Ten-thousand years before my birth:
It had been the Neolithic period. There were scattered settlements, predominantly fishing villages since fish provided a reliable food source that didn't require following a herd's migration. But most humans were hunters and gatherers, nomadically foraging across various portions of the world, without a permanent location or structures to call home. Not "cavemen," although there were some who remained precisely that. When I was young, there was debate whether other human species continued to exist by this time. If they had, they would have been small, scattered groups, constantly and cautiously on the move, all others having already been wiped from the face of the planet by the ruthless aggression of my Homo-sapiens ancestors.
Writing hadn't yet been developed and wouldn't arrive for another five thousand years. There were only primitive paintings and colorful handprints on the walls of caves. Farming, in any systematic form, wouldn't arrive for another four thousand years. Ten thousand years is a long time in human terms, and it was during those ten thousand years before my birth that, in addition to writing, the invention of the wheel and the domestication of plants and animals took place. Dogs had been hanging around camps for quite some time, gratefully accepting scraps in return for their protection against other predators and hostile humans. But the domestication of horses wasn't for several more millennia. No wheel, no wagons, and no horses to pull them or to ride; people walked, or traveled by rafts or primitive boats, anywhere they went, which was seldom beyond the range of the food source they followed.
Since then, the Egyptian, Babylonian, Sumerian, Greek, and Roman empires arose and fell. Their artifacts had been antiquities long before my birth. Greek philosophy and Christianity didn't exist until the final quarter of this period. All the major languages, still spoken by my birth, evolved within the past thousand years, with many others forgotten and lost forever.
As they had, many times over, during the ten thousand years before my birth, countries rose and fell from prominence in the ten thousand years since. Human language, both vocal and telepathic, continued to evolve, with those in common use worldwide unrecognizable from their origins. No one other than Mary and I, and a few, increasingly rare, Immortal members of our group who we encountered in the Real, continued to speak English or anything near it. Most Immortals rarely emerged from the Virt nor communicated vocally at all.
transportation employed at any point within the ten-thousand years since my birth allowed people to travel ten thousand miles, not quite halfway around the world, in just under a minute. Still, many travelers were impatient since they'd become accustomed to instant gratification. They were expecting to arrive wherever they wanted the moment they wished to be there, as they did in Virtuality, which was only one of the reasons that so many who entered Virtuality remained there, living out their existence in Virt Suits. Of course, with the ebb and flow of technology, the only continual participants in Virtuality were Mary and I and the other surviving Immortals in our community.
The physical appearance of humans, other than ourselves and our fellow Immortals, gradually evolved to be subtlety different from our own. Skin tones were commonly darker than either Mary's or mine, more golden, or café au lait. Minorities of whites and blacks remained but predominately coppers of varied hues. The bone structures of faces had evolved to be just different enough for us to wonder: Where had their ancestors originated? Most had a more Eurasian appearance. Humans were also taller, stronger, and faster. The world record for 100 meters was nearing 5 seconds. The record high jump was just short of 12 feet. The Olympic Games, based upon the modern Olympic Games of my youth, now considered the ancient games, were recently restored once again. The original Greek Games were unknown, but things lost to history had a way of resurfacing from time to time.
YOU ARE READING
The Words - An Autobiography
Fiksi Ilmiah"What if God was one of us?" Credit to Eric Bazzilion, and thanks to Joan Osborne for singing his brain-rattling words. Much earlier, my mother promised that if I applied myself, I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. Then, from somewhere, I r...
