(Cont.)
And Yeshua the Zealot died while the wild man was speaking. At one point, he cried with a loud voice; then slouched over. So, after checking for vital signs, the Volcano announced unto the multitudes:
“Our associate Yeshua here seems to have given up the ghost.”
This caused a low hubbub within the crowd that was gathered there. Then the wild man continued, saying:
“Let us use this sober occasion to review our history together: take a trip down memory lane, for old times’ sake. For it is important to reinforce our feeling of shared experience, since, until recently, we’ve been a population of drifters.
“Recall that your grandparents dwelt on the other side of the deluge. I’m not talking about the Hanging Pond of the Great Basin Rainforest, which once was a shrub-steppe: no, I mean the worldwide flood, which drowned every living creature in the universe. Your common ancestor was Noah, who survived that catastrophe in his Ark of Remembrance, which was like a floating museum. You’ll recall that when the waters that had inundated the earth at last dried up, the first thing that Noah did was plant himself a vineyard: He made wine, and got drunk; and then he fell asleep. And his beautiful concubine fell asleep next to him. And they were both naked and unashamed. Then, when his male heirs took it upon themselves to procreate the human species while their parentage was comatose, it led to Abram being born. I took your father Abram and led him into the land of Eldorado, and multiplied his seed. Back then, human sacrifice was all the rage, and there were wonderful mountains to perform such offerings upon, so it proved difficult to keep even one of Abram’s billions of offspring alive into the age of reason; that is, past adolescence. But I succeeded – I traded a ram for a lad: we did a swap; and I walked away with the Chosen Seed. Through this branch saved from the fire, as it were, I bred the twelve patriarchs – those whose names you know so well: Judah, Joseph. Now, Joseph was hated; his brethren despised him, because he was godlike. So they tossed him into an endless pit; and, once he came out on the far side, my other caravan sold him to the Egyptians.
“Then I selected one of the royals out of the secret government of Egypt, from its intelligence sector, and I turned him against his own father, who was the King of that Empire. This intel agent’s name was Moses. What happened is that the King maltreated the working class, and I gave Moses a melting heart for the laboring multitudes, who were your foreparents. The problem was that Moses, being highly educated, could not speak the colloquial dialect of the workforce – he pronounced street slang only woodenly. So I gave him Bryan to be his translator and P.R. rep. Bryan also was (and is) Moses’ official ghostwriter; so, if you’re familiar with any of the latter’s books, including his diary, then you have read the writings of Bryan – Bryan’s fingerprints are all over those scriptures.
“So, as I was saying, I used Moses and Bryan to plague Egypt. Flies, lice . . . and I can’t even remember what else – it’s all in the novel. You should read it. And that’s how I rescued your grandparents from the Empire.
“So once I got your grandparents out of the country, we all ran up against the Red Ocean. That’s a vast body of water – have you seen it? It totally fills your peripheral vision. But the Empire was chasing our escaped group, so we had to flee straight forward, into the saltwater, while holding our breath. And the armies of the Empire pursued us with their battle tanks, their infantry squad vehicles and gun trucks. But they got stuck in the sea, and the wheels fell off their vehicles. I slapped the King with a fish, too, personally! So all our enemies perished.
“And when your grandparents cried unto me, saying ‘O Volcano, help us to escape from those who are chasing us!’ I erected a wall of darkness between them and the Empire’s forces. (I’m backing up a little, to the part of the story before the Empire’s forces met their aquatic death.) So, in broad daylight, there was total darkness surrounding the army of the Empire, and daylight followed my team of escaped laborers, your grandparents, just as if each of them was an individual sun shining within the outer spaces. And then I guided your forefolks through the water – this didn’t harm them, because I can do anything – but the Empire chased after us, like I said, and then the Red Ocean swallowed them.
“Do any of you who are still here among the living remember these things that I did in Egypt? I assume that that generation has all passed on, by now.
“Anyway, I think that some of you do recall our days of wandering in the sticks, and in the desert areas just outside of the Empire. We were in the wilderness a long season. It’s too bad, what happened to Moses.
“But I kept Moses going: I propped him up with my sturdy spirit. Even though we parted ways for a spell, and I took one mass of our multitudes into Eldorado, while he drove his herd in circles. (I don’t mean to make fun of him: that’s just what happened – how else can I say it?) And you yourselves are the offspring of that latter group: those were your fathers and mothers, correct? Yes, and Moses brought you into the land of the Infraborians, which dwelt on the other side of the Great Basin Desert (it was not yet a rainforest, back in those days); and your parents fought against them, and destroyed them from the land.
“Then Balak, the son of Zipporah and Moses, became the leader of the wild lands – he was elected by those people; he won the popular vote, for he was campaigning as a side-hobby while traveling with our masses through the woods. And just as Balak’s own father Moses had turned against his own father the King of Egypt when he, Moses, defied the Empire, so Balak defied Moses by praying to my own brother Balaam Peor, the divine, and asking him to countervail the warmongering of your parents with a prophetic charm for peace.
“Can you believe that? After all the work that we did to get your people out of the Empire and into India, this upstart Balak comes along and wants to neutralize all our progress, just because your parents turned slightly berserk and were knee-deep in war crimes and momentarily addicted to genocide.
“So I forbade Balaam from hearkening to Balak; and Balaam was true to me: he acted as my loyal sibling and delivered prophecies of blessing unto your folks, instead of stopping the slaughter, even while they were thoroughly dripping with blood. Thus we delivered them out of Balak’s hand.
“And most of you got born around this time. Then you shuffled along with the multitudes as our caravan approached Las Vegas: we crossed over the Great Basin together, on the day when it blossomed into a jungle; and you saw the birth of the Hanging Pond. And you mixed and mingled with the Las Vegans, and with all the ivy leaguers who were there – the Columbians, the Harvardites, the Cornellians, the Princetonians, the Brunonians, the Yalies – and I facilitated your conceptions immaculately.
“And I didn’t even tell you about this at the time, but I kept sending a little hornet before you, and it would fly into the lands that your tour was leading to, and this hornet would tell the inhabitants your recent history, and give them all sorts of news, info, and gossip about what you had been doing, so that the natives of each place would have some idea about all the things that your caravan was involved in, before you reached them.
“So now you have visited many places, and mixed and mingled with many people. Masses from our wayfarers have settled down in those nations that we toured; likewise, masses from those nations have chosen to join our caravansary. I have given all of you luxuries for which you did not labor, cities that you did not build; and you enjoy the fruits of vineyards and oliveyards which you did not cultivate. But it is not as though you stole these things – God forbid! No, I had an host of jinn prepare everything aforetime.
“Now therefore treat each other compassionately. Act in friendship, and always maintain harmony. Forgive all debts. De-financialize everything. Work only voluntarily, following your passion: for bliss, not money.”
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