Huh, it said. There was something I was forgetting.
That was it for a while.
Oh wait, it said. Was it…no, I don’t think so. Can’t have been that.
Time passed. Trickles of thought percolated through the accumulated mental debris of millennia.
Aha! it proclaimed in triumph. I’ve got it! Or I don’t. Yes, that’s it! I was forgetting that I was forgetting things. I should do something about that. Maybe ask someone.
There was another, much longer pause, and then it remembered again. Oh right, it said. Better get on that. River! it proclaimed. Go out there and find me one of those people that fiddle with layers of rocks and ground and dirt and water. Someone who knows all about it. A beaver or a badger or bullhead, one of those things.
“You mean a human,” said the river, lazily.
I know what I meant, exactly. Didn’t I? Go find one of them.
“Allright,” said the river. It sloshed away down its channel as indolently as only it could manage, and proceeded to gently meander its way for a hundred miles down sixty miles of land before losing interest.
“So dreary!” it yawned. “Oh, the city is near, I’m sure, but I’m FAR too tired to make it all the way there. Stream, be a spry thing and take this message there, will you? Quickly now, before the master loses its extensive patience. So dull this all is!”
“Yes…” whispered the stream. It slipped the message loose from the sluggish bulk of the river’s currents and was away down its own murmuring path, quiet and quick, darting through trees and into concrete boundaries and under the shade of a big pond in a park.
“Here…” it breathed into the idle ear of a babbling brook. “Take it…” and it was away.
“A message? Most munificent! Oh rapturous rush I shall flee fiercely and find the fellow!” it gibbered happily to itself. Away it dashed, over rock and through the air, spraying and giggling to itself until it darted to near the very feet of a park-bench and its driplets spattered the trousers of a man with very hairy eyebrows. He was reading something rather dull and not quite as important as he would’ve liked.
“Halt now and harken hirsute hooligan there is news nurturing neatly ‘nside my nethers! Afriend from afar!”
The man raised his hairy eyebrows and put aside his papers. “Oh yes then? What is it? Who is it from?”
“My master oh my master’s master’s master musn’t mix them madly no! It is the lovable larger than life lake itself laughably!” said the brook, drooling in sublime delight.
“A lake? Now that’s a new one,” said the man. “Why does it want me?”
“You are a GEOLOGIST gratefully grasped in great grace,” crooned the brook. “It desires rocks and ripples and earth and eddies all knowledge kneaded in one fine form! Now come on come on!” it called, and it pointed up its stream. “To the stream to the river to the lake lake lake go go go!”
The geologist threw his papers down beside the garbage can and got up, took out his car keys, and was off and away. He drove up the highways and down the byways and through the dales and over the hills and at last he came to the lazy river’s roots and found the lake itself, snugged in bed.
He introduced himself, of course.
What are you again? it asked.
He explained it a bit farther.
Oh. So, do you remember why I wanted you?
“They said,” the geologist patiently stated for the fifth time in five minutes, “that you wanted my help with your memory problems.”
I see. What kind of problems? I seem to have forgotten them….
Ah.
“Yes.”
That is a problem indeed. I must have wanted you to go take a look at them.
“This sounds more like a psychologist’s job,” said the geologist.
Well, it said, if it’s a memory problem, I need you for it.
“Why?”
I keep it under my bed. And in my bed.
“Hmm,” said the geologist. He looked a bit thoughtful. “I’ll need a scuba tank. And a lot of men. Maybe more than a lot. Some grants. A few years. And of course, plenty of equipment.”
I can let you in just fine, it said. Just hold your breath for ten seconds, stick your head in me, and inhale hard. Do that, and I can remember to keep you safe.
“That sounds like it would be very unpleasant.”
Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it. After that, just swim down and start looking. I’ll take care of the rest.
The geologist shrugged, stuck his head in the water, counted to ten, and inhaled. It wasn’t pleasant, but it also was surprisingly mellow after the first dozen coughs, reminding him of nothing so much as trying to breathe in an exceptionally thick and delicious fog. He slipped into the water like it wasn’t even there and paddled his way down to the lakebed. A small family of ducks witnessed this and gave a perfectly-synchronized double-take.
First, of course, there was the silt. Lots and lots of silt. The geologist stuck a hand in it cautiously and watched as it sank in without so much as a ripple, giving a bass that was watching him the shock of its life. He wished for his rod and reel as it swam away, then shook it off and dove headfirst into the lakebed.
Past all the organic scum and wisps of little lakebed life, he found things.
Lots and lots of rock, for the most part. There were strange holes knocked out of it, bits missing here and there.
“Here’s your problem, I’d guess” he said.
Have you found it already? it asked, surprised. What caused it?
“Well, let me see,” said the geologist, and he took a close, close look. “Looks chiseled – like with a pick.” He ran his hands over the stones and gazed calculatingly into the empty, innocent little face of a long-lost seashell. “Lots of little fossils here, strange shells.” He frowned. “I’m no paleontologist, but some of these look REALLY strange. I don’t recognize any of them. Burgess-levels of weirdness here, and –”
Hang on. What kind of markings did you say there were?
“Looks like someone’s been chipping around down here, carving holes.”
WHAT! it bellowed in outrage. The lakebed shook around the geologist, frightening him, and in a single moment’s panic he yanked out his little pick and chip-chopped a single one of the shells from its matrix, tearing it free and leaving another open cut.
The turbulence subsided, so suddenly that it almost frightened the geologist more. “Hello?” he asked.
Yes? I apologize, I seem to have lost my train of thought. Have you found anything?
The geologist looked at the shell, which he still didn’t recognize. He was probably the first human to ever see it. He thought about names. He thought about journals. He thought about how insufferable some of his classmates had become, how they talked down to him.
“No,” said the geologist as he looked at the shell. “Nothing important.” Out of curiosity and childhood memories of the sea, he put it to his ear.
“That wasn’t a good idea,” it said in a tinny voice. He scowled and stuffed it in his pack.
Damnation, it said. Onwards! Whatever it is should be somewhere. In there. I think.
The geologist shrugged and burrowed deeper, worming his way through the layers and layers and past the sediment (that had been old, old sediment – how elderly the first lake had been, and how rare for a second to land right on top of it) and into deeper stone with a final glance at the mammoth, immovable remains of something that had been too impossibly huge to live in those old days, and soon hadn’t. Down he went, shifting through fractures, and he found a strange thing, trapped underneath all the shale above his head. Immersed in the cracks, following the chisel-trail, swimming through darkness, he found a great floating microsea of something lighter and fouler than water. Its name was sweeter than honey on his tongue, and by far richer.
“Oil!” he said aloud, and wished he hadn’t.
What?
“Oil’s well,” the man corrected.
What are you talking about?
“Oil’s well, guv’nor,” said the man. “Oil’ll have yer noggin back right as rain, as soon as kip’s a winkin’ fer the hangman’s noose. Cheerio.”
I don’t think you had an accent before, it said, slowly and unsurely.
The man smashed some rock aside and jammed his flask into the damply puddling liquid, corking a jar full of crude. It seemed to smirk at him as it swam against the confines of its new habitat, with such smugness that he could feel its heat through the metal stopper. Wealth warms without a furnace, in its own way. God, such wealth. The geologist felt the currents in that deep sea, and knew that it was huge. So much energy, hiding just out of sight, and he held the keys. That would show them, the whole class. Theresa with her ethics and Thomas with his salary and Ryan with his papers. All of them!
I must have lost track of something. Have you found anything?
“No, no,” said the man, stowing his flask. “You’re fine, you’re fine. This may all just be a figment of your imagination.”
Oh, I hope so. I think.
Deeper still ran the man, following the chiseled gaps in the rock, holding his head hunched and his eyes wide now, shifting to look at everything, hunting for treasures. A glittering vein caught his eye, and another, and another. Gold, gold, gold, they sang cheerily, proudly under the no-sky. All that glitters is gold, and nothing glitters down here.
He scrabbled at the stone with hands, teeth, and pick, tearing loose great chunks of the stuff and letting loose gouts of stone, chuckling deep. Prestige, fame, fortune all in one, and as instinctively as breathing. Shiny. Look here monkey out of place, here is what you desire!
Something hurts! it said. Ow, ow, ow. What was that? What’s going on? What?
“It’s fine,” said the treasure hunter, grinning like a goblin. “Don’t worry. I’m almost through, you’re sure, you’re sound.” His head was awhirl with capital and plans, of how to make machines reach so deep. There’d have to be drainage for sure, dams and such. He could afford it now.
Good, it said. What’s fine again? Please tell me, what is fine again?
“Shush, shush, shush,” said the hunter. “There there. Shush shush.” The chisel-marks were closer now, more frantic. There was something deeper, something farther, and a little voice in the back of his head was politely asking him who’d left the chisel-marks but he didn’t care anymore because the answer was in front of him, in a deep, deep pipe, inside a geode the size of a house, surrounded by a nest of diamonds.
They didn’t gleam, they glimmered. They simmered rather than shone. And in their midst, entangled and mushed, was a half-crushed pack so much like his own, stuffed with riches beyond bounty. A great claw, stone-bone, unknown; a great silvered stainless steel bottle sloshing with purest crude (the smell, he could smell it through the bottle’s lining it was so true!); and gold and crushed carbon, hardest and softest, mingled in an embarrassment of wealth so great that it nearly burst the bag’s seams. And all of it was sitting next to a gem that made it blanch, a great uncut diamond that massed about the same as his torso. It was sitting in a mass of old broken things that he didn’t really care to look at.
The hunter reached out, and touched someone’s hand. Well, it had been a hand. It was carrying a small, diamond-tipped pick. He didn’t really notice, or care. The bones crackled grumpily as he ripped the pick free from them.
Something hurts, a lot. I remember this – ow ow ow ow ow ow – but not what makes it. What’s going on? I can’t remember. Who are you again? Am I doing something?
“Quiet!” laughed the treasure hunter.
Out came the picks, one in each hand.
Down came the picks together, one in each hand.
Crunch, protested the matrix of the diamond.
Silence, went its mind.
And scrunch (that wasn’t the noise, but it was the closest thing imaginable) went the treasure hunter.
There was a pause of some length where no thoughts happened.
Huh, it said. There was something I was forgetting.
That was it for a while.
Oh wait, it said. Was it…no, I don’t think so. Can’t have been that.
Time passed. Trickles of thought percolated through the accumulated mental debris of millennia.
Aha! it proclaimed in triumph. I’ve got it! Or I don’t. Yes, that’s it! I was forgetting that I was forgetting things. I should do something about that. Maybe ask someone.