#Sometimes I think about evolutionary trees and how they would work in Dream Land

[lady-zephyrine]

So I imagine Burning Leo would be related to Fire Lions (just more round), but I'm also wondering if they're related to Efreeti as well.

And if that's the case, Efreeti might also be a round fiery cat as well.

[tanadrin]

The Vault

[Attention conservation notice: 6800 words, SF]

The car trundled uneasily over the stony road toward the dig site. Idalrea was a bleak landscape at the best of times: glacier-scoured barrens, lowlands inundated by cold seas, here and there thin expanses of soil in which mosses and bits of grass could occasionally thrive, and, of course, all of this under the unremitting polar sun. It should be hotter, Mazal thought. He always expected Idalrea in the summertime to be warm, and perhaps further inland, away from the moderating effect of the polar currents, it was. But here, even in the sheltered fjords of the northern isles, it was cool and overcast, a perpetual pale gloom. He remembered something vague from a book once, about evolution. They had arisen here, not in the isles, but to the south, in the sheltered place between Idalrea’s mountains and the coast. No wonder most of their species had sailed the world’s oceans in search of new homes in the millennia since. There was little to love in this gray land.

Of course, it could just have been that Mazal was in a bad mood. The car had a roof, but no sides, and he was cold and miserable, and the bouncing up and down was starting to make him feel sick. He looked over at the driver, one of Asala’s students.

“How much longer?” he asked.

“We’re just about there. Over this next rise, you’ll see it.”

Mazal did his best to stay calm. To keep his expectations measured, reasonable. He had dreamed of a day like this since he was a young man, since his earliest days as a botanist. And while he had always tried to couch his theories in the most cautious terms, to present only the narrowest and most thoroughly justified conclusions in the papers he published, he had to admit to himself that he nonetheless still nursed the wild, youthful dreams of those early years. He still hoped for some firsthand evidence of what he knew in his heart to be true--but he could wait.

The car climbed a low hill, a shoulder of a low moraine that abutted a stony outcropping, and turned a corner. Suddenly the view up the beach toward the head of the fjord was laid bare, and Mazal could see at the far end small figures in brightly-colored jackets moving around the beach. The gray rocky sides of the hills swept down almost to the water’s edge here, and where they met up ahead there was an immense pile of rock.

“There, you see it?” his driver said. “That’s the dig site. The door is just there, where the boulders are.”

Mazal leaned forward and peered through the dirty windshield. “I just see some people standing around,” he said.

“You’ll see it when we get closer, then.”

There was a hard bump as they went over some rocks, and Mazal gripped the side of his seat tightly.

“So are you the geologist?” the driver asked.

“What?” 

“The geologist. Professor Asala said we’d be getting someone from the geology department down here in a few weeks. You’re just earlier than we expected, is all.”

“No, I’m not a geologist,” Mazal said, a little irritated. “I’m a botanist. An agronomist, by training.”

“What, like you study farms?”

Mazal sighed. “Yes. Something like that.”

“Oh.”

There was a short, awkward silence.

“What are you doing here, then?”

Mazal laughed a short, low laugh. “I don’t know yet. I expect Professor Asala will tell me soon enough.”

It was true. It was a long, long way to come for something that did not, on its surface, appear to have anything to do with botany. Asala was a biologist herself, originally, and sometimes a friend--sometimes a rival--from long ago. But she had taken a turn toward archeology later in her career, and paleontology, and as far as Mazal knew, was happy enough to leave genetics and her impatient, late-night arguments with Mazal far behind. Then, he got a message from her.

The message had arrived when Mazal was in the Deserts with his students, on the ninth day of a genetic surveying trip that was supposed to last four weeks. It said simply: “Come to Bilaik’s Fall at once,” it said. And, “You were right about everything.” That was all. But it was enough for Mazal to call for an airlift to the coast, at considerable expense to himself, and then to arrange a flight south. It could only be about one thing, one argument, the only real argument he had ever had with her, the one that had contained everything she admired about him and that also infuriated her. It was, really, a question of time.

Every year, Mazal had a new crop of incoming students sit down in one of his classrooms, and every year he would stand up in front of them, and project a series of images on the big white screen in the front of the room. Two, or three, or sometimes four plants--roots, stems, leaves, fruit, flowers--side by side. And he would ask his students, what do these have in common?

This year, it had been an eager young man who had responded at once. “They’re all closely related,” he said. “Different versions of the same tree.”

“Correct,” Mazal said. “You wouldn’t know it to look at it, but each of these plants is in fact part of the same species; they’re just ordinary apple trees. Not hybrids, not genetically modified. The apple tree is very widely distributed, and different farmers in different countries have, over time, developed varieties better-suited to the local climate, or to whatever use they intend to put their apple crop. As you might do with any food crop, or any kind of livestock, or even decorative plants like garden flowers.”

“Which one is the original one?” a student sitting a row or two back asked.

Mazal smiled. The question anticipated the next point he wanted to bring up. “The one on the far right,” he said. “Found only in a single valley on the Gaderun coast. It is very nearly extinct. Alas, the wild plant seems to have evolved for cooler, wetter conditions than now prevail in the region; it is only its more specialized offspring that survive, although they flourish in many different regions.”

He brought up a new image.

“Now look at these,” Mazal said. Closeups of the heads of stalks of wheat. He pointed to the one on the left. “This is a large-kerneled grain, with a slightly shiny outer covering. A tetraploid strain--it has double the amount of chromosomes its ancestor had. This one, here, is single-grain, an ordinary diploid species, with hard outer husks. And this one, one of the most commonly cultivated grains in the world, is hexaploid. Rather uniquely, each of its three sets of chromosomes seems to come from a different ancestor; it is a remarkable example of hybridization.

“This class will be about genetics, so let me ask you a genetics-based question: if I asked you how you might go about figuring out which of these was the original species, how would you do it? Obviously, the hybrid is out.”

“So are the polyploids,” the eager student at the front said.

“Yes, so are the polyploids.” He touched another button; a dozen new species appeared on the screen.

“These are a selection of diploid varieties. There are many more. How would you go about sorting them?”

“The most common one?” someone suggested.

“All that means is that it grows well, or that people like the taste. No, that has nothing to do with it. What else?”

“Compare it to wild varieties?”

“You could do that, if you had any wild wheat to compare it with. As it happens, we don’t. Whatever grass wheat originally derives from is now extinct.”

“Then compare them to each other,” a woman in the back said.

“Go on.”

“Find out what genes are common across all of them. Find out what genes are common to one or two or three. Try to group them together. Create a taxonomy.”

“Yes. Yes, that would work quite nicely,” Mazal said. He flipped to the next slide. A tree-shaped diagram. “This, as it happens, is a reconstruction of the taxonomy of diploid species of wheat. There is some fussing about the margins with the details; plants can hybridize, which can create problems for creating clean family trees. Can you think of any other use for a diagram like this?”

Quiet. It went on long enough a couple of students started shifting in their seats.

“Find out… how old they are?” the woman in the back said tentatively.

“How might you do that?”

“Well… developing new varieties of a plant takes time. You would have to, I don’t know, guess how long. Try to judge how many differences in the genome accumulate over how long. I guess it would be easier in wild plants, since people aren’t constantly trying to breed different strains.”

“Indeed. And genetic chronology is used to great effect in the study of non-domesticated organisms as well. It is not a precise method of measurement; sudden environmental change can drive rapid bursts of diversification in nature just as the intentional creation of new breeds of plants or animals can among domesticated species. But rough approximate bounds can be given. It is those that are my particular area of research.”

The next slide was a map of the world.

“As it happens, genetics and cladistics are not the only line of evidence we have to rely on. Geographical distribution can indeed be of some help, as long as we take care to make sure we are comparing more basal varieties rather than less. It was just such a technique that helped an earlier generation of botanist track down the wild apple, deep in Deserts no one had ever settled.

“A conundrum arises with wheat, however, one I think you will all appreciate. We have no wild variety to study, nor even any good candidates. The most basal strains are all rather similar to one another genetically, and it’s not clear which came first, if, indeed, any did. One or two show startling adaptations that we struggle to explain from an evolutionary standpoint: for instance, a species naturally resistant to certain phosphonic-acid-based herbicides which only entered common use about forty years ago. One strain, found only on a small island in the Garral Sea, and which is otherwise genetically unremarkable, glows in the dark. No convincing explanation for this adaptation has been advanced.

“That leaves us only the technique of genetic chronology, to at least attempt to determine when these species diverged.”

“When did they?” another young woman asked.

Mazal smiled a small half-smile. He reached over and switched off the projector, and walked slowly to the podium. He leaned against it for a second, gathering his thoughts.

“This is where I must be honest with you all,” Mazal said. “I have, as you are no doubt aware, a bit of a reputation both in this college and in my field, as someone with rather… unorthodox ideas. My methods are not the problem. My methods are all strictly by the book, and I go only where they take me. Unfortunately, they have, in the past, led me to conclusions others have regarded as absurd or impossible; and where they have concluded that therefore the methods we rely on must in some way be faulty, I have, instead, preferred to ask: what if they are not?”

Mazal folded his arms and looked at his class intently.

“I will, so long as you are taking one of my classes, endeavor to make sure you learn the skills and information necessary to excel in your chosen area of study. I will, without reservation, present to you scientific consensus and refrain from injecting my own heterodox opinion--unless asked. And I shall most certainly highlight that my own conclusions are not shared by the majority. This is not because I do not have faith in them; it is because I would be doing you all a disservice to pretend that my perspective is the only correct one. With that rather elaborate caveat, I will now answer the question I was just asked.

“The orthodox answer is this: we do not know. Genetic chronology methods are uncertain at best, and due to the fact that some easily hybridized species have convoluted genetic histories, and that among plants more horizontal gene transfer is always a possibility than among animals, some families, like that of wheat, cannot have their genetic histories clearly reconstructed from the evidence we currently have available. If you encounter an exam question on this topic in six months, that is the answer you will be expected to give.

“If, however, you use the formulae and the other lines of evidence normally pursued for this kind of reconstruction, you arrive at a rather remarkable conclusion: that wheat was domesticated about five hundred thousand years ago. You will no doubt object that our species did not exist five hundred thousand years ago; nevermind build cities, conduct agriculture, or domesticate crops. To which my response would be, as it has ever been: yes. The only possible answer, then, is that it is not our species that did the domestication.”

The reaction that year was very subdued. Some students were amused by the provocative argument. More than a few were skeptical. No one, of course, took it at face value. Mazal, they all knew, had crazy ideas. Mazal believed in aliens. If Mazal weren’t a well-respected geneticist, with dozens of solid accomplishments under his belt, they’d have shipped him off to the loony bin ages ago; but his crazy was confined, his crazy could be controlled, and set aside when it had to be. He could be trusted to teach the undergraduates, anyway. And that was the compromise Mazal had always made with himself: he would yield. When confronted, he would back down. But it had taken its toll on him over the years. So when Asala had said, “You were right,” what else could he do? He set a course for Idalrea. As fast as he could possibly go.

The car came to a halt in front of a knot of tents, temporary structures, and big earthmoving machines, all the normal signs of intense paleontological activity. Mazal had seen Asala’s travel pictures before; this was nothing new. What was new, was the soldiers. They were doing their best to be unobtrusive, carrying only pistols, hiding their uniforms under dull windbreakers. But they still stuck out. He looked over at his driver. She motioned to Mazal to wait; as soon as they saw the car, two of the soldiers had started walking nonchalantly over to them.

They greeted the woman with a nod, and one of them asked Mazal for his ID in as friendly a tone as he could manage. Mazal took it out.

“You’re Dr. Asala’s friend?” the man said.

Mazal nodded.

“Very good. She told us you were coming. Right this way, sir.”

Mazal followed them through the camp, to the place where the rubble-covered slope met the beach. Between two great boulders there was a deep, dark cleft; the passage of many feet had worn a path leading into it, and the soldiers stopped just outside. One of them took out a radio and spoke into it.

“Dr. Mazal is here. Can someone come out and meet him?”

There was a scratchy, indistinct response that apparently made sense to him; a few minutes later, the graying head of Asala emerged from the crevasse. When she saw Mazal, she smiled.

“You made it,” she said.

“I did,” Mazal replied. “Now, would you kindly explain what I’m doing here?” He eyed the soldiers on either side of him.

“Oh, don’t mind them,” Asala said hurriedly. She waved him forward, toward the crevasse. “I think someone in the government got spooked when we mentioned what we’d found. They’re just here to keep an eye on things.”

“I thought you dug up bones for a living?” Mazal said.

“Yes. And sometimes, I find other things.”

“Has this happened before?”

“Well… no, not exactly. Come on, come on. You’ll be glad you came, I promise.”

Mazal followed Asala tentatively; as they moved underneath the rocks, he realized that the summer sun outside had made it seem darker than it was. Someone had strung some lights along the floor, illuminating the mouth of a large cave. More light shone from inside, and cables snaked out to a generator humming away by the entrance. Asala strode confidently forward, and Mazal followed.

“The whole coast is dotted with caves like these,” she said. “We’re pretty far south, but we’re not so far from the Basseron Islands, the place where our species probably first evolved. So we were here looking for bones, early tools, anything that would tell us more about our place in the tree of life, about what sort of hominids might be our closest ancestors.” Beyond the entrance was a large chamber that seemed to branch off in several directions. Only one was lit up, though, and that was the way Asala went.

“Yes,” Mazal said. “I’ve read that that’s a rather persistent mystery in your field.”

“Quite. One I’ve always been interested in. But the genetics angle bore no fruit, so I had to get my hands dirty.”

“So you’ve said. Why am I here?”

“Because,” Asala said, “I think we’ve finally found something. Not the answer, maybe, but an answer. An important one. And I think it’s one that backs up something you’ve been saying for years.”

“You don’t mean my work on drought-resistant potatoes, do you?” Mazal said dryly.

Asala laughed. “No. I mean the one we used to fight about.”

“What was you said when we were still students? You’d never heard such a stupid idea in your life before?”

“Something along those lines, anyway. I don’t think I was that harsh.”

“You were pretty harsh, as I recall.”

“And you were always so sensitive.”

If he were a younger man, Mazal might have been offended; instead he rolled his eyes.

“Anyway,” Asala said. “We’d been exploring caves along the coast. We found this one six weeks ago, and we were pretty excited. There was some evidence of fire-building near the entrance, something that might have been the remains of cave paintings. We thought we’d do some digging around, to see if we could find any stone tools or animal remains that looked like they’d been butchered. Maybe some bones, if we were lucky. We did find some. Watch your head.”

They ducked through a low passage in the back of the chamber, coming into a small, roughly cylindrical room. It might have been cut by the passage of water, or hewn very patiently by many hands working over many years, but the thing in the middle stopped Mazal short. Dirt from the cave floor had been dug away, and a perfect, rectangular hole revealed beneath it. A hatch.

“The difficult was this,” Asala said. “We carbon-dated the bones. They’re about fifty thousand years old. Definitely some ancient cousins of ours. But they were found in the dirt six inches above that. Which means, that hunk of metal you’re staring at is older than that.”

Mazal wanted to laugh. “And older than any city or any known civilization on the planet.”

Asala nodded. “Unless the historians are really holding out on us.”

Mazal squatted down to peer at the hatch more closely.

“Is this steel?”

“No,” Asala said. “We’re not sure what it is. It looks like metal, but it might not be. We haven’t sampled it yet, but it seems to be some kind of high-strength alloy or advanced metamaterial. I have an engineer acquaintance coming to look at it.”

“So you haven’t opened it?”

“What? Of course we have. There’s a button.”

Asala reached down and pressed something in the dirt; there was a metallic clang, and the hatch swung open. There was more light below; Mazal could see a ladder.

“Come on,” Asala said. “Down you go.”

Mazal began to clamber down rather warily. “You know,” he said as he climbed, “the bones could have been moved. This could be a hundred-year-old bunker from the Polar Wars. Or somebody’s idea of a practical joke.”

“We thought about that,” Asala said, “because we’re not idiots.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--”

“No, I get it. Don’t worry. You’ve always been cautious, in your own way. You want to exclude all the mundane possibilities. Well, look, nothing in this life is certain. But if it is a hoax, or a secret cult hideout or something, it’s one that’s had every inch of dirt on top of it carefully arranged to look as authentically old as possible. It has had more dirt and bones and even some dessicated ancient plant seeds that corroborate reconstructions of the local climate from tens of thousands of years in the past scattered down the first hundred feet or so of hallway.”

They reached the bottom; Mazal could indeed see that the floor of the corridor here was rather dirty; someone had carefully marked out survey grids all down its length, and a very narrow footpath had been cleared down the middle.

“Watch your step, by the way,” Asala said. “You never know, we might have missed something. This way. So yes, it might be a hoax. A very, very good hoax. One that involves some dedicated conlanging, no less.” She pointed out something on the side of the corridor, barely visible in the rust and the darkness. Definitely letters, letters that Mazal could not read.

“They’re all over the place down here. Other things, too. What might have been books once. Also carbon-dated, by the way.”

There was a feeling in Mazal’s arms and shoulders and chest that he had not felt in a long time. A feeling like electricity, or pure heat. A feeling of ridiculous, childlike excitement. He did his best to ignore it. They continued down the hallway; after only a few dozen meters, the floor became merely rusted, here and there exposing small patches of bare rock. Whatever this place was, most of it was subject to ordinary decay.

“How big is it?” Mazal asked.

“Not sure. Some cave-ins have blocked of some parts. There’s a lower passage that’s flooded. A shaft that was probably an elevator once, but a lot of the ancient machinery is either non-functional or rusted into a single giant lump.”

“Not all of it?”

“Not all of it. To your left.”

They turned, and the corridor began to slope gently downward. Mazal could hear voices ahead; the corridor opened into a large, round room, the size of a lecture theater. Lights had been set up on stands, to illuminate the walls, which were covered in intricate figures and dense markings. People were milling around, taking photographs, making notes. At the far side of the room was a single immense monolith, with a surface that seemed to have been polished to a shine. Mazal inhaled sharply.

“Gods above and below,” he said quietly. “What is all this?”

Asala smiled. “Something intended to last. It’s built out of the same stuff as the hatch.”

Mazal walked over to the wall to get a closer look. The markings were clearly writing of some kind. He had no idea what. He ran his fingers over the surface. They were deeply engraved. Geometrically precise letters. Intended to be read. But by whom?

“Come here,” Asala said. Mazal followed her to a section of the wall that was recessed slightly, with different markings than the rest. She put her hand on one, and pressed; the wall slid slowly to the side, revealing a high, narrow passage behind it. She stepped just inside, and pulled something out, handing it to Mazal.

“Careful,” she said. “It’s very cold.”

She was right; Mazal had to grip it in the ends of his jacket sleeves to hold it. He turned it over in his hand. It was a long, thin metal plate, the length of his forearm and perhaps three fingers wide. On one end, etched into it, was an image of a plant: the head of a stalk of wheat. Beside it, a series of small pictures he didn’t recognize. And in holes, down the length of the plate, small glass vials, deeply set into the metal. Inside them were seeds.

“Seeds of wheat,” Mazal said.

“Not just wheat, if the pictures are anything to go by. Other crops, too. Soy. Rice. Some fruits. And what look like genetic samples from animals. It’s like a library.”

“A library that’s fifty thousand years old?”

“Much older than that, if we’re right. Some of the illustrations on these walls are star charts. Mazal, this place could he hundreds of thousands of years old.”

Mazal leaned against the wall, his mind spinning.

“You probably can’t germinate the seeds after all this time,” he said to himself. “But if they’ve been kept cold enough, dry enough… you could sequence their DNA. You could recover the species. If they’re unknown species. Ancient cultivars. Oh, goodness.”

“Mazal!” Asala said. “Don’t you understand what this means?”

“What?”

“You were right, you idiot! There were people on this planet before… well, before people! Before our kind of people, anyway! They built this place. I don’t know why. Maybe some kind of safeguard against disaster. It didn’t work, if that’s what it was. But you were right!”

Mazal smiled. “Yes, I was, wasn’t I? My wife will be so happy.”

Asala laughed. “You should be gloating right now.”

“I’ll do that later,” Mazal said. “I want to know everything first. Everything you’ve found out.”

“Asala!” someone called from the far end of the room.

“I promise you, Mazal, I will be happy to share. Let me take care of this, and we’ll go up. I can show you the notes and video we’ve taken so far.”

Mazal nodded, still leaning against the wall for support. Asala went to go see what the fuss was about.

After a few minutes, he felt like he could stand again; his limbs still felt weak, like a rush of adrenaline had just worn off, but he couldn’t stay still. He paced back in forth in front of the walls, trying to will some sudden understanding to leap out at him. Finally, he came to the monolith in the middle; he ran his hand over the surface. Smooth and cold, like everything else. He bent down to examine where it met the floor; only the tiniest crack showed. The same near the wall; it seemed to pass back, into whatever lay behind it. He went around to the other side. That was curious; there was a depression there, a little niche he couldn’t see inside of. He looked back over his shoulder; Asala was talking energetically to two young men. He shrugged, and stuck his hand in the hole, feeling around.

The sides were smooth, but the bottom was slightly rough. There was something there, and with his fingertips he could trace out five troughs, radiating from a central depression. Like a handprint. He pressed his hand into the hand-shaped hole, expecting nothing. He nearly fell over with shock when a cool blue light shone from within. He jumped back, and looked up at the monolith.

Nothing happened. Well, that was a relief. He turned and walked quickly over to Asala. She was saying something to her colleagues about work schedules; then when she saw Mazal, she paused.

“Mazal, what’s that? Over your shoulder.”

Mazal turned around. “What’s what?”

“I could swear--is something different with the pillar?”

“The pillar?”

“That’s what we’ve been calling the big metal thing. No idea what it is. I thought for a second it was moving.”

“That’s odd.”

Then there was a noise like an enormous machine stirring to life, and the monolith--the pillar--lurched forward. Mazal yelped; someone dropped something. As they stood there entirely uncertain about what to do, the smooth metal surface opened in a hundred places, unfolding like a flower; inside, surrounded by the same blue glow, was an immense figure.

It was held nearly in the standing position by the cradle it lay in. It was at least twice as tall as Mazal; its body nearly hairless, its limbs long and delicate; but the hair on its head was dark, and shot through with gray like his own, and something in the cast of its features was still recognizable to him. And was it Mazal’s imagination, or was it… breathing? After a moment, everything was still again, and the light faded; and Asala turned to the two men.

“Go get a doctor,” she said. “And find Kolek. Now! Go now!” They scurried off. Mazal and Asala approached the figure slowly; when its eyes opened, they froze. They were brown, and bright; and they looked from Mazal to Asala and back; and then the figure moved--and collapsed, gasping, to the floor. Asala rushed forward to help it stand. It looked up at her and spoke in a deep, rolling voice, words that Mazal could not understand. He approached more cautiously, and laid his hand on the giant’s shoulder.

“Erm… it will be ok. You’re safe,” he said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “You are in Idalrea. Underground. But everything is fine. I think.”

The giant spoke again; but all Mazal could do was shrug. It reached up with a hand, and touched him on the back of the neck; Mazal felt a sudden, sharp pain go through his head, and he fell to his knees.

“Mazal! Are you all right?” Asala said.

The pain passed as quickly as it had come; and then the giant spoke to them in their own language.

“Forgive me,” he said. “That is a dangerous technique. But I wanted to tell you--I mean you no harm. You are safe.”

“Funny,” Mazal said. “I was about to say the same. You--you understand us now?”

The giant nodded.

“I am Mazal. This is Asala. Do you know where you are?”

“Yes,” the giant said. “I recognize this place. Though a great deal of time seems to have passed. Tell me, are the glaciers gone? Have the seas swallowed all our cities? Is anyone left besides me?”

Asala looked at Mazal nervously. Mazal felt as though an immense weight of time was suddenly bearing down on him; as though he was staring into the darkness of the deepest sea. You old fool, he thought to himself. Did you ever really think about what it would mean, if we were the second, the inheritors, the after-race? Did you ever think about the ghosts that we left behind?

“You are… perhaps alone. We do not know of any others like you. We did not know of you, until you… appeared before us.”

The giant nodded. “The sarcophagus was not a technology my people had much affection for. My willingness to endure it was considered strange by many. Tell me, how long has it been?”

Asala shifted nervously. “We don’t know,” she said. “We didn’t know this place existed until a few weeks ago. We have only just begun to study it. Perhaps you could tell us what you remember from before?”

The giant nodded. “It was winter. The skies were dark. It was so bitterly cold. We took several days to cross the ice, until we came to land. This continent we called Antarctica. Most of it still covered in ice. A desert, hidden beneath a glacier. We descended until we came to the vault; the others with me, they had some records they wished to add to it, in case our people returned. In case the danger passed, and they could begin to rebuild. I did not have so much faith. I wished to remain behind. So I did. I thought… in truth, I thought I was choosing death. But I was afraid to die; and better, I thought, to lie down with the hope, one day, of resurrection, than simply to throw myself into the sea. I did not really think this day would ever come.”

“Your people built this place?”

“It is one of several. Three in the south, two in the north. A place of records. A place to keep the seeds of life, if we should ever be able to bring back what was lost.”

“The records are intact,” Asala said. “You succeeded.”

Tears formed in the giant’s eyes. “If the records are intact, then we failed.” He shifted to a sitting position, and leaned back against his sarcophagus. “My people never came.”

Mazal did not know what to do; he sat down next to the giant and laid his small, hair-covered hand on the giant’s bare palm.

“What were your people called?”

“We had many tongues. In my own, we were called human.”

“We--in our tongue--we call ourselves the Padirek.”

“Padirek. Yes. I would have known you under another name. How long ago, I wonder.”

“If the glaciers still covered Idalrea,” Asala said, “many hundreds of thousands of years.”

The giant--the human--nodded. “That would make sense.” He sighed. “Even then, I think, we knew that we were doomed.”

“What happened?” Mazal asked.

“Many things. But most of all, the world changed around us. The side effects of our technologies--the exuberance of our collective youth, I suppose--came far more swiftly than we anticipated. By the time we marshaled the determination to confront that change, we could not stop it. Only hope to alleviate the worst of its consequences. The ice was beginning to melt here even then. The glaciers were retreating. They had vanished almost everywhere else; this was one of the last places cold enough to keep the vault, at least for a few hundred years. If the glaciers are gone, then so are the cities of my people.”

“Forgive me, but I thought… I have long speculated, anyway, that there once existed a people on this world with very advances sciences,” Mazal said. “Knowledge of genetics among them. Your people, they must have been. I am surprised that so powerful a people as yours could not adapt.”

“Are you?” the human said. “We tried. Some of us. Some of us preferred to hide away in their arcologies. Others, I heard, sought the stars. We had lost so much by then already. The seas were rising, our farmlands were drying out, so many kinds of bird and beast vanishing around us… many simply preferred to let our people dwindle away. To go quietly.”

“Why would they ever choose that?”

The human smiled. “You did not see the Earth in her younger days, Mazal. You did not see the green plains of Africa, where my people were born. You did not see the shining cities of the east, or the great engines we built to work our will, and you did not see us lose all these things, as the deserts came, and the seas rose, and life became harder, year after year. By the time I lay myself down here, our world had been diminishing for a long, long time. Long before I was born. I suppose… I suppose we all felt like the world had grown old. That our time was done.”

“But… but that can’t be,” Mazal said. “It isn’t. At all. The world is young. The universe is young. There is so much to build, to see, to do…”

The human touched Mazal’s cheek. “You have no idea how much joy it gives me to know that you feel that way. I said I knew your people once. When I was a young man, I visited the colonies on the Antarctic Peninsula. The place that was a refuge for one group of scientists working on their hope for the future. A new hominid. A new kind of mind in the world--one very like us, but, they hoped, perhaps with fewer of our faults, and more of our virtues. None of them expected to see their work bear fruit. Perhaps it never did, while our people still lived. Perhaps it was only thousands of generations later that the work they began bore fruit. Or perhaps it was only nature, and not them, responsible for your birth. But you live! You are here, speaking to me! And you still hope, and you still dream, as we once did. I hope that you do so forever. Ah!”

The human seemed to contort momentarily with pain. After a few seconds the agony passed, and his body slowly relaxed.

“Are you all right?” Asala said. “I sent for a doctor. Perhaps he can help, I don’t know.”

“Perhaps,” the human said. “There is a reason that the others shunned the sarcophagus. I think I was not one of the lucky ones.”

“Don’t worry,” Mazal said. “You’ll be all right. We’ll make sure of it. You have no idea what it means to me, to have wondered for so long if there was another people that was first… and now to meet one of you.”

“What makes you think we were first?”

“Weren’t you?”

“God no. Oh, perhaps we built the first cities. I don’t know. But we weren’t the first users-of-tools. We weren’t the first masters-of-fire. We weren’t the first hunters, or the first speakers-of-words.”

“Who was first?”

“We had cousins. You had cousins. Older kinds of human. The ones of the Neander. The Upright Ones. The Cunning.”

“These are your names for them?”

“Yes. Something like them, anyway. Your tongue… is very different from mine.”

“There is so much we can learn from you,” Asala said. “If you are willing to teach us.”

“I am afraid that will not be possible,” the human said.

“I know your world is gone,” Mazal said. “I know… I know this is a very hard grief for you. I can’t imagine what it’s like, to wake up after all this time and know that everyone you ever loved, everything you ever valued, is so… forgotten. But our people would welcome you, if you wished to live among us. Not just for what you can teach us. Not just for what you represent. We know what loss is like, even if we do not know yours.”

“You are kind, little Padirek,” the human said. “And I would happily share the legacy of my people with one like you, but I am afraid--ah!”

The human cried out this time, louder, and bent over double; when the pain passed, he spoke with ragged breath.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that my time is short. That it was only ever my fate to be a ghost in your world.”

Now Mazal’s eyes began to fill with tears; he took the human’s hand in his, and gripped it tightly.

“Help is coming,” he said. “Very soon. You are not a ghost. You are a man who lives and breathes, who has lost much, but who may yet gain many things. There is no grief above or below the sky so immense, that it precludes joy forever. Not even grief for a whole world. Even if we are the only legacy of your people, your people did not live in vain. I promise you that. I will show you. I will show you what we have done while you have slept. I will show you the great city, which sits above the immense falls, whose streets are filled with rainbows. I will show you the university where I work, where we study the earth and the stars and the secrets of life. I will show you our libraries, our paintings, our poetry. If we are your children, then these are your legacy, too.”

“Don’t cry, Mazal,” the human said. “Not for me. You don’t understand--you don’t know what this means to me. I thought the world would be silent, when we were gone. I thought--ahh! I’m sorry. But it doesn’t matter.” He leaned back, and closed his eyes; his breaths were now short and ragged. Mazal worried he could no longer talk over the pain; but after a moment, he spoke again.

“There may be other testimonies besides this place. Look in the mountains to the south. And on the Moon. And perhaps the planet beyond. More records of who we were--of what we did--than one man. I hope they are still there. I hope you find the answers you are looking for in them.”

“We will seek them out together,” Mazal said quietly.

“Yes,” the human said. He began to breathe more slowly; Mazal reached up and wiped the thin film of sweat from his brow.

It was only a few minutes ents later that they heard voices from further up the corridor; then the sounds of many feet, running their way. But the human was still; and when Mazal released his hand, it fell limply to the floor.

[thinkgloriathink]

Unpacking my summer’s readings

So I’ve finally gotten to munch through a hefty chunk of my reading list this summer break, which to this day is still outpacing my ability to keep up. Nevertheless, I’m pretty happy to report that the couple books I did manage to finish were full of gems and precious little nuggets of insight. The list goes as follows (in chronological order of completion, more or less)

The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Behave by Robert Sapolsky

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

Barking up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker

Give and Take by Adam Grant

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

3, 2, 1… Unpack!

1.

The Accidental Universe

by Alan Lightman

“In our constant search for meaning in this baffling and temporary existence, trapped as we are within our three pounds of neurons, it is sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn’t there. Or ignore what is. We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality. We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.”

— Alan Lightman

I’ve got to say, Lightman has a way with his words. In this essay, he weaves together descriptions about our vast and chaotic universe that just ooze with inspiring, tear-jerking beauty. His one segment about humankind’s yearning for permanence in this universe, that is notoriously unkind to that very notion, is so poignantly crafted that it’s worth a couple rereads. As a physicist, Lightman took his sweet time describing the universe at the enormous, cosmic level. At parts, he reached levels of abstraction where you were being fire-hosed with talk about thermodynamic laws, God(s), probability, miracles, and all other things that straddle divinity and science. This was great food for thought, for sure, but all this universe talk seemed to me like a bad recipe for nihilism. Human existence, in the grand scheme of things, really is woefully insignificant, especially if you’re zoomed out all the way in god-land like that. So I guess this book wasn’t the best at making me feel as though my mundane struggles, wants, and life ambitions had any real meaning or importance (which do, I protest!). Did this book fill me with wonder and intellectual bliss? Yep! Did this book kindle the fire in me to grease up my elbows and roll up my sleeves and make a difference in this world of humans? Sadly, no.

2.

Antifragile

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Somehow, it is only when you don’t care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Hohoho what a refreshing read this was! How should I describe this book… a bold treatise that exposes everything wrong with the world’s approach to risk and randomness through the lens of an anti-intellectual scholar? Taleb has no tolerance for bullshit, is irreverently skeptical, and is ruthlessly blunt about his dislike for pretentious armchair intellectuals and “fragilista” professionals. What impresses me the most about AntiFragile is that it is one of those few reads that actually have a real influence on my actions and thought processes. His arguments about randomness and risk (maximize optionality, gauge fragility instead of trying to predict the future, embrace variability over fragile stability, etc.) have pretty concrete applications if you really internalize what he says. No other book motivates me as much as this one to explore my opportunities widely and boldly. He never explicitly says this in the book, but the sentiment I really took away was: Carpe Diem! (Oh, and also a little bit of ��Fuck You’)

This is not to say that I instantly agreed with everything he said. In fact, I admit that I found quite a few of his concepts to be difficult pills to swallow, at first. For instance, he argues that we can tame the randomness in our lives by having optionality, as it can help us bound our losses and unbound our gains. Basically, you’ll always have the upper hand if you diversify your options, enter situations while maintaining multiple exit strategies and backup plans, and generally refuse all eggs-in-one-basket commitments (because that’s what fragile suckers do). I admit, my initial reaction to this was of mild disgust. Here’s a snippet from a sour journal entry I wrote, which I quote: “Taleb wrote an entire book about how not to be a sucker. Instead, he teaches you how to be something else: an asshole!” In slightly less emotional terms, what I meant here was that this flighty strategy would work great for self-preservation, but seems damagingly reckless to the big things in life that do inevitably require vulnerability and self-sacrifice, like close relationships. I think Taleb provides fantastic practical advice for how to withstand and thrive from turbulent challenges, but he would be missing the mark if he pushes self-preservation as the highest priority for living a good life. These insights, that have served him well as a former trader on Wall Street, just might not produce the same smashing successes when applied everywhere in life, I reckon. So while he has certainly demonstrated the wide applicability of his ideas, I yearn a bit for a more conscientious exploration of its limits.

3.

Behave

by Robert Sapolsky

“You don’t have to choose between being scientific, and being compassionate.”

— Robert Sapolsky

Ok this book takes the cake as my #1 favorite book of this summer. It also deserves another superlative: #1 Most philosophically provocative book.

Here were my first thoughts:

Robert Sapolsky?! The Sapolsky guy who did that brilliant talk at Stanford that inspired my starry-eyed self from middle school? YEA OH YEA IT’S HIM

Oh dear. Very big book.

If you were to go to Mars and could take only one social science book with you on your journey, bring this behemoth. A book with the ambitious goal of exploring all the best and worst parts of humanity, Sapolsky has meticulously combed through and weaved together a comprehensive quilt of all the landmark studies and events that have shaped science’s understanding of human nature to date. He patches together the motivations and meanings of our actions by blending ideas from a spectrum of disciplines including evolutionary biology, biochemistry, genetics, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, philosophy, game theory, law, and economics . Something I admire a lot about this book is the amount of nuance and humility Sapolsky has when explaining human behavior. No matter what arrogant “experts” confidently assert about their fields, one can’t adequately account for all the subtleties of human nature by relying on any singular model. I guess that sounds like common sense, but I think the inquisitive softness that I have come to appreciate in Sapolsky’s writing isn’t something very common at all.

That being said, I do have to say this book had a slow start for me. Sapolsky probably intended for his narrative to be as accessible to the general public as possible, so he took his liberties in the early chapters to explain the fundamental biology and neurochemistry concepts underlying his book. Not to say that this stuff isn’t interesting, but it was a little dry. Anyone who has taken a formal psychology class before or is a seasoned reader of social science books probably isn’t a stranger to many of the famous experiments he discusses in detail. Not to worry, though. The pace eventually picks up, landing its best kernels of wisdom and greatness toward the end. And seriously… it is worth the journey. I finished chapters 15-17 feeling like a champion, having experienced feelings towards humanity that swept across my whole spectrum of emotions (a book can do that?). I’ll do you the courtesy of not spoiling any of it ;)

So why do I find this book to be the “most philosophically provocative?” ‘Behave’ obviously invites a lot of introspection about human nature, but I think the doozy in this book lies in the recurring dialogue about free will vs. determinism. I know — bear with me — this debate has probably been beaten to death within academic circles for a century. But Sapolsky brought a new sense of urgency to the question by noting the relentless advancements of scientific and technological discovery we’ve been seeing in recent years. Sapolsky himself sits in the deterministic camp of ideology (gasp!), and goes into pretty grave detail about what this implies. If what he says is true, that humankind is already headed in the direction of realizing there is no free will, our current legal system and humanistic societal mores will be needing some serious revisions. But hey — the hopeful future he paints, where we will have shed our primitive beliefs in “evil” agents and learn to harmonize science with compassion sounds pretty swell to me. *shrugs*

(Bonus quote, because I loved this book so much)

“Solving those nuts and bolts issues may be a way of ending the war, But peace is not the mere absence of war; making true peace requires acknowledging and respecting the sacred values of them. /…/ In rational choice models of decision making, something as intangible as an apology could not stand in the way of peace, yet they do. Because in recognizing the enemy’s sacred symbols, you are de facto recognizing their humanity, their capacity for pride, unity, and connection to their past, and most of all, their capacity for experiencing pain.”

— Robert Sapolsky, Chapter 15

4.

Homo Deus

by Yuval Noah Harari

“This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world. Accordingly, the central religious revolution of modernity was not losing faith in God, but rather gaining faith in humanity.”

— Yuval Noah Harari, Chapter 9

Ok, I admit: After Sapolsky’s grand finish in “Behave”, diving straight into a second let’s-walk-you-through-all-of-human-history book without a proper palette cleanser wasn’t the most tasteful choice. But let’s leave that behind us, shall we? What “Homo Deus” has in common with “Behave” was an iffy beginning, though for a different reason. Harari starts the book off by painting some crazy speculations about humanity’s future and excitedly exploring the moral quandaries that come along with them: we unlock immortality, “hack” away society’s current afflictions, and/or upgrade ourselves to be living gods (hence the dramatic title). To be honest, all of that optimistic sci-fi talk started to annoy me, and I came close to abandoning the book; if there was anything I learned from Nassim Taleb, it was to protect my eyes from the cancerous garbage spewed by haughty experts who think they can predict the future. Thankfully, Harari was aware of this, as he was quick to qualify himself, before he began his thorough survey of man’s historical timeline, starting from square one. That was where the real fun began.

What stood out to me about this book was not its recounting of specific historical events in detail, but rather its insightful high-level analyses of human progress. I LOVE it. Somehow, Harari was able to capture the zeitgeist (pardon the fancy word) of every great human era, into one flowing narrative.

Here’s one example so you know what I mean. Harari remarks at one point that “modernity is a deal,” in which we have traded meaning for power. Long ago, when humans were pretty powerless against nature and celestial deities were the go-to answer for all the big questions about the universe, people didn’t struggle with existential crises. But in the modern age, where science and technology equip people with more power to direct their lives than ever before, meaninglessness and existential unease strikes like the plague. Cool, right? “Homo Deus” is FULL of insights like this. It’s incredible.

5.

Barking up the Wrong Tree

by Eric Barker

“We often confuse fate and destiny for meaning the same thing. But UCLA professor Howard Suber clarifies the distinction: fate is that thing we cannot avoid; it comes for us despite how we try to run from it. Destiny, on the other hand, is that thing we must chase — what we must bring to fruition. It’s what we strive toward and make true. When bad things happen, the idea of fate makes us feel better. Whereas /…/ success doesn’t come from shrugging off the bad as unchangeable and saying things are already meant to be. It’s the result of chasing the good and writing our own future. Less fate, more destiny.” — Eric Barker

Of all the books listed, this one was definitely the breeziest and perhaps the most enjoyable book to read. It is a fast and lightweight read, with an addicting quality to it that reminds me of online blogs (like Medium!). Addicting, you might ask? Yeah — the chapter titles are written like Buzzfeed article headings ( I mean this endearingly) , just beckoning for you to continue. For example, here’s one: “Do Nice Guys Finish Last?” … Need I say more?

I don’t have much else to say about this book besides how easily digestible and pleasurable it is to read. But don’t get the wrong idea — It’s full of hearty insights, and I love how Barker can explore some very deeply philosophical questions in plain speak, without dishing out empty, glib answers. It’s an espresso shot of no-frills discourse and practical wisdom about our common misconceptions about success. Who doesn’t like to ponder about how to live a successful and meaningful life? What is success, anyway? Bring it with you on your next plane ride or listen to its audiobook version during some thoughtful walks. 10/10 would recommend.

6.

Give and Take

by Adam Grant

“Givers don’t burn out when they devote too much time and energy to giving. They burn out when they’re working with people in need but are unable to help effectively.”

— Adam Grant

Nice guys don’t finish last. There, I said it. Adam Grant says so too. And then he wrote an entire book about it.

This book has the lively cadence that reminds me a lot of Malcom Gladwell’s books. Solid, real-world examples and anecdotes make Grant’s book lucid and persuasive. Reading ‘Give and Take’ gave me the fuzzies at parts, because who doesn’t want to feel that all is right with the world, where happy endings occur to people who give generously? But, of course, anyone who hasn’t been living blissfully under a rock their whole lives knows that this isn’t always the case. The kicker in this book is not that he praises saintly and self-sacrificing behavior (which, he does admit, can turn people into burnt-out doormats), but the way he distinguishes selfless and “other-ish” giving. Effectively, he discusses what styles of giving are actually sustainable and win-win in the long run, while giving practical advice about how not to be a burnt-out doormat. Valuable stuff to read, especially if you self-identify as a giver and want to feel validated. Grant reminds us that we (impersonal ‘we’) can help others and help ourselves too, if the cards are played right. I think I give this book a 7.5/10… solid book with clear arguments, but nothing about it made me leap out of my chair.

7.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

by Richard Hofstadter

“ The professional man lives off ideas, not for them. He’s a mental technician”

— Richard Hofstadter

I’ve got to say that this book was most unlike the others I’ve read. If you’re a U.S. history buff, you’d really enjoy this book, which deep-dives into the ebbing and flowing tides of American anti-intellectualism since its origins in the Great Awakening of the 1700’s, all the way to the present day.

( Heads up: This next bit is more of a rant than a book review.) The most mind-blowing thing I learned was really how deeply ingrained anti-intellectualism is in American culture. Peering into the darker parts of the U.S.’s recent history (remember McCarthyism?), the book highlights that intellectuals in this country have long been stamped with disparaging stigmas of being untrustworthy, morally decadent, effeminate, and, get this, un-American. Maybe it’s because I was raised in a different culture, but those sentiments just seemed bizarre to me as I was reading about them, and it took me a long time to understand. Personally, I’ve always revered the well-educated for their critical reasoning skills and genteel dignity, and could never wrap my head around why respectable Americans would routinely seem to be captivated, instead, by crass populist figures. How did “hardworking and charming Christian with simple and practical-minded values” become popularly known as the traits of the “quintessential” American man? This book walked me through the ins and outs of anti-intellectualism, which has become so integral in this country’s narrative. Here’s a thought: have you wondered why the U.S. isn’t known for having beautiful relics or extravagant monuments of classical art and culture, like many Western European countries are? Maybe it’s because the U.S. was built by founders who wanted nothing to do with all that . The first settlers had fled from such countries, and have abandoned centuries of history and tradition and culture, to live a simpler and more pious life. From this, you could probably imagine how anti-intellectualism begins to fit into the picture of American history. These roots run deep.

As much as I don’t want to bring up the 2016 election and subsequent events, this book, though it was published in 1963, is pretty darn relevant to all the craziness that we’re facing today ( is it a little disturbing that things haven’t changed that much in a half-century?) Last year’s presidential election was insane; it tore open old scars, and revealed an ideological rift between Americans that at times is so hostile that it seems impossible to get both sides to understand each other. I won’t say that this book magically made me “understand” all of the unrest between the left and right, or convinced me that anti-intellectualism is a great thing (still disagree…). But it definitely got me thinking about how swampy and complex this makes American history.

All that being said, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life was a fascinating but pretty challenging read. I’m no U.S. History enthusiast, and I certainly won’t be able to remember all the names, dates, and events that were mentioned, but it was enough to get me thinking about America’s past, the evolution of its values, and the perspectives of the “American people” of whom people like to refer.

8.

Thinking Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

“ Experts who acknowledge the full extent of their ignorance may expect to be replaced by more confident competitors, who are better able to gain the trust of clients. An unbiased appreciation of uncertainty is a cornerstone of rationality — but it is not what people and organizations want. Extreme uncertainty is paralyzing under dangerous circumstances, and the admission that one is merely guessing is especially unacceptable when the stakes are high. Acting on pretended knowledge is often the preferred solution.”

— Daniel Kahneman, Chapter 24

When shopping on Amazon for this book, I’ve honestly read nothing but praise. Kahneman and Tversky’s work have had an earth-shattering influence in the social sciences and economics for the past few decades, and it goes without saying that this book is a staple for anyone remotely interested in behavioral economics. All I can really think of to say is to read this book carefully, and have a pen on hand to annotate. This book is DENSE with counterintuitive insights about human psychology, which will make any reader start to think twice about the reliability (or unreliability, rather) of his/her judgment. Very cool, all the way through.

…

Unpacking: Done

So, there’s that: my compendium of book commentaries of the summer. I am ALWAYS looking for more thought provoking things to read, so please (x3) feel welcome to send me book/article/blog recommendations. Thoughtful discussions always appreciated :)