So, in thinking through the questions again—newer, better, or brought together, I'm stuck thinking about many things. Evolution, as always; the Middle Passage somewhat. Slaves being shipped from their homes to new countries—the way they and their cultures, transformed, and how still they didn't lose the knowledge of their passing, nor the knowledge of their pain, loss or transformation. And to how we all have made a passing as a species across time (or, maybe more accurately, as multiple species across time).
Then I got on to how the Earth is changing always. Yes, the geological Earth somewhat, but specifically that rather thin layer of life and substance that clings to the big spinning mass of rock, and how now there is real actionable steps being taken to move elsewhere, to another big spinning mass of rock, and how many argue against it and many cheer it on, and most acknowledge that they probably won't take that step. That they're here to stay, to see out whatever results come of the last several hundred years as we've gotten progressively, exponentially better and better at harnessing other things to do stuff for us, yeast or yardman, silicon or slave.
So for tonight, though I've read at length about pygmy elephants and the brain sizes of animals that evolve on islands, about satellites that can beam internet to anyone on the planet for a price that few can afford, I'd like to just write a quick story that tries to provide some sketch of what it would be like if we just got good at harnessing ourselves in the service of others, rather than the other way around for once.
On Our Knees
Written by Eric Westerlind
There did come a time when the forest was only trees and not another setting for our memories, Doyle. There did come a time. There did come a time when the smell of mulch below our knees meant we ought to roll over in it and lay with our bellies exposed, for that was the time when the whicken worms needed passage from laying their young, on up to the lowest branches where they’d chew on the lowest leaves. Fossils of those times show our digits curled for how long we held first to the branches with our fingers and second to the roots with our toes, long enough that those whicken worms could finish up and make their way back down to wait for their spry whicken young.
Those were dirty days, Doyle. Those were days we kept most to ourselves it seems, days when well gone were the Mark III's and the H. Hibiscus, who took the last of those that'd go from the planet. Days when we’d fled the powered cities and went to the rivers that'd grown fat with floods—days when we learned again how to hoe a field and how to hold a child that fell forth from its mother's belly like it was our own.
No hot water then, the records say. No pictures then. The records are chalk and stone, and bone marks when there was violence of course, but, as those records show we got good in laying down in those days. Good and flat on the ground.
Of the billions left, imagine the ebb-tide, Doyle. Imagine the ebb-tide. Imagine the slack. First of course was the real truth that the top had been reached, you know, when our mouths must’ve hung, all of us then, Doyle, all our mouths open, looking at how far we'd come up and thinking how mighty high it was, and also, how we couldn't get any higher. Quelle surprise, Doyle, as you can imagine.
We'd been staring at our feet so long.
The sky, still sure, still higher.
These weren't godbodies. We didn’t build them, though we tried.
Imagine our surprise, Doyle, when we had to start going down.
Billions to millions, millions to million, million to thousands, and then on to less. We stopped seeing so much of each other then. You can see it in the records, read it in the stones.
This is one of those problems, Doyle, with judging a species on limited fossil evidence. The story so far could’ve been wrong. Coming back at first, digging around, all this from a handful of teeth in the roots of a tree and a few fingerbones only faintly different than our own.
Fortunately there's what the whicken worms tend to do.
After we used to hold the branch for them and let them pass us over, head on up from the mulch to the branch and then back from the branch to the mulch, they’d come on down and wait. And once we laid down for good, they’d keep our bones intact because that's where they kept their young—an appropriation of sorts more than an adaptation. Adaptation would've meant they changed, the worms, and here they were changing us.
When we came down in the lander, they certainly seemed surprised that we didn't act the way those who stayed must've, us in our suits and our masks. The whicken worms made every gesture it seemed to get us to lay down and let them climb up to the lowest branches. And it strikes me that my use of we has become problematic, in this case, Doyle, because we aren't them, though there was a time when we were. But you leave a species on an island long enough by itself, especially with limited resource, and it's bound to change. Bound to lay down to the weather, as they say. So picking among the wreckage now, Doyle, and reporting back across the stars, I'll say things didn't end up quite like the computers say it did. At least, that’s not what I’m seeing down here on the ground.