The Church of the Transhuman

by Joe Plus

  “Don’t waste your time Sweetness,” said another priestess, “he's not even listening.”

  “I will give you such a clap around the ears. Bad imp. Bad, bad imp. How would you like it if someone took your share?”

  “I would eat them,” said Tele, “but these scrawny, worthless birds have little flesh. They are nothing more than a bothersome pest.”

  “I will peck your eyes out,” said a raven.

  “So will I,” said another.

  The high priestess turned to Gideon, and John saw the wolf whisper into her ear. The birds ceased their attack on Tele and flew to the top of the tree and cawed loudly. Sturdy young women blew large curled buckhorns and everyone turned their attention to the high priestess. She climbed up onto the altar, still covered in blood from the sacrificial offering. In each of her hands was placed a brightly burning torch. With her arms outstretched before her she spun the torches in large flaming loops. Sparks of burning ash in rings of gray smoke blew out over the crowd and John felt his eyes beginning to water. She sang aloud in a strange guttural tongue of clicks and rasps; the sound of nails drawn over a chalkboard. Gideon told John that it was a poem with a repeating dactylic heptameter, each stanza a quatrain, an ancient song sung once a year on the winter solstice.

  “Oh,” said John, “that’s like, fascinating.”

  “The Goddess herself composed it,” said Gideon, “and it is sung in her language, a language that only the Priestesses know.”

  John noticed a hush envelop the hilltop and the descending-ascending spiral queue. All eyes were skyward to the risen moon above. Billows of smoke and spark poured over the tree and into the crowd by the icy wind. John looked around and settled on the hanging remains of the dead King.

  Poor dude, he thought.

  The priestess spoke out and the entire congregation began to sing, slowly and sinusoidally with each phrase. John imagined the song to be some doggerel, no different from the rubbish sung in CoT+ meetings.

  The dirge continued for some time, and John was starting to feel tired and drowsy. He struggled to concentrate his eyes on any single point, his eyes flit to-and-fro - each point of focus jittered like a mosquito - and his head ached behind the bridge of his nose. The cold wind on his back combined with waves of fire and smoke, and the hypnotic up and down motion of the song drew him into a dream. He imagined he was a spark that lifted from the fire, drifted above the crowd in a hot whirl, pulled this way and that by the capricious wind. He had stopped shivering and began to feel congested, hot and sweaty. He turned and walked, stumbling along to the top of the path where the masses gently swayed. He continued downward, threw down the fur and unbuckled his belt. He squeezed his way through an open door that led into the side of the hilltop, pulled off his shoes, his jacket, then his shirt. Drawn along by evenly spaced torches that led his way through a tightening left-handed passage. He kicked aside his pants, continued on in his socks and boxers until he reached a small room. He curled himself up on what felt like a pile of hard sticks and closed his eyes.

  Chapter 39

  Log: 08-01-2044::10:13

  Field Trip: Batang Garing

  Role: Field Lead

  Name: Augusta Green

  So why have the Ang welcomed us, and yet killed the rest of the team? The answer is in our gender, they only attack and kill what they perceive to be a threat, and that threat is almost exclusively men. Having lived with the Ang for two months now I am beginning to understand these people. To begin with, I must point out that they do have language, and a syntactically complex one at that. I struggled at first, but I am getting the hang of it. It is nuanced and difficult to learn, and yet every small child from two years seems to have an advanced vocabulary. They call me slow white worm, which is far from pleasing, but the grasp and mastery of elaborate expressions at such a young age is astonishing. The name Ang, pronounced with a short 'a' as in 'hang', is the name they give themselves, although they occasionally refer to themselves after their river, which they call Songee. Songee phonetically resembles the Indonesian word Sungai, which also means water, or river. Trish and I are surprised by this apparent interspecies overlap of words.

  The stages of development are like ours, there are babies, toddlers, prepubescents, adolescents, all the way through to full-grown adults and the elderly. Being the linguist, I have managed to converse with the more patient and vocal women, albeit with a limited vocabulary. They use the moon to describe the gestation period, drawn ten times in the sand. Twenty-eight days times ten lunar phases, that’s two hundred and eighty days, identical to us.

  There are plenty of young boys, but only one mature male. The tertiary sex ratio up to mid-teens is fifty-fifty, but from late teens only females and one dominant male remain. So, this is a hugely female weighted society, yet it is far from matriarchal. The one in charge is the single male named Ai, (the correct pronunciation comprises a combination of diphthongs, Aieeoiu, or something like that, which we always seem to mispronounce, much to their amusement). But Ai - as in guy - seems to be acceptable. It means, shark, and given his long teeth, is fittingly descriptive. The only other males tolerated in his presence are the young boys. We have witnessed males being chased away into the jungle once they reach adulthood. These bachelor males live on the periphery of the village, each securing his territory by the riverside and not tolerating incursions by other males. Sometimes a female will leave her village and live with another male to start another commune. Though Ai gives the impression of being very angry when it happens, he does nothing to stop it. Trish tells me the Ang women insist that a male being chased away is a rare phenomenon, and that most men stay. Those that are chased away choose to be chased away. Trish asked, so why are there so few males? Where are the ones who have not chosen to be chased away? Well, it is strange and difficult to understand.

  As an aside: one of the women explained – well, we think this is what she said - that two bachelor males have kidnapped to women of out clan. So how could they know this? The women explained that one of the males is her son, and she speaks with him always. I assume that have some way of communicating via their clicks and whistles, a bit like the mountain people of La Gomera. Then she said – he says they are fine, but bad swimmers. What she meant was – my son tells me at this very moment, and she cocked her head as she said it. Very odd since we couldn’t hear a thing. Perhaps they can hear sounds outside of the human range. Our hope is that she was indeed describing Natalie and Johanna. We worry for them every night, and hope to be reunited soon.

  The Ang have religion. The ceremonial aspect is gender dependent. Ai and the boys perform the same ritual each day at Sunrise. They lay prostrate toward the east until the Sun is fully visible. This takes ten minutes or so and Trish says that they should be thankful they live on the equator, compared with where we come from farther north where the Sun takes ages to rise. They would be lying there for ages.

  In contrast, the women’s religion is still a mystery to us. In the early morning they form a large circle where they seem to meditate for half an hour or so. They then get up and act according to some known plan on what to do for the day, and they seem surprised when Trish and I appear to be not to know what to do. Come, stop dawdling, they say.

  There are other notable rituals: when a child is born they sing and dance (rather strangely I might add, a sort of gentle swaying) and they eat a large sweet fruit they call gatchya. It has the combined taste of banana and strawberry. They slice it up and top each slice with small, fresh fish. It has a lot of pips you are supposed to chew and swallow. Personally, I find it unpalatable.

  The morning is not the only time they sit together. They have a strange habit of sitting in groups, or standing close together, without making eye contact or speaking. During these moments they will spontaneously laugh, cry, and begin chattering together in a way that suggests they wish to answer some point or continue a conversation. Perhaps they mull on things for days, have long pauses in discussions, and then give an
answer at some later point, I don’t know. Many times I have had a perplexed woman sit and stare at me for hours while I write. They frown deeply, squint and shrug their shoulders. I have tried to meditate with them during this period, but it seems to make them strain harder. Most unsettling. Trish is equally mystified. She says she thinks they expect something, wait for some sort of response. But what?

  On the question of sex, I would say it is expected that the dominant male have free access to any mature female whenever he pleases. Sex is possible throughout the year, as with our species.

  When it comes to menstruation, in the mind of Ai women become unclean. Menstruation is a sign of evil and danger. Ai says it causes all the women to go mad and cause damage. He really believes that their special menstrual power can lead to forest fires and floods. During this period women are confined to a large hut in a treetop. The hut spans across three trees with vine bound poles and woven walls and is about the same size as the giant dam in the water below. The women lower buckskin buckets and the older boys and girls send up necessities, but the children are forbidden to touch their mothers and elder sisters until their flowing is over. A week before menstruation a lot of preparation is required; food, water and certain herbs that are natural painkillers are taken up and stored. The typical duration varies similarly as for our species, lasting from a few days to ten days or so. Trish and I found that our periods were synchronized. Indeed we had synchronized with the tribe’s women. So we joined them in the hut. You can imagine what it’s like in the tree-hut with a lot of irritable women. This time of the month is a bugbear for Ai, because the women have a synchronized period, so they collectively menstruate during the same week of every month, which roughly commences with each full moon. Even so, he will attack any female with stones and sticks should she venture out of the hut during her period. He shouts and gesticulates, points to the moon and then to the river. He gets aggressive and violent. But he’s alone, so it’s a time when bachelor males appear from the bush to challenge him, and there are a surprising number during this time. We all watch the fights – not much choice, although Trish ends up turning away when it gets really bloody, and the fights really are bloody. Ai has not lost a single clash. If the challenger does not manage to flee, and several have managed to escape, broken hip, shoulder, and open wounds notwithstanding, Ai will kill him – he will torture the loser first, in the most unimaginably cruel way – so far he has skinned one young fellow with a flint blade, then left him on an anthill covered in fish waste. He cooked another under smoldering ash, he stuffed a third with rice then forced down liters of water until the poor soul’s stomach bursts apart – ghastly. All the females cheer; they love it; it’s all sport to them. I have to say that after so many years of participation in clinical trials, I did not find the spectacle in the least bit shocking. In fact, I can connect with the pain the losers endure, and I do believe that, like I accepted my lot, so too do they accept theirs. It all goes with the territory, so to speak.

  Outside of the menstruation phase there is a great deal of sexual activity. Each day at around 3 p.m. there is a build up to what amounts to an orgy where Ai copulates with as many women as he can until he tires. It lasts somewhere between forty-five minutes to an hour and the level of aggression used surprised us. He roams from woman to woman, each lifting her buttocks to him, and off he goes. By the term build up, what I mean is, although sex occurs throughout the day, it is during the midafternoon that there is a break where the women practically queue up for it. Sex in this community is, I suppose, an act of domination, but it seems to me that they all look forward to it. Trish and I hide up in the menstruation hut during this time, since it is clear that Ai will happily copulate with us too if he had the chance. We seem to be spending a lot of time in the menstruation hut – it’s a refuge; Ai will not dare enter.

  I must mention the physical description of these people. They really do have webbed feet and hands, and a webbing under their armpits. They have a light, grayish-blue skin complexion, and despite the appearance of hairlessness, they do have a covering of fine down that is short, thinly spread and transparent. They have an upright posture when walking, are lithe, strong and confident in bearing. Sexual dimorphism is clear - on average the women stand 1.85 m, the men around two meters tall. Ai is about average height for a male, but he is particularly strong. They can lift far heavier loads than our species, even taking into account our city backgrounds. The men are more powerful than the women, but even so, the women are powerfully built. Have you ever seen a woman casually lift a 180 kg tree trunk over her shoulder? Even Angel Yoshida was not that strong.

  The sub cuticle fat on their waist and shoulder area does tend to hide muscle definition. Their arms and legs are not short, as some might have predicted for a species that practically lives in the water, and we surmised this is an evolutionary development from their food gathering, searching in small, inaccessible spots deep in the river.

  They eat fish (60%), fruit and vegetables (30%), Insects, grubs, birds and whatever else they can lay their hands on. They don’t eat the Orangutan, a fellow primate with whom they have a strange relationship. When they encounter one they chatter away; and I mean chatter, a cha-cha-cha sound. The Orangutan appears to be the sole animal they will not eat. Men of our expedition team that were killed were cooked and eaten.

  They farm, and most of their farming is not land based but aquatic. They tend a river grass, which they love to include in their cuisine. I find it tasteless, with an odd rubbery texture that snaps crisply when you exert pressure on it; I can’t say I like it much. They herd fish and freshwater life into traps woven from reeds and they have mussel farms, crab farms and other freshwater livestock all pushed up against the riverbanks and side pools. They have separate woven cages for each species.

  They cook their food, and they are skilled in making fire. They have a smoldering fire going all day in the main courtyard of the dam. I introduced them to my magnifying glass to show them how the light of the Sun can be focused to create an intense heat. They were fascinated at first, and within minutes everyone seemed to know about it. Without warning, someone would jump out of the water, walk over to me and take my magnifying glass to give it a try. They are quick to learn, and seem to perceive the power of a given technology once it’s understood. The children have learned a great deal from us in very little time, including how to draw. Already the children are making portraits of each other in the soil. None of them are Raphael yet, but give them time. They seem to have knowledge of music, though emphasis is on melody and not so much on rhythm. You can hear an example now, reed pipes that make a rasping, wispy sound - only ever one person at a time mind, never an ensemble. I would have expected something simpler, more rhythmic, since there is percussive stuff lying around everywhere, sticks and stones and so on.

  They care for their old and sick. The sick are moved to a specially assigned hut removed from the dam. They make sure only one or two people go near the hut since they are wary of contagious diseases. They have learnt to take precautions. According to one woman, they were once a great kingdom destroyed hundreds of years back through disease. They numbered around ten thousand members in separate clans. My estimate for the size of the current population is no more than fifty, sixty of them, including the bachelor males. Perhaps there are other villages like this one, I don’t know.

  In contrast to the care they show to their own, they do have the capacity to be cruel and will not hesitate to fight. Once we awoke to find the camp silent except for a few older women and the children. Later that day the others returned with the head of a bachelor male and three women who had run off the night before. The other male had challenged Ai, and as I have said, Ai can be vengeful. Bear in mind it’s the women who fought; there are so few men about. A low population ensures they war infrequently, although they sing often of their conquests.

  They do not have a writing system and they have no legal system to speak of, whatever Ai says is law. Even so, they
do have the same understanding of right and wrong as we. It is wrong to steal, to tell lies, to kill (at least without permission), and so on. And they have taboos too. Speaking of which, incest is clearly not one of them, whereas sex with a pre-pubescent member of the clan is completely taboo. Cannibalism is taboo, but it is described as having happened to the most dangerous enemies. Inter-species sex is definitely not taboo, and on a personal note it has been a big problem keeping Ai at bay. His curiosity in us, and a clear desire to mate with us means we are getting more attention than we would like. We have moved from the status of guest to a part of the family.

  They spend most of the day on the river, actually, in the river. They have primitive boats of reed and sealed with what looks like a muddy pitch. Though we are encouraged to join them, we are never going to be equipped for the length of time required to observe and immerse ourselves into this aquatic world. Many hours daily are spent underwater, tending to river grasses and farmed river livestock – fish held in giant woven cages. We have recorded one teenager stay submerged for sixteen minutes before needing to come up for air, which is phenomenal. They really are aquatic apes.

  P.S. I reviewed some of my subvoxes the other day, how will I explain the content? God, what was I thinking at the time? That’s the problem with a subvocal, everything that goes through your mind gets stored away and you can’t edit the wretched things afterwards, dammit.