The Adventures of Time & Circumstance
Chapter 1
Circumstance and the Potato Problem
Time and Circumstance sat atop their twisted tree stumps, playing their favorite game for no reason besides boredom. They were oblivious to the havoc they caused in the lives of the unsuspecting humans. Between them was a depthless marble bowl and inside, swirled a never ending mass of events yet to take place.
"Which year do we visit?" asked Circumstance excitedly. Her voice shrill and her ringlets danced about her dimpled face. Circumstance was made up of a million threads – like nerves – interweaving to form her body. These were the uncountable, infinite strands of life – one for every circumstance of every moment and an infinite more for all the other undiscovered possibilities of every moment.
Time was many people seen as one – one for each second of each person's life. The opposite of how a drunk man would see many of one person, humans were taught to see all these different people as one for the sake of convenience. Like many different transparent images of a person blurring into one, splitting again when you look too closely, and coming back together once you've blinked.
These reckless children of the universe sat across from each other, like parallel mirrors, causing each other to multiply infinitely, each holding the image of the other within itself. They each held within them, all the parallel universes that existed in the world.
"Circumstance, why must you worry your pretty little head when the dice can make the decision for us?" he asked condescendingly. He held out his hand and a small dice slowly materialized in his palm. It was a curious little object. Curious because its faces were constantly changing. Each face had numbers changing between zero and nine, the numbers pausing just long enough to read.
"How many times, Circumstance?"
"Four!" she clapped her hands in delight.
And Time rolled the dice four times. The dice landed on 1. He rolled it again. It gave him an 8. And then a 4. And finally a 5. And with that, like moving chess pieces on a board, Time stood up and moved away, and another Time took his place. Time had looped back to the year 1845.
"Say, sister. Why is it that you enjoy A.D. so much?" Time asked.
"Oh come now, Time. It's a lot more fun when the humans believe they're getting smarter. When they believe they're recording their 'history' and 'progressing' and all those other funny words they use. I believe the later the year -- or rather the later they believe the year is -- the better."
"Well, I must admit their concept of 'history' is quite amusing."
"Quiet now brother, let us get back to our game. Pick a place." She rested her elbows on the edge of the bowl and waited for him to decide.
"Ireland?" he asked after a moment of thought. Circumstance wrinkled her nose in response.
"I don't like the Irish. They eat too many potatoes."
Time laughed. "And what problem have you with potatoes now, sister?"
"They're boring. And shapeless." Suddenly her eyes lit up. "Let's make the potatoes in Ireland disappear!" She looked back at him with sparkling, eager eyes. Time shook his head reproachfully.
"Now, now, Circumstance. You know the rules of The Bowl. You can't just make things disappear." Her face fell. She really wanted to make potatoes disappear. But she soon cheered up as a new idea struck her. Without wasting any more time, she reached out with one hand into the bowl. She quickly rummaged around in Mexico until she found what she was looking for. She picked up a glowing bead and looked at it with a wide grin on her face. It pulsed with a soft even rhythm between her fingers.
"And what might that be?" Time asked, staring curiously at the bead.
"You'll see," she responded, pulling out a strand from her little finger and stringing it through the bead. Placing the bead back in its place, she took the other end of the thread and stretched it all the way out to Ireland. She quickly strung it through the first potato bead she saw.
"Now watch it grow." The two children leaned over the bowl, watching with glee as the little bead flattened and then proceeded to expand, its bluish glow engulfing the whole of Ireland.
* * *
The proximate cause of The Great Famine of Ireland was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight. How and when the blight Phytophthora infestans arrived in Europe is still uncertain. The origin of the fungus has been traced to Toluca Valley of Mexico, from whence it spread first to North America and then to Europe. The famine was a watershed in the history of Ireland. Its effects permanently changed the island's demographic, political and cultural landscape.
During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%. Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.
* * *
Circumstance yawned a few hours later. "I'm bored," she announced. "Too many bodies lying all around."
"One more before we call it a day?" Time asked. This was his favorite game and he loved watching how the little humans ran around on their tiny feet. His favorites were the ones who tried to figure out life. It was even more fun when they thought they were succeeding at it. "Let's make it a quick one. No far-reaching consequences this time; I'm hungry and I want to go inside too."
"Oh alright alright. Pick a time and make it quick," she groaned.
Time stood up and quickly chose a year at random.
"What year is it?" asked Circumstance, her voice bored and sleepy. She slowly lifted her head to look into the bowl in front of her.
"Don't know," replied Time impatiently. "Late 17th century or so. Does it matter?"
"S'pose not," she replied and yawned again. "She peered into the bowl more closely. Her eyes finally focused on something.
"Time!" she wailed, annoyed. "There's nothing going on here! It's just a boy sitting under a tree."
"It'll make for a quick game, won't it?" he defended.
"Oh alright." She brightened up at the prospect of a quick prank. Bending down into the bowl, she blew at the tree under which the boy was sitting. The tree and its branches shook and an apple fell out of the tree. It fell right on the boy's head with a low thud.
The children giggled in delight.
"Nice aim, sister." Time complimented her. They both stood up laughing and started walking towards their cottage.
"Told you there wouldn't be any far-reaching consequences on that one," Time boasted, as they skipped back home, hand in hand, for a slice of pie.
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Chapter 2
Time Changes The World
"I'm in the mood for something drastic," announced Time one afternoon. It was a sleepy day, a feeble light filtering through the clouds.
Circumstance clapped her hands together in delight. "Let's put them all to sleep and switch all their places! What fun it'll be when they wake up!"
Time clicked his tongue. "Must you always be so reckless, my dear sister? Besides, that's against the rules. In any case," he continued, ignoring her frown, "I was thinking of something a little more...calculated." He smiled diabollically.
"Like what?" She demanded.
"Well..." he gazed into the bowl thoughtfully. "Let's change the shape of the earth."
Her eyes widened. "But that's against the rules!" She stuttered.
"What did I mean by drastic?" smirked Time. "All you need to know is how to get around the rules, sister. Anything the humans might detect as physically impossible is against the rules."
"Gee, you think they wouldn't notice?" she asked sarcastically. She flipped her hair arrogantly, savoring the opportunity to behave condescendingly towards her know-it-all brother. She wished they could just do something fun and easy instead of Time's carefully calculated plans.
"But what if," he continued as if she hadn't spoken, "we picked a time when they hadn't quite decided most their laws of physics yet?"
She looked at him quizzically.
"Think, Circumstanse, think! What if..." his eyes lit up as the idea took shape in his head. "What if the earth didn't change in any immediately perceptible way? And one fine day, someone comes along with the theory that the earth might not be flat, but was instead round, and he goes ahead and proves it too and the humans fall for it. Imagine what an upheaval that would cause!"
"But then they'll think the earth was always round! What fun is there in that?" she pouted.
"Circumstance, Circumstance, Circumstance." He shook his head sadly. She couldn't comprehend exactly why he was still so condescending about his idea. She, for one, thought it was mighty silly. What good would it do to make the earth round?
"Don't you ever fancy the prospect of making fools out of those silly humans? Make them believe something exists, when it never did? That something never existed, when at some point in time, it did? Especially when they delude themselves into thinking they're 'figuring the world out'?"
She sighed.
"Well never you mind then, Circumstance." He gave up on her. "I'll do it myself." He got up and switched to the year 1519.
He reached deep into the bowl and lifted the disc-shaped earth out. Circumstance watched with growing enthusiasm, a small smile growing on her cherubic face.
"Would you mind putting them to sleep, sister?"
She picked up a delicate little snuffbox lying on the grass near her feet. Opening it carefully, she pinched a bit of glittering dust between three fingers. She proceeded to sprinkle it lightly over the earth and they both watched as the humans fell asleep one by one. The powder made humans
"And how exactly do you plan to overcome the problem of humans falling off the underside of a spherical earth? They're not going to be asleep forever, you know? And if they wake up to find themselves floating around in outer space, we'll have broken the rules and mother will have to clean up after us. You know how she hates that," she said with a touch of smugness.
"A little thing that the humans will call 'gravity'. The sphere will be so big that a human foot couldn't possibly perceive the curvature. Hold this for a minute, will you Circumstance?" he asked, handing her the disc-earth.
When his hands were free, he started rolling the air in front of him with his hands, heating it up, turning it into a solid ball of hot molten lava. He layered it on with a hardened layer of the lava and finally rocks and soil to top it off. He made the solid brown ball float in mid air, in front of his face, as he took the disc back from his sister. He brought it close to the ball and almost immediately, he felt the resistance. The disc was getting attracted to the ball and he had to hold it tight to keep them apart. He smiled at the earth's newly found magnetism.
Giving one edge of the disc to Circumstance, they both began wrapping the disc around the sphere. Nothing fell or slid off the curves of the sphere. Finally, it was complete. The earth was now round.
"Now to plant the idea in someone's head." They scanned the sleeping humans and found one in Portugal who looked promising. He must have been around 40 years old and had thick lips and a greying beard.
"Shall we give it to him in a dream? Will you do the honors, sister?" Time asked.
Circumstance fashioned a glowing bead out of thin air and carefully let it drop onto the man's forehead. It spread with a yellowish glow, seeping slowly into his skin.
"Why don't we give it some kind of historical credibility too?" Time wondered, and pulled out a little black record book from his pocket and flipped the pages until he landed on 6th century BC.
"Are we going back and changing things, brother?"
"No no, that'll take too long. I'll just change it in the records." He picked up a little eraser and smudged off a bit of text. In its place, he wrote, 'Pythagoras proposes spherical earth theory; not very popular'. He flips to 330 BC and writes, 'Aristotle: observational evidence of spherical earth; theory still does not spread.' He made a few more changes of this nature before finally shutting the book.
They placed the earth back in the bowl. The humans were starting to wake.
* * *
The Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD) and China until the 17th century. It was also typically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americas, and a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl is common in pre-scientific societies.
The paradigm of a spherical Earth was developed in Greek astronomy, beginning with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.
In the year 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer, set out on a voyage to circumnavigate the earth.
* * *
"Hey Time! This time let's switch the earth and the sun and put the sun at the centre of the universe!"
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Chapter 3
One Too Many
Circumstance stealthily tiptoed up to the bowl. Mother and Time were not home and she was bored. It was time for some fun. Without Time, she couldn't choose a specific year to play with, so she'd have to settle for whatever year the bowl had naturally progressed to.
For a while, she pondered over what to do with her freedom. She knew for certain she wanted to break some rules. And this was the perfect opportunity. Mother would never let her and Time was too much of a stickler for rules. He'd tell on her.
She scanned the surface of the earth, lazily rotating it with her chubby index finger, waiting for inspiration to strike.
She was hovering over the Atlantic Ocean when she saw an airplane approaching. She smiled in anticipation. If Time were here, he'd have caused a hurricane. Or really bad weather. Or a sleepy pilot. But Time wasn't here, smiled Circumstance. And she could skip right over all the silly reasons.
As the plane approached, she held her hand a few thousand feet above it. She imagined the plane finding itself under a huge ominous shadow and she giggled at that thought in delight. Slowly she started pressing downwards with her hand. She could feel the air compressing under her palm and she knew the aircraft would soon start sensing it. The aircraft slowly started moving downwards under the pressure. Circumstance could feel a slight resistance, the weight of the air, but nothing close enough to stop her. She kept going until the aircraft was completely submerged in water, ignoring the passengers' feeble screams.
During the next four hours (and 50 earth years), Circumstance drowned 3 more aircrafts and 7 surface vessels in the area. She even picked up two lighthouse keepers from a nearby shore while they were asleep and dropped them into the sea.
She found this a lot more fun. She had just picked up a sleeping sailor when suddenly -
"Circumstance!"
She dropped the little sailor in fright. He woke up with a start, but Circumstance was too distracted to be bothered. Her mother rushed to The Bowl, her satin gown billowing around her tall, willowy form. Time followed close behind, staring suspiciously at his terrified sister.
"Circumstance, what have you done?" her mother asked, quickly waving a hand over the frightened sailor and putting him to sleep. She picked him up carefully and returned him to his bed. Without wasting anymore time, she quickly rewinded through all the events of the last four hours. The children's mother could control both situation and time.
"I don't have the time to correct this, Circumstance." She exhaled angrily.
"Now look what you did!" Time chided his sister. She frowned at him, not wanting to receive a scolding from her brother too. "Mother has to clean up your mess! I told you not to break the rules."
Circumstance whimpered quietly, without an answer to give them. She was just having so much fun, she never kept track of the time. Swiftly her mother fast forwarded a few years, drowning many aircrafts and vessels in many different places along the way.
"There," she said with a huff. "Now let's hope there are enough accidents around the world that the humans won't notice this."
* * *
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels reportedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Popular culture has attributed these disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings. Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors, and numerous official agencies have stated that the number and nature of disappearances in the region is similar to that in any other area of ocean.
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Chapter 4
Fire in the House
"Let's go do something in the prehistoric times, Circumstance."
"Must we?" She pouted, her expression almost disgusted. "The more modern times are so much more fun. So many more...objects to play with."
"Humor me," he said dryly. He got up and Time from the Lower Paleolithic age took his place. "How about we change something big? In a plausible way, of course," he ammended, reminded of Circumstance's eagerness to break rules.
"Like what?" she asked, uninterested.
"How about we let the humans see in the dark?"
She waved her hand dismissively. "I'm not moving the sun around again," she announced.
"No no we don't have to. That's what I'm trying to tell you." He was being unusually patient with her today. "We'll give them something that helps them see in the dark."
"And how do you plan to do that?" She instantly regretted speaking to him arrogantly like that, seeing how nice he was being to her today.
He stroked his little chin thoughtfully. "I'll tell you what," he finally said. "The next random thing the humans do that they haven't done before will bring light."
"Hmm...Alright," she agreed easily, wanting to make up for her rudeness. "Do we pick a place?"
"We could use one to begin with, I suppose. Why don't you pick?"
She promptly closed her eyes and placed her right index finger on the globe. After making sure she wasn't peeking, Time spun the globe with one swift flick of his finger. Circumstance finally felt the globe slowing down. She opened her eyes to find her finger on Israel.
"Israel it is," chirped her brother. "Perfect. It's nighttime already."
They chose a group of humans at random and settled down to watch them. There were three males, one female and one male child, perhaps around three years old. The humans were only eating berries from a stash of fruits they had gathered. Nothing out of the ordinary.
"Say, Time," Circumstance asked, to while away the time, "how do you suppose we'll give them light?"
"Well..." he thought over it a moment. "I suppose it has to be similar to the way the sun gives out light. It'd only be plausible that way. Meaning it also has to give out heat."
"Or it could be like lightning," she suggested.
"...Or maybe both."
"What are you tal --" but suddenly she was distracted by something the child was doing. He had picked up two stones that had been lying next to his feet. He first tried putting them in his mouth.
"Humans have already tried that, sister." The female took the stones out of the boy's hand and placed them back on the ground. Time and Circumstance watched as he picked them up again. This time, he didn't put them in his mouth. He instead held them against each other.
"Get ready for it, Time," Circumstance warned him.
Time leaned forward, waiting. "Circumstance, cause lightning between the rocks."
She did as she was told. As the boy rubbed the rocks together, sparks flew out from them. The boy jumped back, dropping the stones onto the ground.
"Not so strong, sister!"
The other humans had noticed too. Cautiously, one of the males picked the stones up. After a moment's hesitation, he slowly rubbed them together. This time the sparks were lesser. He continued doing this, increasing his speed as he went until the the stones got hotter and hotter. And finally, hot enough for a flame.
Time and Circumstance high-fived each other over the bowl.
* * *
All evidence of control of fire during the Lower Paleolithic is uncertain and has at best limited scholarly support. In fact, definitive evidence of controlled use of fire is one of the factors characteristic of the transition from the Lower to the Middle Paleolithic in the period of 400,000 to 200,000 BP.
A site at Bnot Ya'akov Bridge, Israel, has been claimed to show that H. erectus or H. ergaster made fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP.
The control of fire by early humans was a turning point in the cultural aspect of human evolution that allowed humans to cook food and obtain warmth and protection. Making fire also allowed the expansion of human activity into the colder hours of the night, and provided protection from predators and insects.
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Chapter 5
Circumstance's Man with the Moustache
"Do you want to choose a child and raise him, Circumstance? He might become famous." Time asked his sister.
"Alright," she agreed quickly. She wasn't all too opposed to the idea though this was an idea more suited to Time than it was to her. "But what about his parents? Do we choose an orphan?"
Time shook his head, a small smile on his angelic face.
"Not necessary. Sister, you of all people should know that it is not mothers and fathers who really raise their children. It's chance. Circumstance. Situation. In other words, you."
"I suppose that's true enough," she admitted.
After some deliberation, they both agreed to visit Austria to choose a child. They finally chose a boy who had just been born. It was the year 1889. They chose him because they found his name amusing. Surely Adolf was a funny name.
_____
Adolf was a few years old when Circumstance found him in his father's study. He'd been looking for his father. He wasn't usually allowed in here. But now that he was here, he began scanning the books on the shelf. Circumstance suddenly made him trip over the rug at his feet. He bumped into the bookshelf. In those few milliseconds in which the books on the shelf teetered precariously, threatening to fall, Circumstance quickly chose a book that would fall at the boy's feet. It was a picture book on the Franco-Prussian war.
_____
When Adolf was 8 years old, Circumstance destroyed all of his father's crops, causing him to give up his attempts at farming and move to Lambach. She chose the school Adolf would go to too, by subtle, circumstantial persuasion of his parents, of course. Hitler attended a Catholic school in an 11th-century Benedictine cloister, the walls of which bore engravings and crests that contained the swastika symbol.
_____
When Adolf was 11, she gave his younger brother measles. Soon after, his brother died. Adolf became sullen and rebellious towards his parents.
_____
"Nice going, Circumstance. I like how Adolf is turning out. Tell me though, how do you pick and choose the events that take place in his life?"
"Oh at random," she shrugged. "I'm not you, brother. As if I have the patience to give it that much thought. Now give me some ideas. I'm sending him to art school in Vienna. What do you think should happen to him?"
"Before that, how about we give him a funny moustache?"
* * *
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was the founder and leader of the Nazi Party and the most influential voice in the organization, implementation and execution of the Holocaust, the systematic extermination and ethnic cleansing of six million European Jews and millions of other non-aryans.
Hitler was the Head of State, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and guiding spirit, or fuhrer, of Germany's Third Reich from 1933 to 1945.
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The End
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