Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Future Lovecraft

This artifact, showing evidence of prolonged exposure to the conditions of space, was recovered by Professor Amadou Sangare in a folk market outside the New Lagos Desolation Zone, although its true origins remain unknown. The inscription is etched in a dead language, not native to Africa, believed to have once been a trade language prevalent on Terra. Translation has revealed the meaning of the prayer poem, though elements such as rhyme and metre have been lost in transition.

The plaque bears a prayer offered by early starfarers to the Elder Gods, pleading for protection and safe passage between planets and star systems. The crude mysticism and superstition once applied to space travel parallels the rudimentary nature of technology and knowledge of that bygone epoch. Note the childish optimism expressed in the verses, reflecting a primitive belief that the long-dead Elder Gods yet possessed any influence amongst the stars. This artifact represents both an infantile step in starfaring history and a remnant from the Dark Ages, when mortals yet doubted, and even challenged, the supremacy of the Great Old Ones.

The flapping of heavy, grey wings against the membranous thickness of the void

Echoes in the thundering roar of our thermonuclear heart, pounding against its carbon bonds.

Humble are we who sail the satin tapestry of night, ever on the verge

Of the Pit, where sleeping lies the Blind Idiot of all Oblivion.

May the sheen of Bast’s smile, though never so warm as upon her brood,

Find our voyage safe from the burning cold wrath of the aether.

Before Hypnos closes all eyes forevermore, for another day,

May we yet gaze with awe and horror unfettered.

Protect your servants from the ebon, bilious hearts that throb against the crystalline

Chains that bind them to the orbs and spheres that pulsate brightly in the

Eternally Yawning Gulfs. Their noxious, chromatic radiations pollute the

Eons with the foul beneficence of their Great Old Masters.

The narrow, blanched roads between worlds that our vessel travels overhang with

The looming, glassy canopy of galaxies and nebulae fertile with Three-Lobed Eyes.

They watch with a patience as icy as the void that cradles their bower.

Though our voices are mere flecks of cosmic dust adrift between eons,

Please heed this plea from your vassals, O Elder Lords.

May the dying light of the cosmos find our hull shining with the might and majesty

Of the vast shell that ferries Lord Nodens across his abyssal kingdom.

From the hearth fires of one sacred star to the next, may we lowly souls find safe passage,

And in our journeys, may we find comforting respite

Against the Old Ones who dream in their deathless slumber.

THE DOOR FROM EARTH

By Jesse Bullington

Jesse Bullingtonis the author of the novels The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and The Enterprise of Death . His short fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in various magazines, including Beneath Ceaseless Skies , Chiaroscuro , Jabberwocky , and Brain Harvest , as well as in anthologies such as Running with the Pack , The Best of All Flesh , The New Hero II , Robots vs. Zombies: This Means War, Historical Lovecraft , and Candle in the Attic Window . He currently resides in Colorado and can be found online at www.jessebullington.com.

WHEN PIPALUK, THE chief engineer of Hiurapaluk’s Peril Containment Plant, together with 12 of her most well-armed and efficient underlings, came at flickering, artificial dusk to seek the infamous Professori, Laila, in her amphibechanical facility on the lower-most substreet of the city’s underlevel, they were surprised, as well as disappointed, to find her absent.

Their surprise was due to the fact that Professori Laila had made much to-do about her expedition not taking place for another fortnight; all of Pipaluk’s plots against the Professori had hinged on there being sufficient time to gain the rest of the Quorum’s approval before confronting the rabble-rousing academic. They were disappointed because their formidable warrant, with symbolic fiery font glowing on an antique digital tablet, was now useless; and there seemed to be no earthly prospect of wiping the smug expression from Laila’s hairy face, to say nothing of confiscating her domestic warrens for the use of the Engineers Guild.

Ingeniøri Pipaluk was especially disappointed, for Laila was her chief rival in the Quorum’s science bloc, and was acquiring altogether too much fame and prestige among the Voormis of Mhu Thulan, that ultimate peninsula of the Grænland subcontinent. Pipaluk had been glad to receive certain evidence corroborating her suspicions that Laila’s expedition through the Eibon Gate could be catastrophic, and not just in terms of heightening the Professori’s already-dangerous popularity.

This evidence suggested that Laila was not, in fact, a devotee of the state-god, Tsathoggua, whose worship was incalculably older than the Voormi race. No, it seemed that the Professori instead paid tribute to Tsathoggua’s paternal uncle, Hziulquoigmnzhah, with whom the true god of the Voormis had suffered a falling-out sometime in the previous millennium or three. This schism, which had something to do with the fall of Humanity, or perhaps the rise of the Voormis of Grænland and sundry other peoples in sundry different places, had resulted in the sealing of the Eibon Gate.

Walling up the entryway between the worlds of the benevolent, bat-furred toad-god Tsathoggua and that of the much-less-attractive demon prince Hziulquoigmnzhah seemed a surefire means of reaffirming Tsathoggua’s favour. The Quorum’s vote on this matter had been unanimous, and so the pit where the portal was located was closed off using a variety of fail-safes, and then the whole area was surrounded in a series of airlocks, cultural heritage be damned. Until Professori Laila started in with her insane theories of interstellar harmony and pan-theological unification, no one had given any thought to reopening the portal of ultratelluric metal that lay buried in ruins of black gneiss beneath Mhu Thulan’s capital city.

Pipaluk had suspected the worst as soon as she discovered the Professori’s new laboratory was directly adjacent to the outermost airlock housing the gate to Cykranosh that the warlock Eibon had used to escape Earth in ancient times, if the mytho-historical record was to be given credence. Alas, the Quorum had dragged its feet, despite Pipaluk’s warnings, and now it was too late—she would have given her musk glands to kick the Provost in the kanaaks for postponing his vote as long as he had.

Pipaluk’s subgineers bustled about Laila’s laboratory in their glistening salamander-suits and, behind a tarp, they discovered where the Professori and her team of graduate students, clone servitors, and formless spawn had hacked into the municipal pipe that made up one of the facility’s walls and plugged in their plasmaborers. The tunnel they had excavated led—surprise surprise—out of the lab, through a mega-support column, and directly into the first airlock bay, the dull-metal doors towering some thirty meters tall over Pipaluk’s team.

“Airlock initially opened, Aggusti Second,” the voice of one of the subgineers crackled in Pipaluk’s pulsing, yellow bio-helm. “Breached on average twice daily each day since.”

“ Hymirbjarg ,” Pipaluk cursed, and several of her underlings grinned to themselves to hear their normally unflappable superior use such strong language. “I trust this is sufficient?”