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(Page 2 of 2) Origins by Dan Bieger
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What kind of villain rises out of rot-gut mead? An alien, of course, and not just the alien but the alien's mother as well. Rhyme and meter perfect, a night Kenny Rogers only dreamed of, his mind's meme embedded itself in the crowd's sub-conscious. From that small group the meme spread, reproduced, infected the all the isle, then all the world. If that poor poet had only known, mayhaps he'd have sung a different tune.
Athens in the summer, hot, muggy, damp, the kind of place you must be proud to call home. A man could leave the wife behind and walk the streets, find a good match somewhere, a good conversation elsewhere, a good woman somewhere. A prudent man would walk carefully, though, because lately those folk from the mountain had been poking their noses into everything. Why, his best friend had met one of their women, a saucy, impertinent wench who demanded he sit down and carve her image in marble. The poor guy had spent a week of Tuesdays, his mind torn, his fingers bloody, his memory cleared of all save the glory of chipping away at a convenient slab or rock, carving her image. When he was finished, it was a fine thing to look at but where you going to put it. The wife certainly wasn't going to stand for a nude rock in her parlor. The next thing you knew, the polloi had voted to build a temple. A temple? What the Hades was a temple?
In the Garden there was a forest. Maybe the Garden was in the forest, that would be more logical but logic had little to do with the Garden so maybe the forest was in the Garden. The forest, being somewhat traditional, was composed of trees but the Garden's forest trees had names. Not just names, mind you, but Names, like the Tree of Life, Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Tree of Major Archetypes, the Tree of Lesser Ethical Dilemmas, and the Tree of Apples. Sometimes, it was easy to confuse one Tree for Another. You always had to check the name tags. After the Garden, most of the trees were given new names but some old Names survived. This gave these trees a reputation among other trees. No self-respecting Apple Tree stood anywhere near the descendants of trees not named in the Garden, regarding these later trees as some sort of aliens newly arrived on the planet. The later trees returned the compliment believing apple trees and their like – the new comers refused to capitalize names as if the act of capitalization was some kind of paganism and everyone knows pagans are alien to their societies – were the true aliens having no place in the world except in the Garden. They should have stuck with their roots; no one needed them now.
The Seed Ships arrived from the galaxy's core bearing both the life and the life support for the preservation of their kind. They located the proper kind of star with the proper star system with the appropriate planets and the appropriate average Constants and dropped their seed on the most apt planet. Some of their wiser folk had claimed that they should bring their own Constants with them believing the use of Average Constants would result in average progeny. Though, ultimately, their analysis would prove more accurate than even they might believe, the powers-that-were declined the effort of dragging all those Constants with them. Thus, the planet with Average Constants succumbed to the first alien invasion.
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