A LUCILIUS PARABLE: ACTIVATION SEQUENCE - PART I

April 21st, 2019

After centuries of procrastination, Lucilius finally culled his circumstances and went out far into the northern wilderness to a small cabin that he’d fully stocked in preparation for a nine month period.  This was the time he’d imagined and planned he would write a magnum opus of sorts.  With all the trifles and paraphernalia of life out of the way, he could finally sit down and truly concentrate on the task that had been cooped up in his imagination for nearly eons.

To make the occasion even more momentous in his mind, he decided to trek the last 10 miles through rugged terrain, being dropped off by a Hoverjump™ at a clearing where began an endless stand of towering trees. 

“Don’t get lost,”  the car said as Lucilius took a long carbon-fiber spear from the cargo hold and gripped the door to swing it shut, forgetting from old habit, knowing the car was totally capable of managing it’s own doors.

Lucilius looked into the darkness between the thick trees. 

“It’s been awhile,” he said turning back to address the car, “but I think I can still find my way.”

“Well,” the car said, “I’m still well within range of your ThoughtCode©, so I’m on standby if you ever need me.” 

Lucilius winked at the skin of the car as he closed the door, knowing the car’s Visiskin® had the best vision rendering of all the car’s instruments.

“Mind working on that entropy problem for me while I’m gone?”

“Ha, very funny,” the car said. 

The vehicle silently began to rise and called out to Lucilius, “Look forward to reading what you come up with – enjoy!”  The vehicle ascended quicker into the morning sky, then, revving it’s quantum engines, it zipped through the high Cirrus clouds, splashing the thin whips in fantastic feathered directions.

Lucilius smiled after the trusty friend and turned to the woods and began to tramp into the darkness. 

Before long the air of the forest infusing his lungs and the particular silences that greeted him between breathes and footfalls, and the light that filtered between canopy crowns began to awaken within Lucilius an older form of him.  An atavistic system of thought flickered to life and spread throughout his brain, seeing not rocks and roots as rocks and roots but as a seamless fabric that even his counter-balancing hands, and spear, and feet were woven into.  His internal voice slowly dimmed and then lost it’s language altogether until he was again only a piece of the forest moving through itself. 

Each obstacle was not a hindrance, only a movement of hands and legs, climbing over gargantuan fallen trunks of trees, grasping roots latticed along the sides of enormous boulders.  There was no need for safe consideration, of landing on a twisted ankle or grip grasped slipping.  The staccato of thought, made even more rigid by the punctuation of language eroded away to a pure invitation from the moment.

He silently moved up a ridge, from rock to bare root and grew slower, sensing as the moment bloomed anew.  Moving slower and slower as he approached the top of the ridge, he stopped before breaching the sight of what lay beyond and listened.  His eyes closed and his head swiveled, his ears tilted, searching for soft ricochets of sound.  He ceased to move, tasting the damp air, his attention leaving any mind he had and travelling through those subtle and tiny sounds over the ridge, becoming what he imagined, knowing all the while he was within distance of his destination, knowing he had time to field dress and quarter and pay tribute.

Lucilius stayed this way for minutes, totally relaxed and without moving, his skin having gone dry, his heartbeat slow and his breath a mere open door. 

In a single unbroken moment, he lifted himself and launched the spear at the antlered deer grazing a patch of forest flowers.