FIVE

“Human evolution is dead!” The Principal stated emphatically.

He put up a picture on his computer that showed on a screen in the front of the class. The image was of a creature with a small head, a single eye, a hand with just its index finger hovering over a computer mouse.

“As technology increases will we be like this? Will our bodies atrophy and our bones deteriorate? Maybe, the only thing we will need to do in the future is click a mouse and look at a screen. Maybe we will look like this.

“I would like to say however, we are still evolving, just not physically. When I was young, I was a carpenter’s apprentice to my father. He started teaching me when I was just three of four. I wasn’t able to make furniture or much else at that time, but because he was a master carpenter, and because I was willing to learn from him, I became quite capable and was on a trajectory to be a master myself, if not to surpass my father’s ability.

“I don’t say this because I want you to know about my woodworking skills. Be they as wonderful as ever.” He paused. “I say this so that you may understand why we go to school, why we learn.

“I pass my knowledge on to you; however, you are much younger than I am. Some of you will understand and some of you won’t. And an even smaller amount of you will surpass my knowledge, and you will pass your knowledge on to someone else.”

“Who is DaVinci?” He paused for an answer.

“Rachael, please.”

A shy girl in the center spoke up. “He was an artist and an inventor.”

“Right. He was. Very good, Rachael.” The Principal changed the image to one of DaVinci’s flying machines.

“Isaac Newton once said ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.’ I believe it is the same for DaVinci.

“Maybe, however, to make these designs he instead stood on the shoulders of birds. Have you ever thought where the idea of flight came from? Well, here is what I think. I think that someone like DaVinci saw a bird fly, and they thought ‘what if,’ and they tried something. Something maybe not unlike one of these contraptions.” He pointed to the image on the screen.

“We all know that these ideas didn’t work. That is, no one ever flew very far with one of these. Until knowledge.” He paused. “Science knocked on the door, and hot air balloons were discovered and hang gliders were first built.

“Now you may be curious why I am talking about evolution. Well, I believe that humankind will evolve, but we will evolve because of our imagination. We will imagine—based on the knowledge that we currently have—and in turn that will increase our knowledge, which will become a new basis for the next imaginative thought. I wonder how much was lost when Nikola Tesla’s lab burned down.”

Merlin walked over to the whiteboard and drew two sets of concentric circles one had two circles and the other had three circles. In the set that had two circles he wrote above it Before writing was invented and the other set he wrote After writing was invented.

The Before had two labels. One in the center said oral history and a second between the inner and outer circle, that said human imagination.

The After diagram had the two inner circles significantly smaller than the largest one. In the smallest circle he wrote written human knowledge. Between the smallest and the second he wrote unwritten human knowledge. And in between the second and the third largest circles he wrote human imagination.

Pointing at the first phrase. “This is what we have written. This is constantly growing. However, before we had writing humankind’s knowledge could only operate in this area.” He pointed to the area labeled oral history on the much smaller Before diagram.

“I wonder where humankind would be now if Alexandria’s Library had stood for a millennium or two longer. Would flight have been discovered a hundred years earlier than it was?”

“Knowledge and imagination are tightly coupled. One can exist without the other, but the one, knowledge, will not expand—will be stymied—without the other.”

One of the Briston twins spoke up without raising his hand. “What does it have to do with imagination?”

“Good question.” The Principal walked over to his computer and clicked the mouse. A new image showed on the screen. It was a black and white image of a man talking into the bottom of a shoe.

This got a few chuckles out of the kids.

“This is a picture of a character named Maxwell Smart from a TV show called Get Smart. It first aired in 1965. At that time, the knowledge they had in mainstream 1965 households was land lines and rotary phones. Who knows where DARPA and the government was with cellular technology at that time, but Get Smart’s writers created this concept from their imagination. Now this was easy to create, as they could use movie magic to make it seem like the shoe phone was actually working.”

“So, imagine if you will, that this point here is the knowledge of land line rotary phones.” He drew a dot on the second circle of the After diagram. Drawing a second dot on the same circle. “This is second dot is the knowledge of communicating with others over Radio.” He then drew two lines from these dots to a third point on the third ring. “This third point is the general concept of cell phones. Now Mr. Smart here is using a ‘cell phone’, of sorts, although the writers for Get Smart didn’t know how to make a phone like this work, they imagined that such a thing was possible. And now.” He paused and erased the connecting line between the phone dot and the Radio dot, which caused the second circle to now have a cone that extended into the imagination space.

“We have cell phones, so our knowledge has expanded to where our imagination was at one point; I call this the process of imaginative evolution.”

He paused hoping that what he just described was sinking in.

“And the final thought is writing. This process of imaginative evolution, significantly sped up once our collective knowledge started to be written down. That is, once we stopped relying on just Oral History. We do still rely on Oral History.” He realized he was backpeddling and following an unncessary rabbit hole. “Well…

“Now, who can tell me why this is important? Especially, here in Odyssey?”

A boy on the front row raised his hand. “So that we can learn to control our imagination. The first rule of Odyssey is Basis Before Projection.”

“Right.”

Rachael raised her hand.

“Yes, Rachael. You had a question?”

“Well. Yes.” She said shyly. “There are a lot of books that are not knowledge. I mean-” She picked up her copy of Anne of Green Gables. “This is based on truth and how life was during that time, but it didn’t actually happen.” She got quieter as she finished.

“Rachael! Fantastic logic! You are correct. But as our class is about to wrap up, I will say this. Knowledge is different than fact. Gravity is a fact, but we can have knowledge about what life was like during the 19th century from reading this book. That being said, what we take for fact isn’t always fact. Does anyone know who Galileo Galilei was?”

He paused. “Well…” the bell rang. “Hang on, hang on. During his time there was a believed fact that all Celestial Bodies gave off their own light. The Moon, the Sun, the Stars…and the Earth. But Galileo proved that the Moon had shadows. And if something has a shadow on it then it may reflect light, but it doesn’t necessarily produce light.” The principal could see that he was loosing his class so he gave up. “We’ll get more into this later. You’re excused.”

…

That night Rufus was walking back from dinner by himself. The Principal and Meme were walking down the hallway, towards him.

“I’m not going to do it, Merlin. It is embarrassing, and slobber gets everywhere. And the fleas. It takes me a week to get rid of the fleas.” Meme said in a hushed voice.

“I know dear, but if we don’t find the key, then we are not going to be able to get back to Tulendor. That means no Weekend Sessions, no Arena, and our Dabuek will start to show unnecessary interest. Also, though not as important, we promised Nathan that we would let him record the tournament.”

“I’ll think about it.” She pursed her lips. Her face immediately softened when she came up on Rufus.

“Hello, Rufus. How was your dinner?” The way that she said it showed that she actually cared about him. It wasn’t creepy for Rufus, it was just unexpected and unusual and he was a bit unsettled.

“Meme, you should’ve seen him yesterday. He took to the dragon during his test without much effort. It was a fantastic projection!” The Principal praised Rufus and, to eliminate any awkwardness, followed up with “Are you reading the Millennium Child, yet?”

“Uh, yeah. I’ve started it.” He was distracted about having taken the key now that he had a chance to see Meme again.

Seeing that Rufus wasn’t talkative, Meme patted his shoulder. “Ok. We’ll talk to you later.”

Meme and the Principal started to walk past Rufus, when Meme turned back. “Rufus, did you by chance see a small brass key on my desk when you were in my office last time?”

Rufus stood still and slowly turned around. He tried not to show that he was lying and said “Um. No. I didn’t. I just ate that cookie and then left. I did shut the door like you asked.”

“Oh. Ok. Well…” Meme was thinking. “We’ll talk to you later.”

…

Rufus woke up the next morning. He looked at the alarm clock and saw that he had slept in. He had stayed up late to read and to do his homework for his other classes.

He jumped out of bed, threw some clothes on, and tried to tame his matted hair. He noticed that the closet door was still shut—that meant that Jimmy wasn’t going to class. He knocked on the closet.

“Hey Jimmy, come on man, lets go. Math starts in five minutes. You can still make it.” He spoke to the wooden door.

Ever since Rufus started at the Mansion he noticed that Jimmy wouldn’t come out of the closet unless the room lights were off and the sun had set. He was a pale, skinny kid with jet black hair. Jimmy hadn’t gone to any of his classes the whole time Rufus had been at the school.

Rufus had renewed energy after his experience as Smaug and wanted to find out why Jimmy didn’t have the same fervor.

“I’m not coming. The light is too bright this morning.”

That sparked an idea in Rufus’ mind. He had an old pair of aviator glasses that he had brought with him. He went over to his chest of drawers and searched for a moment—coming back to the closet with the glasses.

He cracked the closet door a bit and slid them through then said “Try those out.”

A moment later the closet door slid open ever so slightly. Then the opening widened. Rufus could see a couple of blankets and a pillow laid down. On top of them was Jimmy sitting with his legs crossed, dressed in black jeans with a black button down shirt. He was wearing the sunglasses. They were a bit large for his head, but they looked good and seemed to do the trick.

“Sweet! Let’s go, man. Sineter will crap his pants when he sees you!” Rufus barked as he walked to the dorm door.

Jimmy slowly stood up and put on his shoes. All of his movements were tentative, as if he was walking blindly through a fire pit.

They walked slowly. Rufus thought that Sineter would forgive him being late, bringing such a bargaining chip as Jimmy.

They opened the door to the class to see Mr. Sineter explaining the use of functions and their relationship to hyper dimensional polygons.

“…using one more variable in an equation will move us from n dimensions to n+1 dimensions. A straight flat line is an equation with no variables…” Mr. Sineter paused and slowly turned towards Rufus.

“Well? Are you going to stand in the door are you going to sit down.” He demanded.

Rufus stood in the doorway, still excited that he was able to get Jimmy to come to class, so it took him a moment to realize that he was interrupting.

“Sorry, Mr. Sineter” He ducked his head and made his way to his desk. As he was moving down the aisle he could hear the chatter level increase slightly.

“Mr. Harrison…” Mr. Sineter paused; his bushy eyebrows were raised in a surprised expression. “Please come in. I don’t think I expected to see you after our last discussion. You are welcome to take the desk in the far left corner. I believe you won’t have any real issues with the sun there.”

Jimmy made his way toward the indicated desk and sat. Rufus, along with the rest of the class, watched Jimmy even after he had sat down.

Mr. Sineter rapped his knuckles on his desk to regain the attention of the class.

“As I was saying, a multi-dimensional equation has several variables in it. Can someone tell me the equation of a two dimensional line?”

 …

The rest of the day garnered the same reaction when Jimmy walked into each of their classes. When it was time for Odyssey, Jimmy wouldn’t come no matter how much Rufus pleaded.

With finality Jimmy told Rufus “I messed up in the Arena once, and he told me that I wasn’t welcome. Rufus, I can’t…” He trailed off.

They had gotten to the top of the Vault’s staircase before any of the other students. A few minutes later the class members started filing towards them.

“Hey, it’s the noob and the bloodsucker.” Bobby Briston was in the middle of the pack of the students. At the sound of his voice the crowd of children parted away from him and streamed around the three of them as if the trio was a boulder freshly rolled into a river.

“Nice glasses. Ha! You look like a tool. Let me see them.” He hooked his finger under a lens and flicked them off of Jimmy’s face before Jimmy could move his head away.

“Oops, did I do that?” The glasses flew to the stone steps and one of the lenses popped out.

Jimmy screeched and threw his hands over his face and ran down the hall bumping into students as he did. Rufus was ticked off and tried to shove Bobby, but the older kid was larger and the push didn’t do much. Bobby shoved him back and Rufus fell to the floor almost the same way his glasses had, except it was just his pride that was broken. At that moment the bell rang.

“See you later, noob. You’re such a pansy.” Bobby ran down the stairs towards the Vault. Rufus picked up himself, his books, and his glasses and made his way down the stairs.

He sat down by Biggie. The first half of class was a discussion on the assigned reading. Rufus half listened as he tried to figure out how he could pop the lens to his father’s glasses back in.

The second half turned out to be much more interesting than Rufus ever expected.

“Well, class, we will continue to have tests next week. Make sure you all have chosen a partner for your assigned reading. Today, we have a special opportunity to see two great Odyssians give us their rendition of a scene between Anne and her bosom friend Diana Barry. Bristons if you wouldn’t mind, please come to the front of the class.”

Biggie leaned over and said under his breath “This should be good.”

The Briston twins stood up and walked to the front of the class.

“So as introduction, you all know the Bristons as the Dragon and the DragonRider. Very imaginative power—in Anne’s words, ‘Great scope for the imagination.’ Today we will be pleased to see them use their imagination in a slightly different venue.”

He paused, looked over at the twins. “Are you two ready?”

“Um…yes sir.” Said Bobby.

“Good.”

With that, the Principal looked like he was pressing buttons on his lectern and absently said, “Setting the scene…”

The Vault’s walls, desk, and people all disappeared in splotches and turned into the interior of a farmhouse. Rufus could see that it wasn’t from this century; everything in the home seemed to be temporally from the 1800’s.

Standing in the front door of the farmhouse were the Briston twins.

“Do you remember the scene that you have been assigned?” Asked the Principal.

Rufus looked around to find where the Principal’s voice had come from. As he did, he realized that all of the other students had disappeared including him, except for the Briston twins. He rubbed his chest with his hand and could still feel it, but it was as if he was invisible even to his own eyes.

“Freaky, right?” Biggie was still right next to Rufus.

“Yeah, that’s an understatement.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

The Principal’s disembodied voice was walking through the scene with the Bristons. Finally he said, “Are you ready to project yourselves?”

“Yes, sir” they said together.

“Who is going to be Anne and who will be Diana?”

Bobby lifted his head “I’m going to be Anne and Brock is going to be Diana.”

“Sounds interesting. Let’s see how you do.”

With that a wind sound started up and surrounded the spectators; however, Rufus didn’t feel it enter into him as it had when he turned into Smaug. He watched the Bristons as they closed their eyes and, in the blink of an eye, instead of two teenaged boys standing in the parlor of the farmhouse, there stood two inconceivable human beings. The one, which Rufus could only guess was supposed to be Anne, had electric red hair that looked more like a mullet than anything else. The hair unnaturally stood several inches on the top of her head and hung long down her back. She wore a plain dress that stopped short of her knees and, for some reason, she wore military combat boots with gray socks that were rolled up below her knees. Beyond these aspects, the girl was just as stocky as Bobby had been in real life.

As Rufus was inspecting Bobby’s rendition of Anne, a giggle started to spread through the class. He turned to look at Brock’s rendition of Diana, and he immediately saw what everyone was laughing about. His “Diana” had two things that were completely out of place. One—there was a black tail that lazily drifted out of the bottom of the dress she was wearing, and two—her bust was that of a very well-endowed woman.

 “Class, please keep the noise to a minimum. There are those that still need to take this test. And I think they want to concentrate on this presentation.” The Principal coughed.

Rufus was confused and he leaned over to where Biggie had been. “They can’t hear us?” He asked.

“Nope. Merlin has us in some kind of bubble…” He whispered and trailed off as both Rufus’ and Biggie’s attentions were drawn into the insanity of the scene in front of them.

The two girls—previously boys—were not fazed by the giggling and immediately started into action.

The scene progressed about as well as Rufus had anticipated. The cabinet that contained Marilla’s prized rosebud spray tea set was thrown to the floor because Diana insisted on helping Anne with getting the raspberry cordial and, as Diana walked past the cabinet, her tail lazily flicked out and knocked it down.

The scene digressed to where the two girls ate all of the apples from Marilla’s tree. Then, instead of just Diana drinking three tumblers full of red currant wine, they both drank several tumblers full, got drunk, and started to skip around the dinning table, holding hands and singing a song about a whippoorwill and a weasel, while passing a loaf of fruitcake between them—chomping off chunks and spewing crumbs all over the floor as they sang. Eventually, the two girls fell over on top of each other, utterly drunk, passed out and snoring as if sawing logs was the only way to save their lives.

The scene slowly dissipated back into the walls of the Vault and there, at the head of the class, stood the two Briston twins with very red faces—they had total recollection of what had just happened, and they knew that the rest of the class had seen it also.

“Well, boys. That was simply not what I was expecting…” As the Principal trailed off searching for more words the bell rang and his attention was diverted.

“Weekend sessions in the Arena will be postponed until next weekend. And for next week’s classes, we will be studying music. We will have a different guest each day, and I expect you all to be on your best behavior.”

With that the class was dismissed.