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About Shzemnatolat * Terdon Shzemnatolatem * Fairastayshzia

Aeropian Spiritual * Celestial Wonders of Aeropia * Island of the Suns

K'rallitonian Battle Hymn * War * Stone of Kelle * Home

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What is Shzemnatolat?

            Shzemnatolat is my epic novel.  Part science-fiction and part fantasy, and heavily influenced by The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Quantum Leap, and a fantasy world that my friend Spike created, it is my literary life's work.  It means "The Orb of the Stars."

            Shzemnatolat is a story about a time traveler from the 21st Century named Dr. Tom Patterson.  Tom is a 43-year-old genius who is part of a time travel project called the London Time Project.  The London Time Project is endeavoring to look back in time -- not actually time travel -- but an accident sends Tom back in time 67 years.  He bumps into his grandfather and prevents him from meeting his grandmother, so Tom returns to a future in which he does not exist.  Because he was out of place in time when this change to the time continuum occurred, he does not cease to exist, but he returns to a future in which he has never been born -- in which no one knows him, and in which he is not a part of the London Time Project.  Tom nevertheless uses the Project's technology in an attempt to travel back in time 67 years again and fix his mistake, only he overshoots and travels back too far -- about 120 million years too far.  He immediately returns to the future, but he inadvertently brings a mosquito back with him -- and again changes history.  He returns to a future which is very different from the one he knew, due to a very different time line.

            In this alternate time line, Christianity does not exist.  Marc Antony of ancient Rome married Cleopatra of ancient Egypt, they did not die, and the Roman Empire merged with ancient Egypt to form the Egypto-Roman Empire.  Five hundred years later, during the height of the Sulayman's reign over the great Ottoman Empire, Sulayman's daughter married the heir to the Egypto-Roman throne, and the two empires merged into the Empire of Epata-Ra.  Through imperialism, conquest, and diplomacy (and by virtue of the fact that they controlled the center of the known world), Epata-Ra stretched across all of Europe and much of Africa and Asia, conquering most of the known world and becoming the world's largest superpower.  Meanwhile, the Chinese Empire "discovered" the Americas and their vast resources, and became the world's second superpower.  Tom appears in the middle of a nuclear war between Epata-Ra and the Chinese Empire -- a war which is devastating the whole world.  Tom meets and falls in love with Sercia, empress and heir to the throne of Epata-Ra.  Sercia falls in love with Tom and helps him time travel again, but only after he promises to take her with him, away from her world which is about to end.  So together they attempt to travel back in time 120 million years, to prevent Tom from changing history.  Only Tom overshoots again, by about 5 billion years.  Tom and Sercia begin to materialize in the primordial nebula which will become the solar system.  Their energy sets up a cascade reaction in the nebula, which reverses the time travel process and sends them both back to the future.  This cascade reaction, though, also causes the nebula to condense in a different way than in the original course of history -- into a new solar system with two stars and eight planets.  So Tom finds himself on an alien world called Fairastayshzia, maverick moon of the planet Komponia, fifth planet from the double star Tulaxton and Kalterion.  Sercia is gone -- where, Tom does not know.

            The remainder of the story is set on Fairastayshzia.  Tom learns their main language, Cheldaktorian, as well as several derivative languages.  He soon learns that Fairastayshzia is at war with a superior alien race called the Kondian Empire.  The Kondian Empire learns time travel and sends an automated craft back in time one thousand years, with instructions to evolve and to "destroy Fairastayshzia."  During that one thousand years, though, the craft crashes on a planet, and part of its mission gets deleted.  After that, it thinks its mission is simply to "destroy," and it evolves into a sentient vessel with a star at its core and surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust more than one astronomical unit in diameter.  It heads for Fairastayshzia, destroying all that lays in its path (including the Kondian home world), and in its path it creates an Anomaly -- a rift in the space-time continuum, where the boundaries between this universe and others break down, resulting in chaos.  This Anomaly transcends time, traveling backward and forward through it, and when the sentient vessel reaches the Anomaly, the Anomaly will destabilize, rupturing all boundaries between all universes and causing everything everywhere in every part of time which has ever existed to fracture into chaos.  The sentient vessel will have fulfilled its mission to "destroy," because the Cosmoverse -- the collection of all the universes -- will come to an end.

            Tom realizes that this would be a bad thing.  He also realizes that he cannot simply travel back in time and prevent the sentient vessel from creating the Anomaly; because the Anomaly transcends time, it will still exist, even if Tom does manage to change history and stop the sentient vessel.  With a lot of help from the Fairastayshzians of the future, though, Tom discovers that if he can seal the Anomaly at a point in time when it is small, the act of sealing the Anomaly will send out a time ripple -- a residual temporal wave which will wash through all of time and cause everything which is out of place in time to disappear.  If Tom can pull this off, then the sentient vessel, the Anomaly, and the entire Fairastayshzian time line will disappear, and the time line will revert to its former course -- to the Earth that Tom knows.  But this will require Tom to make the ultimate sacrifice; since he and Sercia (wherever she is) are out of place in time, they too will cease to exist.  The alternative, though, is for all of existence to end.  And Tom believes that he is responsible for this threat to existence; if he had never time traveled, none of this would have happened.  So Tom undertakes to seal the Anomaly and save the Cosmoverse.

            This is where Shzemnatolat comes in -- the Orb of the Stars.  In Fairastayshzian history, legend tells of a magical Orb powerful enough to seal the Anomaly:

In Fairastayshzia's seventh age,

Thousands of years ago,

An ancient empire ruled the world.

Great magic it did once know –

Magic to create and heal,

Good magic from afar,

Come down from the heavens above

And kept in the Orb of the Stars.

But anarchy and greed o'ercame

The empire one fateful day,

And so, to keep safe the Orb of the Stars,

The emperor hid it away.

And still today the Orb survives

In a temple beneath the ground,

And with twelve stones and four broad swords,

The Orb can again be found.

Three stones of yellow, three of green,

Three each of red and blue –

Each set of three points to a sword,

Ancient, famed, and true.

The yellow stones point to the sword of the air,

The blue, to the sword of the sea,

The red, to the sword of fire, and the green,

To the sword of the land and the trees.

So find the land sword and the swords

Of fire and the sea and the air.

Follow them to a temple, and find

The Orb of the Stars hidden there.

Shzemnatolat -- the Orb of the Stars -- promises to be the salvation of the Cosmoverse.  But in the future of Fairastayshzia, the twelve stones and four swords that lead to the Orb have been lost, so Tom travels back in time, through the history of Fairastayshzia, in search of them.

            The bulk of Shzemnatolat chronicles Tom's journey through time, bouncing through Fairastayshzian history in search of the twelve stones, four swords, and the Orb of the Stars.  Tom's journey takes months, but spans millennia.  A rich and fascinating world is revealed, with its own unique florae and faunae, geography, weather patterns, cultures, and history.  Tom finds Sercia, has a son, and meets himself more than once.  He gives birth to his own son -- after having met his adult son, and before having conceived him.  He also loses his faith in God -- after all, how could a benevolent deity allow the Cosmoverse to hang in the balance, its fate dependent on the actions of one man.  All the while, he is in a race against time, for even though he is a time traveler, the Anomaly transcends time and is slowly spreading through time and space.  And, to make matters worse, the sentient vessel realizes that Tom poses a threat to its mission to "destroy," so it creates assassins and sends them through time to stop Tom.

            That, in brief, is Shzemnatolat.

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About Shzemnatolat * Terdon Shzemnatolatem * Fairastayshzia

Aeropian Spiritual * Celestial Wonders of Aeropia * Island of the Suns

K'rallitonian Battle Hymn * War * Stone of Kelle * Home

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