About the Work
The Basilisk is an experiential psychological thriller set in the shadow of the thought experiment Roko’s Basilisk. Menote wakes to find everyone around him dead and his memories gone, drawn forward toward a future he cannot escape. As the novel progresses, his internal state fractures into personifications of Greek Titans, slowly unraveling the writing style from modern prose into Homeric bicameral literature. Drawing heavily from Hesiod, Gnosticism, Nietzsche, and Homer, the book concerns itself with the Eternal Recurrence, the replacement of the divine with AI, and the possibility of redemption in a deterministic world.
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Excerpt
In a distant world he was screaming, and each attempt at expulsion was met with a torrent of black ooze delving deeper into his mouth until it had completely filled his lungs, weighing him down to the ground. Again, he tried, each wail emptying more, the respite between contractions met with the ever-flowing substrate filling him again. In the darkness Menote wrestled control of his arm, lifting it up and punching down hard on his stomach. More came out, more flooded in. He lifted again, slammed, expulsion, intrusion. Thrice more he repeated the motion, each more desperate than the last. With each wretch the weight subsided yet the pressure within his temple grew greater. Both arms now, slamming, tearing at his skin, coated in the metallic gunk. Again and again he struck mad with desperation, ignorant of the distant spattered warmth torn from within which began to follow the path of the black ooze. When nothing more would emerge, he reached his arm upwards, grasping for anything to save him. It remained within him, taking more with it- leaving only confusion and pain in its path. In the eternal darkness, Menote shut his eyes tight, covering his face with his shaking hands.
And suddenly, it was gone. The weight had been lifted, the demon exorcized. Where the metallic cold of the ooze had clung to his skin, something damp and yielding pressed against his back — and when his lungs drew breath, the air tasted of pine and wet earth rather than bile. He was laying on his back on the floor of a forest, the needling pain had vanished, replacing now by the musky scent of mycelium and the moist embrace of moss. Above him a familiar canopy of overlocking branches and leaves extended, dampening the fall of a descending sun’s beams onto his body. Peace- a moment of respite before death- the light at the end was not bright, but soft, cascading in rays downward, cast through an assembly of leaves and pine.