Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
It was all unraveling, but it all felt so wrong all of a sudden. Passages from the text swirled over and over in my mind, and I found myself repeating snippets from S’s account.
The One uses him as a puppet, a vessel, but not an equal. The One speaks in the old language.
And a memory, a thought, a something, pushed to the surface, as though long buried.
“So be it,” whispered an ancient voice, as deep as the earth.
With every moment, I became more aware of the thread of Magic tightening around me, as if just waiting for me to work it all out. It was that same feeling I felt when I was around Dani, that pull of deep, deep water.
Was it dragging me under, too?
I still had so many more questions, and I needed more from S than what he could give me. So I went back to the Dawn Underground.
Once again, I ended up on the author’s page. I hovered over the link on the Order of Autumn.
A pagan mystery school of the Hellenistic period. Thought by some to be the original authors of the Book of Autumn.
A mystery school with strong political leanings that had to scatter and hide after their headquarters were burned.
There was an entire section of the forum devoted to them, folders full of old newspaper clippings and from old scholarly journals.
In his book Alchemical Foundations for the Digital Age, Elphabius Hobbs included a brutal recollection of their beheadings in the streets, of the ditches running red from their blood.
Then there was this essay from a philosophy textbook.
There is not much written about them. What we do have are fragments referenced in the works of later scholars, specifically in reference to “autumnus,” while having no connection to nature or the seasons.
In Iamblichus’s text On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, there is reference to the “… virtus dei autumnus.”* The context of the passage discusses how people “marveled at their capacity for silence.” The fragment is believed to be one of the most definitive references to the group, though symbols of them are decidedly more frequent, referenced by the number 191.
The findings have given rise to the theory that the Order of Autumn were Pythagoreans who didn’t disband as previously thought after the attack (it is unknown if Pythagoras survived the attack on his followers; some suggest he fled to Metapontum), but instead continued on in secret throughout the ages, their thoughts and beliefs evolving as the world did.
It is believed they worshipped numbers as Pythagoras did, that they believed God himself was the number of numbers.
Aristotle is said to have referenced the group in his two-book treatise on the Pythagoreans, though unfortunately those writings are lost to us. ?
Later, in an interview by the same author—
“If the Book of Autumn does in fact exist—and I’m not saying it does—that would make it perhaps one of the only surviving and legitimate accounts of the followers of Pythagoras or his teachings, as Pythagoras didn’t write any of his teachings down because they were meant to be kept secret.
It would be quite the discovery, an accounting of Pythagoras, one of the most controversial figures in history, a man whose legacy has ballooned through history to one of mythic proportions.
The teachings are nearly impossible to separate from Platonic philosophy, for Plato was much influenced by the Pythagoreans, as evidenced in his dialogues Phaedo and Timaeus, which are decidedly of Pythagorean philosophy.
The only teaching we know for certain belongs to Pythagoras was on the belief of the immortality of the soul, and of a soul’s transmigration to a new body upon the death of the old. ”
Apparently, there was even a resurgence in 1993. The headline was ANCIENT GREEK MYSTERY SCHOOL PROVOKES INTRIGUE, OBSESSION.
A bunch of pamphlets had been released, along with a cryptic message: Whoever could decode the message on the pamphlet would be initiated into the order and inducted into their mysteries.
For all of winter 1993, the forum was abuzz with people colluding to decode the symbols, to no avail.
Eventually, the whole thing was dismissed as a hoax, though there were still some threads on the site of stalwart users insisting they’d used the wrong cipher, that everyone had just translated it wrong.
And it hit me all at once.
How had I not realized it sooner?
The Order of Autumn, with their political leanings, the headquarters that burned down. S had even detailed the nightmares he’d had after the beheadings in the streets, spoke of the smoke that clogged his throat from their headquarters burning.
The Order of Autumn was the mystery school that S was a member of.
And if Basile had the book … If it was sitting in his office, of all places?
Well. I guess he wasn’t lying when he said they were more than just some math group.
I looked at my phone and opened Basile’s feeds one more time.
My phone was blowing up with notifications—I’d set it to alert me when new content of his dropped—and I also had push notifications from the Discord server owned by “the Basilites,” a group of avid Reality Paradox and Basile Samir fans.
They were going off, rapid-fire messages mixed with meme after meme.
sierraperez414: Did you see his new video????
amateurPlato: OMGGGGGGG
whatgoeskirdi: I knew it! I freaking knew it!! our boy is going to save the world. Things are really changing now. I can feel it.
amateurPlato: Do you think he will take me with him?
I opened Basile’s page. He’d released two new videos and uploaded them to all of his socials. The first was a teaser video telling people to “watch this space” for exciting new content hours prior. It was strangely serene. He was dressed all in white against a white background.
The second was the same background, same clothes.
In it, he seemed almost reverent, with his gaze reaching to the heavens.
He laughed, then looked straight at the camera.
“To all the nonbelievers, to all the people who have doubted me, I’m here to take my theory one step further.
Not only can I prove the existence of a parallel world, but I can also get to it. ”
Then the video feed cut off.
I looked over at Max, the skepticism plain in his eyes.
Sure, to some it might look like just another publicity stunt.
But to me it rang true. Especially with all our research, everything I’d read of S and Basile’s obsession with an invisible world living alongside ours, it was all starting to become clear.
I considered Basile’s “search for truth,” his Reality Paradox, his fixation on this parallel world, the world of Being. I started thinking of Basile’s belief in reincarnation, his ever-driving desire to perfect his soul, and slowly, slowly, the pieces started to fit themselves together in my brain.
I looked at Max, the answer settling like a weight in my stomach. “Phi Kat is the Order of Autumn.”