The Seeker

To the reader: this story is under construction. I have just rewritten the first part and that is the only part you can read here.

Sfandig was a man of quicksilver thoughts. Born into a family of philosophers he wasn't the sort of boy who'd spend his days climbing trees. He studied classical languages from the age of six. He became an avid student of human thought when he was twelve. He started writing about how humans might interact with the world of the future when he was eighteen and this earned him a junior position in the Department of Futuristic Philosophy at the age of twenty-one. He contributed some highly appraised works and earned the rank of Senior when he was only forty-five. By then his brown curly hair had slowly faded to grey. Some found him capricious and hard to please but his closest friends and family would disagree, he just liked to keep to himself and set high standards.

Realising he hadn't much more to philosophise about he gave up his position at the Department at the age of , found a woman he loved and together they brought into being a son called Valar. It was the only child he'd produce because Sfandig died when his son was only one week old. He went into the wild with two friends, fell out of a tree and broke his neck.

Valar was raised by his mother Xerlo, a black haired, green eyed woman of great strength. With a new lover, Vin-tau, she had two more children, a boy named Kindrik and Pinto, a girl with a quirky sense of humour. She had her mother's green eyes, her father's pitch-black hair and was an agile athlete, able to out-run her brothers with ease. One day when she was only five she managed to summon up her own Temporal Space, an illegal act because you had to be eleven to do that. She then hovered over her brothers and urinated on them. Valar retaliated by kicking her behind. Kindrik, a sulky, stout boy who took pleasure in being cruel to animals nearly strangled her in his rage. Xerlo pulled him off when little Pinto was already red as a beet and starting to go limp.

Valar took after his father, brown curly hair, pointy face, a somewhat forlorn appearance and evidently quite gifted. By the age of three he wrote his first short story, it was about his father and the unlucky fall from the tree. His mother sent the story to a tutor named Phigwid, a lanky fellow whose age was never disclosed to anyone. He usually wore a cloak and his silvery hair was so long that he kept it in a braid that fell down to his knees. He read the story and declared that Valar was able to evoke strong emotions with his story, which was unique for his age. He offered to take Valar under his wing and so Valar wrote a few more stories and some of them were published to global acclaim. By the age of seven he grew tired of fiction and started to binge read historical treatises, historiographies and biographies. And while Kindrik showed no interest in learning whatsoever and little Pinto was busying herself with dancing and gymnastics Valar said good-bye to his first tutor and chose himself a new one. A historian called Damalian took over the position after he read the following piece written by Valar.

Today = Juli 22, 3244 Buddhist Calendar / year 2700 Christian Calendar / year 2142 Muslim Calendar

These three calendar systems have become obsolete. Most people today have no knowledge, nor feel the need to know anything, about these old dating systems, they were abandoned ages ago. But I am a boy who keeps wondering; I wonder about the people who created and used them.

I realise that when we interpret sources from the past we get it wrong in many ways. Even with the use of the best analytical as well as synth-brains it is never possible to be certain of any historical deduction. And the risk of getting it completely wrong is even higher when we start recreating history, like when you want to write textbook stuff. That will never be my intention because I do not claim to understand history. I like to keep an open mind. I like to travel light.

I was six when I first started wondering about the three ancient calendar systems and the people who used them. I am currently reading about the years 1980 to 2050 AD (-720 to -650 for the modern reader) because they give insight into the start of the Stream. But as I learn more and more about the people that lived around seven hundred years ago, I also become more and more confused. They appear to have lived in continuous anxiety; Fear of living, afraid of dying, fear of success, afraid for the world to end. And in their apocalyptic apathy they nearly suffocated mother earth and made their own lives a living hell. So much so, that for us, people living in an age of affluence and peace, it is very hard to understand anything of the world these people lived in.

So I wonder, how did these people wake up to what they were? How were they able to change? What set the wheel of humanist change in motion, against all odds - if you look back at history. And one cannot help but ask: who envisioned this paradise we live in?