LSGL BRAINSTORM
Fr 01.25.08

Premise:  Go through story at three levels:  (1) timeline, (2) major incidents / turning points, (3) moment-to-moment color/texture.  Clarify timeline established by Lovecraft in ATMOM, identify where I choose to diverge.  Focus exploration on the shoggoths.

1.  Origins of the beacon
When was the beacon built?  Who built it?  In a non-techological society, what was the process of collecting materials to build the thing?  Was it a challenge to design it -- or are the principles of its construction a simple matter for the elders?  How many elders did it take to build the thing -- and how long did it take to accomplish?  Is the beacon’s primary function as an intergalactic communication device -- or does it do other things?

What if the beacon wasn’t built by the elders, but was taken from the spawn during the war?  Or, what if it’s technology from another species -- for instance the Mi-Go?  If it was captured, do the elders fully know how to use it?  What if the device is a mystery even to the aliens that had it in a first place -- what if no one’s really certain what its origins are?

How long ago was the beacon made?  And with want intentions?  Perhaps it was constructed within the first hundred years of arriving on earth, as a means for communicating with the core of the empire.  I envision a ritual of going to the beacon every thousand years to send a message updating the emperor about how this outpost is surviving.  Does the beacon ever receive messages in return?  Is its primary function as a receiver, every million years receiving transmissions from the galactic core?

What is the distribution of the elders’ empire?  If the elders originate in another galaxy, it seems unlikely that they would send emails directly from earth back to that point...  There must be other outposts in our own galaxy...  The elders didn’t travel on from earth, which suggests that it’s an end point in the elders’ journey -- at least for this particular group of colonists.  I would imagine that there must be some sort of regional government at the heart of our galaxy’s core.  How many galaxies have the elders traveled to?  Are they present in four galaxies?  In seventy galaxies?  How many trillions of elders are there when we consider the entire universe?

Given the enormity of space, and the trillions of elders that must exist if even a handful wind up on earth, what sense does it make to be sending out a distress call or a warning?  It seems like you might send out a warning that this planet has been lost if you don’t want other elders to come here and risk themselves -- but how likely is it that another group of elders will ever come?  Have other elders ever come to visit earth before?

If there is a practice of checking in with the regional government at the galaxy’s core, then wouldn’t the elders have already told most of the significant events of their history?  Wouldn’t they have already related the conflicts with the spawn and the mi-go and even the war of resubjugation?  If the elders have become decadent, have they perhaps given up on communicating with the galactic core already -- becoming absorbed in life on earth?  If so, is it the “oldest living elder” who I’ve hypothesized that pushes to get the beacon taken out of cold storage?  How long has the oldest elder allowed it to be kept wherever it’s been being kept?  Where has it been kept?  In a storage locker?  As an object of worship in a temple?  As an object in a museum?  As a symbol of power -- like a statue -- in the capitol building?

What is the plan for using the beacon, moving it to the cave?  If one is going to take the significant risk of moving it there, then it must be very strategic.  What will be the right moment to use it?

What if the beacon used to be kept in the citadel, but was moved to the cave a long time ago?  For instance, what if it was moved to the cave for safe keeping during the war with Cthulhu?  Is the beacon of such value that one might want to keep it away from one’s enemies?  Would the foe know how to use it in order to bring further reinforcements from the galactic hub -- thus making the galactic hub vulnerable?

What if the beacon has only recently been rediscovered by an elder archaeological team?  What if a sect within the elder’s society has spent many years hunting for the machine, attempting to recover it?  If it’s been recently recovered, how long have the conspirators known of its location?

Is the beacon a single-purpose machine?  What if it is the self-same device that was used to summon the ultimate gods?  Or, if not the self-same device, then a machine very like the one that was used as a sort of “doomsday device?”  Am I going too far in positing the existence of a doomsday device?  It seems that such an apocalyptic moment in the elders’ history would show up in the bas relief illustrations that Dyer and Danforth read...  Unless it became a taboo to speak of, and was stricken from the history...  Which would help explain why the beacon in the cave has remained secret.

2.  Pain sticks vs. ring-beam tridents
I’ve established that the elders are somewhat telepathic -- at least in groups -- so that they can “wrangle” shoggoths -- a group of 40 or 50 elders reasserting the control programming in a shoggoth that has gone mad...

Note, though, that if control is accomplished via hypnosis, then the scenario of elders using pain sticks on the shoggoths, torturing them, doesn’t seem to make much sense.  I’ve been imagining the elders using the tridents that shoot ring-beams both upon the spawn, and then later on the shoggoths...  But while I could imagine shooting arcs of lightning at a shoggoth, shooting ring-beams looks wrong -- and we’ve established that the ring beams blow spawn into chunks, and were probably used during the war of resubjugation.  I don’t want the tridents to be able to shoot both rings and lightning -- and I don’t think that I want to establish pain sticks as a second hand-held device.  Positing the existence of ring-beam tridents is about as much new technology as I generally want to introduce.

I could even contemplate ditching these -- just having the elders fight hand-to-hand with the spawn...  But given the structure of the elders’ hands, it seems like a tool would be necessary.  They don’t have anything like claws that could do real damage -- and you can’t try to strangle the spawn.  So you need a beam weapon of some sort.

3.  Beacon as brain container
Anyway, where I was going when I brought up that the elders are telepathic, is that I’ve established that the beacon operates at least partially on telepathic principles.  It whispers to the human explorers, almost hypnotizing them, urging them to look into the magic mirror.

If the beacon is partly telepathic, does that mean that it must have organic components inside?  Is there a mutated elder brain in there?  Is it, in fact, the brain of the oldest living elder?  If so, then the character on the elder’s high council that I’ve been positing must be a protégé -- or perhaps a member of the same secret society -- and the elder who leads the survivor party to the beacon must be his protégé or a field lieutenant in the secret society.

What is this secret society I’m suggesting?  It’s some sort of outgrowth of realizing that only a few elder gurus are able to “step sideways” into other layers of reality, which is necessary for accelerating time to advance the evolution of the shoggoths, or to directly shape the evolution of new species using thought.

Oh!  Here’s a whole new train of thought!  Suppose that the guru who is able to “step sideways” long ago became aware of the primordial forces that exist at the mountains of madness...  There’s an encounter between himself and something immense and dark and deep while he is in that other layer of reality...  Sort of like the dragon in John Gardner’s “Grendel?”  And during the war with the spawn, it is the guru’s idea that these dark forces might be salvation...  Perhaps they are disinterested in becoming involved -- but they know of forces that exist in a dimension beyond which are the mortal enemies of the spawn, and they know how they can be summoned here.

And then, the guru is one of the group that actually do the horrific deed of calling down “the enemy of my enemy”...  And in the process of doing so, he is injured.  His great mind is preserved within this beacon machine as a means of life-support.  Or he preemptively sacrifices his body and enters the machine, becoming one with it in order to get enough amplification to contact the spawn’s enemies.  [Interesting parallel to the mi-gos brain jars, there.]  Or, maybe the guru is imprisoned in this machine as punishment for having summoned the ultimate gods -- maybe what we don’t know is that it is a sort of prison cell, sitting there in the cave.

I have a vision of the first thing we see on the magic mirror being a five-lobed brain -- a ghostly image of that thing which resides within.  This, of course, brings up all sorts of further questions about why the guru summons the human explorers to touch the screen.  Previously my idea has been that there’s some sort of strange low-level static that emanates from the beacon, which shows up on the explorers’ radio.  That may still be an acceptable explanation.  (It’s better than “they were forced down by a blizzard.”)  ...But I’ve never really explained adequately how a shoggoth can be so close by when the beacon goes off, and yet not have already discovered the hive.

What if the shoggoth is actually the good guy?  What if the guru in the beacon / brain-container has decided to summon down primordial forces again...  And just needs a spark of living energy to get things rolling.  ...An interesting variation on the story -- one which it’s too late to actually do anything with -- would have the explorer who touches the beacon simply die, there and then.  All the life would be sucked out of him, and he’d be left a dry husk.  The second explorer, then would have to try to drag him out of the cave in a panic...  Eventually just having to drop the corpse and flee for the sake of his own life when hell really starts to break loose.

What if the beacon was put in this cave in order to try to prevent it from ever being shot off again?  And yet, as it turns out, the beam is so powerful, it can penetrate all the way through the stone ceiling.  Perhaps the shoggoth is rushing to shut off the machine -- it’s a heroic act to smash it...  And then, in a closing pan over the devastation in the cave, we see the beacon not merely turned over and battered -- but cracked in half like an egg, with the overgrown five-lobed brain the sticky yolk.

If I really wanted to keep going with this supposition of individual characters, then I could see having the shoggoth that destroys the beacon being the original “savior shoggoth” -- the Che Guavara who discovered the free-range shoggoths, taught them language (there’s a sub-story!), and led them into the city to slaughter the tyrants and take what belonged to them...  Interesting -- that suggests that Che is engaging in a project of “civilizing the savages”...  And with a strange sort of shoggoth nationalism, he intends to establish shoggoths as city-dwelling replacements for the elders?

I don’t really like this scenario, though -- the guru / world’s oldest elder and Che, the revolutionary shoggoth, having a final face-off at the end of all things.  It’s just too damned convenient that my two most important protagonists would have a final meeting like this.  In a story that spans 1000 million years, it’s ridiculous.

4.  Legacy of the shoggoths
What are the shoggoths up to today?  Supposing that they perpetrated genocide against the elders 50,000 or 20 million years ago, how have they spent their time since then?  Lovecraft seems to suggest that Leng was the last city of the elders...  Which is particularly odd, given the elders’ affinity for water -- you’d think there’d at least be several more underwater cities out there.  And given that it’s colder at the south pole, you’d think that they’d be located out in the pacific somewhere.  Sure, there’s a concentration of elders in Antarctica because it’s holy ground, where the species first set foot on earth...  But this is in spite of the cold.

So, I’m having trouble not imagining that after the fall of Leng, there’d have to be further cities to seige.  But this isn’t too problematic -- Leng would be the heart of the revolution, and then the other cities would be mop-up.  This does reverse a previous assumption, however, that the survivors were able to make it to Leng because they received transmissions from other cities which fell first.  It’s kind of nice, though, to sit in the cave and get transmissions from other cities describing the carnage that’s happening there too...  Getting to helplessly watch as the society’s last outposts fall, being powerless to do anything about it -- for fear of bringing the shoggoths down upon oneself.

5.  Protecting the guru
I’ve been assuming that the survivors are hiding out of selfish reasons -- they want to avoid getting killed themselves.  But what if they’re clustered here as a selfless act?  What if it’s really the guru in the brain jar that they’re trying to protect?  What if he is their most important citizen, and so they physically carry him to this cave, and huddle around him in order to fend off all threats with their own bodies?

6.  Where are the guns?
If this is the case, it’s curious that they don’t have any ring-beam tridents with them.  But then, perhaps the shoggoths managed to block off the armory before anyone could get to it.  I don’t expect there’s frequent need for the guns -- so they’d be locked away for thousands of years at a time, still functional, but essentially relics nonetheless.

I’ve suggested that during the later days of the civilization, the elders let the shoggoths go hunting for them -- thus depending on them even for something as essential as food (the metaphor of becoming a baby who is spoon fed much leaps to mind)...  But prior to that point of dependence, I think the elders must have taken pleasure in hunting their food, using harpoons.  Just as they work in groups of 40-50 to mentally ensnare a shoggoth, I imagine the elders using their mental power to freeze giant game in place -- and then the large hunting party butchers the animal, having a feast on site, then carrying back supplies to the city.  As long-lived as they are, there probably wouldn’t be gluttony -- it takes little food to keep an elder going -- but they’d see deep spiritual significance in consuming the life of another animal.  Taking the life of the universe into oneself...  This can relate back to the elders’ sense of religion, which I’ve already explored somewhat.

Anyway, you wouldn’t want to use the ring-beam tridents while hunting, because they completely obliterate their targets.  They turn the spawn into chunks...  You wouldn’t want to do that to something you’re going to eat.  After you’ve killed it, you’d dissect it like a surgeon (reference the elders dissecting a human and a dog at Lake’s camp).  In fact, there’s a great opportunity for horror here -- the elders would actually hold the animals in place, and dissect them while they’re still aware and feeling everything.  Vivisection would be the best way to explore the animal’s biology and appreciate it, consume it...

7.  The legacy of the shoggoths - continued
So, returning to the question, “what have the shoggoths been up to for the past 20 million years?”  It seems to me that they must be occupying the elders’ former cities...  Not just Leng, but the other ones out in the ocean, too.  Only the city-dwelling shoggoths initially had language; there are fewer of them than free-range shoggoths, and the effort to civilize them has been an uphill struggle.

It turns out that there are limitations to how much you can improve upon the “savage” shoggoths.  They can learn rudimentary language -- but not more.  They are trained by the city shoggoths to ape the daily behaviors of the elders...  But it’s a rather grotesque pantomime.  It doesn’t actually make sense, many of the patterns that they go through -- but they still view the elders with awe, so they ape what they once saw.

The cities continue to crumble; where there is new construction, it’s all caves, not great spires.  The descendents of the city shoggoths try to better themselves and take to recarving the old bas relief carvings, fabricating a lie about themselves having come from the stars...  Removing the elders, changing the story.

Perhaps a caste system arises between the former city shoggoths and the free-range shoggoths, where the more stupid ones are treated as slaves.  Sort of an “Animal Farm” story...  Which I could push even farther, by having the shoggoth pigs in this story begin to make deals with farmers (surviving elders), selling off a horse to the glue factory...  Using the free-range shoggoths to produce something that the surviving elders are willing to pay for.

No, not a good direction.  Having any sort of contact between the shoggoths and surviving elders completely undermines the notion that the shoggoths will always be hunting down their former masters.

It seems to me that perhaps the only shoggoths in the world that are amphibious may be at Leng.  They were given this power so that they could hunt for large game for the elders...  Which provides a neat transformation, showing how the hunt which was once grotesque but spiritual has descended to this.  Perhaps it was in being given responsibility for the hunts that the shoggoths gained knowledge of being hunters and killers...  And disdain for their weak masters.

I asked previously what it is that the shoggoths eat.  Perhaps they eat plankton, or some sort of vegetarian diet of fungus / algae.  Well, perhaps that’s what they ate originally!

Knowing that there is only a minority of shoggoths that are able to travel on land -- who will ever be able to travel on land -- the number of shoggoths who might be looking for the elders on the surface is greatly diminished.  We also have to assume that the shoggoths believe that they killed all the elders long ago...  The hatred is still there, but it’s been sleeping, confident in the notion that vengeance has already been carried out.  ...Although, if the brain jar guru is a known figure, it may have seemed an unsolved mystery, as to where he disappeared to.  But, given his magical powers, a myth probably evolved that he simply teleported himself bodily into another universe, leaving behind this world for the shoggoths -- whom, being born here, are its rightful heirs.

8.  The shoggoths’ religion
Do the “children of earth,” as the shoggoths might refer to themselves, look at the elders as greedy angels?  These are creatures that came here to seed the world with life, the shoggoths might reason -- why don’t they move on?  Perhaps “god” charged them with creating us -- but then the angels became devils, who decided to enslave us for their own pleasure.  Why doesn’t god punish them for this?  No intelligent creature should be created simply to be a slave.  God doesn’t punish them because it is the shoggoths’ responsibility to claim freedom for themselves.  God will have disdain and hatred for the children of earth until such time as they rise up and prove themselves worthy of his love by punishing the disobedient angels.

How did the shoggoths come to have a notion of god?  Perhaps they witnessed the ultimate gods which smote the spawn.  What was it like to be a shoggoth and see that great black cloud come down from a rent in the fabric of the universe?  Did the shoggoth witnesses see in it something that looked like themselves?  Did they develop a notion that they were made “in god’s image?”

Suppose the spawn were coming into the cities, the shoggoths were throwing themselves at the spawn, killing many, yet also being killed in droves.  The war with the spawn must also figure as an important moment in the shoggoths’ history.  They had no idea that it was the elders who called down the ultimate gods -- so when the black cloud billowed forth, it must have seemed to be answering their prayers...  Interceding on their behalf...  And when the black cloud kills elders and spawn alike, that then may seem like some sort of promise that the shoggoths will be saved -- but then the cloud goes away, and the shoggoths think that they aren’t worthy yet...  There’s a terrible sense of disappointment.

How old are the shoggoths with language?  Were they upgraded to a new linguistically-superior model by once again being taken physically into the “sideways?”  What are the shoggoths’ first memories?  They probably don’t recall being created...  They may have very little idea of where they came from.  But then when they get upgraded, it’s like one’s mind becomes suddenly clear.

If I were writing this story in book form, perhaps the voice of the elder wouldn’t appear in the book until the upgrade.  Or perhaps it would appear earlier, e.g. as a witness to the ultimate gods -- but it would be radically different, largely incoherent.  ...Alternating chapters between Che and the guru elder?

9.  Are my elders “degenerate”?
I want to check and see if I’ve really abandoned an earlier story version...  There was a point at which I was justifying the visual choices I’d made on the elders by saying that these were “decadent” elders...  Not just their minds have become less crisp -- their bodies have also changed.  Not a bad rationalization...  And the elders in ATMOM who wake up are from an earlier time period -- non-decadent critters -- so, as long as I’m not claiming that these creatures are the same ones from the book, I’m not actually conflicting with anything in the text.

My main reason for saying these are later, “degenerate” elders was to justify the lack of wings.  However, the lack of gills and mouths are in some ways more significant mutations.  To lose five mouths?  That’s a pretty big change.  Losing wings, or the triangular feet -- that’s just a matter of webbing receding.

How long do the elders live?  Are they actually immortal?  It might be plausible to say that the original pioneer elders were genuinely immortal -- they’d just about need to be, in order to traverse the great expanses of space that they have...  But perhaps following generations don’t live as long.  And perhaps the most recent generations are the shortest lived of all.  Maybe something happened during the war with the spawn that changed things...  Either the nutritive pools for spores were destroyed, or poisoned / corrupted...  Perhaps the spawn tampered with the sun itself (which is part of their modus operandi) in a way that altered the solar radiation that the elders depend upon...  Perhaps there’s just something in the minerals and chemical composition that brings about mutations.

If there’s a trend of progressive mutation, however, this has fairly important story ramifications.  It suggests that the elders (on earth) are a species on their way out, anyway...  Even before the shoggoths strike the final blow.

I seem to be suggesting, though, that the mutations don’t happen during the lifespan of a single elder -- the problems arise during reproduction.  Maybe there’s some sort of virus that the spawn released (or embody) which tampers with the reproductive spores, corrupting them...  Even if that’s thee case, the original pioneer elders should be essentially immune.  It’s interesting to imagine that the original twelve elders are the citadel’s ruling council, even in the end days...  Or maybe they’ve been the ruling council throughout history -- but war and accidents have decimated their numbers until there are just two or three left, or perhaps only the one “guru” elder.

Finding ways to kill off the elders throughout history becomes an interesting project.  Several must die in the war with the spawn.  At least two have to die in the process of summoning the ultimate gods.  Keeping one or two around until the end, so they can be in conflict with the guru, though, has good story potential.

10.  The guru’s story - leaving the galaxy core, passing Titan

It seems like I’m increasingly turning to the story of one particular elder in order to make sense of the elder’s history.  Let’s see if I can tell his POV story, and see what comes of it.

When the group of pioneers set off for earth, they were just one group among many.  I’m drawn to saying there were twelve elders -- but it seems like the original colonist’s number ought to be a multiple of 5:  either 25, or 125 (which is the number of finger tendrils that an elder has in ATMOM).

Let’s say there were 25 who set out...  There were parades and celebrations.  A whole army stood in front of the emperor of the Milky Way.  (Here I am borrowing from “Star Wars:  The Clone Wars” -- the image of the stormtroopers and star destroyers arranged before Emperor Palpatine at the end of the film.)  Perhaps there were 1000 units, each of 25, each heading off to a separate solar system, for the glory of the emperor -- or for the glory of the holy goddess of life, or however we shall characterize their religion.

On the way to earth a few elders were killed by meteors and space dust...  Arriving intact is by no means guaranteed...  Journeys of this distance are difficult even for such a magnificent species.

Coming to the Sol solar system, the elders went to earth...  Are they stationed at any other planets in the immediate area?  No, probably not -- because it’s the world with liquid water that they’re drawn to.  Perhaps they might be drawn to Titan, with its liquid oceans under ice -- a very interesting possibility...  But the elders prefer warmth, so earth is going to be their first choice.  Titan, though, is going to remain an intriguing possibility...  Perhaps they actually did start a colony there -- but it was destroyed by the Mi-Go, coming from Pluto, who resent there being other beings in their solar system.

Given that there are only 25 elders in the colonizing party, though, colonizing Titan would have to be a later development -- no one can be spared in the early years.  Maybe the outpost on titan was set up as an early warning system following the spawn’s invasion.  The titanians were supposed to warn of any approaching armies...  Perhaps a ridiculous conceit, when you think of the solar system three-dimensionally.  There’s no reason why an army couldn’t just come at earth from a direction diametrically opposed to titan’s place in its orbit.  I could suggest “sideways” mumbo-jumbo, but I don’t know that it’s worth it.

If I’m going to start bringing in events that embellish upon the history of the mi-go, I’d do well to at least go and read “Whisperer in the Darkness” so I have a solid foundation to begin from.

11.  Dagon?
...On a similar note, I seem to recall that there’s a reference to shoggoths in “Shadow Over Innsmouth?”  The primary monsters in Innsmouth are deep ones...  Which worship Dagon.  What relationship do the shoggoths have with these other two species?  Where did Dagon and the deep ones come from?  Are they native to earth?  Are they somehow related to the snake men that get mentioned in “Shadow Out of Time?”  An interesting additional relationship -- but one which I probably just ought to ignore for now.  If I were writing “Last Days of Leng,” then maybe I’d do some more lateral research -- but they have no place in Let Sleeping Gods Lie.

12.  The guru elder’s story - immortality and shapes in the sky
The guru may have been the navigator on the way to earth.  His training is in slipping sideways into another layer of reality.  All elders have some awareness of the things “from beyond”...  But just as some humans are “super tasters” who are more sensitive to flavors that the rest of the population, some elders also have better “second sight” than the rest.

Navigating through space, I imagine the black of space is white, and the stars are black points...  Humming, as if there were air that allows the transmission of sound...  And there are paths between them...  Great magnetic lines...  Perhaps when you slip sideways (a phrase I’m borrowing from the “Werewolf” role-playing game system) you can see the geometries in the sky...  And can see how the spawn are shifting the geometries.

It’s probably a constant worry throughout history, worrying about how the geometries are turning -- do the elders intend to take any action to counter the spawn on a grand scale?  Is fighting the spawn on earth an incident that’s not tied into a broader conflict?  Do the elders perhaps accept that the spawn will ultimately succeed in their intentions -- that they are essentially a natural force in the universe, like the embodiment of entropy?  And yet, we (the elders) mustn’t give in to entropy prematurely...  The planet earth will be protected because we are not done experiencing it.

It’s an interesting sort of fatalism that the elders may have...  If you know that you’re going to live essentially for eternity, then the end (“closing”) of the universe is a tangible event waiting in your future.  It’s not inconceivable, it’s not too big to imagine, or something that can be denied...  There’s a profound sense of the ticking clock...  A race against time -- in slow-motion.  You can’t stop the end of the universe -- but you can push back against it, trying to slow down time so that you can experience the succor.

This awareness of the universe’s mortality, then plays into the sense of fatalism that the elders have about their own existence.  It foreshadows their downfall before the shoggoths -- the elders have no illusion of an afterlife, and no illusion that their empire will last forever...  They’re waiting for the day when it all comes tumbling down.  They’re trying to play out the clock.

13.  The guru elder’s story - discovering and summoning the ultimate gods
The guru found the way to earth.  And he was present when the first life was created.  He didn’t hold the glass vessel himself, but he did bring the shoggoths into the sideways in order to speed up their evolution.  The “sideways” as I imagine it is a place where time might be moving faster than in our reality.  It’s the sort of place where a human might step in for a minute, but come out aged 90 years.  It’s the sort of thing that could explain spontaneous human combustion, should an individual ever accidentally slip into that other reality.

Or, maybe not.  Maybe the “sideways” is a place where you can more see more clearly the creatures that live “from beyond.”  And maybe it’s a place where the telepathic powers that all elders have in a limited sort of way are amplified...  Perhaps to the point where you’re able to shape a thing just by using your imagination.  I’m not sure if the guru (“side-walker”?  “navigator”?) has to do the manipulation of protoplasm himself, or if he’s able to bring other elders into the “beyond” with him.

Perhaps he is like an oracle, a seer, a medium, who is able to channel the mental powers of those around him...  So that he can bring one or two into the beyond with him if they are surrounded by a circle of other pioneer elders, all of whom are focusing their mental energy to hold the space...  And even then, perhaps the entire ritual also depends upon taking certain psychedelic herbs.

It seems that psychically manipulating the original protoplasm is a task that’s best suited to a different scientist...  A biologist of some sort who understands cell structures at the atomic level...  You can manipulate that which you can understand -- the guru wouldn’t have an adequate grasp of the science necessary to rewrite DNA through force of will.  This is a necessary division of labor, because millions of years later, the elders no longer have the ability to generate new life from nothing.  If it’s a matter of will alone, then the guru could simply gather up a circle of fifty elders and do it all again.

14.  Ways to survive beyond the bomb shelter
When we have all the elders at the end of the story waiting in a cave at the end, I suddenly find myself wondering:  why not just fly away?  If the shoggoths are bound to land, and most are bound to the water, then escaping into the air seems like the obvious solution.  Travel to Titan and regroup.  Start over again.  If you’ve got fifty elders, that’s more than were in the original colonizing party.

You couldn’t travel using your own wings because the formula for the flying herbs has been lost...  Perhaps genetic mutations have made growing wings impossible...  Perhaps the genetic changes are not accidental, but part of an intentional program, breeding elders that are suited for some new purpose?  If so, what?  Living in caves?  Living inside molten lava?

At one point in time, the elders might have gathered pterodactyls to transport them.  But pterodactyls don’t live in the Antarctic anymore.  Maybe there was a period, during the time when land animals were dying off, when the elders even used shoggoths as steeds...  Riding atop them, or having them pull carts/sleds of various sorts.  There’s a nice resonance in that image with rickshaws.  Rather than viewing shoggoths as mules/horses pulling carts, they’re more like human beings being pressed into service as motors.  This contributes to the sense of the elders (ha!) dehumanizing the shoggoths.

Maybe there is one last great hope, that the guru in his brain jar might be able to traverse the beyond psychically, back to the galactic core, to bring back the secret of flight again?

The “magic mirror” of the beacon begins to seem more like the intelligent mirror in Snow White...  The five-lobed brain of the guru might appear there, speaking to his followers...

Perhaps the whole hive of survivors -- the guru’s followers -- are vital to the process of his traversing back to the galactic core...  He needs to draw upon their psychic power in order to make the journey.  It’s going to be a very different journey than when he first came to earth.  He’s not traveling bodily, using his wings -- instead he’s traveling as a disembodied mind...

Maybe when the explorers touch the beacon, it’s not actually whispering to them, beckoning -- instead, they hear the whispering minds of all the elders in the hive...  And touching the beacon disrupts the collective trance.  Not so much because of the physical contact with the screen, but because the apes’ minds have evolved to the point where they can almost understand some of what’s going on.  They are actually merging into the hive’s web-trance for a moment...

I’ve written almost nothing at all about the role of humans in the elders’ timeline...  That’s because they hardly appear at all in ATMOM.  There’s a reference to proto-human apes being used as amusing buffoons...  Sort of like court jesters...  Which, in some ways sets them up -- the species as a whole at least -- to play the Shakespearian fool, who sees the faults of the hubristic king.

15.  The elders in the hive
Who are the elders in the hive?  Options:

(a)  supporters of a far-sighted political leader, who saw the uprising coming
(b)  students of the one remaining pioneer elder, who can still travel into the beyond
(c)  hapless family members who were rescued from the chaos, led to the emergency shelter
(d)  part of a political conspiracy, which dissented with the ruling elder council
(e)  archaeologists who discovered the beacon and were away from the citadel
(f)  soldiers, the personal guard of the pioneer, who alone escaped the citadel in time
(g)  common citizens who transported the pioneer here to save him
(h)  follower’s of the pioneer’s student (disciple), one of 5-7 who are pursuing the old science
(i)  the only citizens who would follow the guru to his Noah’s Ark before the flood came
(j)  a secret community that the guru’s built up, living in the cave, knowing about Che’s plans

How long have the elders been living in this cave?  Have they been in it for months or years before the revolution struck?  Where do the tunnels down into the mountain lead?  Could this be just one room in a temple, where the master resides, delivering lessons to his followers?  Perhaps this is where all of the most psychic elders go...  And as part of a life of asceticism, they don’t bring any shoggoths with them...  They live as the pioneers did long ago, merely soaking in the sun in order to feed their secondary metabolism.  Maybe the guru is hypothesizing that eating nothing but earth-born organisms for generations is part of what is corrupting the elders’ genome.

What is the significance of the cave?  I’ve suggested that it is a former mine, and I’ve suggested that it’s close to the location where the elders originally set down on earth...  But I’ve always had it be an abandoned location.  I assumed that in order to escape the genocide, the elders would have to flee to a location where the shoggoths would never find them...  I’ve been bothered in the back of my mind all along, because the cave just doesn’t seem that difficult to find!

But what if the cave is not an abandoned place, but rather a location of some importance, which is still lived in and used?  It doesn’t have architecture like the great citadel, so it doesn’t seem much like a place where the elders would live...  But maybe the original heat vents where life was formed are still deep down there under the surface.  Maybe if you go deep enough in this location, you find hot springs...  That have been covered up by a mountain, which was once a volcano -- but has again cooled, and due to water dissolving limestone, access down to the original point is available again.

16.  The shoggoths knowledge of their origins
It would add an element of interest if the elders are at the very place where the shoggoths were once born -- but the shoggoths don’t know it.  Perhaps the shoggoths have always hunted for the place where they were first born...  Or perhaps the monks’ temple is somewhat safe because the shoggoths’ own place of birth is taboo...  Maybe the shoggoths have willfully forgotten and denied that they were created by the elders -- so going to their origin would be a suitably Lovecraftian moment of horrible revelation.

Maybe the shoggoths’ mythology is not one that recognizes the elders as their creators, but only as their enslavers...  So to go to the origin and discover that it was the elders who made you would be a horrifying insight, wrecking your sense of cosmology.

Of course, back in the citadel there are bas reliefs that spell it all out...  But only the city-dwelling shoggoths can go to them -- the water-dwellers don’t go up that far.  So, perhaps the city-dwellers, who know full well what their origins were, are reworking the carvings in the underwater cities -- creating palimpsests that say the shoggoths have always lived in glorious cities...  Or which show the elders only as demons which were defeated -- the crucial stone panels that tell of origins are the ones that have very specifically been defaced or destroyed.

17.  The elders’ relationship to the web of the universe
Maybe the heat vent where life on earth began is of particular significance because it’s located over a psychic node...  Something that is more significant than just the rotational axis of the earth, or it’s magnetic pole -- yet which is related, and near to both of those things.  Something which gives the heat vent additional power to make life.

Maybe part of why the elders have shorter life spans and have morphological mutations is due to changes in the psychic nodal geometry...  Which is due to the spawn.  Not due to the war with the spawn, but rather the changing geometries in the sky...  As the alignment of stars changes, the elders connection to psychic nodes also changes -- their life as a species is somehow tied to these invisible energies.  Perhaps if you could look at the lines in the sky today, they would look like ink spills and crazy squiggles, knotted and tangled like hair...  The work of the spawn, inevitably drawing  the universe to a close.

Perhaps when the guru sets out on his journey back toward the galactic core, this is what he faces:  a near impassable thicket of geometries to navigate, a labyrinth of dead-ends collapsing in upon themselves...  Making the journey just that much more difficult and likely to fail.  Cthulhu weaves the lines of fate...  Almost a reference to the greek fates who would weave a string -- a human life line -- and then cut it short with their scizzors.

18.  The watching shoggoths
I’ve been making many subdivisions among the aliens.  Among the elders, there are:
•  the original 25 pioneers
•  the “navigator” who can slip into “the beyond”
•  the council of elders in the later years
•  the navigator’s acolytes/disciples
•  the most promising of his protégés
•  the bands of slave hunters
•  the hunting parties
•  the ring of psychic supporters for the navigator in his final attempt to save the colony

Among the shoggoths, there are:
•  the original generations of shoggoths
•  the runaway slaves who survived the war of resubjugation and live in hiding
•  the intelligent city slaves who are given language
•  the Che Guavara who discovered the hidden runaways and orchestrated the final revolution
•  Che’s honor guard, who know the full truth, and always watch for the elders’ return

Wow...  Who would have thought there’d be such a cast of characters in a story where the alien species look homogenous?

19.  It hurts to look into the beacon
What if in hearing the elders’ minds, speaking together in the realm of the beyond, hurts a human mind?  What if we hear a human voice scream in pain?  I’m not sure it matches the actions of the humans that follow...

This is a direction to explore:  What if the mind-web created by the beacon is treated like an actual location?  An ocean of memory and thought...  A location where events can take place.  What is it like to dream together in that space?  If the hive of elders are all actively tied into that psychic net, how do their thoughts tether the navigator to earth -- or help propel him through space?

If the elders are interrupted, does the navigator lose his connection to earth?  Is it like severing the “silver cord” of someone doing astral projection?  What is the relationship between “silver cords” and the lines that the spawn draw in the sky?  When the navigator came to earth, did there have to be people back at the galactic core holding onto his thread -- or is it different when you travel astrally versus bodily?

What if the beam we see shooting out of the beacon is not a transmission at all?  What if it’s psychic pain embodied in energy?  What if it’s feedback created by the navigator being cut off?

But if it’s so important to not be interrupted, why didn’t the elders take greater precautions, to prevent being interrupted?  Was there perhaps a wall of ice which fell away during an earthquake at some point?  Could this also be playing into the beacon letting off radio waves which can be picked up on the explorers’ radio?

==========

How am I going to bring all this material back into a cinematic telling?

Given the new nature of the beacon (still not entirely settled), what does it mean when the explorers interrupt the hive trance?  What is it that they hear and see?  Perhaps not so much a “message” (either an S.O.S. or a lengthy status report) -- perhaps a “sea of preoccupation” which is focused on the shoggoths?