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Thursday, July 20, 2006

Here's a story I wrote quite awhile ago. It's too long, and I think a lot of the middle part should be cut (especially where I try to be C.S. Lewis), but I'm not sure how much of the middle to cut, or what to put in it's place if I cut it all. Not that the rest of it is perfect by any means, but you officially have my blessing if you wish to skim the middle.

THE ICONS OF THOTH

Ohmjeguk is the name given to the mountain by the beings who
inhabit it. Mortals have confounded it with those features of their own
mundane topography which it sometimes overlaps and called it Olympus,
Ararat, Rainier, Fujiyama, Everest. It's summit is located approximately
3.14 miles from the surface of the Earth, in a direction that can thus be
thought of as "up", although it is in fact perpendicular to each of the
three dimensions humans typically take into account. At that point it
flattens out into a plateau, upon which lie the palaces of the gods, and
the sacred grove in which they recreate. Here the gods Thoth and Ammon (in
the forms of a man with the head of an ibis and a ram of cerulean hue,
respectively) discuss their plans for their worshipers.

"Father of the Four Winds", Thoth began, "I have purposed in my heart this
day to bring down to my children a new gift, one which shall make them more
like ourselves than they have ever dreamt of, and their love for us that
much purer and more intense."

"Again?", Ammon replied, "Thoth, your eagerness to intervene personally in
the daily lives of these creatures is a peculiarity that we've all learned
to appreciate. Not only has it been productive, but it also spares less
terrestrially inclined Etherials such as myself the necessity of doing so.
But the eccentricity of yours that I least understand is your compulsion to
present all of your ideas to me before putting them into practice."

"Your wisdom is incalulably boundless." Thoth paused to shoo away a small
griffin that had landed on his elbow. "Also, what I bestow upon my own
children usually ends up in the hands of yours as well."

"True enough, on both counts, but your wisdom is such that you are able to
see all of the advantages of a proposition, while I see the more numerous
unintended consequences. If I'd had my way, you'd never have bestowed the
gift of fire on the little dung beetles, and we'd never enjoy the sweet
savours of incense and burnt offerings as we do now. You generally proceed
despite my objections, and all of us reap the blessings."

"I concur, Horned One, but I would hate to do without your insights. Absent
your warnings, I would never have suspected that fire could have any
disadvantages. I would have been completely unprepared to deal with them
once they arose."

"You've persuaded me, Thoth, that though my advice is not often followed by
you, it is nevertheless of value. What sort of boon do you propose to
lavish upon the humans this time?"

"A shockingly simple means of supplementing their mental capacities without
altering their physical natures at all!"

The absence of any visible response on the woolly blue face of his
audience reminded Thoth (whom the Greeks called Prometheus) that he would
need to be prepared to answer a demand to know how his plan would benefit
the gods.

"I will teach a few of my worshipers an elementary means of storing
information outside of their temporal minds. The means are so
straightforward and concrete that they will be able to teach it to each
other. Since mortals universally communicate vocally, all they should ever
really need to commit to memory is a set of symbols. Each symbol would
stand for one of their speech-sounds. Then they could record any speech (or
any thought that they can express vocally), simply by engraving or painting
the proper characters sequentially on whatever medium they may choose -
stone, wood, vellum, papyrus..."

Ammon interrupted with an elaborate expletive involving the Enemy
Who's Name Must Not Be Uttered, a powerful egomaniacal entity that had been
at war against the celestials of Ohmjeguk for several eons, attempting to
establish an absolute dictatorship over every aspect of reality. Having
mentioned this being, he was obligated to curse it for five minutes. He
then gathered himself and began to articulate his objections.

(Here's Part Two and
Part Three)

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