illustration by Jameson Currier
THE FIRST EMPYRIAN
by Jameson Currier
Adley Arthur Anstett was born the same day as the writers Eugene O’Neill and Oscar Wilde, but shared none of their talents. His only skill, besides an ability to play a stereo, was that he could transform himself into a postage stamp. Consequently, he had spent the first fifteen years of his life visiting the most desired and beautiful places that Earth could offer. He had scaled the mighty Aconcaqua in Argentina, sailed the majestic Geirangerfjorden in Norway, fished in the magnificent Shyok River in Pakistan, and sung in a melodious chapel in Moldovita, Romania.
But then Adley Arthur Anstett grew bored with Earth. He longed for more colorful adventures. He wanted to visit outer space. Mailing himself to NASA headquarters, Adley Arthur Anstett found himself on the first flight to the planet Kaiamanu. Three years later he awoke to find that the spaceship’s photopolarimeter had failed to function.
Adley Arthur Anstett did not panic; his previous excursions had incubated placidity, if anything at all. Instead, he sped through space at 50,000 miles per hour, marveling at Kaiamanu’s rings, thousands of bands travelling along their own trajectory, encircling the enormous planet. It was the most beautiful phenomenon he had ever witnessed.
Wiping the moisture that had accumulated beneath his eyes, Adley Arthur Anstett realized that he could never again be content on Earth. He now had unlimited galaxies before him. Adley Arthur Anstett had become the first Empyrian.
Flying outside the spaceship surrounded by a trillion stars, Adley Arthur Anstett heard a dog bark. He woke up in his bed in his bedroom. His dog was barking at a squirrel in a tree. But now Adley Arthur Anstett had something to write about. He had had his first science fiction dream.
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About the story
The first draft of “The First Empyrian” dates back to 1977 when I was twenty-one, after I had completed college and was again living at my parents’ house in Georgia. The illustration was done in 2023 at the age of sixty-seven. The term “Empyrian” refers back to a concert piece I played in my high school band titled “Overture to Emperata.”
“Lost Treasures” is Jameson Currier’s ongoing project to rediscover, revisit, and illustrate his early writings.
Jameson Currier is the author of eight novels, five collections of fiction, three illustrated tales, and a memoir.
