Neytopia › Part 1: Dawn › Chapter 3

Embrace, extend and extinguish

She climbed back on the whale, pushed the frozen bodies off to sea and grinned as she watched them sink. She tried to understand what had gone wrong. Cruelty has a human heart. Yes, Cruelty could manifest the true nature of people, so she promised right there to change human nature,

I vow to give people a reason to restrain themselves so what happened today never, EVER, happens again.

But first, she had to reach the shore. After a few days being gently carried by the waves, she finally spotted land in the horizon. She swam the last stretch and reached the shore. It was a new land. Trees had unsuspected shapes, animals had ingenious ways to kill other animals. She walked for weeks through mountains and valleys until finally one night she came across some people. They were very different from her original tribe. She approached them while they were hunting a bison, chasing it with rudimentary spears.

Her skin was pale white, and she wore a torn yet delicate dress. The men were terrified, having never seen such an image. But what scared and impressed them most was that she carried a lit torch. They stopped chasing the beast as soon as they saw her cutting through the darkness with that light. They stood away from her, clenching their teeth as they crouched in wonder and fear. They had seen fire ravaging nature, but never under human control.

Once she had their attention, she used the torch to light another torch in front of them, making them retreat further back. Then, as if dealing with a timid animal, she held the second torch in front of her as a gift. One of them approached her and quickly grabbed the torch, fearing she would take it back.

After her demonstration of power she led them to a cave where she prepared some pigments and painted a bison. It took hours, but they watched her every stroke in awe. Now they knew for sure: she wasn’t human. No, she was superior to any human. To make sure they knew and never forgot, she gave them the gift of language. Among the first words was “goddess”, reserved for her. Language had the slight inconvenience that only children could use it, as adults found it impossible to upgrade their growls to words. Their generation died of old age at 32.

The tribe thrived under her rule. They adored her as their own personal goddess of love and obeyed her every single command out of fear. In exchange for their devotion, she annexed or destroyed their enemies. Over centuries she built a kingdom on violence, the only way that actually works. She had everything figured out until one day, visiting one of the tribes that were part of her kingdom, she met a strange boy. The boy questioned things that everyone assumed were, and could only be, a certain way. When he was only sixteen and his tribe had gathered to honor the goddess, he asked her,

Goddess, you said the earth is round but I have no experience of this. How can I know that the world is round and not, say, flat?

She waved him away, his question was too stupid to dignify with an answer. During the feast the skeptic boy also asked the tribe’s priest, in the goddess’ presence,

How do you know the gods are there when we don’t see them?

The priest replied,

Well, the gods are perfect; something perfect has to exist; therefore, the gods exist.

The priest then thought to himself “I am so fucking amazing”, but the boy had more questions:

And why do we have to follow all these arbitrary rules that tell me who I can marry, what I’m allowed to eat and so on? I mean, I understand that I’m not supposed to kill people in our own tribe, but why can’t I eat certain animals?

The priest had the one answer that convinced everyone but the boy:

Because it’s the law.

And there was no comeback against that. The boy knew that the priest was useless, so he nodded and said,

Of course, you’re right, what was I thinking.

But the boy knew he was right, and no one would convince him otherwise. He also realized that trying to explain what he knew would only lead to death or exile.