Apple of Eden 4

Apple of Eden #4 was a Piece of Eden, a piece of ancient and technologically advanced equipment created by the Isu to control humankind, their workforce. It was one of several known Apples of Eden in existence.

This particular Apple was found and used by the scientist Nikola Tesla in his experiments, until it was stolen by the Templars, who gave it to their ally, Adolf Hitler, allowing him to take power in Germany and start World War II. During the war, the Templar and Obergruppenführer Gero Kramer used the Apple in several experiments, most notably the development of Die Glocke.

Following Kramer's death, the Assassins recovered the Apple, and Boris Pash and John von Neumann used it in Project Rainbow, an attempt to travel back in time and kill Hitler to prevent the war. After the project's failure, the Apple remained in von Neumann's possession until his death, whereupon Pash took the artifact.

In 1964, Pash was forced to surrender the Apple to the Templars to save his newborn daughter Nathalie, who was subsequently taken prisoner by the Templars. After escaping years later, Nathalie kept the Apple for the rest of her life and used it in her efforts to continue her father's life work: Project BLUEBIRD. Regarding Nathalie's experiments as too dangerous, the Assassin Tomo Sakagawa killed her in 2017, in an explosion which also presumably destroyed the Apple.

Owners[]

Isu (until 75,000 BCE)^[1]
Nikola Tesla (1874)^[2]
Thomas Edison^[3]
Henry Ford (until c. 1933)^[3]
Adolf Hitler (c. 1933 – c. 1943)^[3]
Gero Kramer (c. 1943)^[4]
Eddie Gorm and Julia Dusk (1943)^[5]
Boris Pash (1943)^[5]
John von Neumann (1943 – 1957)^[5]^[6]
Boris Pash (1957 – 1964)^[6]
William King Harvey (1964)^[7]
Warren Vidic (1964 – 1977)^[7]
Nathalie Chapman (1977 – 2017)^[7]

History[]

10th century[]

The earliest known depiction of the Apple of Eden 4 was in a 10th-century Chinese painting, where it was shown as a flaming golden ball held by a small demon.^[8]

The painting was also the earliest known pictorial representation of firearms, and the gold ball was thought to have represented an early grenade. Clay Kaczmarek also included a hidden message in his glyph that held this painting; a line of binary code that read "Sumerian Me 23", likely referencing the Apple to be the "Sumerian divine weaponry" that inspired the Chinese to invent gunpowder and early weapons.^[8]

War of Currents[]

MarkTwainandNikolaTesla — Tesla and Twain experimenting on the Apple

The first known human possessor of the Apple was Nikola Tesla, who found it in his home country of Croatia.^[2] When Tesla began his experiments and intended to make free, unlimited electricity available to all, the Templars began their campaign to stop him.^[3] In 1894, the American author Mark Twain visited Tesla's laboratory and admired the Apple of Eden.^[2]

Thomas Edison sent a letter to J. P. Morgan urging him to cut funding to Tesla's experiments, and to tell other investors to avoid Tesla. Edison also began publicly slandering Tesla and his experiments, including conducting his own "experiment" to prove that Tesla's electricity could kill people by electrifying and executing the elephant^[3] Topsy.^[9] At some point later, the Templars broke into Tesla's lab, stole the Apple, and used it to drive Tesla insane.^[3]

Edison was granted possession of the Apple afterwards, and later lent it to Henry Ford, who used it to manipulate assembly line workers for profit. However, Ford shipped the Apple to Europe "as per instructions", where it came into the possession of Adolf Hitler. Hitler used it to obtain power in Germany in the wake of the country's recession from World War I, and per the Templars' machinations, used it to lead the country into World War II.^[10]

World War II[]

With Germany under his control, Hitler granted the Apple to SS Obergruppenführer Gero Kramer, a Templar and one of the founders of Abstergo Industries, at some point before 1943 to use in various experiments. The Templars eventually abducted Nikola Tesla and faked his death, in order to force him to create a secret device using the Apple known as Die Glocke, which Kramer pretended was the Nazi's secret Uranprojekt to make nuclear bombs. The device served as an early version of the Animus, with Kramer hoping the device would let him travel through time to recover other Pieces of Eden for the Templars.^[4]

ACConspirations Julia Dusk Apple of Eden — Julia Dusk recovering the Apple from Kramer's body

When the Assassin Eddie Gorm was sent to sabotage the nuclear project, he was overpowered by Kramer and placed inside Die Glocke.^[4] Tesla, an Assassin sympathizer, had sabotaged the project, and when the laboratory was simultaneously stormed by the Allies, Kramer fled with the Apple of Eden. He was eventually killed on 15 July 1943 by Gorm and Julia Dusk, who took the Apple back to their superior, Boris Pash.^[5]

However, Pash had secretly been colluding with a Templar scientist, John von Neumann, with whom he hoped to use Die Glocke to travel back in time and kill Hitler before his rise to power. When Gorm and Dusk learned of Pash's betrayal, Dusk hoped to destroy the Apple by blowing herself up with a grenade, but the artifact remained unscathed and was taken by Pash.^[5]

On 28 October 1943, Pash and von Neumann planned to force Tesla to try another time travel experiment, known as Project Rainbow, aboard the USS Eldridge. However, Gorm infiltrated the ship, killed Tesla to disrupt the experiment, and then committed suicide before Pash's eyes.^[5] The ship manifested in a future state for approximately 18 minutes, and the Apple was subsequently damaged.^[11]

Vietnam War[]

ACBs Pash Took the Apple, Gavrani Waited — Pash taking the Apple from von Neumann

By 1957, the artifact had fallen back into the hands of John von Neumann, who resided at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C.. On 8 February 1957, Boris Pash secretly visited von Neumann and, after the Templar's death, took possession of the Apple. The Assassin Alekseï Gavrani, who accompanied Pash, saw him put the Apple into his jacket's pocket and questioned him about it, but Pash only told him that von Neumann had died, "probably" from his years in Los Alamos.^[6]

Pash kept the Apple for the next seven years and, in 1964, used it to experiment on Eddie Gorm's daughter Julia as part of Project BLUEBIRD. The artifact unlocked the genetic memories of Julia's father, and she subsequently attempted to kill Pash, forcing him to flee with his pregnant lover Zenia while the remaining members of his Bloodstone Unit tried to stop Julia and destroy all evidence of Project BLUEBIRD's existence.^[7]

While fleeing across the Red River in Vietnam, Pash was confronted by Alekseï Gavrani, who had left Bloodstone Unit and sought to end Pash's clandestine operations. The two reached an agreement, where Gavrani accepted to protect Pash and Zenia in exchange for the Apple. However, in the subsequent fight against Julia, Gavrani was killed and Zenia was critically injured. Out of options, Pash reluctantly made a deal with William King Harvey, a high-ranking Assassin and CIA director, offering him the Apple in return for the Brotherhood's protection.^[7]

ACBs William King Harvey Holding an Apple of Eden — Harvey holding the Apple

Aboard the USS Maddox, Zenia gave birth to her and Pash's daughter, Nathalie, but died shortly thereafter. Harvey then met with Pash and revealed himself as a Templar double agent. Using his newborn daughter's life as leverage, Harvey forced Pash to surrender all his research on Project BLUEBIRD to the Templars, to aid in their own work on memory resurrection. He then handed both the Apple of Eden and Nathalie to the Templar scientist Warren Vidic, the head of the Animus Project.^[7]

In 1977, Nathalie became one of Vidic's first test subjects for his prototype of the Animus, where she relived her father's memories. Discovering that Vidic had kidnapped her from her parents, Nathalie fled with both the Animus' blueprints and the Apple. While she later gave the blueprints to the Assassin William Miles, she chose to keep the Apple, intending to continue her father's work.^[7]

Modern times[]

"Data provided from Animus Subject Twelve indicates that the ship briefly manifested in a future state for approximately 18 minutes. It is unclear whether the timeline is consistent with or parallel to our own. Although we have recovered enough data to reconstruct and repair the original artifact used in the experiment, Administration has refused to move forward on the project, citing paradox concerns."

―Alan Rikkin in an email to Warren Vidic, 2012.^[src]^-[m]

By 2012, Abstergo Industries had explored the events surrounding Project Rainbow through Subject 12 and had gathered enough research to repair and reconstruct the artifact. The company refused to do further research into time travel experiments out of concerns of creating a paradox, and determined that all artifacts that can cause time travel must be contained and moved to secure storage.^[11]

In November 2017, ex-Abstergo employees Thomas and Alice Adler stole an Animus and abducted Maxime Gorm in order to delve into the genetic memories of his grandfather, Eddie Gorm, and locate the Apple of Eden 4, hoping the artifact would cure their amnesiac daughter Elisa. However, Eddie's memories proved to be a dead end, and the Adlers were later killed during an altercation with Maxime and the Assassin Tomo Sakagawa, who had posed as Elisa's therapist.^[5]

ACBs Nathalie experimenting on the Apple — Nathalie experimenting on the Apple

During this time, Nathalie Chapman started her own Project BLUEBIRD, which involved using the Animus and the Apple in her possession to brainwash test subjects, intending to wipe their consciousness and replace them with long-dead Assassins as a form of permanent Bleeding Effect. She used a clinic in Switzerland as a cover for her experiments, with Elisa among her patients. When Tomo uncovered her plans, he set out to stop her and tracked her, Elisa, and Maxime to Nathalie's hidden base in the Swiss Alps.^[7]

Infiltrating the base, Tomo killed Maxime and infected Nathalie's machine with a virus before making a deal with the latter; offering her the decryption key for the virus in exchange for allowing him and Elisa to leave. Nathalie accepted the deal, but after inserting the key, she discovered that it was a new virus for the facility's cooling system. This caused an explosion that destroyed the base and killed Nathalie, while also presumably destroying the Apple of Eden 4.^[7]