Elko the Potter Š 1997 by Jerry J. Davis Franz Kafka looked at his small, elite group of 22nd century students and tapped on the large text display with his pointing stick. “The decisive moment in human development is a continuous one,” he said, reading his own words. “For this reason the revolutionary movements which declare everything before them to be null and void are right, for nothing has yet happened.”
The students fidgeted. One, a young man with so many freckles it looked painful, raised his hand. Kafka nodded, and the youth spoke up. “Sir Oscar Wilde said, ‘History is merely gossip.’”
Kafka took a step toward the student, pointing the stick right at him. “Precisely!” he said, his voice betraying only a echo of his former accent. “That is precisely my point!”
#
A half mile away, Professor Raymond Burns was looking directly into history.
He was searching for carts.
They came from here, he was sure of it. Raymond had tracked the carts all up and down the region and they always came from here. After all, it made sense; the area between the rivers was famous as being the cradle of civilization. The muddy waters and the fertile desert land just begged to be mixed, and the local villages listened. Irrigation was developed, and with it came more food than the farmers could possibly use. This led to the gift of idle time. Time to ponder, time to experiment. Villages became cities, and cities became city-states.
There came kings and gods and law.
The image that was broadcast directly to Raymond’s optic nerves caused a stinging pain. There was a specially developed endorphin to counter this side effect, but it wore off quickly.
The pain distracted Raymond, but he was perpetually putting off another dose for just one more minute…
He worked the controls, slowing the temporal scan. It was right about here. Going forward through time, slowing the rate, slowing so that he could see the passage of humanity through the stinging hell of the retinal linkage. There were no carts at all, and then suddenly they were everywhere! It was like there had been an explosion of carts.
He reversed the scan, going backwards through time. Below his disembodied eyes the city deteriorated into a village of mud huts, and the bronze plow devolved to copper and then to a curved stick.
The men and women carried their harvest in by hand in large baskets. There was not a wheel in sight. Wearily, Raymond flipped the controls forward again. This was taking forever.
For seven long years Raymond had been waiting for this chance, and now he had only three days to accomplish it. Two of those three days were already gone, and this last one was rapidly coming to a close. Behind Raymond there was a long line of others who waited for their turn at the temporal viewer, each with their own pet projects. If Raymond didn’t make his discovery within the next few hours, it would probably never happen.
Through the haze of pain he watched it happen again. An explosion of carts. He reversed the controls again and watched, scanning slower than ever, trying to trace the progress. It had to have begun here. Somewhere.
And then – suddenly! – he spotted it. He stopped the temporal scan, freezing the image. Raymond was so elated he giggled like a madman. “That’s it! That’s it that’s it!” he yelled out loud. They were beautiful – the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Four round bricks drying in the hot summer sunlight.
Four bricks that would forever change the history of mankind.
#
Elko, a Sumerian potter living on the banks of the Euphrates, had this reoccurring feeling that he was being watched. It would come and go, and sometimes he forgot about it altogether, but then sometimes he could be all alone and it was like someone was above him looking down. He attributed it as the attention of the gods.
His own father thought him a fool, so maybe the gods did too, and Elko was providing them with amusement.
Elko, son a farmer, heir to a long line of the most successful farmers anyone had ever known, had turned down the family trade to play with mud. That’s how Unko, his father, would put it. Playing with mud. Unko saw water as the power, water flowing through their hand-dug ditches, irrigating the fields. Man controlling the power of water from the great Euphrates.
Elko firmly believed it was not the water, it was the dirt.
The water merely followed where the dirt directed it. Hand-built levees, hand dug ditches – it was the dirt.
Control the dirt. Mold the soil into shapes from the mind’s imagination. Anything was possible!
His father couldn’t argue that his son wasn’t making a good living – he was. Elko worked as a potter, trading his bowls and vessels for food and clothing, and he lived in a large home made from sun-hardened bricks he made himself. He had a good woman and they were soon expecting a child. Everyone outside his immediate family held him in high regard as a man of ideas.
“Look at you! You call this work? You could be out growing food, building aqueducts! Instead you sit in this fancy hut of yours and play with mud. It’s like you never grew up.”
“Father, what would you store your grain in if you didn’t have my vessels? They’d still be in a heap under a blanket, being eaten by birds, rats, and bugs.”
“Making pots is a woman’s job.”
It was useless. No matter what he did, Elko couldn’t convince his father that what he was doing was useful. Despite his success, this bothered him, and sometimes he lie awake at night trying to think of a way to change his father’s mind.
It came to him on one of those days when he felt he was being watched, while he was busy filling an order of 24 vessels for Yurdmal the Trader. Elko had fashioned a round table that he could spin by kicking at thick pegs radiating from the base. The whole table was very heavy but well balanced in a depression in the floor – once he got it going, it would continue spinning for quite a while. It wasn’t his idea, but it was one he’d improved upon. The spinning table allowed him to make the smoothest and most uniform vessels in the region, and quickly too. He made them by the dozens and sold them cheap.
Being in a hurry that day, Elko kicked the table too hard. It lost its balance, and he was just able to leap back as it tipped over and went rolling around the room. It reminded Elko of something he’d seen as a child – some faint, dream image reaching out from years past. He watched the table rolling until it stopped, then took a breath and went to it. The gods, he was sure, were laughing at him. But after a few minutes of grunting Elko had the table into position and went right back to work. His mind, however, was far from what he was doing.
That night, from the finest of his brick-making clay, Elko made four large round bricks with holes in the exact center. After a week of drying in the sunlight they were rock hard, and he mounted them onto two poles. Across the poles he put a big, strong basket, fastening it tight. When he was done he tested it out, and it worked just like he thought it would. So, gathering his nerve, he rolled his invention out to his father in the fields. “I made this for you,” he said. “This should make it easier to carry in your harvest.”
Unko walked around the unlikely contraption, staring. He tried pushing and pulling it back and forth. “Son,” he told Elko, “this is very clever.” A crowd gathered around, and they tested it by filling it with a large load of grain. With it, one man could carry in more than ten men could carry without it. Everyone agreed that this was indeed very clever, and within a month the whole valley was swarming with copies.
Elko’s father still grumbled about his son’s choice of profession, but now there was a touch of admiration in his voice.
This was enough for Elko. His life seemed complete.
#
The report was titled: Elko Potter, Inventor of the Wheel.
Professor Raymond Burns submitted it to Technica along with a copy of the recordings from the temporal viewer. It chronologged his search for the first wheeled cart, tracing it back to one Sumerian potter, then detailed the potter’s life from birth to death.
Raymond had been waiting for the call. He’d been sitting in his condo all morning wearing a suit and a tie, ready for the occasion. He couldn’t see anything other than complete acceptance, as his thousand-to-one shot project had been a total success.