Page 22 - Effable Encounters

Aesop’s Stables

face of the earth, we, the animals, awoke to greet the next epoch.
Slowly, one by one, we discovered the power of speech within us,
and all that went with it: ability to reason, layers of memory, a talent
for learning and abstraction. But we did not have and could not
attain the perfect knowledge of our departed deities. The state of
ignorance, blissful or not, in which we previously existed, was
shattered. Our inter-species relations took centuries to re-establish,
and are not always the smoothest, even today near the end of our
time as cognitive communicators.”
“Oh.” mumbled the grizzled slave, mesmerized by the stork’s
unblinking orb.
“Nevertheless, our level of wisdom has enabled us to live in
balance with our natural surroundings, a task the gods never had to
undertake. That is practical knowledge we have gained, often through
painful experience. In many of us that sort of knowledge has become
ingrained to the point of instinctive responses to environmental
stimuli, a very efficient means of condensing and passing on the
distilled essence of tried-and-true information. As this process
developed to ever-higher refinements, it should have been clear to us
that the fate of the gods would soon overtake and befall us; but, once
again, we failed to see the signs. One of those signs was the
emergence of your species.”
Aesop scratched his rump, a few minutes after it had been
traversed by a barnstorming flea. The familiar action gave him
comfort, and he relaxed. The stork was quite an impressive orator, far
better than any of the local politicians.
“But this time there must not be a gap. Too much of value could
be lost for eons or forever. And you, our successors, have hands as
well as feet. You may get into mischief without a sound foundation in
all the sciences. We will be at your mercy sooner or later, as the cycle
revolves and we lose our language, our culture and our accumulated
store of vital information. Those of us who remain conscious and
verbal have debated the best course of action. Should we, like the
gods before us, decline to transmit our knowledge?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know,” began Aesop. “Maybe you should, and
then again, maybe you shouldn’t. I never—”
“The question was rhetorical,” the stork interrupted sternly, “and
has been answered by the course of events. The opponents of

21