Encompassing Reality

by Richard Lord

  She wonders about that, but assumes it’s his way of washing her. Then she gets a look in her eye as she turns to peer into his eyes.

  Then he speaks, “Ironic that a book that has a commandment that says ‘thou shall not kill’ includes so many stories of hundreds of thousands of people being killed. The heroes, the prophets, the angels, even God himself.” He takes a drink of water as he stares at the ground.

  She doesn’t know what he means by that. She considers his words, but doesn’t know what he is referring to. “Why do you bring this up? I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve been considering a book I’ve read a few times in different languages and versions. It is one of the most taught books in the world, but it isn’t taught straight through. It’s taught in pieces to avoid the gory details. Most of the people, I’ve met, who swear by it have never even read it, yet they are willing to fight for a book they haven’t even read completely.” He laughs to himself at the irony, then he stands and says to her, “When people read just part of a book and not the whole, they make assumptions and via, what I call the ‘game of telephone’, they create huge problems in the world by doing so. I find it strange the overarching point is not taught.” He notes her inquiring thought. “Life isn’t simple. If it were, there would be no point. We work hard to make our lives simple, but the closer we get the more happens.” He realizes she doesn’t understand most of his references.

  She looked at him. He confused her at times, but she wanted to stay. Then she gets a desperate look in her eyes and turns away. She starts looking around as if she is trying to find something or some place and then turns back to him and says, “I have to, umm, womany, stuff.”

  He already heard her thought and laughs while replying, “Not really a womany thing, we do it too! Go pee. But I will warn you, rats are attracted to the smell of urine, snakes are attracted to rats, birds are attracted to snakes, lizards are attracted to birds. Coyotes are attracted to lizards. So basically…” He looks down at her.

  She looks up from her squatting position with a questioning look on her face, “What? I told you I had to go and then you went on about stuff, so I went.”

  “Yeah.” He struggles to keep his temper in check. “See the problem is, I was trying to point out that you should have ‘GONE’ somewhere else. So I am not sure the word ‘went’ applies since you didn’t actually go anywhere! You pissed in our camp!” He thinks to himself trying to think of another good location for shade, then he looks up at the sun for timing.

  “Don’t you have to go?” She asked.

  “Ohhh, don’t tempt me!” Realizing the spot is already marked he turns away from her and uses what he had planned to be their camp in the same manner she had.

  “See? You’re doing it! So why is it wrong when I do?” She asked, pointing to the stream shooting out of him into the sand so hard the sand bubbles.

  His head swells with frustration as she motions with her hand at his relieving moment. Then he notes she catches that he is angry and turns away. He also hears her look back and that makes him even more frustrated. He realizes most of his anger is about how the heck he is going to find a good spot to teach her the basics she has to get down. It has to provide good shade for the most number of hours of the day. He turns and looks at her and asks, “I assume you’re still here because you want to learn.”

  She looks at him and her face falls a bit. “Yeah, I mean, well, that’s part of it.”

  He looks at her, stunned. As she let the emotion swell he could hear her thoughts, but she had instinctively learned how to block some of them from him. He also realized she knew perfectly well that if she peed in that spot, they would have to move. He looked at her directly until she looked back at him just as directly. “Okay, the first thing to learn is, don’t get baked.” He chuckles to himself as he adds, “Well, you’re supposed to learn that in college, if you’re smart.” Then seeing her look, he realized that there was no relevance for humor there to her. “What I mean is until your skin begins to adapt to the sun, we need to stay out of it as much as possible. So, let’s do that and on the way, let’s review.” He begins to move quickly to another shadow, but it’s one he knows is only a few minutes long. She follows and picks up on his pattern, but she doesn’t understand his constant moving of positions. He decides to treat it as a game. He turns to her and asks, “So the rabbit. Was it bait?”

  “Explain bait.” She asks, now getting used to looking up at the sun the way he does, but still not sure why it is relevant.

  “If you have something very small to eat and you want more to eat, you could gamble on using the small thing you have to eat to attract something larger. You place it in such a way that you have advantage over what comes along so you can attack it and have that for dinner instead of the smaller thing.”

  “Like how you looked at my butt cheeks, but I was counting on that so I could get to your coin satchel, which was full of gold! So not only did I get caught, by you for that, it was filled with a something that is very hard to use in trade. And then on top of that, now I am here with you trying to not get fried? Do you mean like that?” She looked back at him and said, “How’m I doing so far, mystery man?”

  “Well...” His mind wanders but he focuses her and himself back on the point. “So was the rabbit bait and if so who was planning on taking the larger meal?”

  “Do you think those two were hunting the bird?” She thinks to herself, reliving the moment and considers there was more to that moment than he is letting on. It was his first thing to do. Why was that?

  “No, and it’s better if you refer to it as a hawk. More precise. We could get more precise, but that is descriptive enough.” He continues, “One of them already knew the hawk would end up with that prize. But which of them was baiting whom?”

  “How would I know?” Then she got a look on her face. “Now I have a womanly thing again and this time it’s?”

  “Doesn’t matter we’re not staying her long.”

  She looked at him with a bit more concern than she showed the first time. “How about I catch up with you?”

  He heard her internal air pass over what her concern was and said, “Okay, meet me there.” Where he pointed there was a very slim shadow. By the time you’re done that will still be a good spot. Again, that’s not a womanly thing either. Men have to also. Clearly from where you come from you know this.”

  “Yeah, but you can just use your magic and do it wherever you want. I have to walk and it’s embarrassing because you can see me from there.”

  “I won’t look. Stop being childish. Deal with it, but that means we’re at a point where we are going to need food. So that is the third thing we need to consider. I can click to water easily, but food is something I’m going to have to teach you how to get.”

  “Why? Why are you teaching me all of this? Why do you care? Are you all wigged out because I’m a bio or something?” She began unbuttoning her trousers and her eyes gestured for him to go ahead and move.

  He wasn’t sure if she meant for him to answer first or consider it after. He moved and answered as she caught up to him. “No, because there are things I know. There are also things I don’t know. I can’t move forward anymore, that is part of what Phillip did. So I have to learn. I learn best from snot nosed brats who are stubborn and seem to need to squat a lot.”

  She looked at him. “So I’m just being used?

  “No, there’s more to it, but then again, yeah. Like you were using my time up while you waited for an opportunity to reach for my decoy bag.” He noticed her level of caring if he was there or not had gone down. She was already squatting. He realized he still talked too much and clicked to the next shaded area.

  He heard her yell after him, “If you can do that why are we walking?”

  He yelled back, “Well apparently you had some shit to work out. So the walk did you good.”

  She yelled back, “Hey, there’s no…”

  He responded to her realization, kno
wing what was coming next, “No, that is the other thing rabbit fur is good for. But I’ve yet to see you catch one or even look for them. You’ll smell, but you’ll deal with it and learn.”

  “Your lessons aren’t funny. Seriously, what do I do?” She yelled over to him very concerned at the predicament she was in.

  “Pray for rain.” He pushed his hands out palms up and shrugged at her.

  “Can’t you just do that magic thing and get some?” She yelled back. “This really isn’t funny.”

  He sighed and clicked. She saw him disappear and then appear in front of her, back turned, holding a roll out to her without looking. “I can’t do that every time. You’re going to have to learn to plan for the eventualities.” He could hear her embarrassment in his mind, but he needed to make his point.

  “Speaking of which, why do we have to find animals to eat. Can’t you just do that thing and get us food?” She asked as she pulled up her trousers.

  He smiled and asked, “How cool is that?”, then to her question he answered, “No. If you want to stay here with me, you’re going to have to learn and figure things out for yourself. That’s the rules.” He began walking again.

  “Who’s rules? Yours?” She asked in a snotty manner and he stopped.

  He didn’t turn around he just stood there for a moment and then replied, “Yes.” Then he continued walking. “Some believe in what they call ancient wisdom. However, if they knew then, they’d still be alive now. Some believe in conventional wisdom. If we knew now we wouldn’t have had to learn then. Time is not so complex. Yet few step out of it to learn it from an observatory view.”

  She noted he had brought a pack back with him this time. It wasn’t the one he had before. She started to ask what was in it, but decided they were both too irritated at the heat to have much more conversation.

  Despite her realization, he said over his shoulder, “Do you know how to make a fire?”

  “Yes.” Then she considered her answer and added, “Well, down below I do. What do you use up here, all mighty ruler of the upper world?”

  He continued walking as he pulled the pack from his back and reached in and pulled out a ball of string. He tossed it over his shoulder to her. “Keep your eyes open for any dead wood, dried cactus, etc. Don’t pick up any feathers, but note them to me if I don’t see them. We can eat hawks too.”

  She looked at the string and then said, “What is a cactus?”

  He pointed, “Like that. The green ones have water in them. The brown ones are dead and burn well. Some have a surprise when you burn them. Before you ask, a hawk is the type of bird you saw back there. Very hard to catch, but vultures aren’t good eating. They are also a type of bird, but they eat rotten food and guts, so I’d prefer to find something tastier, but in a pinch they are at least a lot easier to catch than a hawk.”

  “Do you like it up here better than below?” She asked.

  “This is the world. Down there is, well, I prefer the world to there. Take a deep breath.” He heard her breath in hard. “Note that is not the smell of a bunch of people cordoned together. It’s clean air. Mostly. It’s dry air. One day I will show you a forest and a river and a mountain. One day, even the sea.” He said thinking of each of those things as he spoke them.”

  “I’ve seen pictures. A lot of pictures were left behind from the people before they became synths. I used to find them stuffed in odd places.” She started wondering what it was like to be near those places. Then she thought of some of the animals she had seen pictures of and that scared her. Lastly, she noted he said ‘one day’, meaning he planned on them being up here for a while longer than just today. She wasn’t sure what she thought about that, but she also didn’t completely reject the idea, yet. Then she looked around and almost bumped into him as he had stopped.

  He reached behind himself and grabbed her wrist. Then he whispered, “Do not move. Breathe normally, but do not move. Stay quiet.”

  She wondered what new lesson this was, and then she looked down in front of him. Then she jumped and yelled, “Oh my lords, what is that?” Instinctively she put a hand to her mouth because he said not to make any sound, he had also told her not to move, but she was twisting her legs looking for a place to jump up on. She didn’t want that thing to be able to get to her feet.

  “It’s a snake. Be quiet and quit fiddling. That kind of snake is poisonous. It can kill. The sound you hear is from its tail. That’s why they call this type of snake a rattlesnake. It shakes its tail to make an intimidating noise. Like I said, most things in the desert like to use their tails.”

  “How does it poison us? And if it can, why are we not running away from it? Why not use your magic trick to get us out of here?”

  “Because that is dinner if I do this right.” He handed her the pack and then he gestured with his finger for her to stay there. Then he eased around it. It noted his movement and turned toward him and bared its fangs.

  Again, she yelled! She was doing her best not to run. She was also considering going back down there and staying there forever. Then she watched as he moved his hand out to the side and waved it slowly. The snake began watching his hand as he kept the rest of his body very still. Then quickly he grabbed it from behind its head and she could see fluid pump out of its teeth. She could hear it hissing at him. That was a sound she had never heard before. She felt light-headed with fear. He put the other hand on its back and she heard a snap and then then threw it away from them.

  “Don’t go near it. It can still bite. It will be dead in few seconds, but even after that it can twitch and hit you with one of those fangs.

  “So we’re going to eat that?” Her face twisted in disgust.

  “Believe me, it’s much better than that stuff you call food, down there. Just wait a few minutes. Then when we find shade we can skin it. They are harder to skin if you cook them with the skin on, but we don’t want to take it off before we are ready to cook it. It will rot too quickly in this heat, with no skin.”

  She looked at him as if he was far crazier than she initially thought, then she saw him produce a knife from under his shirt, leap on the thing and chop off its head. “So you’ve killed things before?”

  “Yes. It’s called survival. You’re going to learn a different way to survive other than ripping off travelers.” He looked at her disapprovingly.

  She grinned and looked at him. “Well, I was pretty good at it until I met you.”

  “You’ll get good at a lot of things before this is over. Or not, and I can always take you back down. However, I suggest you try this”, he held up the snake’s lifeless, headless body, “before you go.”

  She had to admit to some curiosity, but couldn’t’ get out of her mind how disgusting it seemed to her. Then she asked, “Have you ever killed a person?”

  He pondered how best to answer and replied, “Not for food. I’ve been told people taste horrible. Like vultures because people have such a wide varying diet they apparently taste putrid. Also, it would seem odd. I suppose we survived this far into evolution because most things didn’t want to eat us and weren’t interested in eating each other, either.”

  She looked at him unconvinced, “So why did you kill them?”

  “Can’t you tell when someone is trying to change the topic?” He replied. He began to walk again.

  “Well, I don’t believe you.” She said as he was walking away. Then she started to follow him again.

  “Good. Because I did lie. I have eaten people and so have you. What do you think is used to make that you call food, down there? However, I have to admit the reports that people taste putrid are true. And that is why I prefer it up here.”

  She looked at him and ran a few steps to catch up to him. “That’s not funny. That’s not what it’s made out of! We aren’t animals.”

  “No, you’re not. Animals don’t eat people very often. Didn’t I just say that?”

  She frowned and then asked, “Do you really believe that what we eat is people?
”

  He tilted his head and sighed. Then he grabbed her wrist. They appeared in a very large room and it was very cold in there. Especially given the contrast from where they just were. “Look for yourself, but stay quiet, this time!”

  She watched as some synth people with gloves and masks and something over their heads were loading the dearly departed onto a moving belt. She watched as they went into a machine and she could here its blades and the chopping of bone and skin. Then out from that came the remains. He grabbed her wrist again and they appeared in the rafters above where the belt leading the remains went. She saw them chopped into the units of the size of the food she had always eaten. Then she watched as they continued on a metal belt and then charred from three sides. Then he pointed. Their pieces were being cooled and put in the packaging she was familiar with. She gasped. He grabbed her wrist and they were back only a few feet from where the snake’s head still lay in the sand.

  “Didn’t I say, ‘be quiet’? You never seem to do that when I mention it’s important.” Then he looked at her. Her hands were over her mouth. He realized she was thinking very deeply, her eyes were still wide with what she had seen. He felt for her. He had always assumed the people down there knew what they were eating.

  She looked up at him with a pleading why on her face. Then she asked it out-loud, “Why would they feed people that?”

  “Well, it’s meat. There aren’t a lot of things left to eat. There were a lot of people in the world and resources were low then. But then during the gathering of the people, they also took most of the animals that people used to eat. So the main resource is the people who have died. Which sadly is not too old because you can’t keep eating those so unhealthy they died and then expect to remain healthy and live. It was the only logical way to survive. It’s what they fed the synths before they were awoken.”

  She looked at the snake and then at him. “How long before we get to shade so we can eat that?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to gather some things to burn so we can cook it. Best not to eat things raw. I’ll explain that another time.” He reached a hand out to her shoulder and pulled her into him and hugged her. He could tell she had only ever been hugged by one being and that person was part synth. He held her and ran his fingers through her hair as he pulled her face against his chest. He realized it was probably a mistake to have shown her that.