The Great Hum
                    by Homer Pheeder, Journalist at Large 
                           A Fairy Tale for Adults 
                        Copyright 1992 by Dave Laird
                          Chapter I. A Star is Born 
                          
Since the news from the Mideast keeps getting more and more grim with each
passing day, have decided, for our readers and own personal satisfaction,
write a fairy tale which follows. This particular tale is based upon a story
I once wrote for the Uinta County Herald in a oilfield town called Evanston,
Wyoming. I had stopped in Evanston overnight to fix a fan belt and spent a
lifetime, but that's a story for another day.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, mankind had taken its step out
to the stars. Rather than one giant step for mankind, the exploration of
space was more akin to the delicate prancing steps of ballerina men of a
certain persuasion from a pre-galactic place called San Francisco.

Man's first step into space wasn't done with powerful rocket ships that
burned up an eon's worth of decayed swamps byproducts in seconds, either.
The first hitchiker to the stars actually was an accident, the illogical
outcome of an idle afternoon in the life of a bright red-headed young man
named Jeremy Winslow.

Historians will tell you that, at the end of the twentieth century, mankind
had reached a point of high religious planes and abysmal moral values That
is because soldiers dressed like Martian Trigbytes were killing everyone
else in the name of God, who hadn't even entered the picture yet. In fact,
in the late 1990's, nearing the end the Syrian-Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli
war against Western tyranny, men and women were being killed in God's name
simply because everyone was too dazed to remember what the original cause of
the war had been.
   
Enter young Jeremy Winslow. He and his mom lived rundown miner's shack on
the edge of the Great California Desert left after the great earthquake of
1994. Together, these two subsisted by stealing from the Japanese tourists.
After the great quake they often came droves to stand on the edge of the
precipice on the western edge of the desert and stare mindlessly off toward
where a place called Los Angeles once had been.
   
Jeremy was a striking young man of unusual lineage. Since his mom was an
Apache Indian, he had high, well-defined cheek bones and the aquiline nose
that once was the hallmark of their tribe before nearly all the tribal
members had intermarried with the Mormons living nearby. His mom, being
young woman of considerable discernment and independent spirit, had rejected
a tenative offer of marriage to the Mormon Bishop, Alan Winslow, hastily
bedding instead with a half-tanked red-headed Irishman named O'Coy. 

Thus Jeremy favored his unseen father with a wildly untamed shock of flaming
red hair that he wore in braids, keeping with the traditional manner of the
other side his ancestry. also bore the last name of the local Mormon Bishop,
although his mother hadn't bothered to consummate the relationship.
  
From early age, everyone assured themselves that Jeremy was basically a good
kid, but he was...different. Unlike most young men his age, who were busily
learning how to use sub-atomic machine guns to destroy plants, lower life forms
and even occasionally themselves, Jeremy spent a great deal of his time
wandering the desert, poking into dusty, strange places and, in general,
learning all that he could about the ancient cliff dwellings far back in the
desert mountains.

It was there, late one ill-fated July afternoon, that Jeremy first
discovered the ancient tablets, far back in an old cave he'd never explored
before. They were written in a language much like english, but with pictures
that seemed to move around a lot on the paper. At first, he considered
telling him mom about his latest acquisition, but after one the moving
figures bit him harshly on the thumb, he thought better of the idea.

For weeks on end, Jeremy continued to return nearly every day to the cave,
and as the figures on the tablets whirled and danced for him, he began learn
the ancient language of his forebearers, from many centuries earlier, and
with it, the knowledge of the Great Hum.

By alternatively reading and experimenting, Jeremy soon discovered the
proper breathing technique to effect his very first hum. Some say that rocks
cracked over two miles away, so sour was Jeremy's first intonation, but
within days he had straightened up his act to where he could hum a tone of
sufficient clarity to summon a fat, unresisting jackrabbit, which he
promptly killed with a particularly sour flatulent tone, and took it home to
his mother to cook for dinner.

Weeks passed, and as Jeremy began tackling some of the more complex
procedural tones, found that not only could he summon animals, plants, even
automobiles complete with their passengers, he could send thoughts as well.
One afternoon during a preliminary experiment, mistakenly hummed up a
particularly angry thought to his mother, who, by now, was beginning to
bitch about his strange preoccupation with the old cave dwellings.

"You spend too much goddamn time out there messing around those old caves,"
she had observed as she served dinner the previous evening. "You need to go
to town and get a job or a woman or something."

There is no power anywhere in the entire universe so strident, compelling,
as a thought well hummed. That evening, when Jeremy returned home with a
freshly-killed mule deer which he had hummed from Rock Springs, Wyoming,
instead of being pleased at the unusual supply of fresh meat, his mother
spit and hissed like a panther.

"How DARE you to tell me to go poop!" she screamed vituperously. "Maybe you
didn't think I heard you this afternoon, but I did!" which point she sent an
eight in cast-iron skillet flying his way without the benefit of anything
greater than a strong right arm.

Like many battles of the past, his mother quickly recovered from her spite.
Perhaps it was the 14 cubic foot refridgerator-freezer that Jeremy hummed in
from some place back east, only two days later replace with a completely
equipped 55 foot triple-wide mobile home, complete with color video screen
and telemassage. Within days, her anger was diminished and nothing further
was said about Jeremy needing a job. In fact, before that week was out, she
was so engrossed watching the soaps on the vidscreen, she scarcely noticed
his going to and [Cfro.
    
                                  Chapter 2 
                                First Contact 

Before the winter fell upon the desert, Jeremy was well advanced in the art
of the Ancient Hum. He could not only summon, at will, nearly any tangible
item he desired, but he could project complex thoughts to others thousands
of miles away, and read their responses--all without their even being aware
of their subconscious thought processes.

Late one chilly autumn afternoon, after Jeremy had just summoned a
prodigious supply of #2 polonium oxide and a fully automated space heater to
warm up the cave, he decided to see if he could summon one of the ancient
beings who had originally authored the book from which had learned his
marvelous talents.

Jeremy screwed his face concentration and released tremendously raucous Hum
that, were anyone nearby to hear, they would have remarked dryly that it
sounded like a coyote with its tail being squashed flat as a tortilla while
in a vise. Finally, when a horribly distorted materialization of a
subtropical wart hop appeared the front of the cave, howling in its agony,
Jeremy released the hum, and the wart hog to return from whence it came.

Several days passed before Jeremy's nerve returned the point where could
repeat his ill-fated experiment. After reading the strange, moving
characters on the tablet one additional time, he began slowly working up to
the point where he had summoned the unwanted beast from back in time. This
time, the tonal quality was purer, sounding less like a terminally wounded
freight train than before.

"Whoooo calls and what the heck do you want?" The thought, evervescent in
its power, materialized in his mind, unbidden, shaking him completely with
its tonal purity.

"It is I, Jeremy Winslow, seeking assistance," he gleefully toned back, his
self-confidence slowly returning. "I am attempting to reach the old ones who
wrote these tablets."

Slowly, a tarnished-looking old Indian materialized within the cave who,
after taking a look more closely at Jeremy, with a rasping dry voice said,
"Which kind of dog crap Indian are you? I never heard tell of a red-headed
band of The Bretheren before."

Jeremy, his face pale with fright at the anger in the old man's face,
briefly sketched as much of his history as he could into the old man's mind,
to which the Old One nodded as he slowly strolled around where Jeremy stood,
looking him slowly up and down.

"Yes, I can see it," the Old One muttered slowly to himself as he continued
his pacing. "You bear some of the marks of our people."
   
He suddenly ceased pacing his route where Jeremy stood, transfixed, and
suddenly barked, "But why did you end up looking like some kind of wild
dog?" but, wryly smiling to himself, added, "No, don't answer that."

Pursing his lips, and wrinkling his leathery forehead a moment, added,
"Well, will have to consult with others before I can say anything. Wait here
when the next sun rises, and I shall return with an answer."

With that, the Old One disappeared the same way in which he came, leaving
Jeremy standing alone and shaken in the cave, with the psionic heater
chuckling to itself in the background.

Jeremy hummed himself up a Dr. Fudgie Ice Bar from store remembered from a
trip to Flagstaff, and unwrapping it, headed home for the night, humming
idly to himself.

He arrived at the cave the next morning almost before the sun was fully up.
The psionic heater he'd summoned the previous evening was still there, which
was fortunate since, with winter coming, the morning air was cold enough
that the warmth of the cave was welcome.

He had begun translating what appeared to be paid political advertisement
the back of one of the tablets when the Old One returned, this time
accompanied by several other tribal members.

"You are right, Shadnjah," one observed, stepping in front of the rest to
peer more closely at Jeremy. "Although he does indeed bear the mark our
people, he does closely resemble a wild hyena." Then, stepping even more
closer to Jeremy, he asked flatly, "What do you seek from the The Bretheren?
Shadnjah tells us you have learned to use the power, already."

"I merely was looking for the people who wrote this book," Jeremy stated,
adding as an afterthought, "I thought maybe you could tell me why you
disappeared, and what all this means."

"Oho!", the Old One the others called Shadnjah snorted. 

"Oho!", said the other two, in unison. Shadnjah cocked his head a bit, his
eyes shining in the dim light of the cave. "You are asking a great deal,
which we are honor-bound give unto you, yet you offer us nothing." He softly
cleared his throat, thought himself and then continued, It is a custom among
our people, that when a stranger asks for something, he must always give
something in return. Do you not know of this custom?"

"My mom she.." Jeremy paused, reaching for the words. "She never has told me
much about the old customs. All she ever told me was that if I went out into
the desert, one day the answer would come me. started poking around and I
found this cave. learned to Hum, and wondered why there was no leader."

At night, when Jeremy went out into the night to stare across the universe
there were many lights, each of its own special glitter and shine. In
unison, however upon hearing Jeremy's statement, all three of the Old One's
eyes glowed with a warm, pale light that, Jeremy's surprise, lit up the
dimly lit cave with a gently unique signature, the like of which Jeremy had
never seen before.

"It is He," said Shadnjah, softly, with great reverence. "By my jewelsack,
it is He."

"Gom shabbydam Hum!" the other Old Ones whispered in unison.

"What....what do you mean?" Jeremy asked, somewhat alarmed at seeing all
three visitors prostrate themselves on the dirt floor of the cave. "Did I
say something wrong?"

"You have said everything, as it was foretold." Shadnjah said soothingly.
"Sit with us, and we will tell you."

                          The Pearl of Great Price 
                                  Chapter 3 
 
 And so it was, that for three days, as the sun rose and set, the coyotes
mated and separated and the cacti grew by millimeters, the three Old Ones
sat in the cave, teaching Jeremy the true use the Great Hum, and of the part
in history which was his destiny to play.

On the evening of the third day, as the sun was beginning to set in the
west, the four rose to their feet.

"You now are full of the power, Jeremy Winslow," Shadnjah intoned softly.
"We have taught you of the Power, your destiny, and as much of the Universal
Discontinuem as it is ours to know. Only you can accept the burden, or else
mankind will, too, pass away."

Jeremy, who inwardly was at peace for the first time in his life, looked
deeply, one more time, into Shadnjah's eyes. "I accept the burden and the
right," which, although he had no idea where these words came from, he
already knew that they were the only statement he could make.

The Old One's lit, once again, with the Light of The Universal All, and they
briefly glanced, each at the other. Nodding first sagely among themselves,
and then at Jeremy, they disappeared.

Jeremy walked to the front entrance of the cave, listening quietly to the
sounds of the desert preparing for nightfall. He could now hear even the
most minute sound, if he so wished. The sound of the soft pads of the cougar
working its way up a rocky cliff face nearly a mile away was there to be
sampled, as was the sound of a express airjet, as it flew across the desert
highway into the sun, nearly fifteen miles away.
   
With a brief, soft Hum, he sent the psionic heater back to whence it came,
and with yet a different tone, sealed the cave, making it appear there were
a sheer rock face. Then, with one final backward glance at his handiwork, he
hummed a three-part harmony, and he was instantly home, the smell of dinner
wafting along the night air.

"Where have you been?" his Mom asked, scarcely looking up from the video.
"D'ja get lost in town?" Upon receiving no answer, she hrmphed herself, and
resumed watching the latest episode Geriatric Village.

Jeremy ate ravenously, but in silence, and as his Mom turned to go back the
living room and an evening full of video game shows, said softly, "I'm going
to be gone for awhile, Mom. I have a job I have to do."

"I thought that was probably what you were up to," she answered, fumbling
for her Video Guide. "S'not like you to disappear like that unless you found
work or something."

With that, he went outside into the desert night, and short distance away
from the trailer, he hummed a tri-chord, and was instantly transported to
the outskirts of Taos, where he was certain there was an all-night Text
Access Building. After considerable effort, spent trying hitch hike his way
into town, finally resigned himself to humming up a faded jetcar from a used
jetcar lot down the road, and drove sedately into the bustling art town.

After several minutes spent driving toward downtown, saw the Megasign that
indicated a Text Access Building two blocks over, and within minutes, parked
behind the building, noting his satisfaction, that at this hour, there were
only a few other jetcars parked in the lot.

Seated in front of the first terminal he saw, he read the menu and selecting
the first item, read at speed beyond normal human comprehension, going
quickly to the next item, and so on. Within a span the next three hours, he
read all of the Complete Book World Facts, The Wholesome American
Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Universal and Triumphant, The Holy Bible, The
Koran, Global History, the complete collection of Suburbia and Stream and
had just started speed reading an article on tracking bears in Suburbian
lots when a shadows fell across his terminal, interrupting his train of
thought.

"You seem to be looking for something," a voice stated. "I am the Chief
Archive Technician. Perhaps I can help, if you tell me what you are looking
for."

It took a moment for Jeremy to realize that the voice he heard was
disembodied, that the personage standing beside him was a robot.

"I looking for the relationship between war and religion..."he stammered
out. "I'm not sure where to look."

"A student project, yessssss," the robot hissed. "Philosophy and Religion.
Screen 9347. If you need more help, hold up your arm and I will return."

With that the robot hummed briefly, and then glided off down the aisle with
barely a whisper.

As the sun began to peer through the plexiframe behind him, Jeremy had
speed-read nearly every document printed since the beginning of the
twentieth century relating to religion and conflict. War. War and religion.
War for the hell of it. Hell, where war never ceased. His mind swarmed with
facts and data, yet with his newfound abilities, quickly made sense of it
all, as he walked out the front door of the Text Access Building.

He scarcely remembered the jetcar he had previously hummed up for
transportation, but a wary eye told him that several other jetcars with
flashing red lights were swarming around where he had parked, and unearthly
sense told him that it would be ill-advised to return and claim it.

Without further ado, he strolled down the PedWalk until he found a Public
Park and, ducking in between several overgrown bushes, hummed himself back
out onto the desert with a flat tri-chord similar to the tone he had used
earlier the previous evening. Finding himself a small cave, he quickly
crawled into the cool space, and slept.

He awoke in the afternoon, his mind clear, but full of resolution. Hungry,
he hummed himself up a meal from a restaurant he'd noticed earlier in
Taos--greasy vegeburgers and fries, complete with a foamy malted. As he ate,
he prepared his mind for battle, clearly remembering each country he knew he
must visit and what he must do. It did little for his digestion, but he grew
more resolute with each bite.

                                  Chapter 4 
                                The Great Hum 

His knowledge complete, Jeremy sent forth unto the world, a picture,
although brief, of the Cosmic All, which insinuated itself into the minds of
every living human being, as certainly as water runs downhill. No idle task,
this, for it took Jeremy many hours. It was the end of the first day, and he
saw that it was good.

The Cosmic All, that great symbiosis between man and God, had been ignored,
untended since the disappearance of the Old Ones. It has been said that if
one can reach God, and through the Hum, his meanings and knowledge can be
made explicit for all mankind. Yet, in the dark years that followed the
disappearance of the Old Ones, men had followed logic not truth, self not
All and had created Gods where there were none.

God, in his divine wisdom, had long ago decided that mankind wanted to
deviate from The Cosmic All, that was fine with Him. Although he sorely
missed the interaction he once had enjoyed with man, it was a relief not
have so many voices vying for his attention. Yet, Jeremy began his
newly-learned ritual, The Going-to-God Hum, God suddenly realized that there
was a clear, innocent Hum moving toward Heaven, and peered deeply into the
Cosmic All to see who, on Earth, would be capable of such a task. Even with
infinite wisdom, he spent the day trying to fathom how a red-headed boy with
braids, sitting the lotus position in the middle of a desert in the
Southwest United States, a Godless nation if there ever was one, could be
sending such a clear Hum, heavenward.

It was the end of the second day, and behold, God was pleased, Jeremy was
pleased. Everyone was pleased. It was damn fine.

Rajnah Kissmypurnum, the religious leader of nearly one-half the Muslims in
the world, kept tapping his ear, trying to get rid of the pictures that had
been continuously bombarding his mind since yesterday. Yet still, here it
was, like a Christian crawling in the night, to kill and plunder. Yet, to
his amazement, as The Cosmic All began to take shape before his befuddled
mind, by Allah, it made sense!

To his counterpart, Sheikh Subdullah Oblongata, religious head of the Sunni
Muslims, the same insinuating voice came as surprise. Having been exposed,
by four years at Yale University, western thought and religious precepts,
not only did the Cosmic All seem less contentious, it was far more credible
than anything he had ever heard before.

To Mjombe Mikickua, political henchman-potentate of Southern Urumbi-Gumbi on
the Central African coast, the voice spelled a demise to what had otherwise
been an idyllic rule over 400,000 empoverished, illiterate residents of his
tiny country. Yet, as he continued listen as The Cosmic All continued to
whisper in his ear, the concept grew stature and size, and in the distance
tribal drums began beat.

By the end of the third day, nearly all the religious and political factions
of the world had been dissolved. Nations which had been at war for centuries
sat silently contemplating the voices they each had heard, in their own
dialects.

Men who, for the most part of their lives, had been consummately evil to one
and all, were stricken with the knowledge of the harm that they had done,
and were full of remorse and pity.

It was the end of the third day, and all across the face the earth, there
was a great silence unlike anything ever seen before.

On the fourth day, mankind began to knit a skein of compassion and pity
which lasted until the fifth day.

On the fifth day, new voices were heard throughout the world, as men began
slowly attempting their first daily Going-to-God Hum centuries. There was
chaos in the Continuem, for God and all his servants could not possibly make
sense out the babble they heard, yet here and there, fell the tiny, pure
tri-chords of the children of the world, and God saw that they were trying,
and his smile beamed across the heavens and all saw that it was good. It was
the end of the fifth day.

On the morning of the sixth day, as the entire world began their
Going-to-God Hum, there was peace upon the face of the world. Commerce,
at least mankind had known it to be, ceased, mankind began learning better
methods of using skills and the bounty of the earth for the common good. The
great corporations of the world met in their august quarters, only to discover
that success must be the ablility to help others, and that failure is merely
a byproduct of greed. War was universally outlawed, not only on earth, but
throughout the solar system, as entities unknown to man saw The Cosmic All,
and began their way home to stars millenia away.

God looked down on the universe on the end of the sixth day, and saw that it
was good...well, at least better. His heart was light, and he clicked his
heels together in glee as he strolled through the garden of heaven. It was
the end of the sixth day.

The face of mankind was astounded when, on the morning the seventh day,
God's day of rest, to discover that their ritual Going-to-God Hums were for
naught. Try as they might, their prayers encountered what some perceived as
a busy signal. the majority, however, appeared a crudely-scrawled sign which
said, in part, "Gone Fishing. Deal with it! Love. God."

Jeremy Winslow, by now exhausted from his effort, slept in peace in his
cave, overseen by an angel which had materialized, as he slept.

Weeks passed, and as the world grew accustomed to their newly- learned ways
of living, Jeremy met a young girl, late one afternoon, as he was sitting
beneath a tree in the City Park in Taos, teaching young Indian boys and
girls of the Old Ones and their legends, and the essentials of The Great
Hum.

He looked upon her, and saw that she was beautiful, although not so virtuous
as some he had seen. But she had a nice smile and long legs.

They have three children and live in a home next to his Mom in the desert,
somewhere west of Taos, New Mexico.

God still answers questions, requisitions or nearly any other form question
capable of being formulated into an honest Hum. That is, except when even he
goes fishing.

Ho Hum.