Chapter 10: Devolution

When I awoke the sun was once more out in its morning glory, at the height it assumes at about the 9 o’clock hour, and the room was warm and cozy because of it, as it shone in through the glass walls. My first sensation upon waking was one of peace and bliss, the feeling experienced when you wake up late to a nice warm resting place, especially so when all the rest of the world is hard at work and you are not. I breathed in the air deeply and contentedly while stretching my arms, legs, and back in a most relieving fashion, and then turned towards the table in the center of the room, from whence I smelled an extremely appealing smell, that of a hearty breakfast.

As I did so, however, my joy was sent to a bitter, premature death, for there sitting at the table and smiling sardonically at me was the King, arrayed in all his pomp and splendor with his powerful pose, which, while it had impressed, and even to a point overwhelmed me, before, did no such thing to me now, for I was fresh with indignation at the exclusion of the humanoids across the sea from the paradise of Daem.

He saluted me in a polite manner, and I him, though there was little affection behind it. Then, without any more ceremony, I sat down and began to eat, repulsing any attempt of his to start a conversation with persistent vigor, until I had finished, when I stood and demanded where exactly I was to make my toiletry. He laughed and said that he was wondering how long I would last, but as I was still too unpleasant to respond with any familiarity, he showed me to a little room that was tucked off of the side of the bell that formed the entrance to the domed chambers of the upper tower. The top of the tower itself was a half complete sphere, while the room only occupied the upper half, so that the bottom was divided between the entry way and the toiletry room. I spent a few moments grooming and washing myself and preparing for the day, and then rejoined him in the room. He was still sitting on his chair and I took the other. The meal had been carried away.

He began the conversation by saying, “My dear Jehu, I must apologize for keeping you in this position, but you must understand that the outcome of this war is very serious, and I will not risk it to your sensationalism.”

“Sensationalism!” returned I, “Is that how you would describe a touch of humanity?”

“What do you mean?” he questioned, apparently interested in what I said.

“Well,” I began, regaining myself, my former indignation being exhausted by the spirit of my opening comments, and my normal sober reasoning returning, “I have been observing your society, which you suppose to be enlightened, but I have seen some things, which, I am afraid, are evidences of the opposite.”

“Go on,”

“For one, your common folk engage in the most violent entertainment. I saw a vicious game being played not far from here, in the plaza below. There were two sides, and they rushed at each other in a rage and clashed when they met until one side tackled the other. This went on for some time, the evident point of the sport being to gain points by making it so that one of the opposing players cannot get up at the end of a round. It was so brutal that I was disgusted and could watch no more.”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” the King replied, “I myself would much rather that such games would be forsaken, but the people really enjoy it. I must remind you, as well, that your society had the same type of thing, as did every other before it. It was football for you, gladiators for the Romans, and so forth.”

“But I thought that you had no traditions? That you were more enlightened than those of the past? You can hardly excuse your misconduct by reminding one of the misconduct of another, especially when you claim to disclaim the errors of history, or at least, that altered and redefined thing that you call history.”

“You are right, I have to admit,” he conceded, “But let me remind you that it is a static characteristic of humanity to confuse the ends with the means. When an intense effort is applied, the melodramatic tendency is to honor that effort, despite its uselessness, instead of honoring the product of the effort rather than the effort itself. But, you are right, I admit, for we have still a few places left to refine in the common folk.”

Feeling vainglorious at my victory, I pursued him further, “I also observed that your womenfolk wear face coverings in public, which is most certainly a thing of the past.”

“I must disagree with you there Jehu,” he said, evidentially regaining his confidence and sense of moral footing, “For even in your own time the womenfolk all wore masks and face coverings.”

I was taken aback and cried, “Most certainly they did not, your history books may say so, but I, dear sir, was alive and would know best!”

“What, then,” he coolly replied, with a sharp grin that reeked of self-confidence, “Would you call all the messes of make-up and perfume and other such things which they were virtually forced to wear? I see nothing different between wearing face coverings and transplanting an entirely new face, hair, and body on oneself everyday. In fact, our women got together and decided voluntarily to do so, for the very reason that if an artificial covering must be put on, it might as well be one that is easy, for why spend an hour or more a day to change one’s appearance, when it can be done in moments with a head covering? That is a great time saver for us. And why spend the resources to research, produce, and market massive amounts of facial paint to cover up the face when it is possible to put a covering on and get the same effect much, much easier? It is only logical.

“And in general, Jehu,” he pursued, warming to the subject matter, “I find the oppression of women in your time to be quite appalling. You seemed to think that the liberation of women consisted in transforming them into loveless, materialistic thugs, into workaholics whose only desire is wealth, into aggression driven beings that possessed little shred of real humanity, into, in a word, men. I think it would have been a much better endeavor to have attempted to change men into women.”

I was taken aback by his eloquent defense of the treatment of women in his society, and felt, I must admit, a little impressed by his arguments, seeing as how it did make more sense to wear a head covering than to paint on a face every morning. Still, I desired to let him see that traditions aren’t all that bad, just as they aren’t all that good, and, as I had still won one point out of two so far, I felt it safe to move on to my main argument against his humanistic preponderance.

“You are right there, I admit, but tell me, your majesty,” I said with a slow, scoffing voice, meant to show that I had a powerful point to make, and as if I had to go slow enough for him to comprehend the eloquence of my speech, “Why, if you are so enlightened and progressive, so humanitarian and merciful, why do you keep a whole race of people, of human beings, stranded on the far shore, able to see the goodness of Daem’s plush lands, but unable to visit them? How can you justify the keeping of people in such conditions when it is in your power to relieve them?”

He sobered up more than he already was and answered in his most dignified voice, one calculated to stop opposition by its very graces, “Their plight is unfortunate, but as they are not my subjects, it is none of my concern.”

“So you knew of them, but did not care. How typical of powerful men. What are they called?”

“Munams,” he answered, “Is what we call them, though people of your time had a different name for them, Neanderthal, if I am correct.”

My intrigue superseded my conviction and I asked interestedly, “But, how is that possible? The Neanderthals were the ancestors of men in my time, and the men of my time were the ancestors of the men of this time, how could they be living now?”

“Very simply, for your scientists and philosophers did not understand the revolution of time, and what they thought was evolution was in fact devolution. You see, when they found all the fossils and other such evidence for evolution, they interpreted it to mean that they had evolved from lesser organisms. Since they didn’t know that time repeats itself over and over again, ages of time being like the years of the earth, it was actually the remains of the age before them that they thought were the remains of their ancestors. In truth, instead of a great comet hitting the earth and destroying the dinosaurs and many other living beings, it was the Great Wars, the nuclear wars, that caused all the damage. And since their perception of the events was backward, instead of the blasts destroying the dinosaurs and the wholly mammoths, it was what actually created them, for, you see, after the nuclear weapons had all been used, everything in the world died, or came very close to it, all that is, except Daem, which thrived, because of the delcator beetles.

“There were no ‘dinosaurs’, only Zards, for when the radiation levels were still high and unstable, we grew to enormous sizes, and likewise there were no wholly mammoths, but Canitaurs. And the Neanderthals that appeared shortly after were not the precursors to humans at all, but the Munams, who survived on the mainland near Daem because of the corrected atmosphere, but who were mutilated more than we by the increased corruption across the sea. The Ice Ages, also, were not as you thought, but instead mark the position in the last age after the doom of humanity was played out and everything destroyed. The Big Bang, also, was not at the beginning, but at the very end, being somehow related to the onset of the Ice Ages. Your evolutionary theories were close, but the time tables were rearranged to fit the facts, since time was thought to be linear.

“That is where our main trouble lies, Jehu, for through geological and biological evidences, even more advanced than those collected during your times, we can tell that something happens at this very period of history that will wipe all life from the face of the earth for a long period of time, many thousands of years, until somehow they start to reproduce and grow once more into what they are now. Something very powerful happens, even more devastating than the nuclear wars, when all the nations of the world used their entire stock of weapons. Our problem is how to prevent it, and a great problem it presents, indeed. You see, while we would wish to be confident of success, since we know generally what to expect, we know through research that there have been many, many ages before us in which the same thing has happened. That is why the geological layers have always been found to be strangely misaligned, with fossils from an earlier period here and with a later period there. That is why things like tree fossils are found in coal mines, where they shouldn’t be, and why in general, the evidence found in the ground doesn’t fit a consistent pattern.”

As he finished, I could say nothing, for his revelation was sobering to me, bringing me suddenly back to the realization that our doom was impending, that every decision I made had the potential to either bring us to safety, or to supply the necessary force to hurl us viscously off the cliff of mortality. He was silent as well and allowed me a few moments of meditation to turn his speech in my mind. As is my tendency, I looked abstractly out the window as I thought, fixing my subconscious focus on the road that ran from the northern gate down through the city, the road which formed half of the plaza beneath the temple. A moment or two passed like a solemn parade of mourning, then, suddenly, or at least quite unexpected by myself, a party of Canitaurs came walking down the northern road, unharassed and unescorted through the heart of the city. Since they came freely, I knew that they were not prisoners, but still I was perplexed at how a party of them came to be allowed in Nunami at all under such pretexts, especially as they had attempted to bring it to ruin but a few days before.

The King saw their coming and my interest in them, and said in a way of explanation, “There is to be a council today between the Zards and Canitaurs, with you present, of course. Our war has rampaged for quite some time, but we are forced to peace in light of our impending doom, brought by circumstances outside of ourselves. We will decide tonight, or tomorrow, what action to take. It is a grim time, you can be sure, my dear Jehu, when Zards and Canitaurs meet in peace, a grim time indeed.”

He said that very importantly, with an air of fright in his voice, as one who knows his end is near, for both him and his loved ones. There was another moment of silence as he reflected on the meaning of his words, and then he rose and beckoned me to follow him. We made our way through the bottom half of the room and down the long flight of stairs that wound down the great tower in the Temple of Time. When we reached the bottom, we went again into the long room with the bookshelves, the table, and the altar to Temis. Already there waiting for us were the Canitaur emissaries, Wagner and Bernibus.