The characters in this story existed about 3.5 million years ago. They have no names for they existed in a time before one was branded with an organized pattern of "Ummmff"s" and "Hmmmmmn’s" and flicks of the tongue creating a sound everyone must refer to you as. This was after the dawn of bipedalism. These Archaic humanoids have been half-ass walking around the Earth with their newly acquainted two feet for nearly two hundred years, coming down from the trees and searching their habitats for food and the improvement of their current condition of life. Little did they know their species would waste all the time Earth had to offer trying to fulfill this little need. They would never stop and just simply appreciate what their generations have created.
    The generation of homo sapiens in this story will soon create the most important thing in human history. Emotion (which we just can’t help but be addicted to) will finally be realized and understood in one of these lucky neanderthals brain. So understood in fact, he will create the first word out of this bubbling feeling in his spine and ribs. Opening up a new idea in his mind of giving all things in his surroundings a special sound. Out of these sounds he creates love, hate, war, religion, shopping malls, poetry and cheeseburgers. His sloppy nouns created language. And language created the sloppy way in which we think today.
    Since he lives in a time without names, he shall be named before your very eyes. This furry man stands in front of me in a helicopter flying in a circle above the story in my brain right now, waiting to be branded and parachute down to where his fictional life will begin. His name is still on the branding iron in the coals. It isnt quite hot enough. A minute  passes and i pull the iron from the heat source to reveal his name glowing bright orange at the end of the stick. Without hesitation i stick it to his rump. He screams and jumps from the helicopter.  I winced from the stinch of burned hair that instantly filled the back of the chopper. Though hard to see through the tears in my stinging eyes, I got one glimpse of the name scorched into the skin of my ancestor.

On his hairy and callused behind, he would forever have a scar that said...

Oscar
                    by Casey Horner


    Oscar was nearing his 20th birthday. He had no idea what a birthday was, much less what a date or time was. He had just so recently began to realize that he exists. He no longer saw himself as a hallucinating camera floating around in space, but rather an organism..........in his manner of thinking: something he could eat, something alive, now that he realized what alive was.
    This stunning realization took place only three days ago. Until this point, Oscar had seen his reflection in the water, and he had seen his shadow sprouting from his feet, but never saw them as a representation of himself, just things that follow him around, and always happen to be there. But one day Oscar saw them both simultaneously. He was at a watering hole, drinking the water and laying in the sun. He went to the pond for a drink after nearly four hours of laying on his stomach, letting the suns rays roast his back under a two and a half inch layer of fur. There was a stone wall that naturally surrounded one arc of the pond. Oscar would usually go there after laying in the sun for long periods of sunbathing to drink and lay his back on the side of the wall the sun wasnt facing, to cool his fur and skin. When he reached the wall he looked down to the pond to find a spot shallow enough to sit and drink from. He saw his reflection on the surface of the water and noticed today it had a friend. It was his shadow displayed on the wall surrounding the pond.
    Now understand, Oscar had no idea what his reflection nor his shadow was. To him the surface of the pond was a painting he came to everyday, everyday it being the same. He normally, by instinct, went to the watering hole once a day when the sun was highest in the sky. At this time his shadow would have been directly behind him.  Today he went to the watering hole much later than usual. The reason being his family’s cave was discovered by a wandering pack of sabre-toothed tigers the night before. Oscar heard the beast outside before his family awoke. He woke them up and spent the entire night escaping from the cats. They finally caught and ate Oscars son and mate, which was the only thing that could distract them long enough to let Oscar escape. He had already forgotten about the loss of his family by the time he woke up late that evening.
    When he reached the pond the sun was already starting to fall. Which meant his shadow would be about six feet over from where it normally was. So it would have been a terribly noticeable stain on the painting he had began to memorize. When Oscar saw this, he became frozen in perplexity. Staring deeply into the pool. He noticed the tall creature in the painting was just as still as he was. His eyes shifted to the black stain. It too was just as statuesque. The stain was on a rock that looked very similar to the one surrounding the pond.
    Oscar looked over to the wall, saw the stain on the wall itself and instantly ducked down to hide. In doing so he saw a glimpse of his reflection, his shadow, and his shadows reflection  going down with him. At that moment, he suddenly felt every chemical process in his body. Felt every nerve ending and hair rubbing against his body. He realized now that he was part of everything he was seeing. That everyone could watch and study him just as he did to them. He was meat.
    He was the first person to reach this conclusion. Everyone else was too busy eating and sleeping to come to any sort of existentialist realization. Over the next few days, these flashes of emotional realizations called thought consumed Oscar, made him believe their was a whole other existance in his head, and he wanted it out.
    Over the next week, he would be seen by the rest of the pack brutally shaking his head and thrashing at his scalp at random moments, as if there were insects eating away at his face. He would also be seen kicking in his sleep and letting out muffled wimpers from his quivering lips.  This began to worry to rest of the pack for they had seen this behavior once before.
    What they had seen before, though, was not creatures suffering from realization, but other packs suffering from fatal parasites that they had passed on to one another. It would start with one member thrashing about in pain, and then by instinct, it would go to other members for comfort. The next day that one will have died and the rest would be thrashing about like he was. Then the next day that pack would be wiped out. So Oscar’s pack reviewed their memories of this  incident almost in unison.

    And then again in unison, without even looking at each other, they decided to get rid of poor Oscar before it was too late.

                           
                    *  *  *  *  *  *

                In the year 3037, an important meeting is being held by the most impressive minds the world has to offer. The subject being earlier that year, the first successful time traveling device had finally been invented, and it has been decided to change one thing in human history for the absolute embetterment of human present and future. The purpose of this meeting is to come to an agreement on that one thing, and this will be administered.
    The problem in 3037, the need for the embetterment of human present and future, is that before this time machine, no new invention or idea had been presented in over 100 years. The evolution of thought has seemed to have been put on hault. There was no longer new inspiration for art,philosophy and technology. Everything had just become the same old same old. The only rich thinkers this time period has to offer have been locked in seclusion working with everything the past has to offer in order to create some great new sensation to bring back the hopes of Earth’s once creative inhabitants.

    "Think of all the genocides that have occured in our history, now think of all the great minds that could have vanished in them along with their relatives. Surely if we stop these atrocities, some new ideas could come from this," was the point of one speaker.
   
    "We could feasibly go back and stop everyone from learning anything extravagant too early, and keep this going until we see fit, leaving a big gap in the timeline of the progress of human thought. That would move that gap to today, giving us plenty of new things to work with," was another point mentioned.

    "People,! People!" yelled Dr. Bruce Bogari from the middle of the crowd. Dr. Bogari had been a member of the team that invented the time machine. He was one of the most respected minds in the building, and had studied every subject, mastered every art and all of its forms, and had recreated almost every important invention in human history.
             "These are very notable cures for all of our current ailments," he spoke again," but the flaw of all these solutions, comrades, is that we are not digging deep enough. There is an idea to blame for those genocides and for the fact that people learned too much too soon. And that idea is language. Language has limited our brains output for it removes instinct. Some creatures do the most amazing things while doing so only by instinct. Birds fly thousands of miles to warmer weather, not because someone told them to do so, but simply their instincts tell them this the correct thing to do. There was no planning involved, they just feel the need to start flying away. And instinct always points them in the right direction. Just think what our minds would be doing now if we didnt have language to tell us that things are what they are labeled and there should be no questioning otherwise. Now think of what they would be doing after millions of years of evolution for this pattern of thought."

    Dr. Bogari’s words rang throughout the building. Finally a new thought had been presented to humans, and they were all eager to carryout this idea. The planning had been set forth, with Dr. Bogari to lead the team of thinkers. After 3 months of planning, two men now stand before the time machine armed with lazers, ready to enter and kill the supposed creator of language.

            
                    *  *  *  *  *  *

    Oscar sat alone at the pool, constantly shaking his head to get rid of the images and sounds that were reoccuring in his mind.  He had’nt noticed that the rest of the pack mysteriously vanished from the pool. Once he did notice, he decided he might as well leave too so he can silence his new parasite for the day with a good nights sleep.
    As soon as he passed the wall surrounding the pond, he saw a flash and fell to the ground. He looked up to see the rest of the pack circling him and staring down. He lifted his hand to where all the loud ringing was coming from. When he pullled away and looked at his palm, he saw that his fur was drenched in his own blood. This is because one of the pack members had hit him on the side of the head with a rock.
          One of them pointed down at him and then pointed towards a large deep canyon. The canyon was where our ancestors dumped the corpses that once were infested with the unknown fatal  parasite. All at once they worked together to lift Oscar, and started carrying him towards the canyon. Oscar understood what was going on, for he had helped  carry the bodies before. The problem was the hit to the head had momentarily paralyzed him, giving him no fighting chance.
    The need  to explain things to his comrades became an instant priority. But  no way to do this would come to mind. The only thing to do now was to scream.
     "NAAAWWGG, OWW! NAAAAWG!," he wailed as they carried him towards the canyon.
     He started to regain the feeling in his limbs and began to kick and flail about.
    "NAAAAWWWWG, WOW! NAWG, WOW!" after saying this again he heard and felt the emotion behind these sounds and decided to keep going and maybe the right sound would free him.
    "NAAAWWG! NAAWG, WOW! NAWG WOW! NAW  WELLRR!! WERL!"

    In the corner of his eye he saw the glare coming from the surface of the pond. He knew what he had to do to make them realize and understand. He yanked his arm from one of their hands pointed to the pool.
    All at once they looked, and all at once they dropped him. In the pool they had seen the reflections of themselves carrying Oscar, and the reflection of the shadow of it all painted across the wall. They were paralyzed in the same realization that Oscar himself had only a week ago.
    Oscar arose from the dirt and walked towards his reflection. He pointed down towards it, then brought his hand to his chest and said,
 
"Werl.."

This word would be used for millions of years afterwords meaning healthy or fine, and it would be translated into the word, "well". And ’nawg" would be used as "no".

    Not a moment after he had said this, a bright tear appeared in the air. Hues never seen before spilled out the tear in the form of light. Two men in black skin tight suits and big bulky helmets appeared from the rip.  They instantly pointed their black pointy fingers at Oscar and shot lazers into his sternum. As the rest of the pack scattered, Oscar fell backwards and landed on the bank of the pond. The waves sent from his crashing body rippled throughout the pond, dissentegrating any reflection on the surface of the water as the crystal clear  pool turned red. And one by one, generation to generation, his descendents vanished into thin air. Including Dr. Bogari, who was waiting at the other end of the time machine, deeply anticipating the great change for human beings.

THE END