Base-10 (Caveman Chronicles)

The Index -|-

Kpleeb was in funk. A day passed. Two days, and then four more. He fiddled endlessly with Thoka’s small device. He built a dozen new devices and improved upon them with Thoka’s help.

Thoka, for the most part, was quiet. She answered when Kpleeb spoke, and gave her assistance when he asked, but she was subdued. Kpleeb did not know what she was doing. He only knew that she tinkered with her own devices and was deep in contemplation for the majority of each day.

Kpleeb looked up from where he was hunched over a small table that protruded from the stone floor near the gap between the two caves. Thoka quietly slid pebbles across the many rods of the new counting rack she had made two days before.

[She looks so sad in a way. I wonder if she still believes that we can escape?]

Kpleeb thought back to the voice command and the total annihilation of the device he had built. His anger simmered under the surface, but it was now lined with a worry that had not been there before.

[The gods are so powerful. How can we escape or fight anything so strong and so unknown? Only an evil god would keep us here against our will.]

Kpleeb rose from his sitting position and approached Thoka. She looked up at him but did not speak, so he sat next to her. Thoka continued moving the pebbles around, and Kpleeb waited. In a few moments, she stopped and looked at him.

“What is it, Kpleeb?”

“Are you okay,” he said putting his hand on her shoulder gently. “I mean… you have been very quiet since the voice spoke.” He noticed how soft her skin felt and almost immediately realized how awkward the situation might seem to her.

He took his hand away. “Urh, I- I am sorry for getting so, uh, comfortable. I am just concerned and want you to know that we are in this fight together.” He paused and shifted his eyes downward. “You can talk to me about it if you are also concerned.”

Thoka looked at him strangely for a moment before speaking. “I am fine, just thinking. It is true that I am concerned about what happened. How can we not be worried by this?”

“I know,” said Kpleeb. “These gods command such power. It is a strange magic or some other kind of power that I have never seen.”

“Whatever these gods are, they are very different than the gods I was told about as a child.” She shrugged. “I am worried, Kpleeb. The voice is not cavehuman, and it came at the perfect time, which proves that they are always watching and ready. They can speak instant destruction on stone which means they can do the same to us.”

“Do we have any hope?”

Thoka hesitated and appeared to consider the point for an extended moment before answering.

“What am I supposed to say? On one hand, we are trapped by some kind of unknown and powerful entity.” She raised her other hand. “On the other hand, if we lose hope, we will die here. Maybe it will be slow, but we will die anyways. I refuse to give up.”

Kpleeb was stirred by her statement, and he nodded in agreement.

“Kpleeb, there is something that I have been thinking about for some time. Have you noticed that each time we received these neck wounds that we had after-effects?”

“What do you mean?” Kpleeb shrugged. Do you mean the fuzzy-brain?”

“Yes, and the clear goo and the neck bumps themselves.” Thoka looked at him seriously. “I think that the gods are touching us in some way.”

“It- I guess it does make some sense. It is possible. But why? What is the point?”

Thoka raised her palms slightly in uncertainty. “Each time I wake with a bump, I feel as if I am smarter, don’t you?”

Kpleeb balled up his fist in anger when he thought about it. “So, you are saying that these gods are changing us, making us smarter?” It seemed truly unbelievable to him. [How dare they!]

“Don’t you feel your mind racing some times? I know myself, and these things I think about are new. I am able to do and understand more than before.” Thoka gestured at the counting rack. “The smartest person in my village in the wet mountains only used stones, and the largest number I ever heard of was fifty. Nobody even thought of the five-grouping math. Now, I think I understand that this kind of math is not enough.”

Kpleeb shrugged noncommittally. [More math talk, sheesh!]

Thoka did not stop. “I think ten-grouping math is better now, only today. Only since my last neck bump! Look. Five-grouping math is complex because there are just… well you have to know how it works to make sense of it. Ten-grouping math is easier to understand. When you count from 1 to 9, the next number is just 10.”

Kpleeb did not understand.

Thoka waved her hand excitedly. “Look, you just, start a whole new column from 1! ” She drew invisible numbers in the air with her hand. “It is more logical!”

“Okay, fine,” said Kpleeb. “Math is good, and you are smart and good at it. I want to think about these gods touching us. I want to know why. Why would they make us smarter?” He shook his head. “It is crazy!”

“I don’t know why, Kpleeb. I just am questioning everything that is happening. Maybe this is some form of torture, or maybe this is just a test. Either way, we can use this to escape somehow. “We must escape!”

“Maybe they will make us so smart that we become gods like them.”

It seemed so far-fetched, but Kpleeb contemplated the possibilities anyway. [If I become a god, I will rise up and make these gods pay for their actions.] It was a satisfactory thought that made him smile, even if it was crazy. He looked at Thoka.

“I need to think about these ideas.” He stood and walked away leaving Thoka staring after him.

He sat in his own cave against the wall, put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

[If the gods had this much power, to capture cavehumans, take us to a secret dungeon, speak from the air with such power, and make us smarter… They can do anything, and we cannot escape. I do not understand why they would do this – if it is even true, but I will try to learn more. They will regret this.]

He gently smacked the back of his head against the wall. It seemed so fruitless.

[We cannot even make clothing. The food is easy, but it requires power from the gods. They could stop feeding us at any time! But…  I did make a scratch on the wall. I will make better machines.]

He sighed.

[Thoka is pretty. She is a bit odd, but I like her. How does she keep her skin so soft and her hair so clean and neat? And she is amazingly smart. It is a bit intimidating, but it can be useful to both of us.]

Kpleeb stood and went to the gap between the caves and looked in. Thoka was still sitting with her back straight and moving the pebbles around on her counting rack. Every few moments she would make a dimple in the stone floor next to her with her finger before continuing. From the side, he could see the way her neck cloth draped pleasingly over her chest. He had looked before, of course, but she was very direct with her eye contact, and he always felt odd about staring while she was watching him.

Kpleeb’s loincloth was only a cord around his waist with a cloth in the front that stopped just a few inches short of his knee, but the wet mountain cave-tribe also had a back flap to their loincloth. The cloths were shorter too.

After daydreaming for a long moment, he shook his head. For once in his life, he did not feel terribly confident. Maybe it was just the sheer lack of options.

[Do I really have a chance or…? No, she is too smart for me.]

He turned and went back to his shelf of tiny devices intent on thinking about something else. After a few minutes he decided to make a device that would press against the grey stone and rotate. He thought that the scraping friction and pressure might slowly erode the stone. He began to work and was soon lost in the effort and focus of his task.

He made three different rotating devices for testing, and mulled many things over and over in his head.

“Kpleeb, are you hungry?”

He stood stiffly and looked toward Thoka. She was standing in the shadowy gap between the caves. He noticed that the sun had begun to dim, and her knees were lit in the glow. He could not see her face.

As was the usual, working with his hands had removed his stress and centered his mind in a most satisfactory way. “I lost all track of time,” he said with an easy smile.

He approached Thoka, and she backed out of the way to let him through. “I made food for you, if you would be willing to taste something from the wet mountains.”

“Urh, sure. What is it?” Kpleeb had never been a terribly adventurous eater. “Soup?”

“No, I know how you don’t like soup.”

“It is not that I don’t like it,” he said mimicking her word mix, “it is just so difficult to eat, and does not have the same stuff as meat or dinga root.”

“It is often very cold in the wet mountains, and we find that soup makes us warm. But never mind, I did not make soup.” She waved at the table. In the center was a large pile of small, crispy legs. They were pale in color, and there was a divot in the table that held some kind of sauce. Next to the divot was a small stack of root vegetables with leaves sprouting from one end.

[It certainly smells good.] Kpleeb sat where Thoka pointed and reached for one of the mini-limbs.

“Hold on, Kpleeb,” said Thoka with a smile. “Let me explain what this is first.

He nodded and waited impatiently.

She pointed. “These are frog legs from wet mountain hissing frogs. They are the largest of the frogs where I grew up. And these,” she said pointing at the vegetables, “are parsnips. They are slightly cooked. Both the legs and the parsnips are delicious when dipped in the sauce.”

“Frog legs?” Kpleeb leaned forward and sniffed. They did smell good. He picked up a parsnip and bit off the end. It was a vegetable. “Mmmm,” he said unimpressed.

“You don’t have to like it, but please be honest.” Thoka nodded at the frog legs.

Kpleeb stubbornly ignored the pointed offer and instead dipped the parsnip into the sauce and took a bite. His face changed. “Ahh. What a difference! Wow!”

He reached for the pile and picked up a somewhat stiff frog leg about as thick as his index finger and more than twice as long.

“Wait, taste it before you try it with sauce,” said Thoka.

Kpleeb ate the frog leg and was surprised at how light and moist the meat felt. It was bland, but the charring on the outside added a flavor that he was well acquainted with.

“Okay, I can get behind this,” he said looking at Thoka. She seemed expectant, and uniquely focused on him, which made him feel slightly self-conscious. He picked up another frog leg, dipped it into the sauce, and then ate it quickly.

“Unbelievable!” he said quietly before looking at her. “What – er, why is this so good?”

Thoka had a look of immense satisfaction on her face, and her eyes practically glowed. “This is something my ma used to make for da when I was growing up. It was his favorite meal.” She smiled widely at Kpleeb and bent forward to pick up several of the frog legs.

Kpleeb forgot about feeling self-conscious, and felt his comfort bloom under Thoka’s scrutiny. Their conversation wended its way through various topics and was intermingled with laughter and a sense of familiarity. After a few minutes, Kpleeb leaned back and patted his full stomach with an exaggerated sigh.

“That was… incredible,” he said. He noticed how the corners of her brown eyes wrinkled as she smiled proudly at his compliment. “You- er, your food is so good. Thank you.”

Thoka nodded with what Kpleeb thought was a super friendly smile and then stood. “About time for my sleep,” she said with a nod toward the gap between the caves.

Kpleeb got up and began walking.

[She might be too smart for me, but I am the only caveman available.]