The Conscious Beast
AN INTRODUCTION
The rainy seasons of the Etosha Pan, in the grasslands of Nairobi, are a time of birth and awakening. Birth and awakening characterize perfectly the life of one noble Wildebeest, a beast unlike any other of his kind, or, for that matter, the entirety of the region.
Etosha is a cyclical land--its rainy seasons are immensely fruitful, and its dry seasons are harsh and cruel. The birth of the noble Wildebeest towards the later months of the rainy season would, in most cases, be a sentence of death.
The reason our particular Wildebeest is so noble is that he has been born with a consciousness close to, perhaps superior to, that of a typical human. His sense of reasoning is approximate to a human's, but he is not dissimilar to a computer that has not been programmed, or, for simpler analogy, to an empty box. He can rationalize solutions to problems in a manner that far exceeds the rationalizing abilities of his fellow Wildebeests.
The question remains--does intelligence help us at all without support? The only way to know for sure is to follow our origins back to when we, too, were "mindless animals". But the question still remains... are we, ourselves, animals?
All chapter quotations are taken from "Asapient Communication", a fictional scientific work detailing the events of this book, written by the Anthropologist many years after the events have come to pass.
I realize that some of the scientific information contained in this story is not perfectly accurate--I have anthropomorphized M'tumbe to some extent, but I have tried to keep M'tumbe's thoughts and such fairly lined up with that of humanity.
I make no apologies for the literal impossibility of this fiction story--if you read to punch holes in fiction, you probably won't enjoy this story. However, if you read to punch holes in fiction, you probably don't enjoy very much fiction anyways.
Many people may think that they can get a general idea of the story by reading the quote headings. I would direct these people to the Firesign Theatre's motto: "Everything you know is wrong."
--Robert Tobias, Nov 1999
| Chapter 1 | "...the fear of death is common to most humans, but is not common to animals as well--at least, that's what our interviews have shown..." | |
| Chapter 2 | "A certain kind of expression is commonly found in humans, but was never found in animals until our subject came along. This expression was a form of two-dimensional art..." | |
| Chapter 3 | "..the subject struggled with designs. His exact design has been lost to the ravages of time... ... the point is not that he was capable of designing the weapon, but, in fact, that he came up with the concept of a weapon based solely on watching the animals--just as did our ancestors.." | |
| Interlude/ Chapter 4 | "...M'tumbe bred once and only once..." | |
| Chapter 5 | "...such that...I could scarce believe my eyes... ...[the] subject had concisely drawn in the sand what it had taken Charles Darwin a lifetime to realize..." | |
| Chapter 6 | "...an artistic side emerged to the subject, and he produced works of art that rival the complexity and intelligence of even human works... ...and he became the toast of the scientific community..." | |
| Chapter 7 | "We thought Cristo City would be a mecca of enlightened thought. We were wrong.." | |
| Interlude/ Chapter 8 | "...despite warnings, pleadings, and outright forbidding the address, the subject insisted on addressing his opponents... ...a dreadful mistake that led to his decision to leave humanity for a time..." | |
| Chapter 9 | "...the subject evidently managed to dislodge his radio tag... ...he was never seen or heard from again by any human..." |
The Conscious Beast is updated Fridays.
UPDATED: 3/2/01: The Conscious Beast Annotation is now available.
copyright Rev Robert Tobias (C) 2001
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