PREAMBLE
I am Quater. Read my words, and be my friend.
Father commands me to record the truth of history, so that readers will learn from those who went before.
Therefore, I give each of my seven sons one of these self-engraving, history-recording klay walls.
This wall automatically records the activity in this world, and in any other world containing one of the other walls.
Behold. Anyone who tampers with the records on these walls will be considered the enemy of Father. I will not like you much, either.
This wall is given by Father. It will teach you to acquire wisdom, integrity and skills for solving problems.
In each of our lives, we must make decisions. When these times come, be ready to make the right choices.
Continue in what you know is true, though truth is often hard to see. These walls may hold the only truths you will know.
Quater.
FATHER
Father is a kind being whom no one has ever seen. Father is beyond our comprehension. All folks know is that he was here before there ever was a here. He is happy and enjoys existing. He is said to be great and powerful; and as far as anyone knows, there was no one before him. He is from the other side. No one has ever been to the other side but it is supposed to be a great place where there is peace without death.
QUATER
Quater is the only being Father has ever made. He has been a good friend of Father’s for many eons. Quater is the official go-between for all beings and Father. Since he himself is a being made by Father, not much can be learned about Father by looking at Quater. But, if anything is known to any one about Father, Quater revealed it. Quater forged seven crowns for seven beings he created for Father to pour his approval on. Quater left the comfort of Father’s presence to pioneer a new world where his beings could make their own place in order to empathize with Quater.
OGDILLA
Quater made Ogdilla as a kind of test-subject. He gave Ogdilla a crown, although he did not have a head to set the crown on. Ogdilla is a mass of blue gas that is barely self-aware. It is said that Ogdilla is the spirit of adventure since on the day he was made, he left Quater’s homeland traveling in a straight line without stopping…
He has picked up many particles from space, which have made a happy home for themselves on Ogdilla’s back.
Ogdilla is now one million times the size he was when Quater made him, and his inhabitants include the Specks of Rilonate.
The Specks of Rilonate were in constant conflict with the Specks of Rod. The Specks of Rod cultivated food on Ogdilla’s back using their own spit. The Specks of Rilonate had no spit, but occupied most of the surface of Ogdilla. The Specks of Rilonate were disgusted by all the spitting that the Specks of Rod did, and they did not like stepping in it either.
The strife between the Specks of Rilonate and the Specks of Rod carried on for centuries. The conflict was never physically violent, but there was much whining, taunting, heated sneering, upheavals, and so on. This period is known as the “Oobla Senchter Hakkt,” or: the “Three Millennia of Conflict,” although it was really more like two and a half. During the “Oobla Senchter Hakkt,” an incident happened that at once made all the Specks forget their animosity, and at the same time exacerbated the conflict even more.
In the eighth month on the twentyseventh day, during the eleventh year of the first century of the second millennium of the “Oobla Senchter Hakkt,” the Specks of Rilonate woke up to find a strange being of gigantic size asleep in Screnchy Park. There was a pond by his head where he had drooled while he slept. A crowd of Specks gathered around the titan as the morning hours went by. The larger the crowd grew, the more the Specks talked among themselves. The hubbub finally became so loud that the giant awoke and sat up. The giant showed his great teeth and growled at them from deep within his huge body. The Specks fed him for fear of being eaten alive. The giant could easily have thrown three or four of them into his mouth at once. He was very bizzare looking, even for a giant; he was like nothing they had ever seen before. His head had a ring of flesh on it that started almost at the very top then looped down and joined the head again at the jaw. Three Specks, one on top of the other, could have stood up inside the ring. He had huge lips with which he covered his enormous teeth, while the Specks had no lips at all. Above the lips, almost to the top of the face, were two ballshaped things that had one dot within each of them. The giant seemed to use them to observe things, since the dots moved and pointed at whoever was speaking to him. His torso was short for his size, while his legs were extremely long. Out of his chest stuck three spiked horns.
For days upon end the Specks tried to speak to the giant to find out if he was friend or foe, to no avail. His form of speech sounded too low-down, deep and loud; it reminded them too much of the rumbling growl that came from deep within his body. The Specks did not not like it and they did not understand it. They could not even tell where one syllable ended and the next began; and comprehending sentences was totally impossible. To avoid hearing him speak, the Specks fed him constantly. The Specks of Rilonate did not keep a guard posted where the giant was staying; they could never have overpowered him. In any case, the giant never treatened them. King Rilonate had in mind to win over the giant’s confidence so that he might be employed to stomp on the Specks of Rod. King Rilonate often went to Screnchy Park to speak to the giant. He wanted to impress the giant, so he had the best acrobats from the Rilonate Circus come visit him. The king commanded the unicyclist to do loop-the-loops inside the ring on the giant’s head, while a high-diver did trick dives off his huge lips into a barrel of water at the giant’s feet. During these demonstrations of the circus performers’ expertise, the giant did nothing but stand still and smile. Even while there were trapeze artists swinging from the three spikes that stuck out from his chest, the giant stood like a stone sculpture with a silly grin on his face. King Rilonate redoubled his efforts to continue to try to communicate with the giant once he saw that the giant would not harm the circus performers as they climbed and swung upon his body.
Day after day, the king came out to where the giant was to try again to communicate his desire for the giant to walk over and stomp on the Specks of Rod. The giant smiled a lot at the king; he nodded his head when the king nodded his head; he shook his head when the king shook his head. When King Rilonate slapped his own forehead, the giant slapped his own forehead. When the king mimed walking, and pointed in the direction of the Kingdom of Rod, the giant stood up and did a dance. King Rilonate was furious! While the giant was still dancing, the king ordered all the Specks of Rilonate to throw things at him. Since they were feeding the giant all the time, the only stuff they had at hand was food, so they threw that at him.
The giant tried to eat as much of the food thrown at him as possible, but he could not keep up with the furious pace with which the Specks were throwing it at him. He turned and walked away from them and headed in the direction of the Kingdom of Rod. Since the Specks of Rilonate had thrown so much food at the giant, no matter where he turned he stepped into it. With each step, more and more food gunked-up on the bottom of his feet. The Specks of Rilonate cheered and clapped and jumped up and down when the giant continued in the direction of Rod! The giant turned back to look at the Specks, so they stopped their cheering and got ready to throw more food. But the giant did not come back; he continued on the way he was headed, toward the Kingdom of Rod.
So the Specks of Rilonate had a great celebration! They hoped that as soon as the giant arrived in the Kingdom of Rod, he would smoosh the Specks of Rod who were such a bother to the Kingdom of Rilonate. King Rilonate gave a rousing speech:
“Well, that’s that for the great giant! I suppose we owe a dept of thanks to the goofy colossus, for he will shortly be stepping on the Specks of Rod and making so much mush of them! His immense foot will crush our ancient foe in an instant. Squashed beneath his mammoth bulk, those unspeakable wretches will be reduced to the vile scum that they have always represented. We are now delivered forever from their constant whining, taunting and hectoring. That feeble minded titan is our national hero! A doltish whopper, he shall be the greatest of all figures in the history of Rilonate. There is none equal to his blockheaded enormity on all of Ogdilla, but he did finally come through for us. A stupendously dump gargantua, it is well, nevertheless, that we are rid of him. And I suppose we ought to be thankful that the half-witted behemoth did not stomp on us too. I cannot think of any reason why he would come back here… can you?”
Meanwhile, the Specks of Rod heard the giant before they saw him. His every step made a hollow drum sound on the debris-covered surface of Ogdilla. They gathered into frightened groups, becoming more and more agitated as the booming steps grew ever louder. Finally they saw him! They saw his big ring-head, his big lips, and the spikes sticking out of his chest. But what most impressed them were his feet. Actually, what most impressed them was what they saw stuck to the bottom of his feet. All that food that he had stepped on looked disgusting, but the Specks of Rod did not know that it was food. The Specks stood in stunned silence. They knew that the giant had come from the direction of the Kingdom of Rilonate. Their imaginations took over from there.
The Specks of Rod were convinced that the giant had stomped on the Specks of Rilonate and made mush of them. As the giant got closer and closer, word went through the crowd that the giant had finished off the Specks of Rilonate and was now coming to their kingdom to stomp on them. Some of the Specks ran away screaming; but most stood still, knowing they could not out-run the fearsome giant’s feet. Then one Speck of Rod started clapping. At first, the Specks next to him thought he was crazy, but then they started clapping too. Soon a small group was clapping. Then most of the crowd was clapping and cheering and jumping up and down as the giant approached. They had figured that if the giant thought they were glad that the Specks of Rilonate had been stomped to pudding, then he might spare them and consent to be their hero.
When the giant reached the front of the crowd they whooped and hollered for a few minutes more. Then the crowd parted and King Rod made his way through to the front. There, before his people at the giant’s feet, he made a speech: “Oh, Great Giant! Thank you, Mighty Colossal Allied Thing, for stepping on the Specks of Rilonate and making so much mush of them! Your immense foot has crushed our ancient foe in an instant. Squashed beneath your mammoth bulk, these unspeakable hidiots (hideous idiots) have been reduced to the evil scum that they have always represented. We are now delivered forever from their constant whining, taunting and bantering. You, Magnificent Titan, are our national hero! Oh Necromaniacal Whopper, you shall be the greatest of all figures in the history of Rod. There is none equal to your fabulous enormity on all of Ogdilla. You, Tremendous Gargantua, shall be second only to myself, unless of course you would rather be number one. By the way, we thank you, Phenomenal Behemoth, so very much for not stomping on us too. I can only offer our humble Kingdom to you, Amazing Monstrosity, as compensation for the wonderful deed you have accomplished today. It is not a kingdom worthy of your monumental grandiosity, of course; you won’t like it much. You will probably not like anything we offer you, since it is all tiny compared to your gigantean size. But of course, anything we have is yours, but I don’t know what you would do with it. I say, do you understand me?”
The giant smiled at the Specks of Rod, who smiled back, until he spoke to them. To the Specks his voice sounded slow and deep and slurred. They looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. The Specks of Rod decided to go back to what they were each doing before the giant arrived. As they left they kept looking over their shoulders to make sure the giant was not lifting one of his big feet to stomp on them. He did not move from where he stood and maintained his smile until they were out of sight.
The next day the giant was right where the Specks of Rod had left him, only he was sitting. So, the Specks went about their daily chores, and occasionally they would look over their shoulders at the giant just to make sure he had not stood up. This did not change for several days. Finally the giant got up and started following some Specks around. He seemed to be watching them as they went about their everyday tasks. He still smiled as he watched them, but not as much. Day after day, month after month, season after season he watched them tending their fields, from planting to harvest.
At harvest time many Specks noticed how much thinner the giant looked and how little he smiled as compared to when he had first arrived in the Kingdom of Rod. As they talked about it, they realized no one had seen him eat while he had been there. Some of the Specks got together and brought food to the giant. When he saw that they had brought some food to him, the giant looked horrified! He got up and ran off, far away from the Kingdoms of Rod and Rilonate.
There is no official record of when the giant was seen last or who saw him, but a few Specks from both Kingdoms insist that they saw the giant ascending into the heavens early one morning a few years after he ran away from the Kingdom of Rod.
About the time that the giant ran off, spies from the Kingdom of Rilonate came to the Kingdom of Rod and saw that the Specks of Rod were not obliterated. They noticed that their enemies were not even bruised a little! This report went back to King Rilonate, who was shocked and upset that once again the Specks of Rod had foiled his own Speck Kingdom. He ordered a delegation to go to the Kingdom of Rod and meet with a delegation of the Specks of Rod. When the delegation of Rilonate arrived at Rod there was much shock and agitation. “You are supposed to be squashed!” said the representative of Rilonate. “Well, you are supposed to be squished!” said the representative of Rod.
Tensions rose and accusations flew! Each side blamed the other for making their King’s most famous speech a pack of lies. The delegations gave messages to each other to take back to their respective kings about how there could never be peace between the two kingdoms. As they left the meeting, they all thumbed their noses at each other! The “Oobla Senchter Hakkt” was back in full swing.
King Rilonate grew tired of the thousands of years of bickering between his Specks and King Rod’s Specks. In a desperate move to bring about a day of peace, he asked for a secret meeting with King Rod at the center of Ogdilla. In the thirty fourth month on the second day, during the eighty ninth year of the third millennium of the “Oobla Senchter Hakkt,” the kings met. The two kings reasoned for two weeks, trying solutions that were fair for both kingdoms, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Ogdilla himself had grown so tired of the angst he felt on his back that he spread all of the Specks of Rod to one half of his back and the Specks of Rilonate to the other half of his back. In a violent quake, Ogdilla split into two beings which floated independently from each other. The only problem was that King Rod ended up on the half of the back with the Specks of Rilonate, and King Rilonate found himself on the half of Ogdilla with the Specks of Rod. King Rilonate was at first mistaken by the Specks of Rod as King Rod, but he quickly corrected the Specks of Rod announcing that he was King Rilonate. The Specks of Rod immediately cut him into tiny pieces and fed him to their young. King Rod, however, told the Specks of Rilonate that he was indeed their king, and since few Specks of Rilonate had ever seen their own king, they believed him. Eventually, King Rod had the Specks of Rilonate build him a large castle which housed his children, who were half Speck of Rod and half Speck of Rilonate. King Rod, posing as King Rilonate, lived to see his Specks harmoniously blend where it was previously thought impossible.
The Specks of Rilonate did not cultivate food on Ogdilla’s back using their own spit like the Specks of Rod; instead they rubbed their heads on the fine, hairy grass-like particles that had attached themselves to cover the Rilonate portion of Ogdilla’s back. The rubbing caused static charges to build and build until small arcs of lightning flashed off of the Specks’ heads. Ogdilla’s blue gas in the immediate area of the arcs of lightning reacted by turning into bite-size cubes of lime-flavored finger snacks. This was the sole source of food for the Specks of Rilonate.
Every 247 days (this was one year for the Specks of Rilonate, chosen arbitrarily because they did not have seasons) the Specks had their annual feast, which was called the “Fillange per Jungi.” The great day began with the Concert of Rubbing, where the entire population of Rilonate, young and old alike, rubbed their heads on the hairy particles until they collapsed exhausted, unable to lift a limb. About 3 hours after this frenzy, some Specks regained enough strength to shakingly pull themselves upright. Then the male specks began the Harvest of Cubes while the female specks prepared gastronomic delights such as: Cube Fondue, Cube Salad, Cube Roast, Cube Soup, Cube and Cube-on-a-Stick (for the kids), Cube Paste, Cube Fillet, Cube Pie, Cube Relish, Cube Stuffing, Blackened Cube, Cube Kabobs, Cube Sherbet, Deep-fat-fried Cube, Cube Cake, Deep-fat-fried Cube Cake, Barbecued Cube, Cube Chowder, Glazed Cube, Cube Pandowdy, Broiled Cube, Blackened Cube, Cube Thermador, Cube-on-the-Rocks (for the adults), Steamed Cube, Smoked Cube, and of course, Susan’s Cube Bubble Loaf. While the delicious smells of cube cookery were filling the air, those who were not busy found time to participate in fun “Fillange per Jungi” games, like: “Come Over Here,” “Hey You Just Bumped My Friends Elbow,” “Are You Just Going To Stand There,” and “This Is My Bucket.” The day culminated with the “Fillange per Jungi” dance, which they performed lying on their backs with their feet as high in the air as they could possibly get them, first prize going to the dancers with their feet highest up.
King Rod, whom the Specks of Rilonate thought was King Rilonate, used the occasion of “Fillange per Jungi” to campaign for re-election, since twelve days after the picnic was polling day. The specks voted every year, but they only had two choices: King Rod Green Ballot of King Rod Purple Ballot. Either way, King Rod got re-elected.
“Fillange per Jungi” was the Specks of Rilonate Forgotten Day of Atonement. They knew that in their past there was a definite day set aside as a Day of Atonement, but it was forgotten before King Rod ever took over the position of King Rilonate. At least they knew there once was a Day of Atonement, but the Specks could not remember what they need atonement for. After King Rod took the throne, a speck named Hefamut, during the demolition of a shoe foundry, found a vague historical reference to a Day of Atonement called the “Fillange per Jungi.” The king’s advisors advised the king to declare a new “Fillange per Jungi” and to have the marketing department think of some fun things to do on it. No one could think of anything they needed atonement for, so the day is mostly remembered for the annual feast or for the dancing thing.
The Specks of Rilonate determined when one day was over and a new day had begun by having the Day Determiner hold the Determiner Stone out at her side at arms-length. When that day’s Day Determiner could no longer hold her arm up, the day was declared done and the next Day Determiner took up the stone. Being Day Determiner was a prestigious honor, but no she-speck was allowed to do it more than once a year.
Rilonate specks married in threes… Two grooms and a bride, or two brides and a groom. In either case the spouse with the two counterspouses had to alternate every day, being spouse to one, and then the next day to the other. Each Speck year the sequence is renewed, starting with the spouse who was shorted by one day the previous year. The marriage ceremony of Rilonate was short and simple: The three specks went before the king on the assigned day of their marriage appointment; each stated their vows, which consisted only of a promise to abide by the custom of spouse alternating, and a promise to never get ugly. The vows were repeated in this way: The king said to each speck, in-turn, “Do you, ___, promise to never get ugly?” To which each responded in turn, “I do.” Then, in the case of one groom and two brides, for example, the king said to the groom speck,
“Repeat after me. I, ___, take you, ___, to be one of my wedded wives, and you, ___, to be the other of my wedded wives.”
Annulment usually stemmed from one of the two brides or one of the two grooms (in the case of one bride and two grooms) feeling slighted because he/she was not the first one named in the vow. Divorce usually stemmed from one spouse being cheated out of his or her fair share of marriage days on leap year, when an extra day went to the spouse who then renewed the new year’s sequence!