2. THE SECOND LESSON

In the beginning....

It was a day like any other in the classroom on Terraful. The closest of its two moons, Beacon, was sinking somewhere or other, leaving long shadows on the blue grasses of the savannah, and Zoz stood in front of his pupils, a demigod before simpletons. At least, that’s how his mind read the relationship between himself and his class.

Zoz, though, was a Perfectoid. And Zos knew practically everything that there was to know, and quite a lot more than that. Manufactured (that was the right word for his birth) in the metropolis of Clingle, he was an incarnation of supreme knowledge, designed specifically to teach the young so that a homoperp wouldn’t haver to.

“But sir,” ventured Din, lounging theatrically in his easy arm chair, “you told us yesterday that we were going to look at the most ancient pre-history, and you burbled on about Priam and his many sons and their demise in war...”

“I never burble,” rebuked a stony-faced Zoz. Stony face was a warning and Din knew he ought not irritate his teacher any mire than was common. Though he could in no way hurt or damage his homoperp pupils, Zoz could make life uncomfortable for them if enraged by what he saw as human sttupidity.

“What I mean, sir,” insisted Din, “if there were wars in your pre-history there must have been soldiers ready to fight in them, and if society had reached the level of having mounted warriors with spears or guns or whatever it was they had, it can’t have been the absolute beginning of all things. There must have been ages before then, for homoperps to learn how to kill.”

“Are you trying to ask,” demanded Zoz, “what the actual most distant beginning was?”

“In a word, yes sir,” nodded Din.

“Or as close to the beginning as knowledge goes,” added the pretty Cun, folding her deliciously fragrant locks of bronze hair between two spectacularly beautiful fingers and smiling sweetly at her teacher.

“And there you have the rub,” sighed Zoz. “For much knowledge was irretrievably lost during the Great Chaos when the Trumpster emerged as the Mad Tyrant and the Maybot gurned as his slave. But we still have snippets.”

“Then what of those snippets?” asked Din, “it’s only right and proper that we should know such vital things. Who, for instance, was the first homoperp?”

“There were writings, unverified I’m afraid, but in my deepest vaults I recall a rumour of a first man,” sighed Zoz, “and he was a homoperp, as you are, but many generations, countless beyond reckoning, ago.”

“Tell us more,” urged Cun, fiddling with her tresses and sitting upright as if awaiting news of great importance to one and all.

“There were records,” sighed Zoz, “of the creation of a man and he was acknowledged as the first man and from his own rib a fem was crafted whilst he slept. Not a nipper, mark you, but a full grown fem with fem attachments in the chesty region and a need to seek Michaelmas straight away.”

“Fascinating,” leered Pul, his tone filled with mocking doubt, “say more, great Zoz. Did they breed, this first man with his first home-made fem, on that sordid Michaelmas?”

“They had no knowledge of such things as controlled breeding,” said Zoz, “for they were first in all the lands. Yet it is recorded that they had sons who sought wives in other lands,” acknowledged Zoz, “but the tale is disregarded, inconsistencies being sited, like if the man was the first man how come his sons founds wives in other lands where the story would suggest there could be nobody to produce even one wife.”

“It is but an antique tale then?” asked Cun.

“That is supposed,” agreed Zoz, “but here the account varies and becomes interesting. In a more rational tale there were creatures not quite like homoperps, and there was mutation.”

“You mean, interference in the genetic code between generations, creating, as it were, a fresh variety?” asked Els.

Zoz nodded. “So it was assumed, and that fresh variety prospered and over many lifetimes spread beyond its homeland to occupy the entire planet.”

“And we are the progeny of that mutation?” asked Fil, “I’m happier believing that than I would be it it transpired I was a part of a man’s ribcage! For it is my belief that we fems are superior in just about ever respect to you men,” she said, grinning at Els, who had a well known soft spot for her.

“That may be the case, but when it comes to depth of knowledge my own vast storage is supreme,” put in Zoz sharply. “Now attend, young homoperps before I issue a punishment!”

There was a quiet rustle as his pupils sat more attentively without smiling furtively at each other. Punishments, involving the spending of time doing stupid and repetitive things, took too much time, and there were more interesting and pleasing games to be played.

“All the more ancient records are probably false,” said Zoz quietly, “little more or possibly even less than early witterings by homoperps whose brainpower had yet to accumulate sufficient data for proper extrapolation. So we can discount the big bearded creator astride the stars of many yarns, for it has to be proven as nothing more substantial than nonsense. And we can most certainly discount the tale of the rib becoming a woman because it was probably told as an excuse for man to seem to be naturally superior to fems.”

“But the distant past is important?” asked Cun, her hair shining where she twirled it.

Zoz nodded. “It surely is,” he agreed. “The past produces the bricks with which we build tomorrow. It is because of a through understanding of the past, for instance, that wars were abolished and any warlike homoperp putting his foul desires into action rewarded with fifty thousand volts! And it is because of this that your ventures into Michaelmas can only occur on that one autumnal day you all look forward to, and thus population is kept at a sustainable level.”

“Yet we have our playtimes as well,” wittered Fil suggestively, knowing that the one thing that Zoz could never enjoy was the playtime she was suggesting, when men and fems privately passed many sleeping hours together. For Zoz was, at the most basic level, a machine even though he was cunningly crafted from living flesh, but he was denied the joys of lust, and they weren’t.

Living flesh and no heart, they all thought as one, and tried not to smile.

© Peter Rogerson 11.04.19