Prolog for "And Then There Was One"

A Spiritual Fiction of Human Evolution

In our constant search for purpose, maybe we've missed a tree in the forest: we are one

Throughout time, we simultaneously relish our differences and seek comfort in the sameness we share. We struggle to perfection and use meaningless tools to prove our individual superiority. But the ever-present chase and search for independence, power, stellar brightness breaks down to nothing in the face of those tenuous threads that tie us together with the strength we can only find in our commonality.

We are not a collection of individuals set to the single tune that plays itself over again in our minds. Rather, we bob and weave together, each of our single tunes missing beats in harmonious discord.

Part One: Rika and Lok

"My name is Rika and I can't write. I can't talk, either, and I'm not even sure if I can think.

"I have hair on my body. I walk with my back feet; I pick up stuff with my front ones. My front feet put things in the hole in my face; I call that hole my mouth. I chew up the things if they taste good.

"Someplace in my middle leaks after I chew up the things that taste good.

"Lok likes to touch my hair. Sometimes he gets fat in his middle and he touches my middle with his fat. I hope he doesn't touch the part that leaks.

"There are many here.

"Some have big teeth, some have big ears. Sometimes we have to hit them on the head with rocks to kill them and then we eat them. The outside of them doesn't taste too good. It feels really good, really soft, almost like the hair on our heads and on our middles. If you try to eat it, it gets caught under your face and you leak from your face. Me and Lok figured it out to just eat the inside. There's two ways to do this: you can eat it right away and it's nice and warm, but your hands get all red and you have to chew for so long and you forget what you're eating if you don't remember real hard. Or, here's the other way (I found this way). If you put it on a rock in the bright ball light that lives in the sky, it gets brown and easier to chew. And it doesn't make your hands all red.

I made up a word for what it looks like here. My new word is 'pret-tee'. I like that word. It's a good word for the things that stand still in the ground. Sometimes they make colors; that's pret-tee. And the light that lives in the sky is pret-tee and it changes colors, too. Sometimes, when the sky is blue, the ball light is yellow and sometimes it's orange. But when the sky is black, the ball light is white. Oh, yeah, sometimes it's orange them, too.

"One day, Lok went for a long, long walk and when he came back, he said there were two balls. He said he saw both of them at the same time. I don't know if I believe him, but Lok is very smart.

"After Lok came back from his trip when he saw the two balls in the sky, he only had one arm. One of the ones we like to eat (a very mean one who doesn't like to be eaten) bit it off. But we knew what to do. Lok laid quietly for a very long time. I fed him lots of water with plants in it. Soon his arm grew and grew and now it's altogether back. Well, that's one of the things we do here. Sometimes we try to get food, but the food tries to get us first and chomps off part of us. So we lay down and we think to the Spirits and eat much of the good plants and drink much of the good water and wait until we grow back.

"Every day, we take turns and lay down and don't make hardly any noise. Well, except some of us do make some noise. Lok makes lots of noise from his face when he lays down. It sounds like a growl and it scared me at first, but it doesn't hurt him and I think it's good for him. Lok told me that, if you make noise from your face when you lay down, nobody will think you're dead and they won't bury you.

"We like to play with the others who are look us. We don't eat them and they don't eat us.

"One of them leaked a little one of us from her middle and the little one couldn't let go from the string and it cried and cried something awful and no one knew what to do. Except Lok knew. He picked up his special very sharp stone and broke the string. Then he picked up the little one and the one who leaked it took it and the little one was quiet.

"Lok is very important.

"The little one was very red, just like the ones we eat after we take their outsides off. I was wondering if we should put it on a rock and eat it, too, but the one who leaked it said no, no, no. I don't think she liked it that all of us watched her leak the little one. I think she wanted to be alone or maybe with her sister, the one who looks like her. But we never saw that happen before. I wonder if we all have little ones inside of us?

"Something happened that was very scary at first and I was afraid to think about it for a long time. All of us who are the same were eating the plant that makes us laugh One of the others started to make pret-tee sounds come from the mouth part of her face and the sounds made us dance. Lok picked up two stones and clapped them together to make more sounds. And that's when IT happened! The stones made sparks! He hit them together again and again and they made bigger and bigger sparks. We were all very afraid then, but Lok kept hitting the stones again and again and again and the sparks got so much bigger and bigger and bigger and then they wouldn't stop. He had to drop the stones because they were too hot, but when he dropped the stones, the sparks still lived on the ground. We all ran away, because we were all afraid.

"But Lok went back in a little while and the sparks were still there. And they didn't hurt anything. They just kept dancing on the stones. He came back to get me because he knows I like pret-tee things. It was so warm.

"My belly is getting very hard and fat now. I wonder if the sparks did it.

copyright: 2006 crm