Sweet Sarapadon, tell us of Keftiu, of Troy, of wondrous Lycia, and of your place in sacred Elysium.
Sitting beneath the glow of the arc lantern outside Knossos II, Minas thought how calm, safe, and tranquil the nights in this part of Crete were. The golden glow of Knossos’ Li-Fi streetlamps reminded him of his early childhood, and of stories, his father told of the decision to rebuild the Minoan palaces as they were intended. Advanced Li-Fi, and other technologies spirited the island of Crete to the forefront of modern urban planning concepts about the time Elon Musk’s Tesla innovations powered up the Greek island’s solar power grid.
All that was ancient history though, especially in a world where a decade became a lifetime technology-wise. The irony of humankind’s circular path to true peace and prosperity resided in the fact that ancient ritual, tradition, culture, and technology were the catalyst for the more perfect world philosophers always described.
Minas snapped back into the present when the shadow of the lithe figure of his wife Kallia interrupted the LEDs’ glow. “Where were you this time?” she asked in a deep motherly tone as she slid behind him on the overlook. He ventured a big bearded smile when he replied, “Oh, sorry. Was I that detached?”
Prone to dreaming day and night, Minas’ Walter Mitty mind made sense seeing how epigenetics inextricably linked the Cretan Foreign Minister to the cataclysmic events of the last great war. Earth’s final military confrontation of 2028-2035 saw Minas’s father Manolis Liapakis command a group of partisans in Crete’s “kill or be killed” defense against the Fourth Sphere globalists, who were bent on squeezing the last drop of resource from Earth.
As it turned out, traditional societies like the one on Liapakis’ island were the holdouts, the living glue that held fast against a surge of unrealistic and unsustainable supercapitalism.
Leaders of the Fourth Sphere nations had created a mutation of what 20th-century fascists attempted back in the 1930s and 1940s. But this world conflict was not like the previous one. What stood in the way of global domination nearly 100 years later ended up being small bands of capable individuals. 21st-century technology and knowledge powered the individual like never before, but no one could have envisioned how people like Minas’ brother, Dr. Ioannis Liapakis would help people adapt and overcome by leveraging such knowledge. Early conquests by Forth Sphere forces were halted by electronic weapons technology 14-year-old tech students could build in a day. Handheld EMP weapons created in the caves of inaccessible southern Crete could down sophisticated aircraft in the right hands, and easily crafted ADAPTIV camouflage made the island’s partisan warriors invisible to the enemy.
On this night Minas and his wife held hands on the terrace overlooking the marvel that was Knossos II. The soft tantalizing Lyra notes of the kritika rose up to their ears from the central plaza of the palace below. The couple could just make out the colorful traditional costumes on the people dancing the Syrtos, with their hands joined in a collective bond. Neither of them pondered just how much this new world owed to those cryptic Minoans of the Bronze Age. And as the night crept on, they stared glossy-eyed out into the pervasive peace of another Cretan night. As they held one another in the moonlight, Minas’ thoughts drifted once again into the past, where mysteries still clung to the rewritten pages of history.
“Do you think it will last forever,” Kallia whispered, her lips close to Minas’ ear. “I pray it will, I pray it always will,” Minas replied. Leaning his head against hers, the pair cut a perfect silhouette that embraced the moonlit sepulcher above the city.
Editor’s note: Beneath the Gates of Phaistos is a novel in progress that deals with the hidden secrets of the mysterious Minoan Civilization. The book will be part fact – part fiction window into possibility.