Aliens Among US!
TOCS AND OGS
In 1970 a private detective named Herald Childe became involved in finding the murderer of his partner who had been killed in a particularly gruesome snuff film. His investigation lead him to an odd assortment of people, who seemed to embody the legends of vampires and were-people. When Childe got too close to the truth and balked at the investigation they kidnapped his his ex-wife so he would continue it. Childe discovered that these odd people were shape shifting, extra-dimensional aliens named the Tocs and Ogs.[1]
One of the Tocs told an acquaintance of Childe's much of their history.[2] The Tocs and Ogs were beings that moved from energy to matter. In the far distant past they had moved throughout the galaxy by purely mental means. A Toc or an Og with special powers, called a Mover or a Captain, could use a metallic cylinder called a grail to move many others from one point to the next in the galaxy instantaneously.
The Tocs and the Ogs had clashed where ever they met. They had arrived at at truce but when a party of Tocs had visited earth, followed shortly by a party of Ogs, they had fought a fierce war for the truce did not extend to planets outside of a certain sphere of influence. Both had their grails destroyed and their captains killed and so were trapped on earth until a new grail and a new captain could be created.
The person who was telling the story was not telling the entire story but was rather hiding certain facts. She was also playing to her audience, who was an avid fan of pulp science fiction tales. He had accidentally discovered information on his own and he was too well known to be summarily eliminated. So she told him a tale with grains of truth in it but with enough red herrings and fantastic elements that should he repeat it, it would be dismissed as the workings of a fantastic imagination.
According to the Secret History of the Wold Newton Universe here is the true history of the Tocs and Ogs.
During the midst of the Third Capellean/Eridanean war, a clone rebellion broke out. A religious cult that believed that clones were soulless abominations who took advantage of the rebellion to destroy as many clones as they could. They did this in the most violent and sadistic methods that they could devise. The Capellean Council of Nine put down the cult and punished the leadership. They voted to remove the Ogs from Capellean society forever. To this end the Tocs were exiled to the Phantom Zone.
During the fourth Capellean/Eridanean War a portion of the Eridanean population is infected with a neural virus courtesy of the Capelleans. The victims become violently addicted to sex. Violently to the extent that if the sexual urge was not immediately satisfied when it arose the victims resorted to rape, murder or other violent means to achieve satisfaction. The Eridanean Council of Nine felt that it has no choice but to exile the victims to the Phantom Zone until a cure was found.
After a few decades of non-corporeal life, the exiles in the Phantom Zone discovered that certain individuals had the ability to travel huge distances within by will power alone. They could also carry others with them. The exiles with this ability became known as Movers or Captains.
The Phantom Zone is a null space between universes, it is a surreal manifestation of a universe consisting of a vast chaos of quantum sinkholes, black holes estuaries, floating energy fields and distortions, odd singularities and formless wastes and odd planetary systems. Many of the imprisoned Tocs and Ogs were drawn to the Gravity Well near the Andromeda Galaxy. Here they discovered they could manifest themselves in nearly solid shapes. They become adept at changing their non-corporeal shapes.
The Capelleans and Eridaneans continued their war in the Phantom Zone. Although they could not kill one another they could cause each other great pain.
After nearly two millennia trapped in the Phantom Zone, a large majority of the Tocs and Ogs, began to listen to a charismatic Mover who wished for them to travel en masse with him through one of the quantum sinkholes that permeated the Phantom Zone. He believed that it was an exit from the Phantom Zone and even if it were not, at least a quick death would be better than the existence they had. About two thousand followed him into the quantum sinkhole. They were twisted, torn and confettied as they passed through the singularity. Their intellects and personalities were destroyed, leaving only pain, rage and a terrible hunger. They emerged in the corridors of Time, following their Movers like mindless pack animals. They become known as the Hounds of Tindalos.[3]
Shortly after the Capelleans and Eridaneans were stranded upon the Earth, the scientists Marra convinced the Capellean High Council to release the Capelleans in the Phantom Zone so they could increase their numbers in the war against the Eridaneans stranded on Earth. Like man of Marra’s experiments, it backfired. Marra released the Tocs and Ogs from their millennia of imprisonment in the Phantom Zone. Although there were less than 700 hundred left, upon manifesting into solid physical shapes, they immediately attacked one another and the Capellean council. Half were "killed" out right. Marra killed a dozen more restoring order. Several of both groups escaped as Marra transported most of the living Tocs and Ogs back to the Phantom Zone.
The released Tocs and Ogs on Earth soon discovered a bizarre phenomenon about themselves. Their millennia in the Phantom Zone had physically altered them. Having existed in a state of energy and quantum probability for millennia the Tocs and Ogs were returned to the state of quantum probability upon the death of their physical bodies. Yet they were not sent back into the Phantom Zone but their consciousness remained in the physical universe although in a non-corporeal and insubstantial form. The Tocs and Ogs also discovered that by absorbing the brain energy humans radiated when experiencing rage, terror and sexual ecstasy they could, eventually, gather enough energy to manifest another physical body. They discovered another ability, their physical manifestations were malleable within certain limitations. Most of their bodies could shift shapes giving rise to some of the legends of were-wolves, swan maidens and other shape-shifters of note.
After nearly eight hundred years of their newfound existence of fluctuating between matter and energy the Tocs and Ogs discovered that this is not necessarily permanent or perfect existence. For each "death" that an individual experienced made the transition between the states of matter and energy more difficult. Their physical forms were also subject to natural deterioration and aging. Some of the Tocs and Ogs who became trapped in a state between matter and energy and become mistaken for spirits or ghosts. The Tocs and Ogs, each planned to created a Mover, one of those rare individuals who can navigate the swirling neutrino chaos of the Phantom Zone. They believed that a Mover could use their connection with the Phantom Zone to restore them to a permanent yet immortal physical state and use the Zone as a gateway to search through infinite quantum probabilities and discover a universe that is a literal Paradise.
The first such candidate for the Mover was born in 1788 George Gordon, Lord Byron. However due to flaws in the hybrid process and due to another genetic anomaly that possessed, Lord Byron never became the Mover the Tocs and Ogs desired. The other genetic flaw manifested in 1824 when Lord Byron suffered a fatal fever in Missougla, Greece and died. His body regenerated from the disease proving him to be an Immortal.[4]
In late 1934 they artificially inseminated a woman with the frozen sperm of Lord Byron in an attempt to breed a Mover. The child was Herald Sigurd Childe.
In the mid-1950s, Igescu of the Ogs discovered a descendent of Lord Byron’s who seemed to manifest the properties of a Captain. He and the Ogs undertook an elaborate ceremony to turn the Byron descendent into a Captain or to use him to create another Captain but their efforts failed. This became known as the Denton Incident.[5]
In the early 1960s the instability situation among the Tocs and Ogs becomes desperate as they are compelled to force humans into releasing the energy that they need to keep from deteriorating and remain cohesive. A few pursue scientific methods to arrest their deteriorating, others become excessive, kidnapping and using humans as fodder by turning them into sex slaves and torture victims. Others tried even more desperate acts with nearly tragic consequences.
Three years later, the Ogs manipulate events to bring the Mover, who has should have reached the prime of his powers, into their control as seen in the events of Philip Jose Farmer's Image of the Beast and Blown. Private Investigator Herald Childe, while investigating the sadistic sex murder of his partner becomed involved in the secret struggle of the Tocs and Ogs.
Gordon is revealed to be the son of George Gordon, Lord Byron achieved through frozen sperm and in vitro fertilization. He is also the culmination of the Tocs and Ogs dreams, a Mover who can navigate the Phantom Zone and take them to a paradisiacal world. In the end however, Gordon tricked the Tocs and Ogs, exiling them in the Phantom Zone once more.
The story told to Forrest J. Ackerman was a tale that played on his innate love of pulp science fiction tales with a small kernel of truth inside.Some ten years later Herald Gordon, while living under the name of Gordon Carfax became involved with the Medium project.[6] This device could purportedly communicate with the dead and had the ability to make a representation of the afterlife. I believe Medium actually tuned into a wathan collection device. The Preservers had planted wathan creation and collection devices as was done in the Riverworld series. The Medium, acting like a wathan reader, was able to make contact with the wathans in the collection chambers and so it appeared as though contact had been made with the dead.[7]
For a theory about how the Riverworld ties into the Wold Newton Universe see Ozdyssey or How the Yellow Brick Road lead me to the Riverworld.
© 2000-2009 Dennis Power
[1] Childe’s investigation was detailed in Blown and Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer
[2] This acquaintance was Forrest J. Ackerman, the famed science fiction author and editor.
[3] The Hound were portrayed by Frank Belknap Long in is short story collection, The Houds of Tindalos, Arkham 1946
[4] This was
portrayed in the Highlander television series “The Modern
Prometheus” The book Lord Of The Dead by
Tom Holland portrays Lord Byron as a vampire, leading to the conclusion he may
have just pretended to be an immortal. Rather it seems to be the other way
around, with Byron using the vampire myth as an explanation for his longevity
and his decadence. The novel Lord of the Dead borrows background material from The Count of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas and also from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.
[5] This will be examined in the forthcoming article Casting L.O.T.S.
[6] As seen in Philip Jose Farmer’s Traitor to the Living, Ballentine, 1973
[7] For more information on wathans and their eollection devises, see Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series.