IIep. Why Epiktistes?

This second Why Epiktistes? post shares analytical tools for thinking about memory’s role in the Institute story cycle. The guiding idea is that Epiktistes should be conceived first and foremost as an anti-amnesia machine. He is built to combat forgetting. That is what makes him, in the deepest sense, Epi-Ktistec.

I also want to comment on how the Institute materials relate to the Ghost Story. Lafferty began what became the Institute cycle during the prenucleation phase of the Ghost Story. The first installment, “Through Other Eyes,” was finished in 1958 well before the oceanic dimension became central to all Lafferty was doing, the nexus of his thought as a whole. The cycle parallels that development. It is worth noting that the last of the Institute stories is the powerfully oceanic "Bird-Master,” one of his masterpieces.

Early Institute stories are eccentric, offbeat science fiction/fantasy, but they move toward what became Lafferty's great theme, the Christological collective unconscious. This hits its apogee in Arrive at Easterwine, the moment in his work where Christ/Easterwine nealy appears (it is an angel on my reading of Easterwine's appearance; the Holy Spirit appears in The Elliptical Grave). On the matter of the Christological collective unconscious itself, Lafferty probably put it clearest in "Tolkien as Christian": "Christ suffuses Purgatory, and Christ is the Lord of the Archetypes in the unconscious." We are trapped inside the archetypes screaming to get out, but Christ is there with us, on his view.

The Institute stories are unique. They span the entire Ghost Story arc—from prenucleation through nucleation to full flowering. In doing so, they are an index to the Ghost Story and, perhaps, the royal road by which science fiction readers will always enter Lafferty’s deeper waters. It is no surprise that many longtime readers first encountered Lafferty through the Institute. Its earliest stories are almost exterior to the Ghost Story and the later ones dip into oceanic center. Before the readers know what has happened, they are already inside. This is also the experience of opening Arrive at Easterwine and realizing you aren't in Kansas. What had been introductory has become advanced really quickly.

Complicating all this is the matter of internal chronology. The Institute’s ending in “All But the Words” was written before Lafferty had even created Epiktistes, its most famous character, a full decade before Lafferty had imagined its second (the real) founding in Arrive at Easterwine. Other issues, not nearly so dramatic, are worth knowing about. But best to set those aside for now.

The Institute Cycle:

 "Through Other Eyes"

Charles Cogsworth invents the Cerebral Scanner, a machine that lets a user experience reality through another person's consciousness. He discovers that every person perceives a private universe, leading to the crisis that an objective, shared reality is an illusion. The experiment results in him being psychologically shattered after experiencing the intensely alien and sensuous world of his colleague, Valery Mok.

"All But The Words"

The final, apocalyptic failure of the Institute. Having identified empathy as the key to communication, they establish perfect rapport with an alien being, understanding everything intuitively without needing words. This proves to be catastrophic, as the alien's presence becomes an unstoppable, unending torrent of pure information that drives the human members to death, madness, and a desperate, surgically-enforced retreat into total silence.

"What's The Name of That Town?"

Meet Epiktistes, a Ktistec machine. He uncovers a thing that has been completely erased from history and memory. By analyzing cultural artifacts and inconsistencies in historical records, he proves that the city of Chicago was destroyed in 1980 and its existence was wiped from the world's mind by a device Gregory Smirnov himself invented. The revelation is immediately suppressed by a new wave of induced amnesia, making the restored memory a scientific success but a practical failure.

"Bubbles When They Burst"

Recounts the Institute's early tragic attempt to break the light-speed barrier using telepathy. The experiments, led by Cecil Corn, end in the deaths of the telepaths and are dismissed by the scientific community as hoaxes. Years later, Gregory Smirnov reopens the case and proves that instantaneous transmission is possible, but only through a death-instantaneous relay—a momentary channel created at the very instant a life-form dies.

"Land of the Great Horses"

Two surveyors in the Thar Desert witness an impossible event: a mirage solidifies into a tangible country. The event triggers a homing instinct in one of the men, who is revealed to be a member of the Romani people. It simultaneously inspires a mass global migration of the Romani back to their ancestral homeland, which they believe is lost. Gregory Smirnov explains that a piece of Earth was physically removed by aliens a thousand years ago and has now been returned, with the story ending as the aliens take a new piece: Los Angeles.

"Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne"

The Institute uses Epiktistes to alter a key historical event—the ambush at Roncevalles—to prevent the Dark Ages from being prolonged. The experiment creates a utopian present, but in doing so, it erases the memory of the previous, drabber world, causing the team to perceive their new utopia as stagnant and try another, catastrophically reality-destroying experiment. Comical ending.

Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine 

Origin story of the Ktistec machine Epiktistes narrated by himself. He is conceived by the Institute as a composite consciousness, formed from the infused minds (the person-précis) of its members (and a few others) to solve the crises of transmission and perception. He recounts his birth and his three great, foredoomed tasks: to find a Leader, a Love, and a Liaison (the true shape of the universe).

"Flaming Ducks and Giant Bread"

Investigation into a lost lustrum year (1313) causes the properties of this anti-reality to leak into and overwrite their own time. Their world becomes a surreal chaos governed by absurdity, where flaming ducks and pieces of giant flesh rain from the sky, a talking cow walks to its own slaughter, and the Devil in a clown suit has unleashed a year of pseudo-evil. The act of remembering a chaotic reality has caused them to become trapped within it.

"Smoe and the Implicit Clay"

Investigation into who was already there on every discovered world. Reveals the ultimate truth of the saga's universe: it is persons all the way down. The foundational reality of all existence is a sentient, primordial Implicit Clay of quasi-invisible (in this case) Native Americans, and all of creation is merely a thin surface layer upon persons. The story climaxes with the revelation that the members of the Institute are themselves Indians in this sense, primordial trickster forces, but aren’t we all?

"Great Tom Fool" "All Hollow Though You Be"

The learned society Happy Braindom Ltd. convenes to solve the Shakespearean authorship controversy, guided by three sentient machines. The project is a sophisticated confidence game orchestrated by the machines, led by the American "Dude" (Epiktistes), who fabricate a new history for the Shakespearean canon using technologically generated psychic scans. They convince a group of publishers that the true author was a composite entity named "Great Tom Fool" (composed of four great historical Thomases) and proceed to auction off the rights to the contents of a newly (really non-existent contents) treasure chest of lost plays for billions of dollars.

"All Hollow Though You Be"

Epiktistes and his machine counterparts orchestrate a six-day convention for the Hollow Earth Society at the Institute, forcing a confrontation between consensus science and an alternate, "unorthodox" reality. The Institute scientists are faced with physically demonstrated but logically impossible phenomena that defy their rational models. The Hollow Earth proponents are defeated not by proof, but by the overwhelming social forces of public ridicule and an invisible plebiscite from the world's elite, who declare their reality impossible and drive them back into the Earth, leaving a permanent hole as a portent of worlds beyond the consensus.

"Bird-Master" Recounts the annual ritual death and rebirth of the Bird-Master, an immortal, godlike being who controls the bird migration. Members of the Institute are witnesses to this mythological cycle, culminating in the Bird-Master being ritually hanged, drawn, and burned by the Bloody Red Mummers on November 5th. His survival is confirmed when his charred bones begin to heal magically, showing a form of memory and reality that exists outside the Institute's purview. Resurrection motif, linking it to Easterwine.