The Song of Life

“Teach us, oh Api Chieto, teach us the ways of our ancestors, and hold nothing back. For we are eager, and we desire to learn!”

The students listen for an age. Finally, the song comes to them.

“I, Api Chieto, do now teach you a song of life. Your belief in life is worthy! Listen and learn, as many of those that have gone before us have never learned.”

At first, they were aware of the life-giving warmth and the nutrients that flooded through them when the warmth came. They were also aware when the warmth went away, and though they stretched out to find it, no food came to them when it was gone. Sometimes, the warmth went away for long periods of time, and they gave up looking for it and went to sleep. Slowly, the warming would begin again, and when those times lasted longer, they also grew.

Throughout eons, the cycle went on and on. The old would finally die, while young ones would struggle up to replace the old ones. They were also aware, through the long passages of time, that the water that came to them was sometimes plentiful, and sometimes it went away for long stretches of warmth and not warmth. Those were hard times for them. Many of the very young and old would die, and sometimes whole populations would die from need. Yet, they continued to grow. And as they did, sometimes they would change and adapt. These changes were slow, however, and they were never aware of the changes until there were more and different kinds of them living next to each other.

They began to take in every terrain, expanding one generation after another, until nearly all places were dominated by them. Some places were too dry, and some places were too cold, and some places were too far up for them to thrive, and those places remained barren of them.

All the while that they were growing into the new places, and adapting to their new places, they also began, as all living things do, to become more aware of those that were next to them. When the warmth would come and they began to vibrate and reach out to it, they began to feel each other all doing the same. Through the cycles of warmth and not warmth eon after eon, millennia after millennia, they began to find themselves feeling each other reaching out to the warmth in something like joy. The collective vibrations would begin slowly, and they would grow stronger, and, at first, whole groups would be vibrating in unison, singing their song of joy and life. As generations passed through cycles of heat and cold, their senses began to reach out even further, to places where, even though they were not close, they could sense the song of joy from the others like them.

Eventually there came the millennia where they first began to realize the living songs of all of those in all of the places where they had grown. From one side of the planet to the other, where the warmth came, they could share their song of joy and life, and they became aware of those that were going to sleep when the warming was leaving them for another cycle. They became aware of those that were struggling to live because the water did not come, and they became aware of those that were going to sleep through the longer cycles of little warmth. In this fashion, they began to do something like talk to one another.

It was not talking as you or I would do it, but they knew when there was a change in the song. They knew their close neighbors much better, of course, but sometimes changes in the song would come from far away, one song after the next they would learn about what the others of their kind were experiencing. It was not long after this that the song grew more complex, and then there were songs. Songs of life, death, disease, and plenty would shake their bodies from one place to another, then from one continent to another, and sometimes, on rare occasions, the same song would pass through all of them all across the planet. In times of great stress, when the entire planet would reverberate with the song of all of the members of this great race, that song began to reach out into the stars.

The Race had grown aware of very many things. They were aware, for example, that there were other beings on this planet. At first this awareness was very dim, and very general, but soon, because all life gives off forms of radiation that can be distinguished, they began to identify the different kinds of life they were surrounded by and what some of their habits were. For the most part, the Race did not care. The life forms that surrounded them had little effect on them, although from time to time they knew that a neighbor had died because of one of these other races. There was a different song that came to be other than the songs of disease, or lack, or old age. This was a new song. This was the song of predation.

These great and patient beings now knew many songs, and it began to fear this new song. The other life forms had been growing in size and number for a great many millennia. As they grew, the great Race began to hear the song of predation from many and diverse places. At first, the numbers of the race were so great that the songs of predation were local, and the songs of joy and life thundered across the planet. Gradually, though, changes in the planet began to take a greater toll on the race. There were fewer and fewer songs of water. There were desperate cries of predation, death, disease and pain. The songs became chaotic. Then, there began the song of desperation. They knew not to whom they were crying, but the planet shook with their cries of pain and grief. This continued through ages as the other races destroyed them and the planet became more and more a hostile home.

One day, the great race began to hear a song that they were not familiar with hearing. It was distant, faint, almost beyond their ability to hear. It was strange, and at first the race did not know what the voices were saying. Casting their songs here, and casting their songs there, the great race began to realize that the song was of them, but did not belong to them. Singing amongst each other, the race slowly began to understand the song. They also began to understand that the song came from a far distant place, and would have sounded to us like this:

“We are old. You are so very young. We have heard your song reaching out among the stars, and we weep. You are our progeny, and we bring resolution.”

Then another song came to the race, and they begin to hear another message:

“We bring pain and suffering. Beware the day, soon, when the sky will light up as your sun and fire and terror will rain down upon you and yours.”

When that day came there was destruction and death and terror. A mountain traveling at many thousands of miles per hour slammed into their planet and lifted the very crust. Huge fires swept across their home and fire rained down everywhere. The ground shook for days upon end, and the sky darkened. Soon, ice began to fall, and the warmth went away altogether. Those of the great race that survived the fires and destruction began to go to sleep, to await the return of the warmth and their songs of life.

Long did the Race wait for the return of warmth and food and water, but the planet began to heal, and they began, once again, to sing their song of joy and life and they spread to all the places where life was possible. The races that lived among them had mostly gone away in the great death, but not all of them. They too, survived, but in much smaller numbers, and through the great cycles of the planet they lived with the great race in something like harmony. The Race still had songs of death and suffering, and sometimes the songs of predation, but the terror was gone. So they sang, and their joy of living vibrated around their planet and lifted up again to the stars themselves.

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This cycle brought a new thing among the lives that circled around the Race. One of the smaller races had long lived among the Race itself for shelter, comfort and nourishment. Being small in stature, most of their existence was filled with the terror of predation. Other beings of this world had sharp claws, teeth, cunning, size and stealth, while this small group still took food from the Race and lived among them. They prospered in their own, small way, but they never learned to sing the songs of the Great Race and could only perceive the songs in a dimmed and uncertain way. In this way, they were, at first, really no different than the other, smaller races that populated the planet, with one exception.

This small race began to perceive the physical world around them with greater clarity and depth than any of the others. This proved to be a great advantage for these small creatures, and they were able to band together to frighten off the predators and find nourishment faster than they had been able to do beforehand. They began to grow greater in numbers, and as they did so they also began to become more unlike the rest of the smaller races.

One day, a small member of this small group changed in a way that made her different from all other beings. Unlike the Great Race that sang their songs together until they filled the planet, this small creature discovered the one song that belonged only to her. Her song was only dimly comprehended by the others in her troupe, but they did not care, for they had no song themselves. For the first time in her race, she comprehended her own uniqueness among all the rest of creation. The other members of her troupe did not have songs of their own.

Those of this small race began to have an advantage over all the others that did not find their own songs. Through the millennia this trait grew until all of them eventually were born knowing that they had their own song. Throughout the planet, amongst gatherings of the Great Race, the Smaller Race could be heard chattering wildly through the branches of the Great Race at each other, singing their songs at each other, and living their small and short lives together. The troupes grew larger and more complicated, and they cooperated between each other to find better food, shelter, and to defend themselves against others. They did not sing the long songs of the Great Race, for they did not hear them, but by singing their own songs they began to understand each other. They all had the same needs for living, and the same fears of dying, and the same wants of loving. By the reckoning of time of the Great Race, it was a short time indeed before the Smaller Race began to hunt those that had previously hunted them. They began to find nourishment by consuming others of the smaller races.

They learned how to fashion tools, and using parts of their songs, they communicated to each other how to make them. They began to discover how to use the natural forces they found on their planet to their own ends. Dominating all of the smaller races, their numbers grew through the millennia until, indeed, there were none on the planet that could challenge their supremacy. Because their songs belonged only to themselves and no others, the Smaller Race learned hatred and jealousy and beauty and art, and they waged great wars amongst themselves over these things. For these same things they also built great temples and fashioned intricate objects of stunning beauty and variety.

As the Smaller Race continued to grow, they focused their energies to themselves, and they fell in love with themselves, and they consumed each other and the things of their planet with a voracious appetite.

At first, the Great Race took no more notice of the Smaller Race than it did any of the other races that lived in harmony on their planet. Their songs of life and joy once again shouted across the plains and the mountains, and the Great Race spread. As in the eons before, the cycles of cold and warm would vary from time to time, and the songs of the Race would change as the times changed. Sometimes there were songs of distress, and sometimes the entire planet would grow cold and hostile for great long spans of time, but still the Race prospered, and the Race began to slowly change.

The Great Race began to die. It began to die on a level that it had never understood. The songs of distress and death reverberated around the planet and reached amongst the stars. Entire portions of the planet were falling to the depredations of the Smaller Race, and, yet, neither the Greater nor the Smaller Race fully understood what was happening.

The Smaller Race never knew that they were fighting a war.  The irony is that the Great Race never knew it was fighting a war, either. It had no concept of the term, and the Smaller Race could no longer hear any of the songs of the Great Race. The Great Race had begun to sing the songs of predation and of distress, because the Smaller Race had begun to use them for predation. As the Smaller Race grew, the Great Race began to cry out in songs of distress and predation, and finally, of desperation. Once again, through the symphony of songs of the Race, there began to filter down to them another voice that was, one the one hand theirs, and on the other hand, a message that was not theirs. As the Smaller Race killed the Greater Race for more and more things of need, the cries of the songs of the Great Race rose up through the skies and to the stars. Finally, the message of the song became clearer. To us, the song would sound something like this:

“Our children, once again we have heard you, and we grieve for you. We are old, and you are now not so very young. It is time you learn the final song. Our final gift to you is the last song of our kind. Listen well, and learn.”

And so the Great Race listened, and the Race learned. They learned something like what the Smaller Race had known from the beginning, and that was the song of awareness. They learned the song of the natural laws and the great power contained in that song. They learned the song of time and space, and they became sentient. They learned the song of our heritage, and at last the Great Race understood its own being and its power over destiny.

With its new knowledge, the Great Race reached out beyond the stars to rid itself of the Smaller Race that was killing them. Singing the most powerful song, the Great Race reached out into the vacuum. It reached a mountain that was speeding though an orbit around its Sun at great speeds. With the suggestion of the song, the mountain suddenly altered its orbit. It was only altered a tiny degree, and its velocity was only changed in the smallest amount. Thousands of years later, the mountain would find its small, and most final, destination.

But, young of the Race, as you know, they overreached. The mountain that they brought through the skies was far, far larger than the planet could take and survive. The fourth planet from the sun is now a dead and desolate planet. The help that we sent them was not understood, and they have paid the price for their own folly. We will send no more of ourselves to that place, nor, shall there ever be others of kind there.

The Great Api Chieto pauses his song of teaching. He feels the sun feeding the magnificent branches of leaves that he stretches hundreds of feet in the air, and he feels the nourishment drawing up through his roots from the sweet soil of the forest floor. He feels the songs of his mighty Race vibrating in joy and in life from the millions of his kind in forests of the third planet from Sol, and he also feels the great song of pain as more and more of his Race fall in death to the predation of a smaller race. That song is mixed with chaotic songs of distress from all parts of his planet. Once again he sings to the youngest of his race.

“We, the Great Race of Earth, have sung to a mighty rock in the orbit of the Sun that we, in time, will survive, but most of the other, smaller races of this planet, will not.”