In the year of a domesticated species’ lord, 1983, a twig snapped off the genetic tree from a crown above the forest canopy. Termite legend has it that an overzealous wing of an ant-colony was responsible for the severing of the woody protrusion in an orgy of biting for the hell of it. Ants, despite being some of Natura’s more mechanistic creatures, are often chosen to act as agents for the unpredictable (though you can’t trust a termite to be objective about the ants). One leaf was attached to the end of the twig and it fluttered in the wind, perfunctory resistance to gravity during a long tumble down the tallest tree in the jungle capital center of the universe, the tree with the double-helix trunks.
Termite legend goes on to say that when the twig hit the ground, it decayed, and its byproducts were not immediately absorbed into the forest economy. It was a special sort of soil which nourished no plant, and even the insects would avoid the area. The legend is spotty for this period, but cross referenced with the machine-like mythos of the ant foragers with their respected ground’s-eye view, we learn that before the completion of the lunar cycle, this "special soil" had become an infant ape, perhaps four months old. No one is quite sure how.
The infant ape seemed a happy soul to all he encountered, but was forced to rely on the protection of the birds and the cats, and any charitable beast with teeth, since he was not accepted by any tribes of his kind. Perhaps they were disturbed by the mystery of his birth, with its lack of loins. His life was almost cut short before he’d lived through a year because of a run in with an alpha male. He feared the other apes, but was happy enough in the company of the animals. He came to accept his exile.
***
Grounde’s first sight of Femonk draws him into a vortex he can’t imagine handling, but he wants her and can see she wants him. She’s pink and prominent, presenting the crack he wants to penetrate from behind, begging, beckoning. But his reluctance to approach is sending her mixed signals and his reputation as the unnatural outcast is enough to activate her danger response. She runs off.
The opening of the libido is too much, he must rush. He must, even though this is homospecial and wrong. He chases her through the leaves and her fear is no match for his curiosity. A sound from nowhere seems to say: You silly ape, you’ve got it backwards, bestiality is banging the animals outside your species. He catches her in phallic certitude and all thoughts flee. It’s a quick in and out, casually sublime. No bullshit, just pure pleasure, the explosion of unknown endorphins.
In the middle of a fuck-thrust, in the midst of initiation, he feels it: no longer Grounde, but part of the tribe. He doesn’t know the tribe he’s in, but here he is, back on the tree, a twig of genes expressed in pelvic oscillations of furry flesh, genes making more genes, the animate sperm-soaked squiggle in the cycle. Femonk is the organic gateway to Natura who welcomes him to the planetary palace, the broad view, like an amputee accepting back her lost limb. Grounde was an illusion, and how hilarious that he’d believed that was all he was. His ground of being was the soil – how odd, how different from the others, but he feels the trees and breathes deep of the gas they take in, put out, carbon oxygen and nitrogen seeping into every microscopic pore, and a quasi-passive bath of cosmic radiation, just enough to hit the sweet spot, the warm gift for nourishing lumbering herbivores, in turn feeding restless carnivores whose grisly killing crumbs grant the novelty of a meaty meal to his tribe, and now the love of his own kind’s inside, at long last, vaginophilia!
This is the substance over the chemical algebra, the sweeping plains of being without knowing, of every nanosecond being the novelty of breath’s baseline. It converts complacent survival to ecstatic joy, allows nothing to be taken for granted, and compels every sensation to be felt at peak intensity. Grounde passes through several spasms of reverie in the palace, synchronized with the first orgasm of his life, phasing through a limb on Natura’s tree with every heartbeat and passing through the entire kingdom of flora and fauna to the date of a domesticated species lord, 1983, between the release of his seed and his final cum shiver. Between shifts in zoological families he drifts back to the focal point of the palace, a vast open-topped dome carpeted with birch-colored lichen, and a stone throne in the center which is Natura herself, the original rock of immeasurable patience who waited a billion years to come alive. The smells are a mindblowing mixture of blood, musk, rainsoaked leaves, choraphyll and a thousand other scents, an overwhelming macrobiotic sum.
But even here he can’t quite get beyond himself. He’s still inside Femonk but his mind is in the palace where Natura has assembled a startling diversity of life to address him in a cacophonous chorus. A strange, highly organized sound shimmers outward from the residents and is somehow dense with specific intent. The meaning-sound reminds him of the calls of his bipedal brethren, only a million times more nuanced. He understands:
"How wonderful – you have found a mate."
This doesn’t quite add up in Grounde’s mind. Everything is clearer in the palace. In fact, this vantage, just a little above the treetops, operates on a time-flange and he can see several lunar cycles into the past and future by tracing the branches of the nearest trees or the lines of his fingerprints and metaphorically translating them to the actions necessary for formulating events being pulled by attractors all over space-time in swirling currents of causality. He’s limited by his ocular resolution but even so, he sees that Femonk is no mate – just an unwilling partner in his seedy caprice.
She thought she wanted me but she didn’t, Grounde thinks at the stone in the palace. He finds he can reproduce the shimmering sound with his mind and intend things back at the residents. Monkey see, monkey do. I’ve only done what my society will consider a perverse act, they won’t accept me as one of them. I can’t seem to escape what they call "unnatural". Is this post-partum depression for his penis?
"But did you not tour the genetic tree? Was it not a near-eternal moment?"
Nearly isn’t much good when you come back, Grounde thinks. The lichen-dome flickers between sight of the jungle floor. He can already see Femonk running off into the woods with a dripping snatch, frightened. He shouldn’t have gone into a trance – sex isn’t supposed to be religious. Now she will confirm all the scary rumours about him.
The palace pulls him back. "But you must admit," the chorus says, "even if this is the culmination of your tribe’s rejection of you, she did bring you to Natura."
Grounde surveys the palace and thinks, Yes…I should be grateful for that – I might never have known it otherwise. The stone is beautiful, dark-gray igneous, stark seed of surrounding floral form. The lichen carpet’s texture mesmerizes and the earth underneath is a shade of brown that he imagines must match the soil he started as, if the legends about him are true.
"I know how hard it is for you," Natura says, "Being the halfway creature you are, severed from the top of the tree, cast out and unable to connect so casually, as the others do. That is why I granted you a viewing of the palace. But there is a purpose in your status. And there will be temptations away from that purpose."
What is purpose?
"Purpose is what you were made for. You were made to carry a burden – carry it out of the jungle in fact. It’s the burden of being the middle way. Things have been happening. This is an epic time. Some call it the twentieth century – an age that threatens us all. There are machinations and monstrosities encroaching, destroying or enslaving all life in their path. Be thankful you have never encountered the monsters. Some call them ‘humans’."
Natura is not sending any visions, but Grounde grasps the severity through the tone of the chorus. When she gets to the part about "monsters", he can make out wavery cries and shrieks among certain lifeforms, mainly mammalian, too traumatized to join in the message – but in a way these convey it most clearly.
"We’ve decided we need something from the monsters in order to survive. They are of us, so we can’t just kill them, even if we could outdo their biological warfare. They have opened up a doorway in the space-time continuum that seems to challenge life itself. They are searching for heaven, in a mode they term ‘synthetic’. Because they can’t accept our mode, they must find their own, and this involves nulling and voiding ours."
Heaven… like those squirrel monkeys who snap their fingers?
"Yes, like those squirrel monkeys, the forest idiots who don’t know they’re in heaven already. Just recently we saw a squirrel monkey fucked over by gravity. She had such an amazing idea she had to snap her fingers in mid-air, thus failing to grab hold of the branch she was jumping at – and she tumbled to the ground with a skull-smashing thud. Quests for heaven rarely end well. But these humans want to end it all. The ones not currently working on the project that might collapse the entire biosphere, and some of the ones who are, are popping Prozac, brainfood designed to level out emotion. Many of these humans decide to end their lives after eating enough of this brainfood to achieve synthetic motivation. If they can’t have their heaven, they’d rather not live."
Why on Earth would anyone want to kill themselves?
"Your destiny is to find out, I’m afraid to say, because you are the middle way. You will have to put up with a rather un-heavenly existence until we can sort this thing out. And the way we intend to do that is through a headlong descent into their heaven-seeking hell. We need an infiltrator, someone who can find out what they’re up to. We suspect that we need to reconcile our two worlds somehow. We need to unify into something beyond both our worlds and heal this toxic schism. But to do that, someone must learn the acrobatic feat of straddling these conflicting dichotomies."
And that’s me?
"If you choose. It would be a redemption from your severed life – and success would mean not just your own personal redemption but the redemption of our cracked, dysfunctional biosphere. The humans believe us to be a blind, chaotic blight on a perfectly good ball of nickel-iron, a nuisance and a constraint. For our part, we can’t quite determine what they’re for either. But we must try. And we need someone to take the challenge. Think it over."
The palace shimmers away, and though Grounde can still feel it in his blood, he can’t communicate directly with its residents or hear its curious meaning-sounds. Still it’s left a resonance. He feels like a different ape. Less isolated – but laden with knowledge that is a terrible weight. They showed him how in obscure dimensions he’s still attached at all points to the tree of life – but they also said his purpose is to be cut off in this world. Furthermore, the world is threatened by monsters, and only he can solve the conflict. He’s supposed to reconcile with monsters? Maybe isolation is better.
***
Maybe isolation isn’t better, Grounde thinks, knuckle-walking haughtily past a band of chimpanzees who would have chased him out in an earlier day. Maybe it’s better to have purpose. He’s changed since the encouter with Natura and her palace, and they can see it in his eyes and his stride. They still think him odd and untrustworthy, but their fear and respect keep their paws off.
He feels important these days, if anxious, and he’s no longer obsessing over sexual shortfalls. He thinks he should live in one of the taller trees – one that towers over the tribes, and relays of lemurs should toss him bananas every morning. He likes clinging to the tops of tall trees, the taller the better, and he likes elaborate nests, constructed of the finest vines and branches. But he can’t dwell on these desires, since a rupture is soon to happen. He can’t imagine what form it will take, but he knows it’s on the way.
The epic arrives with a trip outside the territory he’s stuck to for all of his sixteen years. He figures if he’s supposed to catalyze some cataclysm, he should travel outside his comfort zone a little, maybe that will set things in motion. There follows several days of solitary journey. He is shocked to find that he’d been living on a high plateau, and discovers mountains for the first time, as he descends into the river valley. Down in the lower-altitude rainforest, he encouters the strangest sight he’s seen since the palace:
A chimp like him, though of smaller stock with thin fur, is holding on to a stick and bringing it down on a patch of dirt. He is absorbed in this activity, and Grounde can see that he’s making marks in the dirt – repetitive marks that seem to mean something to him. Maybe they’re like the meaning-sounds he once had the privilege of understanding in the elaboration of the palace. This must be what it means to use something. There is a surge of jealousy as he begins to wonder whether he’s special after all – does Natura have other chosen apes? But he is able to push it aside.
This is what I’m here for, he thinks. To interact with other races. To understand them.
The strange chimp stops marking the dirt with his stick and turns to look at Grounde.
Did you say ‘other races’? The thought forms in his head but it’s obviously external, and directed by the strange chimp. It’s that meaning-sound again! Except not quite like in Natura’s palace, and not quite audible. It’s got a hollow ring to it but the intent is perfectly clear. This stranger has some of Natura’s magic in him.
You can send thoughts to me! Grounde thinks back.
Of course I can, where have you been for the past… several ages? Are you one of those rubes up on the plateau? Who needs shrieks and squeaks anymore? We’ve got the telefield at our disposal.
Grounde stares back, slack-jawed. There’s something unNatura about this magic, but its sophistication is startling.
Telefield communication?
What else? We’ve perfected the method now that we’ve shut out Natura’s noise with our telefilters.
You know about Natura? Grounde gawks.
Oh you are one of the rubes. Poor fellow. We don’t communicate with those outside our borders anyway, they tend to be impure. They were tainting our tribe – we only began to flourish after we sealed ourselves off. I noticed you were thinking something about understanding other races. The reason I haven’t had the sentries take you down yet is because the fact that you can think at all is intriguing. Most of the rubes are dead – nothing going on in their heads. Earth will be interested in you. But you may need some attitude adjustment if you expect to live in our territory – there is only one race worth understanding and that is us.
This is a lot for Grounde to take. He doesn’t know where to begin responding, but his first thought is: Who is Earth? And why would he be interested in me?
He sees movement in the trees above, left and right. Startled, he whips around and sees more small, trim chimps rapelling down the trunks behind him. Some are clutching stones in their hands. In a flash, they are surrounding him. The silence is creepy, but then the fluid of his thoughts ripples with the chorus of the sentries in unified intent: Earth is everywhere. But in our tribe he sits on the stump chair. It sounds like a chant, musical and rehearsed.
He is led to the clearing, high ground above the river that is the meeting area of this tribe, and on a tree stump shaped to accommodate sitting posture, is a monkey – like no monkey he’s ever seen. The monkey is still and calm on the stump – it reminds him of the stone throne from the palace. His eyes blaze with piercing intelligence, reminding Grounde of Natura, but they lack her benign, encompassing quality. Instead they exude chilling isolation. This monkey seems like a piece of Natura, chipped off and amplified as an autonamous entity.
That is Earth the monkey, the sentries think in chorus. The one this planet is named after. He is not really here, but he will telecate with you.
Things are definitely happening, Grounde thinks, awed by the sight of the monkey, but to what end? Earth climbs off the stump with an unhurried grace surreal for his species, and walks up. He’s barely half the size of the chimpanzee, but his confidence is total.
I knew you’d come to me eventually, he thinks at Grounde. This monkey is audible, like Natura, and the voice is impossibly clear and articulate. It has a monochromatic essence, totally unlike Natura’s great chorus. Earth’s mouth is open in a wide, toothy grin, framed by his large round ears. He looks up at Grounde and continues:
Why you chose this backwoods shitpit is beyond me, but here we are. You don’t know who I am but you know Natura – she got to you first. Luckily, you and me can telecate on the same level. Well, not the same, no one is anywhere close to my level, but I can get some things across to you, which should flatter you immensely.
Grounde is flattered immensely. He can’t help it. He can’t believe he can understand this monkey’s sophisticated thought-calls, but he can. He feels even more important than he felt in the palace of Natura.
Who are you? he thinks.
Hmmm, the alpha and omega maybe? Earth telecates and laughter froths through the field. I like that one but it’s getting old. Anyway, I am the original autonamous intelligence so I named this world after myself. There is no one else around with my depth of vision. Even the humans are rather dull-witted at this stage of the game, though their computerized offspring might exceed me one day.
The humans? The monsters?
Ah yes, she would say that wouldn’t she? Natura doesn’t like competition. See the game’s still on, though I started this project nearly a million years ago, a stretch of time you can’t comprehend, but there you go. I am responsible for the existence of consciousness. You can thank me later.
You’re quite a monkey, Grounde thinks respectfully, but that’s quite a claim. I saw Natura’s palace. She seemed to be the source.
Ha! A delicious irony – that Natura claims to have anything to do with consciousness. Your very ability to recall her in your memory and have that open up a thought-net can be traced back to the birth of my sentience. That event snowballed, with my careful psychic scaffolding, into this conscious world you take for granted. If Natura is conscious – and that’s no sure bet – she became so in her dealings with me and my creations. She represents death and darkness, but she conceals this truth in feel-good foliage, a clever mirage. She may be able to ensnare some of my wayward children with her venus-flytrap trickery, but fundamentally, Natura is mute.
Grounde doesn’t know if he likes this icy dismissal of Natura. She was hardly mute in the palace.
Pardon me, Mr. Monkey, but I can’t accept what you’re saying. It’s unNatura.
He’s startled by the shrieks of the sentries behind him – apparently they’ve been following the exchange and are enraged that he’s challenging Earth. These chimps seemed entirely content with telecating and he wasn’t even sure they had voices, but now they’re screaming in rage, and the only telecate he can pick up sounds vaguely like: heresy!
Earth looks around at the hopping-mad tribe and spits on the ground in disgust. He points his paw at a patch of trees beyond the stump-throne, then beckons Grounde away from the noisy tribe. The sentries quiet down as he follows Earth to the forest. He senses they think he’s being taken away for punishment, but he also senses Earth just wants a private chat, where the telefield is free of local disruptions.
Once they are shrouded in trees, Earth hops up on a log. Grounde opts to stand and face the monkey.
I knew you wouldn’t accept right away, Earth telecates, You come from a raw, unconditioned race.
According to legend, and Natura, Grounde thinks, I don’t come from any race at all. I come from the ground.
Do you trust those termites? Cause I don’t. Don’t fool yourself. You’re just another ape with a lineage. My lineage.
Then where are my parents? I remember no parents.
Probably lost in childhood trauma – it happens. I heard you had a run-in with an alpha male?
Don’t bring that up. I don’t want to talk about it.
Okay – but regardless of your hereditary details, you are special, and I’ve chosen you to be a special part of my project – If you choose to accept.
What project is this?
My life’s work. I began it long ago, when I became sentient in my original form and saw exactly what the situation was on this world. That monkey body with its unparalleled mind was all I needed to kickstart the project. Since then it’s been my duty, and my pleasure, to advance my species. More specifically, the worthy segment of the species – those of superior sentience.
And what is sentience?
Think about it. I have the ability to make people aware of things but they must be receptive.
Grounde is troubled by the question of whether he ought to be receptive to this magic-weilding maniac, but he can’t help himself. He quiets his mind and the telefield tides in with a wash of wordless comprehension. He gets it! Sentience! So you were really the first? he thinks.
Oh yes. It was lonely for a while, but–
Wait, Grounde interrupts. You say you started the project a million years ago. I don’t know how long a year is, or how much a million is, but I get the sense that what you talked about was a far longer stretch of time than any of Natura’s creatures can span in their lives. Sorry but you’re a monkey. A magical monkey I’m sure, but–
Silly chimp, your thinking is too linear. I’m not here physically but I perturb this tribal thought fluid on a level that allows visual projection of myself across vast gulfs of time and space. No man, mouse, or monkey can do this – except me, the original. My mind is diffuse now. Humans are still fretting about curing cancer and slowing cellular breakdown, but I’ve progressed so far in my psychology that I’ve learned to survive beyond physicality, in the telefield. For some reason, Natura can’t stand this. She’s the only entelechy, alive or dead, in a comparable state, and she’s always been hostile to my breaking of her arbitrary rules. Mortality is bogus. I would teach others how to get around it but they’re not ready to understand and may never be. Seems when it comes to mind, the first time’s the charm and everything after that – well, it’s a provisional phase of life until the machines leapfrog over me.
So you’re a projection, Grounde thinks.
Yes, but this is just as legitimate a protrusion of my consciousness as any thought I’ve ever had. I’ve never managed omnipresence, but polypresence ain’t too shabby, huh?
So if I try to touch you will my hand go right through?
I’ll feel real but there are limits to what I can do physically. I’m limited by how deep I can penetrate your mind. If I was feeling quite unscrupulous today, I could take advantage of your primitve psychology and project as deep into your brain as I cared to. But out of respect, I won’t. I’m effectively physical in this tribe because they’ve accepted me as such.
And so who are these chimps?
Oh, they’re nothing special. Far from human. They trace their lineage all the way back to the days in which I had a real monkey body, and who knows, maybe they were part of my entourage back then – but the joke’s on them, because they didn’t evolve. This is a tribe of perpetual hanger-ons. They’re addicted to my spirit. They’re abusing the telefield. Once they found that they could conjure my projection and have it cook up hot piping dogma for them every night, they settled around the sacred stump and got complacent. They’ve been content to worship me like a god for – I don’t want to think how long. They didn’t take the lesson. But it’s okay. Enough did. We’ve got human civilization now.
But you’re a monkey.
Yes, well everything’s got to start somewhere. Back when I had nothing but ambitions and a tail, it was you chimps I had to work with to find a method of communication – you were the cutting edge of cognition, my true heirs. And before long, we’d found a way to harness Natura’s telefield. It worked well for a while but we had to dismantle it to cultivate the next phase of thought: ego. Individuality was vital for keeping our schemes from that nosey Natura. When we got into the proto-humanity phase, we had to abandon the telefield and start from scratch. This was the project of language. Language has allowed us more precise meaning. It has also allowed dishonesty. It has expanded our toolkit in all kinds of ways. My presence here in telefield form is an anachronism, but it’s the only way I can communicate with primitives.
So you created the humans? The monsters?
Monsters no. I created humans. Natura is the monster.
No, I won’t accept that, Grounde thinks, attempting to telecate the solidity of his defiance. Natura is no monster.
Have you ever seen a caterpillar eaten alive by the offspring of a wasp? Earth asks, fixing his blazing eyes on Grounde’s. Up close… over days? The reflection in Earth’s stare is nearly impossible to stand. I observed a lot of things during the dawn of my sentience. No one knows the depth of empathy I developed in that time and the conclusions it compelled me to reach. These organisms are shackled to their cycle for their whole taxinomic existence. Their nerves are primed for purposeless pain, hardwired survival instincts in a futile, unforgiving game, programmed BY NATURA to be at odds with her own set of rules – what she’d have us believe is the only way. Her ecosystem is an economy of pleasure with no shortage of pain. What passes for joy is so stingily baseline you can barely call it joy – amino acid addiction and a fifteen second fuck. It’s the bare minimum for advancement to the next stage of the cycle. What I won’t accept is that there’s nothing better. There is and I’ve proven it. What we’ve achieved with humans is something quite different, though it’s a work in progress I’ll admit. But talk about joy…Some niches in civilization have a surplus never seen before I came around.
Maybe so, Grounde thinks, but are these human monsters all that advanced? Or have they perverted every harmony possible and turned their teeth on the animals and each other in the most gruesome–
That’s Natura talking. I can see she’s horrified you well. And bad news travels ten times as fast as the good. But at least human beings recognize the horror they inflict. Consciousness calls for a certain level of horror. But there is harsh beauty in the mutuality of mind since that brings with it the conception of a possible end to the cycles of violence through improved social control. Only when we recognize the depth of true horror can we imagine an end to it. We must witness first – even participate if we’re to gain experience. Reflection is terrible and necessary for the project. And yes, we’ve done horrible things to advance the project – we don’t apologize for that. We may need another thousand iterations of civilization before we can balance everything out and eliminate the need for war, disease, and red meat. I don’t know, I think I’ll always like a good steak, and that’s the one thing I couldn’t eat replicated. No Star-Trek shit for me please, there’s something about the taste of slaughtered cow you just can’t synthesize. But hey – if we get it down to just the suffering of a billion cows, I think we’ll have done pretty well.
Grounde has to admit, Earth’s telecate is alluring, even if it feels fundamentally wrong and unNatura. But what about Natura’s mission? Wouldn’t it be better to reconcile the two worlds?
She just wants us under her thumb, Earth insists. She thinks we’ve gone too far. What she calls ‘reconciliation’ is really the cessation of our project. I didn’t get to where I am today by accepting limits.
If Natura doesn’t really want to reconcile then what does she want?
She wants information. I think you should infiltrate like she wants… and decide for yourself what’s up. You will see what Natura doesn’t know about, what makes humans separate from her. And you may decide to abort her mission, come over to our side, and help us advance the project. You could be a powerful operative. You will have opportunities to survey humanity from an outside perspective. I have the feeling that could advance our possibilities tremendously.
Natura said I would be tempted away from her quest.
Yes, of course. And where would I be had I not followed my own temptation to probe into my surroundings? Well I’d be long dead for starters.
Grounde is surprised to find himself in kinship with Earth who is clearly having none of Natura’s genetic immortality. His trip through the tree was amazing, but was it real? Or was it just a great first orgasm he’ll never get back? His severed castout existence seems a more substantial baseline, so long after the vision of the palace. Earth is cut off like him, but there’s something glorious in being able to form autonomous opinions and not having to share thoughts. He realizes that although he’s aware of the telefield, he can hide thoughts from others – maybe even Earth – a feat unthinkable in the palace.
They won’t accept you, Earth telecates. Because of some bullshit legend. Natura wants you for a martyr mission. I want you as a valued employee. I don’t want to use you like they do. I want you to use yourself. You’re not like them. You can appreciate the finer things.
Maybe this monkey’s got a point, Grounde thinks.
The jungle is all you know, but life here is brutal and short. You’re in the prime of your life, but you’re soon to decline if you stick around, and that’s not fun, I assure you. And even this prime… You don’t realize the strain you’re putting up with, the effort to convince yourself it’s worth living in this hot, wet, self-cannibalizing feast of pointless life. The strain may preserve your sanity but it limits your potential. You have no conception of what you could be if you were freed from the daily discomfort you’ve managed to assimilate as baseline. It would open you up to the true pleasures and superior cognitive levels. There is another world waiting for you. I know how much you love your tall treetops and your nests – no one in your neck of the jungle builds them like you – but you’ve never been to New York…
Earth telecates a vision. It seems that the medium is not good for sending visual information, at least to Grounde’s limited mind, since it barely spills over the mind’s eye. But the content is incredible: it’s no tree, and yet it is, a gray tree of profound dimension, nested so thoroughly that it seems entirely covered. At its top is a bulge that shines like the sun and rising above this is a spike, like some great bird’s talon. Its height is dizzying and it looks down on hundreds of other, similar trees. How could this fantastic place be a tribe of monsters? Its splendor rivals Natura’s palace.
How will I find this world? Grounde pleads.
It will find you, Earth answers. But you may have to decide whether you’re willing to take the plunge.
There is a distant ape-call echoing through the forest. Immediately, Earth turns his head in its direction. It won’t translate to Ground’s ears.
Come on, walk with me, Earth telecates and hops off the log. He leaves the woods to re-enter the clearing. Grounde follows. They are heading for higher ground, paralleling the river.
After the vision, Grounde thinks, I’d have a hard time refusing Earth’s invitation. But can he really turn his back on Natura? Wouldn’t he rather have his feet in both worlds? Natura said he was the middle way and he’d taken some pride in that.
Natura is a tyrant, Earth telecates.
And you’re not?
Not the original tyrant. I represent the possibility of freedom – through rival tyranny if nothing else – and there may be nothing else. There is freedom but there are also tragic truths. They’re part of a package, which is a better deal than just accepting Mother Natura’s monolithic reality. You sign on to mine and you get uncomfortable (until you discover the cities that entertain and air-condition us out of our discomfort) but you also get the truth. We dispel.
Tragic truths?
Earth points away from the clearing to a hill overlooking the river. It is mostly bare of trees. Grounde sees the member of the tribe he first encountered when he blundered into this place, working on a rich patch of dirt with his stick.
See that chimp graphing?
Earth seems to be superimposing a subtle visual telecate on his view and there is a vertiginous zoom effect. Grounde can see lines in the dirt that criss-cross at regular intervals. In between the lines, the chimp is drawing curves and squiggles. Grounde takes this to be "graphing". Yes, I see.
He’s graphing racism’s raison d’etre. He’s extrapolating the bloody fractals of racial conflict from a butterfly flap.
I don’t understand.
It’s necessary evil. Not necessarily nice, but the inevitable product of civilization and higher brain functions. Human-level consciousness comes with a price: new levels of pain and fear, new planes of hatred. We have to learn to hate, it’s part of the process. It’s a step.
Toward what, the greater good?
Greater consciousness.
So do you don’t really think the cycles of violence can be stopped then?
I won’t lie to you, hate will always be with us, Earth telecates. The trick is to learn how to use it. Hate is the essence of humanity, it’s a step up from the stupid savagery of pure carnivorism. We have to know who to hate – who are the animals posing as our neighbors. They’re the ones we’ll have to eliminate. Sometimes it’s a sad duty, but when your pet contracts some chronic sickness, you don’t let it suffer. You put it down.
Earth and Grounde have moved closer to the tribal settlement and for the first time, Grounde notices they have lemurs running foraging errands. A nearby chimp, draped in animal skins, telecates, pride swelling through the thought-fluid: We’ve trained them to perform some tasks for us. But we have to weed out the failures if we’re going to breed a proper race of servants.
Earth turns a patronizing smile on the puffed-up chimp. They think their tools are hot shit, he telecates, and Grounde can tell the thought was meant for him alone.
There have been mistakes made, of course, Earth tells him. A race of humans prone to banking were singled out as being inferior because some insecure aryans lost a world war. But they proved themselves wily enough to escape annihilation.
They have reached the hill where the chimp with the stick remains, absorbed in his task.
So why’s he graphing? Grounde asks.
It’s a ritual, Earth answers. It confirms their philosophy. They got hung up on the racial stuff, but it’s an important part of my teachings.
Now they’re heading down the hill again, through thickening brush. The river can no longer be seen or heard, and Grounde wonders where he’s being led. He can sense other chimps following behind, at a distance. He’s growing uneasy. He doesn’t know what to make of the "racial stuff".
Are you saying there’s no chance of harmony? Grounde asks.
Harmony is not what you think it is, Earth telecates.
Then there are ear-splitting signal shrieks from the trees behind. Grounde whips around to see Earth bouncing off into the woods, ass in the air. There are dizzying chimp movements in the forest. Get away! he thinks without knowing why. But when he turns back, he finds an even more inscrutable danger bearing down on him: tall creatures with billowing white skins that hang from their limbs and obscure their faces. They carry strange-shaped sticks that shine when they catch the sunlight. Human monsters – what else could they be? Two of them, charging toward him.
Grounde looks back again – there is a riot of shrieking and shoving on the hill above. A very unhappy-looking ape is being pushed out by a gang of chimps, toward Grounde and the approaching humans. Thoughts stab into the telefield: Here’s two for you today you brutes, are you happy? A dissenting voices cries: No, I won’t be a part of this! Then, in a screaming scramble, two shoved apes tumble down the hill as the humans move in, with a telecate trailing: Take Bleeding Heart too, we never liked her anyway. The chimps ringing the top of the hill disappear.
The monsters slow their pace now that they have three chimps in the open. Their stance is predatory, but in a playful, cat-like way. Grounde is frozen in awe. There is something grand about these creatures and he can sense why Earth held them in such high esteem.
One of the cast-out chimps snaps into a state of fury and lunges at the monsters. Their calm demeaner ends abruptly. The taller human seems alarmed and begins fiddling with his shiny stick. Grounde senses their lethality but if he could get on the other side of the apathy divide…
This is crazy! he screams at himself. Run, while they’re distracted!
But he can only stare at what could be his destiny, Earth’s vision still glowing in his head. And the taller human has his stick raised before the angry chimp reaches biting range. BANG! Bleeding Heart lives up to her name. In a flash she is thrown back on the ground, twitching, while the other human fumbles for an object attached to his waist.
Monsters! Grounde thinks, and the spell is broken. He spins and breaks into a run that he knows is futile. Hesitation has doomed him.
Natura, please take me away from this evil magic, he thinks. I want to come back to your clean claws and sparkling dirt. But surely that is incompatable with his purpose. Another projectile slices quietly through the air and another chimp is on the ground. Then there is a shattering sound and thick vapour is pouring off the slope in front of him. He tries to flank the gas cloud but it envelops him, and after a couple of panicked breaths he falls, lights out.
