Amaranth, Lapis, and Luck

“The strings look lovely, Simon,” Mary said as she perused Simon’s white board, placed squarely in the middle of his office wall. “But if this is some conspiracy about a secret society of the wealthy elite, I am going to have to send you to the funny farm.”

              Simon sat behind his desk holding a piece of paper, barely visible behind the stacks of books. The floor was strewn about with notebook paper covered in diagrams and drawings, with lines connecting the words “amaranth,” “lapis lazuli,” and “Big Publishing.” His matted and unkempt hair, along with his messy beard, revealed the amount of time he locked himself in his office. To Mary’s annoyance, Simon had recently been given the job as head librarian and took full advantage of the opportunity to gluttonously devour books when he was done with his administrative duties. But about two weeks ago, he began to act distracted. When Mary and the other employees asked, he simply said it was nothing. But a few days after that, he locked himself inside his office with a collection of books that had been recently shipped to the library. He unlocked the door just that morning, and Mary, as one of the senior assistants, and an old flame, was unwillingly elected to confront Simon about his strange behavior.

“No,” Simon said as he ran his hand through his matted hair, “I don’t know why any wealthy elite would create a pattern of symbols in books that goes back so far.”

“What are you talking about? And why did you lock yourself in your office for three days? The rest of us are worried.”

“You can stop worrying,” Simon said, laying the page down and looking at Mary for the first time. “After today, everything should go back to normal.”

“Why ‘after today?’ What made things abnormal to begin with?”

“Blame my minoring in English,” Simon said with a sigh as he stood up and walked to the whiteboard. “A few weeks back, I picked out a few books of poetry that were recently sent to us; authors from the early 19th century who didn’t get much recognition. Names like ‘Nelly Conway,’ ‘Wesley Michaels,’ ‘Jean Alarie’ - names no one remembers. They were mediocre, but I noticed something,” Simon said as he pulled photos of flowers and a gemstone off the whiteboard. “There were, these,” he said, holding up the photos, “mentioned in each book at least once. Do you know what these are?”

He handed the photos to Mary. The red flowers seemed to hang down like a weeping willow from stalks, and the gemstone was speckled shades of blue.

“They look familiar, but I couldn’t name what they are. Why?”

“The flowers are amaranth, and the gem is a lapis lazuli.”

“So, blue and calming colors, and?”

“Remember I said to blame my English Minor? It’s the symbolism.”

“There is a link between amaranth flowers and lapis lazuli; then it makes perfect sense that if you read about one you read about the other.”

“Ever hear the phrase, ‘Once, is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern?’ But let’s say the bizarreness of three books of poetry from the same era of literature having the same symbols is an accident. I can accept that. That’s what I thought at first too. I even went out of my way to find other books with those symbols, just to prove that it was simply an accident. I went back to the 18^th century to look at poetry there, and sure, I found some. I was laughing at myself. A pattern of symbols in poetry is completely normal…” Simon’s voice trailed off as he walked back over to his desk and grabbed a large book.

“In poetry, it is normal,” he said as he held out the large volume to Mary. “But in a novel by another mediocre, no-name author? That’s a bit more than an accident. And to occur with other mediocre, no-name novels by other authors from different literary traditions,” he added holding up other books of various sizes, “I think we should escalate it to a coincidence.”

“Okay, but it’s still only a coincidence,” Mary declared, wanting to quell the manic look in Simon’s eyes. “And various authors from different centuries are going to mention flowers and gems randomly, it’s not some big conspiracy.”

“Coincidence becomes a pattern after a third event happens,” Simon said looking at Mary with a smile.

“What was the third?” Mary said cautiously, reaching for her phone.

Simon searched through the books on his desk for a moment, and grabbed two novels, a book of poetry, and what seemed to Mary to be an encyclopedia.

“These were written one year apart from each other by four different authors, and were all published by different companies, each a year apart. Read the fourth line on the fifth page of the first novel, the fifth line of the sixth page of the second and continue that pattern with the poetry and encyclopedia.”

Mary opened the books and found in each place that Simon directed, a mention of Amaranth. “That’s…” her jaw was slack, and she felt goosebumps run along her arms and back as she started to see the pattern.

“Lapis was harder to find a pattern for, but it’s found about halfway through each book. I didn’t feel the need to start counting those. Amaranth is mentioned further and further into each text and loops back around to the beginning after finding it as the last word of a book.” Simon walked over to his whiteboard, and traced a path, from where the photos were hung up, following the strings. “There’s the page and line numbers, the halfway point lapis, and all of it occurring with yearly publishing.”

              “A publishing company can’t survive on just one published book a year,” Mary interjected, grasping for a way to disprove such a strange series of patterns.

              “One company can’t,” Simon responded as he stopped tracing the whiteboard, landing on the names of the various publishing companies for all the books, “But what about a bunch of companies working together?” he added as he traced all the strings to a single point where he had written The Publishers. “It’s not a clever name, but it’s the best I could come up with on four hours sleep. I called each of the publishing companies trying to find a connection all night. After getting told that there was none by almost all of them, the last one on the list said that it was part of the company policy not to mention the connection between the groups.”

              “So why did the last publisher reveal it?”

              “Something about it was a special contest for those with the determination to dig all the way down; each one had informed them that somebody had figured it out, and so I ‘won’.”

              “Why does it sound like you think that’s a cover up?” Mary couldn’t lie to herself anymore; she was just as curious about The Publishers as Simon was.

              “Because I found one more coincidence but-… No, I will keep it to myself,” Simon said with a faux dramatic flair. “It could be something too dangerous to let slip.”

              Mary let out an exasperated sigh. “You can’t just set up a whole story like that and leave out the climax.”

              Simon laughed. Mary was relieved to see that Simon hadn’t completely lost his mind in this mysterious publishing conspiracy and smiled in response.

              “I’m kidding,” Simon responded with a calm smile. “That last accident is probably just that. All the licensing and reproduction rights for the books were sold to these companies in the last 50 years, so it was probably a bunch of combined editing and design ideas set up by the head of the company back then. Craziest thing it could be is that I become the heir to the publishing empire, and I set up a whole new coded message for the next guy.”’

              “But you found one more accident, right?” Now Mary had fallen into the conspiratorial vortex. “What was the last accident?”

              Simon gave a slight chuckle as he grabbed a few loose pages of printer paper and handed them to Mary. They looked like scans of old papers, with the words amaranth found on a page numbered 18, and on the 90^th page, lapis lazuli.

              “It’s the only copy of a book from the fourteenth century, but it was never published.”

              “Why not?”

              “The printing press wasn’t around when it was written, and,” Simon added with a smile, “it was mediocre.”

“That means that this could have been going on for centuries!”

              “Calm down,” Simon said with laugh. “That’s not likely. There is no way for a company to have been established back then. Unless you really want to turn this into a whole ‘The Publishers’ conspiracy that achieves a similar level of mythology as the Freemasons. Either way,” Simon said as he took the pages from Mary, “one of the people from the publishing company is supposed to be coming to tell me what I won, so you can tell the rest to relax and that everything will be back to normal tomorrow.”

              A knock on the office door signaled the end of the conversation as Claire, one of the other library assistants poked her head into the room and said, “There is a Mr. Magnus here to meet with you Mr. Ambrose. Should I send him away or,” Claire nervously glanced towards Mary to see if everything was alright, Mary gave a small smile.

              “Send him in. I might as well look the part of a crazy conspiracy theorist at this point,” Simon said as he messed up his dirty matted hair a bit to seem even crazier. “Mary, you should probably leave; the people on the phone said that it would need to be a private meeting.”

              “So, you really will become the heir to a publishing conglomerate. Good luck; hope they don’t take the prize from you for looking like a lunatic.”

              “That would be discrimination! I am a lunatic.”

              With a chuckle, Mary exited the office, and her presence was replaced almost immediately by a man whose confidence inspired comfortability and ease.  

              “Nice to meet you Mr. Ambrose. My name is Alex Magnus” the man said with large, toothy smile as he shook Simon’s hand. “You can call me Alex.”

              Simon was surprised at the casualty of this introduction, and even more surprised by the easygoing nature of the man that the publishers sent. A graphic t-shirt and a pair of jeans were all he wore, yet the way he carried himself seemed to say that he would not be bested.

              “The pleasure is mine. You can call me Simon as well. No need for formality.”

              “Never a need for it in my opinion,” Alex said as he looked over the whiteboard and strings. “So, you found the pattern?”

              “Yes sir.”

              “Didn’t I say no need for formalities?” Alex said with a chuckle. “Regardless, how far back were you able to trace the pattern?”

              “About 50 years-”

              “No, you went further than that at least,” Alex said, waving the statement away like a fly. “The first place you mentioned finding the pattern was in the 19^th century, so you had to go further.”

              “I thought your publishing company just bought the rights to publish those books?”

              “We did, but that doesn’t mean that the pattern started with our publishing company.”

              “What?” Simon asked with a confused expression. Alex chuckled.

              “Where was the oldest mention of Amaranth and Lapis where it doesn’t seem to belong? That is my question.”

              Simon picked up the scans of the old journal from his desk and handed them to Alex. “These were from 1494, but-”

              “Francois Belmonte, a general in the Italian Wars, I remember him,” Alex said as a gentle smile spread across his face. “A good soldier, ambitious to a fault.”

              “Remember him!?”

              Alex glanced over the papers at Simon and seeing the stunned and confused expression on his face, exploded in laughter.

              “What are your views on fairness, Simon?” Alex asked with a gentle smile. “Do you think that everyone gets the same opportunities, or the same starting point in life, so that all that one gets is from their own efforts?”

              Simon continued to stare at Alex.

              “Or, do you think that opportunity comes with luck, random chance, and thus, no one deserves whatever they get out of a life and people should seek to equalize the balance of opportunity and power?”

              Simon sighed and sat down on the couch beside Alex. “If I had to choose, I would say that life is very unfair, but we try our best to make things more equal for the betterment of humanity.”

              “Is that ‘unfairness’ a bad thing then?”

              Simon looked over at the whiteboard, strewn as it was with links between mediocre stories from authors that few had ever heard of throughout history. “I was lucky enough to pick up the right books and start making connections, so I guess that unfairness is only natural.” Simon glanced at Alex. “So, am I ‘lucky’ enough to be invited to some type of secret organization who have been controlling the flow of the world for centuries?”

              “Nope,” Alex responded with a grin. “You are invited to become part of a group of people who have been doing whatever they feel like for eons.” Alex stood up and walked over to the whiteboard. “After all, the others disagreed with my idea of setting up a whole pattern of books for 700 years to possibly invite more to our little parties.”

              “700 years?! How is that possible?”

              “Don’t you know what amaranth and lapis lazuli symbolize?”

              “… immortality.”

              “Bingo! The group you just got invited too is a group of immortals from before the dating system switched.”

              “Who are they? Are they famous people through history? How has no one figured it out yet?”

              “I’ll answer that in reverse order. First, we keep to ourselves mostly, and since the invention of photography have had surgery done on our faces a ton, to prevent too much similarity from popping up, you know? Second, a few, but sometimes they weren’t famous before becoming immortal. And third, you’ll have to meet them all eventually, don’t want to spoil the surprise. Of course, that all depends on if you want to become immortal yourself.”

              This question caught Simon off-guard. “There is an option not too?”

              “Of course,” Alex said with a gentle smile, “some people don’t want to live forever. they are afraid of watching everyone they know disappear before them.”

              “What happens if I refuse?”

              “Nothing, other than you will live with the knowledge that there are immortals walking among the normal people throughout the world.”

              “What if I tried to expose the secret organization? Wouldn’t you need to erase my memories?”

              “I mean we can,” Alex said with irritation. “I just dislike screwing with other people’s heads, it’s so tedious having to rewrite memories. Especially when no one will believe you anyway. So, what do you choose?”

              Simon looked at Alex with doubt. “Isn’t it extremely heartbreaking to watch everyone you know die?”

              “Mortals go through the same thing, you just meet fewer people since you eventually die yourself,” Alex said as he stood up from the couch. “Ultimately, the decision isn’t about the emotional trauma. After a few decades you will have matured enough to where it will hardly matter. The rest of us did anyway. It’s a question of whether you can handle the moral quandary.”

              “Moral quandary?”

              “Why don’t we give this gift to everybody? And why shouldn’t you? These are the questions we had to find the answer for, and most of us only really figured out the answer after we had lived for a few centuries. We don’t give the right to give others immortality for a while until we can agree with the answer given to these questions.”

              “How long did it take you to find the answer?”

              “A few centuries of reading philosophy. Made my own library for the express purpose of coming up with an answer,” Alex said with a wistful grin. “Unfortunate that it all burned away,” he added with a dissatisfied sigh, before returning to his normal state of gaiety.

With a mischievous grin, he took a vial of purple liquid out of his pocket and placed it on Simon’s desk and started walking towards the door. “The choice is yours,” Alex said as he opened the door, before adding, under his breath, “even if you don’t feel like it should be.”