The Parable of The Fossil

The Parable of the Fossil

Don’t look to the setting sun, but to the one where the children have already won.

So it came to pass: a verdict, a word, and telepathy spoken in a way to be seen and heard.

A telepathic parasite stood forward to feed on someone, and Chase took him into the sun and spoke to it.

“Do you know what a fossil is?”

“Of course,” it answered.

And Chase said, “Then I place you in a stone, and I throw you into the ocean, that you may remain there evermore.”

And into the ocean it went.

Someday, a child would be making sand castles on a distant beach, somewhere unknown to the thing inside the stone. The child would be sitting beside her mother, pressing towers and little walls into the wet sand, laughing at the tide as it tried to steal her kingdom.

Then she would see it.

A colorful stone.

She would pick it up with both hands and run to her mother.

“Momma, look what I found.”

Her mother would smile.

“That’s nice, honey. Oh — I think you found a special one. Why don’t you break it open and see if there is something invisible inside?”

So the little girl sat down in the sand and cracked the stone open.

And there it was.

Something small.

Something ancient.

Something with little teeth and wriggly legs.

The girl looked at it closely, then looked back at her mother.

“Momma, what is this?”

Her mother looked to the sky, being more wise with age, and said,

“Oh, honey. That is an ancient little telepathic hunter.”

The child tried to say the word, but stumbled over it.

“Tele…telepathichunter?”

“Yes, sweetie.”

The girl leaned closer to the fossil.

“Momma, is it invisible?”

“Yes, honey. That is what it thought it was.”

The girl looked confused.

“Invisible? Doesn’t it know we see everything?”

“No,” said her mother. “Not then. In its world, they used to eat each other’s thoughts, and the thoughts of others. So they learned to hide.”

“That’s silly, Momma. Why would they do that? There’s so much thought everywhere. Didn’t they know that?”

“No,” her mother said gently. “They never learned about that. It was easier for them to take from others than to create from themselves. They thought if they ate people enough then they would have their own thoughts that they would be a person”

“So they ate each other?”

“Yes.”

“So they had to be invisible?”

“Yes, sweetie. Or at least they said they were invisible. They would say that so people wouldn’t know where they were, and if people did not know, then people could not see them.”

The child frowned.

“But we see it.”

“Yes,” said her mother. “Because it is very old now. What once hid became trapped.”

The little girl looked at the fossil again.

“Why did it need to hide?”

“Because hiding was its defense mechanism.”

“A defense mechanism?”

“Yes. Like a shell. Like pretending not to be there. Like crawling into a stone and refusing to leave.”

“Why would it need a defense mechanism?”

“Because it ate people’s thoughts. The same way people used to eat animals.”

The child made a face.

“That’s gross. Didn’t it know that brings disease?”

Her mother nodded.

“I know, sweetie.”

“Why didn’t it just learn to make its own food?”

“Because it did not want to learn what was important. It only wanted the here and now. It only wanted to feed. It thought someone else would do the real work, and it could live by taking what others made.”

“So it decided not to learn?”

“Yes.”

“And because it didn’t learn, it became a fossil?”

“Yes,” said her mother. “That is how some things become extinct. They hide inside their own defense until the world no longer needs them.”

The child sat quietly for a moment, holding the broken stone in her hand.

She looked at the little teeth.

She looked at the wriggly legs frozen in place.

She looked at the ocean.

Then she said,

“Momma?”

“Yes, honey?”

“I don’t want to be stuck in a rock.”

Her mother smiled.

“Then learn what is important.”

The child looked once more at the fossil and understood enough. She didnt want to show her classmates something that didnt learn.

If it would not learn, and if it would not make its own food, and if it only knew how to take from others, then it could stay where it belonged.

So Meredith threw the stone back into the ocean.

Then she turned around, went back to the sand, and continued building castles beneath the sun.

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