So this letter is meant for God and Abel, though I don't know how to send it or if anybody else does. If anybody ever finds this letter, if you can find a way to send this to God I'll be very grateful.
It's been a little more over 30 years since The Flood. From the way people talk about it you'd think everybody died, but it couldn't have even been one in a hundred who got themselves killed. Maybe if you were closer to the Mediterranean you had worse chance of living, but people here just hiked themselves to the Zagros mountains, and a lot of people with houses made of proper mudbrick just camped out on the roof and fished.
As far as apocalypses go, the Flood just wasn't that big. ...It was big, but mostly for how it made us shelter in place for two years. It was just a pre-echo of the real event that came for us because of how we responded.
We thought The Flood focused everything, solved everything, clarified everything. It obliterated from our minds all the trivial drek. The generation before the flood seemed to be the generation of partisanship and violence, but we were the generation of unity and love. Every man and woman on earth experienced the same loss, the same fears, the same meshiggas, the same boredom, the same rage.
Everybody knew who was at fault. To make a flood this big, there must be a god so powerful that no other god can be much of a god, and it could only be Ea, this water god everybody believes in. There was even a movement to rename him Y'Ea because he was so willing to use his power, but nearly everybody agreed: if one god can be that powerful, we need a war on him before he kills the rest of us.
Of course there were some who didn't believe this, Ea still had a bunch of loud partisans on Earth who were violent and dangerously powerful, but the partisans of the other six gods had an unbeatable coalition. Any system in which the partisans of Ea win is a broken system, and if the system was really this broken, the only option left was to go up to heaven and fix the system. It was one of those few moments in every lifetime when everybody seems to speak the same language.
Nobody actually wanted the responsibility of a god, not if they thought about it... But they did want the right to sometimes be free of gods. Like every other god in their lives, they fulfilled every commandment of Ea's in good faith, they obeyed every obligation to sacrifice, they prayed to him whenever they were afraid, they talked to him when they were lonely, and only crazy people ever thought he answered.
As for me? I knew that Ea was an old wives' tale. I just had a thought that maybe you B'H didn't think of, that this flood was related to all that kvetching you write to me about this heavenly schpritz. Maybe there's a leak in heaven, so I just wanted to go up there to point out the leak and help you fill it.
But I had just been appointed court scribe in Uruk, and took the minutes of the Great Council attended by the kings of every major city except Egyptian Pharaoh, who claimed that the flood happened because the rest of us neuter our cats. But the king of every other major city was there: Eridu, Ur, Nippur, Ubaid, Lagash, Elam, Banesh, Kish, Babel, Persepolis, Erech, Accad, Calneh, Farsa, Ansha, Susa, Irsin, Larsa, Keddesh, Megido, Kass, Hurrain, Malatya, Armenia, Kizzuwatna, Luwia, Melid, Carshemesh, Mitanni, Washukani, Qatna, Armenia, Aramea, Cyprus, Hatti, Hattusas, Mycarae, and Ugarit.
Every one of these cities experienced the same flood, and every one of them believed another flood from Ea was imminent. We all thought we'd never see another gathering as glorious as this one. The Kings and entourages of every city of the world with all their finery and gifts and gold and raiment - all of them speaking barely comprehensible dialects to each other. Yet with even all that pomp and pageantry, the first meeting only took ten minutes. Everybody agreed what needed to be done:
A tower to heaven. An elite force of soldiers climbs to the top, does battle with Ea and his rain, defeats the water god, redistributes the rain to its proper season, and if possible, allots the rain more justly throughout the seasons so there is no drought. The tower doesn't need to last forever, just as long as it takes to climb up and down once with a 20 minute battle in between.
They even agreed on a place: the City of Babel - a modest citystate lodging on the flattest part of the Valley of Shinar. Personally, nobody asked me, but I thought that was unnecessarily cautious to build in a valley rather than a mountain. That's ten thousand cubits more of material everybody needs to buy and build.
The only problem was the contention of what we'd do once we get to heaven. It's one thing to declare war on a god, but not everybody is clear on how certain gods wage war; so everybody came up with their own plans based on what they believed Ea was. Every city brought their greatest artist to sketch their city's idea of what Ea looked like, dressed like, lived like, and the terrain of his celestial property. But before the could even be shown, it was decided that Ea's presence is conjured by any representation of him, and can therefore see and hear what his opponents are planning in any room where such representations exist. So we burned all; the artworks along with the artists.
The first day was met with an opening speech by the King of Uruk. I wrote it of course, but he couldn't read it so he said whatever he wanted. Nevertheless I outlined his idea to build a water basin in the sky which would drain all the water in heaven so that Ea wouldn't be able to cause another flood. If we built a detachable pipe, men should be able control how much rain falls to the ground in any given season. Everyone agreed to convene for a second meeting in three days, during which time each city could form coalitions with other cities to convene a proposal.
As I was appointed recording secretary for the whole meeting, here follow the second meeting's minutes:
Uruk's idea moves immediately into debate. The motion does not carry on account of widespread suspicions that wealthier cities would venture to use the water pipe more often than poorer ones. The motion does not carry.
The Coalition of Eriddu ventures a much more modest proposal than Uruk. If Ea floods us again, everybody just climbs the tower to stay above water. The proposal moves into debate and leads to widespread discussion of how the people of the world would reach the tower, and how this plan necessitates the construction of boats around the world and maps with directions to the tower - which itself creates further discussion because so many landmarks would be subsumed by water, which leads to further discussion of which landmarks would stay above water. After twelve hours of debate, the motion does not carry.
The Coalition of Lagash asks to be called upon later. As does the Coalition of Babel.
The Coalition of Ur proposes that since Ea is so powerful, he could come back and flood us again. But since the tower itself is such an amazing idea that it could only be a divine miracle, we might be able to invest the tower with godly powers of its own, and therefore their solution is to pray to the tower to defeat Ea. The proposal moves into debate, but leads to objections that if we give the tower powers of a god, Ea might offer the tower still better powers and the tower would work with Ea rather than for us. The motion quickly goes into vote and does not carry.
The Coalition of Nippur proposes that since Ea is so powerful, he must be proportionally enormous, so their solution is to build a proportionally large bow so that once we climb the tower, the tower can be used as an arrow to stab Ea. The tower would subsequently be pulled out of Ea, then put back so that the soldiers may climb back down to the Valley of Shinar. The motion moves into debate. After three hours, the motion does not carry due to the dual objections that the tower might be lodged too deeply into Ea to remove from his torso, and also that Ea might be agile enough to move out from the tower's trajectory.
The Coalition of Lagash asked to be called upon later. As did the Coalition of Babel.
The Coalition of Ubaid is more skeptical. They believe that Ea is too powerful to be fought, so they propose the tower ought purely to be used as a symbol of protest; that we should simply use the tower so that a messenger can shout to him daily our dissatisfaction with his treatment. This motion quickly moves to vote and does not carry because Ea's a water god and many things said on land cannot be heard through water.
The Coalition of Elam believes that the flood was dictated by Ea's mood, which itself is dictated by the position of the stars. So were the tower tall enough, we could make more precise astrological calculations about when Ea is most wroth. This motion is debated for eighteen hours, is voted upon five times, but does not summon the requisite votes because many cities wish for their own astrologer to have the honor of doing Ea's horoscope, each of which might pepper their findings with advice to favor their own city over other cities. The motion does not carry to the regret of all present at the council.
The Coalition of Banesh's solution is not unlike the Coalition of Ur's: to worship the tower as a god. But since Ea is so powerful to subordinate all other gods to his will, Banesh proposes to worship only the tower as a god and no other god, so that the tower might be so moved as no other god was to fight for victory against Ea. This proposal meets with immediate objections from all sides about the inevitable afflictions of having only one god. The discussion quickly becomes so volatile that further discussion is tabled until a potential third meeting.
The Coalition of Lagash asked to be called upon later. As did the Coalition of Babel.
The Coalition of Elam proposes that the tower itself is enough and no further contingency plan is needed. People would be able see it from all sides of the world, and when the waters begin to flood again, could journey immediately in the direction of the tower by foot, for which they would have enough time to reach the tower and climb to safety. A dissenting sub-coalition within Elam noted the unlikeliness that the tower would be tall enough to be seen at all instances, and therefore enters a revision that all the entire peoples of the should be moved within hiking distance of the tower. The revision is met with immediate objections and is voted against by unanimous consent. The original motion however is met with by no official objections, and moves into debate. After seven hours of debate, the original proposal is met by the objection that while the tower should be visible from across the world, the rain itself could obscure vision of the tower. The motion does not carry.
The Coalition of Kish suggests that as the flood was accompanied by lightning, the tower should be used to serve as a lightning rod to send the electricity back to heaven, which would stop the rain before flooding. This lead to immediate questions from all sides about what electricity was, and the Royal Vizier of Kish explains that electricity is energy that can be used to provide light and heat for their subjects and could perpetually be renewed. This leads to objections from all sides that renewable energy would be too expensive. The motion does not carry.
The Coalition of Lagash asks to be called upon later. As does the Coalition of Babel. But there were no coalitions further to enter their proposals.
The Coalition of Lagash ventures - and specifies that this must be entered into the record with great reluctance; that the tower is so ambitious that it is fated to be a failed venture. While the Coalition of Lagash does not dare use its vote to prohibit a project that inspired the unity of all cities, the Coalition of Lagash proposes that the tower be constructed as a monument to this moment of worldwide unity, brotherhood, and peace, so that future generations would know that the worldwide brotherhood of nations is possible. This measure is immediately voted against by unanimous consent.
The Coalition of Babel, the city in which the projected tower shall be housed, enters the final proposal. Among the cities in Babel's coalition is Persepolis, and in an extreme departure from protocol, the proposal is given not by the King of Babel, nor even by the King of Persepolis, but by Persepolis's master builder, who brought a scale model of his own buildings - which many kings had seen, and of his proposed tower.
The tower itself was so much smaller than many kings hoped, but the Master Builder of Persepolis explained that with all known substances across the earth, the maximum height any building could ever attain was 218 cubits, and even such a tower is in perpetual danger of collapse. "Towers get weaker as they grow, not stronger." There were kings who immediately objected; one shouted that the tower's divine properties could keep the tower standing a thousand years, the Master Builder silenced him very quickly "Recall all your divine structures, how many of them stood amid Ea's rage? How much more shall he rage against a divine structure built to defeat him?"
The Master Builder of Persepolis explained his belief that rain happens because clouds become so full of midst that the midst turns to drops of water, and the water grows heavy enough that it drops from the clouds to the earth. We know when clouds are heavy because they fall further toward the earth and grow darker; the closer and darker they grow, the more force with which they erupt.
Persepolis's Master Builder further posited that certain temperatures and qualities of air were more conducive to greater intensity of rain, and that the direction of the wind would indicate to which direction the rain was advancing. The Coalition of Babel therefore enters a proposal that the tower be used as a weather station to record the distance, color, and amount of precipitation from each rain cloud, and further record the temperatures, the humidity of the air, the direction of the wind speed and the wind's speed. This would lead the world to better predict when floods would happen, and to respond accordingly.
The King of Babel, Nimrod I, and the King of Persepolis, Darius VI, therefore entered a unique proposition: rather than debate among the kings, the Master Builder may be called upon in interview to answer any objection raised by kings in debate. When their proposal was submitted into motion, it passed by the narrowest margin ever seen in a world congress. It was a tie, and the tie breaking fell to the normally non-voting host King of the debate, my sovereign, Gilgamesh XIX, who asked me for advice:
What could I say? The Master Builder of Persepolis seemed like kind of a mensch who knows what he's talking about, so why not see what he has to say?
This interview raged every day eighteen hours for seven weeks, until the objections of every king of the world were answered and fully satisfied. Even while he was talking, the Master Builder of Persepolis carved all kinds of diagrams on tablets for something he called 'geometry,' which proved to all the kings smart enough to understand him how buildings stay put. He made demonstrations with clay, stone, bitumen, sand, and ore, and he turned it all into pottery, glass, soap, metals, plaster, even waterproofing. He even showed, just on a table, the exact proportions of stones to best support a tall structure, and exactly which kinds of stones, and he said the reason was something called 'mathematics.'
I didn't understand most of what he was talking about, and I suspect most of the kings didn't. But none of them wanted to appear stupid, so after seven weeks of this, they realized they had nothing to show for it except for this builder who'd talked over them for two months, so they had to approve his measure and get back home, and they had to make it seem as though they really believed in the solution they came up with.
The whole world was prepared for Ea to rain his flood, so the world came together as one to build the tower. And even if the tower was much smaller than the kings of the earth thought it would be, it looked as though we'd built a tower all the way to the heavens. More people died while building the tower than ever died in the flood. And verily, when we reached the top, there was no Ea; just invisible light, and cloud, and cold, and occasional thunder that killed still more of us. But so unanimous was the agreement of the tower's necessity that every man prepared to die, every woman willing to live a widow, every child ready to take his father's place.
The Master Builder was a stealthy taskmaster, on the lookout the whole world over for a builder from any city he found to be at all skilled, even a mere workman, and did ask such workmen for their friends as well, and he did beseech the kings of the earth that men of such skill remain at the tower to help him gain greater rigor with his measurements.
And when there was no Ea at the top, the whole world breathed one last sigh of relief. And lo, there was a great seven month celebration of all the world: a world's fair of bonfires, sex, golden idols, silver coins, dancing, music, raiment of wool, linen, and silk; circles in a thousand different camps, each playing a different music listened to lovingly by all, each teaching the dances of all to one another, every tribe and nation conceiving children of the other, men wearing the raiment of women from halfway around the world, women fornicating with distant men - dressed as men, even women fornicating as men and men fornicating as women, all tribes mingled with all tribes. And for all the world, minimal humans sacrificed, minimal children abducted, seemingly all partaking of festivities with nothing but joy.
And then we all returned home, except for the city of Babel in the Valley of Shinar, who measured every rainfall, every wind, every cloud, every thunder, with trust placed in every city that the Edicts of Babel would ensure no new flood. And there was a veritable harvest of new babies, the Children of Babel, each born of fathers they knew not whom.
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