Though none knew it then, once the egg was open, the warm rays of the summer sun had struck the black panel that was inside it, triggering a whirring of invisible moving parts.
All gathered and watched in stunned silence, as a strange thing the herald of yet stranger things to come, happened. Along an invisible vertical joint, the egg opened like a book would. But this, of course, was like no book anyone present had ever seen.
Constructed of some combination of plastics, stainless steel, titanium, and other ancient alloys, the egg had been specifically designed to withstand the centuries. Inset to a thumbnail’s depth inside the right half of the egg was an oblong panel of opaque silver-gray material. The silver screen remained dull and lifeless.
The left-hand half of the egg seemed to be a compartment, made up of three small drawers. Above these at the top were three smaller black panels, each the size of a comb. It was these that drew the attention first, as one after the other they burst into life.
“By the beard of Alchemedes, tis magickery beyond anything,” whispered Glamour as her mother cowered behind her, incanting unintelligible protective spells.
“Tis lightning captured in a box!” wailed the Fool, and in this he was closer to the truth than he could have known. The technology of the mid-to-late twenty-first century had been based upon that of leaves. The black panels at the top of the egg absorbed solar energy and mimicked photosynthesis, converting sunlight into the molecules that powered the hidden veins, branches, and roots within the egg. All with the perfect economy of a tree.
From left to right, red lightning bug numbers began to glare in the tiny boxes, changing numbers numbers with meaning. The digital clock seemed almost comprehensible to Ghazali, beginning at zero, and counting off: 0.01. … 0.02. ... 0.03. … like extended heartbeats.
“Seconds,” marveled Ghazali. “And watch!” As the count hit sixty, the zero changed to a one, and the count to sixty began again.
“Tis the ways of the Ancient Ones. A beautiful minute,” he exclaimed with a laugh.
The central of the small screens was illuminated with ten zeroes and remained unchanging, but it was the right-hand screen that was most incomprehensible. The numbers flashed rapidly, like the egg was being scrambled to come up with the answer to an intractable problem.
And then the clock stopped on the number 164,092.
“Gadzillions!” said Jakerbald.
“Could it be that it has counted the number of … the number of summers since … since this machine was made?” suggested Walterbald looking at Ghazali.
Ghazali nodded and laughed. “Anything seems possible now!”
Nothing else unusual happened from within the egg itself for a long time. Over fifty minutes passed, according to the clock, but in reality time flew by. During that interim, led by Walterbald, the travelers very cautiously opened each of the three drawers, one by one.
The first contained a book. A book in the same form that Stormy would have handled when she helped out at Morainia library. The book’s pages were made of wafer thin plastic, which rustled as the King leafed through it.
“Dic-ti-on-A-ree,” he announced trying to pronounce the strange word on the cover, and he handed the book to Stormy. She held the strange fabric and sat down with Glamour as she opened its pages. It was a book of mostly strange words and a few that seemed almost familiar. Incredibly, the language, though it possessed only twenty-six letters, was the same one she knew. There were only a few words on each page, and pictures.
“It’s a children’s book,” she announced. Sure enough, many of the words were accompanied by finely detailed outline drawings.
Walterbald continued leading the investigations into the other two drawers. The second drawer contained a sheaf of plastics. Walterbald delicately took the top sheet and passed it on, and then the next and the next. They were very familiar looking children’s drawings. Houses, people, trees, animals, the sun like a golden star in a blue sky. One even had a black bird sat in a tree. The bird was not unlike Emmeur’s cousins of the raven world.
Another drawing had a strange flying creature with smiling people somehow inside it. It seemed featherless, with smooth wings. Walterbald looked at Emmeur, but neither could conceive what the creature in the drawing was.
The third drawer contained a dress made of some incredibly light and shiny fabric. The dress was red, but twinkled in the sunlight like crystallized frost in a full moon. There was a pair of flat shoes, which again were constructed of unusual materials. The shoes were what we would call a pair of sneakers. There was also a cheap plastic tiara.
Glamour nudged Stormy. “Well, go on! Try it on, girl!”
Walterbald held out the dress for his daughter and went back to examining the egg with the other scientics.
“Look,” she cried, reading the label inside the back of the neckline. “It has my name in it. Sort of? It’s called Stormskin!”
“I don’t think it would offer much protection in a storm,” said Glamour laughing.
The Princess stripped down to her knickers with none of the modesty of the twenty-first century from where the garb came, and pulled the sleeveless dress over her head. It hugged her teenage figure, went well with her boots, and felt as if it became part of her skin. As if she were almost wearing nothing.
Glamour cooed as she fixed the tiara in Stormy’s hair, and then The Witch issued a baleful cry
“Tis possessed.”
And surely, as the fabric absorbed some of Stormy’s body heat it changed color in waves from reds, to purples, to aquamarines. The changing colors swirled, toppling over each other as the Princess moved.
“Look, look,” called Emmeur. “There is even more wonder here.”
The silver screen in the right hand of the egg had suddenly blinked once, and then sputtered with a magnesium white flash. All eyes turned to watch the screen.
“Urrgghh!” The Fool sputtered aghast, peering intently as the screen came to life. They all gathered to watch the first moving pictures seen on Earth for, oh, about 162,000 years.
The comrades were transfixed. Some seventh sense somehow told them that this wondrous time capsule was benign, and in that they were right.
A group of seven children filled the screen: four girls and three boys. They wore very odd clothing, Stormy remembered thinking later. Most of them looked to be about Stormy’s age, maybe some eleven-summer-olds, but mostly twelve or thirteen, she guessed, apart from a smaller girl in the front with long blond hair who was maybe nine.
They were all waving, laughing, saying hello, and cheering. And then on cue, they began singing in strange accents:
We do say ta for the humble Atom,
From which all things are made.
We do say ta for our universe,
And our home, the Milky Way.
We do say ta for planet Earth,
And its relation to the Sun.
We do say ta for the lucky place,
We find ourselves in.
We do say ta for the atmosphere,
Which warms us through and through.
We do say ta for the spark of life,
From which all beings grew.
We do say ta for evolution,
For giving us a lucky break.
We do say ta for the adaptation,
So that we can communicate.
We do say ta for our imagination,
And dreams that still surprise us.
We do say ta for ingenuity,
And let us use it wisely.
And though our life is in many ways brief,
Let our time be full of wonder … aahh.
And if any should ever hear this rhyme,
Then we do say ta … and hello … and hurrah.
The children continued smiling and waving, but the younger girl at the end burst into tears, hid her face and turned away. A couple of the other children looked uncomfortable.
Then the shadow of a hand appeared in front of the group, blocking out the
screen somewhat. One of the children said “Is that it, Mister Holdsworth?” An unseen man’s voice said: “That were great!”
The screen went blank and resumed its silver lifeless pallor.
Those gathered by The Witch in the Ditch’s cabin were all silent for a good while. As well as being astounded by this magickery, Stormy was overwhelmed by the human emotion therein. Maybe because they were children, to all appearance not unlike herself. The emotion was contagious, and as she looked at Glamour, they both saw the tears in each others’ eyes.
It was The Fool who spoke first in a low whisper. “Holy ’scremis!”
“Poor little Devils. Elf faeries trapped in the egg for all eternity,” barked The Witch in the Ditch.
It seemed like a long time before anyone spoke again, though it was only twenty-three seconds by the firebug clock.
And then a voice broke the silence … it was the voice of a woman who had lived all those thousands of years ago: “At the third stroke it will be One o’clock precisely … beep beep beep.” And the first clock on the egg registered the first hour as having passed.
“What a treasure box!” said Walterbald.
“But what does it all mean?” asked Stormy.
“I think—and it’s only a theory,” said Walterbald, “it’s like a children’s scrapbook from a long time ago. It means, and I am only making a first educated guess, that there were intelligent people, like ourselves, before the dark times. I would hazard a guess, that they maybe knew the dark times were coming, and they would probably not survive them. Hence they made this,” and he paused before he said the word, “Time egg.”
Stormy looked sad, and her dress shimmered a somber green to match. She thought of the smallest girl inside the egg, crying after the children’s song. Stormy went to hug her father.
“Well, for us, dear Alex,” Walterbald said, “the same as we eat your granddad’s chicken eggs for strength, this egg will be food for our brains every time we take in its wonders.”
Looking into her father’s eyes, Stormy suddenly felt very glad to be alive. Though the game of Rock, Shadows, Wonder, had not yet been invented, she knew in that moment if we let it, wonder conquers darkness every time.
Author’s Response
“WHY AN ANARCHIST FAIRY TALE?”
No period of history could better illustrate the constructive powers of the popular masses than the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the fortified villages and marketplaces, representing so many “oases amidst the feudal forest,” began to free themselves from their lord’s yoke, and slowly elaborated the future city organization: but, unhappily, this is a period about which historical information is especially scarce; we know the results, but little has reached us about the means by which they were achieved.
Peter Kropotkin
“Mutual Aid A Factor in Evolution”(1902)
An anarchist fairytale may seem a contradiction in terms. Kings and queens, princes and princesses, serving girls and slaves? You have met them all in these pages. You found some of the regular doses of violence and struggle which survival compels, but also some fine moments of outstanding cooperation between people and between species.
These ideas are not made up. There are many instances of symbiotic behavior between animal species in the nature we know. As, Bernd Heinrich points out, the raven evolved with the wolf, hence its nickname of wolf-bird. Ravens will, quite unbelievably, shy away from animal corpses food just sitting there waiting to be eaten to the point of not eating it, unless wolves (or surrogate wolves) are present. Ravens, who cannot slice up deer carcasses with their beaks, let the wolves do the hard work and then take their share. But why don’t the wolves just eat the ravens as a tasty hors d’oeuvre? Because wolves learned that if the ravens behave in a particular way, they have, with the advantage of their aerial vision, spotted real food waiting to be eaten in the immediate environs.
In our world, though it is very different in some ways to Stormy’s, there are real kings and queens, and nation states engaged in empire-building wars. There are rulers bent on suppressing those who resist their power. But there are also many exceptions to this, that the history of power neglects to mention. The “exceptions” to deadly competition or top-down domination involve another kind of power. And this power of cooperation between people is sometimes called “anarchism.”
There was an actual anarchist prince in old Russia, called Peter Kropotkin. And contrary to the stereotyped image of the black-cloaked, bomb-throwing anarchist, Kropotkin was a rational, articulate thinker. He saw in the wider world around him some of the quintessential elements of non-hierarchical anarchist society. He developed a theory of the human tendency toward cooperation, or mutual aid as he called it, rooted not in wishful thinking, but in observable science.
Building on Russian scientific thought of his day, Kropotkin wrote a book called Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution (1902). The book gave a scientifically respectable theory that for many species, cooperation, or mutual aid, was as much a part of survival for the species as a group, as the survival of the fittest was for the individual. In other words, the individual benefited from the cooperation of the group, whereas the group did not necessarily benefit from the elevation of the individual.
Kropotkin based his theories on observations of animals and indigenous peoples he made while working as a geographer and zoologist, during scientific expeditions in Siberia and Manchuria. He found human societies that were not all as competitive, as compared to the dangerously competitive nations of his own Western Europe of the late nineteenth century.
Contemporary scientists are still arguing over the fine details of how social and natural evolution works, and how this is different for each particular species. But present day evolutionists are finding that much of the general sense of Kropotkin’s ideas was on track. For example, evolutionary scientists E. O. Wilson and D. S. Wilson explain,
Hunter-gatherer societies are fiercely egalitarian. Meat is scrupulously shared; aspiring alpha males are put in their place; and self-serving behaviors are censured. Unable to succeed at each other’s expense, members of hunter-gatherer groups succeed primarily by teamwork. (2008)
In evolutionary terms, we are all “modern humans,” descended from those who first walked out of a gorge in Africa and spread across the world. As a species, we are approximately 150,000 years old, and until the dawn of agriculture 13,000 years ago, we were all hunter-gatherers. In other words, for most of our existence we lived co-operatively. And many of us today yearn for community in some form.
With Morainia, I am speculating as to where the line is between egalitarian bands of fifty or a hundred hunter-gatherers, and the sedentary, farming-based societies of a few thousand people which succumbed to hierarchical feudalism. For surely such a change did not happen overnight?
Kropotkin argued against the Social Darwinism of his own time, which advanced the idea that rich people deserved to be rich because they were fitter in evolutionary terms than poor people. Such warped misrepresentations of Darwin’s theory would be used by Hitler, as justification for the master race of Nazi Germany, and a global war for the survival of only the fittest.
Some of the recently discovered evidence that humans evolved to co-operate has been staring us in the face on a daily basis. For example, David Sloan Wilson explains the unique adaptation of humans—among the other ninty-two of their primate cousins studied—of having exposed bright eye-whites (sclera). In contrast, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans et al., along with most other mammals, have mostly concealed or darker-pigmented sclera. The darker sclera, or nature’s sunglasses, evolved partly due to the general need of animals in the wild for camouflage to survive. But they also served a need of hierarchical ape society, to conceal information from rivals in their own group.
In stark contrast, humans are literally born to attract each other’s attention by eye contact. The naturally selected exposed eye-white draws us into the window of the soul. Eye contact is how a b
aby learns about itself from its mother; it is the means by which we fall in love; and it is the basis of our trying to appeal to someone’s better judgment in times of crisis.
It does not take a trained scientist to notice that the very first thing animators do to humanize their cartoon animals into talking life, is to give them very visible eye-whites. The scientist would ask whether our closest relative in evolutionary history, Neanderthal Man, had exposed eye whites? And bone remains only tell us so much, and just as we have no idea what colors dinosaurs actually were, we know nothing of the Neanderthal eye. But at some point, hundreds of thousands of years ago, the human eye diverged from that of other primates, and the advantage in terms of survival, of being better-able to share information and co-operate, was spectacularly successful.
That humans evolved to be involved in parenting over a matter of years, rather than months or weeks, offers more evidence of mutual aid as a factor in evolution. How could a human baby ever live beyond a few hours were its parents, or substitute care-givers, not hard-wired to raise it through the years when it simply could not fend for itself? And beyond family cooperation, there would be no great cities, no great leaps in technology, no man on the moon, no titanium rod in my broken leg, no avoiding untold havoc wreaked by global warming, if humans had not discovered, and do not rediscover, our natural leaning towards mutual aid.
3 Dead Princes Page 14