The light of the newborn sun rose that instant far enough above the
horizon to shine directly into the tower's upper dome-like room, and I
was awe struck by the texture that the lights created on the glass of
the walls, for when it shone through at just the right height, a
previously invisible picture came to view. It was of a towering clipper
ship with sails that stretched across their masts like skin over the
bones of a pleasantly plump fellow, the wind billowing them about at a
leisurely rate. Waves broke gently upon the ship's side as the crew
rested peacefully on the various cables and nets, all except for the
one-legged captain who was busy looking at the map and accompanying
charts. It was a quaint and beautiful scene, though it soon passed away
as the sun moved upwards in the sky, and I wouldn't have mentioned it,
except that as it disappeared, I found myself looking at where it had
been, but instead of the ship, I saw directly through the glass the
inhabitants of Nunami arising and beginning their daily business, a
scene which I might have missed since I was previously wholly absorbed
by the picturesqueness of the sky.
Usually the Zards would arise before dawn and be about their business,
but because of the great flames of the night before, they had no doubt
had trouble sleeping, and therefore slept later than usual when they
finally did fall into the lands beyond consciousness. They hustled and
bustled about the streets of Nunami, each doing their own business, and
there was much business to be done in a city in which all provisions are
provided internally, with no trade or commerce outside whatsoever. There
were merchants and stores still, yet they were not traders but
producers, each making their own wares as they sold ones they had
already made. Butchers sat in their shops with their blood-stained
aprons already donned, cobblers and tailors were busy with the day's
repairs and new creations, the milkmen paraded the streets slowly and
methodically, somehow getting their products to the citizens before 8
AM. The farmers and herdsmen were also at work in the fields that were
spread throughout the city, plowing and sowing, and being joined by
those who had just finished distributing the milk.
All was commonplace and normal, I thought, and I was surprised, for the
Zards were not at all martially minded, a great contrast to their
Canitaurian brethren. Of course, I had never actually met any of the
Canitaurian commoners. It seems to me that the only ones who really are
martially minded are the leaders and politicians, everyone else seems to
mind their own business, and sometimes I wonder if there would even be
any wars if there weren't any governments with the power to wage one.
There was a group of Zards by the government center, which was close to
my involuntary quarters, and they were leaning over an opening in the
aqueduct that ran down into the lake in the southern section of the
city, branching off from there into all the various sectors. They were
dumping a barrel of a fine, white powder into the water that was running
down into the lake, and after the first had been poured in, they added
another and another until they had put a good five barrels into the
water source. Once they had finished, they took the empty barrels to a
large cage that was down the road a bit, inside of a small grove of
trees and shrubs. Inside the cage was a multitude of little beetles that
crawled around every which way and were evidentially feasting on a large
chunk of glowing material. For a moment I was surprised, and wondered
what it was they were doing, but then it hit me: they were the delcator
beetles that Bernibus had told me of earlier, the ones that absorbed the
radioactive material and stabilized it. As I learned later, they had two
good uses, one was that they consumed the unstable materials and
neutralized them, but the other was that their droppings, when mixed
into the water supply, also gave all that consumed them a greater
tolerance for nuclear material. It was almost ironic that their whole
way of life was dependent on the feces of another life form, but I will
refrain from turning it into a metaphor.
The female Zards wore a black headpiece that mostly covered their faces,
and at first I found it strange that for all his talk of progress, the
King's people still oppressed their women, perhaps there wasn't as much
progress as he had boasted, or, more likely, he was unaware that there
was no such thing as progress, just different manifestations of
oppression. History repeats itself, they say, and indeed it does, both
literally and figuratively.
There suddenly arose a great commotion in the square between the Temple
and the palace, and as I looked, I was surprised to see that there was a
large crowd gathered. In the middle of the square there were two groups
of ten Zards facing each other, with a single Zard in between them, and
around the outside of the plaza area stood a hundred or so spectators,
apparently watching those in the middle. A moment after I started
watching, the solitary Zard, the referee as I found out, walked to the
edge, and each of the groups walked to one of the opposing sides and
then turned about to face the other. The referee let out a loud yell and
in a flash, the two teams ran at each other headlong, until converging
somewhere in the center of the field. As they met they dived upon one
another and pushed and shoved until the left team had isolated one of
the right's players, who was the only one on his team wearing an orange
jersey. They dived on him and jumped until the whole field was piled
high with them, and then they slowly began to disembark. Once all of the
opposing team's players were off of the orange shirted Zard, all was
silent and still as the referee held his hand aloft and began counting
with his fingers. Everyone held their breathe and stood tensely by as
they watched. Just before the referee's tenth and final finger was
counted, the orange shirted player rose from the ground, amidst the
screams of joy from his team and about half of the crowd, apparently
their fans. The two teams then returned to their respective sides, and
again the referee yelled loudly, signaling them to rush at each other
once more, and more of the same ensued, this time it being the other
team's orange shirted player to get pounced on. Once again there was a
high pile on top of him, and once again, as they crawled off and he was
exposed, the referee began to count. Except that this time the orange
shirted one never got up. The other team cheered again and so did the
other half of the crowd. The referee went to a pole on the sidelines and
put up the number '1' on it while a few bystanders picked the Zard up
and carried him off the field. They continued to play in this fashion
for awhile, going until one team or the other had no longer any players
to be jumped upon, but I was too disgusted at their violent nature to
watch, and instead walked over to the end table and picked up the
telescope, taking back as I did my thoughts about the innocence and
gentleness of the common folk.
With the telescope in hand I went over to the eastern side of the room
and began to closely inspect the savanna in an attempt to get a bird's
eye view of the point of my entrance in Daem. It looked rather the same
from above as it did from below, though the smells and sounds were
missing, and I found that it was rather bland once the initial
excitement, surprise, and respect of its novelty had worn off. Indeed,
it was quite too dull for me, even in my state of boredom as a prisoner,
though I suppose that that isn't a proper description of my feelings,
for I wasn't free from excitement or intriguing events, but rather, I
was in the middle of a campaign of new and anticipated things, but
simply unable to participate. Stuck in a room 800 feet from the ground
with walls of glass that allowed observation of the whole island of
Daem, which I assumed to be the only civilization in the world, while
great events unfolded around me, of which I was supposed to be the
primary actor, was very disconcerting, though I find in retrospect that
fate worked so mysteriously in my situation that it is quite puzzling to
think about, meaning, of course, my relationship with the doom of
humanity as preventer and provoker, as savior and condemner.
My writing of this manuscript may be considered quite a big cheat, as it
details my direct involvement with Onan, the Lord of the Past, and the
general circumstances of the end of life on earth, for the current age
at least, but still I am allowed to write it. Onan told me just a few
moments ago that I could write it and tell all that I want, to which I
was taken aback. When I asked why he would allow me to break the law of
the council of the gods, he replied that there was no rule against a
human agent from detailing his involvement in the actions of the
divines. It was allowed, he told me, because it would never make a mite
of a difference, for even if it were able to survive the bitter ice ages
and all the evolutionary periods in this TAB (Temporal Anomaly Box,
which I will explain later, since I get ahead of myself and have not
told of them yet), and even if it is found by humans, and even if they
are capable of understanding the text contained within it, even then
they will take no gain from it. I was again taken aback when he said
this, for though I know humans to be stubborn and foolish, in general, I
would think that they would at least mind the warning when the
conditions of its completion came to pass. But he dissuaded me, telling
me that my coevals of the next age would no doubt take it as a novel.
At this I took your defense quite personally upon myself, and demanded
in as not so humble a tone as would be thought proper, though as I am
about to die within the next day or two, I have to admit that I don't
give much of a damn for politics or manners. And yet, with all my ardor
I was quickly subdued by a curt rebuke by my interlocutors (for Zimri
was there as well), which was, quite simply, that you hadn't taken Homer
for any more than a creative poet, even after a few thousand years of
study, so why should my meager manuscript make such a large impact. At
that, I acquiesced to them and admitted that on that end my attempt to
save humanity one way or another was contemptible, but I still write, as
you see, for the story's sake, and possibly for my own material
immortality. But never mind that, for it is high time that I went back
to my story.
I was looking through the spyglass at the various areas of Daem where my
adventures had so far taken me. After I had examined them all for a few
moments, I felt a strange urge to use the telescope to look closely at
the mainland that I had seen before, to see what the effects of the
Great War had been there. As I turned the telescope's sights toward it,
I was at once surprised and flabbergasted at what caught my eye. There
were living beings on the mainland, not too far from the coast. And not
only that, but they were standing upright, though stooped, as if by
weariness and the wiles of life, and they seemed, in general, to
resemble humans, not directly, but as much as the Zards and Canitaurs
did, and with the effects of the radioactive instability greater on the
mainlands, it would seem natural that they would be further removed from
normality than those on Daem. The land itself was barren and flat, with
sparse vegetation in the forms of small, deformed shrubs and a short,
weak looking grass. As I looked closer I saw that there were about six
of the strange, stooped humanoids, and they were gathering the fruits of
some of the shrubs for consumption. In a few moments they finished their
task and began to walk further inland, and I followed their progress
with interest until they finally disappeared behind some of the small
plateaus that were scattered here and there among the wastelands.
Putting the telescope down, I walked over to the couch and laid down on
it, with indignation filling my every move, for I was almost enraged
that the Zards and Canitaurs both should fail to tell me, whom they
claimed to respect as kinsman redeemer and whose decisions would seal
their fate for good or ill, that there were other survivors from the
Great Wars. I was also shocked by their selfishness, for while they
fought pettily amongst themselves over how they would change their lands
for the better, a seemingly important question about past and future,
they completely ignored the sufferings of other humanoids, to whom their
way of living no doubt seemed like a paradise. But there they were,
stuck across the sea on their desolate lands, unable to cross to Daem
and enjoy its plentiful resources and luxuries, yet not at all unaware
of them, for as they labored in their hopeless ways, they could see Daem
shining like a heavenly vision before them, one which they were not able
to touch or grasp, but instead one that must infuriate them to no end in
their heart, at the knowledge of fate's unfairness and their utter
hopelessness and complete poverty, not because of their laziness or
their ignorance or anything involving their actions whatsoever, but
simply because they had been born on the wrong side of the sea.
At that moment I was embittered against both the Zards and the Canitaurs
for their selfishness and their pretensions of morality. There is no
morality where one sees another starving and suffering and does not
help, when one sees a whole race of people living on a land where
nothing but sorrows dwell, but will not let them share the wealth that
was given one by no doing of oneself. There is no morality in
selfishness, and when I saw those wretched people, I no longer felt like
redeeming those on Daem from the impending doom of humanity. Whatever
plans they had for me they never told, I sensed, for there was something
deeply wrong about the way they looked at me and talked about me,
something deeply wrong about the way they patronized me and treated me
like a silly child, while I was the one who was to decide their fate.
The Canitaurs and the Zards both looked at me with a subtle sense of
deceit and ill will, all that is, except Bernibus, which is why our
friendship flourished so swiftly. As I laid there with thoughts of Onan
and the decision that I was to make, and of all the responsibility that
was put upon me involuntarily, as I thought of the conflict of past and
future at the neglect of the present, as I thought about the
self-obsession and overindulgence that come with wealth, and the desire
for still more that accompanies it, I fell to sleep and into a place
where no troubles lay, for my long day and night had left in me no energy
for dreams.