As I mentioned recently, when I first arrived at IBM Research in the early 1970’s I began to work on Query By Example and other schemes to make it easier for non-programmers to interact productively but flexibly with computers. Some of the lessons learned have to do, not with my own work, but with the work of others.
At that time, some researchers labelled their work as “The Psychology of Programming.” There were many debates — and some studies — about structures, syntax, which language was better than others, etc. There were also lengthy discussions about the process that one should use for software development. Doing any kind of “controlled” experiment on large scale code development is prohibitively expensive. It is rare that a company is willing to have two independent teams build the same piece of software in order to learn which of two methods is “better.”
Of course, one such comparison would likely not prove much. It may be that one of the two teams had a “super-programmer” or an extremely good manager. Perhaps, flu broke out in one of the two teams. You would really need to study many more than two teams to properly and empirically study the impact of language, or syntax, or process. Doing reasonable-sized experiments would be far too costly and impractical. Our lab and others did do laboratory tasks in order to test one syntax variant against another and so on. The problems were generally quite small in order for the study to be practical. So, the applicability to real-world development projects was questionable.
Walston & Felix (See below), on the other hand, were able to find data on a fair number of real-world projects and rather than try to control for languages, processes, etc., they did a multiple regression analysis based on what languages, methods, etc. real projects used and what the important predictors were of actual productivity.
Personally, I learned two lessons from their study.
Lessons Learned: #1 — Sometimes, when it comes to what matters in the real world, controlled laboratory experiments have to give way to other methods such as studying “natural experiments.” Despite the many issues with trying to interpret such findings, no-one will pay for massive controlled experiments that parametrically vary programming methods, programming languages, etc. while controlling for quality of management, experience, complexity of task, etc. Multiple regression studies and in-depth case studies; ethnographic studies; interviews: all of these can provide useful input.
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Lessons Learned: #2 — The impact of the variables that our community of people were looking at in terms of syntax, structure, etc. were dwarfed by the impact of organizational variables. For example, Walston & Felix found that the complexity of the interface between the developers and the customers was extremely important.
DeMarco & Lister (See below) claim that, based on their decades of experience as consultants to the software development process, projects almost never fail for technical reasons; when they do fail, it’s almost always for organizational and management reasons.
That conclusion dovetails with my own experience. Many decades later, working for IBM in “knowledge management,” it was amazing how many companies wanted us to “solve” their knowledge management issues by building them a “system” for knowledge sharing.
But…
Management at the company would not provide:
Incentives to share knowledge
Space to share knowledge
Time to share knowledge
Or, commit any personnel to gathering, vetting, organizing, and promoting the knowledge repository.
So — knowledge sharing was something their workers were simply supposed to “do” knowledge sharing on top of everything else they were doing.
They did not want a computer system, IMHO; they wanted a magic system.
These experiences were part of my motivation for attempting to catalog “best practices” in collaboration and teamwork in the form of a Pattern Language. Christopher Alexander and his colleagues looked at “what worked” in various parts of the world when it came to architecture and city planning. What they did for architecture and city planning, I want to do for collaboration.
Naturally, merely creating a catalog is not sufficient. I need to have people who will read it, understand it, modify and improve it, and then promulgate it via actual use. For now, it’s free. Comments and critiques are always welcome.
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C. E. Walston and C. P. Felix, “A method of Programming Measurement and Estimation,” IBM Systems Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 54–73, 1977.
In my early days at IBM Research (1970’s), we were focused on trying to develop, test, or at least conceive of ways that a larger proportion of people would be able to use computers. One of the major ways of thinking about this was to use natural language communication as a model. After all, it was reasoned, people were able to communicate with each other using natural language. This meant that it was possible, at least in principle. Moreover, most people had considerable practice communicating using natural language.
One popular way of looking at natural language (especially among engineers & computer scientists) was essentially an “Encoding – Decoding” model. I have something in my head that I wish to communicate to you. So, I “encode” my mental model, procedure, fact, etc. into language. I transmit that language to you. Then, you “decode” what I said into your internal language and — voila! — if all goes well, you construct something in your head that is much like what is in my head. Problem solved.
Of course, people who wrote about communication from this standpoint acknowledged that it didn’t always work. For instance, as speaker, I might do a bad job of “encoding” my knowledge. Or, I might do a good job of encoding, but the “transmission” was bad; e.g., static, gaps, noise, etc. might distort the signal. And, you might do a bad job of decoding. It’s an appealing model and helped engineers and computer scientists make advances in “communication theory” and helped make practical improvements in coding and so on.
As a general theory of how humans communicate, however, that notion is vastly over-simplified. I argued then that a better way of looking at human communication was as a design-interpretation process, not as an encoding-decoding process. One of the examples that pointed this out was a simple observation by Don Norman. Suppose someone comes up to you and asks, “Where is the Empire State Building?” You will normally give a quite different answer depending on whether the two of you are in Rome, Long Island, or Manhattan. In Rome, you might say, “It’s in America.” Or, you might say, “It’s in New York City.” If you are on Long Island, you might well say, “It’s in Manhattan.” If you are already in Manhattan, you might say, “Fifth Avenue, between 33rd and 34th.”
Building on Don Norman’s original example, but based on your own experience, you can easily see that it isn’t only the geographical relationships that influence your answer. If you were originally from Boston, now on your own in Rome, struggling with Italian and homesick and someone came up to you and asked that question in American English with a Boston Accent, your response might be: “Are you joking? But how did you know I was an American. My name’s … “
On the other hand, if you’re a 13-year old boy in Manhattan — one with a mean streak — and someone asks you this question in broken English and they’re looking around like they are totally lost, you might say, “Oh, no problem. Just follow 8th Avenue, all the way north up to 133rd. It’s right there. You can’t miss it.” (Note to potential foreign visitors, most kids in Manhattan would not intentionally mislead you. But they point is, someone could. They are not engaging some automatic encoding process that takes their knowledge and translates into English. Absurd!
You design every communication. I think that’s a much more useful way to conceive of communicating. Yes, of course, there are occasions when your “design” behavior is extremely rudimentary and seems almost automatic. It isn’t though. It just seems that way. Let’s go back to our question-asking example. Suppose you work at an information booth in New York City. People ask you this same question day after day, year after year. You’re seemingly giving the answer without any attention whatsoever. Suppose someone asks you the question, but with a preface. “Look here, chap! I’ve got a gun! And if you give me the same stupid answer you’ve given me every time before, I’ll shoot your bloody brains out!” You are going to modify your answer. It only seemed as though it was automatic.
When you design your answer you take into account at least these things: some knowledge that you communication about, the current context (which itself has hundreds of potentially important variables), a model of the person you’re creating this communication for, a set of goals that you are trying to achieve (e.g., get them safely to their goal, mislead them, entertain them, entertain yourself, entertain the people around you, demonstrate your expertise, practice your diction, etc.). The process is inherently creative. In many circumstances (writing, playing, exploring, discovering, partying), you can choose how creative you want to make it. In other cases, circumstances constrain you more (though likely not so much as you think they do).
Many readers think this is a classic example of a straw man argument. “No-one believes communication is a coding-decoding process.”
Well, I beg to differ. I worked for relatively well-managed companies. I’ve talked to many other people who have worked in different well-managed companies. We’ve all seen or heard requests like this: “I need a paragraph (or a slide or a foil) on speech recognition. Thanks.”
What??
Who’s the audience? Are they scientists, investors, customers, our management? How much do they already know? What are your goals? What other things are you going to talk about with them? The people who have left me such messages were all smart people. And, providing the necessary info would have only taken a minute or two. But it would have substantially improved the outcome. It’s not a straw man argument.
Sit-com plots often hinge on the characters doing poorly at designing and/or interpreting communications. A show based on encoding-decoding? No. What could be funny — indeed what often is shown in comedy — are people failing to do good design and in the extreme case, that can arise by having an actual robot as a character or someone who behaves like one.
People also interpret what was said in terms of their goals, the context, what they believe about your goals and capacity, what they already know, and so on. And, even though this may seem obvious, millions of people believe what advertisers or politicians say without questioning their motives, double-checking with other sources, or even looking for internal inconsistencies in what is being touted as true. In other cases though, the same people will not believe anything the “other side” says no matter what. Just as one can do faulty design, one can also do faulty interpretation.
In any case, I decided that it would be good to “show” in a controlled laboratory setting that the Encoding-Decoding model was woefully inadequate. So, I brought in “subjects” to work in pairs at a simple task about communicating Venn diagram relationships. The “designer” had a Venn diagram in front of them. “The “interpreter” was supposed to draw a Venn diagram. The “designer” was constrained to say something true and relevant. In addition to a “base” pay, the “interpreter” subjects would be given a bonus according to how many relationships matched those of the “designer.” The designer’s bonus depended on condition. In the “cooperation” condition, their payoff would also, like the interpreter’s, be determined by how much agreement was shown in the two diagrams. In the “competition” condition, the designer’s bonus depended on how different the two diagrams were.
I ran about half the number of subjects I had planned to run when the experiment was ended by corporate lawyers.
What?
IBM had no unions at that time. And, they didn’t want any unions. One of their policies, which they believed would help them prevent the formation of unions was that they never paid their workers for piece-work. Apparently, somehow, IBM CHQ had gotten wind of my experiment. People were being paid different amounts, based (partly) on their performance. They couldn’t have this! People might think were paying people for piece-work!
It hardly needs to said, I suppose, that IBM definitely tried to pay for performance. This was true in sales, research, development, HR, management, and so on. No-one in IBM would argue that your pay shouldn’t be related to your performance. That was exactly — in one way of describing it — was going on here. By the way, these were not IBM employees and each subject only “worked” for about an hour.
Basically, regardless of how irrelevant this experimental set-up might have been to the genuine concern of unions not to pay people in an insanely aggressive and ever-changing piece-work scheme, the lawyers were concerned that it would be somehow misrepresented to workers or in the press and used as evidence that IBM should unionize. In a way, the lawyers were proving the point of the experiment in their own real-life behavior even as they insisted that the experiment needed to be shut down.
Lessons Learned: #1 Corporate lawyers are not only concerned about what you actually do or how you represent your work; they are also worried about how someone might misrepresent your work.
Lessons Learned: #2 Even when constrained to say something true and relevant, ordinary people are quite capable of misleading someone else when it’s to their benefit and considered okay to do.
It is this second aspect of the experiment that I myself felt to be “edgy” at the time. Sure, people can mislead, but I was providing a context in which they were being encouraged to mislead. Was that ethical? Obviously, I thought it was at the time. On reflection, I still think it’s okay, but I’m glad that there are now review boards to look at “studies” and give a less biased opinion than the person who designed the study would do.
I view the overall context of doing the study as positive. As adults, these people all already knew how to mislead. I was letting them, and many other people, know that we know you know how to mislead and we’ll be on the lookout for it.
What do other people think about studies wherein the experimenter encourages one person to deceive another?
2026 Update: I’ve spend a fair amount of time recently “chatting” with ChatGPT and with Claude. It’s clear that the implementers of these systems (or, at least some of them) were quite familiar with the idea of designing and interpreting text. Claude, in particular, seems like a “nice guy” and an honest one at that. It acknowledges some of its own limitations and often praises the questioner. This shouldn’t come as a complete shock. After all, good sales people and advertisers have relied for centuries on “Design and Interpretation.” Nonetheless, I sometimes wonder whether AI systems might be more ethically employed if they were operating on principles closer to “Coding and Decoding.” What do you think?
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References published literature that describes some of the research that was done around that time.
Malhotra, A., Thomas, J.C. and Miller, L. (1980). Cognitive processes in design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 12, pp. 119-140.
Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1980). Presentation and representation in design problem solving. British Journal of Psychology/,71 (1), pp. 143-155.
Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1979). A clinical-experimental analysis of design problem solving. Design Studies, 1 (2), pp. 84-92.
Thomas, J.C. (1978). A design-interpretation analysis of natural English. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 10, pp. 651-668.
Thomas, J.C. and Carroll, J. (1978). The psychological study of design. Design Studies,1 (1), pp. 5-11.
One of the studies I conducted at IBM Research in the mid 1970’s was part of an effort to do “Automatic Programming” — a department under Pat Goldberg. The first level manager I worked with was Irving Wladawsky (later Irving Wladawsky-Berger). His group wanted to develop a system that would allow the owner/operator of a small business to type requirements into a computer in English (or something English-like) and have the system itself produce RPG code to run the business so described.
The underlying motivation from an IBM business perspective was that many small businesses could well afford a computer to do inventory, fulfill orders, etc. but they couldn’t afford to hire programmers to create such a system from scratch. The small business owner in the mid-1970’s did not program! Yet, for the most part, they understood how their business worked. The notion was that a natural language understanding and generation program could dialogue with the user/owner and through that process, understand their “business rules.” No costly programmers needed!
An interesting side note: at that time, we were told that IBM corporate forbade us to use the terms “Artificial Intelligence” or “Robotics” to describe our work because some PR firm had determined that these terms were too scary for the general public. So, IBM had research in “mechanical assembly” but not “robotics.” We had work in character recognition, speech recognition, handwriting recognition, automatic program generation, and compiler optimization. But no work in “Artificial Intelligence.” (Wink, wink, nod, nod).
Labelism:Confusing a thing with the label for that thing.
Another interesting side note: I worked at IBM Research for a dozen years; started an AI lab at NYNEX where I worked another 13 years; came back to IBM Research and several years later found myself working on the same problem! We were still trying to make a system to allow small businesses to generate their code automatically. In my second iteration, rather than using natural language, we were trying to make the specification of business rules in a graph language that was intuitive enough for business owners. This was a different approach, but trying to address the same underlying desire: to bring computing to small business without incurring the heavy costs of programming and maintenance.
Let’s return to iteration one — the natural language approach @ 1975. Well, one issue was that no-one had a natural language program that even approximated being able to do the job. So…how to study people’s interaction with a system that doesn’t exist?
We used an approach that my colleague Jeff Kelly called the “Wizard of Oz” technique; viz., use a human being (in this case, me) to simulate how the system might work and record people’s behavior. In this way, we could discover many of the issues that such a natural language programming system would have to deal with. I had already had plenty of experience interacting with a computer; and I had acting experience. I could “play the part” of a computer fairly well as I typed in my questions and answers.
IBM Research in Yorktown had roughly a thousand people including not only scientists, programmers, and engineers but also a number of business people (who did not know how to program). I knew some of them from playing tennis and table tennis and we used those folks as initial subjects. What did I find? Good news and bad news.
Dealing with natural language is tricky for many reasons. One of those reasons is that English, including the English that people normally use to describe their business, is filled with words that have multiple meanings; e.g., “file”, “run”, “program”, “object”, “table”, etc. But here is the good news: although it’s true that many English words have many meanings, when these business people described business procedures, almost all of the lexical ambiguity vanished! The program to understand business English would not have to distinguish between a business file and a nail file; it wouldn’t have to worry about distinguishing a run in baseball or a run in stockings from a run of the payroll program; it wouldn’t have to distinguish between the table in a relational data base and the table in your dining room. The domain would mainly constrain! That’s the good news.
The bad news was dialogue management. How can the machine recognize a misunderstanding and how can it correct it? To make matters worse, while business people were fairly consistent in the way they described how their business ran, they were not consistent in how they talked about the communication. If a human being senses that another one is misunderstanding, then, depending on context they might: raise their eyebrows, say “Huh?”, “Come again?”, “What?” “I think I lost you.” “WTF?” “Are you kidding?”, “We’re on different wavelengths,” “I don’t get it.” “But…wait.”
Sometimes, these are referred to as “meta-comments.” Here’s a simple example that took place in the study.
One of the business people told me about various discounts. I had assumed (playing the part of the computer) that he was talking about discounts for items that were being discounted due to inventory management. I recorded all the various percentages and so on. Then, he said, “Now, we also give discounts for various items.”
At that time, most natural language systems of that era simply ignored words like “now” and “also” in this context. Stepping out of my role as a “computer system” and thinking about from the perspective of a human conversational partner though, these words are crucial! What it signals is a change in topic. In the larger context of our conversation, it shows that everything that had just been said, which I thought had been about item discounts, was not about item discounts!
This is just one example, but there were many more. In my more recent experience interacting with various computer dialogue systems, being able to recognize the signals of miscommunication and being able to repair misunderstandings is still not very well-handled more than four decades later.
I’d be interested in any pointers you have to a system that you think deals with meta-communication in a natural and robust manner. I do not think that it is beyond the pale of possibility. The general categories of the ways that people misunderstand each other is not infinite. John Anderson developed excellent tutoring systems for LISP and geometry and those systems worked something like human tutors in that, the tutor inferred the mental model of an individual student and focused instruction on correcting any misconceptions. My intuition is that a generic system built with equal complexity could deal with most of the issues as well as the average human being deals with them; i.e., imperfectly.
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Lessons Learned: #1 You can test aspects of a system even before it’s built or even completely defined. One method that has been used many times: “Wizard of Oz.”
Lessons Learned #2: Language used by professionals to talk about their domain is much more constrained in terms of lexical ambiguity than is language when considered by all native speakers.
Lessons Learned #3: People in “our culture” (i.e., US business culture) do not have an agreed upon and consistent vocabulary for talking about communication nor a consistent process for dealing with them.
Lessons Learned #4: Speaking of communication errors, I don’t recall why, but it was about this time, that I realized that my notion about how research results would be transferred to other parts of IBM was a complete and utter fantasy. I hadn’t articulated it, but it was basically that I would do research, write the results up for publication in scientific journals for an academic audience and publish Research Reports which would be eagerly consumed by anyone who needed to know. I’m not proud of this. LOL. But that’s really kind of how I viewed it. And, then, after a few years, I realized that it really mainly came about through relationships. That was something that people had been showing me all my life, but which I don’t think anyone ever stated it explicitly enough.
Update for 2026: While the four “Lessons Learned” above still seem apropos, some of today’s chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude are much better at dealing with connected conversations with humans that were the systems of the twentieth century. Not only that, people are now describing systems in “natural language” and the computer is writing code. That’s the “good news” I suppose.
The bad news? While my impression of most of the AI researchers of the twentieth century is that they were largely motivated by intellectual challenges and a desire to help make people more productive, I get the impression that most of the AI work of today is controlled by people who are already astoundingly wealthy and want to become even wealthier. And, as UN-laudable as we may view that goal, the wealth is only a means to an end and that end is the total enslavement of most of humanity. Even being a trillionaire isn’t enough.
That’s not to say that all the workers advancing AI have those nefarious aims just because those in charge do, but as the surveillance state becomes more pervasive, their private motivations could have less influence over the outcomes.
“Whom can I trust?” Shadow Walker paced, his energy still high from his second brush with death since becoming the “King” of the Z-Lotz. He didn’t wait for Eagle Eyes to answer and instead ‘ran ahead without his footwear’ as the Veritas liked to say. “I mean who? I am supposed to be their King! Can you imagine someone plotting to overthrow or kill Many Paths?”
Eagle Eyes nodded. “Yes, I can. If we are going to discuss this, you must keep your voice low. We might be overheard and that would not do. I can imagine someone trying to overthrow or kill Many Paths.” Eagle Eyes paused, watching the face of her friend carefully. When she saw that he understood, she continued. “Shadow Walker, you had better be able to imagine that you might be undone. Or, we surely will be. And I have an inkling that your death would be of some interest to Many Paths. Thunder clouds she would see on every horizon. For her, bright green would turn dark blue and blue would look brown. After a refreshing morning rain, the yellow sun would no longer sprinkle the forest floor with stars. She would just find annoyance in the rain. Her large bright heart that sets a glow in all the people would instead be a siphon to suck their sunny spirit out and replace it with spent black embers from a fire once so bright.”
Shadow Walker took deep breaths and consciously calmed himself while Eagle Eyes spoke. Just thinking of Many Paths helped. But it also awakened an overwhelming desire to leave; to return home; to see Many Paths; to touch Many Paths; to smell and taste her; to make love with her; to be home where he could trust everyone.
“Yes, Eagle Eyes. She would grieve for a time. But she is our leader. And she takes that responsibility — that is above everything else, her own comfort, her own desires — even her love for me. She would not allow herself to stay in such a foul place very long. Because of exactly what you say. She would well understand that by seeing a snake in every river, she would lead others to see the same and eventually the people would die of thirst. She knows how important it is to lead by example.”
Eagle Eyes nodded again. “Yes. And an angry leader may anger everyone. A stupid leader encourages the people to be stupid. A cruel leader inspires more cruelty. Do you agree?”
Shadow Walker admitted to himself that it sounded plausible. But then he tried to imagine a counter-example. He couldn’t. Yet, something tickled in his mind that the truth of Eagle Eyes was a partial truth. “There is much truth in what you say. However, just a few minutes ago, I was very upset — for obvious reasons. But you didn’t let it make you upset. Instead, you calmed me down so that I might think more clearly and not do something impulsively that might make the situation worse.”
Eagle Eyes considered. “Yes. You’re right. Sometimes bad behavior produces a good reaction in good people. But that only works at first. Imagine –these people, the Z-Lotz — the leaders lie to the people. They choose their king by assassination. The king — well, certainly NUT-PI, but conversations with Cat Eyes suggest that others were similar — the king shows no loyalty at all to the people whom he depends on. He tries to control them all with fear.” Eagle Eyes bowed her head and shook it side to side. She sighed a deep sigh. “How can people let themselves live like that? It’s horrible. Anyway, the effect of all this on our current circumstance is that because NUT-PI himself was so untrustworthy and so disloyal, many of the Z-Lotz could well be the same. They may think you’re better than NUT-PI, but the ambitious ones are all able to convince themselves that they’d do a better job than you! After all, you’re not even a Z-Lotz.”
“All right, Eagle Eyes. So…” He broke off because Eagle Eyes put her index finger on his lips. He remembered her admonition to speak softly so as not to be overheard. He took several deep breaths and continued.
“So, let’s leave! Let the Z-Lotz sort out their own issues! For all we know, Many Paths needs our skills right now. Why are we saving these people when we may still have more problems at our own Center Place.?”
“First, I don’t think sneaking out is all that feasible. But even if we did leave, might they not be affronted by a King who simply — abandons them. Hard to know whether they would become so ensnarled by their own fighting that they would ignore us or whether they would somehow find this a good excuse to attack the Veritas. And — the very best we could hope for is that things would “get back to normal.” And these people would come and steal children again. If we stay…and we live…there is some chance we could improve relations between … well, really among all the tribes. And, they know things that could be important for us. Besides, none of the people born into the Z-Lotz chose to be born there. If we can help them….”
“If. Yes. If. They know their ways. We don’t.” Shadow Walker looked at Eagle Eyes, who was clearly deep in thought. “I don’t even know how many of them know about that cache of weapons and gold that we found. I don’t know whom I can ask about those weird liquids in the see-through rocks that are not rocks.”
Eagle Eyes and Shadow Walker reflected on their situation in comfortable silence for a time. The Veritas were unafraid to give their ideas space enough to breathe; time enough to mature.
After a time, Shadow Walker said, “We desperately need to understand more of their language. Perhaps we could find some tutors to trust. More than one. It may be very hard to decide whom to trust, but it may be possible to find someone to trust. If we could ask questions of multiple tutors, and we get the same answers, we might presume that they are telling the truth, or at least the truth as they see it. Yet, if they say almost the exact same words, then they are telling a rehearsed story to gain our trust.”
Eagle Eyes added, “In addition to learning more about the Z-Lotz and their language, for others, we can simply be honest. Tell them that, because of the assassination attempts, you don’t know whom to trust so we will need to test their loyalty. Give them the Veritas Test of Truthfulness. If they pass, you will trust them and that will be a very good thing for them as well as for you. On the other hand, if they lie to you, they will not pass the test and that will be a very very bad thing for them.”
“What is the Veritas Test of Truthfulness? Why have I never heard of it, Eagle Eyes?”
Eagle Eyes smiled. “We will need to create it.” After all, She Who Saved Many Lives created seven tests of empathy. We ought to be able to create one test of truthfulness.”
Shadow Walker suggested, “Suppose we observe someone doing something very difficult without their knowing that we are watching. We note how they do. Then we ask them how they did. We will see how accurate they are in their description. If they are honest about their mistakes, they are likely to be honest about other things. On the other hand, it seems a bit ironic — and more than a little sad — to build a test of honesty that relies on deception.” Shadow Walker looked down to the side and bit his lower lip.
“Then let’s not,” said Eagle Eyes after a time. She saw the questioning look in the eyes of Shadow Walker. “I mean, let’s not be deceptive. I don’t think we need to. We will ask them to do something and observe them. I believe, the dishonest will still give themselves away. They are so used to lying that they won’t be able to give a fair description of what they did and did not do.”
Shadow Walker considered: ALT-R had been able to fool nearly everyone about his true nature. For most people though — Eagle Eyes was likely right. What if the Z-Lotz had their own ALT-R? Would they be able to smoke them out? After all, Cat Eyes had said that the Z-Lotz leaders convinced the people who actually worked that they believed in a whole jungle web of lies when actually, they didn’t. She had seen their hypocrisy. Perhaps that was partly because, as a slave, they saw her as not fully human or not very clever. Shadow Walker realized that he would benefit from the thoughts of Eagle Eyes so he said aloud, “We need to start with the people I do trust. I can explain to Tree Vines that the sooner he can help me vet the Z-Lotz, the sooner he can leave to see his daughter — and — that his daughter will grow up in a safer world. If we do this right, we might be able to prevent kidnappings such as what happened to his own daughter so many years ago.”
Eagle Eyes laughed.
Shadow Walker frowned. “Is that funny?”
Eagle Eyes said, “No, it’s just that I had an image. I saw honesty spreading through the Z-Lotz like a plague.”
Shadow Walker chuckled too. “That would be something.” Then another frown passed over his brow. “But that seems like we’re making them into Veritas. Is that right? What if they prefer being dishonest and choosing Kings by assassination rather than competence?”
Eagle Eyes said, “Yes, in the same way that watering the squash turns it into something edible instead of a barren stalk. We’re not talking about their preferences for how well done they like their meat. We’re talking about truth — which is every bit as vital as water is for life itself. Lies, dishonesty, cruelty, hate — these are not the paths of Life. These are paths of Death. As shown by our story of the Orange Man.”
Shadow Walker and Eagle Eyes spoke softly to each other in their native tongue — Veritas — as they explored their “House of the King.” They wanted to plan without being overheard.
Shadow Walker suggested, “At no time should both of us be asleep. I think I can trust our three ministers, but I am not sure. Cat Eyes told us that most of the Z-Lotz do not even believe the myths and legends that they insist everyone else believe! How can one see into such a heart? They shade their soul windows. Can you know the heart of such a one? Can your eagle eyes penetrate the blank stare?”
Eagle Eyes shook her head. “I cannot.” She paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “You are strong and wise and handsome and these things help. But you are still seen as something foreign. I cannot imagine that the people held much love for NUT-PI. He was a cruel and ineffective leader who repeatedly betrayed those loyal to him. There may be others from among the Z-Lotz…no, there must be others from among the Z-Lotz who are popular and who are ambitious enough to be King. Even among the three ministers.”
Shadow Walker nodded. As they spoke, they strode through the King’s House. Shadow Walker’s hand’s idly trailed along the walls as they spoke. The surface felt shiny like rock, but felt warm, something like a rock in the sun, but they were inside. Odd. The surface seemed rock-like but not really rock. It was also much too regular. He wondered whether some of the tiny but deadly red spiders were on the walls.
Eagle Eyes explored her surroundings a different way — by darting her eyes everywhere. Shadow Walker stopped and took the hands of Eagle Eyes. Unlike the Z-Lotz, his eyes were open as he said, “Thank you for saving my life! We will get through this, but I must confess…I don’t know how. I need you and your quick thinking if we are to survive.”
Eagle Eyes tried not to blush, but she couldn’t help herself. She bit her lip and tried to plan. That helped some. Wild images swarmed before her like hiveless bees not knowing where to alight. “Sometimes, I wish we could escape in the night. I’m not sure we could even do that, but it would be wrong. Even if these are Z-Lotz and ROI, they need a leader who isn’t corrupt.”
Shadow Walker gave no outward sign as to whether he had seen her blush. He nodded. “To leave now would be — cowardly. I do trust the parents of Cat Eyes. And, that’s good because we need them to translate. But — now that they know their daughter is alive, I presume that they will wish to journey to see her very soon. In fact, Tree Vines has already told me so. When that happens….?”
Original drawing by Pierce Morgan
Eagle Eyes nodded. “Regardless of what the future brings, it seems that you and I would do well to learn more of the language — and of the ways — of the Z-Lotz and ROI.”
Shadow Walker grimaced. “You are right. Though I wish they would learn more to be like the Veritas, to tell the truth. Just think. The only way for me not to be leader is for someone to kill me! That method ensures that only the most powerful — or most treacherous — will become King. And it will encourage intrigue among the people — not honesty and openness — which are two virtues we desperately need to kill off this plague.”
Eagle Eyes sighed. “If we even can kill it off. We have to try though. That has to be our top priority. Meanwhile, we need to learn as much as we can including who, if anyone, we can trust. I know you must miss Many Paths. I miss her as well. Still, our lives would be simpler if we were together. We could stay here and rule and teach our children to rule and how to stay alive. When the time comes, our offspring could wrest control from you by “force” — though — “farce” might be closer to the truth. We could feign your death and then, once the new ruler was firmly in place, you and I could leave.”
Shadow Walker frowned and then laughed. “That is way too long to wait! But I — I do like your idea about faking my death. That might be a way to provide them another ruler. Anyway, first we must try to help them avoid being killed off. They’ll be plenty of time to plot out our leaving after that. But you said you missed Many Paths.”
Eagle Eyes nodded. “I do. Don’t you?”
Shadow Walker nodded. “Of course, but … I thought you would say you miss Trunk of Tree.”
Eagle Eyes frowned. “Have you noticed how all of the rock in this place is the same exact color?”
“I don’t think it’s really rock. At least, it’s not like any rock I’ve seen before, but — yes. It’s all the same. Too much the same. Not like real rock.” Shadow Walker wondered whether Eagle Eyes wanted to avoid answering his implied question.
Eagle Eyes pointed, “Except over there. Look.” She strode over to a spot behind the throne.
Shadow Walker followed her over. It was subtle, but there was a definite set of lines making a rectangle. Shadow Walker traced the line. It felt different too. He pushed on various spots and felt a slight give. They tried pushing at the same time in a variety of places but nothing happened.
Shadow Walker again found himself wishing that Many Paths were here — or, even better, that he was with her back in the Center Place of the Veritas. Yet again, he took out the Sixth Ring of Empathy. As he felt it and stared at the crystal, as always, he felt a little closer to her.
In his mind’s eye flashed a clear image. Shadow Walker saw himself as a very young boy. He held a leaf in his hand — a dry leaf. He turned and looked up to the side where he saw a beautiful woman smiling at him. It wasn’t Many Paths though. It was She Who Saves Many Lives. Her hair was only flecked with a little gray. Shadow Walker’s tiny hand moved from the dry leaf to a dry seed pod. He heard his little boy’s voice ask the plant, “Thirsty?” He looked up to the kind face of the Shaman and saw her nod. He saw himself bend down and pick up his cup of water from the ground. He lifted it to the leaf and frowned, unsure how to give the plant a drink. She Who Saves Many Lives gently took the cup from his hands and bent down beside him. “Here, Shadow Walker. Here is where the plant drinks.” She slowly poured the water into the ground all around the base of the plant. The soil darkened and turned muddy. He heard his young self ask the Shaman, “Why did you waste the water and not give the plant a drink?”
She Who Saves Many Lives smiled and said, “I did. Be patient and you’ll see.”
Shadow Walker shook his head to clear his mind of the clear memory. He turned away from the wall and looked instead at the back of his Throne. He shook his head. He didn’t like sitting up there. It seemed absurdly huge. It was elaborately carved, not only on the front, but here on the back as well. The front and sides at least were beautifully turned out. The back however…? He glanced at Eagle Eyes who had also turned around and she was pointing to a part of the carving that looked like a small house with rectangular windows and a rectangular door. He touched the door and heard a loud creaking behind him. The noise startled them both. Shadow Walker’s hand flew instinctively to his sword. But no-one else was near. The noise, it became obvious, arose from the grinding of stone rubbing against stone as a hole appeared in the wall behind them. After the noise stopped, the pair peered into the darkness beyond the wall. They each cupped their hands around their eyes and waited for their eyes to adjust.
Some are quick to reply (and that very quickness might be an indicator of indoctrination more than conscious choice) that a project is successful if it meets its objectives and is on time and within budget. I have to admit that seems logical and tidy.
In comparing two projects, we might say project A is more successful than project B if project A achieves more objectives in a shorter time with fewer resources.
A little more about objectives however. Does every objective need to be explicitly stated? Or, to put it another way, if an objective seems obvious to most people but it hasn’t been put in writing, then it need not be met?
Suppose I contract someone to build a pool in the back yard and they do indeed build a pool of the proper size and they do it at estimated cost and time frame. Wonderful! But what if, in the process, they made so much noise, I was successfully sued for twice the cost of the pool? The answer is: “Hey, it wasn’t in the contract we couldn’t do it at night and loudly.” ?
Or, if the pool construction allowed water to run under the nearby house and ruin the foundation and the house fell down and killed everyone inside. But “Hey, it’s not in the contract.”?
Here are some sample objectives that might be included in every contract. I’d prefer that we would all simply agree to abide by them as members of the human race, but if not, we could boilerplate it I suppose.
You project should, on the whole, provide a positive environment for everyone working there. People should not be harassed, belittled, or needlessly endangered. People who work on the project will learn new skills. Your project will not destroy innocent people or their environment.
Your employees will not have to lie to the public. If the project is wildly successful in any way, that success should be shared.
There are many more constraints that might be suggested. What do you think?
If we put too many constraints on people, maybe no-one will never become a multi-billionaire and become too rich to jail.
Career Advice from Polonius: To Thine Own Self be True
“To thine own self be true.” This advice comes from Polonius who is giving advice to his son in Act I, scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Polonius says: “This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Let’s focus on the first part.
One of the dreams of education is to customize teaching to the specific learning style(s) of individual students. This was a hot topic when I was in graduate school.
Some day, your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren may be the beneficiaries of learning experiences that are individualized to their specific styles. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but it could happen. It isn’t only a question of research on what various styles are and how to present material that resonates with these various styles. There is also the question of priorities and dollars and personnel.
But meanwhile, here’s the good news. You don’t have to wait for another 50 years of research and a reshuffling of priorities so folx spend more money on education and less on, let’s say, cosmetics and professional sports. As I say, don’t hold your breath.
But let’s get back to the good news. The good news is that you can discover for yourself how to maximize your own learning as well as what your particular talents are.
One cautionary note: Don’t be a jerk about it. If you’re in a group dealing with grief, don’t say, “Well, I learn best if a subject is reduced to a few hundred polynomial formulae. So, let’s start right there. Let’s reduce grief to three dimensions. Later, of course, we can do a proper multidimensional scaling exercise to determine the optimal number of dimensions.”
No. Don’t say that. Of course, you’re free to suggest that approach, but chances are, in that situation, and in most realistic group situations, you will be treated to information in the same manner as many others who have different styles from yours.
However, in many situations, you are, far and away the main important stakeholder. You can use your knowledge of how things work for you in order to strategize and plan how you will learn about things. You can organize and arrange your work so you’ll be more productive.
Here’s a trivial example. I have learned that my eyes have a wisdom of their own. If, for instance, I’m going out for a walk around the garden to take some pictures of the sunset on the flowers, I grab my stuff and find myself turning and staring at the hat-rack on the way out the door. When I was younger, I would ignore this. But what I have learned is that my eyes are really good at knowing what to look at. So, even if I’m in a hurry, I take a moment to reflect on why my eyes are looking there. And, then, it comes to me. I’ll do better if I wear a brimmed hat to keep the sun out of my eyes while I look at my iPhone.
By paying attention to this little quirk, I’ve saved myself a lot of grief over the years; e.g., not left the house without my wallet, etc.
Here’s another example. I’m very good at seeing “patterns” emerge from a small number of examples or when there is considerable noise involved. This serves me well as my hearing diminishes because I can use top-down processing. Generally, but not always, I understand what people are saying. On the other hand, if I try to listen to a foreign language tape that is only isolated audio words, I have no hope of knowing what they are saying. “Key” “Tee”, “Pea”, sound exactly the same.
Seeing patterns easily is generally a nice capacity. However, I’m horrible at finding my own typos immediately after I write something. I actually “see” what I meant to type. A week later, I’m pretty good at catching the errors. If I had more patience, I would wait a week to proofread for every blog post, but being patient isn’t a strength of mine either. I do go back over old posts occasionally and fix the typos (which I never saw at the time).
When I go to the movies — remember when we used to go to movies? — anyway, if I went to a comedy, I was very likely to laugh too soon. I “hear” the punchline two lines earlier than it actually occurs. There’s no benefit to my laughing early! But that’s when the punchline hits me. I do keep it soft so as not to disturb the others in the audience. On the other hand, I’m pretty good at “discovering” the playing patterns of my tennis opponents and anticipating what they are going to do. Naturally, I don’t always guess right, but I do way better than chance.
I bring up these examples to illustrate a generality; that most of these individual differences have both an upside and a downside. Mainly, learning about my own styles and capacities is something I only began to think about well after leaving high school. That makes sense. In school — or at least, the schools I went to — everybody got the same instruction in the same way almost all the time. But as an adult, you often have a lot of control over your own timing, flow of information, etc. I think it’s worth your while to look back at your experience and discover what you have difficulty with, what you’re OK at and what you are exceptionally good at. When you have a choice, use the approach you’re really good at.
Oh, and try to avoid hiding behind curtains when there’s someone with a sword around.
Trunk of Tree had been in a foul mood. Hunger made his belly growl. He had had terrible luck even trying to track a deer. But the sight of these two Veritas, well-known to him, and the smell of cooking venison lightened his mood considerably. He said none of that, but instead asked again how they found him.
Cat Eyes explained quickly to Trunk of Tree that they were near her village. She explained that a feast was being prepared right now in honor of the knowledge that had been gained from decoding a substantial part of the great library that had been recently discovered. The Veritas had split up the work of decoding the numerous tomes in the library. It was far too much for any one person although, among all the Veritas, Cat Eyes knew the most of what had been garnered by the people. She had been sharing much of what she learned with Tu-Swift. Now, she explained, a great feast had been arranged and the afternoon was to be spent eating and listening to the lessons that had been gleaned. In the evening, the people planned to reflect on the totality of this information in a great dialogue.
Cat Eyes explained all this to Trunk of Tree as they took the short hike back to the place where he had emerged from the hidden cleft in the rock wall. Tu-Swift and Cat Eyes marked the place with broken branches and a small rock cairn so they could be sure to find it later.
Then, the trio strode back to the center place of the Veritas across the Mountain. Cat Eyes and Tu-Swift kept having to stop for Trunk of Tree to catch up. At last, Cat Eyes said, “Trunk of Tree. All you all right? You are limping. You are wounded? What happened? I see a bandage and blood. Were you attacked?”
Trunk of Tree’s mood darkened again. He did not want to explain how he had wounded himself through his anger and carelessness. “I’m fine. Just a scratch.” He swallowed hard. The truth was that the wound was not healing all that well. He grimaced and tried to keep up with the youngsters so they wouldn’t ask any more about his gash.
The reappearance of Cat Eyes caused more of a stir than usual when people noticed that Trunk of Tree was with them. When he explained briefly how he had come here, the Veritas from the other side of the mountain furrowed their brows. How could a passage out of their valley exist so near that no-one had discovered? Even Trunk of Tree could perceive the skepticism on their faces. He explained that he had only come across the path by sheer accident born of desperate hunger pangs. Tu-Swift explained to the small group how he had marked the trail and three of them jogged off to see for themselves.
Soon, Tu-Swift, Cat Eyes, and Trunk of Tree were seated on overturned tree trunks. People kept coming to Cat Eyes with small questions about the upcoming feast. As she answered their questions, she simultaneously pulled up the pant leg of Trunk of Tree, ignoring his protestations that nothing was wrong with him. He was immensely powerful and could have easily kicked her away. Although a part of his mind pictured that, some more fundamental part seemed to know that his leg was more important than his pride so he let her unwrap the bandages.
When she did so, her nose wrinkled up immediately. She glanced at Tu-Swift who noticed it as well. The wound stunk. Just then a young warrior came up to Cat Eyes meaning to ask her opinion about her role in the upcoming knowledge exchange. Cat Eyes answered curtly and then begged the young warrior to bring her the pouch of blue-green mold that sat in a dark corner of Cat Eye’s cabin. Soon, Cat Eyes was applying the mold to the oozing wound of Trunk of Tree despite his objections.
“I already put yellow dock and plantain on it,” he protested.
“Yes,” replied Cat Eyes, “and that is good. This is even better. We learned about it from one of the many books in the library. There are many things we learned from those books and you will hear about many of those things tonight. I wish all of the Veritas were here to learn what we have decoded in the last few months.”
Cat Eyes nodded as she noted that the sickness had not spread much from the original injury. She bound up the wound again. She glanced at Tu-Swift. She slowly shook her head. “It’s amazing how much of a great gift we have now from our library — and all the knowledge put there by our ancestors. And to think…it was there when my mother’s mother’s mother lived … and we had no idea what it was. Until now.”
Now, she turned to look at Trunk of Tree. She smiled. “You will see later today, Trunk of Tree, some of the things we have learned. She tilted her head. “There are things in there about fighting and strategy as well as medicine.” She paused, smiled and went on: “And, to use your imagination to make yourself happier and solve problems — not simply as a tool for hurting yourself.”
The eyes of Trunk of Tree widened thus confirming her hypothesis.
Trunk of Tree reddened. Cat Eyes reached out her hand and gently touched his shoulder. “It’s a tendency all of us have, Trunk of Tree. There’s no reason to feel embarrassed.
An awkward silence grew between them. She looked at Tu-Swift and back to Trunk of Tree.
Tu-Swift took a deep breath. “For example, when Cat Eyes came to visit our Center Place, I ran off to see her because…well, because I … because I love her.” Now Tu-Swift reddened as well. “Of course, everyone does. I … especially do. But then, Suze died shortly after and I made myself crazy thinking I had somehow been responsible. I didn’t cause her death. That plague though was brought to us intentionally by the Z-Lotz. They’re the ones I should seek revenge on and not on myself. He looked at the face of Trunk of Tree very carefully, the way he imagined that Many Paths would do if she were here.
“I can tell you this, Trunk of Tree. I’ve known Shadow Walker all my life. As have you. And, we know Eagle Eyes as well. They are both good people. They will do … whatever they think is best for the Veritas … and for all the people.” Tu-Swift let this thought sink in through the thick skull of Trunk of Tree. He surprised himself by his next words. “Sometimes, we must be apart from those we love. It’s always difficult. But don’t make it worse by imagining things that you know are not true. I don’t know why, but Eagle Eyes likes you. Surely, you must know that.”
Cat Eyes nodded solemnly. “That’s right. Shadow Walker & Eagle Eyes — these are people we can all trust. Trust is fundamental. You’ll hear more about that at our feast. The destruction of trust is what led to the destruction of … of civilization.”
Trunk of Tree frowned. “Civilization? What are you talking about?”
Cat Eyes sighed. “Just listen to our stories tonight. It’s … there were many people … and many wondrous things … but the people lost the one thing more important than all the others.”
Tu-Swift saw the tears welling up in her cat-irised eyes. “They let their greed, fear, and hate grow … and their love for each other … and for all life … they let that decay … and when it did, it all fell apart. The words that people said came to mean nothing. All trust was lost. And, Trunk of Tree, when all trust was lost, all the energy of the people was put into weapons. Killing sticks were replaced by even less honorable weapons that killed hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands. The people thought that somehow, if they hurt others enough, they themselves would live forever, not as part of the great tree of life, but as something separate and apart, as hard as the mountains and as mighty and as immortal. So did the people come to think.
“The times came of great killing.
“The times came of great forgetting.”
The voice of Cat Eyes became stronger and though she spoke to Trunk of Tree, all the people nearby heard her and drew near to her.
“Now, we are beginning the time of great remembering;
“The great remembering of who we are;
“The great remembering of what we are not;
“The great remembering of what makes us a whole people;
“The great remembering of the importance of truth and trust;
“The great remembering of the horror and sorrow that comes of the many being misled by the few;
“The great remembering of what we could become instead;
“The great remembering that each of us is ourselves but one marvelous leaf on the great abiding tree of life;
“The great remembering that we cannot make ourselves into something separate and forever by destroying the tree that sustains us.”
Trunk of Tree wrapped his wound with boiled yellow dock and plantain leaves and then tied strips of rawhide to hold the poultice in place. He clenched his teeth. Then, he clenched them tighter still. He realized that he was hungry and exhausted. He had hiked aimlessly and alone for three days. Most of that time, he had been angry — so angry that he had stupidly stepped heavily upon the dry branch of a fallen tree. The branch had snapped and as his weight drew his leg downward now that nothing any longer held it; at the same time, the sharp end of the broken branch snapped upward, making a long gash in the side of his lower leg.
He mentally listed his grievances. He was angry at the red death. He was angry at Many Paths for sending her own betrothed, Shadow Walker, with the only woman Trunk of Tree had ever loved, Eagle Eyes, on a mission together and now they were far away, living as king and queen and surely, they were mating now. Trunk of Tree clenched his fists and banged them down hard on the trunk of the fallen tree that he sat on. Even in his nearly blind anger, some small part of his brain knew enough to hit the bark with the side of his hand rather than his knuckles. That survival part of his brain knew that injuring his hands would not help him in his current situation, nor allow him somehow to win back Eagle Eyes, should he so deign.
Trunk of Tree swallowed a wordless growl as he thought about how angry he was with She Who Saves Many Lives. She had chosen Many Paths as her successor and then made up various schemes and tests to make it come true. He was sure of it. Many Paths was a woman and it annoyed Trunk of Tree that he had not been chosen as leader. He was much stronger than Many Paths. And, he knew what to do in any situation immediately while Many Paths apparently, he thought, felt obligated to live up to her name and think of a thousand ways to kill a deer while he just picked up the nearest stone and whacked it on the head. That wouldn’t work of course, but that wasn’t the point.
Trunk of Tree could hear his stomach growl. He hadn’t eaten all day and the scant supplies he had grabbed as he stormed off had run out early yesterday. He looked down and saw deer tracks plain as day run through this small clearing where he had made his fire. Some of these tracks are fresh. Good, he thought. He stood up.
“My leg is okay to walk on,” he mumbled to himself. “It’s not bleeding through my bandaging, crude though it may be. Good,” he muttered. “I don’t want the scent to scare off the deer. Nor my anger. I must slow my breathing and become one with the track and with the deer and with the traces of the deer and with wants and needs of the deer.”
Trunk of Tree began to imagine once again that Shadow Walker and Eagle Eyes were together. “I need to discipline myself. I need to concentrate. I can kill them later if need be. But first, I need to find food. I need to focus on the deer. Find the deer. Find the deer. Kill the deer. Eat the deer.”
He found that his wound did not slow him down much. The deer tracks were becoming fresher. At last he caught a glimpse of the buck he had been tracking. The hunter bent down and tightened the straps holding his bandage in place. When he stood back up, the buck was nowhere to be seen. He was still walking so the wind would keep his scent away from the deer and his long training allowed him to stalk stealthily. He began to croon one of the soft hunting chants that he had learned as a boy. Although the slightest snap of a twig or a sudden movement would sent the buck bounding off through the brush, these songs seemed to pique the curiosity of the deer allowing a much closer approach.
“I am the deer. My mind is clear. I walk with no sound,
Yet I sing you my song. We all go to ground. It cannot be wrong.
Come become a part of me.
Someday I’ll die too.
Perhaps becoming part of you.
This is how it’s meant to be.
I am the deer.
My mind is clear.”
Trunk of Tree halted. The track led into a dense thicket of blackberry bushes. Trunk of Tree smiled at the irony. The only reason he would be able to keep tracking the deer was because of his deer skin clothing. A smile crept onto the corner of his lips. This irony was all the funnier because he himself had killed the deer whose skin he was using. His memory flashed back to that day. Eagle Eyes, naturally, had first spotted the track. Trunk of Tree had begun to run after it since the tracks seemed so fresh. Shadow Walker had grabbed him, faced him and sniffed the air. Shadow Walker had been right. They would have simply spooked the deer.
Anyway, Trunk of Tree, thought to himself, enough reminiscing. I must return to the moment. Trunk of Tree slid sideways through the thicket fairly easily. When he came out the other side though, the deer track went right into a cliff. He stared at the track. It made no sense. He began to recite his song again and followed the track right up to … a solid stone wall. He muttered to himself, “This makes no sense. Is this another of those stupid magic doors? I don’t see ….”
Then, Trunk of Tree noticed that what seemed to have been a solid wall really contained a narrow passageway barely wide enough for a deer. The rock walls of the passage tilted outwards slightly. As he walked through, he noticed markings along the moss and rock tripe growing on those wall as though deer antlers had scraped through. When he made it through this passage, he saw the deer tracks veer off to his left down toward a spring. The deer was not in sight. He contemplated tracking the deer across the cold running stream. If he did, his bandage would certainly be washed away along with the medicinal herbs he had so carefully searched out, boiled, and applied.
He wished Eagle Eyes were here. Her eyes were remarkably good. Trunk of Tree tried to push the image away, but it came back. And as he imaged Eagle Eyes beside him, he realized for the first time in his life that Eagle Eyes not only had remarkable vision. She looked at things differently. Trunk of Trees eyes darted always, as did everyone’s. But sometimes, Eagle Eyes looked — for a long time — and she looked methodically. She looked patiently. Trunk of Tree bit his lower lip. It wasn’t just her eyes — it was her patience — and her method that made her so valuable. And, then, Trunk of Tree had another insight. While he may never have such clear vision as Eagle Eyes, he could use her patience and her method.
Trunk of tree looked off to the right. His stomach rumbled again, as though he needed to be reminded of his hunger. He decided to ignore that for a moment and he looked up the slope to his right, trying to imagine the way Eagle Eyes would look. He looked back and forth along a large rock outcropping and realized that something was amiss. At first, he couldn’t tell what. Then, in his mind, he heard the voice of Eagle Eyes say “road” in her wonderful voice. “Road” he muttered to himself. “What road?” He walked up the slope the length of a fallen pine and sure enough, there was a man-made road up there. He looked back toward the cleft in the rock that he had just slid through. There was no sign of the cleft. He walked back down. He couldn’t really see that the cleft was there until he was almost upon it. He walked back up to the road and scanned the far side of the stream, looking for a sign of the deer in the same patient, methodical way that Eagle Eyes would have used. He decided to walk along the road for a time. He now saw that it curved gently around the base of what appeared to be a mountain. As he walked he kept stopping and looking back toward the creek to see whether the deer had reappeared.
Trunk of Tree shook his head muttering to himself yet again. “I’m so damned hungry, I’m imagining the smell of deer meat cooking.” Then, he stopped and sniffed the air. “No,” he thought, “that’s no illusion. That is the smell of venison cooking.”
As he followed the road, the scent strengthened. The road took a sharp turn to the right. Trunk of Tree found himself hungrier than ever now, but he slowed his pace. He may be coming upon enemies. He heard voices! Enemies! Wait, he thought. They are speaking Veritas. He frowned and thought, That boy’s voice sounds exactly like…like that of Tu-Swift! Have I been going in circles?
Trunk of Tree stepped off the path and pressed himself against the rock, peering from behind a tree that grew next to the rocks. Coming down the path he saw Tu-Swift…holding hands with Cat Eyes!
Seeing no-one else, Trunk of Tree stepped back to the road and looked again, forcing himself to look carefully, as Eagle Eyes might do.
He swallowed hard and spoke out loud. “Tu-Swift? Is that you? And Cat Eyes? What are you doing here?”
Tu-Swift and Cat Eyes were both startled at the sudden appearance of the large, well-muscled body of Trunk of Tree and both reflexively hit the ground on either side of the path.
Tu-Swift realized a split second later that it really was Trunk of Tree. He climbed back onto the path and yelled happily, “Trunk of Tree! Hey! Well met!” He loped toward him and embraced him. Cat Eyes came up as well and smiled at Trunk of Tree and took one of his hands.
Tu-Swift shook his head. “How on earth did you get here? You’re nowhere near the ancient tunnel!”
Trunk of Tree frowned. “How did I get here? How did … where am I exactly?”
Cat Eyes answered, “You are in the village of the Veritas. The village you call ‘The Veritas on the far side of the mountain. But how did you get here? And, what happened to your leg?”
To avoid tipping off their prey, the father and son both seemed to know instinctively to mostly communicate via posture, glance, and gesture.
This enabled them to approach their prey without startling them, particularly because they lumbered along quietly and downwind. Though neither would have articulated this out loud in explicit words, they also experienced tighter bonding with this nonverbal method of coordination and the shared careful attention to detail.
The summer’s day began mild and cloudy. Locals often spoke of “May Gray” and “June Gloom.” True, days often began with the sun hiding behind a thick layer of clouds. Generally, however, the clouds completely dissipated well before noon. Today was no exception.
For most, the day itself caused feelings of excitement and anticipation. Hunting heightened those feelings. Every step required care. One broken twig, or a twisted limb on a loose rock could turn the tables. Prey could become predator. Pleasant enjoyment could easily morph into something far darker.
Ever so slowly, the pair drew nearer to their intended target—targets actually—there were two. The youngster had been taught well. He, like his dad, only moved when the wind blew.
The dad moved his head back and forth slightly to better gauge the distance to his primary target. An oddly bent scrub oak partially obscured his vision so he chanced the smallest possible lateral step.
SNAP!
Father’s mouth dried instantly as a rush of adrenaline flooded his body. Sometimes, a split second is all the time available to make a life or death decision.
Run? Attack? Hide?
The high-powered rifle flew to a well-practiced shoulder position. The firing pin hit the back of the cartridge which exploded the bullet into its thoughtless supersonic race. The race ended as the bullet smashed into a scrub oak trunk.
————
Afterwards, the father and son quickly shredded the clothing of their prey. They then dove immediately into the soft bellies and the intestines within. Papa Bear stared for a moment at the strange shiny stick that lay silent now but that had made such a loud pointless noise. Then he returned his glance to Baby Bear.
Baby Bear’s face was covered in blood, chyme, and the biggest grin Papa Bear had ever seen. For Papa Bear it was the best Father’s Day Hunt he had ever experienced.
petersironwood 