest in.
Regardless of any of that how many men - men better than Yaacov - had 
succumbed to the promise of female pleasure, only to see in the end that it 
was a trap - a trap which would ultimately cost them their lives, but in the 
meantime the esteem of the very women they had desired as well as their own 
self respect?
Perhaps only too late had it become obvious to Yaacov whose world it 
ultimately was, and how They would choose to run it. Perhaps only too late 
it had become obvious that - at least for his own kind - getting any kind of 
"good deal" out of the distaff gender was indeed nothing more than a pipe 
dream. How many men had Yaacov seen, destroyed by their own passion for 
women and the culture of female vapidity from which he himself had also 
ostensibly arisen?
In any event the death of and by the erotic is certainly preferable to the 
stifling taxes and cuckoldry of the welfare state; not that, as a rule such 
are mutually exclusive.
At least Yaacov had found his place in relation to women. In contrasting his 
own experiences with those of others ostensibly born male, Yaacov could 
rejoice in being bittersweet on that count; for from what he had seen the 
fate of certain other men at the hands of the "fairer" sex had been - to put 
it charitably - hideous.
As for the women, Yaacov had set it up: He was their turn-on, but never 
their lover. He would meet with them and they would want him to "take" them 
as had always been their wont, but he was outside of that and as a result 
each of them would always unfailingly go elsewhere to fill that need.
He did however enjoy studying their form; especially when properly adorned; 
and in his day and age the asian women had perhaps known the most about 
this.
All of that being in reality neither here nor there, the memories of the 
heartbroken, failed feminine magic faded and there were only the 
recollections of that beauty over which he had always held so many vastly 
conflicting emotions. In the end they had not destroyed him yet Yaacov had 
destroyed himself. Ego death had always been his calling.
Yaacov ultimately believed in but a few things; music, the psychedelics, the 
sensual ideals which had formed the music, and finally the demons who had 
always listened to and enjoyed his music.
Everything else was a lie.
In Yaacov's day many people worshiped many different gods; and as in the day 
of Shamgar son of Anat - all high roads had been forsaken. For the gods of 
Yaacov's day were - no matter how passionately advocated by their followers 
- invariably false; democracy, peace, security, safety; the common good; the 
greater welfare; health care; public schools; psychiatry; central bankers; 
on and on; all false gods.
Yaacov's social pondering at least momentarily finished, he again thought of 
where he was and what was before him; of that thing which he had always 
strived for, despite the fact that until then it had not had an apparent 
name or even form.
If he were to merge with IT he would be home; or as far away from home as is 
possible; or perhaps both at once. Despite his pedestrian upbringing, he had 
always a lover of the esoteric. He knew that prayer and meditation were 
never without their effects; of course none of it would change 
predestination.
Yaacov wanted the world to go away; to die; for there to be an absence of 
all motion once again. He was only curious about what would come next. All 
of that garbage about things such as "environmentalism" and "saving lives" 
he had by then left to the small-minded; just a couple of the myriad of 
icons in the false churches erected by those infected by the likes of haarp 
and the killer memes.
Kaasteen of the Tlingit had done it. How could he be the same in relation to 
his own culture? Certainly he had broken enough taboos. But was he secretly 
of merovingian blood or rather just a pauper?
He remembered the thing about his idea of power and how such contrasted with 
others' ideas of the same. Of course power is not spoken of in polite 
society. Yet everything nonetheless ultimately kills everything else.
Who - or what - was ultimately behind the cult of nine? Of course sometimes 
YHVH is sixty-three and Azathoth ninety-nine. And by the same token Kari 
Hall is seventy-two; and how he would still dream of her from time to time. 
Perhaps indeed aside from everything she were the high priestess of the cult 
of nine. Certainly, in his time Yaacov had crossed paths with various and 
sundry powerful priestesses; but he could never bring himself to love one 
over all of the others; his nature was to have all of them or to have none 
of them; but never simply one of them.
Yaacov could remember his first introduction to the cult; the room with the 
dangling stuck pigs and the demons blissfully torturing one another; some 
sort of perhaps Balthaazar sitting in a tub; the polished private school 
hallways and then the room with the cult members; all pointing to he as 
terrestrial appointee. Perhaps instead he was simply mad.
He instinctively knew that the cult of nine went far deeper than just the 
initiation. It had started with the abduction by the Process and then the 
seeming failure before the Chemical Christiana. Somehow the silver star 
entered in; yet always in passing.
Only then had Yaacov begun to embrace the Terror; to accept the idea of 
possession; of the giving over of his being to the idea of a larger concept. 
After all, what is the individual but a projection? And further, how has any 
pontification on the merits of libertarianism ever prevented even a single 
sheep from having been fleeced? It would appear that we are all really just 
facets - regardless of how bright or dim in our various aspects - of the 
YHVH.
Nonetheless perhaps - in the end - just as the Tetragrammaton were not the 
demiurge - the Beast was not the Beast; and the YHVH was certainly not the 
YHVH. Certainly the succession of Process to Chemical Christiana to cult of 
nine had been unchangeable. Yaacov had continually paid the price. Yet who 
had not?
And who could ever know the true nature of the YHVH, except to observe that 
the snake will always eat its own tail? Yet Yaacov had wanted to ensure that 
nothing would ever be the same and that everything would change; and 
slaughter sometimes went by the number one-hundred and eleven.
Yaacov had been a sometime quistian, but had ultimately decided he didn't 
like quist. Yaacov knew that this dislike might one day translate into his 
own doom, yet he had to be true to himself. Of course being an on-again and 
off-again quistian can tend to be overly costly in any event, for changes in 
"alignment" - whether successful or not - result in the heaviest spiritual 
baggage one might have to endure.
At times Yaacov dreamt of one day reuniting with the Chemical Christiana, 
for in his mind he had been at least in some way "with her" once; and as 
well - even if it were much more often than not seemingly some kind of a 
curse - she would always be with him in at least some small way.
Certainly all of the episodes of demonic possession which haunted his own 
dreams had given him pause; and there had been the dream lovers; all 
reflections of Christiana.
As for the quistians and their prayers; by then Yaacov often cursed the holy 
spirit in an attempt to keep their forces at bay. The end result had been 
his own unfathomable loneliness in the face of greater humanity; but the 
prayers of the quistians were trying to block his predilections; at least he 
still had his demons. And there are no choices in life; only chances.
According to the cult of nine, procreation was the only sin. Yaacov saw no 
need for more sheep needing fleecing. And his blood being ostensibly red 
rather than blue, he could see what his own marriage and mating would have 
amounted to. Instead he had pretended to have been a kind of eunuch or 
homosexual, yet even that had not really been the truth. But he had fooled 
enough people to have escaped his day and time without having left any 
offspring; of course due in part to his failure or refusal to procreate he 
had also gained the mark of the beast.
To Yaacov, natural sexual desire and the urge of most everyone to couple; 
that and society are the twin tricksters which set the trap for those who 
would procreate. Yaacov had escaped that trap, but at what cost? At least 
again there were his demons.
In days far past he had at times wished for a lack of critical thought; that 
naturally inbred optimism which might have made him happy in the context of 
the world. By then though he was glad he had persevered; for he could read 
the proverbial writing on the wall and it mightn't be long before he were to 
see his own death; and for all of his failings he had remained fairly true 
to himself.
He knew at least that matter was without substance. Perhaps possession of IT 
would indeed allow him to ensure that nothing ever remained the same and 
that everything would most definitely change.
He stumbled downward through the opening. By then he truly had no idea how 
deep he was, or how far he had gone laterally. Suddenly he wished he'd 
picked up the rabbi's flashlight so that he might then have more light. His 
maglite went dead and he fumbled in the pitch black for more batteries out 
of the pack. As he struggled in the darkness, he heard the faintest sound 
from below. It was like a will 'o wisp of some alien music. It reminded him 
of the earlier sound of the salvia.
In any event Yaacov wasn't too worried about light; all in all he had three 
sets of batteries and only one was spent. The thought of everything which 
had passed spooked him, not paralyzing him but instead egging him further 
downward.
So that was where his lifelong pursuits had led; into an encounter with a 
grotesque, antediluvian being; the discovery of old, apparently human 
skeletons in long-lost prison cells, and the revelation of further remains 
so hideous that the revulsion he had toward the mere thought of them was 
beyond words. Finally, there was that presence which had been so heavy and 
disorienting up near the entrance, and which had ebbed away during the 
intermediate part of his descent, but which was then returning, seemingly 
without rhyme or reason. For lack of a better description, the rough walls 
were haunted. The goose bumps on his flesh were testament to the strange 
energy which permeated the place, possibly emanating from a source outside 
of time and space.
The hole had actually opened up and the "ceiling" was then a good twenty 
feet high and the "walls" thirty feet across. There were boulders in the 
path and it was steeper than forty-five degrees.
Yaacov was beginning to wonder about triggering a rock slide, but gingerly 
yet earnestly worked his way downward, into the ever warmer hole. It must 
have been a good thirty degrees celsius, a temperature nearly matching the 
barren landscape which was then but a distant memory - so far behind him - 
there on the surface where the people of his day and age concerned 
themselves with the mundane matters of collapsing currencies, making 
payments on their insipid houses and SUVs, and living in the terror that 
their politicians and priests would provide them with daily; terror which 
they themselves would welcome that they might never know any kind of real 
truth; this that the children might grow to share the ignorance and 
slave-like status of their parents. Of course ignorance is bliss so it did 
no one - including Yaacov - any good getting indignant at the way things 
might have been for the greater part of humanity.
Nonetheless to those who cared to pay attention, democracy was but one of 
many false gods. Suffice it to say that of democracy in particular, the 
crowd is always wrong.
Something entered the scene; something Yaacov had not anticipated. It was a 
return of the sound; a low but wavering sound; almost inaudible, but like 
some kind of pre-ancient music. There weren't individual "notes" per se but 
there was a strange "tune" nonetheless. Even as he continued downward for 
yet another thirty minutes, the hum didn't increase appreciably. Then Yaacov 
knew for certain that whether he were in a dream or not, he was in grave 
danger. And it wasn't as though the danger were so much physical as it were 
metaphysical. Perhaps some psychedelic from his drinks was kicking in; or 
maybe it was simply the psilocybin.
At that point Yaacov had an hour or two of light in the then-current battery 
set as he had been traversing the tunnel for close to a total of four hours. 
It began to dawn on Yaacov that he might never see the sunlight again, and 
there was an ember of real madness - an ember which might at any moment 
erupt into and all-consuming fire - in him because of what he'd seen to that 
point; the events and curiosities of within and around the passage; the 
malevolence emanating both from the walls and from below; the 
then-increasing yet indecipherable moan. Thus he was driven by the desire to 
find out what, if anything lie at the bottom of that tunnel - by then 
nothing more than that hole in the earth - everything else be damned!
And of course it could have been said that everything "else" was indeed 
damned in any event. Of course there would always be suffering. The ultimate 
goal of entry into the cult of nine was for the initiate to at some point 
realize that pain was in actuality a gift from the universe to be relished 
by the so afflicted. Life has little to offer for already dead. Perhaps that 
is the true meaning of freedom.
Presently a dim light appeared down the hole in the distance. It looked to 
have been a couple hundred metres below. After stumbling down over the 
boulders and loose rocks, the faint source of light became apparent. Yaacov 
was then standing in a passageway, built of gargantuan stones, the seams of 
which indicated they were at least five metres square. The ceiling was about 
ten metres high and the passageway was also about ten metres across. The 
floor was level.

7) There is no freedom; there are only consequences. Only the 
inconsequential are free.
?
On the walls there were more alien glyphs, similar yet somehow uncannily 
different from the ones he had seen in the other finished hallway up above. 
The present passage was not damp like the other passageway. Instead it was 
dry, almost as if the floor of it were covered by a fine, ancient dust, 
undisturbed through the ages save for Yaacov's own two or three footprints 
behind him, visible in the dim rays of the flashlight and the pale green 
glow from the other end of the hall.
Here there was no moss, and the smell from above had finally died out. 
Instead there was some kind of sweet scent coming from ahead, where the dim, 
emerald light shone. Could a certain type of underground mineral deposit 
have radiated such light?
He switched off the maglite and in the glow could see without it. There was 
a small stream gushing from a hole in the wall and Yaacov's senses somehow 
told him he could trust it for drinking. There he replenished himself. The 
water streamed down the wall and emptied into a hole in the floor directly 
below the spout, leaving no other trace of its ancient flow on that 
previously unexplored floor. Yaacov drank until he was again hydrated, 
sensing the water disperse into his body as he partook freely from the 
spring, itself evidence of ancient and alien plumbing techniques.
Yaacov felt strangely intoxicated but subdued, not edgy or near panic as he 
had been just hours before when Michael had died and he had sought out and 
dispatched the loathsome Cemonculus. It were as if Yaacov had partaken of 
opiates.
The ancient, oppressive energy seemed to emanate from the opening at the 
opposite end of the passageway. Somehow in his trance and in the excitement 
of it all, Yaacov stumbled forward with renewed vigor and fingered his 
pistol, all the while wondering with slightly growing trepidation what might 
lie ahead, after untold ages of sleep or imprisonment awaiting to at best 
ambush and consume human flesh. Yaacov shuddered to think of the worst that 
could be.
It was apparent from the slight footprints he was leaving behind him in the 
fine dust on the floor; that such were proof that the Cemonculus he'd seen 
so far up above had been stationed; perhaps in the first alcove below the 
tunnel opening above it; perhaps there in an eternal sleep, awaiting that 
fateful moment for an intruder to step just inside that antiquated opening.
With near certainty no being - human or inhuman - had in recent times 
crossed the presently dusty and ageless floor; or at least none had left any 
footprints which Yaacov could readily discern. He thought back and indeed, 
Michael had been the first into the hole. The attack had arrived just 
seconds later. So the Cemonculus had been right inside the opening up above.
Yaacov walked the mystical gallery, for as the green glow gained slightly in 
illumination, he saw elaborate mosaics, depicted using stones not more than 
six millimetres across, covering entire walls for ten and twelve metres of 
their length at a time, from floor to ceiling. Elaborate pictures of 
undiscovered dimensions glowed in the ghoulish, greenish light. An alien, 
inhuman, flesh-tingling presence emanated from those presentations out of 
some forgotten age. Perhaps the images - the seven or eight of them that 
aligned the two walls - were elaborate renderings of outer worlds, left 
there in that outpost the way humans would send a capsule into space in 
order to try and make tenuous contact with some cosmic race. Perhaps those 
mosaics were warnings from a prehistoric, priestly order to then future and 
now present travelers of those antediluvian depths.
What could the light at the end of the tunnel contain; what esoteric key to 
the images that adorned those walls, images so bizarre that the mention of 
some of the scenes might have sent a human of normal social sensibilities 
into permanent hysteria? He would have attested that the scenes were 
gruesome and did indeed depict some human life, but not in the form as we 
currently know it. If a person thinks a human tyrant can wreak havoc upon 
the population and is fearful of such, that same person wouldn't want to 
contemplate the images on those walls, at once so foreign and terrifying in 
their implications. Of course in the end what human tyrant is without his 
unseen and inhuman accomplices?
Yaacov inched along the floor of the hall, into the pale emerald glow, into 
the sweet ancient smells, the creepy oppression filling the air like an 
invisible, suffocating smog, the low wavering dirge beckoning, playing on 
some pre-human percussion instrument in the depths of his being, perhaps in 
the primal part that lies hidden beneath the ostensibly civilized gentleman 
that he knew only on the surface of his self.
Continuing along; fingering the CZ-52, flashlight tucked into his belt; 
Yaacov swallowed to keep from retching at the hideousness of the discovery 
and continued down the ancient and foreboding passageway.

6) Your freedom will cost you everything. Your slavery will cost you only 
your freedom.
?
At the end of the passageway, he came to an opening; an opening with a 
sizeable, curved archway constructed of large stones above. From the lip of 
the opening, on a sort of stonework patio extending out beyond the ancient 
archway as the hideous hieroglyphs then faded back into the tunnel; all he 
could see was a vast cave in that unwavering emerald light with the 
strangely familiar low moaning music in the background.
No imagining of Yaacov's own had ever begun to approach what next fell 
before his eyes. He was standing on a patio overlooking a cavern several 
kilometers in depth and breadth, and several hundred metres in height. 
Dumbfounded, he stared into the abyss.
Yaacov stood there for an indeterminate amount of time, forgetting the 
violence of the hours before; intoxicated by the sweet ancient smell, the 
subtly changing glow of the emerald light, and the omnipresent low voice; 
speaking in some distant, alien tongue; perhaps itself mumbling an 
incantation of sorts which in any event somehow served to put him into some 
strange and entirely foreign mental state.
Yaacov forgot for a moment the repulsive evidence resting amidst the 
darkness behind him and simply pondered the lost city which could very well 
have been the remains of one of those ancient abodes which were purported in 
some ill-reputed nameless scroll to have been built and inhabited in some 
bygone pre-human era by none other than perhaps Llethrotep and his minions! 
Which forbidden scroll had it been?
Could Yaacov name that scroll in his mind - there and then that he had 
confirmed the fact of the existence of at least one such city - despite the 
writing's ultimate ill-repute? What of the other things described in that 
decrepit scroll; not the least of which being allusions to nameless points 
of terror in the outer reaches of existence?
Of course, the Scroll had been related to the Necromonicon. Yaacov had later 
learned that it was the Esoteric Knowledge of the Nomad Manichean; the 
scroll that had turned up at a Turkish flea market just after the Second 
World War. Back in the eighties at a distinguished but nonetheless 
little-known university in New Delhi - between stints as a mercenary - 
Yaacov had done some translation work on microfiche copies of that 
particular scroll.
So the rumors of vast underground cities, and the attendant inhuman legions 
walking, flying, and swimming - as well as haunting the dimensions sight 
unseen and in between - during some antediluvian time might have been at 
least partially true?
Yaacov wondered where in G-d's name such memories were coming from, for in 
his waking hours his life had been quite different than all of the 
recollections which flooded and nearly overwhelmed his mind at that moment. 
He was in the midst of a mental and spiritual palimpsest!
In any event the evidence was clear; there was an ancient and gigantic city 
on the cave floor! Again, the fear began to creep over him. What was that 
low, humming "dirge" which seemed to sing an eternally hypnotic yet 
nihilistic tune? What was the origin of that malevolence behind him 
emanating from the giant alien mosaics on those walls?
Was he being watched? What kinds of beings had built that place? What alien 
eyes might have been watching him then? Could some god - perhaps a usurper - 
peer out at him through matter itself, assuming perhaps that its place of 
eternal imprisonment were there, "nearby?"
Could Llethrotep have been buried in some nether region, perhaps within that 
very milieu? Could such a hideous being have been - at that very moment - 
gazing through time, matter, and space upon Yaacov as he - a solitary human 
sojourner from the albeit bogus material plane - at that moment prepared to 
invade the monster's abode in the same?
Yaacov snapped out of his trance, brought back by the same uneasy feeling 
that he was being watched; observed by something literally buried within the 
grotesque mosaics in the walls behind him as he stood perched at that 
opening.
Yaacov again fingered his pistol as he pondered what race of creatures could 
have constructed such a place, again recollecting passages from the 
Necromonicon.
Had it really been Llethrotep and his minions, the Nuphnareloteph? Had the 
legendary ancient servants of respectively ToZ and Llethrotep - the 
Cemonculus and Nuphnareloteph - been foot-soldiers in some ancient forgotten 
battle for the cosmos, created and conscripted among other things for the 
construction of the diabolical city below?
Had the place been built by the legendary Nephilim of yore? Was Yaacov the 
star who had been cast to earth; the star whose only quest was to find the 
key to the bottomless pit; to find the key that he might then release 
Abbadon from the bottomless pit that Ragnarok might then - once again - 
occur?
Yaacov gazed upon the ageless city, once again losing himself in the 
glinting reflections of apparently untouched age-old polished stonework, 
sparkling up at him from below in rich colors as if to indicate the movement 
of some half-visible entity about the floor of the fantastic fortress there 
beneath him.
Again regaining his concentration Yaacov glanced left and right, and to the 
former there was a gradually descending stairway carved out of the apparent 
granite wall, winding down and around the edge of the cavern. He could see 
it following the wall of the cavern; down, down, around the periphery of the 
city, until it curved around and fell out of sight behind some ancient 
spires below.
The decrepit staircase, still upright after apparent aeons of disuse, looked 
to him to be the only practical entrance route to the city; the stairs 
themselves being only a metre or thereabouts in width, and littered with 
rocks which might cause his boot-clad feet to falter on the fairly well 
preserved and otherwise surprisingly smooth stonework, which itself was 
glyphed in some apparently ancient numerals, perhaps measuring height from 
the floor of the cavern; or perhaps the actual number of stairs. As he 
counted them on the way down, every ninth stair appeared to have been marked 
in such a manner. As he descended, he remembered that in some circles of 
satanism (mercyful fate), nine had been the number of lucifer.
Parts of the stairway were completely worn or broken away. As he leapt 
across the gaps in the - by definition of its very existence - antediluvian 
monument to some inhuman race, Yaacov wondered if he were indeed approaching 
true insanity.
It was a dream that he could not awaken from, and that something - invisible 
yet irresistible - was a constant; pushing him downward; ever downward, to 
the mystery of the city floor. Some of the gaps; for all their narrowness 
were dozens of metres in depth; so the consequences of missing such a jump 
would have been certain "death," but fortunately for Yaacov there were only 
a couple of those very deep gaps, and they were invariably amongst the 
narrow ones, and were thus relatively easy to cross. Perhaps those deep but 
narrow fissures were evidence of prior earthquake activity.
The primeval music waxed subtly in the background and in his descent the 
oppressive presence from the tunnel faded. He wondered if his thoughts were 
his own (as though such had always or even once ever actually been the 
case), or if the events, the smells, the sounds, the sights of that 
"expedition" had caused his then apparent fever; his meandering madness. He 
stopped and smoked another bowl of salvia; sitting there on the steps; the 
music became a part of him and the center of the valley below a mass of 
swirling tentacles; all of it - the sound as well as the sights - with its 
basis somewhere between light and shadow. After a few minutes Yaacov could 
and did continue.
He laughed for a moment as he wondered where salvia might take him since he 
was "already there." Certainly the snakes were emanating from within him.
The heat had probably reached about thirty-five degrees Celsius, and the 
humidity was moderate. In any event Yaacov wasn't acclimated and the heat - 
along with the slight humidity - served to make his descent all the more 
miserable, yet the awe of the very discovery of the city itself had since 
dispelled any of his fearful, hopeless, or complaining mental attributes; 
with the thankfully waning presence which appeared at that point to have 
been emanating from its apex about hideous drawings on the walls of the 
passageway, by then several hundred metres above and behind him.
Indeed, Yaacov's entire being was suddenly alight with the excitement of the 
discovery - as though it had once again first dawned on him - of that 
unfathomable city with its equally incomprehensible architecture. The towers 
and spires looked so impossible; so outside the realm of any human 
engineering; with their hundreds of feet in height and shapes which should 
not have been standing by any measure of human science. He was intoxicated 
by something he could not describe; something just outside of his sense of 
reason; something beyond any psychedelic he had ever known. Perhaps it was 
samadhi or even kundalini; at the very least it was his own namaste.
Over ages past, how many other human travelers had reached that point? What 
kind of incredible secret might have been waiting to be unearthed in one's 
ultimately reaching the floor of the city? What age-defying watchmen were 
then standing guard over such vast and unspeakable mysteries? What ancient 
tomes might lie beneath the stonework in the remains of some forgotten alien 
terrace, tucked into a corner or jutting from a tower dozens of metres in 
the air from the floor of the cavern? Would there be decipherable etchings 
on the walls of some decrepit place of worship left over from pre-human 
hystory? Had any human previously ever seen the place, or was Yaacov indeed, 
"the chosen one" - at least in that regard?
Indeed, who of humanity could have possibly known of that fantastic milieu, 
but perhaps for the shamans of centuries past who might have once visited 
the place? Conceiving that it had indeed once been traversed by humanity, 
had the place by the same token swallowed every soul who'd ever dared enter 
it? Whatever the case might ultimately have been, Yaacov continued downward 
across the antediluvian staircase.
Yaacov reached the bottom, and despite his jubilance at having stepped into 
"the home of the gods" he was nearly exhausted, his canteen almost empty and 
his strawberry smoothie gone. The trip down the staircase had taken him over 
an hour and he figured that he'd crossed two or three kilometers in that 
final descent.
The dirge was a bit louder; just enough to - like a drug - further hypnotize 
while somehow magnifying all of his thoughts and sensations. Nothing moved 
but he was better able to observe the structures, dizzying in their very 
stature. The stairs had ended in a dirt area, away from edge of the city by 
perhaps fifty metres.
The outer area of the cave floor was comprised of boulders, rocks, and dirt, 
but without hills. Inside of that outer ring of geological debris was the 
city proper, itself rising from a smooth, flat stone floor. The stonework 
and the unfinished area shared an abrupt border, and from where he was 
standing, that appeared to have been the case for as far as he could see, 
around the edge of the cave floor. He walked across the open ground; 
approaching, then stepping upon those ancient inhuman stones.
He was finally on the floor of the valley and standing like a dwarf amidst 
the ruins of some gigantic and extinct alien race. Large creatures the size 
of the Cemonculus and other remains he'd witnessed above him could have 
easily lived there with little difficulty. Yes, a humanoid two-and-a-half to 
three metres in height could have navigated those depths with ease. Like the 
entire staircase twisting lazily around the cavern wall, all of the steps 
chiseled into the various shapes, sizes, and colors of the stone buildings 
were large; sized for beings of such stature.
>From those he knew at least of the caves; the cave of Sedona and the cave of 
Cydonia. That wasn't so remarkable; any fan of late night AM talk radio 
would have known the same. In any event it was too bad about them; it seemed 
the spooks had covered Their tracks there. Of course who had the spooks not 
gotten to? For it was just like the days of Shamgar, son of Anat - all high 
roads had been forsaken.
And sometimes it seemed Yaacov could remember nothing They had not wanted 
him to remember. It all went back to his involvement with Project Monarch; 
but by then who had not been a subject of either that, MKULTRA, or most 
commonly, haarp?
Suddenly a grim determination gripped him, and he lost all thought but 
instead took action, keeping his pistol at the ready as he started at once 
gingerly yet speedily down the dank passageway.

8) Comfort is never to be confused with truth.

Whatever the ultimate truth of past, present, or parallel realities, there 
in that passageway Yaacov knew rabbi Michael Levin to presently have been 
dead. And the monster had been exceedingly strong; at least the 
eighteen/seventy-six of a vampire. And Yaacov thought of the creature as 
inhuman because from what had been left of Michael's body - then a hundred 
metres above and behind Yaacov in the passageway - it had appeared as though 
only something utterly alien could have done such a thing.
In any event Yaacov thought he'd seen razor-sharp claws and teeth, then 
heard the screams of the rabbi and the hideous sounds of rending and such.
Yaacov cocked the CZ-52 and made his way through the widening, mossy, 
ancient passage. All recollections - dreamworld or other - fading; over and 
over again almost giving form within his thoughts then disintegrating, only 
to nearly re-assemble in yet another guise, Yaacov noticed that sparse and 
"alienesque" markings continued to line the walls. Like his thoughts they 
seemed to disintegrate as he descended.
The passage steepened and the nameless oppression thickened, threatening to 
suffocate him were it to increase by even an iota. As it were, at the 
present levels it was almost too much for his physiology to bear. He fought 
back against the palpable nausea and plunged into the depths, hunting 
something more than likely physically much stronger than he; facing somewhat 
certain death if he were to encounter it face to face; yet he was driven by 
the hazy legend of the Lost Sphere - IT; or at least so he thought.
The Lost Sphere, mentioned in the Necromonicon; the legendary sought-after 
tome of those same aboriginal American shamans who were whispered in 
numerous and nameless other, olden texts to have fabricated the burial mound 
ostensibly above; the salvia-soaked, otherworldly wanderers of ancient Earth 
who had for whatever reason touched down upon those sun-parched hills in the 
almost forgotten days of yore; at once alien magicians and tribal wise men 
who had lived in some remote age hundreds or even thousands of years before; 
progenitors of Qetzalcoatl and the Toltecs. Yaacov somehow sensed that the 
Sphere must be nearby. An otherworldly sensation rose from his feet and 
upward; as if, within that dank passageway the very ground he walked upon 
were giving off some kind of at once unfathomable yet definitely discernible 
emanation.
Yaacov's growing yet wholly undefined sense that the Sphere might be within 
grasp was heightened by some previously eerie premonitions which had 
overtaken at least some small part of his very being over those days 
previous to his presently perilous descent. Yaacov was driven relentlessly 
downward.
Of the Necromonicon; circumspect and perhaps alien tomes procured in various 
libraries and studies had all mentioned that the human scribes of such had 
without exception gone mad. Of course again society usually defines madness 
but in the case of the compilers of that decrepit text there had been no 
doubt; for their madness had been even greater than that; as if, after their 
writing their eyes had without exception held view of an irretrievably 
shattered universe; a worldview ground into the tiniest of shards by 
something far greater and menacing than any byzantine legal codex.
Somehow - aeons after the fact of the translations - the Rabbi and Yaacov 
had gained access to one of the surviving copies. Yet though Yaacov could 
remember having translated passages and the meanings gleaned, he could not 
for the life of him recall just where or when such activities had taken 
place.
Yaacov could neither remember the place nor time of the translation work but 
he could remember inklings of at once vague and obscene passages contained 
therein; verses containing commentary on that grand experiment - humanity - 
and the dual meaning and meaninglessness of such a fantastic pursuit. Had 
such been a hoax? Indeed, what if anything was not at its root a hoax?
Nonetheless he wanted most of all to erase; to forget the origins of 
humanity as he had discovered them from within those dank pages. Yet so very 
many times the snake had already swallowed its tail; and it would again; and 
it was too late for Yaacov; or even his ostensibly own kind.
On some level he longed for the simple humanity of normal people; the 
quistians and others of undying, simple faith; the lovers of democracy; 
fawners over malefactors of great wealth; the obedient; the sheep who demand 
their own fleecing and experience such with untold joy.
Of the creature Yaacov pursued; could it have been a Cemonculus (and again, 
how did he know that name?); amphibian straggler across the ages; creature 
and servant of ToZ, sullen and shimmering water god?
Could Yaacov at that moment have been chasing an actual, surviving 
Cemonculus, minion of ToZ?
What contorted chaos had ToZ and his compatriots - Vutvko and Llethrotep - 
once wrought?
The long-lost sources had hinted haltingly at secrets beyond the stars in 
connection with those three despotic gods; forbidden secrets so vile and 
decadent that no human could possibly stand alone in the face of their 
ancient, purported truths. That is why nearly all texts, tablets, scrolls, 
tomes, and the like are for the most part nameless and hidden to this day; 
the notable exception having been the Necromonicon, whose mysterious name 
was changed somewhat and slightly popularized as the "Necronomicon" in a 
certain particular - and perhaps also peculiar - circle of human 
speculation. Regardless of any of that, according to many of those same, 
unnamed sources, the three usurpers, ToZ, Llethrotep, and Vutvko had been 
once and to this day imprisoned within both the inner and outer spheres. The 
linchpin of this phenomena was the very IT Yaacov was seeking. IT would bind 
the usurpers throughout yawning and shifting eternity.
Yaacov broke from his then-current speculation and realized he'd again 
stopped walking for a moment or two. He then continued to plunge forward, 
rouding a bend in the passageway until the creature - the apparent 
Cemonculus; a hideous, living relic from antediluvian times - was upon him.
Yaacov screamed in terror as he emptied the eight-round, thirty-caliber 
(seven point six two by twenty-five) magnum pistol into the beast as it 
rushed him from a mere few paces and the creature itself fell into an 
at-first eerily moaning, then silent hulk on the passageway floor, its - 
well over two-metre - lifeless frame to never again traverse either the ages 
or Yaacov's dreams.
>From all indications, looking at the twisted corpse on that slippery slope, 
it was indeed a Cemonculus; at least in comparing the visage of the 
bullet-punctured beast on the floor to memories of descriptions Yaacov had 
once gleaned from only god knows where.
Indeed, the claws and teeth, and the tentacles hanging from what was left of 
the alien face where it remained intact; those all looked like the odd 
statues that human tourists had been buying and oft-referring to as "cute" 
in the crafts stands of some off-the-beaten-track Pacific Island carnival. 
Where had Yaacov seen a caricature of that creature before; at which locale 
had he spied such a trinket; Borneo, Palau, Guam, or somewhere near the 
island group known as Truk? Yet Yaacov had never been to any of those 
places; of that he was almost certain. Yaacov decided then and there to try 
and forget where the memories and knowledge were coming from; he set about 
to instead simply use the information he'd been given; and to thenceforth 
recall such in any manner which might prove useful within the context of his 
trip.
At any rate Yaacov was near the end of his own proverbial tether. The 
ringing in his ears, drowning out the dripping sounds in the otherwise 
silent passageway; the lingering echo was only a minor irritant compared to 
his increasingly desperate awareness. Some ancient and alien curse seemed to 
haunt the macabre passageway. It were as if the "feeling" actually poured 
forth from not only the floors as before, but from the very walls and the 
ceiling; as though the passageway were haunted by something totally alien to 
his own - arguably shattered - humanity.
Perhaps Yaacov was simply in need of some "acclimation" to the inhuman and 
terrifying, and then he would be "all right." Perhaps Yaacov could lurk 
within that passageway for a few hours and the oppression - so thick in the 
air at that moment - would leave him. Yes, perhaps mentally and emotionally 
he would only have to deal with the death of Michael and the ensuing 
encounter with the Cemonculus. Yaacov further thought that he could recover 
from those, in their "triviality;" next to meaningless in the sense that the 
very structure of the universe wasn't (yet) in question, but instead "only" 
the loss of a couple of lives, albeit one of them inhuman.
Who ultimately - one way or the other - cared about the universe? His 
sentimentality had almost gotten the best of him. Yet he harbored the 
thought; the idea that if he were to find IT he could ensure that nothing 
would be the same and that everything would change. Perhaps then in his own 
bizarre way he - if no one else - gave thought to the universe.
If Yaacov could remain in that subterranean vault for just a few hours, and 
somehow forget the eerie stifling energy of the hallway whilst losing his 
nostalgia about so-called universal ramifications of what he was attempting 
to accomplish, he might be all right with just the thoughts of his dead 
friend and a hideous alien encounter.
Had Yaacov by then gone insane already? Any more, where was the line to be 
drawn? Perhaps there indeed did exist a real, identifiable insanity outside 
of the scope of social mores. Yet in the end, Yaacov wondered if he really 
had any choice over anything, for one thing was for certain; he could not 
yet bring himself to turn around and flee back upward to the "light of day."
The Cemonculus twitched as it died. Yaacov realized that the thirty-caliber 
had been good enough. In any event, he didn't guess that his luck was going 
to hold out much longer. The Cemonculus lay there with claws and teeth and a 
hideous face. The tentacles hanging from the face were truly ghastly and 
nearly beyond description. The dead yet ageless monster gave off somewhat of 
a stench, lying there at Yaacov's feet with dark liquid oozing down the 
passageway behind it. Certainly his experience with the beast had been more 
frightening than even the most disturbing episode of Buffy the Vampire 
Slayer; of course sans the beautiful females.
Yaacov stepped around the Cemonculus and felt his pockets for an extra 
magazine. Coincidentally Yaacov found several loaded magazines in side 
pockets to his army-style trousers. Working the latch on his pistol, Yaacov 
flicked the empty magazine away and with a fresh magazine reloaded the 
CZ-52. He took an inventory of magazines and discovered that there were 
three more.
Yaacov's ears were still ringing from the shots just moments before, yet he 
couldn't be certain whether he heard a faint low murmur, as if it were miles 
away, deeply wavering in some unearthly, subtly hypnotic tune.
The stifling, invisible presence in the passageway - beyond his 
comprehension and perhaps that of all of humanity - faded into the 
background, albeit steadily and slowly; in any case as he continued downward 
it had ceased to be the focal point of his mental meanderings; as if the 
spot near the deceased Cemonculus had been the "center of the alien energy 
field" and such were now fading as he wandered past it, then away and into 
those abysmal depths.
In the meantime his mind had found a way to concentrate on any possible 
movement that might be further down the passageway, waiting for illumination 
before the slightly dimming maglite. Yes, Yaacov was paying as much 
attention as possible to the turns in the passageway; the hollows that he 
came across, and niches in the construction which had broken down and left 
piles of loose stones on the floor which made for possible hiding places for 
inhuman savages which might find it attractive to lie in wait through the 
passing of unspeakable ages; sitting like silent sentries for the ultimate, 
present-day arrival of some intruder such as Yaacov to maul into oblivion.
Yaacov stopped again and realized he had a small backpack. Out of curiosity 
he put the flashlight between his legs and the pistol into a holster there 
on his belt and took the pack off, then inspected its contents.
There were a bottle of water and a bottle of something reddish and with the 
apparent consistency of a milkshake. Additionally, there were two sandwiches 
in wax paper, some chocolate chip cookies in the same, and a couple of bags 
of barbecue potato chips; also there were spare batteries for the maglite. 
There were tobacco and rolling papers, and some blue ringers in a baggie. 
Yaacov immediately ingested the blue ringers.
He noticed what appeared to have been a folded up map. Again Yaacov's 
curiosity got the best of him and, putting the other items back into the 
pack he unfurled the map.
The map showed the ground above him. It looked like an old map of Arizona, 
yet it was overlayed by other lines indicating some other place; it were as 
though its lines were combining to compare and contrast two places in one. 
Then Yaacov began to again consider that he was indeed locked in some kind 
of parallel reality; that he was indeed beneath both the sands of sleepy, 
modern-day Arizona on the one hand and a forgotten landscape of Mars on 
another. Oddly enough, Yaacov found that he could translate some of the 
text.
There he was taken aback. It was the same thing he'd "seen and heard" a 
couple of times before; "The Tetragrammaton is not the demiurge."
In his shock and amazement Yaacov nearly dropped the flashlight, and the map 
and the pack with its other contents, yet something inside of him rose up 
and allowed him to keep his cool. He muttered in near silence, "That's the 
riddle of my life; and even with the knowledge of that statement - assuming 
it is true to begin with - what does it really mean?"
By then he noticed something else in the pack; a spice jar with some salvia 
inside. There was also a pipe. He loaded a bowl and took a few hits, holding 
each one. The music was inside him. There were ancient voices egging him on. 
He was either corporeal or ethereal or something - perhaps indeed nothing. 
The snakes were swirling about. Slightly regaining his senses, he hastened 
down the hallway with mischief on his unraveling mortal mind.
As he went he hurriedly stuffed the map back into the pack and closed its 
drawstring, saddled it back about his shoulders and took the flashlight back 
into his hand, once again unholstering his pistol; all whilst walking at a 
brisk pace, ever downward and to perhaps his ultimate doom.
As the salvia faded further back, he noted that in addition to the decaying 
brickwork of the passageway - with its piles of rubble there and about - 
there were random archways into rooms off of the passage on either side. 
Peering into such with his maglite, he would invariably see skeletal 
remains. He even entered one of the rooms and found some rags on the floor; 
rags so old they fell into dust at his touch.
He couldn't determine the age of the stonework in passageway, the adjoining 
rooms, the metal implements which held some of the skeletons, or the cloth 
which would crumble to dust; yet all of it was decrepit. He could neither 
determine the identities of the various non-human beings represented by some 
of the skeletal remains.
What sort of secret society had built those passages and when? During the 
heyday of the shamans, had such simply found other nameless sources of 
information, and known well enough to build their burial mound near the 
opening to that very passageway?
Speculation aside, in a way it had been fortuitous - despite the loss of the 
rabbi and Yaacov's own ambling in apparent great danger down the passageway 
- that the ancients had done what they'd done. How else would the rabbi and 
he have ever found the place? What nameless rumors would have remained 
unwritten had the ancient and ostensibly human visionaries not attempted 
their own great work? Yaacov supposed that at that very moment it yet 
remained to be seen whether the rabbi's life had been lost in vain; whether 
Michael's death had been worth whatever it was Yaacov were to find in his 
own continued descent; or if in the end it would prove to have been simply a 
waste of the rabbi's lifelong research; however heretical that may or may 
not have actually been. The confusion of the situation was certainly nowhere 
near letting up. Yaacov simply had to laugh at his own thoughts and emotions 
as they cycled continually throughout the gamut between something like 
horrified veneration on the one hand and humorous indifference on the other.
As for the passageway itself, it was unknown outside of esoteric circles, 
and unmentioned except in nameless texts. The alien hallway is only 
whispered of during certain dark rituals performed by strange keepers of 
olden and hidden traditions, and rumor has it They cannot number more than a 
few dozen - or a few hundred at most - at any given time in human hystory. 
No one else either inside or outside of that locale, those hundreds of feet 
in elevation above him as he strode deeper down into that dank, diabolical 
hallway had ever known of the place. But again, how did Yaacov know all of 
this? How had the totality of the terror and the beauty fallen utterly and 
completely upon him?
Yaacov steeled himself and continued downward, bypassing the various 
broken-down niches and alcoves on the sides of the passage. The entrance at 
the pyramid above had long been demolished, perhaps by the ravages of 
centuries of wind, snow, and rain across that Martian plateau. Perhaps 
vandals had sacked the tomb centuries before.
Of the remains in the alcoves and chambers; those which had not been readily 
identifiable as homo sapien had rather been hideous in their inhuman 
deformity. Had such been the offspring of the ancient nephilim?
In his anxiety Yaacov surged ever downward, and oddly enough the oppression 
seemed to fade and the curious odors dispersed as he went. In a thirst he 
paused and opened the pack to get a drink of whatever was in the bottle. It 
was a strawberry smoothie. Perhaps it was laced by a proper dose of some 
psychedelic such as lsd; certainly, in due time he would know one way or the 
other. In any event, as the salvia faded the psilocybin began to take 
effect.
Yaacov put the drink away and reshouldered the pack, even as his maglite 
began to dim. He figured he'd better get every last ounce of power out of 
the batteries which were already in use.
How far had he gone? How far did he yet have to go? How far was it; straight 
up to the surface?
He paused again, realizing that the construction of the passageway was by 
then undeniably alien. Not even ancient human mystics could have conjured 
such a thing. The inscriptions on the walls were telling a story.
Yes, the only anomalies other than the bizarre and ongoing inscriptions upon 
the walls had been those apparently single rooms off of the main passageway 
- somewhere up and behind him by then - and Yaacov calculated that, were he 
eventually enabled to retreat - and were he to actually take that action - 
that he could easily find his way back up and out of the passageway.
Yaacov checked for a hand grenade, and indeed there was one there in the 
pocket on the leg opposite the one with the pocket containing the ammo 
magazines for his pistol. He re-holstered the pistol and gave it a rub, 
realizing that the trusty CZ-52 had saved his life. Yaacov might need it yet 
again, yet for some reason his sense of imminent danger had at least 
momentarily subsided.
For the last five-hundred meters the tunnel had been simply cut into the 
rock; there were no seams, and though the hieroglyphs were etched into the 
walls there and about, the rest of the passageway - floor, walls, ceiling - 
were all completely smooth. To add to the impression there continued to be 
"rivulet beds" carved into either side of the floor; there where water 
trickled down alongside. For that five-hundred meters the construction had 
been utterly alien. Not even ancient human mystics could have created such a 
thing. Certainly it had been extraterrestrial magic.
That last, perfect section of passageway gave out to what amounted to a 
subterranean hillside; suddenly the smooth surfaces gave way to a rock-hewn 
cave. The descent also steepened.
Yaacov paused as his thirst was getting the best of him, and took further 
nips from the bottles in his pack. He decided to try a sandwich. The 
sandwich was fish and onions with cheddar cheese; his favorite. His clothing 
was drenched in sweat.
Contrasting with the construction of the passageway above and behind him; in 
the area of the tunnel he presently traversed, it were as though the 
finishing work had never been completed, and the hole served no purpose in 
ornamentation, but rather in facilitating the movement of perhaps hideous 
creatures to and from the surface to wherever that yawning gap might have 
been ultimately leading him.
Unnamed tomes through time immemorial have written of the pentagram, its 
properties, and its rumored connection with certain dark and unseen forces; 
forces brought forth by covens of black magicians whilst chanting insane 
dirges out of lost pagan tablets on nights falling far less often than even 
once in a blue moon.
Of the pentagram; what are the properties of this strangely natural symbol, 
with arguably one point on it for "each" appendage common to all humans; a 
head, two arms, and two legs? In any event several corroborating texts have 
mentioned the pentagram as being the "human" symbol, but in the context in 
which Yaacov was seeing it at that very moment, something unearthly and 
inhuman was certainly "hovering" like an ancient oppressor in the air around 
that bas-relief as the low moaning continued to permeate the air about him, 
all of it giving him severe doubts about the credibility of the pentagram as 
a "human symbol." On the other hand, "They" had built the pentagon; the 
Chinese, Russians, and Americans had all used it in some capacity or 
another; every heavy metal or industrial band had probably tinkered with it, 
and every witch and warlock haunting the new age bookstores was probably 
also intimately familiar with it.
What of the five-pointed star? What of the "elder sign," that "thin thread" 
by which certain isolated and decadent New England communities had hanged 
from, in throughout the centuries warding off unnamed and alien age-old 
monsters?
Regardless of any of that, Yaacov remembered his own star; the six-pointed 
star of Solomon - the Sign of Cain. Yaacov could not then quite fathom the 
pentagram. It were as though the universe were split into but two 
significant factions, and he was of the one opposite the other.
He looked past the bizarre, familiar yet disturbing symbol, and walked out 
onto the sloped floor of "the cathedral."
That was it! That was the cathedral he had wondered about in the daydream 
only - what was it? - a few days before.
What sort of freakish events had gone on there, in the starless silent 
eternal emerald twilight of the forbidden underground city, in ages long 
past; distant eras forgotten by the ignorant humanity above, save for the 
asocial scholars spending their days searching through musty tomes in the 
dark storage rooms of the world's private libraries and museums, revealing 
the esoteric evidence of the existence of such mysteries, yet only to 
themselves?
Like everything else in the city, the benches were oversized; perhaps 
fifteen decimeters high and a metre wide on top, without backs. Each bench 
appeared to have several, unique symbols along its top, apparently seat 
markings as in today's human monoliths; the domed stadiums with the bench 
seats and the tiny numbers on them. The major difference was one of scale; 
the unique markings on the tops of the benches occurred every fifteen 
decimeters or so.
What eldritch sport had perhaps been played out in that gathering place; 
what fundraising function had flourished; what dispute debated; there in 
that decrepit room where the ceiling was then open to the glowing green of 
the cave ceiling, and boulders lay in disorder about the ancient floor, 
leaving crushed bench sections and pock-marked glyphs on the once-smooth 
surfaces?
What sounds had the creatures emitted, and what was the purpose of the 
eternal low dirge coming out of that hidden spot, somewhere from within 
elsewhere about the city? What words or phrases had the creatures spoken, 
and what had been their plans? Were they simply another part of a going 
concern, with vested interests; a concern bent on destroying all opposition 
in order to further its aims? What was the level of their depravity, or 
indeed do winners write the hystory books? Why are certain surviving 
nameless tomes so circumspect in describing those ancient beings? What 
bizarre black secrets hovered over their past? In particular, which secrets 
so threaten the existence of humanity that all known references to them were 
without exception couched in strange twisted symbolism any time the subject 
were broached, even within esoteric academic, political, or religious 
circles? Certainly - and especially in so-called "modern times" - every 
attempt had been made to keep the "little" people from knowing anything of 
them. Yet even to the so-called moron the clues were always everywhere.
Directly in front of the "back" wall with its looming pentagram pattern, 
there was a stone "table" or "altar" on a raised platform or stage. Amid the 
dust and rocks littering the gently sloped floor and the alien benches 
standing in silence save for that background dirge, Yaacov crossed the 
"sanctuary."
Haltingly he semi-ciphered the glyphs on the benches; at least where they'd 
not been completely marred by the apparent "collapse" of the ceiling; glyphs 
even at that moment seemingly alive, emanating some strange, inexplicably 
suffocating energy which filled that formerly ceilinged room - then instead 
like an open-air arena - with a foreboding, unfamiliar tension.
Once past the last (front) row of benches, Yaacov reached the platform on 
the far end, and stepped onto a level, flat floor. Between that row of 
benches - the last row he had passed - and the platform, there were a good 
ten metres of bare, flat floor, cluttered only by the silent stones sitting 
in various odd positions, left by their respective falls from the apparently 
once poorly-designed, nonetheless then-collapsed ceiling. He leapt up onto 
the metre-high stage or platform, and studied the "pulpit" with its further 
bizarre ancient occultic inlaid symbols, and almost thought they looked like 
some glyphs he had seen an ancient Khazakian tablet, itself rumored to have 
been discovered in the Pripyet marshes near Kiev.
The pulpit and the "altar" were both chiseled from black and white granite; 
in contrast to the rest of the structure, which appeared to have been made 
of highly cut and polished large (fifteen decimeter cubed) gray stones. The 
walls were probably thirty metres in height and uneven at the top due to the 
aforementioned destruction of the ceiling, perhaps itself due to a 
subterranean earthquake, or maybe a sort of "lightning bolt" cast in that 
abyss against the roof of the building by some angry forgotten god, in the 
days where inhumanity had actually sat upon those benches, perhaps gathered 
within that hall, and haunted the ponderous thoroughfares of the city 
outside.
One would have to have seen the place to have truly shared Yaacov's awe at 
his own - however temporary - haunting within that titanic monstrosity, 
another monument to ghastly pre-human inhabitants perhaps that very moment 
awaiting their re-awakening and renewed despotic dominion over the creatures 
of the world above. Of course it weren't as if the creatures above had ever 
in any real way possessed any liberty to begin with; well at least not since 
"god" had long since cursed them. After that, life had become a series of 
chances, but never choices.
Nonetheless Yaacov then sensed that the very act of entering the place - 
making his way over decrepit littered benches, realizing that the structure 
walls were at least fifteen decimeters of solid ancient stone in thickness - 
had given him some kind of insight into the way those inhuman, still 
nameless creatures had once thrived; as though regardless of his own will 
that living, breathing presence which permeated the room were making him a 
part of itself, even as the low moaning dirge from some forgotten corner of 
the city was calling him into still other ancient hypnotic states, promising 
liberating intoxication if only he would give in to the bygone and nefarious 
machinations behind its sound. The invisible presence in that apparently 
once-hallowed hall - even with the open, fallen ceiling; unseen yet 
spine-tingling - combined with the dirge from outside and the still faint 
"pushing and pulling" of the ominous, vague pressures emanating from the 
mosaics at the entrance hundreds of metres above; all of it combined to put 
him into an supernatural, bicameral state of being, his sanity hanging by a 
narrow thread in connection with what then lingered of his remaining human 
consciousness. It were as if all of the inhuman, alien energies of that 
forgotten fortress were conspiring to make him "one" with them, to put him 
into a trance-like state without volition; as if some alien and forbidden 
force were calling him into an involuntary, extraterrestrial servitude.
In any event Yaacov fingered his pistol as he inched across the raised area, 
toward the altar that sat there. Yes, even with the overwhelming antique 
machinations of unseen and unmeasured ancient powers, he managed to keep his 
wits about him to at least a degree that he could continue to observe and 
explore without otherwise completely losing himself. He did sense though 
that, if he were to retain his sanity - indeed his very, albeit tortured 
humanity - that he must momentarily exit the remains of that structure; as 
if that very thread to his own consciousness were being irretrievably 
unraveled then and there by those same immeasurable alien currents. The only 
way to truly regain his unicameral mind would be to leave that accursed 
place.
On the altar there were blood stains! Yes, even after aeons the blood had 
not disappeared. It was crusty and dark, almost black but certainly slightly 
crimson; they well could have been the stains of human blood. Again he began 
to see fantastic visions of Cemonculii like the horror he had encountered 
what had seemed like so many hours before; hundreds of individual Cemonculus 
sitting there on those benches and spouting barbarous alien obscenities as 
part of their blasphemous religion, rapt in their attention to the 
otherworldy pagan priests on the platform, themselves with daggers raised 
over wriggling, restrained humans, perhaps naturally innocent in their 
prehistoric bicameral minds. Whispering in his ear, he could almost detect 
an audible alien chant, and at that moment was loathe to turn and look back 
at the benches for fear of what he might see; perhaps through some hidden 
magic an intact place of worship inhabited by literally hundreds of the 
dreaded servants of ToZ. What strange force was giving him those feverish 
hallucinations of otherwise unrecorded ceremonies? He dared not turn and 
look at the benches for fear that his premonition might be true. Instead he 
gathered what few wits he had left about him and studied further, the 
ancient and caked altar.
Despite his immediate misgivings, he picked a bit of dried blood off of the 
altar. There was no way of telling for certain whether it were human but 
there was a chill in his spine; a chill beyond the unseen pressure which 
filled the ancient crumbling cavernous structure itself, and somehow he 
flashed back to the hideous skeletal remains he had encountered in the 
alcoves off of the passageway on the journey down; remains of some upright 
creatures but with features utterly foreign to earthly life.
His mind returning to his immediate surroundings, Yaacov turned slightly and 
viewed the side walls of the large, raised alcove where the pulpit and the 
altar had been built. On the side wall of that "stage," there was a 
bas-relief, and it had to have been an image of one of those creatures whose 
ghastly skeletal remains he had stumbled across in the passageway up above. 
It had to have been one of those creatures, only the bas-relief rendition 
was of such in the flesh and it was staring - as if it were alive - directly 
at Yaacov. Upon his first glance upon the thing, for a moment his heart must 
have surely stopped. It had to have been an image of one of the 
Nuphnareloteph, servants of Llethrotep. The creature depicted in the 
bas-relief was loathsome in any event. A part of Yaacov had to laugh. It may 
have simply been an inkling of ultimate insanity; that which goes beyond 
being a blasphemer or outcast.
It stood; not completely upright, but slightly hunched over, with arms and 
legs like a human, but with a tail which pointed like a wide arrowhead and 
horns on its head. It had the red-orange appearance of a salamander. In one 
of its long bony hands it carried a spear and in the other it carried some 
kind of amulet. Its nose was large with flared nostrils, and the mouth had a 
couple of large visible canine teeth. The eyes were red with green in the 
irii. There was almost a physical sensation of something creeping up his 
back, behind his left shoulder. It was a chill, but it was deeper than any 
he had experienced simply reading about that sort of thing.
At that moment, for some reason he had serious doubts about his own sanity, 
and misgivings as to whether he would ever awaken from that dream without 
first "dying." The invisible rancorous presence of that ancient, crumbling 
hall up above continued to push him into an apparently extraterrestrial 
madness, and the hideous visage on the bas-relief stared back at him and 
seemed to plumb the depths of his soul - even in the picture's inherent 
lifelessness - through the eyes of an age-old depiction of a cruel, 
torturing minion of the one known only in musty, circumspect tomes as 
Llethrotep. Indeed, those supposedly lifeless eyes were simply not that, and 
he proved it to himself by jumping up upon the ancient, blood-stained altar 
and hopping to and fro about its approximately four-metre length, watching 
the very eyes of the forbidden bas-relief follow him as he moved. Yaacov 
wasn't sure what other unsavory properties the bas-relief might contain, and 
decided to leave the area posthaste as the at once unique yet stifling 
immediately local energy was becoming too much for his unraveling sense of 
self.
Without examining the opposite wall, he jumped first from the altar, then 
from the raised stage upon which the altar and pulpit sat, not bothering for 
a second to glance back at the terrifying image of an apparent 
Nuphnareloteph; a Nuphnareloteph by imperfect memories of dusty Tramanglian 
manuscripts he had once translated in a forgotten library in a lazy, 
little-traveled section of old Baghdad. He streaked past the benches, over 
the boulders, further disturbing the ancient dust in bounding across the 
sloped floor, up to the entrance from whence he'd arrived. Even then he 
didn't turn to glance upon the symbols in that place, the portentous 
five-pointed star at the very back of the raised stage, and the probable 
Nuphnareloteph whose visage he would've barely seen in any event from that 
awkward angle at the arched opening, had he never first bothered to have 
entered and examined that accursed place in detail.

4) Just because something is written does not make it so; quite the 
contrary.

Again out in the open and upon the alien walkways, Yaacov picked his way 
through the boulders and into the clear; onto the thoroughfares astride the 
other buildings, none of which were in any kind of decrepit state even 
approaching that of the stifling cathedral he had just exited.
As he walked briskly away from the hall with its secrets mainly yet kept to 
itself, by chance he glanced up at one of the spires elsewhere in the city. 
The spire he spied was not the largest, but it was one of the most unique. 
>From where he stood on the floor, the tower had what appeared to have been 
that aforementioned lattice work in its abundantly-sized windows.
The lattice work of course had been common to many of the other structures 
there, but the really odd thing about that particular tower was a strange, 
blinking whitish glow from the top of it. It were as if - at its apex - 
something or someone were alive. The blinking was not extreme, but more of a 
pulse which seemed to go at about the rhythm of someone breathing. IT would 
shine bright white yet not pierce his eyes, then would fade over several 
moments to a dull grey and then complete blackness, oscillating back around 
again until IT was bright white.
He hastened to walk toward the tower, sometimes losing sight of it behind 
other, larger structures, but continuing to zig-zag across ancient, empty 
courtyards and through the silent streets save for that continuously 
wavering, humming hypnotic sound.
The low moaning was seemingly cosmic in implication, never creating a truly 
uneasy sense, but rather persuasively mesmerizing in its effect. Unlike the 
oppressive and spiteful energies of the mosaics in the passageway above, or 
the strange, sinking, stifling energy of the cathedral, the low moaning 
dirge was more than anything else, simply haunting. It was almost as if it 
weren't inhuman after all, but rather it was tapping some overlooked root in 
his genetic memories; some disposition or predilection unbeknownst to 
Yaacov, but shaded in that wintry human past of which so little is known, 
outside of the hearsay of the nameless and neglected tomes, tablets, 
scripts, and scrolls of long-forgotten prehistoric sages from the ages of 
yore; the bicameral mind.
At that very moment, in his state he wasn't consciously aware of the 
hypnotic aspect of the "music," but it was indeed having its effect upon 
him. In retrospect, at that point he was not entirely in control of his own 
body. It were almost as if that same invisible compulsion was pulling him 
toward that haunting light in the tower, singled out amidst the larger, more 
elaborate structures in that forsaken cavern, stark in its oscillating 
mystical light in the shaded emerald shadows of greater, more fantastic 
monoliths.
He reached the base of that otherwise innocuous tower and found an entryway; 
a large gilded archway leading into a lower chamber; the gold a reminder of 
some ancient and pitiless splendor. As he fingered his pistol, Yaacov passed 
through the archway and once inside, checked every nook and cranny of the 
forgotten foyer. Suddenly the thought seized him; what if he weren't within 
a lucid dream, but all of the newfound memories of the preceding hours were 
truly of his own life, and they were resurfacing in the way an amnesiac 
might recover them; by recreating the milieu of an original disaster? 
Mentally it was nearly too much to bear. He fought free of the inexplicably 
conflicting memories, and somehow emptied his mind completely, as if he were 
then in some sort of sorcerer's trance.
The ever-present glyphs adorned the walls and the floor, alight in some of 
those eerie alien colors which had earlier spooked him so. He sauntered 
about in the incredibly-aged space, noticing nary a loose stone about the 
shiny alien floor. In contrast to the shambles inside of what had been that 
terrible temple on the other side of the lost city, the floor of this tower 
was wholly preserved, as if it were under some hoary, saving incantation, 
protected still by a spell cast, once in the unremembered past by bizarre 
alien mutterings which had to that moment held the structure pristine, as if 
it were some beacon out of a misty, forgotten pre-human era; as if it were a 
mechanism, sitting otherwise idle with the pulsing light atop it, awaiting 
the day where some unwary soul such as he might discover some hidden switch 
somewhere within those walls and re-activate whatever arcane machinery may 
have been hidden there in the foyer, or at the top of the steps near the 
light on the roof.
After inspecting the floor of the building, he stepped outside into the 
avenue again, and turned and looked at the outer walls of the spire. Indeed, 
other surface areas of those steep, smooth outer walls were as flawless as 
the interior had been. Even through ages of sleep the building was as new as 
if its construction had been completed just a moment before.
As he looked around at some of the other buildings, he saw a contrast. For 
the first time he noticed that many of them - at least in that locale - were 
pock-marked and worn, as if winds had somehow howled through the cavern; or 
as if chunks of the ceiling had fallen over the ages and thus marked those 
buildings so. For the first time as well he noticed emerald chunks of the 
ceiling lying about the avenues, the streets themselves marked there and 
about as the buildings were. But of the building which stood before him; it 
was flawless.
At that moment his singular task was to re-enter the building with its light 
ebbing and flowing from the top, out of the green glow and into the shadowy 
darkness of that antiquated, alien lobby. He re-entered the edifice and once 
again spied the inner walls, and the staircase winding lazily up around the 
sides, around and around the wall of the coned spire, inner edges appearing 
all the way to the top of the monolith as it would wind higher and higher, 
that inside edge of the staircase always visible from below, and seen as 
some nearly infinite spiral from that eerie point of observation. Just a 
sliver of the black-to-white light filtered through from the top and into 
the macabre lobby.
Yaacov mounted the first step. Like everything else about the city, these 
steps were no exception; apparently not contrived for humans but perhaps for 
someone - or something - inhuman. The steps were about six decimeters high 
and deep, and the staircase itself was about fifteen decimeters wide. The 
oversized steps stretched the overworked muscles in his legs, reminding him 
that he was in an isolated and dangerous situation. He was careful to stay 
near the lattice work, to the outside as he had no inclination to look over 
the inside edge into the foyer, which fell further and further below.
He fingered his pistol then handled the grenade, and not a movement was seen 
save for the eerie oscillating light from above as it twisted its way 
through the lattice work and into his vision; and not a sound was heard save 
for his rubber-toed boots on the pristine staircase, and that at once 
insidious and beckoning low wavering dirge bouncing to and fro across the 
valley floor outside. He continued upward - step by step - and was perhaps a 
thirty metres above the floor of the valley or the base of the tower, when 
Yaacov paused and peered out into the still land of forgotten spires and 
contemplated his increasingly tenuous situation, regardless of the fact that 
he was apparently - at least for the moment - more or less safely alone.
Yaacov could only hope that he would not awaken some hideous, ghastly 
sleeping gargoyle; that he would not at some point cross the threshold into 
a chamber full of ancient, sleeping beasts and awaken them, full of their 
blood lust; but instead that he would be able to explore the place at his 
leisure and make it back out of there in one piece, trusting that his 
companions from there on out would be only his scattered thoughts, the 
seemingly inevitable and vaguely appealing low-pitched unfamiliar music 
coarsing throughout the valley, and perhaps the Sphere, should he find IT 
and indeed be able to tote IT away from there.
The stonework was better than most any product of engineering he'd ever 
before inspected; even from the memories of his prior personal inspections 
of the structures all over the world; Machu Picu; the Taj Mahal; Angor Wat; 
and Cheops to name several. More than any of those so-called wonders of the 
world ostensibly above him, the stones comprising the structures of the 
forbidden city showed tighter fit, smoother finish. To further feed his 
incredulity, some of the stones were enormous. There was one stone at the 
base of a spire perhaps two-hundred and fifty metres in height. The single 
stone at the base was a shiny green, almost like some foreign rock or 
mineral he was not familiar with; but it could have been dark emerald or 
jade. Upon his circling it whilst in a state of utter and complete awe, the 
single block of stone had appeared to have been fifteen metres in height, 
and about seventy-two metres square about its base; roughly eighteen metres 
per side. Where could such a colossal, monolithic piece of stone have been 
obtained, and what had been the method of transport into that forgotten 
nether region? What inhuman, suffocating, crushing - yet at the same time 
incredibly exacting - force could have had the power to have built that 
city, let alone the fabrication of that very stone?!
Twice Yaacov circled the stone, inspecting it for gaps indicating the 
presence of more than one rock in its construction. There were no cracks. 
Even through the ages the surface of the foundation appeared shiny and 
smooth, all the way around its gargantuan dimensions. He found an archway, 
made of maroon stones which contrasted nicely with the hues of the major 
stone. Walking through into a large hollow room; one with no staircase, but 
a ceiling built onto the base and reaching perhaps a hundred metres toward 
its pyramid-shaped inner apex; he furthered admired the construction. As if 
that weren't enough, on the floor - composed of the same sort of 
emerald-like material as outer shell of the structure - were mosaic patterns 
much like he'd seen so far above in the passageway at the entrance to the 
city. These patterns were however without any trace of the hideous 
projections of that maddening, revolting energy he'd found up above.
Nonetheless, there in that room, what dark rituals had once taken place on 
those still ominous hieroglyphic floors, in ages visible only to 
Thoth-Yagog, in Its infinite all-seeing state from the center of creation, 
fanning ultimate chaos in a tangent of an attempt at stabilizing the 
universe?
Yaacov sat, rolled and then smoked a cigarette. Somehow it satiated him as 
he sat within that extraterrestrial lobby and pondered. Soon he left and was 
back out amongst the thoroughfares.
Of that forgotten city; of what did it have - if anything - to do with 
Thoth-Yagog of yore?
Back out on the "street," the fairly open air was a sort of relief. Once 
again he was taken aback by the numerous spires chiseled out of various 
rocks and minerals; some pointing multiple hundreds of metres into the 
seemingly still, enclosed space; monoliths adorned with glistening alien 
designs; patterns out of inlaid mosaics of otherworldly glass, stone, or 
ceramics. The next nearest spire rose from a base which itself was probably 
forty metres across. That particular spire appeared to have been something 
like limestone and the base was circular and the spire itself was a vast 
cone. He found an opening; and inside there was a staircase, presumably 
running around and around to the top of the spire above. The stairs were 
about six decimeters in height and depth. Certainly some race of giants had 
once haunted the place.
In his ever-increasing exhaustion, even the exuberance over the monumental 
discovery could not override Yaacov's ancient and predictable built-in 
needs; the increasing hunger and then-rabid thirst. He opened the pack and 
finished his water, and ate the other sandwich - this time peanut butter and 
jelly - and consumed a cookie and a bag of potato chips. For a few minutes 
he rolled another cigarette and smoked. Two cigarettes so closely together 
was unusual for him; perhaps it was indicative of his own level of anxiety.
After finishing the smoke and re-shouldering the pack, the distant sound of 
running water cut through the continuing low moan in the background. Yaacov 
ran toward it, through oversized walkways underneath impeccable archways and 
past buildings whose at once alien and inexplicable stone architectures were 
like something almost as though out of Lovecraft.
He could see it then; a fountain with a pool. He ran toward it and took off 
his boots and socks. The walls to the pool stood about one and a half metres 
off of the ground, and the pool was a good twenty-five metres in diameter, 
and its walls were built out of some maroon-tinted rock, perhaps a form of 
"dark quartz." He laid down all of his gear; pack, boots, clothes, maglite, 
holstered CZ-52, the chain with its marks of cain, and his watch.
Climbing to the edge of the pool, he dove in. From what he could tell it was 
simply fresh water. Yaacov drank as he swam, wondering if the water sprang 
from some source below which had fed that oasis since its own inception at 
the appendages of those ancient inhuman minions. In any event, at no time in 
his life had water been so refreshing.
The pool - with its moderate outside walls - appeared within to have been 
quite deep. As an experiment he had plunged downward to try and find the 
bottom. As clear as the water was, in the fairly dim light Yaacov couldn't 
see it.
A pipe of some odd construction ran up through the middle of the water and 
provided the source for the eternal fountain. He could not speculate the 
exact nature or origin of the eldritch plumbing artifact.
As it was, Yaacov could only ponder the unseen depths below, and he wondered 
what water-breathing creature might lurk in those hoary shadows, awaiting 
down through the ages like an alien sentry for some sort of awakening; a 
kind of alarm or signal from an inhuman force to the then-hidden minions of 
the seemingly bottomless pool; the proverbial secret tripwire which might 
awaken the denizens and have them pouring forth from the archaic, watery 
orifice.
Of course it was only a daydream; yet upon reflection the Cemonculus he had 
slain hours before could have ultimately come from that very fountain during 
some ancient, decadent, era; so his nearly idle speculation may not have 
been particularly far off.
He left the water; not at all out of fright, but rather refreshed; once 
again thirst-quenched, and clean; at least outwardly clean in any event. He 
put the dirty, dusty, sweaty clothes back on, along with his holster. 
Opening the pack, he refilled the two bottles with water from the pool. Then 
he re-shouldered the pack and picked up the flashlight and wrapped the watch 
back about his wrist, then pocketing the chain with the stars of solomon, 
rather than wearing it about his neck. The watch had since stopped but 
somehow that didn't matter; as though it were a reminder of the world of the 
mundane - a world which Yaacov might then never return to or of which 
perhaps he had never been a part of - which seemed to steel his own resolve.
His hunger fairly satiated by the food consumed just awhile before, Yaacov 
was ready to continue his quest. His logical mind wanted to leave to the 
place from whence he'd arrived, but again just as "something unseen" had 
literally coerced him down the passageway from above, that same "something" 
was pressing him to stay within the city.
He wondered then what immemorial feasts had been thrown in that place and 
what kinds of players had played all of their games? What kinds of fools had 
provided amusement? Would an inhuman race laugh at anything, or would it 
simply demand the right to dominate, to expand such dominion, to increase 
its holdings, to increase its profits, to use lesser beings as slaves and 
even as a possible source of food? Were such things, in and of themselves 
beyond the worry of the members of such an alien race? Perhaps the 
unicameral mind cannot fathom them.
Even though Yaacov was temporarily without physical hunger, he was thinking 
ahead and he wondered if there might have been any source of sustenance 
there. He had found the pool. What if he were to find an ancient orchard or 
vineyard, still producing bizarre fruit beneath that emerald glow? Perhaps 
he would never have to awaken from that dream. Perhaps he had indeed found 
his, "home."
He had seen plenty of stone, and with the discovery of the pool, water. 
Beyond the green light there'd been nothing but stone, hieroglyphs, and then 
water, and the droning low wailing in the background; there with its 
mesmerizing tones, hovering over the city like an ancient, regulating dirge.
Whatever "civilization" it had been, the only traces were those fantastic 
buildings and various other structures, but nary a piece of fabric, of 
metalwork, or woodwork had he spied, save for the petrified doors about 
certain structures. Yet he hadn't toured the entire city; he had not 
investigated the interior of every building; and he had not traced his way 
around the outer edges of the place. Perhaps indeed there might have been 
some source of human sustenance there. However if there were not, perhaps 
that would have meant something.
In any event Yaacov began again to wonder; what connection - if any - did 
the city have to the Sphere itself? Certainly he had seen and killed that 
lone Cemonculus, and that had been some connection. Nonetheless, where would 
an object like the Sphere have been kept? He had always imagined that the 
Sphere would reside near the - for lack of a better word - "prison" of one 
of the usurpers.
Mankind holds the key to his own creation. He also holds the keys to the 
destruction. Thus the snake is destined to eat its own tail.
Simian-like pets humanity might once have been, yet deep in their 
construction were rumored to have been the keys to all mysteries; the 
wonders and horrors, not only of this world and its cosmic venue, but of 
untold countless worlds across the vast reaches of the seemingly unending 
universe in its entirety. Conscious knowledge of such secrets would drive 
the man of normal sensibilities utterly mad; thus the hiding of the keys 
within the human subconsciousness.
Certainly humanity had in any event been an interesting prospect. And as 
well the chance of an overmind preeminent diminishes with the passing of 
time from the end of one kalpa to the to the beginning of the next.
Nonetheless, curious non-linear allusions to YHVH as the creator of our 
physical world were found in more than one ancient text or tablet. 
Similarly, scrolls of unknown origin have described an entity whose name had 
a similar spelling and pronunciation - albeit in various languages - as 
having created as well the many creatures inhabiting the planet, which 
itself admittedly amounts to nothing more than an illusion upon another 
illusion; a series of chemicals and waves.
And our science is but new lies for old while our religion is always the 
same old lies. In any event as the age of "original sin" had passed, Yaacov 
had come from the era of "eternal indebtedness." To say which of the two 
ideas foments the greater human tyrrany; well that is a question for all 
time.
In any event a myriad of ancient, unrelated, hidden and nameless texts tell 
of the ageless power of the YHVH, and modern science has only served to 
befuddle - whilst pretending to illuminate - the wicked; for to the 
scientific humanist it is inconceivable that any self-respecting god could 
possibly be capable of violence. Really the whole mental deficiency of those 
who believe in a peaceful utopia is the simple fact that suffering is at the 
center of everything. Only adventist damnation - unconsciousness - can 
override this suffering; and such damnation is really but motionlessness. So 
the choice is really between suffering and unconscioussness. There is 
nothing else.
In any event monotheism had always been a powerful driving force in the 
current model of bipeds. It is certainly reassuring that an irresistible 
force might be on one's side; on the side of someone not so certain of 
themselves or anything else, but with existence rooted in the simple belief 
in an all-encompassing being. Certainly, like almost anything else 
monotheism does require the embracing of paradox; but such unpleasant 
paradox indeed; at least that had always been the case with Yaacov's idea of 
quistianity.
In the end the fool can agree with the wise man - and the illiterate with 
the man of degrees - that it is only faith which moves mountains. Verily, a 
thing truly believed cannot be a lie. This is the basis of everything here 
in the lesser world; here in the world of ultimate illusion; here in the 
world where suffering is the honest truth. Perception is reality.
And those who fear death continue to live; and those who fear not death are 
already gone; and the snake will eat its own tail; over and over again. Of 
course sometimes the greatest faith is met with the most bitter 
disappointment, and the fullest skepticism or even outright blasphemy given 
the sweetest reward. The principles of suffering are beauty and terror; and 
for these motion is always required.
So many wish only to be taken care of, or perhaps along the same lines, to 
be reassured. Such only causes one to lose sight of the Process. Embracing 
the chaos is then the mark of acceptance.
Some say god loves only the well to do. Yet wealth is in many ways but a 
curse. Only those who know can understand this. Perhaps the most incredible 
waste of time is to sit around lamenting one's position in life, for fate is 
fickle yet not without its own peculiar sense of humor. If one looks 
carefully around, one can see that god really loves no one.
Some see the natural order in the pyramids. These selfsame blasphemers 
postulate there is a purpose in the pyramid's design; a guidepost of sorts 
for the ordering of a proper human society or civilization. Who could argue 
with any of this, for the world is like a pyramid. The little people will 
(gladly) pay. The sheep will (gladly) be fleeced. The real struggle has 
been, is now, and will always be; between parents and children.
In truth, to look too deeply into the actual goings on is to be driven mad, 
or at the very least be turned into an idiot - or literally someone who is 
anti-social. The only answer one can ultimately give the universe is a 
hearty laugh. Perhaps humanity was only first doomed when it traded the 
Chemical Christiana for the prohibitionist quist.
Yaacov's day and age marked the end of human liberty; if indeed such had 
ever existed beyond the words of a philosopher or politician. Of course that 
was perfectly normal, for there is no freedom; there are instead only 
consequences.
Nonetheless in Yaacov's day the stifling of reason was well underway. As 
part of a particular series of waves or chemical reactions, the zeitgeist of 
his era was compelling unreason; and this is always the case just before the 
next kalpa; just as the snake is once again eating its own tail. The only 
consistency thus being that everything is inconsistent.
The state would demand the lives of all it had ensnared; and it had by 
Yaacov's day and age cast its net far and wide. If a person weren't starving 
from birth they were probably instead living some kind of empty, feigned 
existence. Freedom would cost everything; slavery would cost only freedom; 
and most people - democrats all - would prefer the latter.
Some say the Luciferian societies had won out. Indeed, the minions of 
nameless forgotten and sinister tribal gods are said to still wander the 
earth to this day, carrying out their dark traditions in the wee hours of 
the night, and such plotters may even sit on PTA boards, city councils, in 
the halls of parliaments and congresses throughout the world; especially in 
the hallowed halls of academia, Hollywood, and Wall Street do the dark 
servants of unspeakable ancient powers supposedly spend their daytime hours. 
Of course quistianity - especially its catholic derivative - was often the 
biggest luciferian cult of all.
The cult of nine was different from all of those others in at least one 
respect; for if nothing else it was utterly anti-democratic; and "democracy" 
was the mantra of the Satanic cults in their dissemination of ideals to the 
overall population. It had reached the point where quistendom itself had 
become plagued by the very idea of "majority rule." They had forgotten their 
own quist and had taken up worship of the state of democracy, somehow having 
been convinced along the way that such were one in the same. Of course after 
having read their book, who could blame them; for in the final analysis the 
bible condones human slavery.
Yaacov was happy to have discarded quistianity; or at the very least willing 
to accept if he'd ultimately been mistaken. The main thing was that Yaacov 
didn't like the idea of a quist - any quist other than Wodhanaz; and with 
that there was no way he could ever in good conscience attend church again. 
At least he was left with his knowledge of the chaos spiral.
In any event how can one have quistianity without also having satanism? 
Where would one be without the other? It was best for the powers that be to 
muddy the waters and make them one in the same through the holy mantra of 
democracy. And the crowd is always wrong.
Certainly, regardless of authorship the protocols of the elders of zion had 
been enlightening. Of course things were not turning out exactly as planned 
in that screed. Regardless of that, In Yaacov's time it was as in the days 
of Shamgar, son of Anat: All high roads had been forsaken.
It was the kalpa. It was time for the YHVH to introduce yet another new 
model; time for the twilight of the gods; Ragnarok. Only egos could not 
understand any of that.
Where was IT? Was there perhaps a temple there somewhere? Was there a place 
where the minions of some ancient unspeakable gods - perhaps the very 
usurpers - had in the days of human prehystory carried out fantastic and 
callous rituals, with humans as ostensibly innocent sacrifices, and living, 
breathing, gargoyles in attendance? What might the appearance of such a 
temple structure have been? Perhaps it would be an ominous and silent 
cavern, sitting there empty amidst the towers, stadium-like in its 
appearance, filled with eerie glyphs from some extraterrestrial race dead 
since aeons long past, the unspeakable monolith thus sitting silent save for 
the low wavering moan in the background; the moan itself running as if from 
some timeless extraterrestrial machine, meant to sing the praises of some 
hideous and nameless, sadistic alien god throughout the vast reaches of 
forever.
Perhaps there would be an altar, once bloodstained by those same human 
sacrifices, themselves brought unwillingly from their simple hunting and 
gathering existence to die there - thousands of meters below the surface; 
shedding their mortal coils at the hands of nightmarish ghouls who in those 
distant, misted aeons had inhabited that once bustling, inhuman underworld.
Once again Yaacov began wandering the empty streets, speculating anew as to 
which untold relics might lie in small dank rooms behind ancient sealed 
doors. What scrolls might rest there in some unbroken jars, detailing 
prehistoric events, recorded in alien symbols, awaiting the discovery of 
some "lucky" archeologist, and what beast would sit eternally vigilant over 
such treasures, just as the Cemonculus apparently had over the opening those 
seemingly unfathomable kilometers above? Yaacov continued to wander the 
avenues.
Certain color schemes and hieroglyphs somehow forcibly averted his gaze. 
Near wretching he would wander aimlessly and as he did his strength would 
wax again. Then he with newfound determination he would stalk the 
thoroughfares. He laughed as he thought there was a noticeable absence of 
pastels under the green glowing light of the ungodly, phosphorescent canopy.
Nestled amongst what had at first appeared to have been a large percentage 
of looming towers, there were - in some of the shadowy areas back toward the 
far wall of the cave - low-lying buildings which squatted along the 
"sidewalks" in almost every conceivable shape; circular, pentagonal, square, 
hexagonal, triangular, yet all of them sharing the same unintelligible 
hieroglyphs and ornamentation as the larger structures first visible from 
the opening so far above; again all of them also asleep after unknown 
passages of time; sitting there without blinking as his human visage 
approached them along the open avenues. Somehow his revulsion at certain 
symbols and color schemes ebbed, and he was able to scan everything about 
the place without detriment. He was fairly stoked.
In one "residential area," - somehow pedestrian with its low-lying 
architectures - there was one large structure, standing out in contrast to 
the others. It wasn't simply that it was the largest structure in that 
low-lying area of the city of ancient giants. Rather, while most of those 
buildings were remarkably intact - a testament to both their isolated and 
protected locale and the quality of their original construction - this 
particular building was in a state of decay not exhibited by any of the 
other structures of the city. At some point its ceiling and roof had 
apparently collapsed.
As he approached that large structure - with what he spied as a single large 
room perhaps a hundred metres in length and fifty metres in breadth - 
underneath the rubble wreckage from the collapsed ceiling were the remains 
of stone benches. The wreckage from the roof had also spilled over onto the 
streets outside of the place. There Yaacov identified chunks of stone and 
petrified wood, showing that the "cathedral" had not necessarily "imploded" 
but instead might have "exploded," sending excess debris into the 
surrounding streets.

5) Religion is always the same old lies. Science is but new lies for old.

Yaacov wandered to the inside of the wrecked building. Once inside the 
structure, he was amazed to see a large pentagonal bas-relief on the far 
wall, behind where the "pulpit" appeared to be. It was a five-pointed star!
Suddenly he was on the surface of a planet. He was ostensibly in the desert, 
but he could not tell whether it were Sedona, AZ, or Cydonia on Mars. There 
was a city in the distance, but his attention was immediately riveted upon 
the twilight skies above him, for once again - as in so many of the dreams 
he'd had throughout his life - the alien craft were there. Such craft were 
shaped like large, four-sided diamonds. They must have been literally 
hundreds of metres from "bow to stern," with the widest point being about 
two thirds of the way toward the "stern." They were "here" at last!
Again, just as suddenly as he had been transported away, Yaacov was back 
within the "temple" in the city, and pondering the structure about him; in 
particular the pentagram on the wall.
Yaacov realized a slight change in his situation; he was free to leave the 
city. That thing; that presence which had plunged him forward those hours 
before; it was then gone. Presently he could sense that he could have left 
the place had he but his own volition to do so. By then though his curiosity 
had gotten the best of him, and it was at that moment that which drove 
Yaacov higher; but he nonetheless noted the distinction. Dream or not, he 
had regained his freedom of action.
This tower was not the largest, but it had probably been thirty metres 
across the foyer at its base, judging by his estimates when he had examined 
it. Of the interior of the tower; the extent of altitude change traversed by 
the staircase probably reached ninety metres from the city floor.
Yaacov was once again fairly stoked as he fingered his pistol in its holster 
and mounted the staircase.
As he went he looked out through the openings. In and of itself, the lattice 
work was unfamiliar, with thick patterns crisscrossing the wall aside the 
staircase. The wall appeared to have been around a metre thick; generally 
thicker at the base of the structure and becoming narrower as he climbed. 
The lattice was generally about half the thickness of the rest of the wall, 
and built in the center of the same, leaving a smooth, slanting ledge, both 
above and below it.
He panted as he tired of climbing the blocks of stone; formerly stairs for a 
lost race. The lattice work was truly amazing; where he stood, six decimeter 
lines of stones crossing in x-patterns over openings overlooking the city 
from the staircase. It gave him vague trepidations about the stability of 
the structure, but being literally ageless it had probably stood the test of 
time. Truly, that building and the structural viability of its decrepit 
design were the least of his worries. Even as he traversed the stairs, he 
checked the walls, some of the lattice work, and even the steps, and every 
glyph upon them appeared shiny and untouched; every crack between stones was 
still snug, even after untold ages. It were as if the interior of the 
building had been finished only the day before, and all of the bizarre 
hieroglyphs were easily accessible yet utterly alien to his translator's 
mind. The colored stones making up those infernal internal designs probably 
shone as brightly then as they had in the inhuman days when that megalith 
had served its presently unidentifiable original purpose.
He thought of the grisly bas-relief from the "church" and renewed his climb, 
even though the thirst was returning and there were hunger pangs deep within 
his all-too-human stomach. He stopped and took off his pack, gazing over the 
city through the openings as he drank some of the water in one of the 
bottles. He finished off the potato chips and the cookies. For the time 
being he held off on the salvia or another cigarette.
As Yaacov was re-shouldering the pack he thought he heard a boulder fall, an 
afterthought of a sound occurring off in the emerald shadows amidst some 
low-lying section on the other side of the vast spooky city. Moments later 
he heard the shuffling of feet like leather - closer still - from beyond the 
edge of a particularly tall group of spires, through the latticework across 
from him in the then seemingly never ending giant staircase. He was about 
two-thirds of the way to the top.
Again, the still silence below save for the neverending dirge was pierced 
faintly by the shuffling, clicking feet; clicking as if clawed and leathery. 
Scraping sounds mingled with his confusion as he headed up the last laps of 
the spiraling staircase track, serving its purpose as an excruciating 
exercise machine in his mad regimen, the increasingly nearer yet unseen 
sounds of shuffling, clicking, and scraping bouncing off of the cavern walls 
in a quiet alien cacophony, again with the constant of the low wavering 
hypnotic hum, further broken by his own feet slightly squeaking on the shiny 
antiquated steps, themselves as polished and smooth as glass.
The staircase wound ever tighter in its traversal of the monolith's interior 
walls. He continued up - so close to the top - lost in the alien sounds and 
made dizzy by the spiraling ascent into the dull white pulsing light which 
filtered down intermittently from its position atop the cone through the 
slanted lattice work.
Again he paused and took another look out amidst the impeccable alien towers 
and other nameless, twisted and inhuman shapes. Yaacov could detect no 
movement, though the shuffling, scraping, and clicking sounds drew seemingly 
ever nearer. Judging then from the sounds, they were at that moment coming 
from the opposite side of the building, from a place he couldn't directly 
observe.
Yaacov rushed up several more stairs and around to the building's opposite 
side, and peeked out through the lattice work, somewhat higher because of 
the extra steps he had taken. He looked down again, outside into the 
apparent source of the approaching sounds, then for the first time he crept 
to the inside edge of the staircase; the staircase with no bannister. He 
knelt on all fours and stuck his head over the side, peering down nearly 
ninety metres onto the design on the floor so far underneath. Again, from 
there he could clearly see a hexagram - mark of cain - in inhuman colors 
drawn in the floor below. The symbol had not been apparent from his ground 
view, nor had the colors been so alien and disturbing.
Then and there he was trying to speculate outside of what he might have once 
read in nameless crumbling tomes. He suddenly wondered if indeed humans 
weren't the progeny of one named Aiwwai, but that we might have other 
origins, perhaps entirely alien. The thought sent him reeling from the edge 
as he sprang upright and dashed up the final group of stairs to the chamber 
at the top of the spire.

3) Ultimately, only the YHVH holds the patents and copyrights. Any other 
concept of "intellectual property" is simply absurd.

Once within the upper chamber, he pondered how the stairs could have been 
built the way they were while the only sound remaining was that low 
oscillating hum; the clicking, scraping and shuffling having died away. What 
had been the distant, falling boulder sound? What of the scraping - since 
having died away - below?
In the chamber at the top of the tower, some ancient glyph was inscribed in 
the floor - again in some ghastly alien color - and within moments his 
newfound revulsion had him averting his gaze. The walls bore foreign glyphs, 
but in contrast to the colors of the rest of the city, these were mostly in 
various shades of grey; from black to white.
The walls of that top room were vertical where they'd been slightly sloped 
throughout the rest of the structure below him. The roof was a spire at the 
fairly steep angle of about forty-five degrees. Apparently for the purpose 
of lighting the chamber, the ancient architects had created large holes, 
like windows looking upward, not to the stars, but instead to the emerald 
cavern ceiling. Rounding the base of the roof, they were circular holes 
about seven decimeters wide with about a metre between them. From its source 
at the peak of the tower the pulsing light poured eerily into the room, no 
brighter there than it had been from several hundred meters away.
The light was nonetheless slightly somniferous but at the same time, 
invigorating; it began to lose its pleasant aspects and the narcotic effect 
of it was being edged out by strange, disruptive visions which would appear 
especially as the emanations peaked every few seconds; visions which would 
dissipate to nothing as the light would go dark. Yaacov noticed though that 
even in its darkest state, that the source of the light was emanating 
something; something more than simple darkness.
Of the visions themselves; Yaacov couldn't even identify them except to note 
that they were as disturbing as anything he had ever seen.
Yaacov - being less than two metres in height - was barely able to stand 
upright in center of the chamber. He set down his flashlight and his pack, 
then fingered the CZ-52 for a second, and checked for the grenade in his 
pants. He stretched through one of the circular openings and managed to 
reach the outer edge on the roof, gaining a finger hold by which he pulled 
the rest of his body up into a sort of balanced position hanging out of the 
hole, approximately a hundred metres above the floor of the city below.
The hair on Yaacov's spine pricked up. He was hungry and thirsty. Suddenly 
the humidity was stifling; his clothing drenched in sweat, beads of 
perspiration pouring off of his forehead and dripping over the outer shell 
of the spire roof.
Forcing back the sensations of helplessness he used his arms to pull his 
body through the hole, twisting around - thankful he had once been a gymnast 
- until he was face down at the lip of the sloped roof of the spire, the 
tops of his feet "hooked" on the lower lip of the hole he'd just shimmied 
through.
The roof was climbable yet smooth like the inside walls. He was able to 
right himself, and was then standing upon the lip at the lower edge of the 
roof, peering through one of the circular holes at his backpack and 
flashlight on the floor of the chamber below him. Luckily, the rooftop was 
encircled by rings of stone - rising approximately fifteen centimeters off 
of the roof proper - and these made for excellent foot and handholds.
He was sprawled on the roof of that haunted tower, perhaps itself left over 
from the reign of inhuman alien despots and their denizens, then extinct or 
asleep after many forgotten epochs. But what of the Cemonculus? Just how 
"extinct" had that monster been?
Panting for breath he moved up the roof, stone rung to stone rung. His CZ-52 
clanked in its holster against the stonework, as did the hand grenade 
through his pants pocket.
With another two or three metres to go to the top, he looked up once again. 
There at the pinnacle of the tower, the light was emanating from a stone, 
about the size of a grapefruit, set in gold like the pearl on a lady's ring. 
Strangely it wasn't blinding, even from that tiny distance. For all intents 
and purposes Yaacov thought it to be of the same intensity it had been when 
he had noticed it outside of the ruined hall so far below. The fixture for 
the Sphere appeared to be of solid gold, and both the setting and the Sphere 
appeared to be intact; like the rest of the structure unharmed by falling 
rocks over the otherwise silent, yawning spans perhaps just short of 
eternity.
What was it about gold that even ancient alien travelers had apparently seen 
fit to use it in their hoary mechanism, namely the setting for that apparent 
Sphere of the Tetragrammaton, which if his translations of hideous nameless 
tablets were correct, at that moment pulsated something stranger than 
eerily, there atop that prehistoric tower with his insignificant human frame 
perched atop its mammoth, monolithic dimensions?
With a burst of energy he scrambled up to the top. Then with trepidation he 
gingerly reached out and touched the stone in its alien and immaculate 
perch. Presently it appeared that lights - whose sources were inexplicable - 
were touched off between all of the tower tops in the cavern, creating the 
effect of something like a three dimensional spider web, pulsing in a 
million alien colors before settling into a diffused reddish glow, 
supplanting the emerald his eyes had grown accustomed to.
He scanned the ceiling and in the diffused, dull red light was a fantastic 
alien holograph through which he saw at once wondrous and hideous things. In 
those cascading visions there were far-off stars and planets, fantastic 
cities resembling the one he was in - yet hundreds of times larger - 
sprawling over the faces of nameless and unknown places. Creatures wandered 
over the myriad distant worlds. The visions of familiar yet alien locales 
populated by seemingly almost-human simians gave him some slight pause for 
reflection but those visions were to swiftly be replaced by something 
darker, more alien, more terrifying.
There was that music, only it was louder by many times, as if someone had 
turned the volume knob on a stereo from "one" to "ten." It was nearly 
deafening in any event. In his hand, the Sphere began to hum and vibrate at 
a high frequency as Yaacov continued to look above. He felt as though his 
ears were being pierced by the then painful aural pulse.
He continued to gaze upward. There he saw the most awesome and hideous 
vision of all. The vision was of such depravity and torture that it cannot 
even be described with words; unfortunately, unlike some of the earlier 
visions with their limited or non-existent form or substance; this one he 
understood.
With that he took his hand off of the Sphere and the vision left as the 
dirge itself died down. Yaacov shuddered to think that such diabolical 
occurrences as had been revealed by the vision could exist at all.
In any event, he was physically shaking from the phantasm he had just 
beheld. Had he seen some sort of hell? Yaacov's body was dripping sweat and 
he literally pulsed in the unfolding realization that he was perhaps in the 
midst of the greatest discovery of all time. What could the Sphere in front 
of him be except - IT? What other milieu but the city below and the 
passageways leading in or out would harbor a breathing, living, killing 
version of the ancient servant of ToZ, the Cemonculus he had earlier slain? 
What other locale would have featured those hideous remains in those 
decrepit rooms off of the passageway above; ghastly, wicked, ancient mosaics 
overlooking the only obvious entrance from the surface, and the 
blood-curdling bas-relief in the collapsed cathedral? What other place would 
contain a glowing Sphere at the top of a tower, which when touched would 
produce hideous and vast visions of alien worlds? Soaking in sweat he 
fingered the CZ-52 and even its leather holster was drenched.
The low wavering dirge continued in the background. Was he being driven mad 
by the sound? Had it caused his most recent hallucination - or the series of 
them; the dizzying variety of milieus which had passed before his 
unbelieving eyes in those frantic seconds, culminating in a scene of human 
despair beyond description? Perhaps, if he had dared touch IT again he could 
have found out; but he didn't. He stared at it, its light still at the same 
level it had been from afar, shifting black to grey to white but in the 
process never too bright for his eyes.
IT must have been the Sphere of the Tetragrammaton! What an irony it was; an 
irony to have confronted the source of his lifelong quest, only to think it 
just out of reach, not literally, but certainly figuratively. At the moment, 
in Yaacov's mind there was no way he was going to risk touching the Sphere 
again, lest the ultimately accursed visions might return and drive him into 
that dreaded state of pure insanity from which no soul would ever return.
Nonetheless, he couldn't leave. Suddenly he tore the shirt from his body and 
threw it over the Sphere, then with all of his might he wrenched at the 
Sphere through the cloth, this time without the light show, increased volume 
of the music, or the apprehension-laden apparitions.
With a fantastic groan the Sphere came loose from its resting place. As the 
thing was ripped from its alien setting, Yaacov nearly fell backwards off of 
the roof of the Satanic spire. At that moment, all hell seemed to have 
broken loose. Suddenly the cave was filled by literal lightning bolts of 
green energy, and the sounds increased again, in their crescendo nearly 
breaking his eardrums. The earth began to shake as Yaacov gathered the thing 
in his shirt, quickly clamoring back down the roof and jumping through one 
of the holes and into the floor of the chamber. Along with the maglite he 
quickly put the thing in his pack and shouldered it. Then he dashed from the 
platform and back down the staircase.

2) The earth will always thirst for blood.

Skipping steps as he fled, Yaacov fetched the pistol from its holster. Then 
came the noises again, like scraping and rocks being flung about below, on 
the stone walkways of the city. The stairs shook and through the lattice he 
could see the ongoing lightning storm, with bolts hitting and demolishing 
parts of the ancient structures.
Even above the din, the shuffling was there, as was a faint, faint clicking; 
as if one or more creatures in tap shoes were trying to tiptoe around, then 
at the base of that tower. How was he to exit? ...never mind the godforsaken 
Sphere.
He paused to catch his breath amidst the cacophony, and peered out through 
the lattice work and - there in the flesh - he spied four or five of the 
hideous demonoid creatures - Nuphnareloteph - as depicted in the bas-relief 
from the cathedral.
Indeed his worst nightmares were being realized. He had not perished in any 
number of other previously imagined ways. Miraculously, none of his previous 
activities or explorations had ever brought death his way, but at that 
moment of ultimate frenzy he had the distinct impression that his luck had 
finally run out.
Right there he almost "lost it;" he supposed he could have simply drawn his 
pistol and shot himself, but although suicide had, at certain times in his 
past seemed like a real option, he dismissed the thought as quickly as it 
had come to him.
Continuing to peer out through the opening, the apparent servants of 
Llethrotep, the Nuphnareloteph were there alive and in the flesh. The 
hunting monsters looked up at him, shaking staffs and howling in some shrill 
inhuman tongue as they ran out of sight underneath him, probably into the 
gilded entrance to the tower's foyer below. Right there he froze and 
thousands of thoughts seemed to pulse through his maddening brain, fevered 
by the physical hunger and the emotional and mental strain of the incredible 
events of the preceding several hours. The lightning storm and the aural 
assault continued, and the stairs themselves shook as if there were by then 
an ongoing earthquake. A bolt of energy hit the top of the tower within 
which he stood, and though nothing fell through the opening or the staircase 
above, chunks of rock fell just outside the walls. Through the lattice, 
small stones rained upon him as the larger pieces of debris fell outside.
As he paused, certain key passages from numerous hidden tomes and tablets 
assailed his consciousness - all fighting for precedence - as though each 
were the final piece to a fantastic jigsaw puzzle, each and every 
recollection crying to reach the forefront of his thoughts. That dizzying 
array of ancient and haunted references flooded his mind. What was he 
witnessing there? All of the evidence pointed to a dark and dismal past for 
the human race, and perhaps an equally foreboding future, were he correct in 
his speculation, and were certain conditions or elements to simultaneously 
fall into place.
He pondered the immediate situation, forgetting hoary references to fabled 
slave societies, ghastly in their wanton disregard for human "dignity;" 
ruled by alien misfits who had never seen humanity as anything more than an 
afterthought. He thought of those hideous ancient servants and how they then 
must have been climbing the staircase to meet him, and he continued down the 
staircase. At least what they represented - even in all its craven depravity 
- was better than any of the aforementioned false gods of his own age; or at 
least so he thought.
Whatever the case of the superiority of one false religion (and all 
religions save for the cult of nine are false), one tyranny, or one 
suffering over the other, Yaacov decided it was time to meet his fate and 
reached for the pistol as he ran headlong down the stairs, around and 
around, vaulting downward over those inhumanly large steps. Analysis - and 
thus its inherent paralysis - was beyond him. Yaacov's warrior spirit arose 
from within and at that very moment he was in the perfect state for a 
confrontation, consequences be damned. Internally, he began his battle cry.
As Yaacov descended headlong into battle, he spotted the leading hellspawn 
on the staircase, across from and below him.
Yaacov aimed and the CZ-52 rang out, barely audible amidst the din. This 
time he only used two shots. One hit the monster straight in the chest and 
sent it reeling around, its staff clanging wildly off and down the staircase 
behind the decrepit and then-twirling servant of extraterrestrial ancient 
masters, itself spinning out of control, first into the outer wall of the 
far side of structure from his position, then towards him back across the 
staircase sideways and off into its apparent death twenty metres or 
thereabouts below, howling like a banshee until going quiet upon the 
thudding sound of impact. Again across and below him, another hellspawn 
darted by, bounding over the alien blood where its doomed compatriot had 
stood not a moment before, up the stairs and toward Yaacov. Yaacov turned 
from facing across the way to facing down the stairs and the thing was there 
directly in front of him, its pointed tail dragging and making those 
scratching sounds on the stone, one decrepit hand outstretched and wielding 
a staff, the other free and clenching its ancient fist with alien intensity. 
The staff whizzed through the air and the monster's tail came around, making 
wooshing sounds as it sliced the thick air. The tail's triangular end grazed 
Yaacov's holster and just about cut it clean. The apparently razor-sharp 
edge of the hideous creature's tail left a small cut on his thigh just below 
the holster, also leaving a gash in his pants and the beginnings of a 
bloodstain from the wound.
Yaacov broke from the momentary trance of witnessing the attack and let out 
six more shots using a fast-firing technique. The creature stumbled backward 
down the steps, even as Yaacov was making spaghetti of its chest in that 
seemingly eternal, single second of his blazing, pistol firepower. Indeed, 
six thirty-caliber magnum rounds had been efficient in destroying that day 
what those inhuman gods had apparently wrought, those distant ages before; 
that member of a cabal of fiends spawned in some distant, pre-human age, 
apparently having wandered that vast cave over the gaping chasms of time, 
content in that dismal emerald world, incredibly living without food because 
of some extraterrestrial design but in any event being glad at the chance 
for a kill, even after hundreds or perhaps thousands of years since having 
last eaten of unfortunate human carcass; or perhaps just then awakening from 
an age-old sleep which was rudely interrupted in some way by Yaacov's own 
machinations; or having stepped through a dimensional door just moments 
prior, out of some parallel universe.
In any event it made no difference in the fight. The smell of blood in any 
event was of "it," for Yaacov would have hesitated to have called anything 
so alien "he" or "she," and Yaacov was at that moment an avenger, perhaps 
dealing a blow to the seeming invaders, even if it were presently he who 
were trespassing upon their territory and not the other way around; he who 
were ranging about that hideous cavern and somehow symbolically acting on 
behalf of an unknowing, apathetic human race but nonetheless thankful even 
in that desperate moment that he was the one doing the killing and not the 
one being killed.
The bloody stinking brute from an ancient craven world crashed backward down 
the stairs, ending lifelessly about five metres below as its staff continued 
tumbling along the staircase, at last falling over the ledge and into the 
foyer below. The stairs before Yaacov were smeared in alien blood.
The wound on his thigh was just a nick, but the holster barely hung there 
after the clean cut of the Nuphnareloteph's tail. He needed to reload 
quickly as, at any moment then the others would be appearing from below. 
Yaacov shook as he fumbled with the clip, and not all of the shaking was due 
to the tremors rocking the city. He was down to sixteen shots; eight in his 
pistol and one remaining clip in his pocket. He ripped the then useless 
holster off of his hip and started back down the staircase. With the gun 
loaded he ratcheted the slide and was ready, despite the enveloping madness, 
for whatever might come next. His ears were ringing; not so much then from 
the shots, but from the sounds of the ongoing storm and the raised volume of 
that maddening music.
Having reloaded Yaacov whirled around to the nearby sound of those tails and 
claws scraping and clicking on the rock of the staircase. He then couldn't 
fathom why the steps of the monsters were so clearly heard amidst the din, 
but he had little time for contemplation.
Suddenly there were three of them below on the staircase before him. As 
quickly as he could, he retreated up the grand steps and let out four rounds 
into the lead monster, then four more rounds into the next one, again using 
the fast-fire technique. He had emptied the clip in just over a second, 
including the short pause he had taken to whip the pistol from one target to 
the other. The two leaders staggered but continued forth with the third 
monster gnashing about trying to get at him through its wounded and hobbled 
inhuman siblings, its staff poking with futility between the two who'd been 
mortally wounded that moment before.
Yaacov - his legs weakening beneath him - had just enough time to turn and 
bolt back up the stairs, as he heard claws swiping at the space fractions of 
an inch from his ear.
The gargoyles-come-to-life were slowed by the two dying ones in front. Those 
two were without staves, and were simply swiping their claws and their razor 
tails at him as they stumbled forth, blood gushing from their wounds, 
painting the stairs in streaks of that portentous alien color as the 
unwounded one behind them exhorted them all in some hideous heterogeneous 
tongue. Against the sounds of tails scraping stone, Yaacov ran as fast as he 
could, the pathetic cries of the wounded hellspawn, and fanatic, warlike 
yells of the unwounded one in the back following him up the staircase.
Presently he turned as the cries of the dying ebbed away and he then heard 
only the remaining one in pursuit, its war yell mixing with the sounds of 
the storm and the dirge outside.
Yaacov ejected the empty clip from the practically antique firearm, then 
fetched the last magazine from his pocket and fed it into the then hot 
pistol. Yaacov completely emptied the last remaining clip into its gnashing 
form, spraying eight penetrating thirty-caliber magnum cartridges into the 
hellspawn's hide. Again, alien leather was no match for hot pistol lead.
Just as had happened to the others, the war cry turned into an agonized 
yell. Again alien blood was everywhere and, due to his close proximity to 
the monster, drops of it splattered over Yaacov. The monster stood up stiff 
and silent, and then its carcass fell like the others, over the side of the 
spiral staircase and onto the floor below.
Yaacov was winded and on the verge of collapse, but nonetheless he knew he 
must flee. Reaching for his last reserves of strength, Yaacov ran down the 
stairs, over the dead bodies in the foyer and out onto the ancient streets.
There were new sounds; sounds beyond the raging storm, and Yaacov 
instinctively headed back toward the foot of the staircase leading back up 
to the tunnel. The lightning bolts were still in effect, and shards of rock 
and boulders fell, almost like rain. The ground itself continued in its 
tremors. Suddenly there was silence and an absence of motion. The music had 
stopped. The ground was firm. The lightning bolts and their attendant rain 
of rocks; all of it was suddenly gone.

1) Better to die in the infantry than to live a life of adultery.

On his way to the stairs leading out of the lost city, he came across the 
fountain where he had refreshed himself seemingly ages before. This time 
though there were a swarm of Cemonculii emerging from the pool.
Getting his bearings once again, Yaacov looked above, scanning the walls of 
the cave to see the opening and the slope of the staircase winding upward 
around the outer edge. By looking again at the slope of the stairs as they 
disappeared behind a spectacular series of cones, he extrapolated mentally 
to where he thought the path of the staircase would meet the floor of the 
cave and ran off in that general direction, dashing in and out of narrow 
quiet lanes, perhaps once crowded and bustling with alien life. He ran, with 
the gurgling, amphibian voices in pursuit, their wet legs pattering on the 
old stone thoroughfares.
It were as if they'd been asleep for a very long time; as if they were 
groggy, and even though each of them was well over two metres in height, 
Yaacov was able to gain separation from them as the chase continued through 
bygone thoroughfares. At the same time Yaacov was getting quite dizzy and 
nausea was setting in; the visions of everything he had seen to that point 
combining to create multiple dismal images in his head, threatening at any 
moment to send him reeling off into real insanity. Yaacov could not fathom 
what might happen to him should he go utterly mad. He was in no mood to find 
out what might transpire should he lapse into such insanity, stop his 
running, and fall to the ground in a complete mental, emotional, and 
physical breakdown. Something as well was then pulling him out of the place; 
the force extracting him being equal to the force which had originally 
coerced him there to begin with.
He reached the foot of the stairs; stairs which would hopefully carry him 
back up to the surface above; above where there might be simple things, and 
simple folk blissfully ignorant of that teeming underworld. He needed to 
find some way of keeping the two worlds separate; the dark inhuman world of 
that cave and the somewhat hopeful albeit ignorant world of humanity 
ostensibly above.
Again though what if all that were above him were the desolation of the 
Martian Cydonia, and not the charming desert of the American Southwest? 
There wasn't a single moment to ponder that in any event.
Where the steps on the cave's outer wall were decrepit and crumbling he took 
less caution on the flight up than he had on the way down. He almost dared 
not look behind him but he had to see where those dripping minions were. 
They were at the base of the stairs, and he thirty metres or so above them, 
perhaps ahead of them on the staircase by sixty metres.
Yaacov was lost in memories brought by the delirium of the situation. His 
mind flitted between blasphemous and incomplete social theories to other 
disjointed topics, all in the blink of an eye as he spent more and more 
attention simply navigating the large stairs leading to his hoped-for 
escape. At one of the wider breaks in the staircase, he jumped across the 
gap and hit his shin on the opposite side. He cursed and continued up the 
steep stairs, smarting from not only that bruising, but from the constant 
wear on his legs over the preceding hours.
Those hoary alien horrors - the Cemonculii - were good climbers, and they 
were slithering up the staircase, pattering along with gummy feet below him, 
gaining on Yaacov every time paused for a second. Again he turned and looked 
back after crossing a particularly unstable area of the staircase. The 
abominations continued their climb behind him.
Yaacov pulled the pin on the grenade and threw - or rather rolled - it down 
after holding it for a couple of seconds. He immediately dove to the 
staircase. His lying flat on the angled staircase kept him out of the blast 
of the grenade, but his eardrums were seemingly completely shot by then, as 
if he had been next to the P.A. system at a rock concert back in the 
seventies.
As a result of the explosion, several of the slithering minions fell from 
the staircase and to the valley floor. Still others - in a seemingly stunned 
state - stopped their pursuit of Yaacov.
Those survivors glared at him with blank eyes and began grunting in some 
ancient forbidden language, yet for whatever reason they broke off their 
pursuit. Yaacov turned and kept climbing; despite the hunger, the aching 
limbs, the throbbing, bleeding shin, the returning thirst, and the low 
wailing which had returned in the background, and the howling and grunting 
of the reptilian creatures behind him. It were as if, there on the staircase 
the creatures were bound by some invisible line and could not cross it. 
Instead they began picking up rocks and throwing them at him. He was lucky 
the rocks failed to find him as he climbed up and away. A couple landed 
nearby, but they bounced harmlessly off of the stone without hitting him.
Yaacov was presently on that patio overlooking the city, and even though - 
after he had escaped the Cemonculii - he had gained some slight calm on the 
way up the staircase; as he reached the patio that terrible oppression - 
seemingly emanating out of the walls within that entrance - came over him 
again.
He reached into the pack and procured the maglite. He decided to leave it 
off for the moment as he was determined to get as much use as possible out 
of the receding emerald light from behind him as he entered that chilling 
passageway.
Yaacov resisted the inexplicable energy of the mosaics. He hurried along the 
cavernous corridor until once again he was climbing through the unfinished 
tunnel which connected to the passageway above. Again as before - but now in 
the opposite direction - he was thrust upward and away from the city of 
mystery. The light from the city having finally died away, Yaacov used his 
maglite as he managed to navigate around the boulders and loose, smaller 
stones. Once again avalanche was at the forefront of his thoughts. The dirge 
from the city was slowly dying away. Yaacov was nearly exhausted as he 
paused and from his pack drank the last water out of the bottles. He didn't 
dare yet touch the Sphere wrapped inside of his shirt. Even in the heat of 
the tunnel a cold sweat wracked his body. Exposure was surely setting in; 
exposure perhaps to alien and inhuman elements of antiquity but exposure 
nonetheless.
Replacing the pack about his shoulders, Yaacov gingerly made his way up the 
remainder of the unfinished section of the passage. Just as he'd reached the 
finished section and stepped a few metres across its stone floor, the earth 
again shook. For those seemingly unending seconds, Yaacov held his ground, 
and when it was over he looked behind him to see that the entire opening had 
collapsed into rubble, leaving at least that particular entrance to the city 
impassable.
At least he could continue forward, and Yaacov did just that, again being 
propelled by something unseen, as if indeed he were once again within at 
least a semi-lucid dream. Upward and onward he trudged; vaulting past the 
side openings into the chambers, until after uncounted hours he finally saw 
a sliver of light up ahead.
Finally reaching what he'd hoped to be the exit to his dream turned 
nightmare, Yaacov bolted out into the open ground. He was in Cydonia all 
right; it was however Cydonia, Mars. The face winked at him from across the 
plane, and the planet sat still save for the whirlwinds which animated the 
dust there and about.

Epilogue: The whole of the universe is like a snake is eating its tail.

There outside the opening to the then - for all intents and purposes - 
impenetrable tunnel Yaacov sat on a stone bench. For a moment he caught his 
breath and then he turned and noticed something behind him; a crystal clear 
pool of water. Not asking himself about the various vegetation which marked 
the otherwise barren land; not asking himself why the atmosphere was 
breathable, Yaacov went to the water and drank.
As if, by partaking of the water he had been completely restored to sound 
mind and body, only then did Yaacov sit himself back upon the bench and 
un-shoulder his pack. As he went to remove the Sphere from within its cloth, 
Yaacov noticed a small booklet, black in color and marked with its ribbon, 
much the same as a Sunday school bible from his childhood. He opened to the 
marked page, and surprisingly, although the text was in some ancient 
language of hieroglyphs, Yaacov understood the script.
Undaunted by the strange turn of events, Yaacov began reading to himself. 
The script fairly read, "shatter the sphere to release abbadon." Perhaps 
indeed by then Yaacov was really the star who had fallen to earth; and he 
had at last found the key to the bottomless pit; the Sphere; IT.
Without further ado Yaacov stood and slammed the Sphere down upon the bench. 
Even in its cloth wrapping IT shattered into innumerable tiny shards.
Then there was pure chaos; complete motion. Like everyone and everything 
else, Yaacov himself was shattered into a trillion shimmering pieces.
Then there was silence; motionlessness; unconsciousness as light and dark 
were separated.
The snake had once again swallowed its own tail; and then the dance would 
begin anew; and once again everything was a possibility.
Ultimately though, nothing had changed and everything had stayed the same.