Tales of Disturbed Creation: The "Noah Cycle" (not much of a cycle...)--Roughish Draft

 Tale 5: Drink

   Every day, my father warned me of the dangers of the demonic fluid. It is drink which unleashes all of man's evil and eliminates the barrier from beast. It is drink which eliminates health and happiness. Drink is danger, drink is trauma, drink is obscenity and humiliation, blasphemy in the eyes of God and excrement in the windows of memory. Drink is serenity's eternal expenditure: instants of bliss for an eternity of inner violence. 

Trauma is the intrusion of another soul that claims a new section of of the mind every day, intrusion doubling upon intrusion, exhibiting ever more masterfully that he, not you, is the part of your mind that thinks. 

Perhaps this other soul is a devil or dybbuk, perhaps he's simply another person who deliberately lodged part of himself within you, or perhaps he's another person burdened with his own dybbuk. But whomever he is, he, not you, masters the mind, and you become a spectator within your own consciousness. With every hour he determines more of your decisions, and with every new decision he makes for you, you wonder ever more if he was you all along.   

For centuries, father barely touched drink. He knew of its ecstasies and torments as well as any man, but he saw what drink made him, and what drink made others, and its humiliations were repugnant. It caused a whole earth on which man has neither self nor divinity, but only sense - pleasures to drown our pain, other people's pain to drown us in pleasure, a whole earth of trauma absorbed and trauma inflicted where man uses his divinity to inflict all the worse. And so where the rest of Earth was wine, the House of Noah was water, kept fresh and pure in wells we cleaned every day along with blessings to a spirited drink in a second, smaller well. A spirit of the drink whose name we never pronounced, and perhaps we never knew. For an hundred years of our lives, Ham, Japeth and I knew no drink but water. 

All the while, as the temperature warmed and the Earth became fire and rain, Father communed with his holy spirit of the drink. Every day as he had for hundreds of years, he pulled a bowl from the well tied to a string, put a finger in the drink, touched its holy spirit to his lips, and threw the bowl back. Every day he spoke with the spirit of the drink, and the Drink spoke back. For seven hours every day Father walked around the well, speaking questions and answers, and the pool told him all creation, of its trees and crowns, of its spheres visible and hidden, and the Spirit of the Drink made Father the wisest of men. 

The spirit told Father to build an ark and gather every living thing that creepeth upon the earth, for the spirit was wroth with the world and would flood it. The water would cleanse the world, who'd begin anew in a second Eden where would live none but the House of Noah's righteous offspring. 

And the Spirit was right, for lo, the earth became drink; not drink still and clear, but torrential and murderous, until all the world was again without form and void. Then the sea level rose, and rose, and rose, until the planet itself rose up and murdered its unworthy caretakers, and all the Earth was but one large ocean, stewed in the iniquities of its trillions of drowned beings and glazed with salt to parch any survivors. And within three days, all remaining life lodged within an ark of 300 cubits.

The invisible spirit told us of the flood, he told Father to build the ark, precisely how, and with what, and how large, and how many animals to gather, but he gave us no extra ration of fresh water. All we had was the water within our well, which when drawn out must be fermented ere it turn to undrinkable slime. So there was only barley fermentation, and wine, and animals, and obscenity. There was not even water for children. 

And yet the first thing we brought aboard the ark was Father's pool of drink, of which he made us carry pitcher by pitcher to a pool of stone he'd constructed without assistance.

Upon the ark it was only us and the wine. Father told us we had no extra rations of drink for the animals, but to allow ourselves twelve times an eleven month supply for four families - we asked why, he did not say. Surely father knew what was to come better than we.

It began not with agony but with joy and camaraderie - days of merry work followed fine nights of wine and song. Then lying with our wives in tents on the Ark's four opposite corners. The children would fall serenely asleep after dinner, and so torpid they never wandered. The House of Noah used our wealth to buy all the crops of nearby families to feed the ark's animals, and once aboard we pickled them within buckets of salt water procured from the outside deluge. 

Father had always been serene, but he was quiet and cryptic, and often warned us of what sort of different man he was before encountering the holy Spirit. He took to the wine immediately, and his serene self turned upside down to the most dreadful moroseness. None saw him eat, and he said not a word even as he fed the animals. Yet while Father submerged into drink, our work seemed as play. 

But at the cusp of manhood, no drink could torpor Canaan. In less than one year he'd have taken to wife, but what wife lived to take him? 

The noises began with the sheep of course, and then the goats, and then the dogs and cows, and then to the larger animals, and the smaller, until we wondered if there was an unsullied animal among the 16,000 on the ark. An animal would exclaim that peculiar scream, always the same in every species, and we knew what Canaan was doing, particularly because he would return every morning with terrible bruises and scratches. But what did it matter if we all were so besotted with drink? The world was ending, boys will be boys, the animals were drunk too, and were we to believe Father, the House of Noah was the one family in the world who did not enjoy the company of livestock. 

The loneliness of the ark eventually grieved our wives, and we too found it oppressive. As the drink increased, the revelries decreased. Never again would we see anyone but ourselves, and that realization necessitated more drink. Every simple disagreement felt like a second deluge, which also necessitated more drink. Whenever the rain's humidity caused a sniffle, we feared the mortality outdoors would spread inside, which necessitated still more drink. And whenever an animal fell ill, which was often, we were great with labor to minister them, which necessitated the most drink of all. 

All the while, father had built a new cage, and a large one. We wondered if there was a flying animal we'd forgotten. Father would not say. 

Days grew to weeks, memory blurred day into day, until eventually there were no memories except the wailing of our wives as dawned on them a world of loss, and the raging mischief of our children now tolerant to alcohol bored into our heads, which necessitated still more drink. Raven after dove after raven we sent to find evidence of land; but there was only drink, until finally a dove emerged with an olive branch. The Lord had spared us, and thus could we survivors multiply in a new era of righteousness and favor and grace. 

But the very next day, great human cries awoke us to find Ham murdered, and Canaan locked in Father's cage.

"Canaan! What have you done?" 

Here follows the tortuous dialogue between father and grandson:

"I have done nothing! Ham was murdered by you Grandfather!"

"The Holy Spirit warned me something awful would happen, but surely it would be less than this! Murder or defilement among kin is what I expected. For crimes as these the Spirit has flooded the world. We would punish such offenders justly, but what has occurred is so much worse!"

"Why have you murdered my father?"

"Your father tried to kill me before I laid my curse on you!" 

"Why would you curse me?"

"Look at the chalky substance within the drink! The imagination of man's heart is evil from its youth! Canaan has gazed upon my spirit's nakedness and spilled his seed into it! He has raped the holy spirit of the Earth! We shall never rebuild Eden! The whole flood has been for nothing! Humanity now shall continue just as it has!" 

"But I did not...."

"Cursed be you Canaan! A curse you were upon Ham and upon this ark, and cursed you shall be upon dry land! A servant of servants shall ye be unto your bretheren! A blessing shall this Holy Spirit of mine be to Shem and Japeth, but the your house Canaan shall be a servant to the servants of Shem and Japeth all the days of their li..."

"Grandfather, that was milk." 

"What?"

"It WAS milk."

"Did Grandfather really think fermentation and salt would keep a kingdom of animals alive for a whole year?"

"It is not for you to question what the spirit in the drink tells me."

"There is no spirit in the drink."

"SILENCE!" 

"If it's a spirit, then the spirit told you what your mind already saw."

"Indeed, the spirit tells me the world is fornication and wickedness. Just like y..."

"No, grandfather, the world was already flooding, the spirit only told you what you knew." 

"We do not see but with the eyes of our spirit!"

"No, our spirit sees with our eyes." 

"Profanity! You deserve to be cursed all over again."

"Curses mean nothing."

"You dare doubt my curse?"

"I doubt there's any point to us living now when everybody else is dead."

"Your sacrilege is ignominy upon the entire House of Noah! Is it not enough that you desecrate every animal aboard the ark night by ni...?" 

"YOU THINK I FUCKED THE ANIMALS!?"

"You have done evil enough. Do not dishonor us further in the ark of the Holy Spir...."  

"I curse you too Grandfather."

"Abominable blasphemer! May you be known through all eterni..."

"May you endure your remaining centuries knowing nothing of life but this stupid spirit of the drink or whatever you call that liquid shit." 

"Outrageous infide...!"

"May your bullshit visions of the Eden we lost haunt all your days and creep all your nights. May you forever see in me your only impediment to paradise."

Noah immediately charged at Canaan to strike him down but was prevented by the cage he built himself. He reached for the key to the cage, but Canaan pulled Noah's key out of his own tunic. 

"While you all spent your nights in a drunken stupor I was milking all the mammal females and feeding it to their children. I even fed the milk to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren and told them not to tell anyone, because children will never survive on just the alcohol you've spent your whole lifetime warning us against and then made us live on. Shem, do you really think Arphaxad could survive the whole first year of his life on nothing but alcoholic breastmilk?" 

Clearly in grief, Noah reached for his sword with a clear intention to fall on himself. But Canaan from out his tunic produced Noah's sword as well. 

"How can you be given power of life and death? You murdered your own son because I drank some water from the pool and didn't wipe a little milk off my cheek!"

A great cry went up from Noah. 

"My father is now dead because his own father slew him, and you think the outside world was the iniquitous place? Fuck you!"

Noah exhaled a still greater moan.

"We have no idea why the world flooded, but you all kept saying that the world was getting warmer every year of my childhood. Maybe it was from all those fires people light to worship their gods." 

Noah began to cry in earnest.

"And if the world was just a place of people killing and raping each other, maybe it's because worshiping all those drinking and smoking spirits were what made them that way. Grandfather Noah is the same as all of them!"

The wailing and crying grew entwined. 

"And yes, when we were still on land I jerked off in the holy spirit dozens of times, but the whole ark is alive because of me. Me, not your crappy god. I hate the drink and everything it makes you all do. I hate the fact that we're still alive and everybody else is dead, and if there is a spirit who did this, I hate him more than anyone and I curse him forever."

"Execration! Astonishment! Reproach! We spit you out of the House of Noah for eternity!" 

"I was planning to run away from this pathetic house for years. Now I've got a whole new world I can start on my own!" 

We never saw Canaan again. Within two days he'd run away with Japeth's granddaughter Arsal. I've had half a millennium to think about that last horrible day on the Ark. There were details on which Canaan was clearly wrong: the animals were nearly as drink-soaked as we the people and so would be their milk. Doubtless he was wrong about other things too, but it's hard not to wonder if Canaan's arguments were far more correct than Father's. 

Perhaps there are no spirits and the earth contains nothing but water, fire and air. Yet why did Father know to build the Ark? And why did we, out of all the world, survive when no one else did? Did the Drink's holy spirit know what was to come? And even if the drink has no spirit, did our belief in the Drink enable our survival when everyone else died? Even were there no drink to choose us for its terrific knowledge, could believing in the Spirit of the Drink make us survive through hardships no one else can or would? 

I had seen enough of the old world to know that Father may have been right: drink may well be the cause for all the terrors which made the world fit for destruction, so many terrors of which Father must have seen. Yet by abstaining from drink, did Father recreate all the terrors from which he meant to free his children? Had he simply curtailed his intake to mere moderation, no spirit would speak to him, and he would not have known to build the ark. But is the House of Noah lucky for surviving when all other civilizations die, or are we cursed? 

We have no way of knowing what became of Canaan and Arsal. Were there truly no people on Earth but us, how would they survive without knowledge of where to find arable land or animals? They have cut themselves off utterly from their roots and all advantages therein. Were one of them to die, the other would be entirely alone on this planet, with no way of knowing whither their family.  As current head of the House of Noah, surely I would have welcomed them to return, but how could we ever locate each other? 

Canaan and Arsal went alone into the world with no spirit to guide them and nothing to summon their willpower but a hot planet of death who washes away all things for no reason. How could they possibly summon will to life in the face of such indifference? Perhaps love of each other or children will give them succor, or perhaps they find sustenance in a vision of a more just world. Perhaps Canaan sees the world more clearly than his grandfather, and perhaps that clarity can build a better world, but surely he will commit errors as well, and when he does, what spirit will be there to comfort him? 

If Canaan and Arsal are still alive, they will one day die without belief in an eternal spirit to claim their reward. Can humans truly sustain themselves in a world where all things are flesh and dust, and even if they can, will they one day anger a spirit to the point of causing another flood? 

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Tale 6: The Master Builder

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. 

And in the first year, only one new edict came from Babel: "Verily, the rain passeth from November to April, therefore let us make a law to save half our harvest for the dry months." A few complaints passed from farmer to farmer, but the cities were bounteous and less men starved. 

And in the second year came another two edicts: 

"Verily, the light of thunder only doth strike the tallest structure, therefore let all cities to build an inanimate rod of metal 100 cubits high, and the flashes shall strike the rod rather than the house." And the rods were built, and men were spared death by lightning. 

"Verily, we at the Tower have discovered that the human body hath vessels within that doth animate life: heart, kidneys, spleen, liver, hypothalmus, uterus, bladder. We shall in time understand how they do work, and death shalt be conquered." And the Tower did generate equal hope and fear throughout the lands. 

And in the third year came three edicts. 

"Verily, we have discovered a divine number: 22/7, which we may write as 3.14. It may be used to predict the tides of seas and the flow of rivers, and perhaps even to make objects that do fly through the air as gods." And the tower did generate results throughout the lands. 

"Verily, we have invented the means so that heavy objects might easily be lifted. It shall called 'lever,' and thou must put it upon a fulcrum, and thou canst move all the objects of the earth." And the tower did generate results throughout the lands. 

"Verily, we have used the divine number to invent an object circular in shape which may transport all the heavy objects of the earth to any amount of distance. This object shall be called the wheel." And the tower did generate results throughout the lands.

But the people did begin to whisper wroth words, for the Tower did promise the conquest of death, yet solely added qualities to life. 

And in the fourth year came a first edict:

"Verily, the wind showeth there shall be floods in the month of Adar. Let us all abscond to mountains that we may pass this flood above the water." 

And lo, the entire world did abscond to nearby mountains, and peoples did journey a month to climb them, but minimal flood did come, and all the world around there was neither flood remarkable nor rain exceptional, and they did return and were wroth with Babel, for verily, there was no flood.   

And the the Kings of Babel, Persepolis, and Uruk did call a second counsel of all the kings of the Earth. And the kings of the earth did invoke their promise "Verily, thou hadst promised trusting mensuration for an end to floods, yet thou hadst not provided faithful measurement."  And the three kings did say "It is better to burden with great care to avoid flood than than to take little burden to meet flood." And the kings of the earth did accuse them "Verily thou hadst not used thy plenty in the service of faithful measurement." And the three kings did respond "Lo, thou hast availed great use of our pronouncements. Thy subjects do live who shall have died, thy vines do multiply which shall have withered, and thy buildings do stay which shall have fallen." 

And many kings of the earth did respond "Our people hath neither crops this year nor work for harvest," To which the three kings did reply "But thou hast thy reservoirs of grain for the dry season," And the kings of the earth did ask "If we do give grain to our people for which they shall not work, they shall have no incentive," and the three kings did reply "They shall have all due inducement to work the greater upon the next harvest," to which the kings of the earth did respond "Thou is begat the involvement of foreign government in countries they know not," to which the the three kings did reply "But thou art natheless thine own governments to administer law as thou seest best fit." to which the kings of the earth did respond "but we must administer the laws upon which thou hath dominion over the earth," to which the three kings did say "If the world does wish to survive, then all our states must act with unity as one," to which the kings of the earth did reply "We wish not a federative community of nations, we do wish to be men in states with rights," to which the three kings did ask "But what about thy subjects? Are they too not men?" to which the kings of the earth did reply "We are men. They are but our subjects, chattel who hath not rights of men," to which the three kings responded "If thou wishest to survive a farther flood, verily thou must grant  rights of life to thy subjects,"

And to which the kings of the earth did proclaim "thou hast uttered a threat to compel our compliance with thy decrees. Thou do wish to liberate our subjects so that thou mayest enslave us. Babel dost wish to rule as lord and tyrant over the world - to act as Marduk, the world's father, and Ishtar, the world's mother. We do invoke offended gods against thee, we do invoke rites of war, we do renounce the brotherhood of kings."

And there was war within the world for which men were as chattel. 

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Tale 7: Children of Babel

 Aleph.  And war did rage for seven years, the very machines created by the builders of Babylon in hopes to conquer death did become the world's executioners: boulders of dashing pulverization hurled into masses of men; basins of tar lifted atop the walls of cities, burned to boiling and cast upon millions of innocent as rain. Rulers wished to preserve their men as chattel, yet their chattel lay upon hills as carrion; their blood transfigureth grains of sand into forest, their flesh turneth all that lives into plague. And a fifth of the earth's men did die, and a fifth of the earth's men did become crippled, and a fifth of the earth's men did dwell in the house of lunacy.

And behold, the unfathered children of the Festival at Babel had turned twelve. And by such time as their fifth years when war beginneth throughout the world, they all were cast out from their mothers as reminders of  former sin. Great was their disgrace, and the streets of the world were tumultuous with cries through their mothers' windows: "Mothers, why hast thou forsaken us?" And the mothers did weep in concord with their children but offered them not food neither shelter nor warmth. And the children of Babel did sleep and eat within the streets of every city of the world - robbing for food, maurauding for shelter, and trespassing upon sheep to sheer for blankets. And the Children of Babel were much despised. 

And as every city sent citizens into battle to die man by man, the unfathered boys and girls did become as men for every city. By six did they learn to ply trades no city man could practice. By eight did they tenant the markets of their cities. By ten did they take among themselves to man and wife. And by twelve they were manifold among ministers for the kings of the earth. 

And verily, as men fought the world elsewhere, there was none to shield mothers from their unwanted children. Few were the new children of men, and the younger children who did live were great with hunger. And the mothers did come to their unwanted children and ask for sustenance they had not means to give, and the Children of Babel did grant their mothers and brothers food and nourishment. 

And by the sixth year of war, the mothers of the earth were exceeding with woe, for their youngest sons were soon to be trained as soldiers, and the mothers did fall in supplication upon the Children of Babel: 

"Go unto the kings of the earth and prevail upon them to end the war. For we have no children but our striplings, and err the war continueth shall we have no son but the sons of Babel and no honorable men to marry our daughters?" 

and the Children of Babel did exclaim unto their mothers, "Were we not children enough for thee? Hath we not proven our honor? In shame didst thou banish us like slaver, yet for the world we did become as men. When the harvest was great we were like chaffe to thee, yet now we are the source of thy wheat, and thou askest us to vouchsafe the reverence of mothers who never did love us as children," 

to which the mothers responded, "We did always love you as the issue of our hearts, but great is the shame of our actions in Babel. Thou art not the children of thy fathers, for we did lie with enemies. Though we did wish to raise you as children, thou hadst been born with marks of shame.' 

and the Children of Babel did reply: "We are not shameful. We are descendants of the world entire. Through no aid of forebears, we have turned shame to fortune. And behold, thou wishest to profit from thy shame." 

and the mothers were prostrate with weeping and exclaimed "Lo, we have betrayed, we have been disloyal, we have sinned, we have turned away and ignored the children of our wanton acts of wickedness." 

and the Children of Babel did say to their mothers: "Well,... fuck it. No, you're not wicked or evil, you're just kind of a selfish bitch. I'll talk to the kings of the earth and see what I can do."

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Bet. And the Children of Babel did speak with the kings of the earth and they did say "Verily, we have spoken with the mothers of the earth and they hath pleaded you to end this war ere their last children depart for the valley of the shadow of death."

And the kings of the earth did respond "Behold, what have these children to live for? We cannot provide them plenty nor succor without visiting the valley ourselves, for they shall rise up and revolt; and therefore their lives are saved merely by their commitment to our darker purposes. Only their deaths shall endow them with meaning." 

And the Children of Babel did reply "Thou dost surely realize they would disagree." 

And the kings of the earth did respond "What else may we do for them? Their lives are but torture and squalor, but glory may they find as swordly extension of sovereign's arm." 

To which the Children of Babel did respond "They do surely have their consolations, and surely they do value their lives however small. Life mattereth to them if even thou seest them as wheat for the harvest."

And the kings of the earth did reply "Only pharaohs see themselves as gods of stone. We sovereigns are half mortal and do feel the guilt of their calamities. We cannot provide them with more ere they go the way of the earth, and when they do, the flock thins, and as shepherds we may tend them more." 

And the Children of Babel did say unto them "Thou wouldst not have to fret over rebellion if thou hadst not become as tyrants over them."

And the kings of the earth did say "We did not become tyrants, our tyranny was compelled by the tyranny of many kings before us, and should we relinquish our despotic privilege, others would assume merely what we had, with all the greater force for their insecure positions." 

And the Children of Babel fell prostrate "Thy chattel has bled the earth. As the dying wheat beareth much fruit the dying soldiery must beareth provision for the living." 

And the kings of the earth were resolute "The people of the earth are chattel and chattel they must remain." 

Gimmel: And the Children of Babel did return to the Kings of the Earth and they did say. We have spoken among ourselves and have solutions. Thou seest the verdancy of earth post-deluge, and the farming of the earth may be so fecund that there should be no drought for centuries hence. We entreat thee, make peace and put thy subjects as tillers to work the land in fields and forests. 

And the kings of the earth did sue for peace, and the surviving men did go into the fields and work the earth, and there was abundance. 

And the kings of the earth did take the abundance for themselves, and did distribute to their workers with meagerness, but fearing the Children of Babel, the kings of the earth did allow them to partake of abundance. And the surviving men did go to the kings of the earth and entreat them: Behold, we have not food for our children nor reward for the sweat of our brow. 

And the kings of the earth did say: Lo, it is the Children of Babel with who hast taken thy abundance. Their rewards are great while thine are few. They hath not spoken for thee, and hath prevented us from bequeathing thou thy just rewards fear the surviving men shall overthrow the Children of Babel. 

And the surviving men did overthrow the Children of Babel and did slay manifold among them, and the Children of Babel did flee their houses and cities, and did lodge together in the wilderness, and did assume the habit of wanderers. 

And lo, they did wander the earth for seven generations until they came upon the House of Canaan. 

And the House of Canaan did say: Behold, our rations are meagre, our cattle are weak, our coin is soft and our crops are dry. But this land will we shew thee, for there is room to settle and land to work. By the sweat of our brow must we work in heat and dust, but here is thy home, and here shalt thou bloom.