The Shrine tells a Human Tale
In a drizzle, a greedy crow pecked at the lawn for the larvae of chafer beetles. It was Monday. As advised by The Shrine, I returned to see it my back garden.
Thanks for nothing I said but we nicked a draw against City. Gordon won a penalty and converted it. I said I’d had a great weekend. I played football against the little kids with Jonas in my arms. After my Cruyff turn his dad quietly asked me not to repeat it. He didn’t have much confidence in my sense of balance. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone as much as looking at my pettys the wrong way, let alone crashing on top of them, breathless. Did the Shrine have time to watch the news on TV I asked. The Shrine shook one of its many heads, the one made of cowries, and pulled a face of disgust. I bristled. No, I wasn’t asking about the football. But about the bombing of children to smithereens in the name of whatever my far superior betters claimed.
I begged The Shrine to ignore Sunak’s pleas to stop the boats but instead stop the bombs. Do that and I would never trouble it again. I bowed again and sat cross legged before it on the lawn.
The Shrine made a stately gesture. Now, it said, clearing one of its deep throats. Its word was as good as any being else’s and I must promise not to interrupt. History is the tale we grew in place of our tails. Ask the coccyx. I winced in impatience. It was starting to chuck it down.
According to the Shrine in those early light years, they were a gang of five. The Shrine, Life and Death, with the Time and Light crawling out from Dark Matter just after them. The Shrine’s head burst into an iridescent dark flame to show me what the early universe looked like.
Life was the engineer. It created billions of forms but like a toddler, Death played with and broke them. Whether on purpose or not it was not possible to say. Yet, Life and Death got on quite well until Death summoned a meteorite to arrest the dinosaurs. They were fighting without his permission. The meteorite struck almost all the dinosaurs dead. Excessive force by the met, said Life, don’t you think? “It’s my quest for solace and solitude,” said Death.
“But it’s not the same without T Rex and company for company,” said Life. Would Death agree to a new form? Please? They’ll be called the human race. Death was about to reject Life out of hand when its trusty scythe lit up. Death warmed up too, blushing in self reproach for being so dense, its vanity piqued. Ok. Provided humans walked on two legs. That left the other two paws or hoofs or whatever Life called them, free. Life agreed. It should take millions of years Death insisted. Again, Life agreed. One more thing, said crafty Death as its cosmic scythe glowed still brighter. “Emotions. They must have emotions.” Desperate, bored to tears by predictable placental primates, Life agreed to Death’s conditions.
Off they went to Africa where Life’s creations thrived in abundance. They found, hanging from a tree, a mammal suitable for evolving into humans and chimps. When Life popped out of the lab in the gorge for some crucial DNA, Death seized its chance. It leapt in to insert a design fault, an emotion known as avarice, which was not on the agreed list.
Time and Light saw what happened. Furious, they tried to make amends. Under Light’s cutting edge, and a ray incandescent with rage, Time tried as hard as it could. It stood still several times but couldn’t excise avarice. With Death at the door, Time managed to connect a timing protein to the brain to help humans look back and learn from experience. This way they wouldn’t self-destruct as planned by Death.
What went wrong then? Did Time mess up the op I cried.
In reply, The Shrine resumed a corporeal form not dissimilar to a bonsai tree. Swaying stiffly in a gust of wind it said, alas, avarice used the timing protein to switch human memory into myth. Myth became self serving history – mythstory. In turn mythstory begat culture which gave rise to more mythstory. The result? Endless battles for supremacy of the moral justifications for selfishness and greed. Meanwhile, Death gorged on repeats, streamed by multiverse channels owned by a trillionaire who sent cameras back in time to film the carnage.
The Shrine, seeing my sagging face asked me not to despair. The answer is to escape or control the emotions of our brains. Replace them with reason. How is that ever going to be possible I asked. Go, and come back next week. “The NHS needs me desperately.”
Some Shrine. To think I built him with my own mind. The thought of the number of children killed whilst we had been talking shivered my stem cells.
No one’s children died the envoy implies
meaning the children of no one he knows died
When the truth is
No one’s children don’t know why minutes after they were born,
they were blown up by the envoy’s guys,
blasted from postnatal to postfatal
in milliseconds
But no one’s other children know why,
and they know that whilst the world stands by,
they too must die,
to make room for the children
and the children’s children of the great I am who I am.
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