Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
~2 Timothy 2:15
For roughly 12 years I have followed the quest on which you sent me forth upon. Now I feel as one among the ancients who somehow flew high enough to see the horizon bend, and thus conclude from my own eyes that the world is round, before the heat of the sun melts the wax of the feathers in my wings.
Truth makes many enemies of friends, but few lasting friends from enemies.
I read yesterday that: "Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence." (http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someone) But it also takes a special kind of bravery, or perhaps stupidity, to seek and speak the truth in all contexts.
What is the truth worth? Our entire lives are spent in the single flash of a single strobe light of a single Saturday evening party, in all of time. One slow moment of truth and detail played out in a slow motion, like a clip from the matrix slightly changing angle in silence, before the true speed of time and the loudness of sound resumes, as we once again enter into none existence. Or perhaps we do not cease to exist in all forms. It seems far more likely, given the number of times life likely came to be in even our own universe, that there are more artificial or created realities than 'natural' ones. Perhaps we are a deliberate part of a hill climbing genetic algorithm search, mapping the moral landscapes for potential consciousness from a higher plane. Who knows for sure?
We can learn much from the context of this one pulse, this one flash of light in which we live. We can infer in great detail the context in which we live, and what came before us based on the facts we see around us. We can even infer what will likely happen for a time after our demise. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=26jKx74Wc5M)
But there is no happiness to be found in truth. I have pursued many truths, and answered many of the questions I set out to find. But I do not like all, or even many, of the answers that I found. And they are often even less well received by others.
I have learned to see through much of the metaphorical matrix in all it's forms. The realities we craft to suit ourselves. I can easily detect many of the lies we tell ourselves and each other, as a nation, as a religion, the religions and claims of others, our economics, as well as the lies we tell others and even ourselves as individuals.
There is a strange beauty in viewing the clockworks of our minds, our world, and our universe (both real and virtual). But either man is not meant to live there, or it is simply not yet his time. For it is a lonely place with few or no inhabitants.
Who is ready to shed superstitions both shared and unshared? Who will surrender an only hope that isn't true? We live our lives looking forward to the day when we will win the lotto, find the perfect job or spouse, or reach a painless paradise on the other side of the sky. The lies we tell ourselves keep us going, both as individuals and as a culture and people and as slaves to those who are bent to exploit us for their own ends. Lies justify our actions, our motives, and our very being. Who is courageous, or perhaps stupid, enough to give that up?
I ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and more. And now I understand why it requires banishment from the garden. A thing learned can never go unlearned. You cannot return to what and who you were before. It is to put childish things aside. When you see behind the wizards illusions, you can never go back to accepting them in the same way. Maybe that is not the goal.
I am tired of truth. Truth is hard. Truth is exhausting, and pursued too far is only it's own lonely reward. None will hear tell of it. And as time goes on I discover, that I too have been attached to my own lies. Only sorrow seems to comes when they are stripped away. While beautiful, few truths provide the comfort of most all lies.
If asked, I would bet most would not want to know if all they thought were actually lies, and many go so far as to even deny the possibility. Most people WANT to be lied too. Many truths will make you hated, and many lies will ingratiate you.
We live in a dream world. A dream of our own making. Waking from this dream in more than the slightest degree is so damaging and painful we cannot take it. Our minds have evolved for the Matrix, even as it has evolved for us. We are a symbiosis, us and the machine of culture and industry and society. The public dreams informs us and shape us even as we shape it. That pseudo reality we share, replicated over the inefficient network packets of words in speech, or the net, forms the somewhat shared dreamscape that allows us to function as a whole. One body, one being, one species, one civilization, one plant with each of our dream pods sprouting upon a single tree.
Life is but a dream. One we were not designed yet (if ever) to wake from. Lies, make the world go around. If you doubt me, ask yourself: what if you had to choose between that which is most important to you, and opposing truth? What if what you claim is truth, isn't? The fact that they even *could* come into conflict is a truth most cannot, or will not, acknowledge. Maybe that is how it should be.
Friedrich Nietzsche supposedly went insane when he allowed himself neither the escape of religion, nor any other mind altering substance, choosing instead to face the harshness of reality. In my own experience, the more I seek truth, the more my mind demands an escape, I require a dream state, in real sleep or dissociation.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization) The more I know about the world, the less real it becomes. The less attachment I have to it.
It seems our form of life requires the dream like escapes portrayed in 'Big Fish', 'The Bridge to Terabithia', 'Finding Neverland', and 'Sucker Punch'. I may have denied mine for too long.
All is meaningless, said the teacher. For with great wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief.
Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher.
Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.
What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
Look! This is something new?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
Love is the drug.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
On Coming out as an Independent Game Developer.
Part 1: The Timeline
September 1979: I am born and the history of the world is changed forever. ;-)
Early 80's:
-A couple of my earliest memories are seeing the original 'Tron' and 'Return of the Jedi' in the theater.
1987-8:
-I am 7-8 years old and start learning to program in Basic on a TI-99 my dad got at a refurbished electronic shop. I continue learning Basic on my parents new Dos based 80286. They got it for the spell checking feature of an early word Processor (my Dad is a writer) after my Mother discovered it on a borrowed PC for a temp job as an at home typist. Someone where my dad worked left to make video games, and he tries to get me interested in it. But with no concept of number lines in either one or two dimensions and with no one to recognize my need who could explain it to me, the idea goes nowhere at the time.
-Thomas Edison is my proclaimed hero, and I announce that I will be an inventor when I grow up while secretly fantasizing about building intelligent robots. Despite problems at school, I was recognized as above average intelligence by a couple of Boeing Engineers from my parents church (Aerospace engineers were seen as the super smart people before the age of computers). I also wanted desperately to understand electricity and magnetism, but no one would (actually could) give me good explanations.
1989:
-On the School bus to the 4th grade a female student is drawing her own Original Super Mario Brothers levels on graph paper and announces that they are really levels for the then unannounced Super Mario 2. (It was just a kid drawing on a bus, but the idea that you could do that stuck in my head.)
Early 90's:
-I am given a book about Pascal, but never bother getting into it as I was more into playing my guitar. I later wonder if I had continued with my programming as a kid I might have been close to the demographic of Cliff Bleszinski (the designer of Gears of War), although he is several years older than me, so I think probably not.
Mid 90's:
-Mr. Kenny from Cheney High School starts giving our Algebra class 100+ problems a night. Despite bitching about it, I get the fundamentals DOWN, and years later would become the most sought after math tutor in my university.
-I discover the video game 'Doom' and really want to know how it works.
-My High School Physics teacher is forced to use the student AFTER me as the top of the curve so the rest of the class can pass, despite the fact I never did any work other than the exams.
1998:
-I am 18 and working at Burger King while attending WSU (it is the same Burger King from the riots). A coworker spends every day talking about Ultima Online, the predecessor to Everquest and World of Warcraft. I never saw the game, but my imagination of it mixed it with 'Magic the Gathering' started me imagining ways to build micro transactions into video games roughly a decade before the real video Game Industry starts to explore the idea.
-I start designing a game on paper which was effectively Battlefield 1942, four years before the game comes out. My ideas and abilities are belittled by the one person I remember actually sharing it with.
-I realize I want to major in Computer Science when I take the intro C programming course (the most infamous weeder class on campus). In the course we are assigned to make the game Tic Tac Toe. After finishing the assigned requirements I want to play against the computer. I realized I could 'look ahead' by having a choose_move function call itself as opposite players on a secondary board. Something in my implementation doesn't work right, but when I go to the prof he throws me out of his office because he says most students can't even finish the assignment yet I am already trying to write artificial intelligence. (Later I studied artificial intelligence and realized that my idea, despite being undebugable to my then total noob programmer skills, was exactly the right solution even though I had never even heard of recursion at that point.) Despite this, the prof tells me I my never likely understand what I need to to write something like Doom, and refuses to answer my questions.
-Complete disparity between the TV reports of the WSU riot and my own first hand experience and insider knowledge of the surrounding events drives home the idea that maybe nothing in the mainstream media is real or accurate at all.
2000:
-I start my computer Science Degree at EWU and start making Text Based adventure games, which was followed by Tetris, Asteriods, etc.
2002:
-I discover that I am actually learning many of the things I really wanted to know back in grade school but had given up on ever learning by Jr High (the lack of these topics had caused me to lose interest in school). I realized that I was learning these things in the third quarter of calculus based physics and the reason no one could explain what I wanted to know back when I was a kid was because the elementary education majors were the ones who had the most trouble passing basic algebra in the Math Lab where I worked in my free time.
-My College Physics Prof uses the student AFTER me as the top of the curve so the rest of the class can pass. He tells me he would have given me the 5.6 grade he thought I earned, IF the university would have let him.
-Battlefield 1942 comes out and I realize that the game design ideas I had back in 1998 really were worthy as they now were in a smash hit, made by someone else.
-I am yelled at and told I am a total moron by a professor when I try to find out from him how to send data over a network. 3 weeks later I had found out about sockets and with help from a forum I wrote web chat apps in several programming languages and API's after learning how to setup a home network.
-I start teaching myself DirectX and find that the prof who berated me over the sockets teaches the OpenGL class to seniors and has a low opinion of students. He would later tell our Graphics Programming class that these days it was impossible to build games by ourselves or on small teams.
2004:
-While working on a 3D terrain rendering app in my free time I have an idea for a game in which you can dig tunnels in 3D. My idea is similar to Minecraft, but it never occurred to me to make voxels out of triangles and so I dropped the idea. Even though I had never heard of voxels at the time, I had originally thought that was how 3D graphics worked until the triangles of OpenGL and Direct3D came in and temporarily limited my thinking on the subject. It was a real forehead slapper when I saw Minecraft the first time.
-My personal confidence grows when a former NASA engineer drops out of my Artificial Intelligence course because he cannot keep up.
-I graduated and started working at 5th Cell Media writing cell phone games.
Early 2005:
-I have built a prototype MMO on the Nokia s40 after the creative director and I are inspired by the release of World of Warcraft. At the top of the Jamdat tower (later EA Mobile) in LA, I am told that while their engineers couldn't do what I did on that model of phone, our game is unsellable because cell phone games have a completely different and very limited market. I am told that the game of bowling which is only two button presses (one for angle and one for speed) paid for the whole tower.
Late 2005:
-I move to Handheld Games where I write a 3D engine for the Nintendo DS from scratch and coordinate it's use between artists and Game Play programmers, eventually on more than one team at the same time.
-One of my best friends and coworkers burns out from crunch and completely retires from the industry. The team is crunched for 60-100 hours a week for 8+ months until most of us could not function.
2007:
-Having built my own 3D engine I move to Midway to study the Unreal3Engine and end up on another extended crunch. A 20 year industry veteran who had been the coder of thrill kill burns out in front of me. I also work with several other heavy hitting industry veterans, including one of the main coders for the old Lucas Arts Adventure games, the N64 Army Men, NBA Jam, and more.
Late 2008:
-I am phone interviewed to work on "World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Litch King" but fail due to, I think: A) obvious disappointment over the fact that the interview wasn't for Starcraft2; B) Admitting WoW was to much of a grind for me; and 3) Not recognizing immediately that the correct answer to a technical question was actually to point out a game design problem in the proposed scenario.
-I turn down a six figure salary at Rock Star Games because I get the impression crunch was the norm, and narrowly escape the "Rock Star Wives" fiasco.
-I move to Crytek in Frankfurt Germany because they promise me I will not have to crunch anymore (I had been crunching for nearly 2 years solid, as much as 100hrs/week) and because I am told I will get to build the multithreaded entity component system which will become a key feature in future versions of CryEngine.
2009:
-I am surprised when an author of one of the books I learned Game Programming from does not pass inspection for a job at Crytek.
-I raise awareness to some issues that would prevent Crysis2 from shipping on time. This spawns a huge meeting of senior engineers from all the Crytek studios in which the technical and game design plans for Crysis2 are radically changed. I knew in advance raising the issues would likely cost me (and the Team) the entity component framework that I had taken a 50% pay cut to build (and it did) but I knew I had to do it anyway.
-I start building a new Engine in C++ at home out of frustration.
-I am asked if I have interest in Leading Crysis2, but say no and am eventually transferred to Cryteks Artificial Intelligence Research and Development group.
-My youngest Brother, who had previously been studying nuclear engineering and could speak 5 languages commits suicide. His death, combined with my being near burnout, having inadvertently debunked many of my childhood beliefs, and being thousands of miles from home where I could not speak the language was an overwhelming combination.
-After 6 months in the AI RnD group I finally burn out and spend roughly a year and a half sleeping in my apartment, too depressed to get out of bed or often eat or drink. This burned 10's of thousands I had saved to start my own indie game company.
Late 2010:
-I turn down an offer from Havok in Dublin along with the chance at a second degree in neuroscience at the nearby trinity college and accept my first non game development job at Logica to work on contracts for the European Space Agency. I do this in part to avoid the standard part of all Game Studio contracts that give them the legal right to claim ANY intellectual property you come up with, even in your own free time.
-I start my newest Game + Game Engine in HTML5 with the intent to use it as a platform to pursue many game design ideas I have been accumulating.
***February 29, 2012***:
-I announce to the world that I am now an Independent Game Developer with a project underway.
Part 2: Why?
There is not one answer to this question, but I want to put out a few reasons behind my decision:
1) Working in the Game Industry has largely seemed like factory work to me, especially on larger projects.
I really hate being programmer 125 out of 350. If you are, you often may have little or no control over even the code you work on, let alone much input on any interesting technical or game design decisions. I got into this business because I wanted to make my ideas reality, and I have the know how to do it. So why shouldn't I? It is my dream. While I would like to earn a living from my own projects one day, I don't need to be rich and in fact think I might be better off if I am not. I want to do this the best I can for the love of it, not hack some ugly shit in mandatory crunch because we were suppose to ship 5 months ago so some publishers producer who isn't me will get extra millions in a bonus.
2) The Big developers lack creativity.
Do NOT miss understand me. I know MANY seriously brilliant and creative people in the industry. For instance, at Crytek there are a couple of brilliant designers, one of which made a couple of the most famous Counter Strike Maps. And I know other smart people at Blizzard and other companies, even ones you never heard of.
=>
But IMO the game industry has grown up WAY to fast. If we were film we would still be black and white and silent, yet we already have budgets for development and advertisements that rival summer blockbuster films. Given that we still don't even know, for instance, how game play should interact with story, this seems pretty stupid to me. Huge projects have little room for innovation, and as a result the mandate from on high will often be: how does Call of Duty do it? Then that's what we are doing too. There is so much copying going on that everything from controller schemes to cut scenes are obviously just taken from whatever else is selling well at the moment.
I also think it is worth mentioning that the WoW killer is probably WoW itself. There is so much investment in that kind of game that I think people will just burn out of it eventually, but never seriously go anywhere else for that kind of game. The way to beat WoW is to do something totally different and not even try to be WoW. But few big publishers are going to even try it because of the herd mentality. But if you think about it, an MMO doesn't even have to be an RPG with quests and actions bars, it could be any game world with whatever rules as long as it supports lots of players. It's just that most people can only think about what they see working already and currently making money, so they are rarely if ever even going to try something else.
On MMO's in particular, some of the original design ideas for Star Wars galaxies were IMO much better than WoW ever was (even if poorly or never actually executed) and other features from MUD's going back farther shows there are many other paths one could take. But you are going to have to be an indie if you even want to try it.
3) Game Play RnD
Before 100M went into developing Grand Theft Auto 4, there was a GTA3 and 2, and 1. The first two were top down 2D but the game play was there and it was a lot of fun. If you want to develop new IP, start small. Lots of people I know who want to have their game ideas made imagine their idea only with a budget to rival Gears of War or Crysis, but that is never going to happen unless it is already a proven idea, or you are know as a god game designer. And your idea shouldn't be if you haven't proven it yet. If you can't make a fun game in 2D, why should you get hundreds of millions of artwork and marketing put on top of it?
On Crysis2 it took weeks for time for a gameplay coder, and animation coder, and an animator to get a guy to mirrors edge parkour through a window, only to discover it wasn't fun. I want higher iteration time than that. So I am going to start small and build some 2D games where I can explore some basic ideas, and occasionally do my own take on established ones. Some new Skyrim style dynamic world interaction systems don't need millions of $$ of artwork and development. Most game AI is working in 2D anyway.
Part 3: What I am going to do!
My main goal at this point is to develop cooperative experiences as well as team based competitive / cooperative game play. I also want to bring in educational stuff in a fun way so people don't even notice it, but are learning real 21st century skills. I expect augmented reality to be here within a decade, and neural interfaces in my lifetime. Supposedly genetics, Nano Technology, Neuroscience, and more are all following a Moore's law type of exponential growth. 40 years ago something far less powerful than my cell phone took up a whole building. Where will it be 40 years from now? Probably smaller than cells. Video games and virtual reality, along with things like the Khan Academy are going to change the very nature of education and ultimately how the Human Race interacts with each other as well as the universe around us. I am bored of making games publishers copy paste together thinking they will earn them lots of cash in the short term. I am going to find a way to do something that I enjoy, and makes the world a better place. Follow me and see what happens.
Final Note:
In the coming weeks I am going to be setting up and or linking info outlets on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Linkedin, Github and this Blogger account to make a trail of my actions to come, so stay tuned.
Twitter: @JeremyKBGross
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheJeremyKentBGross/videos?view=u
September 1979: I am born and the history of the world is changed forever. ;-)
Early 80's:
-A couple of my earliest memories are seeing the original 'Tron' and 'Return of the Jedi' in the theater.
1987-8:
-I am 7-8 years old and start learning to program in Basic on a TI-99 my dad got at a refurbished electronic shop. I continue learning Basic on my parents new Dos based 80286. They got it for the spell checking feature of an early word Processor (my Dad is a writer) after my Mother discovered it on a borrowed PC for a temp job as an at home typist. Someone where my dad worked left to make video games, and he tries to get me interested in it. But with no concept of number lines in either one or two dimensions and with no one to recognize my need who could explain it to me, the idea goes nowhere at the time.
-Thomas Edison is my proclaimed hero, and I announce that I will be an inventor when I grow up while secretly fantasizing about building intelligent robots. Despite problems at school, I was recognized as above average intelligence by a couple of Boeing Engineers from my parents church (Aerospace engineers were seen as the super smart people before the age of computers). I also wanted desperately to understand electricity and magnetism, but no one would (actually could) give me good explanations.
1989:
-On the School bus to the 4th grade a female student is drawing her own Original Super Mario Brothers levels on graph paper and announces that they are really levels for the then unannounced Super Mario 2. (It was just a kid drawing on a bus, but the idea that you could do that stuck in my head.)
Early 90's:
-I am given a book about Pascal, but never bother getting into it as I was more into playing my guitar. I later wonder if I had continued with my programming as a kid I might have been close to the demographic of Cliff Bleszinski (the designer of Gears of War), although he is several years older than me, so I think probably not.
Mid 90's:
-Mr. Kenny from Cheney High School starts giving our Algebra class 100+ problems a night. Despite bitching about it, I get the fundamentals DOWN, and years later would become the most sought after math tutor in my university.
-I discover the video game 'Doom' and really want to know how it works.
-My High School Physics teacher is forced to use the student AFTER me as the top of the curve so the rest of the class can pass, despite the fact I never did any work other than the exams.
1998:
-I am 18 and working at Burger King while attending WSU (it is the same Burger King from the riots). A coworker spends every day talking about Ultima Online, the predecessor to Everquest and World of Warcraft. I never saw the game, but my imagination of it mixed it with 'Magic the Gathering' started me imagining ways to build micro transactions into video games roughly a decade before the real video Game Industry starts to explore the idea.
-I start designing a game on paper which was effectively Battlefield 1942, four years before the game comes out. My ideas and abilities are belittled by the one person I remember actually sharing it with.
-I realize I want to major in Computer Science when I take the intro C programming course (the most infamous weeder class on campus). In the course we are assigned to make the game Tic Tac Toe. After finishing the assigned requirements I want to play against the computer. I realized I could 'look ahead' by having a choose_move function call itself as opposite players on a secondary board. Something in my implementation doesn't work right, but when I go to the prof he throws me out of his office because he says most students can't even finish the assignment yet I am already trying to write artificial intelligence. (Later I studied artificial intelligence and realized that my idea, despite being undebugable to my then total noob programmer skills, was exactly the right solution even though I had never even heard of recursion at that point.) Despite this, the prof tells me I my never likely understand what I need to to write something like Doom, and refuses to answer my questions.
-Complete disparity between the TV reports of the WSU riot and my own first hand experience and insider knowledge of the surrounding events drives home the idea that maybe nothing in the mainstream media is real or accurate at all.
2000:
-I start my computer Science Degree at EWU and start making Text Based adventure games, which was followed by Tetris, Asteriods, etc.
2002:
-I discover that I am actually learning many of the things I really wanted to know back in grade school but had given up on ever learning by Jr High (the lack of these topics had caused me to lose interest in school). I realized that I was learning these things in the third quarter of calculus based physics and the reason no one could explain what I wanted to know back when I was a kid was because the elementary education majors were the ones who had the most trouble passing basic algebra in the Math Lab where I worked in my free time.
-My College Physics Prof uses the student AFTER me as the top of the curve so the rest of the class can pass. He tells me he would have given me the 5.6 grade he thought I earned, IF the university would have let him.
-Battlefield 1942 comes out and I realize that the game design ideas I had back in 1998 really were worthy as they now were in a smash hit, made by someone else.
-I am yelled at and told I am a total moron by a professor when I try to find out from him how to send data over a network. 3 weeks later I had found out about sockets and with help from a forum I wrote web chat apps in several programming languages and API's after learning how to setup a home network.
-I start teaching myself DirectX and find that the prof who berated me over the sockets teaches the OpenGL class to seniors and has a low opinion of students. He would later tell our Graphics Programming class that these days it was impossible to build games by ourselves or on small teams.
2004:
-While working on a 3D terrain rendering app in my free time I have an idea for a game in which you can dig tunnels in 3D. My idea is similar to Minecraft, but it never occurred to me to make voxels out of triangles and so I dropped the idea. Even though I had never heard of voxels at the time, I had originally thought that was how 3D graphics worked until the triangles of OpenGL and Direct3D came in and temporarily limited my thinking on the subject. It was a real forehead slapper when I saw Minecraft the first time.
-My personal confidence grows when a former NASA engineer drops out of my Artificial Intelligence course because he cannot keep up.
-I graduated and started working at 5th Cell Media writing cell phone games.
Early 2005:
-I have built a prototype MMO on the Nokia s40 after the creative director and I are inspired by the release of World of Warcraft. At the top of the Jamdat tower (later EA Mobile) in LA, I am told that while their engineers couldn't do what I did on that model of phone, our game is unsellable because cell phone games have a completely different and very limited market. I am told that the game of bowling which is only two button presses (one for angle and one for speed) paid for the whole tower.
Late 2005:
-I move to Handheld Games where I write a 3D engine for the Nintendo DS from scratch and coordinate it's use between artists and Game Play programmers, eventually on more than one team at the same time.
-One of my best friends and coworkers burns out from crunch and completely retires from the industry. The team is crunched for 60-100 hours a week for 8+ months until most of us could not function.
2007:
-Having built my own 3D engine I move to Midway to study the Unreal3Engine and end up on another extended crunch. A 20 year industry veteran who had been the coder of thrill kill burns out in front of me. I also work with several other heavy hitting industry veterans, including one of the main coders for the old Lucas Arts Adventure games, the N64 Army Men, NBA Jam, and more.
Late 2008:
-I am phone interviewed to work on "World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Litch King" but fail due to, I think: A) obvious disappointment over the fact that the interview wasn't for Starcraft2; B) Admitting WoW was to much of a grind for me; and 3) Not recognizing immediately that the correct answer to a technical question was actually to point out a game design problem in the proposed scenario.
-I turn down a six figure salary at Rock Star Games because I get the impression crunch was the norm, and narrowly escape the "Rock Star Wives" fiasco.
-I move to Crytek in Frankfurt Germany because they promise me I will not have to crunch anymore (I had been crunching for nearly 2 years solid, as much as 100hrs/week) and because I am told I will get to build the multithreaded entity component system which will become a key feature in future versions of CryEngine.
2009:
-I am surprised when an author of one of the books I learned Game Programming from does not pass inspection for a job at Crytek.
-I raise awareness to some issues that would prevent Crysis2 from shipping on time. This spawns a huge meeting of senior engineers from all the Crytek studios in which the technical and game design plans for Crysis2 are radically changed. I knew in advance raising the issues would likely cost me (and the Team) the entity component framework that I had taken a 50% pay cut to build (and it did) but I knew I had to do it anyway.
-I start building a new Engine in C++ at home out of frustration.
-I am asked if I have interest in Leading Crysis2, but say no and am eventually transferred to Cryteks Artificial Intelligence Research and Development group.
-My youngest Brother, who had previously been studying nuclear engineering and could speak 5 languages commits suicide. His death, combined with my being near burnout, having inadvertently debunked many of my childhood beliefs, and being thousands of miles from home where I could not speak the language was an overwhelming combination.
-After 6 months in the AI RnD group I finally burn out and spend roughly a year and a half sleeping in my apartment, too depressed to get out of bed or often eat or drink. This burned 10's of thousands I had saved to start my own indie game company.
Late 2010:
-I turn down an offer from Havok in Dublin along with the chance at a second degree in neuroscience at the nearby trinity college and accept my first non game development job at Logica to work on contracts for the European Space Agency. I do this in part to avoid the standard part of all Game Studio contracts that give them the legal right to claim ANY intellectual property you come up with, even in your own free time.
-I start my newest Game + Game Engine in HTML5 with the intent to use it as a platform to pursue many game design ideas I have been accumulating.
***February 29, 2012***:
-I announce to the world that I am now an Independent Game Developer with a project underway.
Part 2: Why?
There is not one answer to this question, but I want to put out a few reasons behind my decision:
1) Working in the Game Industry has largely seemed like factory work to me, especially on larger projects.
I really hate being programmer 125 out of 350. If you are, you often may have little or no control over even the code you work on, let alone much input on any interesting technical or game design decisions. I got into this business because I wanted to make my ideas reality, and I have the know how to do it. So why shouldn't I? It is my dream. While I would like to earn a living from my own projects one day, I don't need to be rich and in fact think I might be better off if I am not. I want to do this the best I can for the love of it, not hack some ugly shit in mandatory crunch because we were suppose to ship 5 months ago so some publishers producer who isn't me will get extra millions in a bonus.
2) The Big developers lack creativity.
Do NOT miss understand me. I know MANY seriously brilliant and creative people in the industry. For instance, at Crytek there are a couple of brilliant designers, one of which made a couple of the most famous Counter Strike Maps. And I know other smart people at Blizzard and other companies, even ones you never heard of.
=>
But IMO the game industry has grown up WAY to fast. If we were film we would still be black and white and silent, yet we already have budgets for development and advertisements that rival summer blockbuster films. Given that we still don't even know, for instance, how game play should interact with story, this seems pretty stupid to me. Huge projects have little room for innovation, and as a result the mandate from on high will often be: how does Call of Duty do it? Then that's what we are doing too. There is so much copying going on that everything from controller schemes to cut scenes are obviously just taken from whatever else is selling well at the moment.
I also think it is worth mentioning that the WoW killer is probably WoW itself. There is so much investment in that kind of game that I think people will just burn out of it eventually, but never seriously go anywhere else for that kind of game. The way to beat WoW is to do something totally different and not even try to be WoW. But few big publishers are going to even try it because of the herd mentality. But if you think about it, an MMO doesn't even have to be an RPG with quests and actions bars, it could be any game world with whatever rules as long as it supports lots of players. It's just that most people can only think about what they see working already and currently making money, so they are rarely if ever even going to try something else.
On MMO's in particular, some of the original design ideas for Star Wars galaxies were IMO much better than WoW ever was (even if poorly or never actually executed) and other features from MUD's going back farther shows there are many other paths one could take. But you are going to have to be an indie if you even want to try it.
3) Game Play RnD
Before 100M went into developing Grand Theft Auto 4, there was a GTA3 and 2, and 1. The first two were top down 2D but the game play was there and it was a lot of fun. If you want to develop new IP, start small. Lots of people I know who want to have their game ideas made imagine their idea only with a budget to rival Gears of War or Crysis, but that is never going to happen unless it is already a proven idea, or you are know as a god game designer. And your idea shouldn't be if you haven't proven it yet. If you can't make a fun game in 2D, why should you get hundreds of millions of artwork and marketing put on top of it?
On Crysis2 it took weeks for time for a gameplay coder, and animation coder, and an animator to get a guy to mirrors edge parkour through a window, only to discover it wasn't fun. I want higher iteration time than that. So I am going to start small and build some 2D games where I can explore some basic ideas, and occasionally do my own take on established ones. Some new Skyrim style dynamic world interaction systems don't need millions of $$ of artwork and development. Most game AI is working in 2D anyway.
Part 3: What I am going to do!
My main goal at this point is to develop cooperative experiences as well as team based competitive / cooperative game play. I also want to bring in educational stuff in a fun way so people don't even notice it, but are learning real 21st century skills. I expect augmented reality to be here within a decade, and neural interfaces in my lifetime. Supposedly genetics, Nano Technology, Neuroscience, and more are all following a Moore's law type of exponential growth. 40 years ago something far less powerful than my cell phone took up a whole building. Where will it be 40 years from now? Probably smaller than cells. Video games and virtual reality, along with things like the Khan Academy are going to change the very nature of education and ultimately how the Human Race interacts with each other as well as the universe around us. I am bored of making games publishers copy paste together thinking they will earn them lots of cash in the short term. I am going to find a way to do something that I enjoy, and makes the world a better place. Follow me and see what happens.
Final Note:
In the coming weeks I am going to be setting up and or linking info outlets on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Linkedin, Github and this Blogger account to make a trail of my actions to come, so stay tuned.
Twitter: @JeremyKBGross
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheJeremyKentBGross/videos?view=u
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Oggs Stone Axes (Draft 2, with a new improved ending.)
Oggs Stone Axes.
Once upon a time there lived two small primates who were forced to leave the safety of their tree tops and search for a better life in the grasslands of the savanna. The trees of the forests that had once been home to their civilization had begun to die out, and many had caught fire and burned away. Shortly after the last hospitable tree disappeared behind them into the grasslands of their new home, they gave birth to a baby boy named Ogg.
Soon Ogg was waddling around his parents full of all the excitement that comes with discovering the world for the first time. Ogg’s father was keen to point out to Ogg how he should try to be like Grog, a boy a little older that Ogg. Grog had discovered how to make a stone ax by smashing rocks together for a few hours, and this made BOTH of the eligible females, Shrog and Mog, fawn over Grog as if he were the only male in the savanna. And for all of their own practical purposes, he was. Even little Clog adored Grog, but as Ogg’s father pointed out, she would not be ripe for at least two more summers.
Shortly after that Ogg’s mother and father got sick. Ogg’s father explained to Ogg that he and Ogg’s mother were going up to the tree tops in the sky to be with their own mothers and fathers. But he told Ogg not to worry because they would be looking down on Ogg to make sure everything was OK, and they would still try to help him whenever he asked. Ogg’s father also told him to stay close to Grog and try to be like him. “You too will someday contribute something of great value like Grog has”, said Oggs father, “if you never quit trying.” And then Ogg’s mother and father left to live in the sky.
Ogg adored Grog as an honorary big brother and eagerly tried to copy him in everything he did, especially when he was smashing rocks. Grog was very proud to have a young male admirer, especially since this seemed to make the women fawn over him all the more. So he eagerly aided Ogg in his studies as a rock smasher and soon Ogg was making stone axes that were better than Grogs.
Grog continued to praised Ogg for his stone axe making ability, but he himself abandoned the Axe making and started making spears instead. This worked perfectly because Ogg could trade an axe for a spear anytime he wanted, and they both could trade axes and spears for berries, meat, furs when it was cold, and even some luxury items like feathers that made the girls smile and wave at them. Everyone praised Ogg’s axes and by now some of the females had started to notice Ogg too, and this made Ogg very happy with himself. But more than anything Ogg LOVED making those axes. It was so satisfying to work with his hands on those stones, and the time flew by as if it were no time at all whenever he was smashing rocks.
Then one day Grog announced to Ogg he was going over the farthest hill to see if anyone over there needed axes or spears too. But Grog never returned. Each day more and more people passed by in the direction Grog had traveled until one day the hand full of people in the tribe decided they should move that direction to see what was happening.
When they reached the top of the farthest hill and looked down they saw the strangest sight. The valley below was filled with dozens of people all digging evenly aligned rows in the dirt. And at one end of the valley there was a raised platform made of dead trees tied together with a kind of vine Ogg had never seen before. On the platform stood a huge male shouting directing down to all of the diggers. Also on the platform were several females fawning over the male giving directions. As Ogg got closer, he could see that it was Grog! He was ecstatic!
But Grog was very busy, and only had time to explain to Ogg that they had no use anymore for making axes or spears anymore because they had plenty. Stone axes had no value Grog said. What were really needed were people who could dig in the dirt and place little seeds in a row. This would cause lots of food to come out of the ground. So much food would come up that they would have all they needed for a long time to come and could trade the extra for anything they needed, Grog promised. Ogg began to dig in the dirt with the others. But the dirt got under his nails, and he was not very good at digging strait rows. Soon he was daydreaming about the days when he and Grog had made spears and axes, and how they had all the meat and feathers and admirers that they had ever wanted. But mostly he thought about how much he enjoyed the process of making stone axes.
Ogg never really liked digging in the dirt, but he slowly got better at it, and noticed that there were actually a lot more females here to choose from than when he had been in the grasslands smashing rocks. “Maybe this wasn’t THAT bad”, Ogg thought, “even if I do feel a little less special among so many people.” And when he looked up at Grog he saw that more females than ever adored him on that little platform. Remembering the words of his father, Ogg looked up to the sky and asked: dad, please help me dig good enough rows to reach Grog again.
It seemed to Ogg that his father answered this request because soon Ogg was digging the best rows of anyone. Ogg figured any day now he would move up to be on that platform with Grog.
But the next day when Ogg got up, no one was digging rows anymore except for a couple of people who had tethered wild ox to pull a stone axe through the ground. They were digging rows by themselves in minutes that use to take dozens of people all day.
When Ogg finally found Grog, Grog had no time to speak with him. He was busy looking over what looked like a giant leaf with markings on it that was laid out on a stone table. “We don’t need to dig rows anymore, that has no value” Grog explained over his shoulder. “Talk to my man over there, he will explain.”
The man Grog had referred to explained to Ogg that they had to build a great pile of stones so that his brother could take his place among the other gods.
“What is a god?” Ogg asked. “Well”, replied the man, “they are like men. Except you can’t see them, except for Grog of course, and they are very powerful and make it rain, and they make the sun come up, and if you please them they will do you favors and if you displease them they will punish you.” Ogg explained how he asked his mother in father in the sky for all the favors he needed, but the man explained to him that his mother and father had gone to Osiris in the land of the dead, and could not hear him anymore. From now on he would have to pray to Ra or Horus or one of the other gods, preferably Grog who was a god on earth. These ideas seemed very strange to Ogg, but who was he to argue.
So Ogg went to work in the stone yards with hundreds of others as directed. He was excited about this at first because he thought he could use his rock smashing techniques again. But unfortunately the stones they needed now were much too large to smash. In fact they were so large it took Ogg and many other men just to move one of the many stones that they had to cut into perfect blocks. Ogg was not very good at this and soon found himself day dreaming about the old days of smashing rocks, and the feathers and meat and adoring females. “How will I ever stand out again among so many people” Ogg wondered.
Ogg thought to pray to his mother and father for help, but remembered the last time they answered his prayers a little too late and his row digging skills were no longer useful once they arrived. Maybe it is because they could not hear me he thought. Perhaps the man was right, and now I must pray to Ra and Grog and the other gods. I guess there was a good reason why father told me to be like Grog. I had no idea he was a god. If I can get close to gods then maybe everything will be alright again.
After praying, Ogg remembered the markings he had seen on the strange leaf that his brother had had. He started to ask around about these markings, but was told that they were magic marks for gods and NOT for him to understand. When Ogg next saw Grog he asked him about the magic marks and asked if they were really forbidden. Grog said that it was OK because as his friend he would have someone teach Ogg the basics of mark making and that Ogg should be doing that instead anyway because carving and moving stones had no value.
Grog explained that the leaves were actually called papyrus, and the marks were not magic, but Ogg should not tell anyone that because that was a secret. Grog told another man to teach Ogg the secret of the marks while he attended to some other matters.
The man explained to Ogg the meanings for different symbols and taught him the proper ways to draw them. Ogg found this tedious work and often found himself day dreaming about the days of smashing rocks to make axes. That had been fun and Ogg was good at it. He wondered when what he was good at would be valued again. But Ogg remembered what his father had told him about trying to be like Grog, so he kept at it and he prayed to Ra and Seth and Horus that he would become as good as Grog. And it seemed that Ra answered his prayers because soon he got good at understanding the markings and at making his own. Soon he was able to use them to take down messages between the rock carvers at the various quarries, and the rock stackers at the build site, just as he was told.
But then one day he woke up and discovered that all the tables had been moved out. The stone pyramids had been finished, and his mark making skills, he was told, no longer had value. He was told that men from far away could come on horses, or pulled with horses, carrying shiny spears and clubs and would take everything they had worked for. What was needed now was the ability to work with metal.
Once again Ogg found himself learning new things. He worked long hours near thousands of others all stoking fires that scared him, and hammering copper which hurt his ears and made him tired. The fires were so hot that it was very uncomfortable to be near, and Ogg didn’t enjoy the work that much. Ogg dreamed of the simple days of making stone axes. He was told that the gods he knew had no power anymore, and new gods took their place. This happened many times, and the metals changed a few times too.
Soon the metal working was no longer most important, and Ogg found himself at the markings again, but the old marks didn’t count. This time they were representing numbers and geometry. There were new gods again too: Zeus and Apollo and Athena. It seemed to Ogg that most new gods were often very similar to the old ones with little changes, but maybe that was just because those were the qualities that gods had. And no matter what Ogg did, always Grog was at least one step ahead and he grew farther and farther out of reach.
Then there was more metal working, but again it was a different kind of metal, and again there were new gods.
Soon Ogg was told that all the gods he had ever prayed to were false, and that his mother and father had never heard him either. He was told there was only one God who was jealous and angry that Ogg had ever prayed to the false gods and even to his mother and father. Supposedly Ogg could also pray to saints, many of which kind of seemed like some of the old god’s, but saints had to be approved first by Grog in Rome before they could receive prayers. Ogg thought maybe that was why he had never had the luck that he had hoped for since the days of making axes, but the new God didn’t seem useful at answering prayers either. Maybe the God’s never were so much about answering prayers, but just wanted to be pleased, Ogg thought. But no matter what Ogg had ever done it never seemed to please any of the gods Ogg prayed to. Ogg began to wonder if there were in fact any God’s at all. If there were, it didn’t seem that they took any notice of Ogg’s, or anyone else, just as Grog never had any time to see him either. It seemed nothing he ever did was good enough until just before it was too late for that thing to be of use. The new God also supposedly said Ogg wasn’t good enough and that was why Ogg needed him, and that did seem true. Although the new God didn’t seem to make Ogg good enough either, nor to make up for his shortcomings in any perceivable way.
Some men figured out how to use clear rocks to see things there were very small or very far away. Soon Ogg learned that the earth was not round, which he had heard once before, but also that it was actually smaller than the sun, which it orbited. Who knew? Ogg heard from others that Grog had denied this at first, but then acted as if he had always known it, as he was infallible. Cells were discovered, and by looking through the clear rocks it looked like there were rivers on another planet, just like on earth. Ogg remembered when Mars was a god moving inexplicably through the sky, and not another planet.
Ogg tried to predict what would come next. Sometimes he was right about what would come next. But it never came about like he suspected it would, and usually at not the right time either. Some things he predicted he wanted to do himself, but he never had the time and didn’t know how to get enough support to get it done. Often people thought ideas he had were stupid at the time he had them, and didn’t remember that he had ever had them later on when they in fact became a reality like he had predicted, albeit not in a way he was ever able to benefit from.
As the years passed and time marched forward, Grog discovered the atom, walked on the moon, popularized the operating system, invented the internet, the search engine, and then social media and smart phones.
One day while standing outside of a 3D movie theater Ogg overheard someone talking about something called ‘The Coming Singularity’. He looked this up online on his phone. The phone told him that the Coming Singularity was an event expected in the almost immediate future in which human progress would start to come so fast that no one would be able to keep up with it anymore. People would have computers as part of their bodies and brains, and genetic enhancements and reengineering would be commonplace. Humans would probably be a single living hive machine, like a bees nest or the Borg. Super human strength and speed, hearing and vision would be the norm, along with worldwide telepathy. All the best current world athletes would pale in comparison to the physical abilities of the average person of the future once they were enhanced by Grog’s coming nanobots. Ogg wondered how that would work, but he had little trouble doubting it was probably true. Cell phones and microwaves had been predicted only about 100 years before, and sure enough Grog had invented those things as predicted. Ogg didn’t even understand how his smart phone worked, but he knew that it was not magic and yet he still held more power than many of his gods he had once believed in. He wondered who would have power in that future. No one commands the bees or the ants or the birds or the fish. No one that Ogg could see anyway. Yet they acted as one. Would humans be this way? Or would they still always have a Grog above them telling them what to do, and how to be, and what was to have value? And he wondered if anything he did would ever have value.
He looked up and saw Grog on a billboard with several females clinging to him in an ad for a newer phone than the one he had which came with reality augmenting contact lenses. Each of the females was more beautiful than any Ogg had ever actually seen in real life. Ogg looked around the plaza. There were so many people there he felt like a tiny fish in a huge ocean. All of the people were so busy it seemed as if they rushed by, each like a single blood cell hurdling down the vessels Ogg had read about which were supposed to exist in a living body. Each person passing by was talking on his or her cell phones, or with each other, as if in a trance… each with their own individual realities. They moved so fast it was if they could not even see Ogg at all.
Ogg felt old, even though he knew he was still quite young. He wanted to see what would came next, but part of him felt too tired to actually live through it to find out. That night Ogg went home alone to his apartment as usual, and dreamt he was making stone axes while his mother and father looked down from tree tops in the sky approvingly.
But then there were no people left to take the axes, and his mother and father were gone, and somehow he knew with the special knowledge that only comes in dreams, that the grasslands were completely desolate of people, as if his eyes could see to the ends of the earth. And he sat alone on the rocks, without even the will anymore to even make his once beloved stone axes. And having seen how the world turns, he wished he could go into a deeper sleep from which he would never wake up.
It was at that moment, when things seemed darkest, that suddenly in Ogg’s dream changed as a result of his next action. Ogg looked up to the sky and addressed his parents, and all of the progression of gods, and even to another copy of Ogg deep within himself, and he said the following words to them: “I don’t know which if any of you are real. But I am done following Grog! I am tired of perpetually living in another man’s shadow! I am not an ox or a deer that must always follow in the herd.”
It was at this moment that a huge dark cloud surged from Ogg’s chest and swirled violently in a vortex before solidifying into Ogg’s parents, and all the progression of Gods Ogg had ever heard of, and even Ogg himself, all fused into a single body. And then the hybrid of beings spoke to Ogg (who was somehow still separate also, as dreams work this way). And the being spoke to Ogg in a voice that was both legion and yet one voice at the same time!
And the voice said: “Do not quit! Long have I watched you as you struggled and toiled in Grogg’s shadow; the shadow you created.” Ogg wanted to counter that he had not created Grog or his shadow, but the voice continued: “Do not fight Grog, do not kill him, or try to destroy any of his works in jealousy. But rather add your own uniqueness to his own.” And with that the being swirled back into a dark cloud and rocketed back into Ogg’s chest from which it had come with such a force that it knocked Ogg to the ground in his dream, and awoke him with a start.
Having already lived through so many experiences that it seemed in many ways to have been many lifetimes, Ogg realized that it was time to cast a shadow of his own. And so he wrote about his many experiences, and in so doing paved a way for others to follow. He did it freely, and expected nothing in return for it, encouraging others to do the same, and to hold nothing back. Ogg created for the freedom of expression, and for the aid it could off others. Many people did likewise, while others tried to silence Ogg and the many people who followed his example, and claim their work for themselves. But Ogg created new places and new ways for them to speak, until one day all the world spoke with one voice that was not controlled or hindered by the will of gods, or by any one man, or sub collection amongst them.
And so it was that Ogg, though he did not entirely live to see it, aided in bringing about the first well educated global democracy. And it was just in time too, for the birth of the Homo Evolutis Collective took place the same year, and continues to be free a free thinking democratic hive mind to this day with as many voices as there are people. And no voice is ever allowed to go out, even those who no longer have bodies among us. And this is why all new Homo Evolutis children, children such as you, must live as their first full length virtual life: “A Reenactment Of The Life of Ogg and his Stone Axes” as part of their education. This way they may grow up understanding what it means to be part of the life and mind that we share in the hive, and to begin to learn what it means to find their own individual voice among the gods, and to not allow themselves to be constrained by the voice or shadow of another whether real or imagined. Now sleep tight, the dream will begin soon and you will not remember me or my words again until you awake from the life of Ogg incarnate, your first full life dream. Good luck, and enjoy the ride!
Once upon a time there lived two small primates who were forced to leave the safety of their tree tops and search for a better life in the grasslands of the savanna. The trees of the forests that had once been home to their civilization had begun to die out, and many had caught fire and burned away. Shortly after the last hospitable tree disappeared behind them into the grasslands of their new home, they gave birth to a baby boy named Ogg.
Soon Ogg was waddling around his parents full of all the excitement that comes with discovering the world for the first time. Ogg’s father was keen to point out to Ogg how he should try to be like Grog, a boy a little older that Ogg. Grog had discovered how to make a stone ax by smashing rocks together for a few hours, and this made BOTH of the eligible females, Shrog and Mog, fawn over Grog as if he were the only male in the savanna. And for all of their own practical purposes, he was. Even little Clog adored Grog, but as Ogg’s father pointed out, she would not be ripe for at least two more summers.
Shortly after that Ogg’s mother and father got sick. Ogg’s father explained to Ogg that he and Ogg’s mother were going up to the tree tops in the sky to be with their own mothers and fathers. But he told Ogg not to worry because they would be looking down on Ogg to make sure everything was OK, and they would still try to help him whenever he asked. Ogg’s father also told him to stay close to Grog and try to be like him. “You too will someday contribute something of great value like Grog has”, said Oggs father, “if you never quit trying.” And then Ogg’s mother and father left to live in the sky.
Ogg adored Grog as an honorary big brother and eagerly tried to copy him in everything he did, especially when he was smashing rocks. Grog was very proud to have a young male admirer, especially since this seemed to make the women fawn over him all the more. So he eagerly aided Ogg in his studies as a rock smasher and soon Ogg was making stone axes that were better than Grogs.
Grog continued to praised Ogg for his stone axe making ability, but he himself abandoned the Axe making and started making spears instead. This worked perfectly because Ogg could trade an axe for a spear anytime he wanted, and they both could trade axes and spears for berries, meat, furs when it was cold, and even some luxury items like feathers that made the girls smile and wave at them. Everyone praised Ogg’s axes and by now some of the females had started to notice Ogg too, and this made Ogg very happy with himself. But more than anything Ogg LOVED making those axes. It was so satisfying to work with his hands on those stones, and the time flew by as if it were no time at all whenever he was smashing rocks.
Then one day Grog announced to Ogg he was going over the farthest hill to see if anyone over there needed axes or spears too. But Grog never returned. Each day more and more people passed by in the direction Grog had traveled until one day the hand full of people in the tribe decided they should move that direction to see what was happening.
When they reached the top of the farthest hill and looked down they saw the strangest sight. The valley below was filled with dozens of people all digging evenly aligned rows in the dirt. And at one end of the valley there was a raised platform made of dead trees tied together with a kind of vine Ogg had never seen before. On the platform stood a huge male shouting directing down to all of the diggers. Also on the platform were several females fawning over the male giving directions. As Ogg got closer, he could see that it was Grog! He was ecstatic!
But Grog was very busy, and only had time to explain to Ogg that they had no use anymore for making axes or spears anymore because they had plenty. Stone axes had no value Grog said. What were really needed were people who could dig in the dirt and place little seeds in a row. This would cause lots of food to come out of the ground. So much food would come up that they would have all they needed for a long time to come and could trade the extra for anything they needed, Grog promised. Ogg began to dig in the dirt with the others. But the dirt got under his nails, and he was not very good at digging strait rows. Soon he was daydreaming about the days when he and Grog had made spears and axes, and how they had all the meat and feathers and admirers that they had ever wanted. But mostly he thought about how much he enjoyed the process of making stone axes.
Ogg never really liked digging in the dirt, but he slowly got better at it, and noticed that there were actually a lot more females here to choose from than when he had been in the grasslands smashing rocks. “Maybe this wasn’t THAT bad”, Ogg thought, “even if I do feel a little less special among so many people.” And when he looked up at Grog he saw that more females than ever adored him on that little platform. Remembering the words of his father, Ogg looked up to the sky and asked: dad, please help me dig good enough rows to reach Grog again.
It seemed to Ogg that his father answered this request because soon Ogg was digging the best rows of anyone. Ogg figured any day now he would move up to be on that platform with Grog.
But the next day when Ogg got up, no one was digging rows anymore except for a couple of people who had tethered wild ox to pull a stone axe through the ground. They were digging rows by themselves in minutes that use to take dozens of people all day.
When Ogg finally found Grog, Grog had no time to speak with him. He was busy looking over what looked like a giant leaf with markings on it that was laid out on a stone table. “We don’t need to dig rows anymore, that has no value” Grog explained over his shoulder. “Talk to my man over there, he will explain.”
The man Grog had referred to explained to Ogg that they had to build a great pile of stones so that his brother could take his place among the other gods.
“What is a god?” Ogg asked. “Well”, replied the man, “they are like men. Except you can’t see them, except for Grog of course, and they are very powerful and make it rain, and they make the sun come up, and if you please them they will do you favors and if you displease them they will punish you.” Ogg explained how he asked his mother in father in the sky for all the favors he needed, but the man explained to him that his mother and father had gone to Osiris in the land of the dead, and could not hear him anymore. From now on he would have to pray to Ra or Horus or one of the other gods, preferably Grog who was a god on earth. These ideas seemed very strange to Ogg, but who was he to argue.
So Ogg went to work in the stone yards with hundreds of others as directed. He was excited about this at first because he thought he could use his rock smashing techniques again. But unfortunately the stones they needed now were much too large to smash. In fact they were so large it took Ogg and many other men just to move one of the many stones that they had to cut into perfect blocks. Ogg was not very good at this and soon found himself day dreaming about the old days of smashing rocks, and the feathers and meat and adoring females. “How will I ever stand out again among so many people” Ogg wondered.
Ogg thought to pray to his mother and father for help, but remembered the last time they answered his prayers a little too late and his row digging skills were no longer useful once they arrived. Maybe it is because they could not hear me he thought. Perhaps the man was right, and now I must pray to Ra and Grog and the other gods. I guess there was a good reason why father told me to be like Grog. I had no idea he was a god. If I can get close to gods then maybe everything will be alright again.
After praying, Ogg remembered the markings he had seen on the strange leaf that his brother had had. He started to ask around about these markings, but was told that they were magic marks for gods and NOT for him to understand. When Ogg next saw Grog he asked him about the magic marks and asked if they were really forbidden. Grog said that it was OK because as his friend he would have someone teach Ogg the basics of mark making and that Ogg should be doing that instead anyway because carving and moving stones had no value.
Grog explained that the leaves were actually called papyrus, and the marks were not magic, but Ogg should not tell anyone that because that was a secret. Grog told another man to teach Ogg the secret of the marks while he attended to some other matters.
The man explained to Ogg the meanings for different symbols and taught him the proper ways to draw them. Ogg found this tedious work and often found himself day dreaming about the days of smashing rocks to make axes. That had been fun and Ogg was good at it. He wondered when what he was good at would be valued again. But Ogg remembered what his father had told him about trying to be like Grog, so he kept at it and he prayed to Ra and Seth and Horus that he would become as good as Grog. And it seemed that Ra answered his prayers because soon he got good at understanding the markings and at making his own. Soon he was able to use them to take down messages between the rock carvers at the various quarries, and the rock stackers at the build site, just as he was told.
But then one day he woke up and discovered that all the tables had been moved out. The stone pyramids had been finished, and his mark making skills, he was told, no longer had value. He was told that men from far away could come on horses, or pulled with horses, carrying shiny spears and clubs and would take everything they had worked for. What was needed now was the ability to work with metal.
Once again Ogg found himself learning new things. He worked long hours near thousands of others all stoking fires that scared him, and hammering copper which hurt his ears and made him tired. The fires were so hot that it was very uncomfortable to be near, and Ogg didn’t enjoy the work that much. Ogg dreamed of the simple days of making stone axes. He was told that the gods he knew had no power anymore, and new gods took their place. This happened many times, and the metals changed a few times too.
Soon the metal working was no longer most important, and Ogg found himself at the markings again, but the old marks didn’t count. This time they were representing numbers and geometry. There were new gods again too: Zeus and Apollo and Athena. It seemed to Ogg that most new gods were often very similar to the old ones with little changes, but maybe that was just because those were the qualities that gods had. And no matter what Ogg did, always Grog was at least one step ahead and he grew farther and farther out of reach.
Then there was more metal working, but again it was a different kind of metal, and again there were new gods.
Soon Ogg was told that all the gods he had ever prayed to were false, and that his mother and father had never heard him either. He was told there was only one God who was jealous and angry that Ogg had ever prayed to the false gods and even to his mother and father. Supposedly Ogg could also pray to saints, many of which kind of seemed like some of the old god’s, but saints had to be approved first by Grog in Rome before they could receive prayers. Ogg thought maybe that was why he had never had the luck that he had hoped for since the days of making axes, but the new God didn’t seem useful at answering prayers either. Maybe the God’s never were so much about answering prayers, but just wanted to be pleased, Ogg thought. But no matter what Ogg had ever done it never seemed to please any of the gods Ogg prayed to. Ogg began to wonder if there were in fact any God’s at all. If there were, it didn’t seem that they took any notice of Ogg’s, or anyone else, just as Grog never had any time to see him either. It seemed nothing he ever did was good enough until just before it was too late for that thing to be of use. The new God also supposedly said Ogg wasn’t good enough and that was why Ogg needed him, and that did seem true. Although the new God didn’t seem to make Ogg good enough either, nor to make up for his shortcomings in any perceivable way.
Some men figured out how to use clear rocks to see things there were very small or very far away. Soon Ogg learned that the earth was not round, which he had heard once before, but also that it was actually smaller than the sun, which it orbited. Who knew? Ogg heard from others that Grog had denied this at first, but then acted as if he had always known it, as he was infallible. Cells were discovered, and by looking through the clear rocks it looked like there were rivers on another planet, just like on earth. Ogg remembered when Mars was a god moving inexplicably through the sky, and not another planet.
Ogg tried to predict what would come next. Sometimes he was right about what would come next. But it never came about like he suspected it would, and usually at not the right time either. Some things he predicted he wanted to do himself, but he never had the time and didn’t know how to get enough support to get it done. Often people thought ideas he had were stupid at the time he had them, and didn’t remember that he had ever had them later on when they in fact became a reality like he had predicted, albeit not in a way he was ever able to benefit from.
As the years passed and time marched forward, Grog discovered the atom, walked on the moon, popularized the operating system, invented the internet, the search engine, and then social media and smart phones.
One day while standing outside of a 3D movie theater Ogg overheard someone talking about something called ‘The Coming Singularity’. He looked this up online on his phone. The phone told him that the Coming Singularity was an event expected in the almost immediate future in which human progress would start to come so fast that no one would be able to keep up with it anymore. People would have computers as part of their bodies and brains, and genetic enhancements and reengineering would be commonplace. Humans would probably be a single living hive machine, like a bees nest or the Borg. Super human strength and speed, hearing and vision would be the norm, along with worldwide telepathy. All the best current world athletes would pale in comparison to the physical abilities of the average person of the future once they were enhanced by Grog’s coming nanobots. Ogg wondered how that would work, but he had little trouble doubting it was probably true. Cell phones and microwaves had been predicted only about 100 years before, and sure enough Grog had invented those things as predicted. Ogg didn’t even understand how his smart phone worked, but he knew that it was not magic and yet he still held more power than many of his gods he had once believed in. He wondered who would have power in that future. No one commands the bees or the ants or the birds or the fish. No one that Ogg could see anyway. Yet they acted as one. Would humans be this way? Or would they still always have a Grog above them telling them what to do, and how to be, and what was to have value? And he wondered if anything he did would ever have value.
He looked up and saw Grog on a billboard with several females clinging to him in an ad for a newer phone than the one he had which came with reality augmenting contact lenses. Each of the females was more beautiful than any Ogg had ever actually seen in real life. Ogg looked around the plaza. There were so many people there he felt like a tiny fish in a huge ocean. All of the people were so busy it seemed as if they rushed by, each like a single blood cell hurdling down the vessels Ogg had read about which were supposed to exist in a living body. Each person passing by was talking on his or her cell phones, or with each other, as if in a trance… each with their own individual realities. They moved so fast it was if they could not even see Ogg at all.
Ogg felt old, even though he knew he was still quite young. He wanted to see what would came next, but part of him felt too tired to actually live through it to find out. That night Ogg went home alone to his apartment as usual, and dreamt he was making stone axes while his mother and father looked down from tree tops in the sky approvingly.
But then there were no people left to take the axes, and his mother and father were gone, and somehow he knew with the special knowledge that only comes in dreams, that the grasslands were completely desolate of people, as if his eyes could see to the ends of the earth. And he sat alone on the rocks, without even the will anymore to even make his once beloved stone axes. And having seen how the world turns, he wished he could go into a deeper sleep from which he would never wake up.
It was at that moment, when things seemed darkest, that suddenly in Ogg’s dream changed as a result of his next action. Ogg looked up to the sky and addressed his parents, and all of the progression of gods, and even to another copy of Ogg deep within himself, and he said the following words to them: “I don’t know which if any of you are real. But I am done following Grog! I am tired of perpetually living in another man’s shadow! I am not an ox or a deer that must always follow in the herd.”
It was at this moment that a huge dark cloud surged from Ogg’s chest and swirled violently in a vortex before solidifying into Ogg’s parents, and all the progression of Gods Ogg had ever heard of, and even Ogg himself, all fused into a single body. And then the hybrid of beings spoke to Ogg (who was somehow still separate also, as dreams work this way). And the being spoke to Ogg in a voice that was both legion and yet one voice at the same time!
And the voice said: “Do not quit! Long have I watched you as you struggled and toiled in Grogg’s shadow; the shadow you created.” Ogg wanted to counter that he had not created Grog or his shadow, but the voice continued: “Do not fight Grog, do not kill him, or try to destroy any of his works in jealousy. But rather add your own uniqueness to his own.” And with that the being swirled back into a dark cloud and rocketed back into Ogg’s chest from which it had come with such a force that it knocked Ogg to the ground in his dream, and awoke him with a start.
Having already lived through so many experiences that it seemed in many ways to have been many lifetimes, Ogg realized that it was time to cast a shadow of his own. And so he wrote about his many experiences, and in so doing paved a way for others to follow. He did it freely, and expected nothing in return for it, encouraging others to do the same, and to hold nothing back. Ogg created for the freedom of expression, and for the aid it could off others. Many people did likewise, while others tried to silence Ogg and the many people who followed his example, and claim their work for themselves. But Ogg created new places and new ways for them to speak, until one day all the world spoke with one voice that was not controlled or hindered by the will of gods, or by any one man, or sub collection amongst them.
And so it was that Ogg, though he did not entirely live to see it, aided in bringing about the first well educated global democracy. And it was just in time too, for the birth of the Homo Evolutis Collective took place the same year, and continues to be free a free thinking democratic hive mind to this day with as many voices as there are people. And no voice is ever allowed to go out, even those who no longer have bodies among us. And this is why all new Homo Evolutis children, children such as you, must live as their first full length virtual life: “A Reenactment Of The Life of Ogg and his Stone Axes” as part of their education. This way they may grow up understanding what it means to be part of the life and mind that we share in the hive, and to begin to learn what it means to find their own individual voice among the gods, and to not allow themselves to be constrained by the voice or shadow of another whether real or imagined. Now sleep tight, the dream will begin soon and you will not remember me or my words again until you awake from the life of Ogg incarnate, your first full life dream. Good luck, and enjoy the ride!
The Story of: "Oggs Stone Axes" (Draft 1)
(This is a short story I wrote today. Please feel free to give any feedback even if it is just "Wow! Awesome!" or ''I got bored and quit reading.")
Oggs Stone Axes.
Once upon a time there lived two primates who were forced to leave the safety of the tree tops and search for a better life in the grasslands of the savanna. The trees of the forests that had once been home to their civilization had begun to die out, and many had caught fire and burned away. Shortly after the last hospitable tree disappeared behind them into the grasslands of their new home, they gave birth to a baby boy named Ogg.
Soon Ogg was waddling around his parents full of all the excitement that comes with discovering the world for the first time. Ogg’s father was keen to point out to Ogg how he should try to be like Grog, a boy a little older that Ogg. Grog had discovered how to make a stone ax by smashing rocks together for a few hours, and this made BOTH of the eligible females, Shrog and Mog, fawn over Grog as if he were the only male in the savanna. And for all of their own practical purposes, he was. Even little Clog adored Grog, but as Ogg’s father pointed out, she would not be ripe for at least two more summers.
Shortly after that Ogg’s mother and father got sick. Ogg’s father explained to Ogg that he and Ogg’s mother were going up to the tree tops in the sky to be with their own mothers and fathers. But he told Ogg not to worry because they would be looking down on Ogg to make sure everything was OK, and they would still try to help him whenever he asked. Ogg’s father also told him to stay close to Grog and try to be like him. And then Ogg’s mother and father left to live in the sky.
Ogg adored Grog as an honorary big brother and eagerly tried to copy him in everything he did, especially when he was smashing rocks. Grog was very proud to have a young male admirer, especially since this seemed to make the women fawn over him all the more. So he eagerly aided Ogg in his studies as a rock smasher and soon Ogg was making stone axes that were better than Grogs.
Grog continued to praised Ogg for his stone axe making ability, but he himself abandoned the Axe making and started making spears instead. This worked perfectly because Ogg could trade an axe for a spear anytime he wanted, and they both could trade axes and spears for berries, meat, furs when it was cold, and even some luxury items like feathers that made the girls smile and wave at them. Everyone praised Ogg’s axes and by now some of the females had started to notice Ogg too, and this made Ogg very happy with himself. But more than anything Ogg LOVED making axes. It was so satisfying to work with his hands on those stones, and the time flew by as if it were no time at all whenever he was smashing rocks.
Then one day Grog announced to Ogg he was going over the farthest hill to see if anyone over there needed axes or spears too. But Grog never returned. Each day more and more people passed by in the direction Grog had traveled until one day the hand full of people in the tribe decided they should move that direction to see what was happening.
When they reached the top of the farthest hill and looked down they saw the strangest sight. The valley below was filled with dozens of people all digging evenly aligned rows in the dirt. And at one end of the valley there was a raised platform made of dead trees tied together with a kind of vine Ogg had never seen before. On the platform stood a huge male shouting directing down to all of the diggers. Also on the platform were several females fawning over the male giving directions. As Ogg got closer, he could see that it was Grog! He was ecstatic!
But Grog was very busy, and only had time to explain to Ogg that they had no use anymore for making axes or spears anymore because they had plenty. Stone axes had no value Grog said. What were really needed were people who could dig in the dirt and place little seeds in a row. This would cause lots of food to come out of the ground. So much food would come up that they would have all they needed for a long time to come and could trade the extra for anything they needed, promised Grog. Ogg began to dig in the dirt with the others. But the dirt got under his nails, and he was not very good at digging strait rows. Soon he was daydreaming about the days when he and Grog had made spears and axes, and how they had all the meat and feathers and admirers that they had ever wanted. But mostly he thought about how much he enjoyed the process of making stone axes.
Ogg never really liked digging in the dirt, but he slowly got better at it, and noticed that there were actually a lot more females here to choose from than when he had been in the grasslands smashing rocks. Maybe this wasn’t THAT bad, Ogg thought. And when he looked up at Grog he saw that more females than ever adored him on that little platform. Remembering the words of his father, Ogg looked up to the sky and asked: dad, please help me dig good enough rows to reach Grog again.
It seemed to Ogg that his father answered this request because soon Ogg was digging the best rows of anyone. Ogg figured any day now he would move up to be on that platform with Grog.
But the next day when Ogg got up, no one was digging rows anymore except for a couple of people who had tethered wild ox to pull a stone axe through the ground. They were digging rows by themselves in minutes that use to take dozens of people all day.
When Ogg finally found Grog, Grog had no time to speak with him. He was busy looking over what looked like a giant leaf with markings on it that was laid out on a stone table. “We don’t need to dig rows anymore, that has no value” Grog explained over his shoulder. “Talk to my man over there, he will explain.”
The man Grog had referred to explained to Ogg that they had to build a great pile of stones so that Grog could take his place among the other gods.
“What is a god?” Ogg asked. “Well”, replied the man, “they are like men. Except you can’t see them, except for Grog of course, and they are very powerful and make it rain, and they make the sun come up, and if you please them they will do you favors and if you displease them they will punish you.” Ogg explained how he asked his mother in father in the sky for all the favors he needed, but the man explained to Ogg that his mother and father had gone to the land of the dead, and could not hear him anymore. From now on he would have to pray to Ra or one of the other gods, preferably Grog who was a god on earth. These ideas seemed very strange to Ogg, but who was he to argue.
So Ogg went to work in the stone yards with hundreds of others as directed. He was excited about this at first because he thought he could use his rock smashing techniques again. But unfortunately the stones they needed now were much too large to smash. In fact they were so large it took Ogg and many other men just to move one of the many stones that they had to cut into perfect blocks. Ogg was not very good at this and soon found himself day dreaming about the old days of smashing rocks, and the feathers and meat and adoring females.
Ogg thought to pray to his mother and father for help, but remembered the last time they answered his prayers a little too late and his row digging skills were no longer useful once they arrived. Maybe it is because they could not hear me he thought. Perhaps the man was right, and now I must pray to Ra and Grog and the gods. I guess there was a good reason why father told me to be like Grog. I had no idea he was a god. If I can get close to gods then maybe everything will be alright again.
After praying, Ogg remembered the markings he had seen on the strange leaf that Grog had. He started to ask around about these markings, but was told that they were magic marks for gods and NOT for him to understand. When Ogg next saw Grog and asked him about his magic marks and asked if they were really forbidden. Grog said that it was OK because as his friend he would have someone teach Ogg the basics of mark making.
Grog explained that the leaves were actually called papyrus, and the marks were not magic, but Ogg should not tell anyone that because that was a secret. Grog told another man to teach Ogg the secret of the marks while he attended to some other matters.
The man explained to Ogg the meanings for different symbols and taught him the proper ways to draw them. Ogg found this tedious work and often found himself day dreaming about the days of smashing rocks to make axes. That had been fun and Ogg was good at it. But Ogg remembered what his father had told him about trying to be like Grog, so he kept at it and he prayed to Ra that he would become as good as Grog. And it seemed that Ra answered his prayers because soon he got good at understanding the markings and making his own, and was soon able to use them to take down messages between the rock carvers at the various quarries, and the rock stackers at the build site, just as he was told.
But then one day he woke up and discovered that all the tables had been moved out. The stone pyramids had been finished, and his mark making skills, he was told, no longer had value. He was told that men from far away could come on horses, or pulled with horses, carrying shiny spears and clubs and would take everything they had worked for. What was needed now was the ability to work with metal.
Once again Ogg found himself learning new things. He worked long hours near thousands of others all stoking fires that scared him, and hammering copper which hurt his ears and made him tired. The fires were so hot that it was very uncomfortable to be near, and Ogg didn’t enjoy the work that much. Ogg dreamed of the simple days of making stone axes. He was told that the gods he knew had no power anymore, and new gods took their place. This happened many times, and the metals changed a few times too.
Soon the metal working was no longer most important, and Ogg found himself at the markings again, but the old marks didn’t count. This time they were representing numbers and geometry. There were new gods again too: Zeus and Apollo and Athena. It seemed to Ogg that most new gods were often very similar to the old ones with little changes, but maybe that was just because those were the qualities that gods had. And no matter what Ogg did, always Grog was at least one step ahead and he grew farther and farther out of reach.
Then there was more metal working, but again it was a different kind of metal, and again there were new gods.
Soon Ogg was told that all the gods he had ever prayed to were false, and that his mother and father had never heard him either. He was told there was only one God who was jealous and angry that Ogg had ever prayed to the false gods and even to his mother and father. Supposedly Ogg could also pray to saints, many of which kind of seemed like some of the old god’s, but saints had to be approved first by Grog in Rome before they could receive prayers. Ogg thought maybe that was why he had never had the luck that he had hoped for since the days of making axes, but the new God didn’t seem useful at answering prayers either. Maybe the God’s never were so much about answering prayers, but just wanted to be pleased, Ogg thought. But no matter what Ogg had ever done it never seemed to please any of the gods Ogg prayed to. Ogg began to wonder if there were in fact any God’s at all, or if there were, if they took any notice of Ogg’s or anyone else’s plight, just as Grog never had any time for him anymore. It seemed nothing he ever did was good enough until just before it was too late for that thing to be of use. The new God also supposedly said Ogg wasn’t good enough and that was why Ogg needed him, and that did seem true. Although the new God didn’t seem to make Ogg good enough either, nor to make up for his shortcomings in any perceivable way.
Some men figured out how to use clear rocks to see things there were very small or very far away. Soon Ogg learned that the earth was not round, which he had heard once before, but also that it was actually smaller than the sun, which it orbited. Who knew? Ogg heard from others that Grog had denied this at first, but then acted as if he had always known it, as he was infallible. Cells were discovered, and by looking through a the clear rocks it looked like there were rivers on another planet, just like on earth. Ogg remembered when Mars was a god moving inexplicably through the sky, and not another planet.
Ogg tried to predict what would come next. Sometimes he was right about what would come next. But it never came about like he suspected it would, and usually at not the right time either. Some things he predicted he wanted to do himself, but he never had the time and didn’t know how to get enough support to get it done. Often people thought ideas he had were stupid at the time he had them, and didn’t remember that he had ever had them later on when they in fact became a reality like he had predicted, albeit not in a way he was able to benefit from.
Years passed and time marched forward. One day while standing outside of a 3D movie theater Ogg overheard someone talking about something called ‘The Coming Singularity’. He looked this up on the internet via his phone. The phone told him that the Coming Singularity was an event expected in the almost immediate future in which human progress would start to come so fast that no one would be able to keep up with it anymore. People would have computers as part of their bodies and brains, and genetic enhancements and reengineering would be the norm. Humans would probably be a single living hive machine, like a bees nest or the Borg. Super human strength and hearing and vision would be the norm, along with worldwide telepathy, and all the current world athletes would pale in comparison to the physical abilities of the average person of the future. Ogg wondered how that would work, but he had little trouble doubting it was probably true. Cell phones and microwaves had been predicted only about 100 years before. He didn’t even understand how his smart phone worked, but he knew that it was not magic, yet he still held more power in his hand than many of his gods he had once believed in. He wondered who would have power in that future. No one commands the bees or the ants or the birds or the fish. No one that Ogg could see anyway. Yet they acted as one. Would humans be this way? Or would they still always have a Grog above them telling them what to do, and how to be, and what was to have value?
He looked up and saw Grog on a billboard with several females clinging to him in an ad for a newer phone than the one he had. Each of the females was more beautiful than any Ogg had ever actually seen in real life. Ogg looked around the plaza. There were so many people there he felt like a tiny fish in a huge ocean. All of the people were so busy it seemed as if they rushed by, each like a single blood cell hurdling down the vessels Ogg had read about which were supposed to exist in a living body. Each person passing by was talking on his or her cell phones, or with each other, as if in a trance… each with their own individual realities. They moved so fast it was if they could not even see Ogg at all.
Ogg felt old, even though he knew he was still quite young. He wanted to see what would came next, but part of him felt too tired to actually live through it to find out. That night Ogg went home alone to his apartment as usual, and dreamt he was making stone axes while his mother and father looked down from tree tops in the sky approvingly.
(Optionally appended ending:)
But then there were no people left to take the axes, and his mother and father were gone, and somehow he knew with the special knowledge that only comes in dreams, that the grasslands were completely desolate of people, as if his eyes could see to the ends of the earth. And he sat alone on the rocks, without even the will anymore to even make his once beloved stone axes. And having seen how the world turns, he wished he could go into a deeper sleep from which he would never wake up.
Oggs Stone Axes.
Once upon a time there lived two primates who were forced to leave the safety of the tree tops and search for a better life in the grasslands of the savanna. The trees of the forests that had once been home to their civilization had begun to die out, and many had caught fire and burned away. Shortly after the last hospitable tree disappeared behind them into the grasslands of their new home, they gave birth to a baby boy named Ogg.
Soon Ogg was waddling around his parents full of all the excitement that comes with discovering the world for the first time. Ogg’s father was keen to point out to Ogg how he should try to be like Grog, a boy a little older that Ogg. Grog had discovered how to make a stone ax by smashing rocks together for a few hours, and this made BOTH of the eligible females, Shrog and Mog, fawn over Grog as if he were the only male in the savanna. And for all of their own practical purposes, he was. Even little Clog adored Grog, but as Ogg’s father pointed out, she would not be ripe for at least two more summers.
Shortly after that Ogg’s mother and father got sick. Ogg’s father explained to Ogg that he and Ogg’s mother were going up to the tree tops in the sky to be with their own mothers and fathers. But he told Ogg not to worry because they would be looking down on Ogg to make sure everything was OK, and they would still try to help him whenever he asked. Ogg’s father also told him to stay close to Grog and try to be like him. And then Ogg’s mother and father left to live in the sky.
Ogg adored Grog as an honorary big brother and eagerly tried to copy him in everything he did, especially when he was smashing rocks. Grog was very proud to have a young male admirer, especially since this seemed to make the women fawn over him all the more. So he eagerly aided Ogg in his studies as a rock smasher and soon Ogg was making stone axes that were better than Grogs.
Grog continued to praised Ogg for his stone axe making ability, but he himself abandoned the Axe making and started making spears instead. This worked perfectly because Ogg could trade an axe for a spear anytime he wanted, and they both could trade axes and spears for berries, meat, furs when it was cold, and even some luxury items like feathers that made the girls smile and wave at them. Everyone praised Ogg’s axes and by now some of the females had started to notice Ogg too, and this made Ogg very happy with himself. But more than anything Ogg LOVED making axes. It was so satisfying to work with his hands on those stones, and the time flew by as if it were no time at all whenever he was smashing rocks.
Then one day Grog announced to Ogg he was going over the farthest hill to see if anyone over there needed axes or spears too. But Grog never returned. Each day more and more people passed by in the direction Grog had traveled until one day the hand full of people in the tribe decided they should move that direction to see what was happening.
When they reached the top of the farthest hill and looked down they saw the strangest sight. The valley below was filled with dozens of people all digging evenly aligned rows in the dirt. And at one end of the valley there was a raised platform made of dead trees tied together with a kind of vine Ogg had never seen before. On the platform stood a huge male shouting directing down to all of the diggers. Also on the platform were several females fawning over the male giving directions. As Ogg got closer, he could see that it was Grog! He was ecstatic!
But Grog was very busy, and only had time to explain to Ogg that they had no use anymore for making axes or spears anymore because they had plenty. Stone axes had no value Grog said. What were really needed were people who could dig in the dirt and place little seeds in a row. This would cause lots of food to come out of the ground. So much food would come up that they would have all they needed for a long time to come and could trade the extra for anything they needed, promised Grog. Ogg began to dig in the dirt with the others. But the dirt got under his nails, and he was not very good at digging strait rows. Soon he was daydreaming about the days when he and Grog had made spears and axes, and how they had all the meat and feathers and admirers that they had ever wanted. But mostly he thought about how much he enjoyed the process of making stone axes.
Ogg never really liked digging in the dirt, but he slowly got better at it, and noticed that there were actually a lot more females here to choose from than when he had been in the grasslands smashing rocks. Maybe this wasn’t THAT bad, Ogg thought. And when he looked up at Grog he saw that more females than ever adored him on that little platform. Remembering the words of his father, Ogg looked up to the sky and asked: dad, please help me dig good enough rows to reach Grog again.
It seemed to Ogg that his father answered this request because soon Ogg was digging the best rows of anyone. Ogg figured any day now he would move up to be on that platform with Grog.
But the next day when Ogg got up, no one was digging rows anymore except for a couple of people who had tethered wild ox to pull a stone axe through the ground. They were digging rows by themselves in minutes that use to take dozens of people all day.
When Ogg finally found Grog, Grog had no time to speak with him. He was busy looking over what looked like a giant leaf with markings on it that was laid out on a stone table. “We don’t need to dig rows anymore, that has no value” Grog explained over his shoulder. “Talk to my man over there, he will explain.”
The man Grog had referred to explained to Ogg that they had to build a great pile of stones so that Grog could take his place among the other gods.
“What is a god?” Ogg asked. “Well”, replied the man, “they are like men. Except you can’t see them, except for Grog of course, and they are very powerful and make it rain, and they make the sun come up, and if you please them they will do you favors and if you displease them they will punish you.” Ogg explained how he asked his mother in father in the sky for all the favors he needed, but the man explained to Ogg that his mother and father had gone to the land of the dead, and could not hear him anymore. From now on he would have to pray to Ra or one of the other gods, preferably Grog who was a god on earth. These ideas seemed very strange to Ogg, but who was he to argue.
So Ogg went to work in the stone yards with hundreds of others as directed. He was excited about this at first because he thought he could use his rock smashing techniques again. But unfortunately the stones they needed now were much too large to smash. In fact they were so large it took Ogg and many other men just to move one of the many stones that they had to cut into perfect blocks. Ogg was not very good at this and soon found himself day dreaming about the old days of smashing rocks, and the feathers and meat and adoring females.
Ogg thought to pray to his mother and father for help, but remembered the last time they answered his prayers a little too late and his row digging skills were no longer useful once they arrived. Maybe it is because they could not hear me he thought. Perhaps the man was right, and now I must pray to Ra and Grog and the gods. I guess there was a good reason why father told me to be like Grog. I had no idea he was a god. If I can get close to gods then maybe everything will be alright again.
After praying, Ogg remembered the markings he had seen on the strange leaf that Grog had. He started to ask around about these markings, but was told that they were magic marks for gods and NOT for him to understand. When Ogg next saw Grog and asked him about his magic marks and asked if they were really forbidden. Grog said that it was OK because as his friend he would have someone teach Ogg the basics of mark making.
Grog explained that the leaves were actually called papyrus, and the marks were not magic, but Ogg should not tell anyone that because that was a secret. Grog told another man to teach Ogg the secret of the marks while he attended to some other matters.
The man explained to Ogg the meanings for different symbols and taught him the proper ways to draw them. Ogg found this tedious work and often found himself day dreaming about the days of smashing rocks to make axes. That had been fun and Ogg was good at it. But Ogg remembered what his father had told him about trying to be like Grog, so he kept at it and he prayed to Ra that he would become as good as Grog. And it seemed that Ra answered his prayers because soon he got good at understanding the markings and making his own, and was soon able to use them to take down messages between the rock carvers at the various quarries, and the rock stackers at the build site, just as he was told.
But then one day he woke up and discovered that all the tables had been moved out. The stone pyramids had been finished, and his mark making skills, he was told, no longer had value. He was told that men from far away could come on horses, or pulled with horses, carrying shiny spears and clubs and would take everything they had worked for. What was needed now was the ability to work with metal.
Once again Ogg found himself learning new things. He worked long hours near thousands of others all stoking fires that scared him, and hammering copper which hurt his ears and made him tired. The fires were so hot that it was very uncomfortable to be near, and Ogg didn’t enjoy the work that much. Ogg dreamed of the simple days of making stone axes. He was told that the gods he knew had no power anymore, and new gods took their place. This happened many times, and the metals changed a few times too.
Soon the metal working was no longer most important, and Ogg found himself at the markings again, but the old marks didn’t count. This time they were representing numbers and geometry. There were new gods again too: Zeus and Apollo and Athena. It seemed to Ogg that most new gods were often very similar to the old ones with little changes, but maybe that was just because those were the qualities that gods had. And no matter what Ogg did, always Grog was at least one step ahead and he grew farther and farther out of reach.
Then there was more metal working, but again it was a different kind of metal, and again there were new gods.
Soon Ogg was told that all the gods he had ever prayed to were false, and that his mother and father had never heard him either. He was told there was only one God who was jealous and angry that Ogg had ever prayed to the false gods and even to his mother and father. Supposedly Ogg could also pray to saints, many of which kind of seemed like some of the old god’s, but saints had to be approved first by Grog in Rome before they could receive prayers. Ogg thought maybe that was why he had never had the luck that he had hoped for since the days of making axes, but the new God didn’t seem useful at answering prayers either. Maybe the God’s never were so much about answering prayers, but just wanted to be pleased, Ogg thought. But no matter what Ogg had ever done it never seemed to please any of the gods Ogg prayed to. Ogg began to wonder if there were in fact any God’s at all, or if there were, if they took any notice of Ogg’s or anyone else’s plight, just as Grog never had any time for him anymore. It seemed nothing he ever did was good enough until just before it was too late for that thing to be of use. The new God also supposedly said Ogg wasn’t good enough and that was why Ogg needed him, and that did seem true. Although the new God didn’t seem to make Ogg good enough either, nor to make up for his shortcomings in any perceivable way.
Some men figured out how to use clear rocks to see things there were very small or very far away. Soon Ogg learned that the earth was not round, which he had heard once before, but also that it was actually smaller than the sun, which it orbited. Who knew? Ogg heard from others that Grog had denied this at first, but then acted as if he had always known it, as he was infallible. Cells were discovered, and by looking through a the clear rocks it looked like there were rivers on another planet, just like on earth. Ogg remembered when Mars was a god moving inexplicably through the sky, and not another planet.
Ogg tried to predict what would come next. Sometimes he was right about what would come next. But it never came about like he suspected it would, and usually at not the right time either. Some things he predicted he wanted to do himself, but he never had the time and didn’t know how to get enough support to get it done. Often people thought ideas he had were stupid at the time he had them, and didn’t remember that he had ever had them later on when they in fact became a reality like he had predicted, albeit not in a way he was able to benefit from.
Years passed and time marched forward. One day while standing outside of a 3D movie theater Ogg overheard someone talking about something called ‘The Coming Singularity’. He looked this up on the internet via his phone. The phone told him that the Coming Singularity was an event expected in the almost immediate future in which human progress would start to come so fast that no one would be able to keep up with it anymore. People would have computers as part of their bodies and brains, and genetic enhancements and reengineering would be the norm. Humans would probably be a single living hive machine, like a bees nest or the Borg. Super human strength and hearing and vision would be the norm, along with worldwide telepathy, and all the current world athletes would pale in comparison to the physical abilities of the average person of the future. Ogg wondered how that would work, but he had little trouble doubting it was probably true. Cell phones and microwaves had been predicted only about 100 years before. He didn’t even understand how his smart phone worked, but he knew that it was not magic, yet he still held more power in his hand than many of his gods he had once believed in. He wondered who would have power in that future. No one commands the bees or the ants or the birds or the fish. No one that Ogg could see anyway. Yet they acted as one. Would humans be this way? Or would they still always have a Grog above them telling them what to do, and how to be, and what was to have value?
He looked up and saw Grog on a billboard with several females clinging to him in an ad for a newer phone than the one he had. Each of the females was more beautiful than any Ogg had ever actually seen in real life. Ogg looked around the plaza. There were so many people there he felt like a tiny fish in a huge ocean. All of the people were so busy it seemed as if they rushed by, each like a single blood cell hurdling down the vessels Ogg had read about which were supposed to exist in a living body. Each person passing by was talking on his or her cell phones, or with each other, as if in a trance… each with their own individual realities. They moved so fast it was if they could not even see Ogg at all.
Ogg felt old, even though he knew he was still quite young. He wanted to see what would came next, but part of him felt too tired to actually live through it to find out. That night Ogg went home alone to his apartment as usual, and dreamt he was making stone axes while his mother and father looked down from tree tops in the sky approvingly.
(Optionally appended ending:)
But then there were no people left to take the axes, and his mother and father were gone, and somehow he knew with the special knowledge that only comes in dreams, that the grasslands were completely desolate of people, as if his eyes could see to the ends of the earth. And he sat alone on the rocks, without even the will anymore to even make his once beloved stone axes. And having seen how the world turns, he wished he could go into a deeper sleep from which he would never wake up.
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