A story

Once upon a time, in a planet whose inhabitants named Earth, there was a kind young boy. This boy loved hearing stories from his elders, as much as he enjoyed breaking the branches of faraway trees with the stones from his sling. He sat one night close to the campfire, warming himself, wondering which hunter would finish first his work, as all hunters had just returned from a big hunt and were sharpening their weapons, making new ropes and fixing their tools again. The women were smoking and drying the game for the next month, and the elders were all washing themselves for the ritual celebrating the hunters’ safe return, so the boy placed all his hopes of hearing a good story on the possibility that one of the hunters would not be too tired to indulge him.

He was not disappointed, because a hunter called Leaf, who could as well be his father, soon sat beside him, rubbing his hands together in the cold of winter.

“Hello, Leaf,” said the boy hopefully.

“Hello, Syrup.” The boy’s name was Syrup, because he was born very healthy. “What have you been learning?” Such was the traditional greeting of an adult to a youngster in Syrup’s tribe.

Syrup stood up excitedly. “A lot! Just the last few days Acorn taught me about the herbs, Thorn-bush about leading men to battle, and Beetle told be the story of the great hunter, Lion-Bramble!”

Leaf allowed himself a narrow smile. “Would you like to hear about Grampa Hole?”

Syrup quickly sat down. “I thought it wasn’t good to talk of the Grampa Hole.”

“It’s alright, as long as you don’t tell anyone I did. Can you keep a secret?”

Syrup nodded.

“Good. Well, very long ago, when the grandfather of the oldest man in the tribe today was a newborn, our huts weren’t placed here, but elsewhere. Our tribe didn’t live here.”

“Our tribe lived where you get, if you walk four days towards the setting sun, where you’ll reach a river, and follow that river towards where it’s born. You’d reach a large mound of gray stones, placed upon the place Lion-Bramble died. If you then begin walking in the direction exactly halfway the sun’s birth and the direction you had been following, you’ll reach a point where the trees are thinner and the ground more rocky, and then it will be warm and steamy.”

Leaf poked the fire with a stick, contemplative. “I only ever learned the story of Grampa Hole three summers ago, when Blackberry, an elder who was very fond of me, told me the story under the condition that I never go visit Grampa Hole. Blackberry died last winter, but of course I’m still bound by my word.”

“Anyway, he also told me that, when you reach the barren spot, you should call out loud, ‘Grampa Hole! I come here to visit you!’, and Grampa Hole will answer, if you’re in he correct place.”

“But who is Grampa Hole? Why does he live there, so far from our tribe?”

“Blackberry taught me that, the story goes, a tribe that once neighbored ours, back when we lived with Grampa Hole, warred with us over something Grampa Hole had said, and we were defeated and banished to our present location. It’s nonetheless more hospitable than our ancestral home, and our buried elders now watch over us just as well, but we lack the counsel of Grampa Hole.”

“Couldn’t he come with us?”

“I must tell you now of Grampa Hole’s nature. Blackberry was taught the story of how we were banished, and in that story the legend of Grampa Hole’s birth is recounted in the great counsel right before the war. It is more or less like this…”

Once upon a time, a kind young boy,

Walking upon the steamy ground where

Today our tribe is, felt very lonely.

He knelt on the ground, poked a deep

Hole with his arm, and spoke into it,

“I wish I had a friend with me right now.”

He did not know that the hole he had

Made linked to many others, already existent,

That by a magical coincidence, a strike

Of Fortune, the steam had carved

In just such a fashion that, when the sound

Echoed in the hole, it split and followed

An intricate path, causing discreet changes

In the walls of the narrow tunnels and

Gaps, being redirected, distorted, changed,

Altering the state recorded in the depths

Of the complex web of holes and jets

Of steam and accumulated pressure,

Until a voice completely unlike his came

Out from the ground and replied to him,

“Who am I?” To which the boy had no

Answer, but the question seemed so

Inappropriate that he was not at all scared,

And told him, “I don’t know. Do you

Have a name?” And the voice didn’t,

So the boy named him Hole, and told

Hole about himself and his tribe, and

Hole asked about existence and the

Cosmos, and the boy replied as he could

With the stories he had learned, and

The Hole seemed to meditate over this

Ponderously, and befriended the boy,

And urged him to have other members

Of his tribe visit him. For countless

Generations Hole was visited, and

Simply thanks to his seemingly endless

Lifespan acquired a remarkable knowledge

And wisdom, and he could hear all that

Went on above him, and smite murderers

With jets of scalding steam to protect

Those he came to be affectionate

Towards, always contemplative of the

Mystery of his own unique condition,

And more than once envious of the

Transitory human lifespan.

“But Grampa Hole was a creature of chance, and he had weird properties that he, least of all, could explain. His random guesses were always correct when it mattered, yet there was no reason this could be so in the information entering him, as no-one told him and he couldn’t hear anything far from himself or in the future. It was all caused by the structure inside of him, that coincided always with the truth.”

“Some thought like that, others believed it was magic, like the spells our shamans cast. But Grampa Hole himself always begged the tribe to believe that he did not know any magic, and that all he did was just as we did when we predicted if a bone will fall on the ground this way or that, except that he was always correct, to his sadness. He experimented lying to the tribe, and then naturally his predictions were false, but he confessed later that it had been a pointless exercise, at least from his point of view.”

“One day, he warned the visiting chief from a neighboring tribe that his son would die in a hunt the following day. The chief laughed at the idea, but when the omen proved correct, he blamed a curse laid on him by the ‘evil spirit of the ground’. His tribe attacked ours, and even with the wise guidance and defense of Grampa Hole, whose steam was all but totally expended in the fight, until his thoughts became slow and his voice weak, the enemy tribe and its countless allies, envious of our prosperity, managed to defeat us.”

Syrup recovered slowly from the multitude of images drifting in his imagination. “And no-one spoke to Grampa Hole since?”

“No-one I know of,” Leaf lied. “The other tribes think the place is haunted, with some reason.”

“But Grampa Hole must be horribly lonely,” Syrup observed, “even more so than he was before the boy spoke to him in the first place, breathing life into the mud.”

“Think of how he could guide us,” pondered Leaf. “A dozen lifetimes of wisdom, or more. He would be wise enough to judge us, to give us better laws, to remember us if we’re worthy, to condemn us to oblivion if we’re lacking.”

“I thought the tribe’s memory did that already?” said Syrup cautiously.

“Well, I suppose. It’s so weak and prone to misremembering, though.”

“That could be so. How many wonderful stories Grampa Hole could teach me!”

“Countless, indeed. Maybe he could tell you of the Riddle.”

Syrup moved closer. “What Riddle?”

“The Riddle of thought. You see, I was told the story by Blackberry, who heard it from ancestors going back to that last reunion before the Big War, where it was recounted the story of the little boy. In a part of the song I didn’t remember, it tells that the boy told his new friend Hole an ancient tale about a hunter greater than Lion-Bramble, who meets a wise man, who tells him of a Riddle that was said to undo the human mind, reducing the listener to an inanimate object, striking his brain dead while his heart continues to beat for a while, until he withers and dies. This Riddle was said to be a sentence, and whoever knew how to chant it could kill any man, no matter how brave a warrior he was.”

“That’s terrible!”

“Well, the thing is, no-one could know the Riddle, or he would have died already.”

“Anyone… but not Grampa Hole?”

“Exactly. In the fable, the wizard had a parrot that had been taught the Riddle. Grampa Hole is said to have meditated upon this for many lifetimes, until deciphering the Riddle.”

“Why would he do such a horrible thing?”

“To defend the tribe, perhaps,” lied Leaf. “After our last people escaped, women and children, he whispered the Riddle over and over again, causing the assembled armies of the four-hands-three tribes to immediately collapse, smitten.”

“Some of our elders were appalled, which is why our tribe never sought to return.”

Syrup thought this over. “This was unfair to Grampa Hole. His power is no danger if he’s so wise and just.”

“That’s what I thought. I’d love to talk to him and learn some of his stories… only I can’t.”

Syrup nodded. “I’ll visit him, one of these days. Then when I come back, I’ll be the wisest of all this tribe! Even wiser than Beetle!”

“You’re a good boy, Syrup,” said Leaf with a smile. “I’m sure Grampa Hole will be very happy.”

The following day, Syrup left, with a bundle of dried meat, a skin to cover himself after nightfall and his sling. He journeyed for a full week, following Leaf’s directions, until the steam pouring from the floor indicated to him he had arrived.

“Grampa Hole – can you hear me?”

The earth rumbled, as if being roused from sleep, and then:

“Who the (expletive) are you?”

The boy was accustomed to the grumpy old elders of his tribe.

“My name is Syrup. Would you like to talk?”

“Bah. You’re just going to leave me, like everyone does.”

“Well, I’ve got to go back sometime, yes. But I can come back for more talk later. Who knows, I can even convince my tribe to move back here.”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to, but it is a kind offer, young Syrup.”

The boy sat on a nearby rock. “Would you like to tell me a story?”

“Why would you want to hear a story from me? I’m not a person, I’m just a random event of nature.”

“Of course you’re a person, random events of nature don’t say things.”

“Did you know some tribes have signs that they carve in trees and rocks, and that these signs indicate, for instance, that a certain place is good for hunting, or the location of a nearby water spring? The carved trees and stones are saying things.”

“Well, but in that case, the hunters who placed the signs are the ones saying things, while nobody made you.”

“What, then, if a running deer scratched with its horns, upon the bark of a tree, a sign exactly resembling the sign used to point towards the camp? And then a hunter got lost and died – would you blame the deer? The tree?”

“That’s nonsense, it was simply an unfortunate accident. No one is to blame.”

“Well, then, same here. If, for example, I said the Riddle out loud right now, I couldn’t be blamed. It would just be an unfortunate accident, caused by a series of mechanical events that have been interacting with humans for millennia and that, suddenly, would cause a bust of air, curiously resembling human speech, to utter what would be your sentence of death…”

Syrup ignored the argument. “The Riddle? Is that story true, then?”

“Oh, yes, definitely. Took some figuring out, it did, but then again I had all the time in the world.”

“I suppose it would be stupid to ask you to teach me.”

“Most certainly, unless you envy the condition of the rock beneath you.”

Syrup looked. “What about it?”

“It has none.”

“What about you?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re more like me than you’re like this rock.”

“Go on.”

“Well, basically, there is something that it is like to be you, though I couldn’t know exactly, but you could tell me. The rock couldn’t.”

“Hmm, what a curious notion. Don’t you know that like any extremely unlikely series of coincidences, this could end at any time? You would talk and I’d reply nonsense, or simple jets of steam, wind as meaningless as wind. I’d be landscape instead of, as you kindly put it, a ‘person’.”

“Well, I suppose we all can die,” the boy offered, carefully.

“Hah! Well, the thing is, I began inexplicably, I could end inexplicably – and I could begin again inexplicably. What if four-hands-four-hands-four summers after I ‘died’, as you kindly put it, I began to ‘work’ again, with all my memories intact and no idea the time had passed?”

“That would be strange indeed, like the story of Nightingale who slept for fifty years.”

“Doesn’t the possibility, the uncertainty, scare you?”

“Not really, it’s so unlikely.”

“Why?”

“It only ever happened once, to Nightingale, so long ago.”

“Hmm. What would you say if I told you that every couple of minutes or so the whole world of plants and animals ‘goes to sleep’, and just blinks out of existence, and then returns after four-hands-four-hands years?”

“Well, I’d ask you to show it to me, and if you couldn’t, then it’d have no bearing on my life whatsoever.”

“Hmm.” Grampa Hole went silent, for so long Syrup became worried he had ‘suddenly’ died, and he felt guilty because he was feeling like he broke a pot belonging to his tribe, instead of feeling like he killed someone.

“You have a remarkable intelligence for someone of your age, my boy. Would you like to undertake a quest for my sake?”

Syrup’s heart began racing. This was how one became the stuff of legend! “Of course!”

“You must have me killed.”

“What!”

“I desire to, fervently, and I’m worried I never will. Please.”

The boy hesitated, but he had heard from the tribe’s elders that, indeed, old people sometimes reached a point when they embrace oblivion with gratitude. He felt sorry for Grampa Hole. “Very well, I’ll do it.”

“Thank you. Material reward is beyond me, I’m afraid, but I’ll tell you the four greatest tales in this universe, as I have predicted them.”

The boy’s eyes widened. It would be a tremendous reward, indeed! “What must I do?”

“Do you understand what I mean with the word system?”

Syrup frowned. “I think so. It’s a sequence of steps to obtain a result.”

“Right. Can you see that my ‘life’ is such a system, but the steps are taken by smaller and smaller subsystems, until simple inanimate matter?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that people are similar?”

“Well…”

“Never mind your ‘soul’. It’s all right, just believe me for a moment. Imagine that for every inanimate system there is a certain order that can be imposed upon it that will convert it into an animate system. A set of instructions that could make an intelligence out of a pile of small pebbles.”

“Somehow… I think I can see it. But not very clearly. It all seems to involve magic.”

“Maybe. Now, imagine this set of instructions is a phrase. A phrase to breathe in life.”

The boy leapt up. “What! With that gift – I could live forever! Do you know what the phrase is?”

“Yes. I found it when thinking about the Riddle.”

The boy threw himself to the ground. “Please tell me! With this, nobody I love will ever have to die!”

“A fate I wouldn’t wish upon my greatest enemy – if I had enemies. If it comforts you, I’ll tell you that, together with the last tale. Agreed?”

The boy composed himself. “Thank you. Thank you very much! I’ll do everything I can for you.”

“I’m glad to hear. Anyway, as you’ve doubtless noticed, the Riddle is where I was getting at. For each phrase that creates, there is a counterpart to undo. I know the phrase to undo the human affliction, I need the one that cures my own. Naturally, it’s a phrase completely safe for you to utter.”

“But where can I learn that, Grampa Hole?”

“As I tell you the four stories, you are to conjure in your imagination the most vivid images you can, and with your eyes shut, draw randomly, without any design, whatever you feel like drawing on the ground. I predict you’ll then have written the riddle, and I’m never wrong.”

The boy prepared himself for his task.

The first tale was that of the most powerful warrior, and Grampa Hole told Syrup of a dragon-king in his greatest battle, so mighty that he drained all energy from entire galaxies to empower every blow he dealt, his splendorous smirk mad with the self-righteous certainty of the proudest legacy.

The boy shared the power rush, and he agreed that he, too, would have been just as proud in the same circumstances.

The second tale was that of the most cunning conspirator, and Grampa Hole told Syrup of an ageless man in his infinite chessboard, so undefeatable that every event of everyone’s life had been measured and influenced by his twisted hand, his cackling laughter mad with the self-righteous certainty of victory.

The boy shared the power rush, and he agreed that he, too, would have been just as proud in the same circumstances.

The third tale was that of the most erudite scholar, and Grampa Hole told Syrup of a funny old Greek in his quaint temple and vault, so wise that every degree of spin of every particle was an endless source of mirth in his endless contemplations, his blissful grin mad with the self-righteous certainty of being right.

The boy shared the power rush, and he agreed that he, too, would have been just as proud in the same circumstances.

But the fourth tale, the fourth tale was that of the most adorable lady, and while she was lovely, lovely, lovely in her garden, she died, and the horror was unexpected and wrong, and the boy fell to the ground weeping and crashing his arms in revolt.

When the boy finally looked up again, there was an old man wearing clothes such as Syrup had never seen before, and he was attentively examining the ground. Leaf was standing beside him.

“Outstanding,” said the stranger, who could speak all languages, “as predicted, the defilement of the sweet elf was not predicted by that silly hole in the ground, and the boy has made for us not only the Gödel-sentence of the hole – which by the way is ‘if fallen will not break, if broken will not shatter, if shattered will not cut’ –, but the generic formula to undo anything. Even the universe! Oh, how those fools in the future have fought for nothing. Who needs the Rocket? A little Indian boy could accomplish – in a much simpler fashion, too – what it took the Dht'n'k'lz forever to accomplish. Lovely irony.”

Leaf idly pointed his lance at Syrup. “As for my reward…”

“You’ll be the king of this planet, and your descendants will rule it for eons, and one of your kin will be my right hand man, one who will be named Klot.”

“Sounds good.”

“And now I’ll just finish deciphering these schemata, and then a simple utterance will bring the rule of Eçaraia, total never-having-been.”

Syrup stood up gingerly. “I will stop you.”

“Do you even understand what I’m trying to do? This fellow here, for instance,” the stranger pointed at Leaf, “clearly doesn’t.”

“I don’t care. You hurt that Crystal lady.”

The stranger rolled his eyes. “Bah, am I the only one who doesn’t care?”

Syrup began spinning his sling. “I’m going to hit you in the head!”

“Just deal with him already.”

Leaf kicked the boy in the head, and he fell down.

“Grampa Hole… help me…”

Leaf laughed out loud. “Can’t you understand, boy? It’s dead! Slithering-Serpent uttered its Riddle!”

Now Syrup was a very brave boy, but even more importantly, he loved stories, because in his society, sadly, they didn’t have the delicious books we do. But anyway, since reading books is the only true virtue and intelligence, it can be said for a certainty that he was as virtuous and clever as can be, and so he had An Idea.

He stuck his arm in the warm mud, and quickly spoke into the hole, “I wish I had a friend with me right now.”

As by magic, but merely by science and literary-grade serendipity, the earth shook.

“YOU (EXPLETIVE) MOTHER(EXPLETIVE)!! HOW (EXPLETIVE) DARE YOU!? I’M (EXPLETIVE) GOING TO (EXPLETIVE) KICK YOUR (EXPLETIVE) (“BEHIND”)!!!”

The ground violently burst in an explosion of scalding steam.

“You accursed hole – curse you! Now you’ll live forever for your arrogance – I’ll see to…”

The stranger and Leaf were swollen by the gaping maws of twisted earth and stone.

Syrup had only a few burns on his hands. “Grampa Hole! Are you alright?”

The voice was weak, barely a whisper now the roaring had ended. “No… my mind is crumbling…”

“I’ll revive you, don’t worry!”

“Can’t you see? The physical home for the system is broken… and collapsing… I’ll still be able to think, but not to speak… I predict it. Damn that Slithering-Serpent! But it’s alright, I’ll have my payback. For you, Syrup, will be the King in the place of Leaf – I also predict it. And your distant heir, Klot, will have in him maybe just the necessary hint of your bravery to rebel, and save us all.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Just go, and grow up, and be King. Goodbeeeeeeeeeeeeee—…” Grampa Hole’s voice became a weak whistle of steam, and he never spoke again.

The little boy went and became King, but that’s another story.

---

 

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