-The Secrets of the Universe

The sun was setting on the horizon of hetchie-ketchie land when the wondrous silver arrow fell from the sky. All the people of the yustsie-wanna tribe, and the ikki-gurl tribe gathered around as the giant, and unearthly object from the gods settled as light as a feather to the ground. The tribesmen decided to follow the obvious course of action: they fell on their faces and began worshiping the silver arrow.

There was a hiss, and a part of the arrow came away shining like the ten-moons in the eyes of the awe-struck viewers. A form stood silhouetted against the light. He wore colorful garments of the sacred weave the elders called "plad". His skin was white as the clouds; not the brown of the earth, like the tribesmen’s skin, and his hair was as golden as sunlight. Immediately the yustsie-wanna and the ikki-gurls realized their mistake. The silver arrow was merely the vessel of this apparent deity. They began bowing before him.

The creature in the arrow spoke to them in a strange tongue, and waited for a response. The elders scratched their heads in bewilderment. They greeted him in their usual manner, which consisted of slaying forty yum-yums, and devouring them raw while performing an elaborate greeting dance that took two days. Then the elders of both the tribes would each make a greeting speech, which took another two days. The greeting would end when the last elder had made his speech and both tribes would sing the "hello-howdoyado?" song for six hours, and all collapsed in exhaustion. The being seemed bored out of his skull for most of the ceremony (and being a deity, why should he not?), but he politely allowed them to finish. When it was all over, he disappeared into his vessel, and came back carrying a black box. He spoke into it in his strange tongue. Then the box spoke in their own language:

"Hi, I’m Micah."

The tribesmen started worshiping this strange box which called itself Micah.

It took Micah a while to convince the tribesmen that he was the one who was speaking. Their inclination was to worship him like a god. Micah toyed with the idea of allowing this, but dismissed it, and convinced the people he was just a normal guy from another planet. He felt sorry for these poor hunter-gatherers. They had to spend all their time fighting to survive, and did not have time to engage in playing games. Any civilization without computer games brought a tear of pity to his eye. So he devised a simple, yet brilliant two step plan. First he would introduce to them a number of labor saving devices, and secondly, he would teach them to play games.

Micah decided to introduce one new item to them each day. The next morning he appeared in front of them and announced he was about to teach them about a bit of magic. He flicked a lighter in his hand, and a flame sprung out. The crowd oo-ed and ah-ed, and were pleasingly impressed. The rest of the day was spent showing them how to set things on fire, how to avoid getting burnt, how to keep the fire going so they would never be without it, and most important, how to cook some decent meals.

By the end of the day, they had started three major forest fires, and arson had risen to the number one community crime. All in all, Micah was very pleased.

Over the next month, Micah introduced the wheel, agriculture, the keeping of livestock, pottery, long rang weapons, utensils, mining, the working of metals, and the combustion engine. He modified Hamarabi’s law code for the tribesmen here, and set up their simple elders as governors in a Monarchy ruled by himself. By the end of one year, Micah had totally altered their simple lives to the confusing work-a-day world of technology. Finally one of the elders timidly suggested to Micah that all this new knowledge had somewhat complicated their lives. Micah smiled smugly and replied that now they where ready for the next lesson.

Then Micah began teaching the noble yustsie-wanna, and the chauvinistic ikki-gurl about the virtues of entertainment. He made a ball out of inflated intestines and animal skins and showed the natives how to play basketball, soccer, and volleyball. He found a sizable hardened fruit and some bat-shaped sticks, and taught them baseball. That was only the beginning, though. When the tribesmen had learned to recreate in order to relax, Micah taught them his favorite pastime: the fantasy role-playing game.

In just under a year and a half, Micah had molded an incredibly laid back, happy, self-sufficient race of Micah-ites. Then the trouble came…