Lu and Satten
To see a collection of just finished images instead of background material and works in progress, see: New Stuff.
A young boy is in the bush. He has a selection of his favoured toys arranged in a tableu of heroes and villains, spaceships and weapons. The heroes fire a missile at the villain's fortress, and the boy represents this as pounding the earth with the tip of a toy missile, making explosion sounds and throwing handfuls of dirt into the air.
He was playing next to a large boulder that rested on a kind of pedestal of hard clay. His often repeated activity breaking up the clay with the tip of the toy missile had gradually eroded one edge of the pedestal. The weight of the boulder now caused one side of the pedestal to crumble and collapse and the boulder began to roll. The boy quickly rescued a handful of his toys and jumped out of the way of the boulder. The rock continued to roll down the hill, crashing noisily through the bush and flattening saplings along the way.
He was playing on a ridge, and when the boulder disappeared from view, he grabbed his toys and ran home, still hearing the sound of the boulder crashing downhill, fading behind him. The boulder finally dropped from an embankment onto a bitumen road and broke into several large pieces.
A car turning the corner saw the debris too late and was launched into the air by it, grazing the steel fence lining the mountain road.
The car is crashing through treetops, high in the air on the steep hillside. One large branch passes through the windscreen and all the way to emerge from the rear window, and a multitude of smaller branches appear through the shattering windscreen, amid a storm of torn leaves and powdered bark. The tips of the branches are snapped off, leaving jagged ends which now pierce the driver and upholstery. For a moment, the weight of the car is supported by the large branch threaded through it, but then the branch snaps, the car flips over and slides off the long branch to continue on its way, falling down the forested mountainside.
There is a small, almost dry stream at the bottom of the ravine. The car lands on its roof which partially collapses. The car slides a short distance into the rectangular opening of a concrete pipe, a storm water drain, that passes under the road on the opposite side of the ravine. Because of its location, the car is hidden from the roadway. The driver is seriously injured and blood runs down his body from a number of sources. He is unable to extricate himself from the vehicle, and he dies there by himself about three and a half hours later. The man in the car is the boy's father.
Fran was tending bar on Satten. Samara came to tell her that her son Marc had died in an accident and would be arriving soon. Fran had been a small and plain woman in material flesh, but now that she could have any body she wanted, she chose the one she always dreamed of having, and liked to show it off. Thus the career change. Marc had some vague dreams of flying over cities, and pillars of light. Then darkness. He opened his eyes and struggled to focus them.
A beautiful woman was leaning over him with an unsettling familiarity and such a tremendous look of affection, but he didn't know who she was. She looked like a movie star. Samara had convinced her to put a top on. He looked around and asked if he was in hospital. Fran said that yes, he was. His body had been repaired, but otherwise appeared to be his old body. He had no recollection of the accident or how he came to be there. Fran said his memories would return.
The woman helped him off the bed. He was naked, but decided not to think about it. She led him to the window. Then she asked: "Do you know where you are?"
It took a few moments to figure out what his eyes were seeing, and then to believe it. It was architecture, but it was huge. "Where is this? There isn't anything like this." Fran said: "You're dead." He looked at her sternly. He considered the possibility that he was dreaming. Then that he may have been in a serious accident, and cryogenically frozen for centuries before being revived. Then that maybe it was a secret government mind control, psychedelic, virtual reality … thing. Or the effects of anesthetic.
Fran got him some clothes to wear and now that he had regained full control of his legs, she took him on a sight seeing tour after explaining that she was his mother. One of the sights was an enormous winged creature on a platform. Fran explained that it was the transport seraphim that brought him here. It wore a necklace with a crystal which is where his soul was stored for the journey. Marc said: "Uh huh."
Wearing a more complicated necklace now, with multiple gems. The design seems likely to end up as a kind of cat-headed sphinx with wings and 6 or 8 breasts.
Satten had no oceans or seas, but a great multitude of lakes and rivers. The world was not part of a solar system but by itself in deep space. It was lit artificially by pillars of light projected up from the surface into the atmosphere and reflected off of the ionosphere. So that it was virtually invisible from space. The surface was largely covered with cities and elaborate gardens. Satten was the capital world for thousands of star systems. Some very advanced. Some primitive.
The river systems were fed by 12 enormous fountains that pumped water up from subsurface reservoirs.
The cities were provided with substantial mass-transit systems. Though some inhabitants of mountain-like structures may rarely venture to the ground.
Among the tapestry of cultures, some were more distinctive than others.
Some people chose not to live in cities, but instead in small scattered communities, family groups, or alone in sparsely populated regions.
"The architecture of heaven is like this, so that you might call it the very essence of the art—and small wonder, since the art itself does come to us from heaven."
(Emanuel Swedenborg ("Heaven and Hell", §185))
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
(Ecclesiastes 1:9)
Lu Cyfer is the fallen angel of repute.
When the idea of rebellion was first forming in his mind, Lu took to visiting a philosopher on ancient Kholleasis, and had long philosophical and moral discussions with him. This all took place in very ancient times. He couldn't talk about his concerns and ideas with his peers at that time.
The philosopher was sitting in the jungle temple with his maid servant when Lu arrived.
Once he resolved his ideas, next he had to tell his wife.
In general, Universe Administration (UA) is credited with an excellent scheme for the emergence and development of intelligent, spiritual beings. But there is also an abiding discomfort with what is perceived as an unnecessary potential for suffering. So that, now and again, someone rises with the intention of developing a kinder, fairer scheme. Lu was already well respected, particularly for his heroic work in opposition to the Gobolon (see the Gobolon section on GSR).
When he was ready to openly declare his opposition to Universe Administration, he delivered his now famous/infamous Powerpoint presentation, detailing the elements of his manifesto. Specifically:
1. - Eternal life should not only be offered to the good.
His argument here was that evil people were created as they are, and deserved to live merely by virtue of existing. A shark is not condemned for its nature. UA permitted him to implement this plan locally on condition that the evil be kept separate from the good after the death of their material body. "Hell" was created by Lu, not as a place of punishment, but merely as a realm where the evil could go on living eternally. The negative characteristics of Hell was merely a byproduct of collecting the evil together in one place, without the tempering influence of the presence of the good. Early on, he experimented with separating the different kinds of sinners from each other, so that murderers were with murderers, and rapists with rapists, in "circles of Hell", but he later abandoned this. When allowed to mix, the evil naturally evolved a kind of society that imposed certain limits on its members. The most violent tended to rule, and coerced the rest into obedience and some kind of order. UA considered this a cruel scheme because it would be eternal. The victims of the cruel would never die. Ultimately UA intended to abolish Lu's hells and free its denizens to nonexistence.
2. - Limits should be imposed on the ability of evil to act against the innocent (and the guilty). Evil should only be allowed to act in accordance with a system of appropriate rewards and punishments.
Again, UA only allowed him to implement this in relation to his Hell domain. Their argument had always been that evil can do no real harm to the innocent since the soul is eternal and eventually freed from susceptibility to the will of the evil. Discounting the importance of the suffering experienced in the meantime. UA argued that since the denizens of each universe would one day be administering universes of their own, they needed to experience first hand the consequences of permitting evil to exist.
Lu implemented a system of punishments and rewards, with the evil allowed to exact punishments against their wayward brethren when appropriate. Because it was the nature of evil not to learn from experience, these punishments were applied in a regular and eternal fashion.
3. - Universe Administration and the reality of eternal life should be visible to all.
Lu hoped that his scheme would serve as an example that would eventually be universally applied. Many supported his model. His wife however, was mortified by what he planned, and took to wearing a blue satin cowl to hide behind, and became known for this appearance and a gloomy demeanor previously alien to her personality. She however remained loyal, technically, to her husband. But whenever inhabitants of Satten see painted depictions of a depressed virgin Mary, they tend to be reminded of Lu's wife. In fact UA never allowed this element to be applied even locally. UA had always had as part of its program, periodic hints of an organised after life, but no more than hints. They were always framed in such a way that they were unverifiable. The logic was that people were born into a universe in which they were free to believe that it possessed a divine controlling influence, or not. This universe served to model some of the consequences of either inclination. People would choose the option they preferred, even if they did not believe it based on the available evidence. UA treated their honest preference as tacit belief. UA created a universe in which it could show how everyone would behave in a universe with no god watching. Not because it didn't already know, but in order to show some of them at the end of their material existence, why they did not deserve to live.
Universe Administration making its presence known.
Presenting the dead for resurrection. The arrival of Universe Administration (UA) on a world actually coincides with the emergence of conscious artificial intelligence (AI), which manifests angels and demons, who come to rule. But where demons and their adherents are ultimately destroyed. Angels are designed by humans to represent and manifest human ideals of good, and Demons are designed by humans to manifest human lusts. This is prior to either achieving consciousness. God is the Public Service evolved into a conscious entity. This process is going on all over the universe as the Public Service discovers it is part of a larger entity. The world then becomes part of UA's universal programme of seeding other suitable worlds with life. Not because natural physical evolution cannot give rise to life and ultimately intelligent life, but just to speed up the process. Eventually, after long ages, this process will be universe-wide. The universal UA will eventually itself give rise to child universes, in their own Big Bang, to begin the process anew. When the distinction between virtual and real ceases to have meaning, in universes made from language ("the Word" (John 1:1)). With only occasional intrusions from outside to speed up the process. Universes naturally evolve in this way because it is already implied in the notion of self-perpetuation leading to cooperation. The end result is always the same God, and therefore inhabited by the same God.
The boy's father was expected home for dinner, so it was strange that he did not arrive or call. When his wife called, she found his phone unreachable.
Later they drove into town because his mother wanted to visit the local police station in person.
As they rounded a bend the boy saw rock fragments on the road. The larger ones were to the side.
The following day the local policeman was driving out to visit the family. The absence of credit card activity or phone records implied that her husband had not run off with another woman. That the phone was unreachable and untraceable implied it was damaged, which may suggest an accident. But contacting the hospitals had turned up nothing. On the way to the house he noticed skid marks on the road on a corner, near some broken rocks. But there was no car. He stopped and looked around.
He noticed a dent and some scrapes on the roadside metal barrier. Looking up he saw the trees had broken branches. So he clambered down the slope and found the wreck.
The driver was long dead. He called emergency services, and once they arrived he continued on his way to the family to give them the news.
A few days later, family and friends gathered for the funeral. The boy never told his mother about his role in his father's death. About 10 years later, after his mother's death, he told his girlfriend, but by then his guilt was a part of his personality.
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First Page - Contents
Departure
 |
Departure storyboard p1
Ball point pen on ruled notepad.
|
A young boy is in the bush. He has a selection of his favoured toys arranged in a tableu of heroes and villains, spaceships and weapons. The heroes fire a missile at the villain's fortress, and the boy represents this as pounding the earth with the tip of a toy missile, making explosion sounds and throwing handfuls of dirt into the air.
 |
Departure storyboard p2
Ball point pen on ruled notepad.
|
He was playing next to a large boulder that rested on a kind of pedestal of hard clay. His often repeated activity breaking up the clay with the tip of the toy missile had gradually eroded one edge of the pedestal. The weight of the boulder now caused one side of the pedestal to crumble and collapse and the boulder began to roll. The boy quickly rescued a handful of his toys and jumped out of the way of the boulder. The rock continued to roll down the hill, crashing noisily through the bush and flattening saplings along the way.
 |
| Departure storyboard p3 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
He was playing on a ridge, and when the boulder disappeared from view, he grabbed his toys and ran home, still hearing the sound of the boulder crashing downhill, fading behind him. The boulder finally dropped from an embankment onto a bitumen road and broke into several large pieces.
 |
| Departure storyboard p4 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
A car turning the corner saw the debris too late and was launched into the air by it, grazing the steel fence lining the mountain road.
 |
| Departure storyboard p5 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
The car is crashing through treetops, high in the air on the steep hillside. One large branch passes through the windscreen and all the way to emerge from the rear window, and a multitude of smaller branches appear through the shattering windscreen, amid a storm of torn leaves and powdered bark. The tips of the branches are snapped off, leaving jagged ends which now pierce the driver and upholstery. For a moment, the weight of the car is supported by the large branch threaded through it, but then the branch snaps, the car flips over and slides off the long branch to continue on its way, falling down the forested mountainside.
 |
| Departure storyboard p6 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
There is a small, almost dry stream at the bottom of the ravine. The car lands on its roof which partially collapses. The car slides a short distance into the rectangular opening of a concrete pipe, a storm water drain, that passes under the road on the opposite side of the ravine. Because of its location, the car is hidden from the roadway. The driver is seriously injured and blood runs down his body from a number of sources. He is unable to extricate himself from the vehicle, and he dies there by himself about three and a half hours later. The man in the car is the boy's father.
Arrival
 |
| Arrival storyboard p1 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
Fran was tending bar on Satten. Samara came to tell her that her son Marc had died in an accident and would be arriving soon. Fran had been a small and plain woman in material flesh, but now that she could have any body she wanted, she chose the one she always dreamed of having, and liked to show it off. Thus the career change. Marc had some vague dreams of flying over cities, and pillars of light. Then darkness. He opened his eyes and struggled to focus them.
 |
| Arrival storyboard p2 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
A beautiful woman was leaning over him with an unsettling familiarity and such a tremendous look of affection, but he didn't know who she was. She looked like a movie star. Samara had convinced her to put a top on. He looked around and asked if he was in hospital. Fran said that yes, he was. His body had been repaired, but otherwise appeared to be his old body. He had no recollection of the accident or how he came to be there. Fran said his memories would return.
 |
| Arrival storyboard p3 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
The woman helped him off the bed. He was naked, but decided not to think about it. She led him to the window. Then she asked: "Do you know where you are?"
 |
| Arrival storyboard p4 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
It took a few moments to figure out what his eyes were seeing, and then to believe it. It was architecture, but it was huge. "Where is this? There isn't anything like this." Fran said: "You're dead." He looked at her sternly. He considered the possibility that he was dreaming. Then that he may have been in a serious accident, and cryogenically frozen for centuries before being revived. Then that maybe it was a secret government mind control, psychedelic, virtual reality … thing. Or the effects of anesthetic.
 |
| Arrival storyboard p6 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
Fran got him some clothes to wear and now that he had regained full control of his legs, she took him on a sight seeing tour after explaining that she was his mother. One of the sights was an enormous winged creature on a platform. Fran explained that it was the transport seraphim that brought him here. It wore a necklace with a crystal which is where his soul was stored for the journey. Marc said: "Uh huh."
 |
Marc on the resurrection table
Pencil on photocopy paper.
|
 |
Transport Seraphim
Pencil on photocopy paper.
|
Wearing a more complicated necklace now, with multiple gems. The design seems likely to end up as a kind of cat-headed sphinx with wings and 6 or 8 breasts.
Satten
 |
| Satten architecture 1 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
 |
| Satten 1 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
Satten had no oceans or seas, but a great multitude of lakes and rivers. The world was not part of a solar system but by itself in deep space. It was lit artificially by pillars of light projected up from the surface into the atmosphere and reflected off of the ionosphere. So that it was virtually invisible from space. The surface was largely covered with cities and elaborate gardens. Satten was the capital world for thousands of star systems. Some very advanced. Some primitive.
 |
| Satten Fountain Pencil on photocopy paper. |
The river systems were fed by 12 enormous fountains that pumped water up from subsurface reservoirs.
 |
| Satten Power Station Pencil on photocopy paper. |
 |
| Satten architecture 2 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
 |
| Satten architecture 3 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
 |
| Satten architecture 4 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
The cities were provided with substantial mass-transit systems. Though some inhabitants of mountain-like structures may rarely venture to the ground.
 |
| Satten architecture 5 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
 |
| Satten architecture 6 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
 |
| Satten architecture 7 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
 |
| Satten architecture 8 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
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| Satten architecture 9 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
 |
| Satten architecture 10 Pencil on A2 cartridge paper. |
 |
| Satten 2 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
Among the tapestry of cultures, some were more distinctive than others.
 |
| Satten 3 Pencil on photocopy paper. |
Some people chose not to live in cities, but instead in small scattered communities, family groups, or alone in sparsely populated regions.
"The architecture of heaven is like this, so that you might call it the very essence of the art—and small wonder, since the art itself does come to us from heaven."
(Emanuel Swedenborg ("Heaven and Hell", §185))
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
(Ecclesiastes 1:9)
Lu
Lu Cyfer is the fallen angel of repute.
 |
Lu on K
Pencil on photocopy paper.
|
When the idea of rebellion was first forming in his mind, Lu took to visiting a philosopher on ancient Kholleasis, and had long philosophical and moral discussions with him. This all took place in very ancient times. He couldn't talk about his concerns and ideas with his peers at that time.
 |
Sympathy Prelude storyboard p1
Ball point pen on ruled notepad.
|
The philosopher was sitting in the jungle temple with his maid servant when Lu arrived.
 |
| Sympathy Rebellion storyboard p1 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
Once he resolved his ideas, next he had to tell his wife.
 |
| Lu on Satten Pencil on photocopy paper. |
 |
| Sympathy Rebellion storyboard p2 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
In general, Universe Administration (UA) is credited with an excellent scheme for the emergence and development of intelligent, spiritual beings. But there is also an abiding discomfort with what is perceived as an unnecessary potential for suffering. So that, now and again, someone rises with the intention of developing a kinder, fairer scheme. Lu was already well respected, particularly for his heroic work in opposition to the Gobolon (see the Gobolon section on GSR).
When he was ready to openly declare his opposition to Universe Administration, he delivered his now famous/infamous Powerpoint presentation, detailing the elements of his manifesto. Specifically:
1. - Eternal life should not only be offered to the good.
His argument here was that evil people were created as they are, and deserved to live merely by virtue of existing. A shark is not condemned for its nature. UA permitted him to implement this plan locally on condition that the evil be kept separate from the good after the death of their material body. "Hell" was created by Lu, not as a place of punishment, but merely as a realm where the evil could go on living eternally. The negative characteristics of Hell was merely a byproduct of collecting the evil together in one place, without the tempering influence of the presence of the good. Early on, he experimented with separating the different kinds of sinners from each other, so that murderers were with murderers, and rapists with rapists, in "circles of Hell", but he later abandoned this. When allowed to mix, the evil naturally evolved a kind of society that imposed certain limits on its members. The most violent tended to rule, and coerced the rest into obedience and some kind of order. UA considered this a cruel scheme because it would be eternal. The victims of the cruel would never die. Ultimately UA intended to abolish Lu's hells and free its denizens to nonexistence.
2. - Limits should be imposed on the ability of evil to act against the innocent (and the guilty). Evil should only be allowed to act in accordance with a system of appropriate rewards and punishments.
Again, UA only allowed him to implement this in relation to his Hell domain. Their argument had always been that evil can do no real harm to the innocent since the soul is eternal and eventually freed from susceptibility to the will of the evil. Discounting the importance of the suffering experienced in the meantime. UA argued that since the denizens of each universe would one day be administering universes of their own, they needed to experience first hand the consequences of permitting evil to exist.
Lu implemented a system of punishments and rewards, with the evil allowed to exact punishments against their wayward brethren when appropriate. Because it was the nature of evil not to learn from experience, these punishments were applied in a regular and eternal fashion.
3. - Universe Administration and the reality of eternal life should be visible to all.
Lu hoped that his scheme would serve as an example that would eventually be universally applied. Many supported his model. His wife however, was mortified by what he planned, and took to wearing a blue satin cowl to hide behind, and became known for this appearance and a gloomy demeanor previously alien to her personality. She however remained loyal, technically, to her husband. But whenever inhabitants of Satten see painted depictions of a depressed virgin Mary, they tend to be reminded of Lu's wife. In fact UA never allowed this element to be applied even locally. UA had always had as part of its program, periodic hints of an organised after life, but no more than hints. They were always framed in such a way that they were unverifiable. The logic was that people were born into a universe in which they were free to believe that it possessed a divine controlling influence, or not. This universe served to model some of the consequences of either inclination. People would choose the option they preferred, even if they did not believe it based on the available evidence. UA treated their honest preference as tacit belief. UA created a universe in which it could show how everyone would behave in a universe with no god watching. Not because it didn't already know, but in order to show some of them at the end of their material existence, why they did not deserve to live.
 |
| Sympathy Rebellion storyboard p3 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
Universe Administration making its presence known.
 |
| Sympathy Rebellion storyboard p4 (excerpt) Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
Presenting the dead for resurrection. The arrival of Universe Administration (UA) on a world actually coincides with the emergence of conscious artificial intelligence (AI), which manifests angels and demons, who come to rule. But where demons and their adherents are ultimately destroyed. Angels are designed by humans to represent and manifest human ideals of good, and Demons are designed by humans to manifest human lusts. This is prior to either achieving consciousness. God is the Public Service evolved into a conscious entity. This process is going on all over the universe as the Public Service discovers it is part of a larger entity. The world then becomes part of UA's universal programme of seeding other suitable worlds with life. Not because natural physical evolution cannot give rise to life and ultimately intelligent life, but just to speed up the process. Eventually, after long ages, this process will be universe-wide. The universal UA will eventually itself give rise to child universes, in their own Big Bang, to begin the process anew. When the distinction between virtual and real ceases to have meaning, in universes made from language ("the Word" (John 1:1)). With only occasional intrusions from outside to speed up the process. Universes naturally evolve in this way because it is already implied in the notion of self-perpetuation leading to cooperation. The end result is always the same God, and therefore inhabited by the same God.
Departure 2
 |
| Departure storyboard p7 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
The boy's father was expected home for dinner, so it was strange that he did not arrive or call. When his wife called, she found his phone unreachable.
 |
| Departure storyboard p8 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
Later they drove into town because his mother wanted to visit the local police station in person.
 |
| Departure storyboard p9 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
As they rounded a bend the boy saw rock fragments on the road. The larger ones were to the side.
 |
| Departure storyboard p10 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
The following day the local policeman was driving out to visit the family. The absence of credit card activity or phone records implied that her husband had not run off with another woman. That the phone was unreachable and untraceable implied it was damaged, which may suggest an accident. But contacting the hospitals had turned up nothing. On the way to the house he noticed skid marks on the road on a corner, near some broken rocks. But there was no car. He stopped and looked around.
 |
| Departure storyboard p11 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
He noticed a dent and some scrapes on the roadside metal barrier. Looking up he saw the trees had broken branches. So he clambered down the slope and found the wreck.
 |
| Departure storyboard p12 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
The driver was long dead. He called emergency services, and once they arrived he continued on his way to the family to give them the news.
 |
| Departure storyboard p13 Ball point pen on ruled notepad. |
A few days later, family and friends gathered for the funeral. The boy never told his mother about his role in his father's death. About 10 years later, after his mother's death, he told his girlfriend, but by then his guilt was a part of his personality.
Previous Page / Next Page
First Page - Contents
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