12,000 years ago, as their home star died in a distant corner of the universe, the Obsidian Men—forty crystal-matrix beings—fled through a blue-white hydrogen fire portal. They landed at Göbekli Tepe, an ancient Earth site that became their hidden sanctuary. But, Earth's sun was too weak for their biology, optimized for intense solar heat. Facing extinction, they discovered a surrogate: dreams. Children's dreams, in particular, provided the potent theta-wave energy they needed to survive, though in a subdued, low-energy state.
They distilled these dreams into an elixir called Somnolent, sustaining their 32 remaining members (down from 40 over millennia). Attempts to create a hyper-concentrated version to transform them into human replicas failed catastrophically—the only volunteer dissolved into a black pool that never solidified. So they recruited a human collector.
At 7 years old, Echo Voss ("Voss" meaning "collector" in their language) was lured through the portal and granted powers to harvest dreams worldwide. In exchange, he received a mild humanized Somnolent for eternal youth. Echo served for 11,983 years, mapping every dream on a Vitruvian Man ledger—the Cartographer Map. His final vial was his own 7th birthday memory, fulfilling his contract. He slipped into dementia, finding peace after centuries of service—a tragic figure, child-recruited into an alien existential struggle. He is succeeded by Lira Voss.
By the 4th century A.D., the Obsidian Men relocated to the Vatican's sealed -17th level, deeper shadows for safety. They ensnared Earth's rich, famous, and powerful with human Somnolent, trading eternal youth for fealty and loyalty. These addicts became unwitting agents, sowing chaos to ease the harvest.
The Obsidian Men aren't evil overlords. They're benign survivors in an existential fight—32 refugees on a path to extinction. They lack human morality; all that matters is existence. Right and wrong? Irrelevant. Only the harvest endures.
Red-carpet gods who never age
Elixir of life is all the rage
Flashbulb smile at twenty-five
Glows brighter still at sixty-five
Behind the shadows I work the blade
Extract the memories, bottle the past
Call me Echo, cartographer of sleep
I draw the dreams the ageless keep
I deal in yesterdays, watch them flow
Steal your dreams and the futures you’ll never know
Cartographer of ghosts, reaping what you sow
The map leads to nowhere, the places I go
Göbekli Tepe, first harvest ground
Stone circles drank the terror down
Dimensional beings slipped into form
Fed on the past to stay forever warm
Dementia’s just the receipt, my friend…
You pay in full by the end.
Needle in the arm, they call it safe
Soma in the blood, keeps the herd half-awake
Thumbs keep scrolling, faces softly glazed
While the ghosts drink the years we’ve already paid
I deal in yesterdays, watch them flow
Steal your dreams and the futures you’ll never know
Cartographer of ghosts, reaping what you sow
The map leads to nowhere, the places I go
One vial too bright—seven candles on a cake
I saw my own face at the age I can’t remake
Then the memory blinked
Static…
Blank page…
They close the ledger
Echo forgets his name
Lyrics and music by T Atkinson
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