I publish here the second short story of my anthology of short stories "Masquerade of Cycle of Existence". Originally, I wrote it in 1994, the whole story is a mere fiction. For nowadays nobody is able to return to Atlantis any more, let your fantasy to fascinate you, and soar with me to the extinct, fabulous age! I depict in the story its catastrophic time of the end what is strange despite familiar, at same time. I hope, the vortex that was the peculiarity of the sunken under water, world would be interesting for you. Have a good reading time!

I travelled an adventurous path until I came to the following discovery: I was the last Pope of Atlantis, the thirteenth Arckloki [1], who did not save this continent from destruction.

Let us start with the fact that I am not religious in the present: I am an atheist. I have a materialistic worldview in my genes – at the same time, my grandmother's wonderful abilities had a double effect on me all the time. She was the last "witch": she knew the herbs, the antidote to evil eye, the spells against evil curse, and she was also able to see the future. She played cards, read the future from floor or from the swing of a golden wedding ring hanging from a single hair. Even the flight of birds has always carried meaning to her. She understood the language of animals, talked to grass, trees and flowers.

All this comes together in me today, when I myself also talk to animals, flowers, trees, I see people differently, and if necessary, I can see the future, the past, find the cause of troubles...

Things of life-changing importance usually appear in my dreams. Thus a life of mine of long ago first appeared in my dream, which took place somewhere in the East, maybe, in the eighteenth century India.

So I saw for the first time how Atlantis was destroyed. Later, I was able to see it with time travel, as well.

Before the catastrophe broke, Atlantis was a prosperous, vibrant continent with exquisite culture. Cities were built, stone houses, palaces and observatories towered in geometrically determined places. Roads were prepared for the carriages; paved, wide roads protected with walls encompassed the whole of Atlantis. Horse-drawn and ox-drawn carts and carriages travelled; and with a faint sound, the 2-4-6-8 seat, antimatter-powered, today we say, cars rolled by.

Our spacecraft discovered another planets, our rockets were able to perform a hyperspace jump. Our services were similar to those of today's society: baths, modern hospitals were built, and our surgeons performed complicated surgeries.

Our women were equal to men. On their feet they wore sandals, the decorative corset of which varied according to their position in the social ladder: that of the lokanas [2] had a crimson cord that reached the knees, that of the noble women was canary yellow and could be tied to the middle of the legs, and that of the common people was green, even ending directly above their ankles. Their clothes were colourful, richly pleated, loose materials: green, red, yellow, blue, purple and white. Each dress could only be of one colour, which women and men wore in the manner of a shroud later called a toga. On their left shoulders a huge brooch held the material together, and the women richly bejewelled their arms, ears, and hair. Silver and gold earrings, bronze alloy earrings for the poor, hair clips, golden chains, brooches and belts, anklets and bracelets glittered and sparkled in the sunlight on the streets of the capital of Atlantis. In the center, especially many unmarried, noble ladies walked every day, I liked to watch them come and go in my free time.

In the city center rose the main building, which can be called a church today: the observatory. A sea of stairs led up, steep, the building itself stood with many towers, and suitable for consultation inside: I used to summon the lokis and lokanas here, and from here the universal library opened. We stored information about the knowledge on microdisks (today: chips). Only the initiates had access to this. They also differed from the others in that they could only enter the observatory in white clothes, on other occasions they could wear any colour of their choice, but their clothes had to have a wide white stripe running through the front and back, from top to bottom, so that their affiliation would be clear.

The observatory was surrounded by smaller buildings, where the material of the encyclopaedias was collected, classified and reproduced by the priests. The market was located on the left side of this center. At that time, our continents were connected to each other by a narrow neck of land – there were places where today's continents belonged together, e.g. North and South America and Africa, including Atlantis with a strip of land, and to which today's Eurasia was connected from the east.

As a result, a huge, lively trade developed between vendors from different places. Bananas, lemons, oranges, ripe figs, dates and kiwis, southern and northern fruits, plants, whale fat and seafood were poured in astonishing abundance on today's separate continents.

Barter trade developed, where merchants carried their goods from the four cardinal directions.

Roads led to the market from all directions, along which the residential buildings rose in ever-widening circles. They were built of stone, with small gardens and roof terraces.

Many smaller and larger suburbs were also organized around the capital of Atlantis, in which the units that supplied us with industrial products produced.

Finally, the traveller came to separate areas of livestock keepers and farmers, if he was curious. In the place of today's deserts, irrigated agriculture took place, the machinery worked.

Here rocked the first cradle of earthly intelligent beings, of humans. The individuals among men who had attained certain emotional and intellectual development received learning, knowledge and power here, that could only be passed on to a select few.

These chosen ones were recognized by certain signs that are now considered miraculous. For example, about the change in their aura; their nervous system qualified them for mediating the world invisible by eyes, namely,  today so to speak, to become a medium. These were prepared to receive the knowledge by the priests who possessed the knowledge at all times, the masters of the loki, the arcklokis.

There were also female priests, they were the lokanas. But let us not imagine them as today's priests, monks, nuns who took vows of celibacy and monasticism! These people were outwardly ordinary and lived ordinary lives. They had a choice: they could have a family or they could live alone.

The Atlantean epoch, on the other hand, could claim only one pope in each generation: this pope, the Arckloki, possessed the highest knowledge, in his hands the knowledge was concentrated: medical, surgical, genetic engineering procedures, astronomy, mathematics, astrology, aeronautical and aeronautical knowledge, physics, biology and chemistry, and in addition to this, some surplus: he coordinated and controlled all the priests and priestesses. He alone kept a relationship with the power that permeates everything and is inherent in everything, like the ocean in a drop of water, which gave the answer, helped and directed everything.

The arckloki was the master who possessed all  knowledge and power, and today we would say that he was the embodiment of the divine essence on Earth in a human body. He had no real gender, he was neutral, androgynous. This served to ensure that he was not diverted from the spiritual path and his task by any human frailty, such as love.

But he did not – nor could he have forbidden – his priests to practice love and what accompanies it. Well, the arckloki was always a chosen person who was already predicted by astrological calculations when and where he would be born. He was taken away from his parents' house at a very early age and among the priests, and grew up next to the arkloki, who held power, under his active control – straight into power.

He received power symbolically by taking over the papal insignia of Atlantis. These included a mantle made of a mixture of gold and white, as well as a golden crown with a forehead decorated with a lily and a sword. They also included the scepter and the lightsaber, which signified spirituality, and the golden throne, marked with the insignia of the lily and the sword.

In my life today, I know the man who was my master pope in Atlantis. By that time, he had already incarnated twice, when I became the thirteenth, the last of the arcklokis. I took over the knowledge from him, I walked the spiritual path leading to the power, and fulfilled my abilities under his guidance. At that time, these permeated the entire world system.

At that time, another little child was raised with me in Atlantis, who also acquired a high level of knowledge, but  was not a candidate for the papacy. She became a priest. At that time, she was a woman, and I was androgynous. She admired me, looked up on me, and if it was permissible, she loved me – so hse became my subordinate priest, she always did everything unconditionally, and I liked her and it was good to know that she was by my side.

My time has not yet been completed in the service of men on Earth that I undertook in order to direct them in accordance with the divine will. On a beautiful warm summer evening, my ministering sibling priest and I were sitting in the observatory, looking at the city below us, listening to the pulsating murmur of vehicles, carriages, and walking, milling crowds – suddenly, on a strange impulse that I myself did not quite understand, I examined the constellations appearing in the sky. My astrological knowledge indicated that a celestial body, a comet that has not yet been seen, will fall on our Earth, and at the same time we will be attacked by beings from the other world who are intelligent, bloodthirsty, and whose nuclear and other weapons will set in a blaze and destroy our continent and almost our entire planet. I immediately showed my clever and beautiful lokana the constellation.

With a lot of worries, we started to calculate the expected degree of destruction and the temporal aspects of the destruction of the atom. We had worked shoulder to shoulder on rescue plans for two whole weeks, day and night. After this, we had one more year left until the expected catastrophe, to carve the knowledge on as many clay tablets as possible to escape to distant points of the Earth.

The lokis and lokanas were working day and night on the task, and I organized, counted, and sent them on our aircraft to find a suitable terrain for survival. The only thing I did not have time left was to organize to save the people, too much would have had to be transported to move them, there were not enough airships.

Besides, every arckloki has been given the right to err. My great, guilty mistake, which involved a series of transgressions, was this: I did not have enough time and strength to save the people, the common people. And I committed a betrayal that still accompanies and haunts me even today: my beautiful, loyal and clever companion, my lokana, expected me to save her, I knew it from her vibrations. But when the moment came, I sat alone in my aircraft, rose alone to the height of the clouds and then higher, and watched alone as volcanoes erupted after the comet struck and a tsunami swept away the houses. The blue, yellow, red, and white dresses of screaming, running around women flashed before me, who holding crying babies in their arms, run away from the blow. Small children were running desperately after their mothers. In the confusion of the fugitives, I also saw my beautiful lokana. I sensed that she saw a betrayal in my behavior, and then even the atomic bomb struck. The mushroom cloud then covered everything.

I sat confidently in front of the control panel of my aircraft, knowing that I could not get into trouble. I am enough high above them. I just did not count on atomic radiation. In the end, this caused my doom.

Slowly, majestically, the tropical continent sank, burying man and animal, buildings and treasures. But I knew that the most important treasure the knowledge was already in a safe place, and I ensured development at the cost of temporary difficulties.

Suddenly, thanks to my special abilities, I sensed that radioactivity had nestled in my body. I knew: in this life, my role was over. I slowly descended to the site of the vanished continent and plunged my vehicle into the cool waters of the ocean.

Thus ended my life with Atlantis, and thus began my adventurous life, the next epoch, in which I no longer remembered who I once was.

And how could I tell you this now? After the dream, the oracle, I saw the same thing on a time travel. Today, in my current life, I have to clear off this hideous transgression forever.

And then let come the darkness. Let come the light. For the two are only opposite poles of the same force...

Written: Summer 1994, by J. W. Cassandra
Translated: 12 / 06. 2025., by J. W. Cassandra

[1] The word 'arckloki' on one side has its origin from the Ancient Greek 'arkhon' – Guards or Lords of the material world which chain the souls to the matter; on another side, the second part of the word derives from Latin locus, loci – 'place', space, rank, authority, gentility. In a transferred sense the archloki means 'Lord of the Word', in another aspect 'Pope'.

[2] Lokana is a priestess in the story, with high rank.

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