Symmeran Wastes 5

Part 4 

Might be the last bit I do for a while, not sure yet. Comments appreciated!

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Ayrsir couldn’t believe his ears. He was tempted to walk out right then, but Falix had been so nice to him up to this point. So instead he just paced back and forth on the soft carpet, fuming.

“Okay, okay, I’ll make that my next question,” Falix said, leaning over the table. “What’s wrong with writing?”

Ayrsir told her, with great gestures of his arms. “Books are the problem! Books sit alone by themselves, much like a female in her tent, so that if anyone unobserved were to go up to them—they could alter the Records, or even the Edicts! The only way to maintain proper witness to the true text is to constantly have living minds verify the words to one another! To keep it out of the paws of demonic influence and sin. Paper cannot provide witness, and neither can paint or stone.”

Falix thought about this. “Okay, but you understand it was the separatists who wrote these things down, right?”

“That’s a danger in itself,” Ayrsir said, still pacing rapidly between the cold box and the cup of water. “The wrong words can lead to confusion. We have to meditate on the Edicts all the time, to ensure they’re always followed…”

“Even by a ‘troublemaker’?”

Ayrsir paused. His ears sank and his tail slumped to the carpet like an uncoiling rope. “… that’s not fair.”

“I don’t mean to accuse. But you seemed rather dismissive about your various other sins. This one is a sticking point. Why is that? Is it an offense worthy of exile?”

“It’s…” Ayrsir sat down again. “I need to come out about it, you will learn soon enough with the interrogations. I’m a half-Learned.”

Falix tilted her head. “What’s that mean?”

“You don’t—oh, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Ayrsir said. “See, when our scholars turn their attention to learning the Edicts, it’s a very strict process and takes years. There’s an ultimate test at the very end, where you stand before the Learned and recite the whole of the Edicts. If you make one mistake, you must stop, and spend another year in training. We’re only allowed three tries.” Ayrsir sank. “I failed. So I am not a reliable source of the Edicts, for as much as I worked on it. My memory is too faulty.”

“But the Elders sent you to teach me the Edicts?”

“In the general manner,” Ayrsir said. “Not everyone knows the Edicts, of course, but the idea is that once you are part of the community you would receive your instruction from the Learned only. My halfway knowledge ought die with me.”

Falix twisted her muzzle at Ayrsir in a considered expression. “I probably asked you too many questions for my one question,” she said with a slight smile, “but… in your last test, what was the word you tripped up on?”

“It was the same every time,” Ayrsir said. “Ironically… the First Edict of Ayrsir, the prophet I was named after. I kept forgetting to speak the last statement of the Edict. ‘Ayrsir spoke these things and the people threw stones at him, shouting until he was driven across the river, where he remained in a cave’.”

Falix perked her ears. “But you do know it.”

“I can’t tell if I do or not at this point. I haven’t received the approval. My knowledge is incomplete, and always will be.”

“Is that why you feel comfortable breaking the rules? Because you already feel like you’ve failed Domour?”

Ayrsir stared daggers at Falix, whose fur immediately stood in shock.

“I’m sorry!” She said quickly. “That’s a personal question, you don’t have to answer it.”

“You cut to the root of the matter,” Ayrsir said. “I don’t think even the Elders would have asked such a pointed question. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought much about it.”

“Well, if you feel comfortable, think about it and get back to me,” Falix said. “For now, you’re definitely owed a question. If… if I haven’t put you off. Which I didn’t mean to. Please, ask anything.”

Ayrsir took a long, deep breath. He was still annoyed. He couldn’t really articulate why other than “it was wrong” but when had that stopped him previously? He’d done so much wrong. The half-truths he told were still lies and deceptions. He pretended to mate with this stranger to sate his curiosity. He slept carnally with Rohomes constantly, despite receiving the punishments more times than he could accurately recall.

He wanted to know himself better. But that seemed vain, to just want to learn about oneself. It wasn’t as if he mattered all that much, he was a troublemaker, a half-Learned, a failure. What else was there to know? Would knowing even save him? What use was there in trying to save the certainly damned?

Ayrsir looked up at Falix. Her expression had softened, less giddy, but still quite attentive and looking directly down at Ayrsir, wanting his response, whatever it was.

“Tell me…” Ayrsir said, “about… ringel.”

Falix’s ears perked in surprise. “Oh! Uh… that’s a big question! What would you like to know first?”

“Where are you from? And what’s it like?”

“Well…” Falix said, “First I need to explain how it is outside your world here. Like… how big do you think the world is?”

“I don’t know,” Ayrsir said, his sorrows waning back to curiosity. “The Edicts don’t contain such information. It only says that Domour holds up the sky along the five pillars of creation, so… all I’ve really seen is the horizon from here and from the place we live in the spring. I haven’t really thought about much past that before.”

“Interesting,” Falix said. “Well, to the empire, this world is called Mysatec. That ‘tec’ suffix is from the language Krakunese, meaning “world of”, and “mysa”, their name for people of your… type. I’m a ringel, and my planet is called Ringeltec for the same reason. Now there’s other names for the world, but it depends on which language you’re speaking. In my native tongue—or close enough to it—in Ringelese Galactic Standard, my home world is simply called Rys. We just, out of habit, call it the Krakunese word for clarity.” Falix folded her arms across herself. “And, frankly, Krakun don’t like it when we say Rys. Sounds too nativist-revolutionary for them. So… whatever.”

Ayrsir had no idea what Falix meant by nativist-revolutionary. The words she spoke were literally “supporting the homeland, changing the ruler”. It didn’t quite fit proper grammar easily, and Ayrsir wondered if it was another instance of Falix making up words in an attempt to be concise.

“In any case,” Falix continued, “I suppose we’re like people anywhere. We have different habits, sure, but when you get right down to it, living, intelligent beings often need the same things. We need food, air, companionship, we desire to reproduce, to provide for our friends, to make something of ourselves, to be seen as good and honest citizens to our peers, but most of all we just try to live. So you probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that on Ringeltec, there’s a lot of things we do that aren’t different from you. We have homes we go to at night. We take mates. We raise kits. We grow, make, and eat food. We have jobs that we need to do, depending on what society finds valuable.”

“But!” Ayrsir interjected, and then he gestured to the entire space he was currently sitting in. “All of this! This is much different than anything I know!”

“Yes, that is true,” Falix said with a somewhat rude point of her finger. “Very smart. But even so, this vehicle has a purpose that supports those basic needs. For instance, the cool air in here—yeah I noticed how much you like it—that’s because, frankly, if I tried to exist in this desert without it, I would die. I’m not a tough nomad like you are.”

“Well that’s why we live—.” Ayrsir started, before recalling he was speaking too much. “…where we do. The heat is oppressive.”

“There’s not much in the way of hot deserts on Ringeltec,” Falix said. “I’m not suited for this place. That’s why this vehicle has all the features it does.” She opened the cool box and pulled out one of those strange purple fruits. “Storage for fresh food. Or, if I run out of that,” she opened a box and pulled out a small, shiny rectangle that crinkled when she handled it. “Some preserved food that could last me a week. I have the bed back here where I sleep. If you go up here…” Falix hopped over the barrier where Ayrsir sat and made her way to the fore of the caravan, into the bench. “This is where I pilot this thing.”

“With what beast?” Ayrsir asked. “I haven’t seen you with one.”

“Oh, no beast. It moves on its own. This vehicle is its own beast.”

“This thing moves? Without… without any beast to pull it?”

“Oh yeah, it does,” Falix said. “It even can move without input from me… this here is a map of the region.” Some shapes lit up on the screen, largely the same color as the desert sands. “You probably don’t know what any of these shapes mean, since you haven’t seen a map before. But every place on this map corresponds to a place on the surface of your world—or at least, this small part of it. I tap this, and the computer,” (for this she said “thinking-box”), “figures out how to navigate there, and there we go! If I ever need to move to a different well, or go get more supplies in Urim, or meet up with my colleagues, that’s how!”

“But—but…” Ayrsir stammered. Once again, this was all so much! Thinking-boxes? Caravans that moved on their own? “But that’s nothing like what I know! I know none of these things!”

“Well that’s the interesting thing,” Falix said, turning around to face Ayrsir. “I don’t know how all of this stuff works, either. But I don’t have to. Just to take one example… some thousands of years ago, ringel still rode around land in carriages or on beasts similar to yours. Now, you know all of the problems that come with having to tame a beast, right? They’re temperamental. They need to eat. They’ll only take you so far before they need to rest.

“Well, around this time, ringel were looking for more efficient ways of doing labor. There was a lot of work to be done and not enough ringel or beasts to do it. One of them discovered that steam, when trapped, creates pressure, enough to shatter the container. Later, another discovered that if you force the steam through a narrow tube, you can use it to push a turbine. You can use that turbine, and a series of gears, to create force. And the force can run a machine. This force is greater than a whole team of ringel doing the same work at once, and all you need to do to make it is to boil water—and it took a lot less work to gather fuel than it did to run the same devices manually.

“Later, someone found better fuel. Someone figured out how to make the machine smaller—using not steam, but other gases. And then you get the automobile, where someone took the engine and made it move the wheels on a carriage all by itself, no beasts required. And then there’s more. Someone figured out a way to store this energy with chemicals, and put it in a box called a battery. Someone figured out that you could make a machine to add numbers for you. Someone discovered that you can use numbers to describe nearly anything you want. Someone used this and the adding machine to create a difference engine. Someone used the engine to create a programmable machine that would calculate faster than any ringel can. And that was the computer… someone made it smaller, someone made it faster, people gave it screen to see data, they gave it more features all the time. And someone put the computer in an automobile—simple ones at first, but more complex ones, that could solve problems like “how can this vehicle move without striking any person or object” and so on, and so on, and so on…”

Ayrsir’s jaw had dropped. Falix suddenly blushed hard, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly. “Uh, sorry, I mean… I get carried away when I… the point is, all of these things that eventually built up to the vehicle you are in right now were made for a reason: to make life and work a little bit easier. And it wasn’t just someone figuring out all the secrets at once, nobody built this from nothing. It was because of small bits of interesting knowledge that came together over the time. And that’s… kinda why I’m here. I’m just learning some more. Documenting it for others to read, so that maybe someone, someday, will find something valuable inside.” She winced. “Oh, but that’s… that does have to do with writing.”

“These people who made these things all wrote?” Ayrsir asked.

“Well, as much as I don’t want to disparage oral tradition—which I don’t, I find it very laudable how you do it, how much it keeps your culture together and all of that, and the amount of text you can rote memorize is fascinating… and it’s not my intention to take that away from you or your people! But if you’re asking me how we do it… the amount of things out there, the knowledge people have, the things they’ve spoken or thought, the techniques they’ve discovered, the observations they’ve made… you can’t have a hundred people sitting around repeating it to each other all the time. There’s too much. It takes time to recite, you can’t cross-reference, you can’t scribble notes in the margins. I understand if that’s not for the Edicts, but the rest of the galaxy runs on documentation. If we didn’t… there’s no way I would be here right now.”

Ayrsir considered this for a long while. It was all so much to take in, and well… there was just so much he didn’t know. How did the ringel keep their documents accurate without witnesses? Couldn’t some sinner have just changed the words of the “documents” and destroyed everything that came after? Or maybe, it didn’t matter so much. Falix was a female of many, many words as it was—maybe she did provide witness to these documents, as much as she was sitting here, now, with that slate in her paws.

“Are you… writing this down?” Ayrsir asked her.

“Well… the tablet does most of the writing,” Falix said. “It has been recording everything that we’ve said. I was going to ask your permission if I could keep the recordings too, but if that’s not—“

“Can you teach me to write?” Ayrsir asked.