The UTS Literary Society is often symbolised by a little green worm, wearing glasses, sitting inside a teacup. This cute little creature is called Norman the Bookworm. He appears within various pictures, social media posts, and banners, a recurring symbol amongst UTS LitSoc.
But this symbol has deep historical roots to the formation of The Literary Society and does not reoccur without reason.
This symbol is based upon a real living entity who controls The Literary Society alongside a hidden ruling class consisting of other members of their species. The existence of these entities and their leader has been kept secret by each consequent President.
This knowledge is recorded as a text written based off of the witness accounts from humans involved in the formation of The Literary Society. Upon reading this text, one will become an enlightened member of the society, knowing the truth behind the motif of Norman the Bookworm.
When humans imagine something, their thoughts are broadcasted into the universe to travel forever. However, there exists a realm, where these thought waves materialise. Where all things that humans imagine come into existence. This place is called the Lucid Realm.
The Lucid Realm is alike our universe, it consists of stars, and planets that orbit them. Each planet forms from some core ‘idea’ shared among humans, materialising from shared human imagination.
There is a planet in this realm, Clava, a planet where an eternal fight rages. Birds rule the skies, while worms muddle in the earth. This was the first planet to form from the imagination of humans, hence the minds of the creatures here model ancient human warriors.
The bird-like creatures were called Puzl-Aol, they were brown, winged creatures with purple eyes. They built their civilisation in the clouds, made of large cubic structures. The Puzl-Aol were intelligent, diplomatic and sought to spread wisdom and equality.
The worm-like creatures were called Bukwyrm, they were green, vile creatures with serpent-like eyes. Their civilisation consisted of mudbrick houses and subterranean tunnels. The Bukwyrm were violent, expansionist, and sought to conquer others rather than negotiate with them.
For millennia, the Bukwyrm and Puzl-Aol were mortal enemies, but the Puzl-Aol could never rid the earth of the worms no matter how many times they tried.
Time in this realm would pass relative to Earth, and since Clava had existed for thousands of years this gave these imaginary creatures enough time to develop technology and science.
The Bukwyrm started an industrial revolution, burning coal and polluting the atmosphere. But since the Puzl-Aol lived in the skies, they would not stand for it. A century-long war began, called The Coal War, fought not with talons and swords, but guns, planes, and bombs.
As war raged, technology inevitably advanced, up until the Puzl-Aol discovered nuclear energy. The endless cycle of hatred ended when the Puzl-Aol called for a ceasefire. They decreed that they would give the Bukwyrm nuclear power technology and never again attack their civilisation, so long as the Bukwyrm upheld peace on their end and never again polluted the atmosphere.
The Bukwyrm agreed to this deal and both creatures lived in peace. But the Puzl-Aol made one condition, that due to their violent history, the Bukwyrm were forever prohibited from reaching to the skies.
For an expansionist species like the Bukwyrm this came as a tragedy when the space age came. Upon the invention of rockets decades after the war, their prohibition from the skies was still in effect, meaning they would never leave their planet to colonise the universe.
Knowing they would never stand a chance against the Puzl-Aol and never conquer the atmosphere, they decided to find other ways to expand their empire. They turned their eyes to the inter-dimensional. Advancing their technology, they found a way to contact another realm.
They discovered their realm exists because of the imagination of creatures in the Material Realm. Using some receiver technology, they could detect signatures from this world, specifically, the brainwaves of humans.
But there was no way to send matter from their world into the other, so sending Bukwyrms into this realm was impossible. But since brainwaves constituted ‘imagination’ and the Lucid Realm exists from ‘imaginary matter’ it should have been possible to transfer not the material body, but the imaginary ‘mind’ of a Bukwyrm into this realm. But minds can’t exist in a vacuum, they need a material host to exist in. And earth was full of hosts, filled with creatures called humans.
So they created a device that could allow a Bukwyrm to transfer their consciousness into the material body of a human. Their plan was to send Bukwyrms to earth this way, and colonise the planet.
But this device was only half the equation. On earth, humans are not usually very imaginative, and spend too much time doing mindless tasks, making them difficult hosts to take over. And even if a person could be found ‘using their imagination’, the device would not be able to sustain a strong enough connection between dimensions to transfer anything.
However, spiritual beings live on earth, often called ghosts. These spirits are immaterial and exist purely in an ‘imaginary’ form, hence they can communicate with the Lucid Realm. Certain physical objects on earth can be instilled with a spirit, often called a ‘cursed object.’ If a human were to interact with such an object, it could act as a gateway to send a Bukwyrm into their mind and take over their body.
Exactly this had happened . . .
In 1974, there was a young man named Norman who was interested in paranormal activity. He would frequently try to contact ghosts, summon demons, and study the occult. He was also an avid reader and would spend a lot of his time browsing bookshops.
One day he came to a bookshop where he found an old, tattered book with no title sitting in the ‘occult magic’ section. Curious, he flipped through it, the book was in English, yet seemed to be an incoherent jumble of noise. It consisted of random sentences, vividly describing different scenery, written in second person, telling the reader to picture themselves in different places. When he tried to buy the book, the clerk had never seen it before. It had no price tag, nor was it listed. Being generous, he paid seventy five cents for it, and took it home.
He sat down reading passages from the book – it described the reader rowing a boat down a gentle stream, detailing each and every sensation the reader would feel. It would then go on to describe a snowy mountain top, a jungle rainforest, a scorching desert.
At first, it seemed like incoherent nonsense, but Norman felt himself immersed in the imagery portrayed in the text more and more. So immersed that he began almost physically being in the locations described, alike to entering a Virtual Reality.
He was confused why such a book existed, and its exact origin, but being obsessed with the potential existence of magic, he believed this book to be some kind of hypnotic spell. In fact, he was right, the book’s text was a carefully curated string of information made to open the deepest recesses of the consciousness and open their mind to the spiritual.
What Norman was not aware of, was that this book was instilled with a spirit, trapped within the book, waiting to possess the next person to fall under the hypnotic trance.
But as the spirit began to creep into Norman’s mind, the relay systems in the Lucid Realm built by the Bukwyrm detected a compatible opening between dimensions.
A spirit, a conduit between the Material and Lucid Realm, was opening a gateway into a human who strongly believed in the existence of other immaterial worlds, a human capable of being hijacked.
So, the Bukwyrm brought forth the strongest and bravest of them all. They called them ‘The Buff One’. They activated the device and their body remained limp and lifeless. Their eyes turned white, their skin pale. But their mind transferred worlds.
Riding through the gateway created by the spirit in the book, The Buff One materialised within Norman’s brain.
The Buff One felt his eyes being open, felt hands by his side, felt his heartbeat, and a throb in his temple. He was holding a book before him. He closed it and set it aside.
The Buff One felt strange, like they were not . . . themselves. They had vague memories of stepping through a device, coming from the Lucid Realm, but those memories felt distant, almost alien.
The Buff One spoke, ‘I am here. I am … who? Who am I?’ he felt strange as sound vibrated out of his throat. ‘What is this tongue … this language I speak?’
He looked around, felt his skin and said, ‘Who am I? I am Norman. No, I can’t be … I am Bukwyrm. Yet I am … Norman?’
He felt awkward in this new human body, having limbs, eyes, a nose. He stood up and walked to a mirror to examine himself.
He wore big circular glasses, had a side part, and some light freckles.
What was strange was that this felt like him. This felt like who The Buff One had always been. Then, he understood what happened.
Upon transferring his consciousness into the Material Realm, he gained existence within the brain of the human. But in doing so, he inherited all the pre-existing memories the human held. He did not just transfer himself into this world, but instead materialised ‘as a human’ on the other end.
Hence, he remembered how to move, how to speak the human’s language, and could even recall memories the human cherished.
Norman worked as a journalist and was able to wake up each morning, go to work, write articles, and talk to human coworkers, fully impersonating a human. Since he inherited all the memories of Norman, it was easy to convincingly ‘be Norman.’
But the true mind in control, The Buff One, knew that he had to find more hosts for other Bukwyrms to use if they were to build a colony on this planet.
He began thinking about the type of person he had overtaken – an avid reader, able to open their mind to the possibility of the paranormal. Finding other people who believed in demons, spirits and ghosts was difficult, none of Norman’s human friends shared his beliefs, but people who were avid readers were rather abundant.
He considered that when people read books, they use their imagination actively, meaning they are forming matter within the Lucid Realm. When reading books, they open their minds to the Lucid Realm, the only problem is, a cursed object is required to actually act as a gateway between dimensions.
That’s when Norman realised, if he was a being from the Lucid Realm existing in a material form, then he could do the same thing the ghost in the book did, act as the middleman in bringing a Bukwyrm from the Lucid Realm into a human.
Norman saw a post advertising a local book club. He took it off the posterboard and wrote down the time and place into a pocket journal. His best chance of finding new hosts would be among them.
A few weeks passed and he came to the book club taking the cursed book as a communication device. During the meeting, there was a moment where everyone sat and quietly read as a group for thirty minutes. This is when Norman felt something strange, he could ‘sense’ the imaginary flow of everyone there, he could feel their connection to the Lucid Realm as they imagined whatever they were reading.
He opened the cursed book and began reading it. This way, he could signal back to the Lucid Realm, and send his own thought waves directly back to his fellow Bukwyrms. He told them that a fresh batch of available hosts were in the vicinity. At least he hoped, his thought waves would be received.
But after a few minutes, while everyone was deeply immersed in reading, Norman began chanting, ‘Let them in . . . let them in . . . ’ over and over again, in a low rumbling voice. People glanced at him awkwardly, confused as to what he was doing, but being still immersed in their books, they were essentially in a hypnotic state, connected to the Lucid Realm. When they made eye contact with the possessed human, his snake-like gaze was what opened the gateway between worlds. Everyone in the room was overtaken by a Bukwyrm.
Each of the humans had the same reaction, confused by their new form, or rather new identities. Everyone had inherited the memories of a human and took a moment to adjust.
Norman spoke loudly, ‘Fellows! Welcome! Welcome to the Material Realm!’
One human asked, ‘Who are we?’ Another said the same thing, soon everyone in unison was chanting, ‘Who are we?’
‘This is how we must exist in this world. It is our only choice.’ Replied Norman. ‘I am Norman. It is who I remember being, it is who I am now. But I am not human, I am still a Bookworm. I am a symbiotic combination of two beings into one, I am not Norman, nor human . . . I am Norman the Bookworm!’
As the others began to understand, one human asked, ‘Why do you say our name so crudely? Buk – wyrm?’
‘The tongues which we now possess, and the language we are forced to know, do not permit our true name to be uttered. This is how we must name ourselves.’
‘But it sounds like book – worm?’ said one person. ‘Like a worm who resides inside a book? Wait … how can I remember such things? Books? Worms?’
‘Because you are now just like a human.’ Norman replied. ‘Everything they know we now know. But, it is still too dangerous to reveal ourselves. If we are to set up a colony here on this planet, we must do so in secret. You must use the memories you took from them and act like them.’
‘Pretend to be a human?’ asked one person. ‘But why? I say we ditch this wasteland of a reality, and take our fight against the Puzzle Owl and spread to the stars.’
‘No, you do not understand. If we take earth, if we can rule all the minds of humans . . . we control their thoughts and imagination, and hence rule not just Clava, but the entire Lucid Realm!’
Every human in the room began nodding their heads, smiling, some laughing with excitement.
One person spat on the floor and said, ‘Bookworm? Puzzle Owl? Clava? Why can we only speak such vile sounds?’
‘Never mind that.’ Said Norman. ‘We must spread our kind to as many as possible.’
Norman stood up and spoke, ‘Go out and procure more humans. I have learnt that reading books puts humans in a hypnotic state where they are vulnerable to the Lucid Realm. Go out and procure humans that avidly read! Once you have found them, bring them here, and we will enact the spell needed to seed them with Bukwyrm consciousness.’
And he said for all to hear, ‘Go out and procure humans, go out and bring them to us!’
With a collection of Bukwyrm controlled humans on earth, Norman could lead them to gather more and more people under the guise of being a book club. But as soon as new people came in, and began silently reading, that’s when they chanted and made eye contact with them, putting them under control.
Over the next few months, what began as a book club turned into something named, ‘The Cult of Norman the Bookworm.’ This cult convinced the ‘humans’ involved in it, (or the personality of the humans) that they must all worship Norman as a leader, and be a slave to the Bukwyrm species. If the humans they were controlling were themselves convinced that they want to help the Bukwyrm’s expansion, it would ensure that the human mind would never fight against the Bukwyrm and make the symbiotic connection near permanent.
Norman would explain to them how he is two creatures fused into one. His human body, Norman, the one who wears glasses, and his Bukwyrm soul, the one alike to a worm, with green skin. The cult devised a symbol to portray this new type of being.
They drew Norman the Bookworm as a green worm, alike to the Bukwyrm species, but with circular glasses like the human. This symbolised a human possessed by a Bukwyrm.
Thus formed The Cult of Norman the Bookworm.
In the Lucid Realm, the Bukwyrm’s inter-dimensional technology did not remain secret forever. After less than a year, Puzl-Aol authorities had found out what they were doing from an anonymous information leak.
Puzl-Aol troops stormed their facility, stole the device and arrested all the Bukwyrms involved in making it. They had interrogated the Bukwyrms and had their own scientists examine the device.
The Puzl-Aol understood that the Bukwyrm were planning to take over earth and control the imagination of humans, and hence, the Lucid Realm.
They demanded that whatever humans they had possessed be freed and their operation be stopped. But their demands were futile. They had no choice but to fabricate a copy of the device and send in a Puzl-Aol agent to earth. They did so during a Cult chanting. The Puzl-Aol they sent into the body of a human impersonated a Bukwyrm and pretended to be a part of the Cult. But in secret, they gathered together their own band of humans by going into courtrooms and police stations, catching people reading newspapers or reports, touching their shoulder and whispering to them while making eye-contact.
The Puzl-Aol wanted to cause the least amount of disruption on earth, so they saw quality over quantity, gathered together a small group of authoritative figures and approached the Cult of Norman the Bookworm.
At one of their book clubs, a Puzl-Aol possessed human said that they have amassed enough humans who they will use to take earth’s legal action against them, in order to suppress the spread of their cult. They explained to their leader, Norman, that he is to stop his plan, or the Puzl-Aol will retaliate, here on earth.
By this point, Norman had become an entity fused by two. He shared the memories of The Buff One and the human able to use these memories simultaneously.
He agreed to venture back to the Lucid Realm to negotiate the situation. He opened the cursed book and put his human in the same trance, but this time, detaching himself.
Back in his world, they prepared his imaginary body with the device so that his mind could re-enter it. But being back in his strong Bukwyrm body, his mind was altered. He still retained the memories of Norman. He no longer felt like the same person. He instead decided that from now on, his name across all worlds will forever be cast as Norman. But while he is present in the Lucid Realm, occupying his strong Bukwyrm body, he will be referred to as Buff Norman.
So Buff Norman went and negotiated with King Rubik. The leader of the Puzl-Aol empire. King Rubik wore a pink scarf ending in a colourful jigsaw pattern. By the King’s side sat his heir to the throne, a tiny grey creature who wore a fluffy hat with a pompom.
Buff Norman had himself fashioned a pair of round glasses alike the human Norman’s to show himself as the symbol of the Cult on Earth.
King Rubik and Buff Norman agreed that banning inter-dimensional technology would be naïve. It would be much safer to keep several Bukwyrms and Puzl-Aols on earth to study the Material Realm rather than conquer it. But these select few individuals had to remain in a small group, both keeping check that neither begins to expand beyond reasonable limits.
Being an imperialist species, Buff Norman felt ashamed to take such a deal, but had no choice, in order to prevent another war.
Over the next few years, the Cult of Norman the Bookworm had remained a small community on earth and acted as a means to gather information about earth. Bukwyrms would return bearing human memories and retell aspects about human civilisation.
The Puzl-Aol had discovered that reading books was not the only way to hypnotise a human. When a human is concentrated on figuring out a solution, or trying to solve a puzzle, their mind is not so much hypnotised, but distracted, vulnerable, almost transparent from the outside. What this meant is that if a Puzl-Aol possessed human made eye-contact with a puzzling human, that human would not become ‘fully controlled’ but rather remain themselves while a Puzl-Aol consciousness sat in the back seat, sensing and feeling everything the human did. This meant that the Puzl-Aol did not need to steal human lives, but rather use humans as windows to earth to observe them and ensure that no rogue Bukwyrms got out of line if the human happened to spot one.
These secret agents residing in humans were nicknamed, ‘Puzzlers.’ They maintained the safety of earth by watching through human eyes.
If action ever needed to be taken, they could wait for the human to read, and fully pilot their body. Luckily, this was never really needed. There were a few small incidents, but we don’t talk about them.
The Cult of Norman the Bookworm remained suppressed, while the Puzzlers policed them.
Norman, being a Bukwyrm, would not give in to the Puzl-Aol so easily. He would create a secret society back in the Lucid Realm, strictly consisting of Bukwyrms. This society were called ‘The Enlightened’ who knew about a secret plan to conquer earth, despite Puzzlers protecting the planet.
The human on earth, Norman, soon grew old over the decades, but the symbol of the Cult remained as the green bookworm who wore glasses. In fact the name became so deeply engraved that some human cult members called the Bukwyrm species, ‘normans.’
But even as Buff Norman’s human became old, he found different human bodies to possess over the years. At any given time, there was always a president of the cult, with Buff Norman’s consciousness residing in their body, while fellow Bukwyrms possessed the other members.
The Cult remained a small community under the guise of being a book club, but within this cult a small few who were part of The Enlightened. They had a plan to gradually seed more and more Bukwyrms on earth without the Puzzlers figuring it out.
As the twenty-first century came, technology on earth had advanced. The internet and cell-phones were used by many people, which made the risk of exposure of the Cult’s true intentions much greater.
In 2019, Norman decided that he needed to set up a permanent outpost for the Cult, a pool of ever changing young humans. A place where new humans would come, be possessed for a few years, and then leave. This would make it much harder for Puzzlers to keep track of which humans are and are not overtaken, and allow The Enlightened to sneakily place Bukwyrms elsewhere on earth.
After doing some scouting, Norman found a university which had not yet any book related clubs. If he could set up one there, it would guarantee a new inflow of Cult members. Of course, pretending to be on King Rubik’s side, he let him know of his intentions. King Rubik agreed, but only if within this university, Puzzler agents would be present to keep watch on the Bukwyrm.
The Puzzlers, found an existing society to occasionally use as ‘sightseers’ to keep watch on this new book club on earth.
Norman, possessed a human that started something called The Literary Society. But it was often nicknamed ‘Litsoc.’ This was Norman’s way of laughing in the Puzl-Aol’s face. The name ‘lit’ referred to ‘light’ or the ‘enlightened’ referencing the secret society from the Lucid Realm that planned to take over earth.
This society began to grow over the years remaining secretive. Its members were hosts for the Bukwyrm species from time to time. To decrease risk of exposure, these humans were only possessed when needed during gatherings to perform chanting that they would later be conditioned to forget.
But among them were a select few often called ‘executives’ who were the ones controlled by Bukwyrms part of The Enlightened. These enlightened ones, (their Bukwyrm counterparts anyway) knew about the secret plan to take over earth.
And so the Cult of Norman the Bookworm, a decades old pool of possessed humans disguised themselves as Litsoc, still upholding the old symbolism associated with the Bukwyrm empire. Their symbol was Norman the Bookworm, a sign of the fusing of the bodies of humans and the souls of Bukwyrm.
A common motif in this club, were little green creatures known as ‘normans’ who represented the presence of Bukwyrms within the minds of its members.
But while the Puzzlers think this is an innocent group researching earth, The Enlightened lurk in the shadows, unknown to the Puzl-Aol, biding their time until the day of reckoning, when Bukwyrms will spread across earth and invade it, capturing the minds of all humans, controlling people’s imagination, and gaining control over the Lucid Realm.
But until then, all they need is more humans to keep reading books, to remain in use of their imagination, and keep the Cult of Norman the Bookworm alive until they are ready to strike.