The Ultimate Manuscript (LONGer than ever)

From: R Supward (r_supward_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/28/04 

Date: 28 Sep 2004 02:56:03 -0700

Raiders of the Lost Archive

We are in the closing years of the Second World War. A brave Norwegian
resistance fighter with a Celtic tonsure makes his way across the
border to neutral Sweden. He is known only by the code name "The
Kingfischer". Although seriously wounded by the bullets of pursuing
German soldiers, he struggles as far as the parish of Tantrum and the
lodge of an old hunting companion, Oscar "Gunner" Andersson, whom he
finds stuck in a Rut. With his dying breath the Kingfischer tells
Andersson that he has managed to smuggle out of Norway something that
can cripple German morale by striking at the very roots of their Nasti
ideology, proving that the Nordic race has always been part of the
Roman Catholic world. It's a photograph of a document pasted into the
cover of an old book in a remote Norwegian church. Before he can
explain any more, the Fischer King dies with a whimper. Andersson
looks at the blurred photograph, where it is faintly possible to
discern an incomplete map of the world that looks as if it came from a
faulty Cumbrian slide projector. He fails to see how it can hurt the
Germans, so he just puts it away in the family bible.

Fifteen years later, Andersson's ten-year-old daughter Britta (a
precocious child, "as old as the Earth, and as young as the Sea,
eternally right, infallible me") finds the photograph while pursuing
scriptural exegesis. She asks her father about it and he tells her as
much as he knows. She wonders, "What-if it is a pre-Columbian map
demonstrating a knowledge of North America that conventional
scholarship has hitherto denied?" She writes to the vicar of the
church in Norway, asking if she can come to look at the map. The reply
is a disappointment: the vicar tells her that she has to have at least
a Ph.D. to be allowed to see it. But that only makes little Britta
determined to pass an academic exam. With Schliemann-like zeal, she
attains proficiency in all the ancient and modern languages of Europe.
She reads voraciously, concentrating on primary sources. While other
children are reading Donald Duck, Britta is analysing Diplomatarium
Danicum. Her parents sometimes wonder if is healthy for her to have
her nose constantly buried in some papal bull.

By the age of nineteen Britta Theodora Andersson is more than
qualified to start university, but she realises that proper analysis
of the huge amount of data is going to require access to a powerful
computer and the creation of a search engine capable of coping with
non-standard spelling. This is still back in the days before the PC,
when it took a whole room to hold a computer, and the only one in
Sweden at the time belongs to the SAAB aeroplane factory in Linköping,
where the family are now living. Instead of going to university she
gets a job as a typist at SAAB. When all the other staff go home,
Britta spends the evenings at the computer, learning everything that
can be learnt, developing new programming languages (of which BOLOC is
her favourite), double-checking the calculations of Einstein and Bohr,
becoming an expert in cryptography and Norse Code, and inventing a way
to connect computers via the telephone line. In the process she
creates the Internet and single-handedly establishes the global rules
for electronic communication via Usenet.

Britta has many other strings to her lyre - one of the most
high-strung lyres in Sweden. She is a skilled metalworker, having been
the only tomboy at Sillinäs primary school to choose metalwork instead
of needlework. Learning how to blow bellows and forge iron gives her a
lifelong familiarity with hot air and forgery. Many a keen blade has
been tempered in Tantrum. Grandfather Fritz, a stone- and freemason,
initiates her in the arcane science of geology, artificial weathering
and stonewalling. Grandmother Brunhilda teaches her different kinds of
craft, so that she can embroider material and fabricate strawmen. From
her father, who is so obsessed with clean streams that he even wed
one, Britta soaks up everything about changing lake levels and
muddying waters. Mother Rut Gunhilda teaches her good manners so that
she can act like a lady. When it comes to sexual morals, Britta is
strait-laced and jacketed, disappointing many a young swain who has
heard of her reputation as the lassie who cannot say nay.

To compensate for her humble origins, young Britta cultivates
influential friends. Guests at her candlelight suppers include
prominent politicians, top-drawyer lawers, human ecologists, divine
apologists, Liberian diplomats - and above all professors in every
conceivable field of scholarship with whom she is on first-name terms
(although their names cannot be revealed). They include the Piltdown
Professor of Phrenology at Uppsala University, the Norwegian editor of
the definitive corpus of Ogham inscriptions in South America, and the
professor of Rosicrucian studies at the Redbuck Institute of
Oceanography and Atlantology.

After many years of preparation in museums, libraries and
laboratories, and after working in a vital capacity for every major
company in Sweden, Britta feels she has done her homework. She is
finally ready to start her interdisciplinary historical studies at
university, as a mature student. However, she quickly runs into
opposition from the entrenched views of the orthodox scholars. Sad to
say, they refuse to accept the thesis of her proposed magnum opus,
which runs as follows:

The Goths originated in Tantrum (Jordanes' aptly named "vagina
nationum"), from where they spread their woad-based civilisation over
Europe via the Gothic Canal, Lake Roxen and the Vistula, under the
leadership of Britta's ancestor Theodoric (after whom she gets her
middle name). Shocked by the childish behaviour of the Vandals and
Alans and depressed by the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the
last of the Goths moved back to Tantrum. There they remained until
1362, when Pope Iniquitous selected them for a very special mission.
The Catholics in Boston and the rest of Vinland were several centuries
in arrears with their tithes, and the pagans had not paid a cent since
the year dot, so strong-arm tactics were called for.

A spunky band of assorted Norse heavies left 56 Norumbega Heights in
Gothenburg and set off for the New World on a luxury knarr leased from
King Hakon Magnusopium. The spiritual leader of the mission was from
Greenland City, a holy man always engrossed in his hornbook. Ivar
Hardon was his name, a canon of high calibre, in good standing with
the pope. The first landfall was in Norfolk, where an astronomical
mathematician from Oxford joined the crew. He taught them the
difference between longitude and latitude and instructed them in the
use of his new invention, the compass. This gave the Swedes the idea
for a new sport which they called orienteering. The next port of call
was the Orkneys, where they picked up Henry Sinclair, the permanently
pissed Pict killer of Highland Park. His speech was so slurred that he
pronounced his name Zichmni. The drunken lord of Orkney brought along
his personal confessors-cum-chefs - a chip monk and a fish fryer - two
men with grey and sordid habits. They were forever fingering a copy of
the Grail (one of those cheap relics which Jacques de Molay had
mass-produced, and for which the Knights Templar had been convicted en
masse of heresy). The greyfriars thought it might amuse the Skraelings
to try drinking out of this mass chalice, a stone cup with a hole in
it. Also on board was a concupiscent cartographer, Paul ("the Pole")
Kuntson, always on the lookout for a woman who might let the
Scandinavian surveyor. From his post on the poop, Kuntson mapped all
the coasts of Greenland and Hudson Bay. Once on land, Kuntson chased
the Native American women, but the other Norsemen remained chaste out
of fear of contracting breast cancer from them; instead they drilled
"mooring holes" for the seamen wherever they went. While trading with
the natives, the greyfriars swapped the Holey Grail for a coconut,
thinking that the addition of a silver foot would make it a
mouth-watering goblet for the Pope.

Unable to find any Christians (all the inhabitants of Norse America
had been secretly evacuated to the Canary Islands), the party split
up. One group headed back to the east coast, where Ivar Hardon
supervised the erection of the Newport Tower. This was to mark the
harbour from which they left the New World, after solemnly naming the
land Norumbega. Back in Europe after his frustrating journey, Ivar
Hardon had the satisfaction of depositing one copy of the map in a
church in Norway. The ever-frisky Paul Kuntson mounted a filly for his
long ride to Rome, siring bastards at every inn on the way. He
presented the coconut cup and another copy of his map to the new
incumbent of the papal throne. Pope Rural listened with palpable
distaste to Kuntson's cringing apology for the failure of this
expensive mission to bring back any tithes. The pontiff grudgingly
accepted the map but he offered no bounty for the coconut. As an Old
European he was vehemently anti-American, so he buried all the
evidence deep in the secret Vatican archives. (Centuries later a
senior Vatican official, "God's Archivist", is found hanging under
Greyfriars Bridge in London. Coincidence? Britta doesn't think so.)

Meanwhile, back in America, the other group of Norsemen penetrated
deep into the wilds, turning their "collection journey" into an
"exploration journey" (the only difference was a runic dot, which they
hoped no one would notice). Encamped in the midwest, they tried to
establish a new Sweden in miniature. At first, relations with the
natives were amicable - the Sioux even picked up a few hundred words
of the ancient e-dialect of Tantrum, as well as the place-name
Mini-Sweden, which they corrupted into Minnesota. Things turned sour
when the new settlers, returning from a fishing trip, produced some
fermented herring and began polluting the atmosphere, then got
absolutly sauced and started desecrating the totem pole by dancing
round it, imitating the action of small frogs. The redskins were
appalled (even today their descendants are paler than other American
Indians). They drove out the Goths and Norwegians, who were implacably
pursued and brutally butchered, left to die in their Kensington gore -
but not before one of the masons among them managed to dress a stone
and carve some runes with an Absolutely Vital Message for posterity.
That message was not discovered until 1898, when a Swedish settler,
rooting up a slender young asp, ejaculated: "Oh man, lookee here!"

Presented at an undergraduate seminar in this way, without the
supporting evidence at hand for the moment, Britta's ideas seem
speculative - perhaps the operative word would be "greywacky". She is
ridiculed by scholars and fellow students alike. She finds out that
all the other researchers and lecturers belong to a society of
self-hating Scandinavians affiliated to the great Columbian
Brotherhood, a clandestine but powerful global conspiracy whose motto
is "Forget the Greenlanders". They use secret handshakes and invoke
bureaucratic technicalities to make sure that Britta is edged out of
the university before she achieves the diploma necessary to consult
the map in that Norwegian church. She is obliged to forge ahead with
her research on a freelance basis, while earning an honest living in
the secondary school system, teaching every subject but gymnastics.

But now she and her angelic daughter have a PC of their own (boasting
a huge hard-drive and a Pentadic 133 professor), with an illustrated
dictionary beside it, an Internet account and several e-mail addresses
(one under the moniker dora.dammit@not.telling.com), and Britta can
continue her work with the aid of the Usenet she built up years
before. She researches via Google and lectures people via newsgroups.
She posts so frequently that she earns the title of Top Poster six
years running. She forges genuine friendships with a few
e-correspondents in obscure corners of the world, and finds herself
especially drawn to shifty types with a bent for using the CAPS LOCK
key. One of them is a figure with a split personality who goes under
the nom de guerre Graffiti, with whom she exchanges billets-doux
written in her best computer-manual French. With one foul-mouthed
fellow in particular she develops a profound and poignant
relationship. He is an expatriate Scandinavian now living in the
Antipodes, running a reused furniture business and spending all his
time and sunburnt dollars on fruitless litigation and criminal
stalking while trying to find his true purpose in life. His name is
Pukko Elgskog. Britta sends e-mails promising copies of precious
diplomas for Pukko's eyes only, and although the letters all get lost
in the mail or the envelopes arrive empty, Pukko never loses faith. He
promises to write the foreword to Britta's forthcoming book, and
Britta is not backward about accepting the offer. They agree to share
everything, even stevens.

Meanwhile, Britta is subjected to all-round abuse and circular
arguments by the other newsgroup users. They make fun of her Oxford
spelling and her Scarborough grammar, which they cruelly dub
"Brittish", with two t's. They call her a plagiarist merely because
she takes other people's lines and passes them off as her own. They
call her a kook simply because she believes in every unconventional
theory on this flat earth. They call her a liar solely because she
cites fraudulent evidence in favour of fakes. They call her a bluff
because they refuse to accept her 50+ good excuses for not revealing
her sources - their problem, not hers. They have the iron gall to
forge her posts, they ignore her threats of legal retribution and data
inspection, and they deride her dyslexia by e-mailing virulent
hard-pore corn purporting to come from a *** scion of Kuntson.
Only her profound faith in God and the love and support she receives
from Pukko keep her going, doggedly working on the book that will make
the naysayers eat their hats as soon as it is edited. And together
they hatch their plans for the great coup - code name "Operation
Goodnight" - in which they will turn the Easter tables on their
adversaries and their ad hominems.

Pukko sells his last few sticks of furniture and his shares in a
septic tank to raise the cash for a standby flight to Sweden. Britta
and Pukko finally meet in the flesh. They head for that church in
Norway, not to get married (Britta has no wish to get bunked, bonked
and binked again), but to break into the sacristy during the night.
With a medieval statue of Mary looming all over them, they open the
book. Bitter disappointment causes Pukko to utter an oath: "Fy for
Søren!" The map pasted inside the cover turns out to come from a dot
matrix printer and thus, they conclude, cannot be pre-Columbian. But
Britta suspects that it is a printout of a scanned copy of the genuine
original, and she thinks she knows where that can be found.

They head to the nearest airport, where Britta refuses to let an
Internet security man from Iceland frisk her. Off they fly in a stolen
SAAB aircraft, with Britta at the controls, all the way to war-torn
Iraq. Through a hail of ack-ack fire Britta lands the plane in the
wasteland. Here they run the gauntlet of dangers and hardships too
numerous to relate. Among other things, they stumble across a doug-out
concealed by an old election campaign sign saying "Vote for Baath so
you won't smell like Shiite". Inside they discover a huge cache of
Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, thus incidentally justifying
Bush's gunboat diplomacy. When the last of their food runs out they
are forced to live off conkleberries and the scratchings from Pukko's
beard. They hijack a US army truck which turns out to be driven by
Elvis Presley - 69 years old, emaciated, no sideburns, but still
recognisable. Elvis pulls a gun, so Pukko is obliged to shoot him with
a .44 Olaus Magnum. The King dies - this time for real - muttering two
syllables which Britta and Pukko try to make sense of: Rosebud?
Reboul? Roswell? Rosslyn? Royston? Roxen? Rock on?

A map in the Iraq Exploration Journal sets them on the right course
(Pukko subscribes to IEJ). Using up their last jerry can of fuel,
Britta and Pukko finally reach their destination in deepest Kurdistan:
a Christian monastery perched atop a mountain peak. Obstinate abbots -
again with Celtic tonsures - block the gate with their crosiers,
saying that no women are allowed in, but Pukko, armed to the teeth and
seconding every relish, soon makes dogmeat of them, down to the last
monk standing.

In the monastic archives, shrouded under a book***, Britta is
gratified to find a chest containing a wad of manuscripts that were
believed to have been lost forever:

* a history of Gothenburg and the Goths by Diocassiodorus;

* Aristotle's lost work on comedy, in which he argues that the best
belly-laughs are provoked by loonies who are unintentionally funny;

* a scroll of the New Testament with an agnostic Gospel of Philip
sandwiched between Matthew and Marcus, continuing the story of Jesus
after the resurrection and his move to Gaul, with the development of
the house of David into the Merovingian line (later the Långaröv
dynasty);

* the unknown "Ora Begorra" by the Irish scholar Dicuil;

* an entry visa to Iceland, dated 26 August 1477, for one Cristóbal
Colón, with an annotation - "If this Dago isn't an ***, he's damn
close to one" - evidently written by a hyperdiffusionist immigration
officer;

* the deed poll by which Pelagius changed his name to Palladius;

* "Et in Orcadia Ego" by Sigeric the Serious;

* some whatsits and doodahs by Nicholas Thingey;

* a B-manuscript, a C-essay and a D-composition of the Vulnerable Bede
(to which Pukko surreptitiously adds an E-mail and an F-word);

* a foldout picture of Knickerless Lynn removing a G-string to reveal
all the nautical bits;

* detailed medieval maps of North America signed in anatase by Paulus
Cunnifilius;

* a polite request from King Arthur, dated 67 BC, asking for someone
to come and teach Christianity to the Surreymen;

* The Rough Guide to Engroneland by Nicolò Zeno;

* an Old Slavonic silver bible (Zolota Biblia) caked with pond scum;

* da Vinci's plan of Rosslyn Chapel showing which column the original
Holy Grail is concealed in;

* a new Old Norse "Skammsaga" (an ambiguous title, meaning either
"short story" or "saga of shame");

* a sixteenth-century rubbing of the Kensington runestone with
interlinear transliteration into the characters on the Phaistos disk,
confirming the proto-Idiotic decipherment by Foucaullayou (aka
Graffiti);

* a transcription of the missing Gran tapes, with a deathbed
confession retracting the previous deathbed confession to faking the
runestone, and confessing instead to faking the Larsson papers.

Britta has discovered all the sources she needs to clinch her case. Or
as she herself exclaims in a poetic frenzy: "I have managed to achieve
the archive / to paint the picture for everyone to see." Moreover, a
close examination reveals that these documents are stored in nothing
less than the original Ark of the Covenant, on which both Theodoric
and Moses have left their names written in woad, thus certifying the
Ark as Gothic/Mosaic.

The climax sees Britta gushing as her seminal work comes off the
printing presses. Even before it is proofread, the book is nominated
for the prestigious August Prize (although Britta is somewhat peeved
to be in the fiction category). The 1144-page tome has no ISBN but
four prefaces: one by Pukko Elgskog, with LOTS of words in CAPITALS;
one jointly written by Kirsten Wallace and Birgitta Seaver, concocting
a recipe for chapeau au gratin with prime sauce; one endorsement by an
unnamed professor of methodology and copyright law; and the most
important one by President George W. Bush, personally thanking Britta
for his re-election. The title of the book is "My Pet Goth".