A tourney: intro

(Cont.)

Now let me tell one more bad event that happened, before moving on to the rest of the Volcano’s road trip. I hate even to mention such misfortunes, but my aim is to maintain a truthful record here, and the fact is that there was a great deal of ugliness that occurred early on, when the workforce was wandering.

Alright, so here’s the issue. There was this faction made up of certain managerial types among the working populace – it’s true that the actual, official taskmasters and overseers from the Empire had been defeated: they were all now sleeping at the bottom of the Red Ocean, which closed over their heads when the workforce left the Empire; but, from among the laborers who escaped and were journeying with the volcano of potential, there existed individuals who naturally possessed a tendency to be bossy and to police people and to be bullies – some called themselves gurus and yogis, others took the title of deacon or minister, and they called themselves the Fathers of the Church, also known as clergymen, and bishops and pastors, and many other names. Reverend such-and-such; most honorable so-and-so. Do you get the picture?

Now these churchmen rose up before the Volcano, with a smattering of the members of the workers who had been coerced into following them – whether Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, or the various other sects, they all united under the common banner of the Church – and they gathered themselves together and stood as a bloc against the Volcano, and they said unto him:

“You bit off more than you could chew, when you set yourself up as the god of the entire workforce. Only the Church is equipped to handle a task of that magnitude; for we are all of us children of our Father in Heaven, and we are sons and daughters of the Most High, and the only true Creator appointed the Church to represent him to the people, and we are his clergy, his clerics, his priesthood, his ministry, his holy orders: the populace needs us to serve as intermediaries between them and the Almighty. It is madness and confusion to expect each individual to speak directly to the Volcano: We accuse you of being an imposter. How dare you lift yourself up above the congregation of the Church!”

And when the goat-eyed wild man heard this, he shook his head sadly and then answered the clergymen, saying: “I don’t desire to proclaim my own greatness – that would be inapt: I think it’s better for others to come to their own conclusion about how mighty I am. I’ll only remind you, once again, that it was I who caused all those frogs to congest the Empire; and I also made all the swarms of flies and locusts devastate the land. The King’s intelligentsia could not even manage to copy my lice plague. They were baffled: they had never known about such a spell. I also inflicted them with hideous, painful boils on their flesh: you saw that. But, enough. I could go on for days reminding you of the different marvels that I performed, all of which you witnessed with your own eyes. Forget the past, though; let’s just focus on the future. You doubt me? Fine, let’s put it to the test. I’m a man of science; let’s let the hard facts speak for themselves. So, what do you churchmen think would be a good contest? How about this: Let’s conduct an experiment, to prove which one of us is truly divine. Thus, once and for all, we shall find out exactly who is the Maker of All the Worlds, whether it be your Church’s cloud-god, or me myself, the volcano of potential. Here are the details:

“Let us each take a censer – you know what I mean by that term? I’m referring to those ornate metallic vessels that you clergymen use to burn incense in your religious ceremonies. Each of us shall take one; as many as wish to compete, bring a censer for your god. (I’m not sure if you Reformed Protestants consider your god to be the same or different from the god of the Catholics, the Lutherans, or the Baptists, not to mention the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Pentecostals, or the various other cults – you can all either share a censer, or take a censer of your own.) I’ll also take one for myself. Then we’ll all put fire into our censers, as well as incense; and we’ll set them on the mantelshelf before the furnace in the Tabernacle of Potential. And we’ll stand for a moment and gaze upon all the censers lined up on the shelf there, wondering what shall happen next. Then, suddenly, the censer corresponding to the legitimate Creator and Sustainer of Spacetime shall receive a visitation from the ghost of his murdered father. Does that sound like a fair test? Ha! This will be too easy. You priests are in way over your heads, this time.”