Power (8x100 words)
Aug. 29th, 2011 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolThe primitive sits and watches the sun set over a plateau. The spread of color and the play of light are miracles, a source of wonder.
The primitive is not hungry; her family has food and shelter and few fears. At last she has time to think a new thought, and that thought is: how? How do miraculous things happen? How can the sun paint the whole world in tawny gold and burnt orange?
In some remote part of her mind, long before she has the tools of logic and reason, the primitive knows that the sun holds power. How?
**
The clansman fetches his war-chief. It has happened again.
Excited, he pokes the ashes out of the fire-pit. Last night the flames burned high and hot. While the tribe slept, God-metal came out of the stones lining the fire. It pooled under the embers, but when the fire died and the ashes cooled, the God-metal hardened. Now it is an irregular plate, still warm.
The war-chief cautiously lifts the edge of the golden mass. It is hard, as hard as stone, but gleams like sunlight on water. The clansmen sigh, awestruck.
Fire, thinks the war-chief. Yes. Its power is formidable.
**
The herdsman's son has made another water-wheel. He lowers his water buckets to the ground and watches his son work, entranced. Using only sticks and bark and marsh-grass, the child makes a toy – a device that spins forever when the water can push its arms. It goes around and around. The herdsman is hypnotized.
In this state he has a daydream. The water-wheel has scoops, not arms, and these scoops lift water up to a sluice. The water pours down into the animal troughs, powered by itself, and the herdsman never must lift a bucket again.
He drops his yoke.
**
The prow cuts through the darkness and cleaves through waves. Most of those aboard are sick, but the She-Wolf yet keeps her ale down. She clings to the mast and peers ahead. Is that a lighter patch? It must be. "More sail!" she bellows.
Ropes swing about and canvas unfurls; then the sail snaps taut with a brisk wind behind it. Now the ship powers forwards toward the gap in the storm. The She-Wolf smiles grimly. They will make it home with their lives, and their news. There is no water's end; no ship-eating serpent – only land. More land. Hers.
**
The soldiers hunker in the trench and wait for the other side to come over the top. They are tired and dirty and traumatized, but for now they feel safe. There are hundreds of yards of open field for the enemy to cross. They would be sitting ducks.
The rumbling gets their attention, jars them awake. What is that clanking, that clatter? Then they see the monster – a plate-steel box on wheels with a cannon on top, impregnable, parting the barbed wire, belching out chemical fumes. Their rifles are powerless.
They scatter. The war is lost; technology has won. Again.
**
At night the great scientist weeps. The images of the ruin his weapons have caused will haunt him forever. He never wanted to be a monster, yet somehow he has made a bomb that can destroy a city.
His resolve is firm. His work was encouraged by the military, and paid for too, because they needed it. But the atom, the scientist knows, can be a force for good instead of evil. It can be turned to serve Mankind. All it takes is a little leadership, a bit of initiative.
The world must be made to treat power with respect!
**
The primitive sits and watches the sun rise over the ruins of the city. The sun is a swollen orange glow through the eternal mocha haze. The primitive is hungry, and that always makes him maudlin.
The knowledge of the atom is lost to them. There is no wind for windmills, no running water for water-wheels. There's nothing left to burn, above or below the earth. Even the sun has become diffuse, impotent – useless.
How? thinks the primitive. How did we possess such power and lose it? How did we rise so high and fall so far, so fast?
How?
**
But! on the detritus-cluttered beach not far away, the girl stabs a piece of Ancients-metal into the gummy sand. Around it she places a wreath of plastic wrap. The tide comes in – the tide, still driven by the now invisible moon through the dank atmosphere.
The girl watches as the rising tide causes the floating plastic to climb ever higher on her metal measuring-post. Somehow, faraway things exert a powerful influence on the world, making things go up and down, back and forth, there and back again. And one can harness that, and that's power too.
Interesting, the girl thinks.
The primitive is not hungry; her family has food and shelter and few fears. At last she has time to think a new thought, and that thought is: how? How do miraculous things happen? How can the sun paint the whole world in tawny gold and burnt orange?
In some remote part of her mind, long before she has the tools of logic and reason, the primitive knows that the sun holds power. How?
**
The clansman fetches his war-chief. It has happened again.
Excited, he pokes the ashes out of the fire-pit. Last night the flames burned high and hot. While the tribe slept, God-metal came out of the stones lining the fire. It pooled under the embers, but when the fire died and the ashes cooled, the God-metal hardened. Now it is an irregular plate, still warm.
The war-chief cautiously lifts the edge of the golden mass. It is hard, as hard as stone, but gleams like sunlight on water. The clansmen sigh, awestruck.
Fire, thinks the war-chief. Yes. Its power is formidable.
**
The herdsman's son has made another water-wheel. He lowers his water buckets to the ground and watches his son work, entranced. Using only sticks and bark and marsh-grass, the child makes a toy – a device that spins forever when the water can push its arms. It goes around and around. The herdsman is hypnotized.
In this state he has a daydream. The water-wheel has scoops, not arms, and these scoops lift water up to a sluice. The water pours down into the animal troughs, powered by itself, and the herdsman never must lift a bucket again.
He drops his yoke.
**
The prow cuts through the darkness and cleaves through waves. Most of those aboard are sick, but the She-Wolf yet keeps her ale down. She clings to the mast and peers ahead. Is that a lighter patch? It must be. "More sail!" she bellows.
Ropes swing about and canvas unfurls; then the sail snaps taut with a brisk wind behind it. Now the ship powers forwards toward the gap in the storm. The She-Wolf smiles grimly. They will make it home with their lives, and their news. There is no water's end; no ship-eating serpent – only land. More land. Hers.
**
The soldiers hunker in the trench and wait for the other side to come over the top. They are tired and dirty and traumatized, but for now they feel safe. There are hundreds of yards of open field for the enemy to cross. They would be sitting ducks.
The rumbling gets their attention, jars them awake. What is that clanking, that clatter? Then they see the monster – a plate-steel box on wheels with a cannon on top, impregnable, parting the barbed wire, belching out chemical fumes. Their rifles are powerless.
They scatter. The war is lost; technology has won. Again.
**
At night the great scientist weeps. The images of the ruin his weapons have caused will haunt him forever. He never wanted to be a monster, yet somehow he has made a bomb that can destroy a city.
His resolve is firm. His work was encouraged by the military, and paid for too, because they needed it. But the atom, the scientist knows, can be a force for good instead of evil. It can be turned to serve Mankind. All it takes is a little leadership, a bit of initiative.
The world must be made to treat power with respect!
**
The primitive sits and watches the sun rise over the ruins of the city. The sun is a swollen orange glow through the eternal mocha haze. The primitive is hungry, and that always makes him maudlin.
The knowledge of the atom is lost to them. There is no wind for windmills, no running water for water-wheels. There's nothing left to burn, above or below the earth. Even the sun has become diffuse, impotent – useless.
How? thinks the primitive. How did we possess such power and lose it? How did we rise so high and fall so far, so fast?
How?
**
But! on the detritus-cluttered beach not far away, the girl stabs a piece of Ancients-metal into the gummy sand. Around it she places a wreath of plastic wrap. The tide comes in – the tide, still driven by the now invisible moon through the dank atmosphere.
The girl watches as the rising tide causes the floating plastic to climb ever higher on her metal measuring-post. Somehow, faraway things exert a powerful influence on the world, making things go up and down, back and forth, there and back again. And one can harness that, and that's power too.
Interesting, the girl thinks.
