by John Akers
Cevis took a bite and forced himself to smile at her. "It's delicious!” he said. Risi smiled and headed back to the kitchen, happily humming to herself.
Cevis’ mind raced as he ate. It wasn’t much, but his gut told him it was enough to go on. Now he had to figure out how to get there, and as fast as possible. He knew he’d be lucky if he had more than a couple of hours before the police called him or simply showed up at his door. A surge of frustration coursed through him as he wished he'd thought to check his junk mail before speaking with Emma. He could have found an excuse to delay her calling the police for a while longer. Now it was too late.
He heard a clacking sound and looked down. He was absentmindedly stabbing his fork around on the already empty plate. Suddenly he was aware Risi was beside him again. He looked up at her and found her beaming at him.
“My, you must have really liked those!” she exclaimed.
“They were absolutely delicious, Risi.”
“Let me make you some more,” she said, picking up his plate.
Cevis held up his hand. “Thank you, Risi, but I need to get ready. There’s somewhere very important I have to go.”
Part 6
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Chapter 49
As the black void raced upward away from them, it revealed the enormous expanse of the tower’s interior. There were no rooms or even floors, just a single, continuous space. It was like being in a gigantic, endless tube, the inner walls of which were covered in brightly colored, three-dimensional images. They created a massive, kaleidoscopic tapestry soaring thousands of feet into the air. After a couple of hundred feet, the colors swirled together so he couldn’t tell what they were depicting. But as he looked back down, the resolution of the images at the bottom became razor-sharp.
The images at the bottom showed a small clan of prehistoric people sleeping in a cave. The three disks were still visible, but the platform beneath them seemed to have disappeared. Beneath him, all Pax could see was brown dirt and large number of differently sized rocks strewn about.
Suddenly, the images began to extrude off of the walls, becoming three dimensional. They drifted toward Pax and Alethia, slowly surrounding them. Within a minute it seemed to Pax as if they were actually inside a cave. The air felt cold and slightly damp, and Pax detected the scent of smoke from a fire.
On their right were the people, still sleeping, lying on animal skins and makeshift beds made of piles of plant stems and leaves. On the left was the mouth of the cave, fifteen feet tall and twice as wide. Outside the first yellow traces of the dawn light were beginning to appear in the sky. It seemed to Pax as if he could walk right out of the cave into the world beyond.
The people in the cave began to wake up. Pax noticed one man was already up and keeping a watchful eye on the entrance. The rest of the group woke quickly, and within a few moments everyone was up and milling about.
Suddenly, the animal skins and roughly woven loincloths and tops the people were wearing disappeared and were replaced with modern pajamas. Their hair changed from being matted with dirt to being simply disheveled from sleep. The men’s long, stringy beards were replaced with day-old stubble. Pax was shocked at how similar to modern humans they now appeared.
As the cave-dwellers began making their way outside, Pax and Alethia’s viewpoint followed, as if they were floating silently alongside them. Directly outside the entrance was a large fire pit. The remains of a leg bone from a large animal was suspended over it with sticks. The people continued past it, down a footpath that snaked through rocky terrain toward a small river. A half-dozen children darted among the adults, laughing and playing tag.
When they reached the edge of the river, some of the people began scooping up water with their hands and drinking, while others unabashedly took off their clothes, forded in, and began to wash themselves. When they reemerged, the pajamas they had left on rocks on the shoreline had turned back into animal skins.
Alethia pointed off to one side, where a man was huddled over a large, flat stone. After a moment the images rotated so the man was directly in front of them. Pax saw the man was scraping the edge of a small stone at sharp angles back and forth against the larger one.
“For nearly two million years,” said Alethia, “the extent of our technological advancements consisted of minuscule improvements to our techniques for chipping sharp edges onto stones. But then we learned how to grind and polish edges on stones instead of chipping them. This seemingly innocuous change dramatically increased the sharpness and durability of our cutting tools, as well as the reliability with which they could be made.”
The images morphed into people chopping trees and clearing brush in a field with rudimentary hand axes and scythes. Then others dug large holes in the ground and covered them with thatched roofs and walls. The clothes the people wore now changed as well, from animal hides to ones made with plant fibers.
“For the first time in history, people began to make significant, lasting changes to their environment. We began creating safe spaces from the surrounding wilderness and building our own living spaces, such as the pit-houses you see here. Most importantly, we began farming.”
Cultivated fields of wheat and other grains started to appear all around the little thatched houses. Pax suddenly noticed that even the white disks had disappeared, along with their water glasses. His feet still rested on the platform, but it looked as though they were on the dirt. Alethia looked as if she were floating among the stalks of grain now surrounding them. The grain looked so lifelike he wondered what would happen if he touched them. Pax reached out his hand, but the stalks gracefully swayed just out of his reach. The effect made him smile. An odor of rich, loamy soil reached his nose, and a warm, soft breeze passed lightly over his skin. Pax shook his head. The experience made a Univiz seem like an old-time 3-D ViewMaster for preschoolers.
Several makeshift pens made with tree branches now appeared near the houses. Inside, goats wandered about, bleating.
“The domestication of animals began around the same time,” said Alethia, “Goats and sheep were the first to fall under human control, followed later by cattle and pigs.”
The images of the crop fields changed to show shallow walls of earth rising around the field’s perimeters. Inside the walls, water appeared, covering the fields.
“Eight thousand years ago, we discovered basin irrigation, in which rainfall or overflow from nearby rivers is trapped in crop fields. Later on, we learned how to divert water from nearby rivers, and how to store it until it was needed. This represented a major advancement in our ability to insulate ourselves from the haphazard providence of nature. The shift to an agricultural lifestyle resulted in something we’d never had before: a food surplus. This freed us to spend more time on activities other than constantly foraging for food.”
In front of them, a man appeared, hunched over a hole in the ground containing a flat circular stone. There was a small gap between the edge of the stone and the earth surrounding it. On top of the stone a long clay coil was looped on top of itself in progressively wider circumferences to form a rudimentary bowl. The man was running his fingers along the seams to close any gaps between the loops. Then he leaned forward, grasped the edge of the stone, and rotated it a quarter turn before resuming pressing the coils together.
“Pottery making had been around for more than 20,000 years prior to the dawn of civilization, so perhaps it is not surprising it produced two major inventions after the development of a food surplus. The first, as you see here, was the wheel. Seven thousand years ago, the creation of the slow wheel helped potters speed up their rate of production by enabling them to turn the object on which they were working, rather than having to repeatedly reposition themselves around the object.
“Later on, with the fast wheel, the potter could continuously s
pin the wheel at a high rate of speed, either by hand or by pushing a foot pedal. This enabled them to ‘throw’ objects by pressing their fingers or other objects into a hunk of clay in the center, and use the wheel’s centrifugal force to create a much wider variety of shapes like urns, wine bottles, and so on.”
The image warbled and then resolved to show the man placing the bowl in the center of a shallow hole in the ground. It had sticks piled up all around it, which he then set on fire with an already burning stick.
“We also discovered that by heating the clay in pit-fires, we could harden it into a ceramic, making it far stronger and more durable.”
The images of the potter moved off to the side—Pax wasn’t sure if it was the images moving or if the disks on which he Alethia and he were sitting—and an image of a man boring a hole out of a cross-cut section of tree trunk with a sharp stone appeared.
“We began experimenting with the use of wheels for transportation around the same time. However, it took a thousand years to progress from early attempts, such as you see here, to the invention of the spoked wheel, which was much lighter and had much greater radial strength. But along with the domestication of horses and the creation of the horse-drawn cart, the radial wheel began to enable us to transcend our two-legged limitations and move ourselves and other objects from one place to another much faster and farther than ever before.”
Then the image of the pit-fire reappeared, only now with pieces of broken pottery stacked up all around it to form a wall. On the ground nearby were many types of metal artifacts—arrowheads, ax blades, saws, bracelets, and small flat disks strung together with plant fiber to form necklaces.
“In the course of our explorations with pottery-making,” Alethia continued, “we learned how to make kilns to create hotter fires by retaining the heat with walls and arches, and devising different ways to control the flow of air inside them. Eventually, we discovered we could heat other materials as well. We learned that by heating chunks of earth containing copper we could separate the copper from its surrounding ore. The copper could then be hammered into a much greater variety of shapes than could be achieved with wood, bone, or stone.”
The images of the pit-fires and the field slowly receded back to the tower wall. As the images reached the wall, they flattened out and became two-dimensional again. Pax noticed that, strangely, the wall seemed farther away than before. Above the old images, new ones of mud-brick buildings appeared and drifted down toward them. Some of the buildings were two or even three stories tall. Pax noticed the people were now wearing more refined clothes, such as tunics and skirts made of cotton, flax, and wool.
“As towns grew more populous,” said Alethia, “they turned into cities, which in turn merged into city-states. By 5,500 years ago, city-states had formed along several of the major rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, the Indus, and the Yellow River. The worldwide population of humans began to grow much more rapidly as well. In less than 5,000 years, our number had grown 25 percent, from 4 million to 5 million.
“The progression to large, sedentary populations led to a number of social changes. One was our increasing shift to specialization of labor, which produced products and services of higher quality. This, in turn, led to the concepts of ownership, bartering, and of course, stealing.
“The concept of social status became much more important and refined as well. In the large city-states, formalized societal stratifications developed with kings, queens, and priests at the top, military leaders and administrators below them, then traders and the various craftsmen. At the bottom were slaves, a logical, albeit morally repugnant extension of the concept of ownership. Of course, the idea must have existed for much longer, but like stealing, slavery was an impractical concept when living a migratory lifestyle. But with the shift to a stationary existence and the development of technology such as metallurgy, it became possible to create tools to restrain and inflict terrible pain on other people, enabling slavery to be put into practice. And it was—in societies all over the world.”
Their viewpoint rose up and then forward, through a window on the third-floor of a building. Inside, a man in a robe was hunched over a large clay tablet. He pressed a stick with a flattened tip into the clay repeatedly, leaving a variety of wedge-shaped markings in neatly ordered rows.
“A little over 5,000 years ago, people living near the Tigris and Euphrates developed cuneiform, the first formal writing system,” said Alethia. “Initially developed for purposes of recording barter exchanges, this was the most significant technological development since the invention of agriculture 5,000 years earlier. For the first time, humans could transmit knowledge remotely from one person to another with great accuracy. Although the skill of writing was initially confined to priests and others at the top echelons of society, it set the stage for information to be disseminated much faster and farther than ever before.”
The view backed out the window and descended to the ground again. It moved to a different building, where a man was pouring liquid metal into a stone mold the shape of a short blade. Around him on the wall were a variety of weapons: daggers, battle axes, spearheads, helmets, and armor plating metal. They had a darker, more burnished appearance than the earlier copper artifacts.
“Also around this time,” said Alethia, “we discovered that mixing tin with copper produced an alloy significantly harder and more durable than copper alone: bronze. Because of these qualities, one of the primary applications of bronze was to create improved weapons of war. It is worth noting that before our transition to an agricultural lifestyle, there are very few examples in the fossil record of organized warfare among humans. But afterward, it became a fundamental aspect of human society.”
Suddenly, Alethia turned to face Pax.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve made it halfway up the Story of Man.”
Pax looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean, halfway up? Don’t you mean halfway through?”
“Either way. The height of the tower is directly proportional to the 10,000-year timeline of human civilization, so being 5,000 feet up means we’re only 5,000 years from the present.”
“What are you talking about? We haven’t even started…“ Pax stopped short as he looked up and saw the darkened ceiling was now much larger, although still a long way off.
“I didn’t feel a thing,” he said in astonishment. “You’re telling me this thing is 10,000 feet high? That we’re 5,000 feet off the ground right now?”
Alethia nodded. At first Pax couldn’t believe it, but then he realized he’d been sitting on a magically levitating disk the whole time, so he wouldn’t feel any swaying motion from the tower being pushed about by the winds outside, nor vibrations caused by the mechanics of the platform rising. But neither had he heard anything, no sound of gears or engines of any sort. But there was no doubt the ceiling was much closer, and the walls considerably further away. When Pax looked down at the platform he saw it still reached all the way to the edges.
“And is the platform…getting wider?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Alethia.
“How?”
“It’s made with a material created by the Infinet that has unique polar covalent bond properties. By manipulating the electric field around it, the Infinet can dynamically control its shape and tensile strength. It’s similar to the material used on the ship, although with some small differences as well as a different color.”
Pax hopped off his disk and tapped on the platform several times with his foot. It felt as solid as concrete. He shook his head, then noticed the disk he’d been sitting on had turned white again. He sat back down.
“Shall we continue?” asked Alethia.
Pax nodded. “By all means, let’s get this over with.”
The images of the city retreated to the wall, and new images came off and drifted down, passing in front of them. This time they proceeded as a continuous carousel, slowing down only momentarily before returning t
o the wall.
First came a series of connected clay cylinders lying in shallow ditches in the ground that Alethia identified as the first pipe-based plumbing system. Then, some unlucky people appeared, throwing fistfuls of sulfur dust over a crop field, the first pesticide. Small pottery bowls with candle wicks hanging out of pinched corners, the first oil lamps. A tall obelisk casting shadows on the ground, the first clock. Images of more elaborate-looking ovens appeared, and near them a wide variety of gray-colored metal artifacts and weapons, including larger swords and shields. Early versions of algebraic and trigonometric equations also began to appear.
“Around 3,300 years ago, we developed the first furnaces, which could attain and maintain significantly higher temperatures than kilns. This enabled us to smelt iron, and soon after, by adding a small amount of carbon to the mix, steel. Both stronger and lighter than iron, steel revolutionized many aspects of human existence. Unfortunately, as before, one of its primary applications was to create even more effective weapons of war.”
Next, a number of paved roadways appeared, along with images of an aqueduct, a bathhouse, a bridge, and a dam.
“Also around this time, the people of Rome accomplished many significant feats of engineering. One of the most significant was the invention of concrete. Roman concrete, made of quicklime, volcanic ash, and pumice, was much stronger and more versatile than other building materials. It enabled the construction of buildings such as the Colosseum and the Pantheon. But most significantly, it enabled them to build a vast network of roadways, such as the Appian Way. Of course, it was all done with the aim of conquering Europe, and later, the world.”
The images of buildings and roads retracted and were replaced by ones of men pounding a strange mixture of rags, plant fibers, and tree bark in a large container filled with water.
“For 3,000 years,” said Alethia, “one of the biggest challenges involved in writing was finding a suitable writing surface. Palm leaves, tree bark, turtle shells, silk, and many other substances were used, but all had limitations in efficacy, availability, or cost. But 2,100 years ago, pulp paper was invented by people living in China. Using hemp, tree bark, old rags, and a great deal of manual labor, pulp paper would revolutionize the availability of the written word. Five hundred years later, people in the Middle East figured out how to automate the production process with water-powered pulping mills. Somewhat surprisingly, it took several hundred years more before knowledge of paper-making reached people living in Europe.”