Michael Coney by Celestial Steam Locomotive

Author:Celestial Steam Locomotive
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-01-08T22:51:54+00:00

The boy studied history, as the Oracle had suggested, and, as time went by, he tried everything. He painted abysmal pictures, he wrote verse that no minstrel has repeated since. He chopped chunky nudes from rock, he built a minareted temple that kindly Dream People quickly smallwished into nothingness.

He was labeled a madman. He sang songs without melody in a tuneless voice, and people avoided him. And in no time at all, so it seemed, he was fourteen years old and passionately interested in the bodies of women. Fortunately for history, the fear of ultimate death was even stronger than this interest, and he channeled his burgeoning drives into his quest. It is fair to say that by now he probably had more drive than anybody in Dream Earth. So he continued to study with a growing frenzy while he wove monstrous tapestries, created and destroyed perfect football teams, designed dancing dinosaurs and spread across the countryside a sinuous and psychic River of Knowledge up which people swam, growing ever more learned as the strange water penetrated their pores, until, addicted, they could not rest until they reached the source. As their knowledge increased, so did their awareness of what they did not know—and so did their fear of what awesome Consciousness the source might be. In their minds the source gained a capital S, and the seeking of it lent a new meaning to life and the purpose of Mankind. It is perhaps significant that nobody ever reached the Source; their minds exploded with accumulated trivia long before that point. In their zeal they had forgotten that knowledge, to be useful, should have a directed purpose.

And if they had discovered the Source, they would have been disappointed. No august Being sat there on a throne waiting to welcome them into an unimaginable Kingdom. Instead there was a little black box

and a multicolored cable leading to a concealed terminal of the Rainbow. It was nevertheless an incredible achievement on the boy’s part. He had succeeded in creating real objects on Dream Earth—the box and the cable—a feat that could normally only be matched by the Keepers. It didn’t happen again, not for millennia, not until the Cap of Knowledge appeared. The boy was unique. He was ready.

He was sensitive, at the most sensitive age. He had redirected urges. He dreamed of power, of might and thrust. Things from the past moved in majesty through his mind. He was still a child, and he thought as children always had—and the images began to clarify, began to take shape from a particular period of Earth’s history, from a fleeting instant in Time when Mankind had grown a million years in one century, a time of quick changes and therefore of haunting nostalgia. That was what art and beauty were all about: nostalgia. He woke one morning trembling at the discovery, knowing where art had gone. If nothing changes, then there can be no nostalgia for things past and lost. And without that beautiful sadness, art withers.

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