The Name and the Shadow

Contents Chapter One - The Codex Chapter Two - The Sour Son Chapter Three - Event Producer, Not Planner Chapter Four - Second Session Chapter Five - Armand Takes Over Chapter Six - A Feast of Strangers Chapter Seven - GigaMaestro Debut Chapter Eight - The Assassin Chapter Nine - Mount Desert Island Chapter Ten - Varinder Rahan and the Sea Castle Chapter Eleven - The Atman Movement Chapter Twelve - Brothers and LLM's Chapter Thirteen - The End of the Codex Chapter Fourteen - The Tale of Didier Martel Chapter Fifteen - Bryant Park Chapter Sixteen - Boot Sequence Chapter Seventeen - Text To Speech Chapter Eighteen - The Vreen Board Chapter Nineteen - The Invite Chapter Twenty - Cairo Arrival Dinner Chapter Twenty-One - Synchronicity Engine Attack Chapter Twenty-Two - The Zoroastrian Chapter Twenty-Three - Conclave Chapter Twenty-Four - Wiggin the Wicked Chapter Twenty-Five - The Dahabiya Chapter Twenty-Six - Breakfast With Gideon Chapter Twenty-Seven - A Knife In the Night Chapter Twenty-Eight - The Artificial Pineal Gland Chapter Twenty-Nine - The Big Meeting Chapter Thirty - The Library Chapter Thirty-One - Psionics Chapter Thirty-Two - The Sand Beast Chapter Thirty-Three - Battle Thrones Chapter Thirty-Four - Many Miracles Chapter Thirty-Five - Christmas Dinner Chapter Thirty-Six - Five Perfect Days Chapter Thirty-Seven - Metatronic Chapter Thirty-Eight - The Circular Pyramid Chapter Thirty-Nine - A Kopesh, a Katar and an Urimi Chapter Forty - The Golden Time Chapter Forty-One - On Gapstow Bridge Chapter Forty-Two - Ptolemaic Ventures Guide Contents Start of Content CHAPTER ONE The Codex AS ARMAND MARTEL translated the ancient Egyptian codex, it began speaking directly to him. HELLO ARMAND. He did a double-take at the phonetic hieroglyphs enclosed in a cartouche. Yes, falcon, flat circle, owl, falcon, water, fish — Armand. He was not a natural at hieroglyphic translation: he relied on Fabricius, a Google AI to help him do it. As he kept reading, the strangeness continued: YES. I AM SPEAKING TO YOU, ARMAND. That jolted him. He looked around the room suspiciously, as though the source of this phenomenon might be a visible thing nearby. How is this happening? But even with ice rattling in his heart, he kept going. HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN? How long has what been? Was it asking how long it had been buried? Just like a goddamn Mummy, Armand thought — and then pushed the thought away. Four thousand years, Armand muttered. Maybe four and a half thousand. If you know my name, why don’t you know the length of time that you were in the sand? UNTIL YOU THINK IT, I CANNOT KNOW IT. What did that mean? Until you think it … That rattled Armand. Was this thing somehow inside his head? As strange as this book seemed, it was something ‘out there’ — something he could close, burn, throw out the window, get away from anytime CHAPTER TWO The Sour Son A SOUR SUN throbbed over New York. Scant clouds crusted a cold sky, and a dreary wind made everything all the more bitter. Armand Martel ran errands on foot for GigaMaestro, the venture capital firm where he worked. Loneliness purred on a low hum in his mind, as it so often did now. The Old Mood, he called it. Or The Sads. The Deep Drear. Most of his friends from high school and college had gone, moved away, scattered in a diaspora for the faraway blockchain hotbeds of Singapore, Seoul, Zug and Dubai. But not Armand. He’d stayed in New York. And even though he was already thirty years old, Armand could barely afford a shabby little studio in Alphabet City. On the other hand, his older brothers — Quinctius, Marius, Cyrano, Ames, Samson and Otto — were all quite wealthy. When their father, Didier Martel, had died, he’d left the bulk of his considerable riches to them. But as the seventh and youngest brother, Armand had been born too late — the Martel Family Trust had been set up for them and them alone. Armand had not even been included. Had it been an oversight? Or had it been intentional? Only Didier knew for sure, and he was wasn’t talking. Still. His brothers had at least been kind enough to carve out