Discovering Truth
I dreamt I read a history book that threw up names and dates. This book was sick. It complained that it was ill for the plot it contained. History books should contain facts, not plots. Plots are for fiction and conspiracy theories. The book agreed, as it coughed up a little date. The plot was making it sick.
I held its peeling cover, and stroked its spine while it lay, dying of plot. The history book finally crumbled to dust. I watched its disintegrated pages swirl in the wind.
This drew my gaze to its family. Biographies, covered in footnotes of unbalanced sources. Bibliographic un-listings grew out of control. They formed threads of references that crossed, and stuck together. Coughing, sneezing, the crying of the little, barely read facts filled the air around me, as I watched more of history disappear into the wind.
The sticky references comprised an expansive web. I climbed into it without disturbing it too much, trying to read the strings of its foundation, but found the residue of gossip and opinion obstructing my view. The goo was speaking. Tiny lies that solidified out of the quiet sounds of these words ran all over this web, I climbed. They clumped together, screaming at each other in strangely colored groups where they clashed.
I saw a small fact, born only yesterday, proclaim itself proudly, as it aimed to leap over the web. Amazement stole my breath when a clump of screaming gossip-lies stretched so far from their original cross-reference threads that they worked together to form a stereotype. It trapped the young fact in mid-air. Other lies converged into more stereotypes, seeing the success of the first, and pulled away from the original references, attached only by half-truths now, to wrap a wave of leaping, young facts in cocoons of prejudice.
I climbed over this crawling, crazy mess, holding the date, protectively. Having lost the original thread of reference, I continued to try to read beneath the writhing, dying little facts in vain, as I moved forward in my quest to save this date which was the only clue to the sickness that made history break out in plots.
I mourned the young facts, little truths that kept bouncing into the net. Bulging with the corpses of their kin, the cancer of prejudice kept on growing on top of the foundation of unwritten cross-references left behind - the blood of a history, unbalanced by plot. Lone facts kept jumping, feeding the tumors of hatred while aiming to sacrifice themselves for the chance to poke holes into the disease.
The web became a rock, standing solid while I climbed it, still holding the crying little date. I sat on the spirit of History. Though trapped inside misunderstanding, the spirit of all the facts, the foundation of crossed references that made up the source of every true story, back to the beginning of time - including that first, sick book I encountered - supported me now.
Lights flew over the night sky in welcome to the Soul of Truth which itself remained unseen. The Truth was aware. The Truth had all language, though it did not speak itself. The Truth saw all things, though it could not be seen. The Truth remained true, though the little, unbalanced books of history were written only by the victors.
The Truth could not be changed, though it grew.
I stood on this rock as it continued to grow. A breath older than Time, the rock, though flawed with the perspective of everything that had ever been, was true. The date stopped crying in my hands.
I looked to the ground where opposing sides faced off. One side raised their pens to tattoo their version of the truth onto the surface of their opponents as these merely stood, prepared to allow the pain of this misuse of ink to happen. I wondered why from atop the rock.
They knew about the Truth. Bled, unwritten from the death of History, it built the foundation of this Rock, I stood on. This Rock I called my home was being defended by those who stood with it. Dignity in the torrent of abuse. The Rock did nothing to assist, but hold firm and grow.
I thought of all the little facts that fell victim to stereotype. They were the ancestors of the sleeping little date I brought up here. They were a part of the Truth, of this Rock that built itself on a battleground, burying the dead within. Whatever they were eventually wrapped in, they were truths before they leaped to join the blood of their kin.
Dawn touched the Rock to reveal someone else climbing the growing mountain while holding something precious. I suspected it to be another date. Smiling, sadly, I gave the date I brought with me - the precious piece of History - a name. Then, I smoothed it into a little crack on the Rock where it hardened, and changed the color.
My task complete, I proclaimed the young fact that was the date, proudly as I jumped to join those standing firm. Echoes of History rang with my voice throughout space, and all eyes turned to me. The name I shouted as I fell was the one I had given the date I brought: "Today!"