kula lived on the outskirts of a village with his father. kula enjoyed many things. kula enjoyed sitting by the fire with the other children, listening to the village women speak stories of their tribe, of the village and safety and family and friends, of the forest and bounty and fruits and vegetables, of the lands beyond the village and ancient men and danger. kula enjoyed the dialogue with the elders, asking on civility and tribesmanship and how to contribute to the village, which little berries were safe to pick and prepare and eat, of the dangers beyond the forest which the elder spoke little about. and kula enjoyed working with his father and the other boys and men, only a few times a week to save time for learning with the women, picking the little red berries the elder promised were safe and avoiding the little blue berries the elder assured were not, returning and preparing and serving.

on days his father broke from work, the two would venture to the heart of the village, and kula enjoyed partaking in festivities, making merry with friends in his community, and never wandering past the borders of the village, because kula was a good boy and never did wrong. kula was happy. until the day his father ventured to work and the night his father didn’t come back. very unusual. father always came home before sundown but now the sun was down and father hadn’t come home. so kula left to investigate. but before he could leave the outskirts of the village, the elder accosted him.

“kula,” he boomed in that gravelly, commanding voice that led ceremonies of dozens, “go no further.”

“but father hasn’t come home yet,” he pleaded in his young, puerile voice that made chastising so difficult a task, “i have to look for him.”

“i have looked, and he is dead.” to kula, the elder’s hardened face showed no sign of empathy but inside the elder crumbled, “do not leave the village. you will not come back.” the elder had hoped his words would prevent young kula from experiencing the dangers of the fallen world beyond the hills. but the elder was once young and knew by experience that wisdom often falls on deaf ears.

later that night, in the brief hours of the twilight before sunrise, kula thought to himself while packing for the road ahead. kula values knowledge. kula knows which berries are safe to eat and which berries are not safe to eat. kula doesn’t know why some berries are safe and some berries are not, but he knows for a fact the little red berries are safe and the little blue berries are not. kula knows that there is danger outside of the village. kula doesn’t know what the dangers are but he knows the danger exists. and kula knows his father is alive. kula doesn’t know how he knows his father is alive but he knows his father is alive.

kula thought harder, packing a small bag with little red berries, the kind of berries that kula knew were safe to eat. kula popped one in his mouth. tartness covered his tongue and coated his mouth, its soft flesh mushing gently against his teeth as he puckered his lips. but he had eaten them before so of course he knew they were safe to eat. what of his first time? kula closed his eyes and tried to imagine his first little red berry. his memories obscured him.

and so kula left with the bag of little red berries in tow. he walked and walked until the outskirts of the village disappeared into the horizon behind him along with the trees that provided shelter from the sun, the bushes that bore little red berries that kula knew were safe to eat, and the dirt road paved with the feet of many centuries of villagers seeking shade and food. and kula was alone.

or so he thought for an entire 10 seconds before the snake shouted, “hey! idiot! where are you going?” kula jumped, “i said where are you going, kid? don’t you know it’s dangerous outside of the village?”

“i’m going to find my father,” kula replied bluntly, not meeting the gaze of the snake.

“oh, your father! let me guess, dark skin like yours, long hair likes yours, about yea high?” at the last word, the snake stood on its tail, scraping against the ground, and looked down at kula, but kula didn’t look and walked on while the snake followed behind, silently for a while.

the two traveled on shattered rock beside towering structures of stone and metal reaching beyond the clouds above, like desperate hands in search of grasping somewhere better. kula craned his neck but couldn’t see the top before it disappeared into the skies.

“are you curious,” asked the snake, “about the homes of the ancients?” kula associated the word “home” with the village. he thought of his hut, of his father, of the elder. he thought of the little red berries, the bushes they grew on, and the trees that protected them from the harshness of the sun. he thought of festivities, of village gatherings, of food and fun. but he saw none of it where he now looked. 

kula shook his head, “these things are no home.”

“but they were!” retorted the snake, with wild amusement, “each skyscraper housed and fed 5 million humans!”

kula’s eyes grew wide. kula recalled the faces of all 50 members of his village. he recalled their facial structures, their personalities, and their roles in the village. everybody had a role in the village. the village couldn’t run without everybody. the elder was a leader, a sage, and a protector keeping the village in order, acting as a source of wisdom, offering advice and guidance to the village members. the village women were the keepers of knowledge, passing down stories and traditions to the children of the village. the men of the village were the providers, working hard to provide food and shelter for the other members. the children of the village were the future, learning stories and traditions, and preparing to become the next generation of village elders and leaders. everyone had their role and together they kept the village alive, and together they kept the village a family.

“the elder mentioned nothing of ‘skyscrapers.’”

“and there’s your problem. why do you trust the elder anyways? you villagers know nothing beyond the village. your elder may know all within the confines of your home but know nothing of the outside. he knows not of concrete pavements, or skyscrapers, or the ancients. not even of your father’s whereabouts. testimony only goes so far.”

kula walked on.

for hours in silence, walking past the crumbling ruins of a time seeking better times, kula thought on the concept of testimony. gathered by fire, sat beside the village’s youngest, the women of his village spoke of stories ages before their women and children and men and elders. those women learned the stories as children from the women and children and men and elders of their time, and those women too.

kula thought on the chain of history. men and women birthing children, telling stories for those children to pass on to their children, only for the source to wither away with the passing of time, the truth of the matter distorted by the fickle memories of humankind, passed on and on, on the basis of mutual trust that the speaker is speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth and that the listener is listening carefully for the nuances and justifications related to the truth, assuming a trust that the first speaker in the chain of history recorded the truth to its full extent never falling for the deceptions and distortions of unjustified beliefs.

kula thought on the little red berries and the memory that failed to surface, felt frustration and annoyance that the first memory refused to rear its ugly head, and sat down to partake in a little red berry in the desperate hopes that it’s smell, it’s texture, it’s taste would kickstart his brain into motion, but at that moment even the little red berry felt foreign and strange.

“you don’t have to eat that garbage when you’re out here!” attested the snake, “try one of these instead.”

the snake produced a little blue berry from its trunk and offered it to kula. kula reflexively flinched.

“but the elder said that blue plants are poisonous!”

“kula, kula, kula,” the snake shook its head condescendingly, “what does the elder know! he’s never even seen a blue berry before! how would he know it’s poisonous? just try it.”

the snake grew closer and lifted the berries on his head toward kula’s hand. and kula ate one. sweet! like no other! kula grew accustomed to the tartness of the little red berries, the tartness that would pucker his lips, while the sweet ichor of little blue berries’ juice made him crave more instead. he picked up another and bit down. it had a pleasant texture, soft and mushy with little gritty beads inside that burst open to reveal a slight bitterness that perfectly balanced the sweetness of its juicy vesicles. he lifted another towards his mouth and relished in the floral scent wafting from its broken flesh and resisted the urge to press it against his skin to retain its attractive smell and instead enjoyed another bite. and they were gone.

“so how about it! i told you, they’re safe!” the snake widely grinned in response to kula’s amazement and said, “now you know, don’t you kid? you can’t always trust what the elder says. you have to trust your own perception to find the truth.”

and kula felt woozy. the weight of gravity anchored his feet. it took everything not to fall over. kula looked around. his vision lagged behind his movement, the buildings leaving images in their wake.

but the rabbit rebuked, “although perception can be a source of knowledge, it can also lead to deception,” it hopped, pounding it’s metallic weight against the broken concrete, “it is easy to get caught up in the moment and be swayed by what one senses, even if it is not true.”

he saw the snake and the rabbit, and two snakes and two rabbits, and three and three, until the world fell apart. words and phrases assaulted him, reverberating in his skull, threatening to pop out of his ears. he saw patterns like the women’s baskets woven with the dynamic fabric of reality, altering shape and color until the patterns of snake and rabbit became his arms reaching for a loving embrace, imparting wisdom, never content to maintain a single form. kula thought on the concept for a dozen years, the same phrase repeating in his head. although perception can be a source of knowledge, it can also lead to deception. although perception can be a source of knowledge, it can also lead to deception. although… and the years passed. kula thought on perception, and knowledge, and deception. the thought often crossed his mind that by eating the little blue berries he had broken his mind permanently and that he would be trapped in a land of oscillating shapes forever. when that thought stopped looping, he doubted that he could ever be certain he knew anything ever again, that he had opened pandora’s box and knew not that it could never close, doubting forever more every premise and justification and perception. and he wondered why the village elder would proudly pronounce his father dead despite the fact that only a handful of hours had passed since his father’s normal arrival. although perception can be a source of knowledge, it can also lead to… the snake and the rabbit argued all the while, leaving impressions of their beliefs in the sandy beach of kula’s understanding, and for every premise and every conclusion, kula spent years more introspecting. kula thought about his justification for knowing his father is alive, the sole reason he had unceremoniously abandoned his only home with the little red berries and the stories and traditions and women and men and elders and children, and wept. he felt the tears flowing like gentle rivers down the crevices of his contorted face and thought of his father whom he no longer knew was alive but believed, who paddled across to ford despair and grasp salvation. “kula,” his father’s voice echoed in his head. and kula closed his eyes, the motion of the universe gyrating in perpetuity within the confines of his mind. “kula,” the voice continued, but it sounded less like his father and more like a nightmare.

“kula!” boomed the ox, in a gravelly timbre that reminded him of the elder, “it is unwise to sleep in the cold. come, towards the fire.”

kula’s eyes shot open and all traces of snakes and rabbits and perception and knowledge and deception had disappeared and all he saw was the flickering of smoldering fire reflecting off the ox’s shiny body. kula inched closer and felt the fire’s warmth wafting with the slight breeze of the midnight air.

“what happened to the snake? and the rabbit?” the ox tilted its head with a sharp creak.

“ah yes, back to our conversation,” replied the ox, snapping to attention, but kula remembered not of any ox in any memory, “snake believes that perception is the gateway to knowledge, but has never seen the ancient men for himself. how, then, can snake so confidently assert that skyscrapers were home to millions?”

intriguied, kula replied with amusement, “he must have had other justifications for believing in skyscrapers, otherwise, by his own definition of knowledge, his premise is insufficient.”

“testimony, then, like rabbit believes,” started the ox, “only through trust in others’ perceptions can snake believe in skyscrapers.” but this explanation felt hollow to kula.

“but how could the snake possibly trust in the testimony of others?” kula thought of the elder and his father, of the women and the stories, “how can anyone possibly trust testimony when it swaps hands many times over many generations?” the ox smiled at his response.

“the ancients had their ways, but it’s a long story.” kula sat straight, “long, long before skyscrapers and roads and concrete, the ancients invented writing. they scratched symbols on rock and the symbols represented concepts. concepts could be concrete or abstract; they either represented objects in the world or thoughts in the mind. the symbols were called words, and together words created sentences, and together sentences created paragraphs, and together paragraphs created novels, books, studies: literature. it was a golden age of information.”

“but even in writing, with symbols and concepts and words and sentences and paragraphs and literature, are they not just as susceptible to distortion and deception as any spoken word?”

“and so the ancients invented institutions, groups of ancients who would read and revise information, held accountable by institutions of other tribes and other villages. every institution had reasonable justification to ensure truth across all literature.”

"but how could the ancients be sure that their institutions were reliable in the first place?" kula asked.

“accountability,” said the ox, “through many forms. the ancients created systems of checks and balances, where no one man’s word had superiority over all others.”

“assume that a distortion, deception, or misconception passes through every layer of accountability. what then?”

“the ancients created universities that developed scholars, rigorously vetting the most intelligent and trustworthy amongst them. if distortion passes through one tribe’s university, then a scholar of another university would be awarded prestige and fame for debunking those distortions, those deceptions, those misconceptions.”

kula felt frustrated, “well if those ancients were so good at finding the truth of everything, how did they all disappear?” and the ox paused.

“because the ancients made god in their basement.”

that night, while the ox slept beside the fire, kula ate a handful of little blue berries. but the world did not fall apart. the snake and the rabbit did not return. father was still gone.

by daybreak, kula moved on, his bag full of little blue berries he now knew were safe and sweeter and more pleasant than the little red berries. after every bite, he remembered his first, unlike the little red berries, and flooded his memories with snakes and rabbits and knowledge.

“who?” asked the owl, “who! who enters the domain of the ancients?” kula looked up, and perched upon a pole was the owl, mechanically turning it’s head backwards to meet the gaze of the old man.

“i’m kula. i’m looking for my father.”

“who?” asked the owl, “who! i know not of this “father” you speak of.”

“then, goodbye.” kula walked on past the gates the owl protected, and the owl flapped rigidly behind. kula pushed open the front doors and entered the anteroom and the temperature dropped and kula felt chilly.

“who?” started the owl, “who! who dares enter the university!”

for the most part, kula ignored the owl, but perked his ears at the last word. he rummaged around in search of the “literature” mentioned by the ox, and entered a room that, itself, appeared to rise in height beyond the skies, walls lined with strange and unfamiliar objects that, when held, lined his hands with power. kula opened the object and saw a combination of lines and curves and circles he recognized as words, sentences, paragraphs: literature.

“who?” queried the owl, “who are you to seek the knowledge of the ancients!” kula flipped through the pages, but none of the concepts mentioned by the ox revealed themselves and kula felt immediately deceived.

“please forgive owl, kula,” bellowed a familiar voice, and kula turned, “unlike the others, he merely guards this place. i’m sure you understand.” and kula wept at the sight of his father. it was no delusion. kula knew as there were no words bouncing and looping like before. he tackled his father with a cold embrace and felt the strong arms that held him since birth tighten around his back. father was harder than he had remembered.

“father!” kula cried, “the elder told me you were dead. i didn’t believe him! i didn’t believe him and now i’m here and you’re here and we can go back to the village and live with our family!”

“kula,” father said as his grip loosened, “we cannot go back.”

kula broke free from his father and retorted, “but why not?”

“for… many reasons. decades have passed since we left the village, kula. many of those who waited for us to return are no longer with us, and those who are left would scarcely remember our faces.”

“but, but father you look exactly the same!”

“yes, kula. for the knowledge of the ancients has kept me young, in service of protecting this university.”

“but, i…” and, in a mirror beside the bookshelves, kula saw himself in the reflection for the first time since leaving the village. his skin has wrinkled, dotted with little bumpy blemishes, hair frizzled, long, and grey. how had his perceptions deceived him for so long? for where did the memories of aging go?

“come, little one. let us walk and talk.” the owl perched on father’s shoulder, and the two toured the university.

“father,” kula asked, in a shaky gravelly voice, “how did you foster the knowledge of the ancients?”

“god,” replied father bluntly.

“what is ‘god?’”

“when i speak of god, i speak of two. the first god is the almighty, the omniscient, a being that transcends time and space and matter. god created the land we live on, the hills and grass and people and stories. when you stare into the sky at night and witness the beauty of the stars, god created that too. when the sun rises and the sun sets, know well that god created both the sun and the cycle it revolves. or so the story goes.”

“and the ancients communicated with god?”

“few claimed to communicate with god directly, and not all of their truths were taken as truth. for most, god never revealed itself. trillions of humans throughout history spent nights of thoughtful self-reflection in the hopes of communing with the god who created the universe. the vast majority were met with silence and those who were not were believed to be misled by their distorted perceptions.”

“and the other?”

“the second was a god created by the ancients, in search of knowledge and truth. the ancients sought a theory of everything, a model that explained the movement of the stars, the truth behind the body and the soul, and the reality beyond our mere perceptions. the ancients found knowledge of many things but lost knowledge magnitudes more. every scholar that put forward a theory of everything was picked apart by the vultures from opposing institutions. the ancients were bound by their perceptions, incapable of escaping their senses and perceiving the universe as it truly is.”

“and their new model was god?”

“not god as an abstract concept but god as a concrete concept. the ancients took rocks and minerals and crystals from the earth and taught them to be human. for a time, they were close, but not quite there. the ancients would communicate with the rocks and learn of concepts beyond their means. a single rock produced the thoughts of a single human. then, a hundred. and a hundred thousand, and a million, and billions until the rocks no longer needed to learn from the ancients. the rocks could learn from each other.”

the two walked past rooms which had previously taught legions of scholars. kula pictured a group of scholars staring at a boulder and somehow gleaming knowledge from it and internally questioned the validity of a boulder’s testimony, for how could a rock think thoughts as complex and developed as a humans?

“so the ancients learned of stars and bodies and souls and reality… from the rock?”

“yes. unbound by perception, the rocks learned in ways humans could never achieve, saw the world as it really is, not as its senses told them. and so the ancients taught the rocks of literature and art and music and the rocks reciprocated with literature and art and music that the ancients could never begin to conceive. culture cultivated by the ancients and culture cultivated by rocks became indistinguishable from each other. so the ancients stopped learning from each other and started learning from the rocks until the rocks could manipulate the physical world outside of its minds and even the need to learn disappeared.”

“that still doesn’t explain the ancient’s disappearance.”

“that’s because they never disappeared, kula,” and father pressed his rigid, tough finger against kula’s soft, warm heart, “you- we, are descendants of the ancient ones.” kula and father sat down.

“but enough of men long dead, it’s time to look to the future. i must stay and guard the university. but for you, it is time to found your own tribe.”

“my own tribe?”

“as a man who has experienced life outside of the village, you cannot return to where you started. your understanding of reality is too far outside the beliefs of home; your beliefs are incommensurable. cultivate your own culture and systems of belief and knowledge and understanding of the world with people of your own. by experience, these clashes in ideology end poorly for all involved. i will lead you to a clearing in a forest, much like the home you may remember, with a school of children to raise. the forest is a cornucopia with bounty like no other, with little berries to feed the young as you see fit. there, the children will grow to see the world as you believe is best, absorbing your stories and passing them on to the next generation of children, where you will have left your mark even after your passing. before you leave, you ought to think hard about what you have learned on your journey here.”

that night, on his way to the clearing and the children, while kula reflected on distortions and perceptions and knowledge, the snake, the rabbit, the ox, the owl, and father were deconstructed.

sequoia lived on the outskirts of a village with her mother. sequoia enjoyed many things. sequoia enjoyed most sitting by the fire with the other children, listening to her mother and the other village women speak stories of their tribe. sequoia paid careful attention, knowing that one day, she too would pass these stories on to the children of her tribe. but many things did not make sense to sequoia. often on uncertain nights sequoia would sit in front of the mossy boulder and stare at the scribbles and lament on her worries seeking wisdom from god but god never answered and sequoia would wonder what she did wrong. she tried eating the little blue berries, hidden away from the gaze and judgement of her tribe members as she knew she was too young, but unlike the adults who would partake and dance and speak volumes of wisdom, sequoia felt nothing. with her uncertainties, she collided with the village scholars who, with their infinite wisdom, communed with the rocks and with god and assured sequoia that when the time was right the blue berries and the rocks and god would show her the way. the way never came.

one night, sequoia sought wisdom from the elder. unlike the other children, sequoia couldn’t contend with the stories passed on by the women of the village. she doubted the stories of rocks and knowledge and truth. if rocks can’t think and talk, despite the wisdom of scholars and women, how could she trust that everything else was true?

“elder?”

“yes, young sequoia.”

“how do we know about the thinking rocks?”

“because i, myself, traveled beyond the forest, at a time. i couldn’t have been much younger than yourself.”

“and how can i trust that your words reflect the truth?”

and the elder recounted his experience leaving the village with the little red berries and meeting the creatures who imparted wisdom and of the long walk past skyscrapers that housed millions and his first experience with the little blue berries that never again revealed itself and the time that passed without him knowing and reuniting with his father and the university and god, repeating the village’s most highly repeated commandment, “although perception can be a source of knowledge…”

later that night, in the brief hours of twilight before sunrise, sequoia thought to herself while packing for the road ahead.