(fiction) by dannye Fri Oct 06 2000 at 0:00:28

Chapter Two

Carts moved slowly underneath the tower where the monks worked so feverishly, their cartmen calling out in loud ((and joyous tones?)), "Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead!"

The smell of death all around him made Callitus anxious. He had assumed this project would take a few weeks, perhaps six months. Little did he know that when one begins to catalogue all of human thought that the culling is the hardest part. It became not a process so much of what to put in as much as what to leave out.

The monks from the northern regions were scholars of many fields; primarily the sciences. They were intent on including nothing aside from facts and logical theories. They were concerned with the what and when and sometimes the how -- not the what is up, when is dinner, and how are you doing.

Several of the monks from the southern regions were quite fond of the steamier and more mundane aspects of human existence. They were intent on including all manner of human thought, no matter the depravity, banality or sacrilege.

How could this be reconciled with Pope Kurt's vision of The World as It Should Be? Even the somewhat liberal Callitus Nathaniel Oostendorp was at times aghast at the thoughts going through his subjects' minds. He was said to wonder at one afternoon reverie,

"How can such beautiful specimens think such horrible thoughts?"

This became the primary bone of contention. How much do the future generations actually NEED to know about their ancestors?

In his infinite wisdom, Callitus spoke thusly:

"We shall have to go among the populace and find one who is both of them and apart from them. We shall have to find a man who understands the limitlessness of potential as well as the downfalls of perfidy."



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