For all my adult life I thought churches were a scam that profited from simple-minded people, telling them that if they give money to Jesus, they would have a place in Heaven and maybe some occasional help in Earth.
Basically, they were saying that when a true believers dies he would get a amazing reward, and since I was pretty sure there was no old man in cloud judging people and doing an aquatic genocide every now and then, I was confident that church goers were getting scammed.
Now I now better, there is not one God, but two and they don’t look like a Swedish hipster with a six pack, but there are literally corgis. Sure, they told me that the corgi form wasn’t the real one, but like every good religious fanatic I choose to believe what I want to believe. To me the Gods are Corgis.
But after going fishing for the first time here I realized another one. Every single picture of Jesus in a boat with his disciples, the boat was load to the brim with fishes. In my mind the ancient fishermen always had a boat full of fishes after a hard day of work.
Boy I was wrong, even after breaking my back for hours we only have a few dozens of fishes, some of them pretty small.
The boat is pretty small and is not full to the brim. But both father and son look happy with the catch, which means that today was a productive day as any. Considering that the whole village only have three boats, there are no way to feed the entire population with just fishing, and since the agricultural output is incredible small, how the hell this community didn’t die out?
Which is another piece for the puzzle of how the island economics work. There is no currency in the island, so a priori I imagined there was only barter. Barter is the exchange of one product or service for another, but I have seeing people just give stuff away and then never mention.
Then I thought that we lived in some form of tribal society with no private propriety conceit, all for the good of the community. Then I see a barter transaction with the bald guy exchanging his services for some grain.
The worst part is that everyone is so used to this system that them don’t stop to think of how this island makes no sense. The only commerce that we have is when a passing pirate ship needs food or repair, and they only pay some trinkets. Not that I blame them for not paying more, the island has very little to offer.
We finally get in the beach and start putting the boat in the sand and cleaning and drying the fish nets for the next day.
When is over I say good bye to Jon - that somehow didn’t stop talking the entire trip - and come back home with a half dozen small fishes as my payment. I wonder if this number of fishes is considerate acceptable for a hard day of work.
I’m not complain, just want to understand the logic behind, the ship and equipments weren't my and they were doing a favor for taking me out for a day in the sea.
When I'm finally get home Natali immediately hugs me and starts crying. Jeez, I’m coming back from fishing trip not some war.
- “My baby boy, thanks the Gods you are fine.”
- “I was just fishing, I told you yesterday!”
- “But there is a ship in the island, I was worried that you had been captured!”.
Ship? I can feel the cold sweat in my back now, one man and two boys in a small boat are no match for a pirate crew, we would be captured and sold as slaves to never see this island again.
I don’t really care about never coming back to this shit hole, but the idea of a very short and brutal life as slave makes living here a great life choice, well, maybe not a great life choice but a reasonable one, taking in consideration my other options.
And perhaps fishing is not for me, can’t risk my life for half dozen fishes, it’s not worth.
-“I’m fine and I brought some fishes! You can stop hugging me!”
While I try to leave her bear hug, a hand hit me in the back of the head with a lot of force.
-“You lazy boy, stop playing with your mother and start helping me with this order, these pirates manage to almost destroy their ship and are going to need a lot of metal to leave here, and I want them out as soon as possible!”
For a few seconds I consider explaining that I'm tired after a day at sea and I will do it tomorrow, since is to late to light the furnace any way. But he's just going to hit me and tell me to stop being a bum. Sighing, I start to prepare the workshop for tomorrow.
--
The next few days passed in a blur, waking up before the sun rises and only stopping working to eat a little in the noon. It took 6 days of hard work to finished the order, without a doubt this was the biggest job that we did since I took over this body.
Every single muscle in my body is in pain, I thanks the Corgi Gods that the bold guy is going to do the final delivery today and I have the entire day to do absolutely nothing.
-“Boy, get ready, we need to delivery the final part of the order today”.
- “Wait, I going with you? Why?”
- “You don’t want to meet some pirates?”
-“No, I fine staying home until they finished the repair and leave here”.
He looks at me and put his hands on my shoulders and is clearly preparing himself to tell me a life lesson:
-“I won’t always be here, you need to learn to deal with this kind of persons. It’s a good thing that you fear them, but you can’t let this fear stop you from doing what needs to be done.”
Personally, I just want to say I understand what he means but I think it's better for my health to stay away and besides I have some experince in my past life dealing with criminals. But it’s impossible to explain that for him without mention that his son is dead, so I confirm with my head that I understand and follow him outside.
The good thing when you are dirty poor is that you don’t need to worry about what you are going to wear when you only have one outfit. Also, you are always ready to leave the house without any kind of preparation, fear of forgetting the cellphone or wallet? You can’t forget something that you don’t have.
Outside of the house there is seven of the village men waiting, three of them are carrying the goods for the last shipment. The village chief is for some reason trying to look important in the middle of them with his chest puffed out and standing in a way that he thinks is a noble posture. To me he looks like a child pretending to be a grow up.
Of the other six men I only know Antonio, the others five I know from the village but I can’t remember their names. Carlos looks at me and say angrily:
-“This is a men job, no place for a boy. Go back to your mother!”
-“He needs to learn how to negotiate and he is going to stay behind us, there is no problem!”
As usual Carlos and the bald guy start to argue immediately, everybody is used so we leave and nobody pay attention in their shouting war and start having their own conversations.
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-“I’m glad theses bastards are finally leaving, tired of been hungry all the time.”
-“Don’t tell me, my kids are crying every day from hunger, them must leave soon or we going to starve”.
Antonio grunts agreeing to them and telling that he is tired to the bone for staying all day in the sea -don’t asked how I can understand that from a grunt- and they all agree with him and keeping complain how hungry their family’s are.
Which is interest, sure the food in my house is never enough to really satisfy me, but I would be lying if I said that I was going to bed hungry. And I pretty sure that the family food didn’t decrease in the last few days.
I would love to ask a few questions, but this culture doesn’t like young people asking questions. After I realized that I was no longer in Kansas, and this world is real and not a product of my imagination.
I did try asking some questions and the only answer that I got was how many beatings a person can get before stop asking questions, the answer is four. This bunch of morons believe that by watching their elders the young generation can learn all that they need.
And that’s why we leave like primitives, no culture here, there is a zero chance of us building a pyramided or enslaving our enemies.
To get to the other side of the island there is only one way, we have to cross the island forest. It’s impossible to go to the other side by walking in the beach, thanks to some mountains.
The trees are not very large, about the height of a adult male but they grow very close to each others making very hard to walk.
That’s why I never get to close to the center and stay in the peripheries. Now that I think about it, how the hell a deer can live in these conditions? But then again, I was brought here by a couple of Corgis from a different plane, who I’m to judge what is suspicious?
Goddamn, this is tough hike, especially when you are kid trying to keep up with adults. In my defense everybody looks sweat and tired, even the bald men and Carlos stopping yelling at each other and are panting like the rest of us.
For a bunch of primitives, we are really out of shape. Which is kind of sad, didn’t people say that back in the day everybody was healthy thanks to all the farm work? Pretty sure that my old sedentary self would be just as tired and at least I would have a excuse “I sit in a chair the whole day, what did you expected” ? What’s their excuse?
After a while we just stop to rest without anyone saying anything. I just lean against a tree and try not to die. Nobody has the energy to start a conversation so we stay quiet.
After what fells like a few seconds, but was probably a dozen minutes, Carlos get up and grunts that we need to continue. The guys change who he is carrying the baggage and we continue the hike of death.
Ok, I’m being a little melodramatic. But I’m to fucking tired to care about being a Prima Donna. I’m really out of shape, by the Corgi Gods, I need to start doing some cardio immediately.
We finally arrive at the beach. I’m exhausted and wondering who is going to carry me in the way back, when a see the two boats that are in the sand, and my mind immediately stops working.
I’m not sure what I was waiting for, but definitely wasn’t this. One of the boats is clearly a trading vessel, has three sails and is tall and chubby on the sides and is being cannibalized for wood to repair the second ship.
The second one is obvious a warship, with two sails and instead of being chubby, is a lean killer machine with hundreds of “windows” on the side for oars. Even with my untrained eye and with the repairs, you can tell that it is a beauty.
And there are hundreds of men camped in the beach, most of them are just laying in the ground, but some are working repairing. As much I would love to go take a look, we stay some distance away waiting.
They know we are waiting, but either are doing a power play or just don’t care about us. Times pass and I can see that the others are used to this and are patiently waiting. Not that I'm complaining, I need all the rest for the trip back, but it’s a shame that we are to far away to give a proper look in the boats and camp.
Finally I can se some people from the camp coming in our direction. There are seven men in the group and six of them are heavily armed with shields, helmets and cuirass made of bronze and long spears. The last man is just wearing a incredible nice tunic with a fancy sword, it’s very easy to say who is the leader.
We look like beggars, very harmless beggars compared to them. I wonder why they even bother trading with us. Just this group could easily take the whole village without breaking a sweat. To my knowledge we don’t have a single spear, much less a sword in the whole village.
Unless my village is formed by a group of ninjas that hide their ability from the children until them hit puberty, and them start a super secrete training in hand-to-hand combat that make the whole world fear us.
My dreams of becoming a super ninja and cutting bullets with leaves ends when I see the fear in my compatriots faces. They try to hide, but is clear as a sunny day that theses men are no warriors. Just farmers, fishermen and blacksmiths trying to survive in a cruel world.
Which is pretty amazing by itself, to face a challenge that you know is impossible but is necessary, is what differences men from boys.
Unfortunate, amazing or not, doesn’t change the fact that we are dead if something goes wrong in the negotiation.
There a lot of mass graves back in Earth full of brave man that were kill by professional soldiers while trying to defend their family’s. Some of them even became martyrs of a cause and a example to be followed, but that doesn’t changed the fact that they were killed and lost everything.
Better to be a live coward then be a dead hero, that’s my motto. As long you live long enough there always a possibility to make yourself look like a hero and make the poor bastards that were brave and lost everything to be the cowards.
-“It’s good to see you guys are in good health!”
While I was lost in the dream world the group has finally arrived. The leader is a very young man, probably in the early twenty and has a smile that don’t reach the eyes.
-“It’s good to see you too Lord Bannus, we are happy to see that the repairs of the Dancing Fool are close to be done.”
Carlos tries he best to crawl in front of Bannus, sure the words don’t sound like that, but the manner he is saying is basically a dog giving his belly to be pet by his master. But then again, I suppose is very easy to judge people when you only have to stay quiet in the back.
-“The old girl took a beating in the storm and will need a dry port to put her back in her former glory, we are just doing enough to get her back in the sea.”
The guy has a pretty strong accent, our language is probably not his second language. By the way, what’s the name of my current language? Since the language in the village is very similar to Portuguese, I didn’t stop to think about it. The “holy shit, what the fuck is happing!?” has taken up almost all of my contemplation time over the past two years.
-“We bring the last part of the order, just like we promised, we hope that the quality was to your liking”.
-“The quality is subpar, but that was expected, good enough to get us home”.
Fuck you! Subpar my ass you bastard, we worked like dogs to get this shit done in such a short time! I barely sleep and eat for fucking six days !
-“We are glad that you liked Lord Bannus”.
Fuck you too Carlos! Don’t you see the fucker is trying to pay less for the job! Goddamn, bald guy do something about this! I look at him and see that he is not angry at all at been insulted!
The bastard somethings get angry when I take to long to drink water! Water! And when someone insults his jobs, he acts like it is the most normal thing in the world! Doesn’t he know what subpar means!?
Wait, does he know what subpar means? And why I’m so angry? Who cares about the bald guy getting insult? He always a dick with me and deserves this. And why my head hurts so much? What’s going one?
-“But I think that I have a better proposition then what we had agreed.”
I’m going insane here and can see that this guy is a 171. But what choice we have here? The guys with the weapons are always right.
- “But my Lord we need the goods to survive…”
-“What you need is good wood for construction, this island forests are useless for that, I’m willing to give a whole ship for you guys.”
Let me guess, he wants to give us the ship that is almost destroyed. I mean, the ship is to fucked to be take to the sea, so why not give to a bunch of island losers instead of paying them a few bucks?
The worst part of all this is that my compatriots look incredible excited by the proposition. The fact the ship is pretty much useless and most of the good wood was already take to fix the Dancing Fool doesn’t seem to be important.
And let not forget that the village is in the other side of the island, how are they planning to bring back the wood when there is only a crap track? But the fools are basically drooling looking at the ships, the morons will probably accepted the crap ship and even pay a extra !
By the Corgi Gods, I don’t no what is worst, my headache or this group of gullible idiots just asking to be deceived. I should just start a pyramid scheme and get everything these idiots have.
-“Of course my Lord, we would be happy to accepted, but…”
-“Good, you can just take the ship when we leave, and who is the young man?”
Young man? Shit, he is talking to me? My angry with his shitness, my headache and the villagers gullibly and make me forget to keep my poker face. Well, I better do something before someone decide to use the sharp part of their spear on me.
-“Lord Bannus, my name is Nestor son of Roberto and a blacksmith apprentice, and it’s a honor to meet you.”
He continues to look at me but stop smiling, shit, did I say something weird? I was just trying to be polite not to get the leader of hundreds of heavily armed soldiers mad at me.
-“I see, well, Nestor son of Roberto the blacksmith apprentice, I see a great future ahead of you, until the next time”.
After that, he just turns and walks away. His bodyguards just pick the packages in the ground and follow him. The others just look at me like I've grown a second head.
-“Looks like is going to rain, better return now.”
I turn and walk back to the village before any of them starts yelling at me.