Infinity Wanderers 11: Infinity Wanderers, #11

INFINITY WANDERERS

#11

EDITED BY GREY WOLF

Infinity Wanderers issue 11

Edited by Grey Wolf

Cover art by Robin Stacey

Fiction, Poetry and Artwork: Copyright remains with original authors

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author or from the publisher (as applicable).

INFINITY WANDERERS

ISSUE 11

CONTENTS

Breakdown - - - Ali Ashhar

Greek Fire - - - Matias Travieso-Diaz

Pembrokeshire Farm Holiday: April 1980 - - - Jon N. Davies

Night Blues - - - Matthew Spence

Poetry - - - Ben Macnair

Arming Our Enemies: An American Tradition - - - L.G. Parker

Poetry - - - Grey Wolf

Art - - - Davyd Meyrick Griffiths

Book Review: The Governess of Greenmere by Paul Leone

On Writing 'The Governess of Greenmere' - - - Paul Leone

20th - - - Rick Barooah

Money Problems - - - Nicholas Woods

A Glimpse of Heaven in NW Devon - - - Brian G. Davies

Poetry - - - Paweł Markiewicz

Good Enough: Part 1 - - - Drew Concord

The Finest Purveyor of Dreams on Titan - - - Ruth E. Thomas

Yob - - - E. F. Hay

Poems from 'Objectives' - - - Gary Beck

Hannibal ad Portas - - - L. G. Parker

Book Promotion: White Bear, Red Rose - - - Corina Apostu

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY

OF

DAME JINTY NELSON

(Professor Janet Nelson)

(1942 - 14 October 2024)

An inspirational teacher

and

Excellent historian

(photo from Wikipedia)

Breakdown

Ali Ashhar

The gas stove lies

vacant;

the inhabitants wade through

a relentless season,

the open air prison

smothers the free oxygen;

the hospital and patients

vie for the inevitable,

the birds seek

a safe passage across the hazy horizon;

for, the faraway border seems like a heaven

the underlying screams in the camp

propagate through different media

and platforms;

satellites telecast a man-made glitch to billions—

the signal of humanity surreptitiously breaks down.

Ali Ashhar

Ali Ashhar is a poet, short story writer and columnist from Jaunpur, India. He is the author of two poetry collections: Mirror of Emotions (Notion Press, 2021) and Across the Shore (Zorba Books, 2024). He tweets @AliAshhar11

Greek Fire

Matias Travieso-Diaz

History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe.

Frank Herbert

The acrid smell of burning wood and papyrus penetrated Iahmesuti’s nostrils and forced the sleeping boy to wake up. He rose from his straw mat and, as he walked the few paces from his quarters to the main hall of the Mouseion, he immediately choked from the smoke and trembled in terror as orange flames engulfed his workplace, the Great Library of Alexandria.

Iahmesuti, a fifteen-year-old slave, was one of the clerks that supported the upkeep of the library’s scroll collection. He was one of three clerks assigned to the epistemi (science) portion of the collection, which included numerous treatises on mathematics, science, and technology. He had been taught the rudiments of written Greek so he could recognize the identification labels on the outside of each scroll, but was ignorant of the contents of any of the manuscripts.

Iahmesuti ran into the room that held the epistemi scrolls and picked up an armful of manuscripts, intending to move them to a safe place and return to retrieve others. As he reached the outside, he became aware of the magnitude of the disaster: the Mouseion was in flames, as were several surrounding buildings. The entire port area of Alexandria’s Great Harbor, from the docks all the way to the buildings in that part of the city, had caught fire.

Iahmesuti realized that even outdoors he was in danger, as burning debris was being carried by the wind; returning to the library would probably have been suicidal. Still holding six scrolls across his chest he ran wildly towards the southern quarter of Alexandria, where the poor Egyptians lived. He was struck painfully in the shoulder by a sliver of burning timber, but kept running and reached safety in a narrow alley out of harm’s way. As he struggled to catch his breath, he was able to laboriously read by the light of the moon the titles of the scrolls he had rescued: they were the treatises labelled Belopoeica (On War Machines) and Automata (On Automatic Machines.) Iahmesuti had no idea what the writings on those scrolls meant.

***

The fire that consumed much of the Alexandria port area lingered on for several days, and by the time Iahmesuti attempted to return to the Great Library he had learned the probable cause of the conflagration. It appeared that a Roman general named Caesar was waging war on pharaoh Ptolemy XIII and had barricaded himself in the royal palace. Besieged in the palace by Egyptian troops loyal to Ptolemy, Caesar had sought to remove a blockade imposed by the Ptolemaic naval forces stationed at the Alexandria harbor by setting those ships afire. The fires had spread ashore and had reached the Mouseion and the library it housed, partially destroying them.

Iahmesuti attempted to reenter the Mouseion but was stopped by Egyptian soldiers patrolling the area. I need to return these scholarly writings that I rescued from the library he pleaded, gesturing at the scrolls he held in his arms. He was rebuffed by a guard: The Mouseion has been evacuated and all its occupants sent away to safety. There is no one left to whom you can return those scrolls.

Iahmesuti became confused.  What am I going to do with them? Throw them away or sell them for kindling replied the guard dismissively. Many scrolls have been lost already. What difference does it make whether these get to burn outside or inside?

***

 The chaos generated by the fire at the Mouseion opened an opportunity for Iahmesuti to seek his freedom. Prior to that night, he had given little thought to escaping from captivity; as a slave under the supervision of Neferhotep, the manager of the Mouseion property, Iahmesuti was often beaten and abused, but otherwise he was treated as well as a slave could expect. Now, for the first time, he pondered whether and how he could get away. There was desert in all directions east and west of Alexandria, so an escape by land would be perilous; on the other hand, if he sought refuge in a faraway temple and agreed to become indented to its service, custom dictated that he would be able to evade capture.

With that thought in mind, Iahmesuti took off south from Alexandria, following the Nile until reaching Heliopolis a week later. Before he left, Iahmesuti sold the Automata scrolls to an artisan who removed the writings and resold the rolls as new. The proceeds of the sale kept the boy alive for the duration of his trip south. 

Upon arrival in Heliopolis, Iahmesuti went into the famed temple of the sun god Re-Horakhty, offered to serve as an attendant, and was accepted. He became a minor priest and lived at the temple the rest of his days. Upon his death, his meager possessions were stored in a cubicle pending destruction, but somehow were overlooked. They included the Belopoeica scrolls, which he had kept in memory of the early years of his life as a slave.

***

Centuries passed and the cult of the sun god fell out of fashion and its temples went into disuse. Four centuries after the period of Iahmesuti’s stay, zealots seeking to implement the anti-pagan policies of the Christian Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius sacked the virtually abandoned Re-Horakhty temple and carted all its potentially valuable contents to Constantinople for disposition. One of the looters discovered the rotting remains of Iahmesuti’s possessions, including the three Belopoeica scrolls. The scrolls were in good condition, since the dry climate had protected the papyri from water or mold damage, so the looter added the scrolls to the temple belongings to be shipped away.

The scrolls were given a cursory initial review by the Emperor’s clerical staff and would have been tossed away except that the subject of the work, weapons of war, suggested it could contain some useful information. Thus, the scrolls were delivered to the imperial army, where they apparently were found to be of little use but worthy of preservation and were consigned to storage in the army’s archives.

Two more centuries passed. Towards the end of the seventh century CE, the Eastern Roman Empire was consumed in a struggle for survival against the all-conquering Muslim forces that