[Original Novel] The Eternal Mysteries of Vril, Part 4

^{source
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3}

---

“Neil is an associate of mine, it’s true. I rarely deal with him directly though, Zachary handles that for me. Are you and Zachary acquainted?” I told him I don’t personally know anybody by that name. “Oh, that’s a shame. Bright young lad, next in line to head up this department should I ever kick the bucket for good.”

That last part snagged my ear and I dwelled on what he could’ve meant by it, but he plowed right into the ensuing spiel so quickly that I set it aside in order to pay closer attention. “Now, the Vril-ya are not actually descended from frogs of course, at least not as recently as they mean for us to believe. That’s self-evident from their hominid physiology and appearance, although they certainly have tampered with their own genome quite liberally.”

It didn’t surprise me Neil knew this guy, given how matter of factly he launched right into crazytown in the span of a few sentences. “What I and the other fellows at the Institute have determined from what little genetic material of theirs that we’ve been able to scavenge is that they are descended from neandertals.”

I asked if he meant the extinct species of protohuman that used to dominate Northern Europe before Homo Sapiens drove them to extinction. “The very one!” he exclaimed, eyes twinkling. Probably just thrilled to have company. Who else knows about this building?

“Now, they were never terribly photogenic, but they were unusually bright. Brains wired differently from our own ancestors, possessing some capacities in advance of our own, though others were deficient by comparison. Having already survived the ice age by retreating underground, it came as second nature to them when the next great cataclysm befell their lands.”

Oh, yes. The flood. Noah piling two of every species on Earth into a boat he built with his sons, somehow. Travigan detected the shift in my demeanor. “Don’t be so hasty, my dear. There was indeed a flood, local to the Middle East, which reputable archaeologists consider the basis for all the legends.”

In fact I did read something to that effect years ago. I can’t remember how credible the source was. But flooding localized to the modern day Middle East could never have spread to Northern Europe. When I asked about it, he readily gave me a superficially plausible sounding answer involving localized melting of glaciers.

“Early experiments with Vril, as with any newly discovered energy source, occasionally met with spectacularly disastrous results. Their own equivalent of Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island. No lingering radiation, mercifully. Matter/antimatter reactions, while fiercely hot, don’t irradiate their surrounding environment the way nuclear explosions do.”

More and more of it kept tumbling out of his mouth, as if he were wholly oblivious to how bonkers it all sounds. “In truth, their retreat was as much from the encroaching homo sapiens as it was from the aftermath of their own scientific accidents. If anything, the flooding drove our ancestors out long enough for the Vril-ya to seal up and conceal every entrance to their caves, taking all traces of their technology with them...so it wouldn’t end up in our hands.”

He winked for reasons unclear to me until he produced the incomplete remains of a gauntlet made out of a familiar pale yellow alloy. “You...don’t mean…?” He nodded. “You’ll never find this in any museum, I can assure you of that. Nor any of the other artifacts we’ve recovered. I’d like to tell you we found them lying about, except the Vril-ya are anything but careless.”

He leaned in, now whispering. “It is possible to kill one of them, you know. Don’t be fooled by their looks. They bleed the same red blood as either of us. At least until you take a close enough look at the DNA, but that’s beside the point. It is difficult and unfathomably dangerous, but they can be killed.”

At this point I noticed he wore a ring bearing that...broken wagon wheel symbol that turned up in my internet searches. The spokes, if that’s what they are, abruptly taking a ninety degree detour, then another before resuming their path to the circular outer rim.

“So how is it you know all this?” I pried. “Did one of these...Vril-ya...just appear to you one day and tell it to you?” He scoffed. “I should think not. They don’t just ‘appear’ before any of us without a great deal of enticement. To orchestrate such a diplomatic meeting, if what they do could be called diplomacy, is Neil’s business not mine. He takes care of all that hoopla for me, so that I never have to deal with those insufferable creatures.”

At last, something I could use. “He organizes meetings, then? Where do they take place?” He pushed a small pair of spectacles up his nose a short ways and peered at me through them. “You could ask Neil to take you. If you just show up, uninvited, it’s liable to end quite disagreeably for you indeed.”

The implied threat was not lost on me. “I don’t know what you want with the Vril-ya, though” he added. “They’re fool’s gold, in the flesh. Captivating to look at, don’t get me wrong. But the more dealings you have with them, the more you will come to realize how irreconcilable the cultural differences between our species truly are.

The thing about evolving from frogs is far and away not the only lie you’ll hear from them. Damn near everything that comes out of their perfectly sculpted mouths is a lie. They just have no qualms about lying right to our faces about even trivial matters. If ever you were to catch them in one of their lies, if they didn’t indignantly vaporize you with a thought, they’d just double down on it with total apparent sincerity.

It’s not sociopathy either. Not exactly. By all accounts from Institute spies, they are scrupulously honorable with others of their own kind. It’s only humans they have no regard for. Culturally ingrained collective narcissism might be a more accurate diagnosis.

You see, they no longer resemble their neandertal ancestors. After mastering genetic engineering while the brightest human minds on the Earth’s surface were busy mastering gunpowder, the Vril-ya set about radically altering their genome.

They already engaged in some limited form of selective breeding before that, as I understand it, but it accomplished very little measurable improvement compared to the sudden leaps and bounds which resulted from their mastery of genetic engineering.”

I still wasn’t about to touch the tea, but now wished I had popcorn. Far from put off, now desensitized to the strangeness of it all, I’d become engrossed. “Even so, they are not actually as far in advance of us as their disproportionate self-regard would lead you to believe. That’s purely cultural, the result of thousands of years isolated underground. With no competition and nobody to dispute it, naturally they identified themselves as the supreme form of life in existence, and dedicated more than one holiday to ritualistic self-congratulation.”

Charming. I could think of two exes in particular who, in retrospect, sounded a lot like the professor’s description. “Don’t you ever speak to one directly without being invited to. You’ll be gone in a puff of superheated vapor. Even if invited, never make eye contact and never speak as though you know anything at all about anything.”

Neil’s unassuming nature came to mind. “Most of all, despite what I said before, do not ever put yourself into a position to fight one of them unless there’s no alternative. Besides their considerable physical advantage, they are never without a Vril staff. It is to them much as smartphones are to us. A general all-purpose gadget representing the apex of their technology which every Vril-ya, even their children, own at least one of.

There is no better way to describe it than the sum total of all human manufacturing capabilities miniaturized into a portable form the size of a walking stick. It actively reads the owner’s mind, and translates their intention into reality by reconfiguring matter into any form, or disassociating it entirely if all they wish to do is destroy.

Mind you the children’s staffs are carefully constrained so they don’t hurt themselves or one another. Though the gy-ei, their women, usually possess staffs with less destructive potential than those wielded by males, it seems to be by their own choice.

All of the intel gathered to date bears out apparent gender equality in their society, not as a recent development but as a foundational tradition. Do not imagine the gy-ei are any less dangerous, though. One percent the destructive potential of even a child’s Vril staff is still enough to cripple you, if judiciously applied.”

I asked how it is that he managed to overcome one of them and steal the artifacts in his possession. “Well I didn’t do it personally! Never said I did, either. The Institute has its fingers in many different pies. Rest assured they have agents younger and fitter than I, armed with the most potent forgotten technologies in our possession with which to keep the Vril-ya in check.

Though really, Neil’s...activities...are also a great help with placating those pricks. Don’t tell him I said that, though. He’s always trying to talk me into attending the rituals. If I never lay eyes on another Vril-ya, it will be too soon.”

---

^{Stay Tuned for Part 5!}