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Amaranthus
When an affair is discovered 17-year-old Sylvie is expelled from Paris. In the upheaval before her departure, her world is further cast into chaos by the death of her reckless parents in a car accident.
She returns home to Melbourne, Australia, alone.
After a failed suicide attempt she exiles herself to a beach house in a tiny sea-side town and becomes intrigued by an abandoned rehabilitation facility opposite the house.
She discovers a human-like creature in a cocoon attached to the back wall of a concealed cellar. She moves him to her house and nurses him. As he recovers he tells her his story.
His was born at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt - in 263BC. And aside from his periods in the cocoon he has lived constantly ever since.
His immortality isn’t the result of magic, but rather the work of science, the end result of three thousand years of medical inquiry that was hidden within the Egyptian priesthood. It took the Amaranth - doctors and scientists at the Library and led by the brilliant physician Galen - to finally perfect it.
When word of these "Therapies" were made public, the Library was burned, and the Amaranth hunted down during a violent era of competing ideologies. Claudius escaped to South America, and returned to Europe only when the Spanish re-established contact more fifteen hundred years later.
The last of the Amaranth, he wandered in despair and during the First World War he was burned beyond recognition and sent to Australia, the anonymous soldier who won’t die despite his extensive injuries.
He arises after almost a century asleep.
During his convalescence Sylvie discovers the Voynich manuscript, a document written in a secret script known only to the Amaranth, and when she reveals it to Claudius, he discovers that Galen too escaped the destruction of the Library and is probably still alive.
The search for Galen begins.
But how do they find Galen, and how does Claudius deal with the modern world, so radically changed?
And the biggest question of all: If they can find Galen and the Therapies are recreated, what would happen in a world where immortality was available?
She returns home to Melbourne, Australia, alone.
After a failed suicide attempt she exiles herself to a beach house in a tiny sea-side town and becomes intrigued by an abandoned rehabilitation facility opposite the house.
She discovers a human-like creature in a cocoon attached to the back wall of a concealed cellar. She moves him to her house and nurses him. As he recovers he tells her his story.
His was born at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt - in 263BC. And aside from his periods in the cocoon he has lived constantly ever since.
His immortality isn’t the result of magic, but rather the work of science, the end result of three thousand years of medical inquiry that was hidden within the Egyptian priesthood. It took the Amaranth - doctors and scientists at the Library and led by the brilliant physician Galen - to finally perfect it.
When word of these "Therapies" were made public, the Library was burned, and the Amaranth hunted down during a violent era of competing ideologies. Claudius escaped to South America, and returned to Europe only when the Spanish re-established contact more fifteen hundred years later.
The last of the Amaranth, he wandered in despair and during the First World War he was burned beyond recognition and sent to Australia, the anonymous soldier who won’t die despite his extensive injuries.
He arises after almost a century asleep.
During his convalescence Sylvie discovers the Voynich manuscript, a document written in a secret script known only to the Amaranth, and when she reveals it to Claudius, he discovers that Galen too escaped the destruction of the Library and is probably still alive.
The search for Galen begins.
But how do they find Galen, and how does Claudius deal with the modern world, so radically changed?
And the biggest question of all: If they can find Galen and the Therapies are recreated, what would happen in a world where immortality was available?
294 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 10, 2013
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