JT O'Neal

Genius Archipelago

A Novel by JT O’Neal

Chapter One

Adrift

                        To whoever sent this bird,

                        I am adrift. I was taken unawares by my presence here; yet, I

                        know not from where I came. I may have been many days on this

                        garnet-colored sea, but all sense of time passed is lost to me.

                        Please help me.

                        Urgently,

                        ---

            The man on the raft stumbled upon a chasm in his mind. Where his knowledge of self should be, there loomed abyssal blankness. His quill nib hovered over the tiny slip of parchment, and it performed miniature aerial loops that resulted from the momentum of his previous writing and the anticipation of what had yet to be written. A name. His name. But when he searched his mind for the information, the castaway man found nothing. In place of a name, he signed ‘X’—as that was the most appropriate symbol for himself that he could construe. X: the unknown.

            X blew on the impossibly small piece of parchment to dry the ink; then he rolled the note tightly and slipped it into the small, metallic tube that had been gently tied just above the bird’s talon. Had it not been for the bird, he might have slept until his body consumed itself from lack of water and sustenance. But gentle pecking had awoken him. At first, he thought he was carrion for the thing as a lingering dream of his innards turned out for a meal faded. He’d hurled his arms about himself spasmodically, and the furious action caused a flurry of wing flaps as the bird tried to retreat from the onslaught. Once that initial rush of fear subsided, X sat up on the small cot and discovered his unlikely predicament.

            The raft of lashed planks was slightly more than ten paces in width and breadth. He’d walked it gingerly once or twice since his waking. In addition to the cot, the raft carried two more pieces of furniture—a small writing desk and a chair. Why these incongruous objects should be bobbing out here on the open ocean with him he could not fathom. He surveyed the horizon in all directions, but X saw no sign of land. His neck prickled with dark expectation. Yet, however he’d come to be at this place, lost and ignorant, fortune seemed to have bestowed upon him a way to make a record of it. He laughed until tears filled his eyes. The absolute absurdity of it! A desk and chair and cot on a sea of nowhere. He laughed until the sound of it discomfited him.

            Upon a closer examination of the desk, he found only a single bottle of ink. No pen. No paper. That hysterical laugh threatened to consume him again. His chest heaved rapidly several times, but X repressed the sound. He feared letting it out again. Instead, he sat in the chair and laid his head on the desk, wetting it with tears until a soft fluttering disturbed his mourning.

            When he looked up he saw the bird, which had otherwise been circling overhead. “Hello, friend. Come to peck my eyes?”

            To his statement the bird seemed to respond by lowering its head in a tilted fashion that made the creature look somehow beatific. It extended its talon in the manner of a courtly bow, and it was then that X noticed the ornate metallic cylinder. The bird seemed to wait patiently for this castaway to come to a realization, which after a few long moments he did. X uncapped the end of the tube and withdrew the tiny slip of parchment it contained. Expecting to find a message, he unrolled it hastily. It came to him, when he saw nothing written, that it was he who was expected to write.

            But I have no pen.

            The bird had obviously considered this. It turned its beak to itself and plucked out one of its longer wing-feathers. Clutching the feather in its talon, it then whittled the tip with its beak so that the hollow of the plume was exposed and the point sharp. With a jerk it tossed the newly fashion quill onto the desk. A sudden gust of sea breeze threatened to steal the quill, but X snatched it out of the air in a surprisingly quick—almost instinctual—reaction. He thought hurriedly about what to write for fear that the bird might decide at any moment to flea.

            With message attached, the bird took abruptly to the sky and, with supernatural speed, disappeared over the horizon.

            Alone, X had only his thoughts for company. He took a moment to ponder himself. How is it that I know nothing of myself? I know ocean and bird. I know cot and raft and writing desk. I know the absurdity of their presence here. I know things that I cannot see, like land and tree, rock and sand. I know man and woman. I know child. I know people, yet I can recall no faces save one. The old man. His name... I never learned his name. I remember he seemed kind but profoundly sad. I know his hands often shook. I never learned his name. That’s the same feeling I have of myself. I never learned my own name. But how can this be? Yet, I know I didn’t forget my name, because I never knew it. And I know words and how to read them and write them. And I know the number of paces that count the width and breadth of this miserable raft are ten. Still, I am a fog of nothing. Emptiness. Full of everything but myself.

            X knew the setting sun meant that darkness would soon be upon him. As the great amber fire crawled slowly toward the edge of the sea, the water grew unnaturally still. Two suns burned into his eyes, the one above and its mirror twin, the illusion. The murky crimson of the water no longer captured the fire in its depths to sparkle like a precious gem. It instead became black and impenetrable. An obsidian mirror.

            For the first time, X saw himself. Kneeling, he leaned over the edge of the raft and stared down at the dark glass of the ocean. What he’d hoped would fill the chasm of self only deepened it further. At that moment, it was as though the sun had entered his head and burned his mind with all its fiery vengeance. Agony clawed behind his brow. Anger pierced his thoughts with its molten needles. Pity preyed on senses, and sorrow keened for compassion’s betrothal. What X gazed upon in that moment he did not understand—in fact could not, at least not at that moment. Time stuttered and blasted him apart. Flung him over the whole of eternity. Stars birthed at his fingertips, perished at his toes. The darkness that inhabited the interstitial vacuum seeped into him, and he balanced on its perilous fulcrum.

            The anguish diminished when he turned from his reflection and withdrew to the raft. Singularity anointed him with its balm. And he felt infinitesimal.

            The experience so taxed him that he could not lift himself to stand. He lay on his side with his knees at his chest. There he slept as the blaze of orange and pink across the sky ushered in the stars.

            Renewed consciousness chafed like coral.

            X woke to the sight of the bird sleeping next to him on the raft. Its head was tucked delicately beneath its wing and it cooed in the smallest voice X could imagine. It must have sensed his stirring, because it looked up at him. Proffering its encumbered talon once again, it hadn’t long to wait for X to retrieve the reply carried in the delicate cylinder. At first he thought the straining light of the moon’s sliver deformed the text. It looked like no writing he had seen before. Its curves and seraphs and ticks were alien, ancient. Yet, somehow, X knew the sounds to make. What the sounds meant, he could not translate. These words seemed to be above the mutterings of commonplace speech. Perhaps there was no normal tongue that could convey their true meanings. The concepts that lay behind the sounds were a mystery, but X—his voice shaking—spoke them aloud.

            The bird flapped with a leap, taking to the chalky dark between sea and stars. It spiraled ever upward until X could no longer see it. Then time took a deep breath. The world grew calm, almost static. X feared another attack of psychic pain was about to overcome him, but his worries were displaced by the larger threat of catastrophe. The glassy brine trembled. Its polished surface shattered into an interlaced pattern of white-capped ripples. The raft wobbled upon them with a shudder, as if a cold chill had run up its spine. X heard a thunk as the ink bottle overturned, its contents no doubt ruining the wooden desk. He imagined the other furniture would fare this turbulence. Whoever had made this unlikely craft had seen fit to lash the desk, chair, and cot to the planks. They did indeed hold even as the waters grew rougher.

            The chop enraged and heaved the raft upwards. X was thrown into the air above the raft, and there he hovered, his limbs desperately grasping for the planks, which then rose up to meet him. He barely had time to get a handhold on the cot leg as he was pitched vertically with the vessel on an immense wall of water. The crash of water stole the breath from him. He choked and coughed. Was he to die now? How short a life—to awake new to the world knowing it well, but never having a chance to know himself. What being of cruelty could have designed such a scenario? Some god? Some man? X felt nothing about either species. Although he was aware of them all, he neither believed nor disbelieved in any of the cosmologies humans had pondered throughout time. Humans may or may not have created those stories to cope with unanswerable questions. What was the why? In times of peril, what or who was the cause?

            Someone—some thing—to blame. That’s what the castaway wanted at that moment. Someone to blame for his birth into this absurd existence.

            When he came down the opposite side of the mammoth wave, he saw that the ocean had been displaced by two massive stone pillars that slowly rose from beneath the surface. As they ascended, great and frothy rings radiated from the origin of their penetration. Hundreds of feet across, and perhaps thousands high, these twins towered over him and made him feel insignificant. The craft rushed toward them, pulled in opposition to the tidal forces they generated. X saw carvings on the twin monoliths. The symbols in bas relief were similar to those written on the slip of parchment he clutched, and he concluded they were of the same strange language. He realized his words had called forth these stone giants by some unseen force. What ancient (for they seemed just that) technology had constructed such miracles? What culture had such knowledge? He searched his mind, but found no answer. Now added to the mystery of himself was the existence of the makers of these pillars, and if they had indeed responded to the words he had spoken, then perhaps their creators still existed.

            Are they the culprits behind all of this? Can they give me answers? Can they tell me who I am?

            What happened next barely registered in X’s mind, for it was such a violent thrust of action, he had little to do but cling to the cot leg in a desperate attempt to preserve his confused life. The raft passed between the pillars like a shot. It plummeted over the edge of the cascading waters into the pit of a swirling vortex. The whirlpool was so large it seemed boundless. It was as if some marine god had pulled the drain plug at the bottom of the sea, and all of it contents were gushing through to some hidden realm. Or perhaps some great chamber had been constructed at the ocean floor that allowed the water to drain in such a way. But for what purpose? The raft began to make what could have been an endless circuit around the funnel; instead, it was suddenly seized and held in place by an invisible anchor. Innumerous gallons of the briny red beat upon the castaway. Yet still he clung to the raft and clamped his eyes shut against the torrent.

            This will end. It cannot go on forever.

            When finally the dawning sun beamed its first peek above the edge of murky night, the violence subsided. In the near distance, a great wall of ocean loomed high above him in all directions. Its perpendicular waves twinkled pink in the morning light. The world was calm, and a gentle breeze caressed X’s wet skin. Below him there was also sea. The regular horizontal plane of the ocean turned a sharp ninety degrees to flow up the water wall. This bizarre sight held him transfixed. He imagined that he was seeing something few had ever seen. There was no record of such an occurrence in his reservoir of memories. His tongue grew dry as it lay speechless in his gaping mouth. Then, as if caught in the act of something unnatural, the surrounding barricade of garnet water silently collapsed upon itself in shame, and the singular, logical horizon returned.

            X stood on tremulous legs.  The raft, at last still, had lodged high in a tree. X swayed and caught himself on the desk. The motion of waves continue to move within him for a short time, and a slight queasiness came with their passing.

            From his lofty perch, he could easily survey generous beach below. So captivated by the water wall, he had not notice the movement at the shore. On the sand a light speck leaned upon a tall thin pole and stood motionless at the shoreline. X squinted the speck into focus. It was a man.

            Someone to answer his questions. Someone to tell him where he was.

            X immediately began to descend the tree in which the raft perched. He had wanted to shout to the man, but he was afraid that his unseen voice might frighten whoever it was. He thought it better to approach on foot and with a pleasant disposition. X jumped the last few feet to the ground and turned towards the shore to see only thin shaft standing where it had been. The man no longer leaned upon it. X looked franticly about. Surely he could not have gone far in those few seconds. Up and down the beach X saw nothing, but then he turned his gaze to the ocean just in time to see the man’s head disappear beneath the tide. Even at such a distance, X felt the aura of sadness that emanated from the man. A withering loneliness washed over him, and he was seized by a deep concern for the man’s wellbeing. When sad man’s head did not reappear, a sense of dread darkened X’s imagination. His lips could not help but whisper the news: “He means to drown himself.”

JT O’Neal

Dr. White

November 20, 2006

Draft Exchange Revision Account

The idea for this book, oddly enough, came to me while I was playing around with a software program that generates landscapes. I created a grouping of islands and instantly began to wonder about the people who lived there. I decided it was special place, created by an ancient and technologically advanced culture of humans whose belief structures were based upon science. Yet their science can only answer the question: How? They cannot fathom the Why.

The protagonist of the story, called X because he has never been given a name, is brought to this society by technology so advanced that it seems supernatural. He seeks answers about himself, but finds a divided nation in the throws of a civil war. His only friend is the man whose life he saves when he first arrives in the archipelago—a soldier who is no longer willing to kill for the sake of abstract ideals.

A note on the title Genius Archipelago: “Genius” is not only meant in its common usage referring to the intelligence of the creators of this world, but also in its sense of the spirit of a place, which the character X eventually comes to represent. That is the spirit of human discovery.

My initial responses to this first chapter were fantastic. I wanted to capture the reader with the first chapter, and it seems that my readers were enticed as I had hoped. I want to create an exciting adventure story and at the same time elevate the work to a literary level. I know I have my work cut out for me.

 Here are some of the comments I received:

            Joe:

            I found myself wanting to know more about X, the man on the beach and the old man    that X mentions.  The imagery you are providing is very vivid and accurate.  For          example, “X was thrown into the air above the raft, and there he hovered, his limbs        desperately grasping for the planks, which then rose up to meet him.” is an accurate             description of two objects flying off into the same direction—given the same amount of force, one object would literally stop and “hover” until the other has time to catch up. I    also want to point out the way you are moving flawlessly between describing the scene as            a narrator to allowing the character to describe his feelings and answer the narrator’s             questions from a first person perspective. So far, all I can say is that I am enjoying it.  I do not believe it would be fair to ask for further definition of the character given that you    already mentioned that it is the beginning of a longer piece.  As such, it accomplishes the     job of drawing the reader in to this mysterious figure and wanting to know more (as I             mentioned, it did with me).  Let me know if you need more feedback.  Thanks for letting            me read your work, I enjoyed it and hope I can read the rest soon.

Keely suggested this: that I end the chapter with “Yet still he clung to the raft and clamped his eyes shut against the torrent.”

            I would consider ending the chapter here – totally a suggestion.  Here is my thought       process behind it:  It is an excellent cliff hanger making me want to read more.  Once I      actually read all the way to the end I could have set the book down.  I am a firm believer           if you want to get a person hooked on a book then you have to have cliff hangers that       grab the reader to make them keep reading.  If you wanted to lengthen the beginning give           me more description on these stone creatures.  Expand more on the things in the raft –           why does X think these things are on there, etc.  But you really don’t need to expand I          like it the way it is.  I would just end my chapter here and start number 2.  I know that is a             lot to write for your submission or not at all.  Just a suggestion!!!!

I considered it briefly, but decided that where I ended it is actually a better cliff hanger. I asked Joe about it, and he agreed:

            I thought that the flow of the story works quite well.  The manner in which you wrote the            scene places the reader in the middle of vivid action.  I got the impression that X hanging             on for dear life does not take very long (I guess in real time, no more than 30 minutes—    of course that would be my interpretation because I would not expect a tired, hungry     exhausted man to be able to “hold on” for a great amount of time).  Even though, I can   appreciate a cliffhanger closing to a chapter, I personally believe it is more of a          cliffhanger by ending the chapter the way you did: with X saying “He means to drown        himself”.  Those words made me want to accompany X down to the beach and try to find   this “person” that could possibly be drowning.  It also made me want to learn more about          X in general.  Given the fact that he does not who he is, but yet he still knows a lot, I’m         interested to know why he believes that the “person” is trying to drown himself—is he            going to do something or is he going to sit and just observe?  Again, those are questions          that I, as a reader, want to answer and so therefore, I want to continue reading more and           continue enveloping myself in this mysterious world you are creating.  Hope I gave you    something that actually helped,

He did! I agree with him completely, which is why I ended it where I did. I did, however, add a bit to the closing paragraph to help the reader understand why X thinks the man means to drown himself. Also, I wanted to introduce one of X’s abilities—a sort of telepathic empathy.

Heidi also had nice things to say, but thought the language might be too much for the average reader:

            Heidi:

            PAGE \# "'Page: '#'
'"  This entire story is simply a work of art. It’s almost poetical in its philosophical   approach. Where I can follow it though, you have to remember not everyone is a            literature buff like ourselves. I simply adore your vocabulary usage. It’s not easy to write     so much with little if any dialogue. The description is vivid and paints the picture in the    mind perfectly. I also like the internalization that reads into X’s mind. Granted, there are         so many questions it leaves me with. Such as, why is the water red? And is it X that is           speaking in the last line? There are many more, those are just the most prominent in my    mind at the moment.

            Where this is all so beautifully orchestrated, I just worry that it’s a little too much. Too    much detail and literary elevation can really intimidate a reader. By all means I would     keep it as is for my own intellectual enjoyment, but for those unlike myself, a simpler             view at times may be logical.

I understand where she is coming from, but I write the way I write. Some things will be simply put, but mostly (as an artist) I am interested in creating works of art, which are seldom “easy.”

About dialogue: There will be much more in upcoming chapters. It is limited in this introductory chapter simply because X has no one to talk to, other than the bird that, although of seemingly heightened intelligence, cannot answer back. There will be NO TALKING ANIMALS in this book. Although there may or may not be non-human sentient beings who can speak, I wouldn’t refer to them as animals.

On the question of why is the water red: well, that may never be answered. I might be obstinately difficult about not choosing to explain it. I leave it up to the reader to decide.

Charity had a few remarks that helped me to clarify a few things.

            Charity:

            “With a jerk it tossed the newly fashion quill onto the desk.

                        With message attached, the bird disappeared over the horizon.”

            Could you lead us into this a little more? It seems that after the bird created a quill and   gave it to X, a note was written and the bird took off. Can you give us one sentence above         this one to confirm that?

Keely also had questions about how a bird could do this, so I added a little more description of the action and bridged it with the writing of the note. I think that smoothed out the transition.

Charity:
            “By some unseen force, his words had called forth these stone giants.”

            Is X thinking this or is this the narrator’s statement? I think that if X is thinking it, it may sound more convincing as a question he ponders rather than an assertion. But you know       best what will work here.

I changed the sentence to:

            “He realized his words had called forth these stone giants by some unseen force.”

Charity:

            JT, I thought this story was extremely imaginative and full of intrigue. I enjoyed the         suspense, and I’m really wondering who the man is and what the huge pillars have to do with X’s situation in the ocean. It was so difficult to find anything except positive to say for this piece. Very nice work. I can’t think of anything else to help tighten it up.

All in all, the suggestion by my classmates were extremely helpful, and they have given me the incentive I need to continue working on the book.