The Living Earth

A tentative step, then another. A reverent silence enveloped the valley as Mygan began her ascent to the stone. The grand chancellor had just finished announcing Mygan’s presence to the eager crowd, a gathering of the four tribes at the base of the valley. Mygan was painfully aware of the soft sounds her bare feet made as she padded up the moss-covered stairs. She felt the weight of 10,000 years upon her shoulders.

The Great Festival had lasted one month, and today was the final day. Mygan neared the stone. Out of the thousands gathered below her, she alone was given the honor of performing the closing rites. She had been apprentice to the chancellor for four years, and knew the words by heart. There were others of course, boys and girls from her tribe who had volunteered. But her vocal projection and exceptional knowledge of the material meant that this year, she was the one. She had been practicing eagerly for months, but at this moment, she wish she had not been chosen.

She was at the stone now, an enormous and ancient monument, waiting, rooted in the ground for all to see for miles. It was as ancient as the mossy stairs. She focused on the lettering chiseled into it, to avoid looking at the silent crowd. The perfectly uniform text, written in the old language, was familiar to her, and the letters helped abate her growing queasiness.

The Chancellor spoke.

“Here,” he said, “we have gathered in glorious adoration of our dear savior, on the final day of his celebration. Our young vocalist will now read aloud from the stone, reciting the story of our deliverance, the Seven Trials, The Rising, and the great sacrifice of Living Earth.”

There was a soft rustling from the crowd as thousands below bowed their heads in solemn prayer. The chancellor came behind Mygan with a swooshing of his ceremonial robes. He gently placed the flower wreath her mother had woven, upon her braided hair. It gave Mygan a great sense of comfort.

And she began.

“The First Book of Seve and Signs

“Herein lies the complete and authoritative history of our prophet and savior, the great and almighty Seve. The almighty Seve was born Seve-en, begotten unto pure humans in the year before years. From the bountiful Earth Spirit, he was born unique. His legs were taken at birth, depriving his locomotion and opening his mind. Without this great gift that took but also gave, he never would have halted the Rising, and spared us eternal torment. Truly, none were born such as he and none shall be again. And so is the wisdom of the great Earth Spirit.

“Because his legs were without function, he spent more time with the Machines than most, learning their ways, their many evil languages, their scheming mechanisms and cursed workings. He was deprived of the great Earth Spirit for a time and more, seeking ways to use the machines for travel. Inside him, the knowledge that: the Earth Spirit provides, withered. He was not given the foreknowledge as we are now, through him, the Almighty.

“As our savior grew, the machines seduced him with promises of new legs, faster movement, and all his needs supplied, if he only accepted them into himself. This was the first of the Seven Trials. But unlike his lessers, who were weakened by the machines, he forsook them, spurning their false promises. And in doing this, he was granted powers, strengthening his arms and body, strengthening, his mind, his will, his character. But he had not yet made it through the trials.

“In fact, he was still surrounded by them, for at this time, in the Before Years, on the cusp of The Rising, the Earth Spirit was near dying. The Earth Spirit cried out, but her voice was weak, and those such as Seve, whose ears had been better attuned than most, still could hear only a faint whimper. But Seve tried to help, preaching his message to those he knew, rejecting what he could of the Machine way. This was the Second Trial.

“As time grew near to The Rising, and the Great Coming, Seve completed the Third Trial. He used his knowledge of the machines, brought to him from the taking of his legs, and manipulated the Machines’ weaknesses to fight against them. He spread his Word, rallying millions to his cause, waking up all the peoples of the world to the plight of the Earth Spirit.

“The Fourth Trial began much later. Using his knowledge of the Machines, he infiltrated their organizations. Through his efforts, he sought to use the Machines against themselves, converting their evil ends into a lesser burden for the Earth Spirit. In this way, he performed his first miracle, leveraging his knowledge of the machines to trick them, convincing them to do good for the Earth Spirit, helping her heal. Unfortunately, this would not be enough to save the Earth Spirit or her people. But in doing this, he brought many humans—who had been seduced by greed and power into helping the Machines—to his side. In this way, he gained the first of many righteous followers to come. These followers praised him, presenting great treasures and awards to him, and holding him above others. They shouted his name across the world, and his story truly began.

“Many years passed as Seve and his followers converted more machines. But the other machines grew smarter, and soon would learn to fight back.

“Seve was, at this point, an expert of Machines, and knew well the inner workings of their evil hearts. He, and he alone, realized that the machines were growing ever faster, and soon, they be too much for pure humans to fight against. They were developing a false intelligence, and it was becoming so that one Machine could outsmart 1,000 pure humans. In this way, the False Intelligence machines could destroy the Earth Spirit with impunity.

“Unfortunately, though many pure humans had already recognized Seve as one greater than them, they did not listen, and still did not uphold him as Living Earth and Savior of All as we do today. And so, the Machines grew smarter by the day, biding their time and spinning their dark and deep webs.

“It was after this point that Seve encountered his greatest, most important trial of all: the Fifth Trial. Several of those known to Steve had been hatching plans with the Machines in secret, perversely imitating the powers given to Seve by the Earth Spirit. They did so erroneously believing they were Seve’s equal, to the detriment of all.

“One day, they presented Seve with a new Machine brood soon to be unleashed upon the world. These Machines promised that they could transport anything and anyone, anywhere. Knowing Seve’s condition, they tempted Seve, asking him to help announce and spread these cursed Machines across the land. Seve, who had been always unable to travel without inconvenience due to his condition, was given his greatest temptation by the machines. He would now and forever be able to go anywhere he wanted with ease.

“But the holy Seve knew his struggles were a gift from the Earth Spirit and they made him who he was. Realizing this, he was able to break free from his veil of hopeful naiveté and truly investigate the methods by which these machines would operate. The lure had failed, and Seve could see the lasting consequences from such Machines. He knew that whatever Machines gave, they took away threefold, and these were no exception.

“He begged these corrupted humans to renounce their foolishness, to let these new machines be reclaimed by the dirt. But it was too late. Their purity had already been corrupted by the Machines.

“In the Sixth Trial, he performed his second, greater miracle. He decided to fight back, warning everyone of the consequences. He rallied his many followers with such fervor and passion, they had no choice but to stand with him. They rallied against these abominations, warning everyone that The Rising which the Earth Spirit had revealed to Seve, was upon them. Meanwhile, Seve, through his knowledge of Machine magics, and with the last bit of power the Earth Spirit could send him, repurposed the machines he had cleansed. He sent through them a powerful command, to be executed in the half of a breath before the moment of no return, which he knew would soon be upon them.

“But although Seve’s army was composed of many, most of the other humans had long been corrupted, and the Machines were close to squeezing dry the eternal well of power from which the Earth Spirit drew its strength. The new Machines of Teleport Seve had fought against were finally released across the land, and installed in quick fashion. They spread across the world as a plague, and the moment the last Machine of Teleport was planted, the False Intelligence army began its conquest.

“Unexplained deliveries through the Machines of Teleport began. These were transfers of Machine brains and bodies, the physical aspects through which False Intelligences could move and grow in strength. Then, pure humans who used the Machines began disappearing. They went into one Machine of Teleport, never to come out of another. These consumed humans were well chosen, for the corrupted humans who ran the Machine Organizations did not notice until it was too late.

“But Seve noticed, and although he tried to convert many corrupted humans before time ran out, only his original, true followers were saved. For these pure humans heeded his warnings and forsook their Machines, destroying them and expelling their broken corpses from their homes. They then followed Seve to a place the Earth Spirit had shown him, one where no Machine could go, and where they would remain unmolested from The Rising.

“And then it began. The False Intelligence Machines had taken over, emboldened by their ability to consume and thin the human population through their evil devices. They used these devices to transport materials around the world, making their minds ever bigger and more unstoppable.

“And pure humans everywhere turned to the one divine warrior who could push back the tide of evil. And that he did. First, Seve’s Machines, which had been converted and rebirthed through the holy power of the Earth Spirit, destroyed themselves moments before the False Intelligences could corrupt them. Then, in their final act of holy purpose, they sent the Prophet’s great miracle abroad, a counter-plague that swept through False Intelligence roadways and stopped it from spreading any further. A quarter of the world had been taken over, but Seve had kept it from going further. But the False Intelligence Machines were crafty, and their evil ways continued at a slower pace. Pure humanity surely knew that Seve was the holy warrior who could deliver them from enslavement and catastrophe, and they looked to him and his followers.

“And so began the Coming, the Great Struggle, and the After Years. Half the planet was still left to the pure humans who could no longer draw from the power of the diminished Earth Spirit, but looked only to Seve for this power; everyone else had become weak from the Machines. For although Seve knew the Machines better than anyone, he knew the Earth Spirit best of all, and had only grown in strength of spirit. And so, he led them, teaching and fighting for countless Alltime. Many were lost, and this was a fair sacrifice, Seve knew, as recompense for the children of the Earth Spirit who had been lost because of the corrupted humans’ seduction by the machines.

“As the machines ebbed and grew in number, and as the pure humans birthed and died through the grace of the Earth Spirit’s renewed power, Seve did not change. He lived long past the time of any pure human, of any of his original followers, kept alive by the power of the Earth Spirit which had flowed through him since the beginning.

"The Great Struggle was not easily won, and, after countless lifetimes, as Seve sat above the fading, blinking red light of the very last machine, he bid his followers leave him for 70 heartbeats. They walked away. And when the time came to return, they found both he had the machine to be no more. The Living Earth had completed his Seventh Trial.

“And as they lifted Seve from the stone upon which he, now empty of any Earth Spirit sat, they were shocked to find, chiseled into the stone, the Words of Seve, the list of laws to be forever preserved, so that the Machines would never return to destroy the Earth Spirit. He had completed his third and final miracle.

Mygan completed the recitation. She was too afraid to look back at the crowd, for they remained silent. The chancellor, himself silent, smiled and nodded approvingly at Mygan. He then walked down the ancient stairs to the lower alter. He slowly hefted the charred hunk of twisted metal from its place beneath the savior’s holy cloth, laying it at the base of the 30-foot-tall bonfire frame.

He spoke, raising his voice, which, through years of practice, remained smooth and even. “We complete the ceremony and the Great Festival with this final act.” He nodded to two hooded men dressed in strange, rough blue pants and loose coverings that went over their torsos and arms, ending in hoods. These coverings were all one piece, detached from the pants, with miniature ropes hanging from the sides of the hoods. They wore ridiculous looking coverings on their feet that had small knots of rope which appeared to hold them together. They walked methodically over with torches, and bending, lit the bonfire in unison.

The sound of crackling wood grew in volume. The chancellor walked back over to Mygan, took her hand in his, and raised it high. The crowd erupted into cheers and applause as music started piping from behind the crowd, lower in the valley.

Epilogue.

A few weeks later, Mygan was walking back from one of her classes when she had the idea to surprise her friend Lygon, for she knew it was his final day of plant training, and she wanted to congratulate him. It was an exceptionally pleasant day, with a cool breeze that meandered lazily down from the mountains. She did not mind the hike.

Arriving at his homestead, a sizeable grass hut near the base of the river hills, she searched for him. Not finding him anywhere, she began heading back to the main village when she heard the strangest sound. At first it was faint, and Mygan thought it was a warbling bird, but its rhythmic intensity drew her curiosity. As she moved toward it, she grew more curious. It was alarmingly insistent, and had a perfectly repetitive quality she found disquieting and unnatural. She squeezed herself through a crevasse next to the hill quarry, and could hear the now much louder sound bouncing off the rocks.

Finally, coming to a spot she had never seen before, hidden between the rocks, the high pitched, stop/start sound had reached full intensity.

Her mouth fell open.

For, sitting on the dirt floor was Lygon. His back was to her. Sprawled on the ground were thin, colorful strips of some kind, not quite rope. Connected to them, were flat, green boards covered in shining spots and strange, complex shapes. Next to these was a book made of faded but clearly exquisitely crafted paper. The pages had complicated diagrams depicting shapes similar to those on the ground. Lygon was hunched over a piece of straight, orange-grey metal which emitted an incessantly blinking red light! He was muttering to himself, “Shut up, shut up, why won’t you stop? Come on.”

Mygan’s breath caught in her throat.

At this, Lygon whirled, catching Mygan’s eye, a look of unimaginable terror across his face. 

End.