The year was 1946, the Alaska Canada Highway had just opened to civilian traffic. Joe and Pete Balch had been dreamed of claiming homesteads in the Alaska Territory since they were teens living on their grandfathers homestead in Whapeton North Dakota. Freshly released from the military after the war had ended they decided it was time to head north. This is the story of how they got there.

I suppose I could have put this story first in the lineup, being that it is the origin story for all the others, but alas…I didn’t. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

*the picture is the actual Jeep in the story, faithfully restored by its new owners and still in Salcha!

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Every kid needs someone to watch over them. Some rich kids get nannies like Mary Poppins, or some exotic foreign Au Pair.

Me?

I had Rosy … a great big slobbery Saint Bernard.

This is episode 5 of 6 of the Our Man In Alaska series which I recorded way back in 2008 with Nigel Killick of the PeopleTalk podcast. This one is probably mostly true, I will admit, being cobbled together from things my mom told me and the potentially erratic memories of three year me.

Episode 1
Living in a Postcard, at 65 Below

Episode 2
Moving my Family to the Wilderness.

Episode 3
Mosquitoes.

Episode 4
Grocery Hunting in the Modern Age.

Episode 5
The Nanny.

Episode 6
Brothers on the Frontier.

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Let me just say there are only a handful of things I truly HATE amongst humans, and people who hurt children are #1 on that list…as you will hear in this story.

Enjoy.

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Hunting is more than just a tradition or past time in Alaska, its part of surviving. But sometimes wilderness survival and technology are very much at odds with one another. This is a true story that actually happened to an actual friend of mine. It just goes to show you that when it rains…well when it rains you get wet and maybe that has nothing to do with this story, but still there is a metaphor somewhere for what happened to my buddy in this store.

This is episode 4 of 6 of the Our Man In Alaska series I recorded way back in 2008 with Nigel Killick of the PeopleTalk podcast.

Episode 1
Living in a Postcard, at 65 Below

Episode 2
Moving my Family to the Wilderness.

Episode 3
Mosquitoes.

Episode 4
Grocery Hunting in the Modern Age.

Episode 5
The Nanny.

Episode 6
Brothers on the Frontier.

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Episode 3

Mosquitoes.

There is a joke in Alaska that the state bird is actually the mosquito. The funniest part of the joke is that we’re not joking when we say that.

Part 3 of the 2008 series I recorded for Nigel Killick’s PeopleTalk podcast.

Some people’s flesh is indeed sweeter than others, and my poor wife discovered she was amongst the most divinely sweet of humanity…at least as far as the mosquitoes tastes were concerned.

But revenge can be very sweet indeed.

Episode 1
Living in a Postcard, at 65 Below

Episode 2
Moving my Family to the Wilderness.

Episode 3
Mosquitoes.

Episode 4
Grocery Hunting in the Modern Age.

Episode 5
The Nanny.

Episode 6
Brothers on the Frontier.

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The second of the six episode series I recorded for Nigel Killick’s PeopleTalk podcast back in 2008. My wife, a city girl from Seoul South Korea, willingly (mostly) followed me when we returned to Alaska after being away for 8 years. She was a big city girl from Seoul South Korea and its environs, and while she had spent two years in Fairbanks Alaska when her soldier step father was stationed there, she had never gone beyond civilized limits of the small city, had never ever seen the actual bush. Boy was she in for a surprise.

Episode 1
Living in a Postcard, at 65 Below

Episode 2
Moving my Family to the Wilderness.

Episode 3
Mosquitoes.

Episode 4
Grocery Hunting in the Modern Age.

Episode 5
The Nanny.

Episode 6
Brothers on the Frontier.

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This is episode 1 of the 6 part audio series I recorded for a podcast called PEOPLE TALK, produced by my friend Nigel Killick. I had nearly forgotten about this series we did and then while searching “Internet Archive” for something different this popped up. At first I only managed to find 5 of the 6 episodes, but after a much deeper search of the internet’s cellars and a weird smelling dark room to the left of the Lawnmowerman’s secret lair I found them!

Wow, what a wonderful flash from the past!

I hope you enjoy listening.

Our Man In Alaska

Many people fantasize about what life would be like way up in the forests and mountains and tundra of the Alaskan wilderness. But few will ever actually convince themselves to give it a try. If you have ever wondered what it takes to make it in the Greatland take a listen to these short episodes and you will start to get a picture of it.

I was born right in the middle of the Alaskan Frontier on a hot summer day in 1968 and now I’m gonna tell you all about it. Alaska that is, not my actual birth. My mother was rather adamant about keeping that bit private. Over the course of six episodes you will learn about the real life and people of Alaska. Some of the stories are my own experiences. Some as told by friends and family. And some from the early days as told by my pioneer Grandfather who was one of the first civilians to drive up the Alaska/Canada highway in 1946. Most all of the stories are mostly all true, although some names have been changed so I don’t get into any trouble, since most of the old neighbors still remember me, and are very well armed.

Episode 2
Moving my Family to the Wilderness.
In 1996 Basil moved his wife and son from the relative comforts of the American Midwest back to his birth home of Salcha Alaska. Little did his Korean City Girl wife know what was in store for them.

Episode 3
Mosquitoes.
There is a joke in Alaska that the state bird is actually the mosquito. The funniest part of the joke is that we’re not joking when we say that.

Episode 4
Grocery Hunting in the Modern Age.
Hunting is more than just a tradition or past time in Alaska, its part of surviving. In this episode you’ll hear how wilderness survival and technology are sometimes at odds with one another.

Episode 5
The Nanny.
Every kid needs someone to watch over them. Some rich kids get nannies. But me, I had a great big slobbery Saint Bernard.

Episode 6
Brothers on the Frontier.
The year was 1946, the Alaska Canada Highway had just opened to civilian traffic. Joe and Pete Balch had been dreamed of claiming homesteads in the Alaska Territory since they were teens living on their grandfathers homestead in Whapeton North Dakota. Freshly released from the military after the war had ended they decided it was time to head north. This is the story of how they got there.


Why not visit us at www.peopletalk.libsyn.com
(the link no longer works, but I left it here any for the nostalgia)

Why not also visit Basil Sands web site and listen to his great free audio books
at www.basilsands.com (this link does work…it’s where you are now actually)

Buy the Music at magnatune
Music credits:
1st Track Music from Magnatune at http://magnatune.com.
Track: Hagagatan 14
Album: GratisJazz
Artist: Eternal Jazz Project

2nd Track: Magnatune at http://magnatune.com.
Album: Acoustic Earth - Electric Sky
Track: Angel

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I do not believe that all humans are idiots, not even most of them. The vast majority of humans, whether educated or not, are equally intelligent, equally capable of smartness. Which is to say they mostly all have the capacity to act with wisdom. Nor do I assume most humans to be evil. People just want to be at peace and not have to deal with, or even see, evil and wickedness.

The problem is that the majority of that majority does not realize these facts about themselves and they tend to flow straight down to lowest common denominator (LCD) living. Letting themselves be led by the herd, following the groupthink for fear of standing out. They are afraid to judge, afraid to call out something they don’t feel comfortable with. All too often the narcissistic core of the political leaders and tenured faculties, ecclesial and institutional alike, are grabbed from that tiny portion of the population that actually are both idiots and evil. By employment of cunning displays of treachery, they c…

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Walking by the basement door next to my office I overheard the Leprechaun brothers that rent my basement in deep conversation. When I listened this is what I overheard:

Gnillii: “What is a vatar?”

Berthold: “Vatar? Where did you hear that?”

Gnillii: “Someone said I should watch a vatar, they said it was really good. But I don’t know what a vatar is to watch one do its good things.”

Berthold: “Not a vatar, it is one word, avatar.”

Gnillii: “Ahhh…..avatar.”

Berthold: “Exactly, avatar. And there are several televisy things with that name.”

Fillii: “Okay then smarty pants, what’s an avatar?”

Boffin: “Isn’t that one of those Araby dancers with all the veils and stuff?”

Gnillii: “I don’t even know how to dance, let alone dance with vases in my hands.”

Boffin: “Not vases, veils, you know those floaty scarf things the Araby dancers flitter about when they’re busy sashaying and clicking their finger bells together,” pulls up his shirt and tucks it into his collar, baring his round hairy belly, “like this.”

Boffin shaped sounds of sashaying and fingertips slapping together as if holding tiny cymbals.

Berthold: “Boffin? What are you doing wiggling your bottom and flapping your fingers like that?”

Boffin: “I’m sashaying like a lovely Araby Avatar dancer with veils and bells.”

Gnillii: “And vases, don’t forget the vases.”

Berthold: “An avatar is not a kind of Araby dancer. An avatar is just a thing, like an animal or symbol used to refer to a specific person or resource. It’s just an image that makes you think of something else.”

Fillii: “Watching our brother wag his tushy about is definitely making me think about something else, and it certainly ain’t no Araby dancers.”

Berthold: “Yeah, like how my tummy is getting kinda queasy, like I wanna un-swallow my lunch.”

Gnillii: “Here’s a vase you can fergle in.”

…sigh…yup, impromptu belly dancing leprechauns…these appear to be my avatar

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Walking by the basement door next to my office I overheard the Leprechaun brothers that rent my basement in deep conversation. When I listened this is what I overheard:

Gnillii: “What is a vatar?”

Berthold: “Vatar? Where did you hear that?”

Gnillii: “Someone said I should watch a vatar, they said it was really good. But I don’t know what a vatar is to watch one do its good things.”

Berthold: “Not a vatar, it is one word, avatar.”

Gnillii: “Ahhh…..avatar.”

Berthold: “Exactly, avatar. And there are several televisy things with that name.”

Fillii: “Okay then smarty pants, what’s an avatar?”

Boffin: “Isn’t that one of those Araby dancers with all the veils and stuff?”

Gnillii: “I don’t even know how to dance, let alone dance with vases in my hands.”

Boffin: “Not vases, veils, you know those floaty scarf things the Araby dancers flitter about when they’re busy sashaying and clicking their finger bells together,” pulls up his shirt and tucks it into his collar, baring his round hairy belly, “like th…

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I see a river of crystalline aquamarine.

It springs from The Mountain,

Cloud adorned peak rising beyond the sky

To the Realm of Beyond Above.

The river flows from The One.

The Throne.

The Forever.

I drink.

I live.

I pass through the Pillars of Fire

Bow to the glory of

The Seen.

The True.

Revived.

Refreshed.

Alive in full I return to the world of men.

I look across the River that

Divides the Infinite from the

Time locked world of humanity.

I watched from the shore that sees but cannot be seen.

Mankind, male and female,

They each alone must decide

How they will join immortality.

Alas few even realize the test they are in.

They stroll along and

pretend they do not grow closer to the River every day.

They imagine they can push it away

As the quiet water laps at their ankles.

Fruitless fantasies.

The River is moved by none.

Neither man, nor angel, nor ones like me.

The day of your crossing was written

Before you were an Is.

All mortals must cross at their appointed time.

For men, this crossing is always, ever, only, one way.

I cross.

Returning to the land of men.

Walking out of a vibrant land

Where radiance flows from the Alive

Light that flitters like living, sparkling gems,

Shimmering against streets of purest gold.

Stepping across to a land of burning sun

Filtered through filthy, grey, rain-choked clouds

Onto cities of red iron and black smoke.

I step from Light to Earth.

From mystic angel song,

The vibration of eternal joy,

To the voice of chickadee, robin, and raven,

Yearning to mimic from their trees

The song they hear on me.

That tune and rhythm still reverberating from my body.

The life blessing chorus of the place I just left.

My feet rest again on physical soil.

Dirt between my toes.

Air fills my lungs.

I push my light, that mark of my kind, deep into my flesh.

Turning off that part of us that men once had

The light that emanates from within.

I reduce and dim myself until I appear as a man alive, and mortal.

Striding forth I am solid flesh, blood, mind, hands, feet, mouth, ears, eyes.

I see, smell, taste, hear, touch, talk, feel, love, laugh, create, destroy.

I am a servant of The One.

Sent to do amongst men that which

One day rewards,

Another day judges,

One day gives peace,

Yet another

Applies judgment unto death.

I am a friend to those who seek peace.

I am a brother to the merciful warrior.

I am an embrace to bring comfort.

I am a sword against the wicked.

I am a servant of The Lord.

- Kharzai Djinn

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This excerpt of the Audiobook version of Midnight Sun is free for all to listen to.

They should’ve let him go. They should’ve let him retire in peace. They should’ve left his woman out of it.

Kharzai Ghiassi has served the US Government his entire adult life. The best infiltration agent they’ve ever had. Death is not just his business, death is his life. He’s gone off the CIA’s radar and all they know is that someone is in danger.

When a former soccer star turned Islamic terrorist shows up in Anchorage, Alaska, retired Marine Corps Special Operator Marcus ‘Mojo’ Johnson and his State Trooper wife, Lonnie, team up with the FBI’s Mike and Hilde Farris to put a stop to the threat that hangs over the city like a hammer about to fall. No one is safe. No one can hide in the Land of The Midnight Sun.

Originally self-published in print and audiobook in 2012. The story was later picked up by Permuted Press, re-edited and republished in ebook and paperback in 2019.

Midnight Sun is the final episode of sorts in a very loosely connected ‘series’ of independent stories where the primary character of one will be a secondary character in another, or the secondary character becomes a primary, and so on. In Midnight sun Marcus & Lonnie Johnson (lead characters from 65 Below) join with Mike & Hilde Farris (Faithful Warrior) to stop a huge internationally impacting terrorist attack apparently led by Kharzai (permanent secondary character in all of my books except for 65 Below) in my beautiful home city of Anchorage Alaska.

While this free first chapter takes place in a Taliban controlled village in Pakistan, the rest of Midnight Sun runs wild through the urban wilderness of Anchorage Alaska, the city I have lived in for nearly a quarter of a century now.

Potentially Interesting Side Notes:

-Midnight Sun ends and the characters disperse, but only a year later my ICE HAMMER trilogy begins in the same universe just a few miles from where Midnight Sun ends.

-Midnight Sun was the last story I wrote involving Kharzai in which I still did not know his real identity. Read his other stories here on Substack at www.basilsands.com to learn what I am referring to.

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Enjoy the first chapter of my novel Midnight Sun, originally self-published in 2012, then picked up and republished by Permuted Press in 2019.

Here’s the blurb:
They should’ve let him go. They should’ve let him retire in peace. They should’ve left his woman out of it.

Kharzai Ghiassi has served the US Government his entire adult life. The best infiltration agent they’ve ever had. Death is not just his business, death is his life. He’s gone off the CIA’s radar and all they know is that someone is in danger.

When a former soccer star turned Islamic terrorist shows up in Anchorage, Alaska, retired Marine Corps Special Operator Marcus ‘Mojo’ Johnson and his State Trooper wife, Lonnie, team up with the FBI’s Mike and Hilde Farris to put a stop to the threat that hangs over the city like a hammer about to fall. No one is safe. No one can hide in the Land of The Midnight Sun.

Chapter 1

Southwestern Punjab, Pakistan

November 4th

“Ali aga, how long will the meeting be today?” Kharzai fidgeted as he …

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This little tale is a short action sequence following on the heels of Shadow of the Bastard King. Originally published as a couple of chapters at the beginning and ending of Shadow of the Bastard King, it is a continuation of the same story, albeit 3000 years separated from Sumeria. Argan has been embedded with German Polizei for many years. Hunting Nephilim hiding amongst the Nazis is a lot easier than in most places, monsters tend to find an easy home in such families. In the rain and cold of 1943 Argan finds himself in Nazi controlled Lithuania, hunting and ancient enemy that has set himself a home at one of the most notorious concentration camps in Europe.

I find the concept of monsters like the Nephilim, be they in the form of goblins, trolls, or werewolves, or whatever shape, easy to embed into a group of wicked people as were the Nazis of Europe. Nazis are easy to vilify because, well, they embraced villainy as a positive trait. But they are not at all the only such purveyors of evil. Nazis focused their evil on certain groups of people. So confident were they in their wickedness and violence that they industrialized their sadism. Institutionalized murder was stitched into their uniforms as Totenkopf, scary death’s head skulls sewn right on their uniform and cap. They reveled in evil.

That said, they were not the worst, not by far. Their peers, the Soviets claimed to be brother to the common man but then killed tens of millions of their own people in the name of socialism. Mao even worse than both, killing nearly 60 million Chinese on the path to a bright new communist world! And those were just the 20th Century baddies!

The Mongol conquest was worse. They just murdered everyone equally whenever the desire struck them, nearly 80 million dead at their hand, wiping entire people groups completely off the map.

Sometimes it is easy to vilify a particular group of people because they are actual villains. Sadly for the world and its inhabitants there are and always will be plenty of utterly depraved humans who will go to no end of travels to ensure the rest of the world has a horrible day. For writers like me, there is always someone who welcomes monsters, always someone who invites demons, always a target for Argan to close with and destroy.

Sadly, there is no end to the story material taken right out of history.

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This audio novella is one of the first in the Argan the Warrior series. Originally written in 2021 for an anthology titled Legends of the Werewolf Hunter it was republished here on substack in text format in 2023 with the audio added for subscribers the following year. Now the audio version comes to you via this podcast, the first few minutes are available to all comers, but the whole story is only for subscribers.

Follow Argan as he serves the mighty Nimrod, the first emperor in recorded history, more well known as Sargon the Great. Argan knows what it is to be an emperor, for long before the historical records discovered in this second age of men, he ruled the entire world, even if only for a season.

Condemned to hunt down and destroy the Nephilim he created in the days before the Flood that wiped his civilisation from the earth. He created those soulless beasts to be the perfect warriors to advance his kingdom, demi-gods under his personal control. But their creators soon realized their error, at the same time the superhuman monsters realised their own power. Edged on by dark forces beyond Argan’s authority, the Nephilim began to see humanity as little more than cattle, food even.

Argan’s wickedness and greed for power only increased, murder, lying, rape, torture…nothing was too much for him. And then his evil boiled over the limits set by the Creator and the curse was placed on Argan. To die and be resurrected over and over until all of the Nephilim were destroyed. He was killed not long after, only to rise back up and walk back into the palace, his wounds healed, and his body again strong. He laughed at the Archangel that delivered the curse to him, mocked the Creator.

“What kind of a curse is it that gives the accursed immortality!”

And that was what he thought it was, at first.

With a final victory that eradicated the last mortal forces loyal to the Creator, Argan cinched his rule on earth, anticipating to maintain a human empire into which the Creator could no longer reach, for there were none to pray to call him down. Argan had created a world where science ruled and the gods stood beside men. A place where mankind not only chose his own path, but defined his own immortality.

And then the world exploded, literally. Unable to withstand the strain of constant abuse forced through its veins, the ground ruptured spewing massive columns of mud and water and steam and magma miles into the sky. The sky shield cracked and the great protective dome of water vapor lost its cohesion, loosing torrents of rain sufficient to refill oceans in a constant deluge. Between the water from below and the water from above every tall mountain vanished beneath the salty seas. And everything that had the Breath of Life within died.

Argan died again, but this time he awoke to his curse. Alone on earth so it seemed, except for the Nephilim monsters who had survived the flood. For unlike mortal humans, Nephilim are not imbued with the Breath of Life. Once his “children” realized his curse brought him back to the mortal world for them to kill again, they stalked him without mercy.

In time Argan learned that he was not truly alone on earth. After more than a century of hunting, killing, and being killed he discovered that one family, eight humans, and a minimal collection of all the assorted beasts and birds, were safeguarded in a nightmare of shattering earth, tossing waves and water from both the sky above and caverns below. By the time he encountered them, their numbers had grown to thousands, and by the time Noah’s great-grandchildren were running the show the population had exponentially grown to hundreds of thousands and soon to millions.

It was among those early generations, their elders still having vivid memories of sitting at Noah’s knees and the knees of his sons, to learn of the world before, mist-shrouded memories of old men’s tales that became the legends and mythologies of the world to come.

In this broken world of new things, where nothing worked as it did before, where men were relegated to only a tenth of the average lifespan of men of the first age, Argan had no power but that which was given to fulfill the end of the curse: to locate (or be located by) the Nephilim monsters and to kill them, no matter how many deaths he had to die.

In this story Argan, a warrior skilled beyond the imaginations of modern men, awoke to this new life several years before the tale of the Shadow of the Bastard King opens. He became a warrior in Sargon the Bastard’s personal guard, soon being elevated to Captain of the Shadows, commanding the elite of the elite in Mesopotamia.

Follow Argan the Warrior as hell ascends to consume the Shadow of the Bastard King.

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Basil has asked that I, Kharzai Djinn, write out this last blog post. As if I were not already busy enough translating Argan’s hand written scrolls, codexes, and journals as it is, he wants me to say something about endings, so here goes.

This, faithful listener, is the final chapter in the saga of KAZ, the definite end of the adventure. This is the part where from here the reader/listener will have the rest of the story play out in their own imaginations. What happens to the characters that survive? How do they live on? Does life go on as usual for them or do they just fade into the background and cease to be?

I can tell you that after this adventure I certainly continue on (both in your imagination and in my own!). At the end of every story I move on to my next mission, which may be in this world, or may be in another. That said most Djinn, in the even you meet one other than myself, don’t really share their goings on with mere mortals unless they want you to write their story. Plus sometimes it is illegal for us to tell you what is going on in the other realm, humans do tend to get panicky about things they don’t really understand.

Speaking of stories, Argan most certainly does continue right on to the next, which I am intently translating from Goryeomal, the language of ancient Goryeo, was spoken and written long before the advent of the Hangul alphabet used in Korea today. Although called “Middle Korean” it was written in old-Chinese. Plus translating some of the idioms and colloquialisms of 13th century Asian countries, especially when interracting between Goryeo, Chinese and Mongol speakers, gets a little tricky. Working on it though, working on it.

In the case of the order of the Argan stories you will read/listen to on this substack site you will notice they are not in any particular time frame order. The ones I’ve translated so far go from 2nd Century BC Sumeria, to NAZI controlled Lithuania, to the Pacific Northwest in 1805, and next to medieval Korea, Goryeo, in 1240 as the Mongols assert their rule.

Hopefully by the time you’ve finished processing what you just read/listened to in KAZ, the next story will be starting up right here in this same channel.

In the meantime run over to Amazon or Audible or where ever you buy books and audiobooks and get a copy of Basil’s full length novels. He has a bunch of them, and I am in most of them. He left me out of a couple mainly because I was actually not there for that story, he just could not wait to start an adventure without me there to give him guidance (IE harass him and make silly faces).

Basil’s Books and Audiobooks on Amazon

Basil’s Audiobooks on Audible (written by other authors as well as his own)

Well…this is the end of this story.

See you in the next.

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How does one face your own death?

It is not something most people ever think about. Even after having gone to the funeral of a loved one, or seeing a fatal accident on the evening news people seldom consider their own guaranteed ending, living their day to day existence as if tomorrow is a certainty. Folks tend to live as if they always expect there to be a next day, at least, until they get some dire illness that gives them advance warning of their impending demise.

Most of us will be cruising along in our lives thinking about work, family, food, sports, books, etc, etc, and then “all of a sudden” we drop dead. No thoughts about it, no time to prepare or warn others. Be it a traumatic ending, painful but fast, or a sudden stopping of the heart, we all have the final breath awaiting us at the appointed time. There is no running from death for we are all born into mortal fleshly bodies that have a defined beginning and a definite ending.

No one cheats death.

Some people believe that via training or skill or plain old luck they have cheated death. They just don’t realize that those frightening times of destruction simply were not their appointed day to die. It was not their fate, for they still had days and weeks and months and maybe even years to live toward their purpose.

My son recently brought up a theory he read that states that we have a finite number of heartbeats, that every mammalian creature (and possibly all creatures with a cardiovascular system) have the same number of heartbeats that define the limits of our lives. A mouse, a dog, a human, a sea turtle, all have the same number of ventricular thumps per their species that will ‘lub-dub lub-dub’ until the count is run out. Most animals have about 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) beats during their lifetime. For humans lets call it 2,575,440,000 (2.575 Billion) beats* for your entire life, as long as you make it to old age and are not run over by a cement truck or eaten by a giant squid or something traumatic like that.

A mouse, a mut, a moose or a man all have the specific number of beats assigned to their species, limiting the length of their natural lives with a hard stop at some point. Since a mouse’s heart beats at 700 beats per minute they only live to be about 4 years old in a good environment. A dog with a heart rate of 140bpm 15-20 years. A moose can be similar to a dog. A human gets to live, on average, to between 70-80 years.

Once we hit the full number of beats, the clock stops ticking, the spring is unwound, the heart stops beating and the creature’s body ceases to live. They are then physically dead, any spirit they had is gone from the clothing of flesh, and there is no way to get it back inside.

Not trying to be morbid here, but this is one of the immutable facts of existence. Nothing is eternal in the manner in which we perceive it. Too many people focus on living their lives with no consideration of the ending, no concept that they have this limited number of heart beats, and all of the things they did as healthy young people that raised their heart rates to higher and higher limits through their lives has, while potentially being quite fun, used up a portion of those beats that could have lengthened their stay at L’Hôtel de la Vie Mortelle by a few more days.

Of course, even with that set number of heartbeats, that only accounts for living life sensibly and fortuitously not being splattered by a falling meteor or slipping into a shelf at the grocery store and being killed by a #10 can of pinto beans to the skull. In those cases, limitations to the length of life having nothing to do with the set heart rate of your species. It has to do with the set time written in the Book of Judgment, the inescapable day of your end, your fated destiny.

Death comes to us all.

It may not come for you for a long time yet, but there is an equal chance it is just around the corner after you read this, maybe even at the hands of a monstrous giant from deep within the earth…but probably something more common.

Therefore be prepared, for every day, every minute could be your last in this mortal skein.

Live your life with the other side of the river in mind.

Death need not be feared, but it must be acknowledged.

How will you make yourself ready for your own death?

*That is not the actual number of beats we are alloted. I just extrapolated from a human average of 70 beats per minute for 70 years…its just a guess, your mileage may vary

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In a similar vein to the discussion of OOPART from the previous post in this chapter we run into a collection of ancient weapons that still function as designed. The Song Arrows and the Shining Swords are based in part by memories of the Frank Herbert Dune novels, where even though space travel had been mastered and they had incredible technologies, warfare boiled down to blades and shields face to face.

From KAZ chapter 18:

A pair of swords hung on the rack, the leather of their scabbards encrusted in a thin layer of stone. They appeared to be petrified, preserved in the high mineral content of the subterranean air. But when he picked one up it sagged against its weight, the crust crumbling off it in large flakes that shattered on the bedrock floor, making a tinkling sound like fine pottery. The ancient method of treating leather was said to be permanent when these were made, it would appear to have been more than just a bit of marketing spiel. Of course, the continued strong presence of the power source had a huge contribution to their longevity as well.

He tugged at the handle of one of the swords, not surprised when it slid free. The mirror like blade glistened with reflected light from around the room. An alloy of ancient recipe, the metal from which these swords were made could never be replicated with the technology available in this age. If the alloy was discovered by future explorers, it would likely be classified as a newly found element, for men were ever unable to understand that the past could have been so much more advanced than this future he found himself in.

These days we dig deep into the earth to pull up rare earth elements to run our electronic obsessions. Mobile phones to satellites to electric cars and stealth bombers are all greatly enhanced by these powerful, and dangerous, minerals that are so deep or so difficult to extract that nations threaten war over their mining. And yet those minerals are never more than a mile or two deep into a crust that is hundreds of miles thick. We today are only scratching the surface of potentials, those potentials that are and the understanding of those potentials that were and are no more or are significantly diminished. Imagine if the ancient civilisations had the ability to dig deeper, to delve far into the crust to extract elements we have no knowledge of for we cannot go that deep.

In that world, the world of Argan before the flood, they would even have designed breeds of Nephilim that could tunnel farther than any man could, withstand the heat and pressure that would kill a man, or the subterranean darkess that would drive him mad.

The were able to build with those elements structures and objects of great beauty, and weapons of merciless destruction.

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Chapter 20

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OOPART

Out Of Place Artifacts.

This is an official archaeological designation for things that are found in the wrong geological strata, or in unexpected contexts. Here is what Wikipedia says:

An out-of-place artifact (OOPArt or oopart) is an artifact of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest to someone that is claimed to have been found in an unusual context, which someone claims to challenge conventional historical chronology by its presence in that context. Some people might think that those artifacts are too advanced for the technology known to have existed at the time, or that human presence existed at a time before humans are known to have existed. Other people might hypothesize about a contact between different cultures that is hard to account for with conventional historical understanding.

However one thinks about these discoveries, they are actual physical objects found in contexts that to do not match the general consensus of traditional academia, and therefore are often considered outliers or even fraudulent by some. The fact that some artifacts are discovered that do not match the general consensus can mean two possible things.

1. That somehow these artifacts jiggled themselves down, by way of earth tremors or human interventions, down to archaeological layers way too deep for the to fit in the conceptualised record, or

2. that the time lines established by modern archaeological academia are not as factually rigid as some purport them to be.

Here are some examples of what I am talking about.

The Antikythera Mechanism

Ancient Greece created something like an analog computer.

It was recovered in the Aegean Sea and was designed to predict astronomical positions and the eclipses of up to nineteen years for astrological purposes and the exact date of six ancient Greek contests, including the four major Panhellenic games.

There must have been more, for Cicero speaks of them.

But, surprisingly, these technologically advanced devices stopped being built at some point, and it would not be until 1,600 years later that they developed astronomical clocks in Europe.

The Maine Penny

Another surprising oopart is the “Maine penny,” a coin found, as its name says, in the state of Maine in the northern United States.

This Scandinavian coin dates from 1065–1080 AD and belongs to the reign of Olaf III of Norway.

The Maine State Museum and the Smithsonian Institution have accepted it as authentic, suggesting that the Vikings touched American soil long before Christopher Columbus.

Why found it in American pre-Columbian ruins were still cannot be fully explained; some hypotheses suggest that this proves the contact of the Norse with the American Indians; however, other authors suggest that the explanation is more straightforward (and less spectacular): that it is a “seeded” proof because it is the only object of that kind in that place; if there was such contact with the Vikings, it is most likely that various objects would be found and not just a coin as is the case.

However, the American Numismatic Society and other researchers consider it a hoax.

The Dorchester pot

The Dorchester jar was an unusual find in 1851 after exploding a rock from Meeting House Hill in Dorchester, located in Massachusetts.

It consists of a vase or jar made of a zinc and silver alloy about twelve centimeters high and sixteen at the base.

It was discovered several meters deep, under a layer of sedimentary rock.

A means of dating of the time yielded a figure of 100,000 years old, earning the category of Oopart.

In this vase, we can see represented plant species extinct tens of thousands of years ago, as attested by some botanists who reviewed the artifact.

Shortly after its discovery, the prestigious Scientific American magazine devoted an article to such a unique find, in which both the object and the particularity of the discovery is described. At the beginning of great interest, the news was losing strength due to the rejection of the great majority of the scientific community.

After passing from museum to museum, the object was definitively lost, and its whereabouts are still unknown.

The Piri Reis Map

According to some, it includes information that was unknown in 1513, such as the existence of Antarctica.

Many theories have been formulated about this document.

It includes a copy of a map drawn by Columbus, that it is the oldest cartographic record of the Americas, or that it is the most accurate of the 16th century.

Kemal Reis, crewmate of the Ottoman cortege ( freebooter in the service of his Conglomerate), captured seven Spanish vessels off the seacoast of Valencia in 1501.

On one of them was a sailor who claimed to have sailed three times to unknown lands under the command of a confident Columbus.

In his hand, he holds a map drawn by that man.

After the battle in Valencia, Kemal Reis sent the Spanish prisoner with Columbus’ map to his nephew.

The latter, who was none other than Piri Reis, used the enslaved person’s testimonies and the document to draw the new islands and coasts discovered by the Spaniards in the Caribbean.

More than four centuries later, in 1929, the son of the Grand Vizier of one of the last sultans, a historian studying the archives of the Ottoman Empire, found in the Topkapi Palace (Istanbul) the third part of a map drawn on gazelle skin.

The fragment, which shows the coasts and islands of the New Continent, is signed by a Turkish admiral named Piri Reis — Reis means admiral — Kemal’s nephew, dated 1513.

It has been said that this map is the oldest cartographic record of the Americas, that it is the most accurate of the 16th century, but also that it is a copy of one by Columbus himself.

But some claim that it is too accurate for its time, including lands that got only discovered centuries later.

Therefore, it proves the existence of a very advanced civilization that lived in Antarctica 10,000 years ago. It even proves the visit of extraterrestrials.

Piri Reis took three years to draw his map, and according to his notes, the cartographer cites all the sources used along with numerous explanations; it follows that he used some twenty maps, the most striking of which was “drawn by Qulūnbū [Columbus],” in the admiral’s own words.

In the map, Piri Reis used more modern charts than that Columbus for his design.

He never took his eye off the one he had of the discoverer (a map made by the latter about 1495), which is deduced by comparing the greater accuracy of the coasts of South America with the numerous errors of the Caribbean.

Moreover, along with the names given to the islands, the best evidence that the Caribbean part is grounded on a chart drawn by Columbus is in Cuba.

Columbus believed it was part of the continent and made his crew swear that it was, on pain of having their speeches cut out.

That is how it appears on the Ottoman map.

Likewise, experts say Hispaniola — an island that contains the Dominican Republic and Haiti — has a strange shape that can explain by comparing it to Cipango, the ancient name for Japan.

The island’s shape is very similar to the Japanese archipelago as drew it in MPolo’solo’s time.

For McIntosh, Columbus’s stubborn character led him to prove that he had reached the Indies and deny the evidence.

He was also known for his secretiveness, and it cannot rule out that he deliberately drew a map with these characteristics.

Until the discovery of the Piri Reis chart, it was not known how Columbus saw his discoveries, but this testimony is preserved in the Piri Reis map of 1513.

The black pyramid of the creator’s son

The Illuminati occult pyramid inverted the darkness with the eye of destiny.

This Oopart was found in 1893, specifically in the jungle of Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico (where the discovery was made), along with other similar artifacts which were cataloged as “the artifacts of the Manna (Objects with Divine power).

It is an object composed mainly of stone, and its measurements are exactly 27 centimeters high.

The stone has a whitish tone on one side and black on the other, forming a pyramid of bricks that culminates with an eye at the top of its summit.

Someone happened to glimpse the strange object with ultraviolet light, and they could see something surprising; the eye of the small pyramid began to shine strangely; this tells us that the material of the eye was a precious stone.

It is currently in a private collection, so it isn’t easy to know its exact location.

Nanotechnology in the Urals

Between 1991 and 1993, while prospecting for gold in an area east of the Urals along the Narada, Kozhim, and Balbanyu rivers, small objects of a few centimeters (0.003 millimeters the smallest) appeared one after another in geological strata located between 3 and 12 meters deep, which allowed a subsequent dating according to the level at which they were found, ranging from 20,000 to 318,000 years.

The analysis carried out on these objects by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Syktyvkar varied.

The larger objects were dominated by copper, while the smaller ones contained tungsten and molybdenum.

Tungsten has a high atomic weight, as does molybdenum, with a melting point of 3,410 degrees Celsius for the former and 2,650 for the latter.

Shockingly, the millimeter size of many of these objects requires highly developed technology for their manufacture, capital of the former Soviet Republic of Komi determined that the composition of these objects.

Even today are in the process of developing what has been called “nanomachines,” tiny robots designed to act where the human hand is inoperative, as in the case of microsurgery at the brain level or risky operations inside the blood vessels that are not possible to perform with current surgical techniques.

Lanzhou screw

During field research, Mr. Zhilin Wang found the rock containing the screw body in the intermediate zone between Gansu and Xijiang provinces.

The color of the rock is an unusual black, and its degree of hardness also makes it particular.

It weighs 466 grams, and its approximate dimensions are 7 x 8 centimeters.

The object inserted in the rock has all the characteristics of an ordinary screw body, about 6 centimeters long.

Since its appearance, the screw body has attracted the attention of many scientists and researchers from institutions such as the “National Bureau of Earth Resources of Gansu Province,” the “Research Institute of Geology and Minerals,” and the “School of Resources and Environment of Lanzhou University.”

After several investigations, the specialists confirmed that the rock should be treated as one of the most valuable objects in Chinese and world archaeology.

Pre-Columbian airplanes

The Gold Museum of Bogota, part of the Bank of the Republic of Colombia, houses one of the most curious collections of pieces from the entire pre-Columbian era.

Its maximum splendor developed about 500 years before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors to the new world, although the tombs where some of these objects have been found are almost 2,000 years old.

Their strange shape has led several experts in aerodynamics, such as J.A. Ullrich, Ivan Sanderson, Arthur Poyslee, etc., to raise the possibility that these religious elements are not precisely any animal species but rather authentic small-scale model airplanes, with all their technical characteristics.

Among valuable necklaces bracelets, bracelets, figures, and other gold ornaments, a set of Religious Ornaments, as archaeologists have cataloged them, with shapes of birds, butterflies, flying fish, etc., is especially distinguished.

These ornaments were found in different tombs as part of the grave goods and are mainly attributed to the Tairona Culture, the Muisca, Calima, Tumaco, Urabá, Cauca, Nariño, Malagana, Tierradentro, San Agustín, Quimbaya, and Tolima form the known Gold Cultures.

The Tairona archaeological area is located in the north of Colombia, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, near the city of Barranquilla, where their most direct descendants, the Ijkas and Koguis Indians, still live.

There are other pieces in the hands of private collectors, but they all pose the same question.

Baghdad Battery

Probably the most famous oopart globally, along with the Nazca lines (large-scale elaborate figures with perfect strokes on the desert).

They are several vases made before 226 AD.

The first one got found in 1936 in a village near Baghdad, and many people concluded that they were jars used to generate electricity, like an electric battery.

The first analysis introduced an electrolyte inside and connected it to a lamp, which lit up very weakly.

However, the official report afterward pointed out that the object behaved like a modern electric battery.

However, the absence of electrolyte traces, the low electrical potential of the system, and the absence of practical uses for electricity at the time call it into question as an oopart.

The most plausible hypothesis is that it was a container for cosmetics or written scrolls.

The Kingoodie hammer

A hammer was found in London, Texas, in 1934 encased in stone that had formed around it. The rock surrounding the hammer is said to be more than 100 million years old.

Glen J. Kuban, a vocal skeptic of claims the hammer was made millions of years ago, said the stone may contain materials that are more than 100 million years old, but that doesn’t mean the rock formed around the hammer so long ago.

Some limestone has formed around artifacts known to be from the 20th century, so concretions can form fairly quickly around objects, he said. Concretions are masses of hardened mineral matter.

Carl Baugh, who is in possession of the artifact, has said the wooden handle has turned to coal (evidence of its great age) and that the metal it is made of has a strange composition. Critics have called for more, independent testing to verify these claims, but thus far no such testing has been conducted.

These are but a handful of OOPArt objects discovered in the past century. And as more locations like the various Tepes in Turkey and other regions of the earth are discovered more OOPArts are disovered daily.

Look it up, and find out just how deep this rabbit hole flows.

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Chapter 19

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Who/What Is Argan?

A few chapters ago I brought up the real substance of Kharzai, as I have gotten to know him over more than twenty years of writing him into my stories.

Today I bring to you Argan.

Full name:
Argan manu Urdom’ni manu Ur’ni manu Ha’Atem’ni do Ha’Eba’ni.

Translation:
Argan seventh son of Urdom who was the seventh son of Ur, who was the seventh son of Adam and Eve the father and mother of all mankind.

Argan took up residence in my imagination several years ago, growing in my mind since at least 2019. What you are witnessing on these substack pages in the stories I write about him is actually my own process of creating the backstory and building the world in which Argan becomes the ultimate ruler prior to the flood. Argan himself, as I am discovering, is a very complex character to be sure.

Born a few decades before the death of the first human, Ha’Atem the Father of All Men, Argan was from a small city on the eastern slopes of what are now called the Zagros mountains near the ancient lands of Elam in western Persia, or in modern terms, Iran. At the time he was born the earth was very different from our experience today. All of the various technologies I have mentioned in previous posts have at least been discovered and are being harnessed in their most rudimentary forms for benign purposes. But Argan saw potential for much more.

Argan, when he was young, was singularly focused on what he saw as right and wrong, a very black and white thinker with no subtlety. The hunger for revenge for perceived injustices always poised on a razor edge.

After the death of H’Atem, the tribes of men attempted a reconciliation with the break away rebellious tribes of Kayin the brother-slayer, father of murderers. Their father was yet alive, living in exile for the bloodguilt but the leaders of the tribes invited the children of Kayin to the funeral of H’Atem in hopes of peaceful reunion. That peaceful reunion was ready to blossom and usher in even greater achievements for mankind.

Argan though was incensed. He felt it a betrayal of humanity to invite the murderer of Avel. But he could do nothing about it for he was yet a young man. In time his position changed. Twenty years later, Kayin too died. Due to the stigma still upon him, for the mark of his crime was visible in his flesh, he was not buried with his father and mother and other siblings, including the murdered Avel, but his name was officially honoured by the priesthood and elders of the tribes and a remembrance ceremony held for him as well. This was more than Argan could stand, and he began to organize resistance against the reunification of the tribes. He had encouragement too, from both men and from a sect of The Watchers who had taken an interest in human affairs beyond their scope of authority. Those Watchers were among the fallen, who stepped down from their position of watching and into the position of guiding, for they desired to spoil the peace of mankind out of spite for the Creator.

A hundred years after the passing of H’Atem Argan put his plans into motion, at time of the centennial memorial at the tomb of the Father and Mother. As the children of Kayin rode in their caravans across the plain to return to their lands in the east, Argan struck and made a great slaughter. He killed many and ignited a struggle for power in the first kingdoms of the first age of men. As time went on Argan’s power grew. Over the centuries he went from bandit, to warlord, to king, to conqueror, to ruler of a vast empire, to Great Emperor of the entire planet, and almost, or so he thought, to god.

Men of the first age lived for lengths of time incredible to us today. Eight or nine hundred years is a long time to perfect one’s craft, to build one’s powerbase, and to condense power. And when a man rules over others for those lengths of time his mind becomes changed. Warped. Twisted. Moreso when malevolent creatures posing as wisdom and light are guiding that king. Such was Argan’s journey, and in the going he did very much evil.

After more than four hundred years upon thrones, in the second half of his reign of over eight centuries, Argan joined the nefarious works of dark minded Watchers to create a new thing. A hybrid of man and god: The Nephilim. The first were, in appearance, men. Demi-gods of power and strength who performed mighty deeds and even helped mankind in many ways. It did not take long, a very short time, for their creators to change the design of their creations until what they produced were not like men at all, but mere killing machines made for the destruction of one’s enemies. Regardless of what kind or how human they appeared, all such creatures lacked the one thing that actually made them men, made them alive. They were not imbued with the true “Breath of Life”, for that can only be given by the eternal Father, the Creator of all.

Argan’s evil, his bloodthirsty grasp to power and his murderous rebellion against the Creator brought an age of war and terror unlike anything ever seen in this world, before or since. When his wickedness reached the limit set by the Creator the Archangel himself was sent to curse him. This was his curse:

Argan, son of Ur, son of Urdom, son of Ha’Atem.
Argan Blood Drinker,
who laid waste peoples,
who destroyed nations,
who slew your brothers.
In violence you ruled,
so violence shall rule you.

You showed mercy to none,
so shall you never find mercy.
As you put the sons of Khobaraes and Pharoan to the flame,
as you tasted their flesh between your teeth,
so shall your sons be put to the flame,
their flesh torn in the teeth of your enemies before your eyes.

You Argan, son of Ur
will not see the end of death
until the Eternal One declares it.
Though you die,
your soul will not cross the sacred river to your fathers.
Your eyes will yet open that you may endure the tribulations of men.
One hundred generations will see the judgements against you.
As you laid waste your enemies in the first age of man,
so through the ages of the sons of men will you be laid waste.
Age to age you will run.
Age to age you will find no refuge,
until you repent of your pride Argan son of Ur.

In seeking ultimate human power he harnessed the earth itself and pushed everything to its limits. He laughed in the face of God.

And then everything shattered.

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Chapter 18

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