Ana May's Last Supper
Chapter 1
The last great hunts were mere memories in old mens' minds as John Campbell sat in his dormitory room.
He was looking over the essay test he had given to his students that day.
It was difficult for him to concentrate, as he was thinking of the coming deer hunting season.
The papers he was grading were about time concepts as they relate to history repeating itself.
His mind strayed again, as the essays themselves repeated each other.
John was going to hunt his deer with a crossbow. John thought the longbow was for the barbarians. You had to be physically strong to pull a powerful longbow back. He thought the gun was for the bloodthirsty intellectual who did not want to
learn to hunt. The gun hunter only liked the killing. The crossbow was between. It required great skill to get close enough but the mechanics of the bow took away the need for barbaric strength.
His attention went back to the papers as he picked up Neal Astor's exam.
Neal was a business student at Dayton College where John taught History. The History course was required for all commercially oriented majors.
John had noticed that in the past, Neal's papers were more creative than the others.
He read the first paragraph silently to himself in a fraction of a second. John had taught his mind to read with extreme rapidity. His comprehension as he read was actually at a subconscious level.
His eyes stopped abruptly as he finished the first paragraph. His inner mind had somehow clicked. He saw relationships that he hadn't seen before.
The electric matter was passing through his mind as though a thousand computers were working together to arrive at the first original machine-generated creative thought.
Now aloud he read the paragraph!
"If we consider all of the speculative history of the earth time patterns, these patterns appear to have made quantum jumps. If we consider cataclysmic changes such as the dinosaur becoming extinct, when life was formed, man created fire,
etc. We will find that they follow a mathematical formula. At time zero until we have the first cataclysm (continental drift beginning) we have a period of 3.2 million years. All cataclysms, or dramatic changes that we are aware of are the square
of each succeeding number."
John said aloud,"It seems logical."
He then began reading the remainder of the essay to himself.
On the next page, John backed up a paragraph and begin reading aloud again.
"It appears that things went smoothly until about 10,000 B.C. At this time, some abstract thing called Civilization took over."
John thought for a moment. He had never heard anyone call civilization an abstract "thing". John, as well as anyone he had encountered, took civilization for granted, and had never considered it a separate thing.
He read on,"At 10,000 B.C. it began to ignore the square root patterns as though it locked into a physical, or may we say, metaphysical law all its own"
John hesitated again, thinking,"time following laws"
He continued reading slowly and quietly. He stopped as he read,"Civilization followed or made law patterns every 20,100,500 and 1000 years. It is as though Civilization itself is a species."
His mind went back to hunting, as he thought,"Men hunt species but men have never hunted civilization as a species."
John had many times dreamed about going back in time 1000 years to hunt the Great Irish Elk that became extinct shortly thereafter. He had even considered time, and how time worked, as he dreamed of these possibilities.
John was now talking to the empty room as though it could hear him. He paced around the table.
"Men hunt species."
"They always hunt lower species."
"Man has never hunted a species higher than himself."
He flopped down into the chair and began silently thinking so the room itself could not hear his inner thoughts. "Why hunt a species lower than myself? The outcome is predetermined. Man is the number one predator. He must succeed. Why not hunt the next higher species? Why not hunt civilization?"