[The following is the forty-fifth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, here is the thirty-second, here is the thirty-third, here is the thirty-fourth, here is the thirty-fifth, here is the thirty-sixth, here is the thirty-seventh, here is the thirty-eighth, here is the thirty-ninth, here is the fortieth, here is the forty-first, here is the forty-second, here is the forty-third, and here is the forty-fourth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]
Translator’s Introduction
This chapter, too, seems eerily prophetic. It seems to predict not only the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon (or are our researchers letting their imaginations run wild here?), but also the end of the Commons due to enclosure, forcing English farmers to enter cities to work in factories. We’ll let you decide if our researchers’ speculations are correct.
Chapter Two
The next crest we saw in our visions would be a short one–so short as almost to seem non-existent. Indeed, this crest seemed almost to overlap with a trough, and to overlap almost fully.
Those who wore the bracelets came to hate them, suspecting rightly that it was the bracelets that were the creators of their woe. So when the time came that the bracelets would no longer stick to their skin, and the wearers were to feel compelled to pass them on to be worn by the next generation, the wearers, having finally become able to remove the bracelets from their wrists, resisted giving them to their sons and daughters. They felt a terrible headache from their resistance, but they prevailed all the same, not knowing the Crims or their divine power in the bracelets.
This unwitting disobedience to the Crims–the people’s not knowing that it was to be the Crims who decided when the wearing of the bracelets would end, and not the people to decide–would result in good and ill fortune at nearly the same time. True, the ill fortune of servitude to the lords of the land would end, the curse of wearing the bracelets, but a new ill fortune would creep up on the unsuspecting people, their punishment for rejecting and discarding the bracelets before the time the Crims deemed a fit one.
The people with naked wrists rejoiced at the cutting off of the heads of their oppressive kings and queens. They rejoiced no longer to have to work on land owned by lords who took most of the food they produced. They were delighted that a new state, with men to represent the needs of the common people, was born…almost still-born, they would soon learn.
Indeed, new evils were soon coming to replace the old ones–new evils that followed like toes of boots stepping on the heels of the feet of the old ones.
A great new leader, once thought to be a liberator of the people, would soon call himself “emperor,” and would conquer many nations–though he would be defeated soon enough.
More significantly, while those farmers who now lived off the land in relative peace, without lords to have to give most of their food to, were happy in this state for a time, new masters would come. These would buy off the land and force the farmers off of it, making them move to the cities to find work in filthy, smoky buildings, castles that blew fumes into the skies.
The people would work for a pittance, barely enough to live on, and thus would begin a new trough, the worst of them all.
Infinite Ocean 