The GLASS DOORS
CHAPTER 15-19
CHAPTER 15
Severance
Life was getting better, bit by bit. I had regained all the weight that was shed during my trip to Algonquin Park. I was bouncing between jobs but still bringing in money. I lost many part time jobs to employers who claimed that I seemed distracted and uninterested in the work. Is stacking bags of kitty litter inherently interesting as a task? Yet, I realized that what was actually happening is that my bosses were noticing that I cared little for basic interactions and activities. My mind was locked-in on more significant existential projects.
Additionally, I sputtered through school courses receiving decent grades in some courses and poor grades in others. I made no bones about my philosophies on life, and they pervaded my academic writing. Some readers at the university found my ideas quite radical, if not, disturbing. I made it easy for them to mark me down given that I reinterpreted all their lessons based on the findings and conclusions from my philosophical meditations.
With how things were going it would never be possible to live a normal life even if I was working a steady job or getting above-average grades at school. A push-comes-to-shove moment was fast approaching.
In my effort to right the ship and get my life back on track, I had reached out to some old friends. Many made themselves unavailable and would not give me another chance to prove I had changed. Heath was a different story. Heath had become a great friend at the end of high school, and we had been bunkmates on a grad trip that one of our mutual friends, Juan, had put together the summer we all graduated.
Heath had a great sense of humor – wry, yet cheeky. He was clever, but not too smart for his own good. He was also a very talented musician which I admired, and he carried his acoustic guitar with him almost all the time. He had a repertoire of cover songs alongside his original composition, and he knew how to weave in a ditty as a punchline to whatever strange thing happened any given moment.
Through his strumming and singing of familiar tunes, Heath had the capacity to make people feel safe and comfortable. To my chagrin, I was now quite the opposite sort of person. In fact, my mired life was beginning to infect his own. Heath wanted to know more about my beliefs once they were capable of being relayed in a lucid manner now that I had stopped believing in mass telepathy. The more he learned, the more he began to believe in my ideas as well. In time, Heath was developing his own Moral Paradigm, and it involved traumas from his past. Heath was concerned about alcoholism and understood the black-hat-white-hat dichotomy of a cosmic wager to be based around alcohol. For Heath, the drinkers were the black hats, and the sober were the white hats.
In Heath’s estimation, no one was truly evil, but being a black hat meant that you were parasitic to the white hats. Heath adopted a messianic complex which was easy to do for him because his music and joviality had made him such a popular guy throughout high school. Heath made it his purpose to engage in the culture of alcohol and try to find ways to convert drunks over to sobriety. The mission was perverse and misguided, but for Heath this was his duty and what he had been called upon to perform through cosmic forces.
At the time, I couldn’t vibe with the alcohol aversion that was central for Heath because I didn’t believe that it was the cornerstone for morality in my judgment of humanity’s problems (yet I value Heath’s point of view much more now). Instead, I developed a new meditation which I thought Heath and I would share. This new meditation might bridge the gap that was growing between us. I needed Heath’s humor and his music. However, the more Heath invested in his cosmic wager about alcoholism, the less he told jokes or played songs. Life was getting serious for him as well, and I feared that one day he would end up in Algonquin Park like me and experience a worse fate.
The meditation that I developed for the two of us to share was naïve as well as being a significant regression for my personal philosophy and Moral Paradigm. However, I thought that Heath would adopt the meditation and become distracted by it. The meditation was based in a popular pseudo-science: numerology.
Severance
Life was getting better, bit by bit. I had regained all the weight that was shed during my trip to Algonquin Park. I was bouncing between jobs but still bringing in money. I lost many part time jobs to employers who claimed that I seemed distracted and uninterested in the work. Is stacking bags of kitty litter inherently interesting as a task? Yet, I realized that what was actually happening is that my bosses were noticing that I cared little for basic interactions and activities. My mind was locked-in on more significant existential projects.
Additionally, I sputtered through school courses receiving decent grades in some courses and poor grades in others. I made no bones about my philosophies on life, and they pervaded my academic writing. Some readers at the university found my ideas quite radical, if not, disturbing. I made it easy for them to mark me down given that I reinterpreted all their lessons based on the findings and conclusions from my philosophical meditations.
With how things were going it would never be possible to live a normal life even if I was working a steady job or getting above-average grades at school. A push-comes-to-shove moment was fast approaching.
In my effort to right the ship and get my life back on track, I had reached out to some old friends. Many made themselves unavailable and would not give me another chance to prove I had changed. Heath was a different story. Heath had become a great friend at the end of high school, and we had been bunkmates on a grad trip that one of our mutual friends, Juan, had put together the summer we all graduated.
Heath had a great sense of humor – wry, yet cheeky. He was clever, but not too smart for his own good. He was also a very talented musician which I admired, and he carried his acoustic guitar with him almost all the time. He had a repertoire of cover songs alongside his original composition, and he knew how to weave in a ditty as a punchline to whatever strange thing happened any given moment.
Through his strumming and singing of familiar tunes, Heath had the capacity to make people feel safe and comfortable. To my chagrin, I was now quite the opposite sort of person. In fact, my mired life was beginning to infect his own. Heath wanted to know more about my beliefs once they were capable of being relayed in a lucid manner now that I had stopped believing in mass telepathy. The more he learned, the more he began to believe in my ideas as well. In time, Heath was developing his own Moral Paradigm, and it involved traumas from his past. Heath was concerned about alcoholism and understood the black-hat-white-hat dichotomy of a cosmic wager to be based around alcohol. For Heath, the drinkers were the black hats, and the sober were the white hats.
In Heath’s estimation, no one was truly evil, but being a black hat meant that you were parasitic to the white hats. Heath adopted a messianic complex which was easy to do for him because his music and joviality had made him such a popular guy throughout high school. Heath made it his purpose to engage in the culture of alcohol and try to find ways to convert drunks over to sobriety. The mission was perverse and misguided, but for Heath this was his duty and what he had been called upon to perform through cosmic forces.
At the time, I couldn’t vibe with the alcohol aversion that was central for Heath because I didn’t believe that it was the cornerstone for morality in my judgment of humanity’s problems (yet I value Heath’s point of view much more now). Instead, I developed a new meditation which I thought Heath and I would share. This new meditation might bridge the gap that was growing between us. I needed Heath’s humor and his music. However, the more Heath invested in his cosmic wager about alcoholism, the less he told jokes or played songs. Life was getting serious for him as well, and I feared that one day he would end up in Algonquin Park like me and experience a worse fate.
The meditation that I developed for the two of us to share was naïve as well as being a significant regression for my personal philosophy and Moral Paradigm. However, I thought that Heath would adopt the meditation and become distracted by it. The meditation was based in a popular pseudo-science: numerology.
CHAPTER 16
Divisive
Heath and I were standing outside my parent’s house one night when I presented my numerology system to him. We began walking down the street casually and I explained to him the basic meaning for the primary set of numbers.
The number one was a number which signaled a message or meaning for the individual. The number one was an “I” statement. Conversely, the number two was focused on meaning or messages related to social interaction, like friendship. Three was actually “big three” and it was related to the creator force, or God. Four was an exclamatory sign and was the “!” statement. If you were to see a prominent four while thinking through a serious issue, then you also knew that what you were thinking in that moment was emphasized and important, cosmically.
The number five signified goodness and love, whereas six represented evil and hate. Seven was a tricky number because it pertained to suffering which could be considered functional and positive if that suffering was constructive. However, suffering could also be mischief and arise from the malice of otherness.
Eight was the infinity sign and a strong representation of the number eight signalled a message or meaning regarding fate and destiny. The number nine was about the future, and it was a prognosticator sign. In many ways, this basic numerology system was not an original creation of mine, and similar number systems exist as paradigms of superstition in many cultures around the world.
I explained to Heath that his obsession with the number eleven was inappropriate and very common among non-introspective thinkers. An eleven was in fact an aggregate of two ones, and the true sign for eleven was two. Heath wasn’t sold on that idea, and he felt that eleven was a special number independently.
We had continued walking and discussing how a taxicab with the number 8732 emblazoned on its door could be distilled to (8+7) and (3+2), which was then, 15 and 5, with that then becoming 6 and 5, which in turn, could be interpreted as a weak six with a strong five. If you were to see this taxicab number while thinking about your boss or a girl you were dating, you might consider that those thoughts were significant along a topic of love (5) versus hate (6), with hate being present but weaker than love as an issue. In turn, this analysis might encourage you to approach your boss or budding romantic partner through bringing a lot of positivity (5) but being prepared to shoulder the burden of receiving some animosity in return (6), perhaps, from coworkers, or an ex-boyfriend of the girl you were dating.
The number system was akin to reading tea leaves or interpreting the lines on the palm of your hand. The numbers provided a guide or map, but Heath took my numerology and made it an all-encompassing system of language and communication. He interpreted all the numbers around him and counted up all the taxicab designations, or house address number signs he observed. He decided to call or not call friends on the phone based on an analysis of their phone number. Heath’s imagination for numbers was a self-destructive juggernaut. I felt responsible.
We would meet again many nights outside my house and walk the streets trying to sort out Heath’s number system. At that point, he was no longer willing to have me coach him and instead he had developed his number system beyond my pretense of meaning which he now considered quaint. My numerology meditation had been designed for use only in special moments when an important number in the environment impressed itself upon your senses and qualified that moment in your life experience in a unique way. For me, finding a number was like blowing out the candles on your birthday cake – you do it once a year. The numbers found you, much like the birthday wish you made hopefully would. For Heath, he was chasing the numbers – hunting them – and it was akin to him blowing out candles constantly and everywhere all at once. He had started a raging fire in his own mind.
I was sure that my madness had infected my good friend, Heath. He was in worse shape than me after the numbers racket. One night, we walked up the street from my house and stopped exactly one block to the north. There was a house on the corner, just like how my parent’s house was a corner property. Our neighborhood was upper-middle-class, and just two blocks over and to the west was a street of upper-class houses that most people would consider mansions. However, the house on the corner exactly one block north from mine was an eyesore like no other in the neighborhood – it was Weird Willard’s house.
Of course, “Weird Willard” was a derogatory nickname for a man we had never met in person. I wasn’t that keen on the “Willard” moniker given it was so close to my own name, Will. However, the man was certainly weird. His house was dilapidated with chipped and fading paint along all sides of the brick façade, the windows were opaque and covered in layers of thick dust, the lawn had weeds growing several feet high, and the backdoor which was visible from the side was rusting off its hinges. Additionally, his medium-sized driveway was packed with four compact cars, two of which were covered in tarp all year long, and the other two were hatchbacks of the same model and color. Inside the back seat of that matching pair was dozens of old newspapers and empty paper coffee cups.
Very late at night, perhaps after 4am, you might see Weird Willard driving around the neighborhood, but it was unclear for what purpose. Willard was a sinister figure from my childhood, and it was unnerving that his house had the same placement as my own, but just one block further north. Heath and my other friends enjoyed the feeling of being spooked by Weird Willard. He seemed harmless if you were being honestly to yourself, but it was still possible to conjure up torrid tales of macabre machinations for this old hermit. Years earlier, to ease my own mind, I had done a little research on Weird Willard, and I discovered that in the white pages, he was listed as “E.T. Arnold” for that street address. This didn’t sit well for me, and later once I had gone down the rabbit hole with my cosmic thinking, I began considering whether Willard was indeed an extra-terrestrial.
One fateful night while Heath and I discussed our evolving cosmic belief systems, I made a very strange choice. We walked past Weird Willard’s house and Heath stopped to inspect the backdoor from afar. Heath mentioned that the door appeared unlocked, and he dared me to enter. Dare? I was well into my twenties. Normally, I would have ignored the juvenile goad, but I felt that if I showed bravery to Heath and revealed to him what a maverick I was when it came to tackling the higher mysteries, then perhaps, he would once again trust my wisdom about cosmic paradigms and accept that he had gone too far with his explosive numerology.
Gingerly, I stepped over some tall weeds and moved closer to the backdoor of Willard’s decaying abode. I inspected the backdoor, and the wood frame had worn away enough that some of the rusty metal lock was exposed. In fact, the backdoor wasn’t locked at all. It seemed that I would merely have to push the door open to enter. And so I did.
The door was open, and I was looking through Willard’s unremarkable kitchen. It was dirty and neglected, but there were no entrails hanging off counters or jars full of formaldehyde and human eyeballs staring back at me. It wasn’t a house of horrors, but rather, just some strange old hermit’s lonely domicile. I had no business being there. Just as I thought to back up, Heath was beside me. He coaxed me to continue into the house.
Heath stayed in the kitchen, but I ventured further. There was a living room – the one with the dusty windows – and the furnishing were old and seemed unused. I wondered where the rooms were that this “E.T.” Arnold lived in. A door to the basement was opposite the front door. I carefully opened the door to the basement and descended. When I looked back to the kitchen, Heath was standing outside again. He had chickened out. This was my opportunity to prove myself to him about the legitimacy of paranoia and fear.
I descended the basement stairs but at the bottom experienced the most shocking thing imaginable. Weird Willard, or rather, E.T. Arnold’s basement was set up identically to that of my parent’s house. The uncanny structural similarities were unnerving. The bathroom was precisely where my own basement bathroom would be found, and it was no more spacious. The first empty and dusty room led to a short hallway, just like at home. I had to confirm the unsettling similarities and so I pressed on with my investigation.
Opening the door to the main room of the basement, revealed an identical space in size to that of my basement, however, this basement was not renovated like my own. There was only one more room to explore – the furnace room. I moved through the dank space, which was almost entirely bereft of objects, and had the sparsest furnishings, including an old bicycle in the corner, and a narrow bookcase with hardware supplies littering the shelves.
I entered the furnace room through a door at the far end of the main room of the basement. I expected to find a narrow rectangular space with a water heater and furnace to my right. Instead, the E.T. Arnold furnace room was a vast chasm. It was an impossible space yet strikingly real. It was a space only possible in the most haunting nightmares. There was a great gulf of blackness right in front of me. The pit appeared bottomless and yet I could also see no far walls in this room. The room went on forever fading into dark shadows past my visual ability to discern detail.
For a moment, I wondered whether E.T. Arnold was indeed an alien and if his mothership was at the bottom of the black hole at the end of his basement. Before I had a chance to ponder the implications of aliens on Earth, I heard a rustling sound of shuffling feet behind me. There was no time to turn around fully, and before I realized it, I had been pushed into the dark, stygian gulf.
Divisive
Heath and I were standing outside my parent’s house one night when I presented my numerology system to him. We began walking down the street casually and I explained to him the basic meaning for the primary set of numbers.
The number one was a number which signaled a message or meaning for the individual. The number one was an “I” statement. Conversely, the number two was focused on meaning or messages related to social interaction, like friendship. Three was actually “big three” and it was related to the creator force, or God. Four was an exclamatory sign and was the “!” statement. If you were to see a prominent four while thinking through a serious issue, then you also knew that what you were thinking in that moment was emphasized and important, cosmically.
The number five signified goodness and love, whereas six represented evil and hate. Seven was a tricky number because it pertained to suffering which could be considered functional and positive if that suffering was constructive. However, suffering could also be mischief and arise from the malice of otherness.
Eight was the infinity sign and a strong representation of the number eight signalled a message or meaning regarding fate and destiny. The number nine was about the future, and it was a prognosticator sign. In many ways, this basic numerology system was not an original creation of mine, and similar number systems exist as paradigms of superstition in many cultures around the world.
I explained to Heath that his obsession with the number eleven was inappropriate and very common among non-introspective thinkers. An eleven was in fact an aggregate of two ones, and the true sign for eleven was two. Heath wasn’t sold on that idea, and he felt that eleven was a special number independently.
We had continued walking and discussing how a taxicab with the number 8732 emblazoned on its door could be distilled to (8+7) and (3+2), which was then, 15 and 5, with that then becoming 6 and 5, which in turn, could be interpreted as a weak six with a strong five. If you were to see this taxicab number while thinking about your boss or a girl you were dating, you might consider that those thoughts were significant along a topic of love (5) versus hate (6), with hate being present but weaker than love as an issue. In turn, this analysis might encourage you to approach your boss or budding romantic partner through bringing a lot of positivity (5) but being prepared to shoulder the burden of receiving some animosity in return (6), perhaps, from coworkers, or an ex-boyfriend of the girl you were dating.
The number system was akin to reading tea leaves or interpreting the lines on the palm of your hand. The numbers provided a guide or map, but Heath took my numerology and made it an all-encompassing system of language and communication. He interpreted all the numbers around him and counted up all the taxicab designations, or house address number signs he observed. He decided to call or not call friends on the phone based on an analysis of their phone number. Heath’s imagination for numbers was a self-destructive juggernaut. I felt responsible.
We would meet again many nights outside my house and walk the streets trying to sort out Heath’s number system. At that point, he was no longer willing to have me coach him and instead he had developed his number system beyond my pretense of meaning which he now considered quaint. My numerology meditation had been designed for use only in special moments when an important number in the environment impressed itself upon your senses and qualified that moment in your life experience in a unique way. For me, finding a number was like blowing out the candles on your birthday cake – you do it once a year. The numbers found you, much like the birthday wish you made hopefully would. For Heath, he was chasing the numbers – hunting them – and it was akin to him blowing out candles constantly and everywhere all at once. He had started a raging fire in his own mind.
I was sure that my madness had infected my good friend, Heath. He was in worse shape than me after the numbers racket. One night, we walked up the street from my house and stopped exactly one block to the north. There was a house on the corner, just like how my parent’s house was a corner property. Our neighborhood was upper-middle-class, and just two blocks over and to the west was a street of upper-class houses that most people would consider mansions. However, the house on the corner exactly one block north from mine was an eyesore like no other in the neighborhood – it was Weird Willard’s house.
Of course, “Weird Willard” was a derogatory nickname for a man we had never met in person. I wasn’t that keen on the “Willard” moniker given it was so close to my own name, Will. However, the man was certainly weird. His house was dilapidated with chipped and fading paint along all sides of the brick façade, the windows were opaque and covered in layers of thick dust, the lawn had weeds growing several feet high, and the backdoor which was visible from the side was rusting off its hinges. Additionally, his medium-sized driveway was packed with four compact cars, two of which were covered in tarp all year long, and the other two were hatchbacks of the same model and color. Inside the back seat of that matching pair was dozens of old newspapers and empty paper coffee cups.
Very late at night, perhaps after 4am, you might see Weird Willard driving around the neighborhood, but it was unclear for what purpose. Willard was a sinister figure from my childhood, and it was unnerving that his house had the same placement as my own, but just one block further north. Heath and my other friends enjoyed the feeling of being spooked by Weird Willard. He seemed harmless if you were being honestly to yourself, but it was still possible to conjure up torrid tales of macabre machinations for this old hermit. Years earlier, to ease my own mind, I had done a little research on Weird Willard, and I discovered that in the white pages, he was listed as “E.T. Arnold” for that street address. This didn’t sit well for me, and later once I had gone down the rabbit hole with my cosmic thinking, I began considering whether Willard was indeed an extra-terrestrial.
One fateful night while Heath and I discussed our evolving cosmic belief systems, I made a very strange choice. We walked past Weird Willard’s house and Heath stopped to inspect the backdoor from afar. Heath mentioned that the door appeared unlocked, and he dared me to enter. Dare? I was well into my twenties. Normally, I would have ignored the juvenile goad, but I felt that if I showed bravery to Heath and revealed to him what a maverick I was when it came to tackling the higher mysteries, then perhaps, he would once again trust my wisdom about cosmic paradigms and accept that he had gone too far with his explosive numerology.
Gingerly, I stepped over some tall weeds and moved closer to the backdoor of Willard’s decaying abode. I inspected the backdoor, and the wood frame had worn away enough that some of the rusty metal lock was exposed. In fact, the backdoor wasn’t locked at all. It seemed that I would merely have to push the door open to enter. And so I did.
The door was open, and I was looking through Willard’s unremarkable kitchen. It was dirty and neglected, but there were no entrails hanging off counters or jars full of formaldehyde and human eyeballs staring back at me. It wasn’t a house of horrors, but rather, just some strange old hermit’s lonely domicile. I had no business being there. Just as I thought to back up, Heath was beside me. He coaxed me to continue into the house.
Heath stayed in the kitchen, but I ventured further. There was a living room – the one with the dusty windows – and the furnishing were old and seemed unused. I wondered where the rooms were that this “E.T.” Arnold lived in. A door to the basement was opposite the front door. I carefully opened the door to the basement and descended. When I looked back to the kitchen, Heath was standing outside again. He had chickened out. This was my opportunity to prove myself to him about the legitimacy of paranoia and fear.
I descended the basement stairs but at the bottom experienced the most shocking thing imaginable. Weird Willard, or rather, E.T. Arnold’s basement was set up identically to that of my parent’s house. The uncanny structural similarities were unnerving. The bathroom was precisely where my own basement bathroom would be found, and it was no more spacious. The first empty and dusty room led to a short hallway, just like at home. I had to confirm the unsettling similarities and so I pressed on with my investigation.
Opening the door to the main room of the basement, revealed an identical space in size to that of my basement, however, this basement was not renovated like my own. There was only one more room to explore – the furnace room. I moved through the dank space, which was almost entirely bereft of objects, and had the sparsest furnishings, including an old bicycle in the corner, and a narrow bookcase with hardware supplies littering the shelves.
I entered the furnace room through a door at the far end of the main room of the basement. I expected to find a narrow rectangular space with a water heater and furnace to my right. Instead, the E.T. Arnold furnace room was a vast chasm. It was an impossible space yet strikingly real. It was a space only possible in the most haunting nightmares. There was a great gulf of blackness right in front of me. The pit appeared bottomless and yet I could also see no far walls in this room. The room went on forever fading into dark shadows past my visual ability to discern detail.
For a moment, I wondered whether E.T. Arnold was indeed an alien and if his mothership was at the bottom of the black hole at the end of his basement. Before I had a chance to ponder the implications of aliens on Earth, I heard a rustling sound of shuffling feet behind me. There was no time to turn around fully, and before I realized it, I had been pushed into the dark, stygian gulf.
CHAPTER 17
Reality
I was tumbling through the blackness with nothing to hold onto to stop my descent, yet it was clear that this liminal space was not adhering to the laws of physics. I alternated falling quickly and slowly, sometimes bumping off of obstacles that I might have described as marshmallow-like, yet I could not feel their form or grab a hold of them. The experience reminded me of times that I would pursue an ant on the picnic table with a beer coaster and constantly force the insect to redirect once it encountered the coaster wall another time. My fall was directed, and I never really hit the bottom per se.
Eventually, I stopped falling but without attaining a solid footing. One might say that I was floating, but it wasn’t based in suspension. My body was supported by some kind of force that I could not yet qualify. All around me was blackness, but I knew that I was not blind. And then something came into focus. A speck of light in the distance was getting closer. The speck became a ball and I realized that it wasn’t moving toward me, but rather, I toward it.
The ball was now clear in my visual field, it was a planet, and this planet was much like the familiar Earth. The oblate sphere had equal amounts of lush green land to vast oceans, as well as arid deserts. It was a prosaic visual, to be fair, if not for the extraordinary circumstances. A star came into view behind the planet and slowly shifted positions until it was in front of me, and the planet was slightly below us and between us. It felt as if I was at a games table playing chess against this star and the only playing piece was this strange, new planet in front of us.
This star’s glare did not strain my eyes and its glow was gentle, illuminating just enough of the space around me that I was able to observe a backdrop of thousands of stars in the distance and in every direction. I was unable to move from my position and was held there by an invisible force. The planet began to move closer to me so that I could examine its features.
Eventually, the planet had moved so much closer to me that I was within its atmosphere and could make out the features of the land, such as canyons and mountain peaks. This star that presented as a playing partner was attempting to show me the happenings of this new world.
The landscape moved closer, and I could see upright men and women hunting along the plains, persistently stalking their prey with spears and rocks. This was the cradle of life for this new planet. I attempted to call out to these primitive people, but my voice was muffled as if it were a call heard emanating from inside a soundproof booth. This muting effect made me nervous, and it was the first truly coercive action that had been taken against me since I had begun tumbling into the void.
I continued to observe the primitive hunters. Time was passing rapidly as if someone had recorded the scene and then hit the fast-forward button on the remote during playback. At times, the playback for this new world would slow down to a regular pace and I was witnessing the nuances of cultural development for the primitive hunters.
It was clear from my visual journey across this planet that there were several hundred tribes, but one in particular stood out for its more advanced developments. The tribe in question had five sons born only a few years apart to a relatively unremarkable couple, Pi and Ea. These sons appeared more advanced than the other primitive hunters. I noted that the quintet never cried, nor were they ever fevered or sick as babies.
This tribe had acquired language, and I could hear their words without understanding the meaning. These five babies grew and became children, and then teenagers. The quintet was already standing a full foot taller than all the others in the tribe, or any other tribe on the planet for that matter. These boys were not lanky, but rather had muscular physiques with broad shoulders and good posture. The young men appeared modern.
I was able to discern names within their exotic language. The eldest son was Sol, and his brother, Sin, had been born the next year. Two years after Sin, Hap was born, and the following year, Ea gave birth to fraternal twins, Sum and Gif. Sol had become the leader of the tribe while still growing into a man, and Sin was the tribe’s best hunter, Hap was a carefree spirit, while Sum learned from his mother and became an educator for the tribe. Gif had strength and power. This advanced tribe undertook the challenges of an Agrarian Revolution, and Gif pioneered farming for his people.
What I witnessed was inspiring although I realized that this was not the history of Earth which had developed through stages from hunter-gathering to farming across a much longer timespan. This new world seemed magical, and it had the logic of a time-management video game, such as, Sid Meier’s Civilization. I continued watching over the development of the tribe with years of their lives passing as mere hours for myself.
As time passed, I recognized that these five men were far from perfect. Sol took his alpha position for granted and assumed that others should be able to pick themselves up much like he and his brother were able to. Whereas, Sin lived in the shadow of his eldest brother, Sol, and he had developed an ambitious nature. Hap was so carefree and relaxed as to be useless for conflict resolution, and he did not know how to take a strong stance on issues. Sum was prone to intellectual arrogance and tended to not see the value in the individuality of others. Finally, Gif was prone to clumsiness in his reasoning through fetishizing the simple life of tending to a patch of land.
I was able to make out what this tribe had named itself – “Oor”. I didn’t understand the meaning of the name, but when the tribe of Oor was in contact with neighboring tribes, the name came up and was contextualized by me as being the correct designation for Sol’s people. Later, Sol married a woman named, Ria, and she bore him a son, Sun. It was clear as I watched events unfold that Sun was being groomed to be the tribe’s next leader, however, Sin was plotting against his brother and nephew.
Based on my observation, the tribe of Oor seemed to be an age-old story and one which had been told by ancient Greek dramatists, as well as Shakespeare, or even, Mark Twain. To see it play out as a movie might have been interesting, but to watch over it like a God was truly intriguing and a unique privilege. I wasn’t sure how this tribe of Oor would matter, but I had to pay close attention because eventually I would need to find a way to escape the dark void under Weird Willard’s house and return to my reality.
Reality
I was tumbling through the blackness with nothing to hold onto to stop my descent, yet it was clear that this liminal space was not adhering to the laws of physics. I alternated falling quickly and slowly, sometimes bumping off of obstacles that I might have described as marshmallow-like, yet I could not feel their form or grab a hold of them. The experience reminded me of times that I would pursue an ant on the picnic table with a beer coaster and constantly force the insect to redirect once it encountered the coaster wall another time. My fall was directed, and I never really hit the bottom per se.
Eventually, I stopped falling but without attaining a solid footing. One might say that I was floating, but it wasn’t based in suspension. My body was supported by some kind of force that I could not yet qualify. All around me was blackness, but I knew that I was not blind. And then something came into focus. A speck of light in the distance was getting closer. The speck became a ball and I realized that it wasn’t moving toward me, but rather, I toward it.
The ball was now clear in my visual field, it was a planet, and this planet was much like the familiar Earth. The oblate sphere had equal amounts of lush green land to vast oceans, as well as arid deserts. It was a prosaic visual, to be fair, if not for the extraordinary circumstances. A star came into view behind the planet and slowly shifted positions until it was in front of me, and the planet was slightly below us and between us. It felt as if I was at a games table playing chess against this star and the only playing piece was this strange, new planet in front of us.
This star’s glare did not strain my eyes and its glow was gentle, illuminating just enough of the space around me that I was able to observe a backdrop of thousands of stars in the distance and in every direction. I was unable to move from my position and was held there by an invisible force. The planet began to move closer to me so that I could examine its features.
Eventually, the planet had moved so much closer to me that I was within its atmosphere and could make out the features of the land, such as canyons and mountain peaks. This star that presented as a playing partner was attempting to show me the happenings of this new world.
The landscape moved closer, and I could see upright men and women hunting along the plains, persistently stalking their prey with spears and rocks. This was the cradle of life for this new planet. I attempted to call out to these primitive people, but my voice was muffled as if it were a call heard emanating from inside a soundproof booth. This muting effect made me nervous, and it was the first truly coercive action that had been taken against me since I had begun tumbling into the void.
I continued to observe the primitive hunters. Time was passing rapidly as if someone had recorded the scene and then hit the fast-forward button on the remote during playback. At times, the playback for this new world would slow down to a regular pace and I was witnessing the nuances of cultural development for the primitive hunters.
It was clear from my visual journey across this planet that there were several hundred tribes, but one in particular stood out for its more advanced developments. The tribe in question had five sons born only a few years apart to a relatively unremarkable couple, Pi and Ea. These sons appeared more advanced than the other primitive hunters. I noted that the quintet never cried, nor were they ever fevered or sick as babies.
This tribe had acquired language, and I could hear their words without understanding the meaning. These five babies grew and became children, and then teenagers. The quintet was already standing a full foot taller than all the others in the tribe, or any other tribe on the planet for that matter. These boys were not lanky, but rather had muscular physiques with broad shoulders and good posture. The young men appeared modern.
I was able to discern names within their exotic language. The eldest son was Sol, and his brother, Sin, had been born the next year. Two years after Sin, Hap was born, and the following year, Ea gave birth to fraternal twins, Sum and Gif. Sol had become the leader of the tribe while still growing into a man, and Sin was the tribe’s best hunter, Hap was a carefree spirit, while Sum learned from his mother and became an educator for the tribe. Gif had strength and power. This advanced tribe undertook the challenges of an Agrarian Revolution, and Gif pioneered farming for his people.
What I witnessed was inspiring although I realized that this was not the history of Earth which had developed through stages from hunter-gathering to farming across a much longer timespan. This new world seemed magical, and it had the logic of a time-management video game, such as, Sid Meier’s Civilization. I continued watching over the development of the tribe with years of their lives passing as mere hours for myself.
As time passed, I recognized that these five men were far from perfect. Sol took his alpha position for granted and assumed that others should be able to pick themselves up much like he and his brother were able to. Whereas, Sin lived in the shadow of his eldest brother, Sol, and he had developed an ambitious nature. Hap was so carefree and relaxed as to be useless for conflict resolution, and he did not know how to take a strong stance on issues. Sum was prone to intellectual arrogance and tended to not see the value in the individuality of others. Finally, Gif was prone to clumsiness in his reasoning through fetishizing the simple life of tending to a patch of land.
I was able to make out what this tribe had named itself – “Oor”. I didn’t understand the meaning of the name, but when the tribe of Oor was in contact with neighboring tribes, the name came up and was contextualized by me as being the correct designation for Sol’s people. Later, Sol married a woman named, Ria, and she bore him a son, Sun. It was clear as I watched events unfold that Sun was being groomed to be the tribe’s next leader, however, Sin was plotting against his brother and nephew.
Based on my observation, the tribe of Oor seemed to be an age-old story and one which had been told by ancient Greek dramatists, as well as Shakespeare, or even, Mark Twain. To see it play out as a movie might have been interesting, but to watch over it like a God was truly intriguing and a unique privilege. I wasn’t sure how this tribe of Oor would matter, but I had to pay close attention because eventually I would need to find a way to escape the dark void under Weird Willard’s house and return to my reality.
CHAPTER 18
Declination
Sin was a clever one. One day, he had tricked his nephew, Sun, while they were out on the plains hunting game. Sin had feigned an injury which he leveraged into a threat to never hunt again for the tribe. Sun had been learning hunting from his uncle and worked hard to change his uncle’s mind regarding early retirement. Later, Sin agreed he would hunt with Sun again but only if Sun could take down the greatest beast in the land on their first new hunt together.
Little did the others in the Tribe of Oor realize, but Sin had spent years making allies with the neighboring tribes and now put a dark plan into motion. The dangerous hunt for the great beast was to be a secret, otherwise, Sol would have disapproved of Sun undertaking the daunting challenge. Sun agreed to keep the secret for his uncle. Sin led Sun across the plains and past the mighty river Sep to a site of a neighbouring tribe. Those tribesmen murdered the boy. Sin told his secret allies to rough him up a bit and make it look good. Then, Sin returned to the Tribe of Oor with the intention of ruining his brother Sol through the news of the neighboring tribe’s attack and the subsequent death of Sun.
It seemed to me that this nasty man, Sin, had only one desire and it had been to be the leader of the Oor tribe as opposed to his older brother being selected for the job – an age-old story. I wasn’t sure why this cosmic star was showing me such paltry drama while I was stuck in the black pit underneath Weird Willard’s house. An acute fear developed that this tribe of Oor was a lesson for something that would soon affect me directly. The force that was holding me in the black pit could probably have done anything to me at all if it had wanted to. And so, I kept watching with mental focus.
Sol’s vengeance was murderous, and he razed all neighboring villages thoughtlessly. Sol was all-consumed by the trauma of his loss. Sin honored himself for the wicked deed in private. The three other brothers could sense that things would never be the same for the Oor tribe. I watched the first funeral processions of this planet. It was dark days for these people in the cradle of this new world.
Eventually, I witnessed the moment that Sol learned the truth about Sin’s betrayal. Sol cut off his brother, Sin’s feet, and then forced Sin to march toward the river Sep which cut through the fertile plains of the land. At the river, Sol killed his brother, choking the life out of him. Sol was a husk of his former self. He could not lead the tribe any longer, and those duties fell to the well-practiced yes-man, Hap.
Sol traveled with his wife, Ria, to the northern regions where the winter months were snowy, and the lingering frost imposed a certain seriousness and work ethic on the indigenous people of the land. The twins, Sum and Gif, also vouched for building a migrant caravan party. They traveled east and many from the Oor tribe joined them until their community was bloated and incapable of fostering a strong sense of individualism, which suited the proud, Sum who led the caravan.
Hap lacked get-up-and-go and he was not able in the role of tribe leader, however, those who had stayed behind preferred a comfortable, social experience. Life was leisurely in the cradle, and major construction projects previously headed off by the other brothers now ceased.
Sol and Ria settled in the northern continent and discovered that the wintry months not only encouraged strong work ethic for the sake of survival, but that the annual frost cycle knocked back germs and it was easier to control parasites and stop the spread of illness. Meanwhile, Sum and Gif traveled to the eastern continent, and Sum instructed Gif to scout further north. It took several years for Gif to return but when he did, he informed his twin brother that there was a large continent connected to their eastern continent, but that the two major rivers on the unknown continent were inappropriate for agrarian cultivation. The brothers stayed put, but Gif continued to venture into the unknown continent on private adventures.
Across the newly settled lands, the brothers encountered other tribes with some being developed and others being atavistic, but none having men or women that were advanced like the five sons of Pi and Ea. Sol and Ria’s tribe mixed with the advanced indigenous tribes in the northern continent, and they set themselves to task on eradicating the atavistic tribes throughout their land. The same duty was called for in the eastern continent because the atavistic tribes were violent and savage, and prone to making incursions on Sum’s newly established territory. The atavistic tribes were cave dwellers and believed in torture for the sake of it. Sum wanted the mighty Gif to wipe out the atavistic tribes in the eastern continent, however, Gif ended up negotiating with those atavistic tribes.
Gif and the atavistic tribes of the east traveled to the unknown continent and cultivated that region with Gif bearing many children that had both his advanced genes, as well as the atavistic genes of his new tribe. Back in the cradle, Hap’s leadership was lackluster and his son, Hum, was expected to take over after him, but Hum was lazy more than he was carefree like his father.
As the star showed me this story of the Tribe of Oor while I was still being held in the black void under Willard’s house, I noted that it was a parable about the human race of Earth. The star was explaining anthropological developments that took humans a million years. The star translated the events of early humans to a single story of one family and their progeny. Was this lively diorama accurate? Perhaps, humans had developed in this manner. I didn’t know enough about the related science to confirm it, either way.
I was tired of the story and was ready to search for an escape. This racist star didn’t concern me anymore and what I needed was an assurance that I had the choice to be somewhere else. I began to struggle from my position, and I attempted to reach out for the planet, and after that, I fumbled to grab the star while my head was still stuck in the atmosphere of the new world. My arms didn’t reach my targets, although it seemed as if the planet was as close to me as could be. I was within the atmosphere of the planet and yet still at the cosmic games table with the star and this new world as a mere game piece. The experience was akin to dunking only my head in water. Although, my submerged self was disallowed from communicating with the tribesmen from my position in their sky, my unsubmerged self was somehow too far from the planet as a cosmic game piece to hold it or manipulate it. I was powerless in a paradoxical way.
I continued to struggle to effect change in my position and then I felt a more significant push at the back of my head. Some invisible force was now imposing itself and making me submerge such that I was watching the new world from its sky and losing sense of my body. I was within the next deeper level of immersion. The story of the Tribe of Oor continued, but I was resisting. Some events passed me by while others did leave an impression. Soon, I was to find out why this story and the new world mattered.
Declination
Sin was a clever one. One day, he had tricked his nephew, Sun, while they were out on the plains hunting game. Sin had feigned an injury which he leveraged into a threat to never hunt again for the tribe. Sun had been learning hunting from his uncle and worked hard to change his uncle’s mind regarding early retirement. Later, Sin agreed he would hunt with Sun again but only if Sun could take down the greatest beast in the land on their first new hunt together.
Little did the others in the Tribe of Oor realize, but Sin had spent years making allies with the neighboring tribes and now put a dark plan into motion. The dangerous hunt for the great beast was to be a secret, otherwise, Sol would have disapproved of Sun undertaking the daunting challenge. Sun agreed to keep the secret for his uncle. Sin led Sun across the plains and past the mighty river Sep to a site of a neighbouring tribe. Those tribesmen murdered the boy. Sin told his secret allies to rough him up a bit and make it look good. Then, Sin returned to the Tribe of Oor with the intention of ruining his brother Sol through the news of the neighboring tribe’s attack and the subsequent death of Sun.
It seemed to me that this nasty man, Sin, had only one desire and it had been to be the leader of the Oor tribe as opposed to his older brother being selected for the job – an age-old story. I wasn’t sure why this cosmic star was showing me such paltry drama while I was stuck in the black pit underneath Weird Willard’s house. An acute fear developed that this tribe of Oor was a lesson for something that would soon affect me directly. The force that was holding me in the black pit could probably have done anything to me at all if it had wanted to. And so, I kept watching with mental focus.
Sol’s vengeance was murderous, and he razed all neighboring villages thoughtlessly. Sol was all-consumed by the trauma of his loss. Sin honored himself for the wicked deed in private. The three other brothers could sense that things would never be the same for the Oor tribe. I watched the first funeral processions of this planet. It was dark days for these people in the cradle of this new world.
Eventually, I witnessed the moment that Sol learned the truth about Sin’s betrayal. Sol cut off his brother, Sin’s feet, and then forced Sin to march toward the river Sep which cut through the fertile plains of the land. At the river, Sol killed his brother, choking the life out of him. Sol was a husk of his former self. He could not lead the tribe any longer, and those duties fell to the well-practiced yes-man, Hap.
Sol traveled with his wife, Ria, to the northern regions where the winter months were snowy, and the lingering frost imposed a certain seriousness and work ethic on the indigenous people of the land. The twins, Sum and Gif, also vouched for building a migrant caravan party. They traveled east and many from the Oor tribe joined them until their community was bloated and incapable of fostering a strong sense of individualism, which suited the proud, Sum who led the caravan.
Hap lacked get-up-and-go and he was not able in the role of tribe leader, however, those who had stayed behind preferred a comfortable, social experience. Life was leisurely in the cradle, and major construction projects previously headed off by the other brothers now ceased.
Sol and Ria settled in the northern continent and discovered that the wintry months not only encouraged strong work ethic for the sake of survival, but that the annual frost cycle knocked back germs and it was easier to control parasites and stop the spread of illness. Meanwhile, Sum and Gif traveled to the eastern continent, and Sum instructed Gif to scout further north. It took several years for Gif to return but when he did, he informed his twin brother that there was a large continent connected to their eastern continent, but that the two major rivers on the unknown continent were inappropriate for agrarian cultivation. The brothers stayed put, but Gif continued to venture into the unknown continent on private adventures.
Across the newly settled lands, the brothers encountered other tribes with some being developed and others being atavistic, but none having men or women that were advanced like the five sons of Pi and Ea. Sol and Ria’s tribe mixed with the advanced indigenous tribes in the northern continent, and they set themselves to task on eradicating the atavistic tribes throughout their land. The same duty was called for in the eastern continent because the atavistic tribes were violent and savage, and prone to making incursions on Sum’s newly established territory. The atavistic tribes were cave dwellers and believed in torture for the sake of it. Sum wanted the mighty Gif to wipe out the atavistic tribes in the eastern continent, however, Gif ended up negotiating with those atavistic tribes.
Gif and the atavistic tribes of the east traveled to the unknown continent and cultivated that region with Gif bearing many children that had both his advanced genes, as well as the atavistic genes of his new tribe. Back in the cradle, Hap’s leadership was lackluster and his son, Hum, was expected to take over after him, but Hum was lazy more than he was carefree like his father.
As the star showed me this story of the Tribe of Oor while I was still being held in the black void under Willard’s house, I noted that it was a parable about the human race of Earth. The star was explaining anthropological developments that took humans a million years. The star translated the events of early humans to a single story of one family and their progeny. Was this lively diorama accurate? Perhaps, humans had developed in this manner. I didn’t know enough about the related science to confirm it, either way.
I was tired of the story and was ready to search for an escape. This racist star didn’t concern me anymore and what I needed was an assurance that I had the choice to be somewhere else. I began to struggle from my position, and I attempted to reach out for the planet, and after that, I fumbled to grab the star while my head was still stuck in the atmosphere of the new world. My arms didn’t reach my targets, although it seemed as if the planet was as close to me as could be. I was within the atmosphere of the planet and yet still at the cosmic games table with the star and this new world as a mere game piece. The experience was akin to dunking only my head in water. Although, my submerged self was disallowed from communicating with the tribesmen from my position in their sky, my unsubmerged self was somehow too far from the planet as a cosmic game piece to hold it or manipulate it. I was powerless in a paradoxical way.
I continued to struggle to effect change in my position and then I felt a more significant push at the back of my head. Some invisible force was now imposing itself and making me submerge such that I was watching the new world from its sky and losing sense of my body. I was within the next deeper level of immersion. The story of the Tribe of Oor continued, but I was resisting. Some events passed me by while others did leave an impression. Soon, I was to find out why this story and the new world mattered.
CHAPTER 19
Emergence
I wanted to escape my confinement, but the force on the back of my head persisted and I had no choice but to watch. The lazy, Hum, son of Hap, had inspired no self-discipline in his own three sons, Fit, Hub, and Sim. The three sons were aggressive and constantly fighting. The tribesmen in the cradle refused to allow the three sons to become leaders of the dominant Tribe of Oor which after Sol’s violent retributive purges now controlled most of the region. The three sons were banished.
The sons were too confrontational to agree on whether to migrate to the northern or eastern continents, and so they choose to inhabit the central, meso-region of the planet’s landmass, which became a crossroads for the three major continents where Hap, Sol, and Sum were leaders and now living as middle-aged men.
The listless sons of Hum found that they could only exist purposefully through conflict and the ensuing chaos of their perpetually antagonistic relationship with one another. Their one-upmanship was not based in hunting achievement or construction projects, but rather, it focused on controversial ideas of what was constituted superiority. As such, Fit, Hub, and Sim developed the new world’s first religions, places of worship, and social ideologies. Theirs was a legacy of elitism and exclusionism. For them, the primary concern in life was devotion, and anyone who did not adhere to the religious codes was deemed a heretic and dealt with violently.
I was exhausted by the story that the racist star was forcing me to engage in. Over the years, I had become aware of the problems of the human race and was cognizant of those problems having origins in ethnicity and religion. The historical story that was unfolding in front of me was biblical, but not applicable. During the development of my Moral Paradigm, I had moved past the “human story” and had become more concerned with being able to access the cosmic and join my skeleton crew of real family and friends. For me, Tricks of the Trade, had happened and human development from my world was a result of cosmic interference. I found that the racist star’s lessons were beside the point. Had cosmic villains, such as, Kerplunckians, never existed then rotten bastards like Sin, or the sons of Hum also would not have been able to act with impunity on Earth.
This tedious simulator in the dark void under Willard’s house was thwarting my cosmic beliefs and the racist star was thumbing its nose at me. Clearly, I had now ventured into the cosmic as a realm of existence, but where were my skeleton crew of family and friends? Where was Uncle Lou? Where was Mindy and Mandy? I had spent years determining from “clues” in my life on Earth who my real people were – my tribe. Why was I not able to unite with them even in the face of cosmic unearthly reality?
I struggled against the force pushing at the back of my head, submerging me into the atmosphere of the new world simulator. I attempted to reach back and stop the force, but then I was shoved. I entered the new world fully, and once more I was tumbling down in a rocky freefall.
As the ground was getting closer, my body was becoming more proportional relative to the landscape. It seemed that if I didn’t go splat on the ground then I would become a relatively regular sized person in the new world – certainly not a giant. I didn’t have time to contemplate particular issues, but soon after landing I was panicked regarding the language barrier. As it turned out, those things wouldn’t matter.
I landed gently and rose to my feet. I looked down and checked my body. I reasoned that my modern clothing could become a problem, among other anomalies that the indigenous peoples would inevitably notice when encountering me. I was a modern man, and primitive men were brutal. There was no conceivable way to survive the experience without help from above. That racist star had to bail me out. I looked up. Nothing happened.
Where I had landed was familiar to me and it was at the northern end of the region controlled by the Tribe of Oor. I felt that I could follow the river Sep up to its mouth and get settled in a region which I knew to be stable and peaceful. I passed by a village and was stealthy enough to sneak into a hut near the edge of the village and steal some primitive clothing.
I shredded and then ditched my modern clothes in exchange for a light leather poncho, some sort of leather skirt, and some spongy sandals. The fit was very poor. The attire felt slimy and gross, and I had a sense that the look was not chic. I felt ridiculous. Why was I even playing along? I should have just gone and drowned myself in the river. But I didn’t. In some ways, I had always longed for a special purpose in life and maybe that is why my mind was able to transform to introspective consciousness in the first place. By nature, I was adventurous.
The hike along the river reminded me of Algonquin Park. It took a few days to make it to the mouth of the river, but I had an unusual amount of energy. In this new world, I seemed to be imbued with greater fortitude physically. It was not difficult to walk for ten hours straight at a brisk pace. Also, the poor fit of the clothing indicated that I was much like the five brothers in the Oor tribe – I was super-sized among regular people. Hopefully, the endowments would help keep me alive if I had impromptu encounters with beasts, or if I had to explain myself to protective tribesmen.
At the mouth of the river I discovered a small village whose members welcomed me in and then fed me. I was being celebrated and it felt as if they recognized me as a deity. They placed a wreath of flowers on my head and regaled me with stories in a language I could not understand. I politely nodded at the appropriate moments and yawned during awkward pregnant pauses. It seemed that I would be protected in the village and that I could use their temple as my home. No one was expecting me to speak, almost as if they anticipated that my language would be alien and my voice a godlike deafening roar.
Also, I was the wrong skin tone for these villagers who then began fitting me with proper clothing. I had the patina of authentic exoticism about me. It was clear that I was a sort of alien, yet they accepted me and perhaps, they were worshipping me although the interactions were amicable and there was no groveling by them, nor fear in their eyes when I shifted my weight or made a sudden movement.
The temple was modest and reminded me of mausoleums in regular cemeteries back in Toronto. There were two stone pillars framing the opening of the temple. A dozen stone steps led to the entrance and then there were three steps down into the main area of the temple. No couch. No bookshelf. Just an area decorated with gnarly lumps of fat with shards of wood jutting out – they were candles. In that comfy area were some leather rugs, as well as leather pouches stuffed with bird down – these were pillows. Some sheets of papyrus hung over a stone ledge, alongside a plume and small pottery bowl with sooty black ink in it.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. After a few nights in the temple, things were getting very uncomfortable despite my almost superhuman physicality. The villagers now took my presence for granted and milled about not paying much attention to me. I decided that I would move on, and I considered traveling north to connect up with Sol and his new miscegenated tribe. There was also a possibility of going east to meet Sum who had already built the new world’s first city.
I would have to sleep on it. At least, I had a pillow.
Emergence
I wanted to escape my confinement, but the force on the back of my head persisted and I had no choice but to watch. The lazy, Hum, son of Hap, had inspired no self-discipline in his own three sons, Fit, Hub, and Sim. The three sons were aggressive and constantly fighting. The tribesmen in the cradle refused to allow the three sons to become leaders of the dominant Tribe of Oor which after Sol’s violent retributive purges now controlled most of the region. The three sons were banished.
The sons were too confrontational to agree on whether to migrate to the northern or eastern continents, and so they choose to inhabit the central, meso-region of the planet’s landmass, which became a crossroads for the three major continents where Hap, Sol, and Sum were leaders and now living as middle-aged men.
The listless sons of Hum found that they could only exist purposefully through conflict and the ensuing chaos of their perpetually antagonistic relationship with one another. Their one-upmanship was not based in hunting achievement or construction projects, but rather, it focused on controversial ideas of what was constituted superiority. As such, Fit, Hub, and Sim developed the new world’s first religions, places of worship, and social ideologies. Theirs was a legacy of elitism and exclusionism. For them, the primary concern in life was devotion, and anyone who did not adhere to the religious codes was deemed a heretic and dealt with violently.
I was exhausted by the story that the racist star was forcing me to engage in. Over the years, I had become aware of the problems of the human race and was cognizant of those problems having origins in ethnicity and religion. The historical story that was unfolding in front of me was biblical, but not applicable. During the development of my Moral Paradigm, I had moved past the “human story” and had become more concerned with being able to access the cosmic and join my skeleton crew of real family and friends. For me, Tricks of the Trade, had happened and human development from my world was a result of cosmic interference. I found that the racist star’s lessons were beside the point. Had cosmic villains, such as, Kerplunckians, never existed then rotten bastards like Sin, or the sons of Hum also would not have been able to act with impunity on Earth.
This tedious simulator in the dark void under Willard’s house was thwarting my cosmic beliefs and the racist star was thumbing its nose at me. Clearly, I had now ventured into the cosmic as a realm of existence, but where were my skeleton crew of family and friends? Where was Uncle Lou? Where was Mindy and Mandy? I had spent years determining from “clues” in my life on Earth who my real people were – my tribe. Why was I not able to unite with them even in the face of cosmic unearthly reality?
I struggled against the force pushing at the back of my head, submerging me into the atmosphere of the new world simulator. I attempted to reach back and stop the force, but then I was shoved. I entered the new world fully, and once more I was tumbling down in a rocky freefall.
As the ground was getting closer, my body was becoming more proportional relative to the landscape. It seemed that if I didn’t go splat on the ground then I would become a relatively regular sized person in the new world – certainly not a giant. I didn’t have time to contemplate particular issues, but soon after landing I was panicked regarding the language barrier. As it turned out, those things wouldn’t matter.
I landed gently and rose to my feet. I looked down and checked my body. I reasoned that my modern clothing could become a problem, among other anomalies that the indigenous peoples would inevitably notice when encountering me. I was a modern man, and primitive men were brutal. There was no conceivable way to survive the experience without help from above. That racist star had to bail me out. I looked up. Nothing happened.
Where I had landed was familiar to me and it was at the northern end of the region controlled by the Tribe of Oor. I felt that I could follow the river Sep up to its mouth and get settled in a region which I knew to be stable and peaceful. I passed by a village and was stealthy enough to sneak into a hut near the edge of the village and steal some primitive clothing.
I shredded and then ditched my modern clothes in exchange for a light leather poncho, some sort of leather skirt, and some spongy sandals. The fit was very poor. The attire felt slimy and gross, and I had a sense that the look was not chic. I felt ridiculous. Why was I even playing along? I should have just gone and drowned myself in the river. But I didn’t. In some ways, I had always longed for a special purpose in life and maybe that is why my mind was able to transform to introspective consciousness in the first place. By nature, I was adventurous.
The hike along the river reminded me of Algonquin Park. It took a few days to make it to the mouth of the river, but I had an unusual amount of energy. In this new world, I seemed to be imbued with greater fortitude physically. It was not difficult to walk for ten hours straight at a brisk pace. Also, the poor fit of the clothing indicated that I was much like the five brothers in the Oor tribe – I was super-sized among regular people. Hopefully, the endowments would help keep me alive if I had impromptu encounters with beasts, or if I had to explain myself to protective tribesmen.
At the mouth of the river I discovered a small village whose members welcomed me in and then fed me. I was being celebrated and it felt as if they recognized me as a deity. They placed a wreath of flowers on my head and regaled me with stories in a language I could not understand. I politely nodded at the appropriate moments and yawned during awkward pregnant pauses. It seemed that I would be protected in the village and that I could use their temple as my home. No one was expecting me to speak, almost as if they anticipated that my language would be alien and my voice a godlike deafening roar.
Also, I was the wrong skin tone for these villagers who then began fitting me with proper clothing. I had the patina of authentic exoticism about me. It was clear that I was a sort of alien, yet they accepted me and perhaps, they were worshipping me although the interactions were amicable and there was no groveling by them, nor fear in their eyes when I shifted my weight or made a sudden movement.
The temple was modest and reminded me of mausoleums in regular cemeteries back in Toronto. There were two stone pillars framing the opening of the temple. A dozen stone steps led to the entrance and then there were three steps down into the main area of the temple. No couch. No bookshelf. Just an area decorated with gnarly lumps of fat with shards of wood jutting out – they were candles. In that comfy area were some leather rugs, as well as leather pouches stuffed with bird down – these were pillows. Some sheets of papyrus hung over a stone ledge, alongside a plume and small pottery bowl with sooty black ink in it.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. After a few nights in the temple, things were getting very uncomfortable despite my almost superhuman physicality. The villagers now took my presence for granted and milled about not paying much attention to me. I decided that I would move on, and I considered traveling north to connect up with Sol and his new miscegenated tribe. There was also a possibility of going east to meet Sum who had already built the new world’s first city.
I would have to sleep on it. At least, I had a pillow.