Once upon a time in Ginnungagap — in an orbit not too rimy, not too sparky, but juuust right — and, coincidentally, not too far away or too long ago from our own place and time, OG^[1] humans lived happily ever after.

Until they all drowned in the blood beer brewed to prevent jaguars from devouring everyone.

All giants died.

Except for the one who caused the flood — Odin, that is. His mother was a Jötun, so that counts as half-giant.^[2]

Bigger than zero, still.

But other than that — all giants died.

Of course, this excludes the all-knowing völva — the giant-born seeress whom the almighty, and also all-knowing, Odin would later always humbly ask for knowledge.

Not entirely sure how that counts, to be honest. Would you say she was a full-fledged giant?

Fine. All giants died.

Except for all the giants living in Jötunheim, children of the ONLY surviving giant, Bergelmir.

And his wife, with suspiciously redacted name... who survived too — probably.

And then, a few centuries later, humans proper (here — non-giant, Cl. Homo s.s.) were invited to a globalist world forum in the primordial mound of creation — while, outside, the aforementioned world was destroyed.

Again.

But they survived, merrily drinking dew and acting very polite.

Until one day the cosmic egg cracked, and they were all nicely asked to leave the Seven Caves — for reasons unknown, possibly something trivial. They were law-abiding legal immigrants, after all, and their credit record was spotless. Maybe just a couple of little scandals, like accidentally sleeping... uhm... what?..

Let me check the sources real quick...

“Tucking in a ball of feathers and getting pregnant”?!

Ah — the ball was never found, I see.

This isn’t a crime, though. A misdemeanor at most... Right.

Anyway...

Of course, if they promised to behave and brought referrals, they were always welcome to return to the Fields of Reeds — but that invitation lasted only while there was still a place to return to, for it, too, was soon destroyed by an impossibly precise strike, followed by mountain-melting fire.

The remarkably kind and intelligent serial founders worked very hard, once again, to bring enlightenment into this broken world — despite the setbacks — and started another green field incubator in the same valley.

And it worked, for some time, until the locals grew too amoral.

And then the new place, too, was destroyed — in a single day and night. This time by a tsunami, for a change.

That's when the council of gods came together at Teotihuacán and voted to sacrifice themselves in order to start a new world.

A really new world.

Not like the last world, when Odin and his recently deceased sons founded Atlantis, because the Flower Road to Mount Meru broke again, and they had no more five-colored stones left, as Inanna had already used them to prop up the tilted heavens with the Four Sons of Horus.^[3] According to one comfortably well off Egyptian priest, this happened no later than [Archaic Daylight Saving Time: two times the Sun rose in the West] ago — the date when all the Egyptian gods retired and have never been seen in human form again.^[4]

Confused?

Angry?

Then this pseudoscientific distasteful nonsense is not for you.

You’re clearly too intelligent, and will have no trouble effortlessly clearing the famously high bar of the ACTUAL Department of Archaeology; they’ll feed your appetite for the rigorous math of paleogenetics and arm you with peer-reviewed, dissertation-supported knowledge of Mayan ritual iconography — provided you solemnly vow never to utter the word pre-Clovis.

If, however, you’re a casual lad who enjoys Sudoku, tap this Spine of Osiris to eleven^[5], and you’ll experience nine whole new levels of lowbrow comparative eschatology — and discover what happens^[6] if you build an apocalypse-survival contraption out of an Orphic Egg™ floating in magma, with a support bed of Chilled Ether™ — or maybe a giant serpent.

Totally not the same serpent by the way that gnaws the roots of the world-tree, while Rā hauls it skyward by the crown.

And not the Great Feathered Serpent.

Who is a different serpent from the Rainbow Serpent, which brings rain — but only to Australia, since the European Union remains under Zeus’s weather monopoly.

Yes, Zeus — that nepobaby playboy with thunderous personality, who is absolutely not to be confused with...

Ugh.

Go read the book if you are curious. Or if you just want to help the author be happy.

— Al Kha ⵣ the author of The Atlas Hypothesis

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1. O.G., abbr. — Original Giant (see Ymir, Frost Giants). ↩
2. As for the other half — his paternal grandfather was supposedly the first non-giant person, licked out of the ice by the holy cow. And we don't talk about the birth circumstances of his father. ↩
3. Either the Sons weren't very tall or the weather was cold when the Norse women first saw them, but another nickname also stuck. ↩
4. Only via their representatives, outsourced to that priest's humble duly franchised prayer center. ↩
5. Voids the resurrection warranty. ↩
6. Nothing good happens, by the way.
   The people you saved will disrespect you, and their morals will sink lower than you could imagine.
   They won’t be grateful for preserving the complete collector's edition of Library of Amenti at all — probably something to do with elitist-coded sacred math and the high barrier of having to read whole pages at a time from the boring monochrome-green displays of the emerald tablets.
   Their standards will be weak.
   Meanwhile, a subscription to Norn-a-Link-enabled Third-Eye AR seductively promises them Housewives of Olympus in full-sensory HDR. (Leto, like, totally is a b-tch — amirite?)
   And that project to convert the upper levels of Pātāla into an “Apsara Pleasure Dome”? They’ll have no shame at all. ↩

spoilers