A rerun, and the option to split

(Cont.)

Then, exactly on the anniversary of their earlier arrival at the place, the wandering multitudes came to Fallout Rock again. Also known as Lynch Peak. Remember, it was here that Moses suffered a fallout with the entire populace, and its angry mobs almost lynched him, because they were dying of thirst; but then Bryan teamed up with the Volcano, and they caused a cascade of fresh drinking water to descend from the cliff. Now, however, this many years later, all those waters had dried up; or their source was re-corked or stoppered, for the stream was gone.

So the multitudes were dying of thirst again. This was the moment when Myala the black panther called it quits: she summoned a fiery chariot from heaven and went back to Jupiter, her native planet. “I’ll meet you at home, whenever you finish with these guys,” she said to her husband, Bryan the King. So the wild man with the goat eyes instructed the skilled seamstresses among the population to create a stuffed effigy of Myala; which he then buried beneath a plaque, to commemorate the location of her liftoff.

Now the attentive reader might ask: Why had the people arrived at the border of Rosemount, near the woods of Sin, again? Weren’t they intending to go into Emerald City, and then on to India, where Eldorado expands? Is the volcano of potential leading his population in circles; or did they at some point begin ambulating in reverse without realizing it? Could it be that the wilderness through which the multitudes are traveling is but a repeating loop of film projected behind them so as to create the illusion of motion, like what is known to the animators of cartoons as a “wraparound background”?

While the reader has been asking the above questions, the armies of wandering multitudes have begun railing against the Volcano at Fallout Rock: “It would have been better for us to remain wage-slaves in the Empire, for at least then we would have had enough water to drink.” The standard complaints of a perishing multitude. “All our livestock are dying; and there is no good land to plant crops.”

So Moses and Bryan said to the wild man whose hair completely encased his form: “What shall we do; tap the rock with our wand, like last time?”

And the wild man answered: “Here is my plan. Take the wand, Moses. You and your brother Bryan will gather the assembly together, and make a speech to the cliff before their eyes. It shall then release its water: a fresh cascade will come gushing down from the rock. In this way, you can offer refreshments to the congregation and their beasts.”

So Moses took the wand, as the wild man instructed, and he and Bryan herded the masses together before the cliffside. And Bryan went up and stood on the precipice. Then Moses tapped its base two times and waved his wand while announcing as follows:

“Let there be no longer any firmament in the midst of the waters, dividing the waters that are above from those that should be below. Let abundant geysers break out in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. And let the parched ground become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, let there be grass with reeds and rushes. Let the firmament no longer alone be called Heaven, but let the dry land that is newly watered become the Paradise of Earth.”

And while Moses was thus chanting at the cliff, Bryan rolled away the stone that had been blocking the upper wellspring, at which point a cascade of freshwater came gushing down for the people and their livestock to enjoy.

After this, the Volcano spoke to Moses and Bryan in private, saying: “Do as you like, but I am ready to lead the multitudes myself. Just me and the armies, alone in the wild together, touring the globe. What I’m trying to say is: Come along or not; it’s your call – if you have something you’d rather be doing, go ahead and pursue it. Any side-project or whatever. I don’t mean to push you away; but I just now realized, while watching you two at Lynch Peak, that it’s probably not necessary to have all three of us trying to pilot this caravansary. The triune nature of our headship might even be confusing the people, if only slightly – perhaps they would be better off with just one clear-cut captain. As it is written, ‘A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.’ How much worse, then, if the man is triple minded! But, like I said, it is completely up to you.”