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Old May 3, 2003, 23:24   #1
History Guy
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The Cradle of Civilization...
A short story...thing.
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The Cradle of Civilization

Back in the good old days, before there was civilization, there was a city full of men with high hopes and a dream in their individual hearts. The Babylonians were awfully keen on the idea of civilization, and it was largely through their big hearts, their determination, and their good new-fashioned values that they hoped to make it all possible. They hoped that their toiling away at that blah, dreary old life of theirs would someday add up to something far in the future that made wearing wool skirts worthwhile.

Gu-Nickle was just such a Babylonian of lofty ideals. A strong man was he, and perhaps the city’s most famous artist. In just about twenty years, he’d earned the reputation as the best sculptor in all Babylon (and perhaps all Babylonia to boot). But, like many other ancient people with very little at all to look forward to other than eating bread and (sort of) roasted chunks of meat, or going to sleep on the roof again because it was too hot inside, Gu-Nickle felt as though there was something more to existence other than sculpting things for the royal court of Hammurabi.

“Anu,” said Gu-Nickle one day to his brother-in-law, “There’s something missing here. I know that Hammurabi, the Great King Under the Sun, or whatever, is saying that this is really the best way to live at present, this being the dawn of mankind, and the lot, but I just don’t feel satisfied.”

“What do you mean, old chap? Are your wool skirts getting itchy too? I know that with the hot weather, it gets to be a bother, especially with sweat,” answered Anu, who was carrying a very, very heavy bunch of inscribed tablets.

Gu-Nickle laid down his chisel from the rather tall, bald, wide-eyed statue he was working on of a guy in a wool skirt. “Well, no, that’s not quite it, Anu. You see…I’m beginning to wonder what he means by ‘We all live in the cradle of civilization’. I mean, what does everyone expect? Do they think that one day we won’t have to wear wool skirts anymore? Do they think that, for once, Hammurabi’s taste in art might get a bit more daring and, dare I say it, interesting? I mean, if we’re just going to hang around doing the same sort of mindless thing day after day, we might interpret those words as just nonsense. He might as well be saying something entirely moronic and nonsensical, just because no one ever said it before, like, like, say ‘We all live in a yellow submarine’, whatever that means. You see my point?”

“Not really, actually.”

“Bugger. Look around you! Do you see anything at all that remotely suggests anything other than bad taste?”

“What? I rather like the tall bald chap you are making there…” said Anu, innocently.

“Shut up. By Gilgamesh, Ishtar, and Inanna! You just are too thickheaded. It’s the Babylonian spirit to persevere, and push forward, and all that, so that we may mold a better future. That one day, when we’re dead, someone will have good taste and make clothes that don’t make us look like sheep, or make art that doesn’t portray a lot of chaps running around looking like bug-eyed monsters…” Gu-Nickle nodded towards the statue of the bald chap with the big eyes and the wool skirt.

“Bug-eyed? Well, I suppose…”

“Do you know what I have on my list of things to do, eh, eh? Everyone wants me to make them votive offerings for the temple…Some priest wants me to do a new wall panel that shows, what else, Hammurabi killing someone baaaad. Guess what? The King wants a carving in his bedroom of an antelope getting bitten on the rump by a lion. And it has to be a muscular lion, at that. And what do you think the big going item is these days, eh? A dumb looking winged bull with a man’s head, and a big beard. Yes, sure, this is great. Civilization in art. Just look at it. Oh Ninhursag! You’d think that Hammurabi, with his ‘Building a bridge to the 16th Century BC’ line, you’d think he’d try to make us a bit more civilized…”

Ansu was getting upset. “Hey, look, Gu-Nickle, I know that you are a bit depressed. But look, we’ve all got to put up with that sort of lip from whiners like you, and we don’t bother you because of it…Do you think you are the only guy who says ‘Geeze, it’s really terrible’ when they look at a votive offering? Do you think that you are the only guy who doesn’t like wearing a skirt in public? Think again. We’ve all got to go through little trials in life here, buddy. You aren’t the center of the celestial dome.

“And if you care to knock Babylonian culture, snot-head, why don’t you take a look at…the cylinder seal!” To bolster his point, Anu whipped one out of his woolly pocket.

“Anu, the cylinder seal was invented thousands of years ago…”

“Look, I’m sorry if I’m being tough, but you’re ignoring one big fact…There isn’t anything else on earth except this, and until someone comes along and thinks up something better, this is what is going to be…” Anu looked away, wiping a little tear out of his eye. “I’m sorry, Gu-Nickle. But what would you possibly do to improve things?”

“I don’t know. I’ve tried some things, you know. They never sell. They just aren’t ready for them, you know. They quite prefer bug-eyes and wool panties and muscular goats and bulls and lions and things. Sometimes, I’ve thought of doing, for example, a painting of some lady with folded hands, without eyebrows, clothed in black, with a charming smile on her lips, gazing away demurely at the viewer from the nice little landscape all around her…”

Anu gave a little snort. “That’ll never work. Too pointless. Moronic.”

“Or, for example…I’ve often thought of painting a ceiling…”

“Gag me with a bone-handled soup ladle! A ceiling!”

“Yes, with a bunch of angelic-being-thingies floating around doing something in the clouds. In the center is a naked white-skinned chap…”

“What? Where are you coming from?”

“Bear with me. This naked chap is reclining on a cloud, gazing at some old, white-haired God who is likewise sitting on a cloud…”

“Oh, right. This is sheer brilliance, shining forth like a beacon, extending from your own glorious, center of the universe-type pate…”

“Anyway, the guy points at the God, who points back at him, and their fingers are about to touch, and…”

“Please. I can’t take this any longer. No more. I don’t want to eat these important tablets from the King out of sheer survival instinct…”

Gu-Nickle looked, for the first time in the whole week, somewhat amazed. “The King? Hammurabi? The wildly brilliant, most tasteful King of Babylon?”

“None other. He wants you to design some sort of pillar with his brand spanking-new law-code emblazoned upon it in big, black cuneiform,” said Anu in a boorish manner.

“Law code? What in shocked reactionary curse is that?”

“A law code is a code of laws. Don’t ask me. I didn’t write the thing. But here, take these tablets, and carve out the cuneiform under some nice picture of the King on some big pillar of something or other. It might just be that civilization thingy you were waiting for.”

“By gum! You may be right!” shouted Gu-Nickle excitedly. The prospect of advancing beyond his simplistic, archaic, antediluvian existence filled him with sudden and tremendous joy. He giggled insanely as he tore into the stone tablets, ignoring the mixed metaphors, looking for some sign of the meaning of life itself, or at least civilization. “Yes! This is it! Completely revolutionary! We’ve got laws now! This is wonderful! Look, read this,” he said, wiping a huge crocodile tear from his eye. “’Any architect who constructs a dwelling that collapses in on itself and kills the owner of the dwelling will have his hand cut off’…this is beautiful! Glorious! ‘Any man that breaks a hole into another man’s house to steal from that man shall be put to death in front of that hole and buried’. Words cannot describe the rapture I’m experiencing at present…”

After a few minutes, that feeling subsided.

“OK, OK, I get the picture. Someone does something wrong, he is put to death, or gets his limbs sawed off, or something. Where’s the imagination here? The creative instinct, eh? I thought at first that it was something good and worth my time, but noooooo way. Forget that. This is only the cradle of civilization here, after all. Can’t keep our hopes up. Haven’t quite reached civilization, have we? Ick. And look at it. It’s disgusting. ‘If a surgeon has opened an eye-infection with a bronze instrument and thereby destroyed the man’s eye, they shall cut off his hand’…Ack. Who wants to have to carve that in? I don’t. Nasty.”

Back in the good old days, before there was civilization, there was a city full of men with high hopes and a dream in their individual hearts. The Babylonians were awfully keen on the idea of civilization, and it was largely through their big hearts, their determination, and their good new-fashioned values that they hoped to make it all possible. They hoped that their toiling away at that blah, dreary old life of theirs would someday add up to something far in the future that made wearing wool skirts worthwhile.

But, I guess, it really, really didn’t.
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Old May 4, 2003, 02:14   #2
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Crisp dialogue, good feel forthe time, and (crucially) funny.
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Old May 4, 2003, 06:29   #3
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Excellent! yes really funny. Well done.


Any chance of updating Lancelot Snurdley.
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Old May 4, 2003, 11:24   #4
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Thanks, chaps.

Well, as for Lancelot...I might do to release boredom, or something to that effect. Despite the fact that the plot was just wildly insane and couldn't get far, I actually enjoyed writing it, so I suppose there was something good about the thing.

Actually, I was somewhat inspired as of late to write a historical story describing Florence at the time of the Renaissance, and revolving around the Medicis, Boticelli, Machiavelli, Pope Julius II, and most of all, Savonrola...

I haven't done an epic in ages. In fact, I've never done one on this forum. Perhaps that might be a good idea, if I can only come up with a plot...
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Old May 4, 2003, 20:36   #5
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Personally, I like it.

I mean it's certaintly not 'Blessed be the Peacemakers', but it's still good.

For one thing it makes you think, it's surprisingly insightful and It's a deeper piece than most could manage, It shall certaintly make it's mark in this world of Apolyton if you finish it. Don't leave it like you left Snurdley, I liked Lancelot.

Keep up the good work :thumbsup:

By the way, from what I've read I have conceived of what the rest would be like if I wrote it, it shall be interesting to see what you come up with.
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Old May 5, 2003, 11:15   #6
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Skilord,

Now that you mention it, I was thinking of writing a bit more to it. Perhaps I should expand it from a short story into a...not so short story.

If you have any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them via pm! Thanks.

I suspect this isn't the end of Gu-Nickle's semi-intellectual wanderings after all...
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Old May 5, 2003, 17:15   #7
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You left the conflict open, he's still searching for Civilization, isn't he?
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Old May 5, 2003, 23:00   #8
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SKILORD, yep. His quest could potentially take forever...
--

Gu-Nickle was having a really, really strange night.

It wasn’t just that it was strange, really, but that it was odd, in a malevolent, leering, nasty sort of way. It was unusual, in that strange sort of twisted, bleak little way. What made it even worse was waking up in the middle of the night and realizing that he had left the lamp lit. The mud-bricks of his room always annoyed him, especially when there was nothing better to look at while he lay awake, what with his wife away at Ur visiting her mother. Of course, his wife was perhaps as uninteresting to look at as the bricks were, to be brutally honest. To be even more brutally honest, he was having a hard enough time getting to sleep without the darn light still on, and he wished he had a stick long enough to smash the damn thing to bits.

After angrily putting the light out, Gu-Nickle tried to get some real rest, without lying await thinking about the course of human events itself. It was always really annoying to him that he seemed to be the only chap in Babylon concerned with molding the entire future history of the human race. Ah well, he thought, super-geniuses are never recognized in their lifetimes. At least, not in pre-civilized times.

This led him to think that it was only the real boobies who got recognized in their times as geniuses. The really smart lot was never so highly acknowledged. Hammurabi wasn’t exactly the most ridiculously brilliant old geezer who’d ever trod the streets of Babylon, after all. One could tell by looking at the tasteless decorum he had in his bedroom – muscular lions biting antelopes on the rear, for example. People getting bashed on the conk with a very, very large mace. Blood spurting everywhere, of course. How’s that for taste? Not that there was much better out there, really. Gu-Nickle snorted.

With these idiotic delusions of civilization floating through his head, Gu-Nickle fell asleep.

When he awoke, he was no longer in his bedroom. As far as he could tell, he was actually sitting in the middle of Hammurabi’s throne room, which was quite a terrible shock to him. What was even worse was when old Hammurabi, in all his radiant glory, flopped into his throne with an audible bump.

“Greetings, Gu-Nickle. It really is a pleasure, actually. Well, sort of. I understand you want to get us out of the cradle, if you like, and into this thingy that we call civilization. Nice phrase, by the way…” said the King of Kings in a nice, friendly voice, stroking his luxuriant beard, and looking about as wise as they come. Gu-Nickle had never actually seen the King face to face before (though he’d often, by some strange trick of fate, spent time in his bedroom doing the walls).

“My King, I do think we must. After all, we can’t wear wool skirts forever, can we?” asked Gu-Nickle. Immediately, the King burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, and the sculptor began to wonder if he’d really been as wise as they said. The King flopped madly around his throne a few seconds, before he had to stop to adjust his crown.

“Well, as you can see, we are working on some things now about wool skirts…” The King was actually clothed in something that looked rather decent. It certainly didn’t make him look like a sheep. Perhaps, despite that law code, he was not so barbaric as he thought. This was, in itself, something of a paradox, for the law code was supposed to be civilized. How could it be barbaric? Gu-Nickle strained his synapses to come up with an answer.

“I sometimes wonder, my King, if we can ever get out of the cradle. It seems that civilization has a lot to do with thinking about things that no one has ever thought of before, and no one in Babylon has really gotten the hang of that yet…” replied Gu-Nickle, trying to sound wise, but not quite reaching it.

It was at this point that Gu-Nickle gasped in terror. A sudden feeling of abject horror and insane revulsion that somehow accompanied the strange image that stepped forth to greet him with a lick on the ear. That feeling of horror only lasted for a moment or two, but it was nasty enough all the same.

“Hullo,” said a yellow cow that had approached him from behind a group of the King’s advisors.

“Ummmm…Hullo, Cow…” replied Gu-Nickle, sheepishly (which was quite accurate, for he was burying his face idiotically in his wool skirt to hide the shocked expression).

“Gu-Nickle, old man, you know, you really do need to brush up on your court etiquette,” began the Cow.

“I suppose I do, Cow…” replied Gu-Nickle, who was fumbling about in a nervous way, edging into a corner, prepared to make a sudden grab for a spear or something with which to confront this apocalyptic beast of evil.

The Cow appeared to sense his fear.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Remember you? Should I, Yellow Cow?” Gu-Nickle was genuinely shocked. He was even more so when he noticed that Hammurabi was smiling on like a total dimwit, as if the Cow did not register in his brain. Stupid ignorant savage, thought the sculptor. A second later, the Cow gave him a good swift punch in the head with her hoof. Was this a vile cow of evil?

“Look, stupid, you don’t know your own handiwork? By Gilgamesh! It’s me! The golden cow thing you made for the temple last year! Geeze!” shouted the Cow angrily.

“Look,” said Gu-Nickle, spitting out some teeth, “I’m sorry…but… Hey! Wait a moment! What are you doing here? I made you out of gold…and you’ve become a real cow! What happened?”

“You moron. This is a dream. The gods sent me down to talk to you about civilization in general.” The Cow rolled her eyes.

“Oh, really? Why you? Couldn’t they have sent someone like…the goddess Inanna, for example?” He wiggled his eyebrows in a vague attempt to look comic before he realized that jokes hadn’t been invented yet. Instead, he just looked stupid.

“I’ve only got a few minutes before the sun suddenly hits your head like a brick smashing into your brains, so I’ll be very, very quick. The gods were sitting around the other day over luncheon and decided that it was just about time to get the civilization ball rolling, you see…” the Cow began slowly. Despite breaking into mooing several times, her speech was quite good. Superb for a cow, actually.

“So they chose me?” Gu-Nickle was genuinely shocked and, at the same time, honored.

“No, of course not, you dimwit. They sent me to tell you to knock it off.” The Cow put her hoof down hard.

“Knock…it off? But why? All I want to do is improve the world…Get men out of skirts. Get art to look like art. Get people to think about the world around them. Get people out of the stone ages…”

“I was kidding.”

“What?” Gu-Nickle clearly did not understand. The Cow had evidentially not been informed that jokes had not been invented yet.

“Sorry. Anyway, as I was going to say, Ishtar said to me the other day that if you wanted to get things started down here in Babylon, you could go ahead. They’ve got some chaps elsewhere that are already cranking up the old civ’ machine in distant lands. They say…though I can’t be sure…that in some lands men don’t wear skirts anymore…” spoke the Cow with awe.

“A blessing from the gods? That’s wonderful! By Gilgamesh, Inanna, and Ishtar! I’ll take a look. There’s nothing I’d like to see more than civilization, you see. When it comes, I’m going to stick out my hand and grab it, and when I get it, I’m not letting go…” The Cow opened her mouth to speak, but Gu-Nickle was just too enthusiastic.

“Ever since I was a boy in little wool diapers, I’ve thought ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I were to live to see the day that we all became civilized?’ I don’t even think I understood what it meant then…I probably still don’t today…but I was always looking for it…” droned on the sculptor.

“Yes, yes, but…”

“It’s like something that you see from a distance, before you can make it out, it looks kind of fuzzy until…”

“Look, shut up! In exactly two seconds, you are going to wake up, and I won’t be able to warn you about the fact that…”

Immediately, a brick smashed into Gu-Nickle’s brains.

Or so he thought. It was actually just sunlight coming through the crack in his door. A new day had dawned. Perhaps civilization was just beginning to stir as well.

Whatever had happened, as Gu-Nickle groggily groped at his head, he realized that the doors were suddenly open to him, in a manner of speaking. There was nothing holding him back now, really. The gods fully backed his scheme. He’d gotten it from the Cow’s mouth. A new day was dawning, and mankind was on the move towards…whatever.
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Old May 6, 2003, 15:38   #9
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So in those days before civilization and the wearing of woolen skirts and all, how come this sculptor smoked the whacky backy ?

Please dont stop I love your humerous style of writing.
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