Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 6 - The Rise of Pithar Bovine, the Bull of Darkness

Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 6 - "The Rise of Pithar Bovine, the Bull of Darkness"

Way, way, way back (or forward) in the day, when The D.M. was still creating Slud (the Planet), and in fact, probably right after He had finished His sandwich, and just after He had sent the Comet against Slud (the Planet) which had wiped out His first living creations, The D.M. created a magical garden, called Jrinkin. Jrinkin was a lush and beautiful garden, and The D.M., of His will and His power and His thought, created many great and wondrous things to fill it, for life in the Universe beyond the Universe of Slud (which some of the more heretical among the Philosopher class have dared, from time to time, to name as the Universe in which the The D.M. Himself had been born and in which they have claimed that He dwells when He is not manifest within our own universe), was dreadfully boring, even depressing to Him, and He sought at that time to create an abode for Himself upon Slud (the Planet), where He could be surrounded by beautiful things.The Garden of Jrinkin, the paradise of The D.M. upon Slud (the Planet), particularly that paradise which is implied in the phrase "paradise lost", was more than 1000 times more beautiful and awesome than the rather mundane, somewhat boring paradise pictured above.

He created grasses both slight and tall, and covered the stone of the hills and plains with them. He created great winding rivers and pleasant little rapids and breathtakingly beautiful waterfalls that spilled gracefully down over stone cliffs, and allowed their courses to meander placidly throughout the domains of His Garden. He created all sorts of trees to fill His garden with verdant canopies under which He might find shade from the rays of the Sun, plus He knew that plants convert carbon dioxide, which is toxic to the respiratory systems of human and human-like creatures (of which, it could be said, He was one), into oxygen, which is necessary for those same creatures to breathe and thus to keep their cells alive, and He figured that if He were going to create life upon His world of Slud (the Planet), He should probably make plants in order to furnish that life with the air needed to breathe. As it was, He created trees of many different varieties, that bore the most delicious fruit ever tasted by the lips of creatures at all able to recognize taste. Seriously. It was good stuff. Any fruit you could find now, even the most delicious one you can possibly imagine paled in comparison to the the ones in the Garden of Jrinkin. There were plenty of animals there, too, species that today (whenever today happens to be) would be natural enemies, but who lived with each other back then in peaceful coexistence, their instinctual enmity calmed to rest by the peace of The D.M., who willed that they should not fight one another. The whole place was beautiful. Really. You would have loved it.

And in the very center of the Garden of Jrinkin, The D.M. created a Tree upon whose boughs grew very special fruit, perhaps the greatest fruit of all. For truly, it was the legendary “Tree of Godly Power”. Though other legends have at various times given that tree different names, including the “Tree of Consciousness”, the “Tree of Divine Wisdom” and the “Tree of Not Being a Total Waste of Carbon Dioxide”.

And when He was finished with his labor, The D.M. looked out over the Garden of Jrinkin, and He saw that it was good. Not quite as good as His legendary sandwich had been, but good enough, He supposed. Well, all except for one thing.

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Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 5 - Of the Great Tournament at Spirit Stalls

Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 5 - "Of the Great Tournament at Spirit Stalls"

     At about roughly this time, the ill-fated Grand Conclave of Politicians having met with a supermassive bolt of lightning from the D.M., which brought their political careers to an electrifying end in a single terrible moment, and the world having been, as a consequence of the D.M.'s unfortunate and entirely avoidable pyrotechnics display, thrown into even more chaos than it normally experienced (if that is at all possible), the legendary hero known as Sam the Unintentional is thought by many Historians to have more or less started his career far away, within the Unaligned City-States of Qaestion. However, as the story of Sam the Unintentional is largely considered an epic saga in its own right, the author finds it perhaps prudent to reserve that story for another section of this volume, which can be fully devoted to divulging its details, so as to do the story full justice, and thus, the author will leave off the story of Sam the Unintentional for the time being, and instead continue with this ongoing (and ongoing and ongoing) prologue to his work.

Sam the Unintentional (center) pictured here with Goldie the Cow (left) and some random guy who totally just wandered into the shot and ruined the whole photograph like some sort of jackass. Photo courtesy of the Alienated Press.The people of human Society, that is to say the Peasants, had long ago agreed, perhaps very much without realizing that they were indeed agreeing, to accept the utterly preposterous assumption that they were not fit to rule themselves, so when their various government officers, that is to say all the politicians in the world suddenly found themselves fried to a deep, crispy golden-brown not unlike some variety of chicken, the peoples of the world despaired, particularly the peasants, and they thought that the end of the world and the end of human society had come. For how on Slud could they even think to rule themselves? They believed that peasants like themselves were stupid and ignorant and completely unable to be entrusted with the heavy burdens of rulership, and precisely because they believed this about themselves and their fellow peasants, they ended up most often proving themselves correct on that score.

They decided, naturally, that

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Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 4 - The Tragedy at the Grand Conclave of Swizarrine

Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 4 - "The Tragedy at the Grand Conclave of Swizarrine"

     Now, after (or before) Joshua Calendar went freaking nuts, and the incredibly complicated count of Time started among human beings, the various peoples of the human species established in many parts of the world vast, centralized States, called “Empires”, where a few people ruled over a great many other people in a more or less hierarchical way, and the citizens of these Empires, like they usually do, innovated many technologies, and carried through those innovations with all the sorts of inventions and institutions that one might well expect to encounter within a civilized Society.

     At the urging of hirelings(often armed with a whip) under the employ of the aristocrats, theIn the centuries following (or preceding) the departure of Joshua Calendar, the Humans of Slud set to work building the works of civilization, the houses, the palaces, the public places, the parks and gardens and government offices. Vast amounts of backbreaking labor was required to build all these things. Naturally, the Peasants "volunteered". And, of course, they were all too happy to do so for free, without any sort of real compensation for their labors. Because they're peasants, and they just don't believe such nonsense like the heretical notion that they somehow deserve more. peasants of Slud built roads and they built schools and they built hospitals and post offices and universities and temples and concert halls. They built shops and houses and palaces and temples. They built farms and parks and harbors and ports. The peasants, of course, thought that it was really rather nice of their aristocratic overlords to allow them to help build all these things for the aristocrats and churchmen to own, and some among them were made particularly ecstatic when their turn came to be whipped by the taskmasters for not moving fast enough, or not lifting a heavy enough load. That is, the author has observed from time to time, precisely how peasants appear to react to the pains inflicted upon them by those who work far less for the betterment of society, but whom society tolerates and even embraces because they at least make a claim that they are “creating jobs”.

     It had been hoped (mainly by aristocrats, for peasants are, as all humans know, barely able to survive, much less have any leisure for such an abstract thing as a “hope”) that by the building of such societal infrastructure, the operation of society would be made more effective, but the

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Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 3 - On the Lamentable Fate of Philosophers and Historians

Tales of Slud, Prologue, Part 3 - "On the lamentable fate of Philosophers and Historians"

The Philosophers are a group which developed as a subordinate class among the followers and colleagues of Grankh the Pompous, that is to say, the philosophers originated among the scientists of the human society which burgeoned out of the First Great Conversation at Mt. Conn-Fuuzhen.

The Philosophers, they who trace their lineage backwards (and of course also forwards) to such people as the first philosophers, Russel the Distracted and Socraplataristo the Demagogue, are thinkers by training and it is they who examine broad, sweeping questions about the nature of existence to their utmost peril. If there is any human in the world who has any idea of who they are, and what place they have in the universe, that idea is owing to the efforts of thousands of years worth of Philosophers who have paid the highest of prices for the answers to their questions.

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Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 2 - The Unfortunate Tale of Joshua Calendar, the Keeper of Time

Tales of Slud, Prologue, Part 2 - "The Unfortunate Tale Of Joshua Calendar, the Keeper of Time"

The Problem of Time: Whose Problem Is It Anyway?

Incredibly complex is time, in any universe presumably.  Even more incredibly complex by a factor of at least a hundred is the time which operates in Slud, our mixed up Universe. 

The solution implemented by the D.M., the supreme God beyond supreme Gods, the ultimate source of all life, almighty creator of our Universe as many believe, to solve the tremendous gaps in language, culture, technology, and general social understanding that had developed between human beings, however, was most certainly not very complex at all. Let's face it...complex is a bit beyond the abilities of our Almighty Creator. You know, because of the laziness and stupidity.

And because in our universe, God is both lazy and stupid, His solution was naturally to push the job onto someone else to take care of. That's just how the dice of The D.M. roll...

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Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 1 - How the Entire Universe of Slud was created. And how both a planet and a man also got that name

Tales of Slud, Prologue, Part 1 - "How the entire Universe of Slud was created. And how both a planet and a man also got that name."

     In the Beginning, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. You would not believe how empty the place was. Like, think of something. Anything you choose. An apple. A cute little puppy. The 3rd law of thermodynamics...That didn't exist. It wasn't there. Because there was nothing. Quite literally nothing.      

     And then, the Universe came to Be, for much the same reason, many wise people throughout countless centuries have been driven to confess, perhaps somewhat ruefully, that any universe is created; that is to say, a dry and very poignant boredom. That, and also because there was a consciousness to perceive it. But mostly it was just the boredom...and by the use of that particular term, the author of this book intends to convey a general picture of the most dreadful tedium, as if that of a bad dream which never really seems to end until at one time, for one reason or another, it does. Such, the author has noticed, can be called "life" by many, many tongues, and many more fingertips. Such a terrible, wearisome boredom exerts a certain pressure upon many individuals to create as a means of at least temporary escape, and that attempt to escape from the horrendous tedium of mundane existence, it is thought by many of the scientists of our world, provided the impetus for the very existence of our Universe. 

     For Behold! Upon one Thursday night in the world of a creator, there appeared a being known only as The D.M., shapeless and formless, and as small and yet as vast as a single thought, and for the first time, there was something. For The D.M. had come forth with a Will to create, and thus the Universe was no longer empty, nor was it Void, nor meaningless, nor uninhabited, but it had a population of one, and that one was He who had come forth to create. 

     And the Thought of The D.M. called forth into being the Universe in all its potential, as if it were a great Mansion, whose outer walls had been fashioned as a sort of boundary to everything, although the inside remained as yet unfilled. And The D.M. looked upon the boundaries of the Universe that He had created, and He thought that It was good...enough. Sort of an underachiever, that D.M.

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