Awakening by Alan Delaney	Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion

He wrote out the first twenty prime numbers, pi correct to five decimal places; the twelve times tables; e correct to five decimal places; the formula for converting from decimal to binary and back again; the square root of two correct to five decimal places; and the three square roots of 1.

He demonstrated his understanding of calculus, matrices, probability theory, Cartesian geometry, the Mandelbrot set, Fermat’s last theorem, real analysis, set theory, Bell distribution curves, trigonometry — and even drew some wire-frame diagrams that he had seen in text books of topology, which he knew little of.

He wrote down everything he knew of mathematics — from formulas he had learned in school and techniques he had picked up since, to discoveries he had made on the spot, all the way down to every half-forgotten memory and vague, poorly-understood concept that he could think of — until he could recall no more.

Countless hours later, he stood back and admired his handiwork with pride. The cave darkened, the writings faded to nothingness. It was displeased. He shrugged, picked up another pencil, and tried again.

This time he started with Newton’s laws of motion. He wrote out the law of gravity, the laws of conservation of energy and motion, the formulas of friction, the second law of thermodynamics, Ohm’s law, the formulas of radioactive decay, the periodic table of elements as best as he could recall it, the chemical formulas of as many substances as he could think of, the electromagnetic spectrum or what he could recall of it, the equations of Keppler, Maxwell and Einstein and many others he didn’t even know the name of, the formulas for circular motion and centrifugal force.

He drew a sine wave, a helium atom, a circuit diagram, a magnetic field, and so on until he could think of nothing more.

Countless hours later, he stood back and admired his handiwork with as much pride as the first. Yet, again the cave darkened and the writings faded to nothingness. It was displeased still. Confused, he picked up another pencil and tried again.

This time he started with a car.

He drew the wheels, the engine, the steering wheel, the seats, and the dashboard. He drew a motor-bike, a van, a truck, a bus, a ship, an aeroplane, a tank, and a submarine.

He drew the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Statue of Liberty, and every other major architectural achievement he could sufficiently recall.

He drew a mobile phone, a laptop, a pager, a walkie-talkie, a credit card. He drew a house, a cut-away with one wall removed. He drew a kitchen with an oven, a dishwasher, a microwave oven, a washing machine, and running water.

In the sitting room he drew a television, a computer, a home entertainment system. He drew sofas and a potted plant and a carpet.

Moving onto the rest of the house, he drew the beds, the toilet, the shower, the wardrobes, and everything he could think of that he felt a modern house should have.

He drew diagrams of a motorway system, a domestic wiring installation, a water-supply system, a computer system, shipping and airline routes, and a telecommunications network. He described, to varying degrees of detail and accuracy, everything he could think of that defined modern life and technological achievement until he was satisfied that there was little else of consequence to tell.

Countless hours later, he stood back and admired his handiwork with as much pride as he would allow himself to feel. He knew his work had been good, and exhaustive, but he was not the final judge.

Once more, the cave darkened, the writings faded to nothingness. It was displeased once more. Despondent, he picked up another pencil and tried again.

This time he drew a time-line.

He recorded every major historical incident that he could recall from the beginning of written records — every war, every battle, every coronation, every death, every population shift, every event of any significance he could think of that defined human history.

He then wrote down the sagas of the great battles themselves He told the story of the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae, of Cannae and Zama and the death of Hannibal, of Teutoburger Forest, the fall and sacking of Rome, of the battle of Hastings, of Troyes, Crécy and Poitiers and the Hundred Years war, of the Crusades, the sacking of Jerusalem and the fall of Constantinople, of the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, of the Thirty Years’ War, of Frederick of Prussia and Gustav of Sweden, of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, of the battles of Austerlitz and Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars, of the Battle of the Bulge and the First World War, of the invasion of Poland, the fall of Paris, the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Jutland, the siege of Leningrad, D-Day and the fall of Berlin.

He wrote of the fall of Communist Russia, the break-up of Yugoslavia, and the rise of the European Union. He wrote down as much of the entire known history of Europe as he had learned it until he felt sure that there was little of any great importance that he had left out.

Countless hours later, he stood back and admired his handiwork but with no more than muted pride, knowing what had happened to his earlier work.

The cave darkened, the writings faded to nothingness, it was displeased still. He picked up another pencil and tried again.

He drew a woman, long-legged, curvaceous and buxom.

Then he drew a man, tall, muscular, and endowed; he drew pictures of their genitals and descriptions of their use; he drew pictures of the couple, holding and kissing each other in various embraces, and copulating with each other in various positions; he transcribed from memory passages of the Kama Sutra, the Priapeia, the Perfumed Garden, the Song of Songs, the poetry of Sappho and Yeats, the sonnets of Shakespeare and all manner of poetry, writings and sex manuals as he could recall; he described the orgasm in as much detail as he knew and had experience and wrote of acts that he had known only from pornography.

He wrote down everything he had been though, everything he had learned, and many things he merely suspected about arts of sex and love until he felt sure that there was no more he could add to it.

Countless hours later, he stood back and admired his handiwork, unsure whether or not he should be proud of it or not.

The cave darkened, the writings faded to nothingness, it was displeased and he could sense a growing anger and impatience. He stood back from the wall and thought about what he needed to do next.

He had lost all sense of time or place and could not tell how long he had been in the cave except that it was surely on the order of magnitude of days, possibly weeks, yet he felt no hunger, no fatigue and no tiredness. In fact he could feel little sensation in his body at all except a distant, indistinct numbness in his fingers.

He looked down at the pencils. He had been drawing constantly using just the small pile of pencils that he had started with, yet he had never given thought to the pencils themselves.

There had always been more than he needed, no matter how much he had used them. Now, however, he saw that there was only one left. He was being given one last chance — there was no room left for more mistakes.

This place was ancient, timeless and magical, and he was beginning to understand how it thought. It had no care for mathematics, no use for science, no need for technology, no love of history, and certainly no interest in sex. Such things were transient, unimportant, or mere pastimes. What it wanted was something lasting, something profound, something that would outlive man’s advances and his fashions and his books. It wanted truth.

He picked up the last pencil and began drawing.

He drew an oak tree, expansive, enormous and lush. Its roots stretched out wide and reached down to the ground and beyond, its trunk was wide and solid, its branches were heavy and laden with leaves that stretched out higher than he could reach.

He stood on his toes trying to capture the true size and splendour of the tree but realised with alarming clarity that he would never be able to do justice it by a mere picture. Instead he looked at what he had drawn with awe and fascination.

The cave grew brighter, the drawing grew more pronounced, more solid somehow. It seemed to be pleased with his work.

He drew some more pictures.

He drew a deer, long and graceful, leaping through nearby grass; he drew a cow, serene and at peace, grazing happily in the shade of the tree; he drew a rabbit running for its life and a fox leaping after it in an age-old battles of wits and physique.

He drew plants and shrubs growing in the rich soil by the tree that until he began his undertaking just a few days before, he never knew existed or had only ever seen in books; he drew sycamores, chestnuts, hazels, larks, birches, poplars and many other trees that he did not even know the names of, filling out the scene until it had become a forest.

He drew pigeons roosting on high branches, sparrows chasing insects through the skies, crows mobbing together on tree-tops, hawks hovering high in the air, searching the ground below for their next meal, eagles diving into mountain streams to snatch fish from the water, seagulls fleeing a coming storm, swifts massing together for the coming migration and every type of bird that he could remember the shape of.

He drew every living thing — every grazing animal, every carnivore, every fish, every bird, every insect and every plant — that he could remember the shape of.

He stood back and admired his handiwork once more but this time it was not pride he felt but awe, and understanding. The cave grew brighter and the drawings seemed to come alive before him. It was pleased but not satiated — there was something wrong, something incomplete, something missing from the tapestry he had drawn.

For a moment he could not understand what it was looking for, but the answer was not long in coming. He picked up a pencil once more.

He drew a man, dressed in primitive clothing and carrying a long, pointed spear, chasing a herd of deer through his forest; he drew a woman, heavily pregnant and carrying a child in her arms, tending to a roasting pig; he drew a man planting an acorn in the ground; he drew grass seeds being thrown over the ground by a group of young children.

He drew a woman collecting water from a clear, fresh mountain stream, the same one the eagles were hunting in; he drew a herd of cattle being milked by a family; he drew a man and woman sitting side-by side on the branch of a chestnut tree staring at the rising moon.

He stopped, stood back from the scene, and looked at it — but this time it was not admiration that felt, nor was it pride, or awe. He looked at it in shame.

He let the pencil fall between his fingers and onto the floor and fell to his knees in tears. He understood now. He had known all along. He just didn’t want to.

Beneath the hands that he had buried his face in, he became aware of a change around him. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his head, the softness of mud under his legs and the chirruping of birds in his ears. He let his hands drop by his side and looked up.

He was kneeling on the same bright, soft meadow he had seen earlier. Before him there loomed an enormous and ancient oak tree, exactly like the one he had drawn himself not so long ago. Its branches were bare except for the small green shoots of early spring that were beginning to sprout. Behind him, he heard voices and turned to look.

There was a small group of people there, sitting on the new grass and enjoying a picnic under the warm spring sun. One of these caught his eye — a bright-eyed, smiling woman. She was the same woman he had drawn earlier, the one who had been carrying the child, the one who had been collecting water from the stream, the one he had been sitting beside on the chestnut tree and watching the moon with.

She beckoned to him to join them at their meal and moved aside to offer him a place by her side. He turned back to the tree and could feel its ancient, omnipotent wisdom glowing back at him. He blessed it, prayed to it and thanked it for showing him the way.

Then, with a spring and confidence that he had not felt since he was a little boy, unversed in the ways of modern man, he stood up, turned towards the picnickers, and walked towards a new life.

Copyright © 2009 by Alan Delaney

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