When man way young, and woman too, each person lived in a silent world. But man soon came to a realization, or more likely woman, that the ideas of one person are too important to keep to one’s self, and they each decided on their own, for they knew not of each other’s intentions, that some method must be found to make the other see as you yourself saw the world.

Woman and man tried with all of their might to give their thoughts to one another, but the thoughts of man were silent, only dancing chemicals, and woman too could only fail at this endeavor. And so it was to the children of man and woman, and to their children in-turn to solve this, the first of human kinds engineering tasks.

Many ideas were submitted, and their efficacy tested. Despite the great distance of minds they were all of the same form after all, and many found agreement in their methods. Some took the hair that their bodies produced, forming it this way and that until messages emerged. Some found understanding in the careful layering of the brittle shells of the trees where tiny foods and stinging things crawled, thought their resource was is short supply. Still others made their points with the rhythms of rocks as they fell.

Each like minded man and like minded woman gathered their followers about them and shared their ideas, limited as they were by the necessities of their mediums, but to each woman and each man of a group, the thoughts of the other groups became foreign and strange. For as long as they could remember, each person was like an islands of thoughts, and the thoughts of others were of little concerns, but now with such easy understanding between so few, the thoughts of others suddenly mattered a great deal. With no basis to move thought between the groups, each was forced to imagine the thoughts of the others.

Here in was the first of human kinds mistakes, for with no foundations to base the imagined thoughts of the others besides their rejection of what was thought the best communications method, each group learned fear and suspicion of the other. Soon there was war, war until society tore itself apart for the first time. And from the ashes came a new thought among the people, so profound that only the war itself could have brought it to the minds of the men and women.

Man, and woman too found language, and then art, and music, and on the shoulders of each of man’s children grew new and innovative methods of moving thoughts. This time, each building on the last, so that no one method supplanted or displaced its progenitor. Woman and man found ever more elaborate tongues, but still, the entropy from mind to method to mind was great.

All until one day. On this day a woman of letters, in and of themselves a symbol of the many thoughts she had collected into her mind, found a new path from mind to mind, a direct path. With excitement she used her old methods to spread the thoughts she had with her colleagues, self-assured with the thought that such a clunky process would soon be a thing of the past. Soon her device was constructed, and two volunteers came forth to be the first to see from the mind of the other. She gave them each a metal hat, and she told them that each hat would move the mind of one man into the mind of the other, though only for a moment. In that moment, each man would see for an instant what was the other man’s view onto the world for his lifetime.

Each man agreed, excited by the prospect, and they took their places in the laboratory of the woman. She checked each man’s hat in turn, and then she moved to the controls she had built, and she activated the device.

—

The woman was ruined. The boards convened, boards of her former colleagues, and each in turn berated the woman for her experiments. How obvious it was to all of them now how wrong she had been; the puzzled why she could not see the folly herself, even when they too had missed it when congratulating here just a short time before.

The woman didn’t care anymore, no thought could enter her mind, nothing would block the images of the two men. She could still see them every day, and hear them too, each running to opposite corners of the lab screaming, tearing off their hats, and then laughing uncontrollably. Furious one minute, and giddy the next, their minds now a blur of what they thought the world was like just 5 minutes earlier, and what they now knew it to be having seen it from the other side.

Their laughter brought other researchers running to the lab, and the woman desperately tired to snap the men out of their delirium. She told herself now that she wanted to help them, but at the time all she wanted was to know what they had seen. Each man’s yelling grew louder and louder until they caught sight of each other from across the room and suddenly fell silent. Then each man fell to his knees and then slept and slept and never woke up again.

        ”I know not my liege. He simply insisted that you must see him immediately.”

        ”But now page? It’s the middle of the night! That old wizard has been living as a hermit on the other side of the forest for 4 years, you would think that whatever it is could wait until the break of dawn.”

        The King slowly made his way down the dark corridor behind the page, careful to stay in the light of his lantern. On any other night, the King would have lead the way himself, holding the lantern before him and swinging it back and forth as he walked. He liked to pretend that he was Apollo, guiding the sun across the sky in his charriot, bringing light to every nook and cranny of the hallway as he passed. Knowing the King’s flair for the dramatic, the page was usually glad to indulge him, after all, he was the King, but the insistence with with the old wizard had sent him to fetch the King made the page uneasy, and he was determined to finish this errand as quickly as his King would allow.

        ”This way my liege, the stable has sent up your horse.”

        The King passed through the archway of the keep’s main gaits and walked up to his horse, giving it a gentle pat on the nose. The horse gave a snort, and shook his head.

        ”Well, at least I’m not the only one unhappy to be up at this ungodly hour. Page, let’s make haste, if I’m lucky I can be back in bed before morning.”

        ”You’ll get no argument from me sire. This way, the wizard has claimed the old stables as his laboratory, he has asked that you meet him there.”

        The King quickly mounted his horse and the two men were off into the night. As they approached the old stables, they could see a large column of smoke and steam rising from its roof, illuminated an odd orange and green color by the fires feeding it from below.

        ”Show yourself old man. I hope for your sake this is worth disturbing my dreams,” shouted the King.

        ”Ahh my friend, I was beginning to think you weren’t coming. Tell me, do you still dream of pies.”

        ”Aye, pies,” sighed the King.

        The old wizard laughed, “Well, we’ll see if we can get you some pie while we talk. Come in, come in.” The old wizard lead the two men into the stables. They passed tables and shelves filled with old books and papers covered in numerological scrawling. They came to a large box, about as tall as a man, and twice as wide, with a color so back that not even the shadows cast from the boiling fires could be seen on its surface.

        The page stared at the box as he had earlier when the wizard had called him to bring a message to the King. It had still been light then, but the box had been no more light than it was now. The page could see however the markings in the dirt around the box where it had moved this way and that a few inches or so.

        The page was a young man, no more than 12, and the way he looked at the box reminded the King of how he must had looked peering at the old wizards creations when he was that age. Even now, despite his experience in such things, the old wizard never failed to pique the Kings curiosity, though the King’s weathered face told more of the late hour than of his boyish interest in the box.

        ”How could he do this to us!?” Warren thought to himself, “I can hear that back stabber in the meeting now, ‘Why sure, the more the merrier. What’s that, you need space for the ant colonies too, sure, we’ve got acres of space, we’ll just put them down in Nuclear Physics with Warren. Heh, he could use a few friends down there. Now, lets say you gentleman come with me in my effeminate little pill box of a car and well go piss away the rest of the department’s budget on cotton candy machine for the directors lounge.’”
        Warren was practically yelling now. He didn’t care, no one could here him down there in his office, no one but the ants.
        ”Oh, wait, not my office, oh ho ho ho no! What does the sign say my little pretties? ‘Radio-Nuclear Physics Laboratories – Director Warren S. PhD; Etymology Storage’,” Warren sighed, “at least they left my name at the top.”
        Warren placed his results clipboard on a large stack of results sitting precariously on the corner of his desk. The desk had once been surrounded by shelves of books and papers, but all of that had to be moved out to make space for the 4 large plastic aquariums of ants that now stood along one wall of the room. All of Warrens books and papers were strewn in untidy piles on his desk and chair, and scattered around the floor leaving only a narrow path from the door to the case of controls on the opposite wall. the office had never been spacious by any means, but Warren had little need for a large workspace.
        However, once the workmen installed the 4 large tanks, not to mention the crisscrossing network of clear plastic tubing connecting them to the ants in other storage rooms, there was scarily enough room for Warren to stretch his arms out. The tanks blocked the one wall outlet in the room, so now the only light left was the small stream that came in from the florescent lights at the end of the hallway. Warren couldn’t even sit at his desk and look over to monitor the control panel for the test equipment in the next room anymore, relegated instead to balancing sideways between the stacks of books and papers and the ant’s plastic tubing to see the readouts.
        Warren blew the arrant strands of his comb-over out of his face and sat down hard on the stack of thick teachers editions he had made his new make shift chair. He let out another sigh and continued grumbling. He reached up for the cup of coffee he had placed on to of the tank nearest his desk. Warren took a few sips and looked down at the cup with a sower expression, it was awful. “Perfect,” he thought, “you’d think if they were trying to kill me she could just get it over with rather than this slow torture. Yesterday it chicory, before that its orange zest, what the hell is this? It tastes like cheese!”
        Warren moved to set the coffee back on to of the tank, then thinking twice he quickly downed the rest of it and threw the cup at the tank in the far corner of the room. “Have some coffee you ingrates!”