When these men came to Pangea, I did not know them. They did not know me. But we needed to be friends because we were the only people alive. We still are.
In the beginning, it scared me to talk to them. I told them things that were not true. I did not feel like me. When we talked, I wanted to be more like my old friend Aeiai. Aeiai makes jokes for people. He says things to other people that other people have not heard before. Then they say things to him. "We like that." "You makes us like you by being a funny person." "Tell that again, but this time tell Eeouoi, who has not heard that before. And tell it the same way."
One of the men, Oatwood, told me he could tell I was not happy to speak to them. He said he could see my shaky hands. He could hear my shaky voice. He did not like the way I smell. He told me to write in a journal. He told me to write what I think. Any thought I have he said to write down.
And it feels good. I like to write what I think. He told me I do not have to tell people what I write. I am happy for that, too. It makes me feel free on the inside to write. I am learning things that I did not know before. I told Oatwood that this is unusual. He told me that it is unusual. But he told me that I should make it usual.
So I will. I will write every day in my journal. And if anybody takes my journal and reads in my journal, I will kill him when I see him.
While we know today that the human male brain is composed of some dozen neatly defined regions, it was not always so. In the 21st-century, neurologists were bogged down in complex synapse networking methodologies, and completely missed the simple structure sitting right under their noses.
It was therefore to my great surprise to find this 21st-century diagram, almost perfectly representing the brain as we understand it today.
I have underestimated the science of the 2000s. A tip of the cap to you, century.
Yesterday I made an amazing discovery! I was hacking through the jungle on a stroll to the river to relieve some acute gastro pains I've been suffering recently, when my machete hit stone and bounced back with a clang, narrowly missing my face. Momentarily confused and constipated by the clatter, I began to pull apart the thick curtain of vines until I could see I had struck an ancient monument of some kind. Holy moly!
I ran back to camp to fetch Oiuea, so he could take a picture with his bamboo camera, and so I could set him to work clearing away the rest of the vines. After seven hours or so of manual labor, he uncovered a rotted and weathered plaque announcing this to be the Sergeant Floyd Monument, erected to honor a man sent on some sort of "Lewis and Clark Expedition," which I can only imagine was a regular occurrence in the 19th century.
The Floyd Monument (That's me in front. Looking good, huh?)
From what we could discern from the monument and surrounding plaques (full excavation took another ten Oiuea-man-hours through the night), this Sergeant Floyd had a diary, and wrote in it one day, "I am verry sick and has ben for Sometime but have Recovered my helth again." Three weeks later he died of appendicitis. A prognosticator!
What a discovery! The grave of a man just like me: on an expedition, lost in a strange and scary land, writing in a diary (!), suffering from stomach pain (unlike poor Floyd, I have no chance of dying from a burst appendix, as those were bred out of the human race in the late 2600s).
I take the serendipitous discovery as a chance to turn over a new leaf; rather than waking every day to complain for 3 solid hours about my tummy ache, I will strive to follow Floyd's noble example. For even though his own diary foreshadowed his death within days, the man kept at the joyous work of life: naming places (July 31, 1804: "this place is Called Council Bluff"); enjoying the outdoors with friends (August 15: "Capt Clark and 10 of his men and my Self went to the Mahas Creek a fishen, and Caut 300 and 17 fish of Difernt Coindes," and August 16: "went to the Creek a fishen, Caut 709 fish Differnt Coindes."); and writing fanciful fictions of some made-up people he called "Indians" and their festivals of "Smalipoks" and "Buflow" (August 14: "thes Indians has not Live at the town Sence the Smalipoks was so bad about 4 years ago. thay Burnt thare town and onley live about it in the winter and in the Spring. Go all of them in the praries after the Buflow and dos not Return until the fall, to meet the french traders. thay Rase Som Corn and then the Ottoe nation Comes and Cuts it Down while thay are in the praries")
Thinking of Floyd's worthy standard of a life lived fully is enough to make me a bit affected by the many ways we fall short of ideals, ours and his. What a great man. I think I will order Oiuea to dance one of his three-hour memorial dances for Floyd.
We found a broken old machine in the jungle yesterday. Grarnt identified it as some sort of antique computer; Oiuea was able to repair it with some grass and electro-vines--at least, repair it enough that it could gasp out a video promoting the Rocket Racing League. I couldn't believe it--this must have been an antique indeed, if it referred to the organization as the Rocket Racing League (we now know it better as the Mega Fantastic Rocket Awesome Super League)!! This video even makes it seem as if rocket racing didn't exist yet.
For someone of my time, this is hard to imagine. Rocket racing, simply put, was the most popular sport of the 23rd, 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th centuries. When rocket racing was big, hardly anyone paid any attention to other sports (in fact, baseball was put on hiatus for thirty-nine years during the legendary rocket-racing career of Dagoberto Flex (usually referred to simply as "D-Bert-F-X-The-Best"). He was so popular that many cared for nothing other than to watch him race. Millions died of starvation. Football was cancelled forever).
Stephen, the rocket racing legend.
As something of a daredevil myself, I took part in a few pro-am-animal rocket races, and I don't think I'm bragging when I say I won most of them (except for one notable exception when a talented but bewildered harbor seal named Stephen set the single-race-canyon-run speed record--I think I can be forgiven for losing to a legend! (I later hired him to run my rocket busing company and had the unfortunate task of nudging him into early retirement three years later upon learning about his unapologetic binge-alcoholism)).
Anyway, seeing this video reminded me of Stephen, and I would like to record here for posterity the conviction that I was wrong in letting him go. Surely some sort of work-life wellness/intervention program could have saved him. As it were, I think the loss of a job brought Stephen to rock bottom. The last I saw him, he was bobbing alongside the boardwalk of the port of Rotterdam, exposing himself, furiously trying to unstop the cap of a bottle of 2000-Year Reserve Glenfiddich with his flippers, crying, barking throaty obscenities at the startled Dutch passers-by. He sank to the deep without a drink, and I miss him to this day.
This week is the worst week for me. It is a bad week. I am a dance instructor. I own a dance company. I invented a dance. But today, the survivors on Pangea gave me an artifact of dancing. This is a video. It is from 1,000 years ago. It is a man. Keith Terry. He does the dance I teach. He does the Ieaue. I did not know the dance I teach was once big and popular 1,000 years ago. I should be happy. But I am jealous. And sad. I did not invent the Ieaue. Keith Terry did. I have not eaten this week.
Amidst the fire-breathing dragon flies and the machine-gun toting moths, I had a chance to think about my family during another sleepless night. Here they are again. Aren’t they beautiful? That picture was taken of us in the park right before we sat down for a picnic. That’s my wife’s favorite denim blouse.
I taught my daughter how to catch a baseball that day. My wife looked on the entire time, smiling and clapping every time my daughter made a catch, I made a catch, my daughter made a throw, and I made a throw. She applauded louder for my daughter than she did for myself, which initially upset me, but then I understood. Anyway, there we are, as happy as can be. I know we will meet again. Pangea 3000 is strong in landmass, but nothing can overcome a father’s will to be with his family. Nothing.
Dear Secret Journal,
In my studies of pre-Pangea3000 culture, I often read of Baseball player Pete Rose and his many, fervent acolytes.
In 2042, the then-commissioner of baseball, Pontius the Space Alien, excommunicated Mr. Rose, and destroyed all video tapes bearing his image. Only one tape survived the "Great Cleansing", and became the centerpiece of a new religion, Roseism, which soared in popularity in the 24th century. The Roseists were secretive and left few records, but those that still exist revolve around three central tenets:
1. No Fancy Perfumes
2. Or Fancy Bottles
3. Or Fancy Prices
Dear Secret Journal,