Three visible Brown squares placed into an almost incomplete box topped With a black trapezoid like structure - ah yes! a house. smoke bellowed through its chimney. Red light barely stripped from its interior. People. That meant people. Did I want people? I looked back up to the night sky and paused. It was night after all. Was not refuge a good thing? but at night.. it was rather strange for me and likely for them. But I figured, why not? One is supposed to take refuge at night and one is supposed to take in fellow travelers at night. It was a perfect system!
My mind walked towards the house through the perfect system, while my body remained still. Only once I had reached the door did my arms, legs, head, and torso catch up. Stagnation is the name of the game. Now as I was in front of the door I could see its exterior with much greater acuity. the red light still steeped out of the house windows glazing long, very thin rectangles onto the grass .It looks like something? My heart fluttered. a spider slowly sank from the corner of the doorway. everything was still. the grass. the trees. the moonlight. the spilled blood rectangles. all of a sudden in a flight of existential panic I threw my eyes to the window.
No. Yes. No.
On The far left corner of the house I saw a contorted face searching my own. The red light was gone, it had been displaced onto what was clearly a woman’s Noh mask. It was grinning; perhaps happily orAngirly, I didn’t know. Gross... I didn’t know …. I didn’t know …. I don’t know. Gross … why don’t I know?
Was the person behind the Noh mask welcoming me, luring me, giving me every possible signal that I should turn around and leave? All the while I considered this, the mug still stood behind the window; pale, stiff as a corpse, not moving. My body loosened and let out a long, overdue sigh. The red light had returned. Ah! I thought. She must be a friendly folk! Just look at the way she’s standing there for god’s sake! Only friendly folk stand so anxiously still in your presence! After all, it was night. You welcome your fellow human beings at night. That was courtesy. How could one disobey courtesy? Look at her! pointing towards the window, she’s so cute with her little mask! Like one could just pinch its little cheeks and immediately watch her blush! Isn’t that sweet and nice? The spider, now dying on the floor, was also blushing!
But wait oh wait, what does reason tell us here? It is night. A house in the middle of the forest. Nobody else around; only myself, the Noh mask and the dead spider. What is the probability of the other being ….... B A D? Well it’s not too abnormal to be wearing a Noh mask in a house shining red light out of it, in a deserted forest at night, with a stranger at your door. Nothing too ominous about that. But the facial expressions! My god the facial expressions! That was my clue and yet I couldn’t tell what it was expressing! Were they happy? Sad? Angry? Disappointed? Embarrassed? Absolutely, positively mad? The spider was now my only clue. But it was dead. How could I possibly know what it was now? Okay. Okay. Calm down. We simply need an analysis. Yes! An analysis of the measurement of each facial organ and its proportional relation to certain physiognomic traits! Then we will have our answer. Let us start with the eye ….The mask was gone. The window was empty. The blood rectangles suddenly reappeared onto the grass. The door was now wide open.
The figure stood directly in front of me. The Noh mask was still there, at my height. I could now see it much clearer. It was a woman, mid 50s maybe, emancipated, looking weak and carrying a miserable, pathetically charming smile . She gazed toward the top of the door, allowing the light to catch on half of her face. It revealed darkness where the neck should have been. Where was the neck? A large black robe of fabric—god knows what it actually was—draped all the woman’s appendages such that one could not see the skin other than through certain gestures of the hand. Surely, scientifically, it must be a trick of the light that the neck was not revealed. An illusion of the surroundings! Yes! “An illusion of the surroundings!” That one placated me for a while. How could it be anything else?
Nevertheless, a few words were exchanged, pleasantries at most. I gave her my spiel about refugees at night , how it was dark and as a result custom to let “travelers” (travelers?) inside. She didn’t say a word. Just stood there for a few moments, stepped out of the way and gestured for me to enter with a slow movement of her hand to the floor.
How compassionate! No questions, no inquiry, trusting me at face value! Ha! Face value! “Oh madam, how enlightened you are!”, I went on half jokingly, “to not even require words for your sincere expressions!”. I thought it was dumb but I played along. Still silent…
I grossly walked past her, still mumbling drivel. A curvature of the floorboards attacked my foot causing me to fall, tumbling into the woman on the way down. But she didn’t move. I crashed into her and she didn’t move. But as I was falling I caught her fabric with my own and realized it did move like typical texture would under such conditions. It was heavy, like fifty pounds heavy. I regathered my equilibrium, aggressively apologized, and kept on my guest-ly way. She still didn’t utter a single goddamn syllable, just kept repeating the gesture to the floor with her hand. What does it mean? Was she pointing to something? No. Doesn’t seem like it. Did the hand seem like it? A symbol maybe. Wait; there is a probability that it is a symbol. Wait; let me run through my mental catalog of highly sophisticated mytho-religio-philosophically semiotic symbols. Let’s start with —
The door was slammed shut. The hand was gone. The woman was now in front of me. Angry. Screeching at something. She stopped. her face now seemed much livelier, cheeks filled, no longer malnourished. The same woman, now a younger woman, was now leering back at me. As the mask and its accompanying body retreated farther into the room, the surroundings became more and more explicit. We were no longer alone.
The room, to its credit, was less a room and more of a divider between spaces. It had at both widths an arch that resembled a gaping mouth. But one could not see too far into the rooms because of their depth. However, the proportions did not at all match its exterior. In the middle room were two people sitting on a leather sofa. It was the only thing in the room. They were both wearing the same black, heavy wardrobe that the woman was wearing and had pocketed in their hands as if they were stuck to them, a single book. They too were wearing masks. I couldn’t read its title but it seemed to be passed back and forth between the two persons so each could read. The condition of the book was absolutely wretched. It might have been in English but the font seemed so incredibly faded and skewed that it really did look like nothing but gibberish and the occasional black and white Kandinsky painting.
I was now gestured by the woman to place my bum between the two reading figures. I was hesitant because the leather surrounding the figures had faded to white like a cornucopia surrounding a meteor stroke. I was afraid the same thing would happen to me. But I figured it was because they had sat in those very same positions for a very, very long time. Who knows how long. They must be scholars, I thought. Their faces were plastered with that lugubrious regret that you typically see scholars wear. How learned! It would be my privilege to sit next to them if they were indeed scholars. Knowledge by contact! The middle man! My condition, their condition, and the similarities between!
I was now in between, as they say. The initial woman stood before me. The black Bobo dolls on both sides of me. Her mask was inscrutable.
“These are our Alkaloids”, she weakly, but excitedly spoke, “They read. You see, they are the only ones capable of understanding the language of the Hythro. Therefore they are the only ones that read. When—“
The Hythro? My brain shut off her words. I peered over while she remained talking, trying to get a better view of this peculiar book. Upon closer examination, in these few seconds that I had, I could tell that the book had suffered very severe water damage, causing it to stink and have the written ink, already skewed to hell at this point, to sink further into the page. Not a single word was intelligible nor even visible. This only excited me more, however, and even, admittedly, thrust me into deep reverence for these avid scholars! Only those with such learned wisdom could one grasp such language! That’s all I needed to know. Perhaps they are even……… immortal.
Probably noticing the confused excitement on my face, she snapped. “Stop looking at the texts!” All went quiet. She took a wheezing breath and carried on.
“Hythro is not something us …laymen.. look at. It can be irreversibly harmful. Which is why they read, we listen. They speak, we open our ears. It has never been accessible to us and it never will be. The Hythro itself was found by pure accident. Our ancestors who had just moved to this forest, for reasons we need not discuss, had developed a commune around a rather small water reserve at the time. They built their houses, crafted tools, killed one another over the slightest grievances: in other words, a perfect order society! However, they had forgotten one important feature: commodes. They had provided nearly everything for themselves besides a proper human waste system. Men, women and children were going number 1 in any private space they could find and number 2 had been designated to the surrounding forestry. People were, admittedly, not following such rules because of how inefficient it was to daily affairs. The elders, noticing the resentment, then wanted to build and construct proper outhouses, to which the waste could then be sent to the nearest massive body of water. They, however, quickly realized that they did not have the materials to construct these outhouses because they had all been used up on the massive wood and stone monoliths created early on in the society’s beginning. They weren’t going to stop creating them though because they were said to bring good luck. So instead, the elders, after much trial and error, and more importantly, grievances, passed a law to commit all members of Aknen, to perform their…. discharge… at the watering hole because there were no more resources to be obtained from it. After all, what other purpose could it serve?!
“Anyways, the people of Aknen semi-agreed and began doing their ….business… at the watering hole. It piled up like manure at the bottom of that great holy water and after causing a severe algae bloom during one summer solstice, something miraculous happened. One day when social member Rognez Alini, I still remember his name so clearly, did his …. business…. The final fragment of fecal matter had been delivered to the Holy Pond of Hythro!” The woman was now gesticulating with the mannerisms of a child, jumping up and down, side to side. “That same day, ten minutes after the initial Rognez Alini…business doing …., when the sun had reached an exact 90 degree zenith, an admixture of feces and algae rose to the top of the Holy Pond and like a chariot in fire, brought along with it the Holy Book of Hythro! Of course when the original was found, its name was wholly unknown, its symbols were unknown, and yet it was the only piece of literature of Aknen. But oh many wise men and women threw up their interpretations as to what the text said as if their life depended on it—and little did they know, it kind of did. As a result, those who claimed to know the interpretations rose to the highest of statuses. The society split into interpretive sects. More and more monoliths were built … in service… to the text, as posed by the elders, as first posed by the interpreters. ‘More monoliths’ they would say. ‘The book needs more power’ they would say. Eventually all the resources and labor expense was put to making more big (useless) objects. Men and women were chopping and gathering wood to build the temples and other wooden objects that the Hythro commanded as if it were a frenzy. All labor was to get the wood, which was to get the temples, which was to help the interpreters. A feedback loop of symbols. The holy water of Hythro was also deemed sacred and thus unusable. After a while those who did not adopt the primary interpretation: Ryoism, were banished on account of high Elder Sazzimov who, upon one day in a dream, was visited by an entity he called Ryo. Ryo was said to have provided him with a translation of a single section of the holy text : “Put egg in basket.”, as Sazzimov insisted. He further insisted that the interpretation was both literal and metaphorical. Putting the egg in the basket was to mean by Sazzimov , through a series of logical deductions, inductions, and other forms of -ductions, that a system of linguistic expressions, known as the E-G-G, could in fact explain every conceivable question in the known universe. Once the three word code was known, then all else would follow. Sazzimov further instructed every social labor activity to be in pursuit of the creation of baskets and eggs, not monoliths (they were all burned), to see if by doing so, the weaves of the baskets or the eggs would reveal any anomalies that would crack the E-G-G code.
“More and more was added to the interpretations, only some spread as cultural phenomena. The black, heavy wardrobe was added in the third generation to make bodily activity more strenuous, reducing the body’s worldly significance; the masks to protect from The Eye of Judgment (another interpretive mythological entity), so on and so forth, all while the Holy Pond of Hythro baked in sacrality. It was at this point..” her voice broke, turning into a shaking hum, “ that … that… people.. started to get..sick.” She resuscitated herself. “ The drinking water of Aknen had somehow become infused with the Holy Pond of Hythro, and perhaps due to its sacred powers, slowly began to kill everyone, like flies.
“It was a message, the elders had interpreted, that those who get the ailment had not been faithful to the practice of Ryoism. Thus the Elders and interpreters and translators and scholars all continued their laborious, noble search for the E-G-G code. They remained high up in their wooden towers while those who couldn’t read or understand the text sat below, sick, dying, told to go get more baskets, more eggs. Those below all eventually died…”
I realized her pause. I finally shifted my shoulders off her intense stare and let up my current need to hold my facial expression in tact. To be honest, as interesting as it was, I wasn’t paying much attention to what she had said. I had become bored and tuned out a while ago, but I wass…peculiarlyy… interested in this E-G-G code. The key to any answer? Impossible. But that’s exactly what I wanted: the impossible. The Hythro must have the code.
She sensed my reverie, picking up now only to halt my thoughts in a nervous haste. “We are are Aknen’s only living descendants. The Great … Infusion .. had killed most of us, but the mighty elders did not let that stop their progress. They kept their system of egg making and basket weaving and Hythro interpreting , but all at a much smaller scale. First, 10 people making baskets, eggs , and interpretations. Then 7 people; then 5; then 3. The system, to our benefit actually has produced tremendously positive results. It has lowered the confusion rate by minimizing the possible outcome interpretations. If there are less people, then there are less ideas. We need only a few, as the Elders would say, to give answers to the meaning of the Hythro and it’s implications in daily affairs. Politics, the arts, spirituality, etc. As a result, we now have only the two Alkaloids, i.e., Hythro interpreters, instead of ten or a hundred”
“Yes, yes.” I sputtered. Now realizing where I was and what had been happening. My heart sank. I was in the middle of a dark forest, surrounded by the descendants of what was it, Aknon? These people use this “Hythro '' as a key to all psychosocial behavior and furthermore, this Hythro is eligible to everyone except a selected few who will all disagree on the meaning of translation. They are searching for the E-G-G, a prophesized linguistic sequence that would reveal every known truth and answer within the realm of human intelligibility—maybe even beyond. No … something seems… irrational…perhaps I am overthinking. Yes, “overthinking”. It does sound rather miraculous the more I think about it. That the Hythro would make its way out of the pond, in fecal Fate! The many contingencies that led to such a brilliant discovery! I mean who has ever heard of feces causing an algae bloom that upsurge a book from a pond? It had to be holy! Was it holy or just unintelligible?
The woman pulled me forward, off the couch, into her body as though being able to experience my reflexive switch from outward to inward.
“No. No. No. No thinking. We speak, you listen. Or better yet, they speak, we listen. Our social structure operates this way: less thinking equals less confusion, which equals more productivity.” She was now forcefully gesturing me to follow her into the next room, leaving the life drained alkaloids to their …. business.
“In here we have the second operation of things. These are the Basketdets. You see, they don’t really know their just basket weavers but indeed all they do is weave baskets. It is their life purpose. They have adopted the physiological patterns of basket weaving since birth and given birth to no other thought than a possible word found within the weaving of the baskets.”
Indeed, there were three more black robed figures, huddling in a circle surrounding a massive heap of wood wiring. They didn’t look at one another, just stared emptily into the emptiness of their half made baskets. In the corner of the room were hundreds more of these baskets that had seemingly been discarded as useless. She continued:
“ The values of our culture are so deeply ingrained within us that we ourselves barely know what they are! Isn’t that marvelous? We just do! We don’t even have to think!”
I was astounded by the dedication of these basket weavers. To live in such insipid monotony every day of life with the one day hope of solving the answers to the totality of human enquiry! What self-sacrifice! What meaningful engagement with the world! These people were surely fulfilled …. The scene was now nauseating. I had to turn away.
“The alkaloids translate and interpret. Producing slight nuances in ritual customs over time. They too were born into this position once eldership had ceased. The Basketdets endlessly scour for any meaningful syllables in their subconsciously produced weaving patterns. They have yet to discover anything so far other than a few …. Missignifiers. But oh my Ryo, they will eventually. This is what the Alkaloids have said: that it is inevitable that they find a word or phrase. It is their fate, they say.”
She raved on. Oftentimes making that same gesture to the floor with her hand. What did it mean?
But the Hythro. That was also important. What did that mean? How was it connected: the Hythro, Ryo, the Alkaloids, the basket weavers, the eggs, the HAND. It meant S o m e t h I n g.
We made our way back through the room with the Alkaloids, passing them and their humming into the final section of the “house”.
“These are the Eggists, the final part of our perfect system.”
How had I not noticed this before? The eggs! There were hundreds upon hundreds of them!
“We used to think in past generations, ” she continued, “ that the baskets and the eggs needed to be together. That one would get the eggs and place them into the basket, at which point the sequence of the E-G-G code would present itself to the user. We only then came to the conclusion, well, an Alkaloid did, that the whole system was only unified in abstract terms. There was no need for the Basketdets and the Eggists to mix! So the Eggists were raised with the sole intention in life to harvest and crack eggs. But even now they don’t have to harvest because of the overproduction of eggs in the fifth generation. They just crack! If an anomaly presents itself, they show me, and I show the Alkaloids. So also goes it with the Basketdets. You see, I am the perfect mediator because I have no subjectivity! This is what makes the system so perfect, as the old elders would say. “
“Have they found anything…meaningful?” I finally blurted out, picking a tether in my shirt collar.
She froze, as though an animal had suddenly grown a vocal apparatus and spoke.
“Well, yes and no.” She stammered. “A former Alkaloid, A312, one of the earliest Alkaloids and earliest interpreters of the Hythro was said to have translated and interpreted one of the later lines in the text to say …”
Quiescence ensued. Her eyes grew with deception.
“Well, that the Holy Pond needed … Red dye. Whatever that meant.” She laughed. “HAHAHAHA! Well enough of that, look at our little system here! The Alkaloids, the Basketdets, the Eggists! To think that this is all that is required to exist! We have all found our special niche in the great scheme of intelligence! Why even think anymore? One day we will know everything there is to know. One day the E-G-G code will be revealed through the Basketdets and the Eggists and the Alkaloids and the Mediator. One day there may not even be a reason to live! If we have every answer, then there is no need to question or pursue anything! How fantastic does that sound? The life of a toad!”
Indeed, it did sound quite fantastic. If the Hythro was holy and the Alkaloids were accessors of that holiness, then therefore the system of finding the E-G-G code was also holy. Yes! Es muss sein! The pure accidents; the contingencies of the absent commodes and their leading to the relationship of finding the Hythro! It was all too perfect! How could it all possibly be so perfect? But even more so … the code … that is what I want. It doesn’t even matter if the system is correct if I can get that damn code. The answer is there. Maybe the hand had something to do with it.
Perhaps sensing my growing unease, she smirked, “ but you know, there is a way to … speed up the process.”
Silence filled the room.
“It has been told by our ancient Alkaloids that the Red Dye passage was providing explicit information on how to retrieve a … second book”.
“Second book?” I implored.
“Yes, the second book of Hythro. It is said to still be in the sacred Holy Pond of Hythro, waiting to be found. Another Alkaloid, with the help of a message found in one of the weaves baskets, began through a process of induction, deduction, and all other various forms of -duction to conclude that the E-G-G code could indeed be found within the second book of Hythro on its second page.
“Well?” I asked. “Was it there?”
“ We have not checked. ”She responded.
“What do you mean you have not checked? What is this whole system for if one can simply prance on down to this watering hole and retrieve the damn thing?”
She slowed her responses, as though giving as much brevity as humanly possibly. “Because we will die. Our vital organs begin to slow to a pace of death when we go near the Holy Pond of Hythro. We do not know why but It causes us to combust!” One of the Eggists let out a short burst of laughter, interrupting the woman and causing her mask to shift in disgust.. It was perfectly quiet again.
A thought crossed my mind. “Well, let me go. I can retrieve it.” I said this without even considering that it was internally given and that I wasn’t supposed to share it. “I’ll find it and bring it back to you.” No. I will steal it.
The woman was shocked, but had ecstasy written all over her mug, as though she had finally accomplished something. Eh, who did I care what she had accomplished? Her hand kept doing the thing. That’s what I cared about.
“Yes, yes” I continued, keeping my eyes fixed on her moving hand. “ My bloodline has not been affected by this so-called great infusion and am thus pure! I won’t combust! I can simply go to the location where you and the Alkaloids designate me and bring back the second book, clean and safe! And without combustion!” A nervous laugh escaped my belly.
“Oh?” She hesitated. “I hadn’t thought of that..”. She turned to the Alkaloids, and for the first time, they smiled back.
She proceeded to supply me with directions to the Holy Pond of Hythro, informing me that this was my life goal and so on and so forth. I wasn’t really listening. I just wanted the code.
I was sent on my way, my mission. But before I left, just before the door slammed shut in my face, both Alkaloids, each Basketdet, every Eggist, and the woman were now grinning at me with a voracious appetite.
The door was shut. The blood rectangles had returned to the exterior of the house. I carried on into the forest without another thought, admiring the stillness of the dead spider on my way out.
Those fools! I thought. How easy life now was! I have a mission, a purpose, a goal. I will find the E-G-G! Not for them but for myself. I wasn’t going to return with their stupid cultural book, it was mine if I found it. Every answer to every conceivable question, mine! It had nothing to do with culture, ha!. I was to be even greater than humanity if I had this! They can keep their little system up and one day maybe find the code, but I will find it now!
Through all the green and brown and black hues, there it was: The Holy Pond of Hythro! It was exactly where they said it would be. I ran ahead towards the left quadrant, passing by uncountable pieces of decayed wood, dead shrubbery, old rusty tools, and the occasional human organ. But it didn’t matter. The code mattered. They think I can’t translate it? Who do they think I am? Yes, we will see about that. I’m just as smart as they are, probably even smarter! Those “wise” fools. Why even give the opportunity to an outsider? Fools! I could play God. I will play God. If there is nothing left to know then I am not the creator? I create everything that comes after! But if I know the meaning of human life …. Will I still be human? ….or?…
The water was as murky and disgusting as the tales told. Algae had indeed bloomed everywhere on top, the water was not even visible. The stench had pregnated the atmosphere and killed everything in a near two mile radius; but I didn’t even notice. My stomach told me to turn back, but no! That damn thing will no longer control me! The book, the code, it was here somewhere! There! Over where the plank of wood extended into the small cove of algae. That is where they said the second book would be!
I ran towards it with every fiber of my being needing to touch that book. I needed to know! The E-G-G was here, I could sense it. Your holiness! One can always sense holiness! It all made sense now! The human project!
I leaned over the plank, thrusting my hand into the algae, past the feces, deeper and deeper, swarming, stretching and searching for that damn book. I didn’t care for anything else.
And then it happened. All went quiet. The air lost its oxygen . The Alkaloids, the woman, the Basketdets, the Eggists, were now all behind me; chanting, screaming, running towards me with their books and baskets and eggs and masks. I didn’t have time to think. My body was frozen. It was a lie. The totality of a human project: a joke.I was then thrown in head first into the abyss of the Holy Pond of Hythro. I now realized exactly what I was: a human sacrifice in a pool of excrement.
Yes. He died. The descendants of Aknen had the plan of sacrificing him from the beginning. All because, as the Alkaloids had said, outside blood in the Holy Pond will bring about the second book of Hythro.
But there was no second book. In fact, there wasn’t even a first. If only these people had known that the original book of Hythro was simply a misprinted cookbook by an unknown Philip Genzens, which had been discarded by its publishers on a camping trip when it was realized that the copy was printed entirely backwards in Romanian, repeatedly randomized into long paragraphs of gibberish, and had absolutely no pictures; I’m sure this story would have played out much differently.
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