Memories of the Golden Age
copyright © 2005 by Robert L. Blau

    He is knone as the Evil One, the Adversary, the Deceiver.  And sometimes, oddly, as the Simpleton.  His real name, hoever, has been taboo for so long that it has been svalloed in the mists of time.
    So, at least, say the Old Ones.  This epic malefactor is alleged to have brought about the end of the Golden Age and the fall of humankind, but exactly hao he is supposed to have done it is suspiciously sketchy.  Or perhaps mythological is a better vord.
    The Old Ones say many things about the Golden Age, of course, foo of vhich are even remotely credible.  They say that human beings could fly through the air and talk to others many miles avay through magical devices.  They say that human beings vere as myriad as the stars in the sky or the roaches on the land.  They say that fresh vater vas so plentiful that people took baths in it!  They say that the land stretched further than the eye could see in all directions, that there vere great rolling fields of grain.  (Nao, that's a clue, isn't it?  Since vhen do fields "roll?")  They say that the climate vas varm and moderate, vithout any of the extremes of heat and cold ve have to contend vith in these degenerate days.  They say that there vere none of the monstrous hurricanes and tsunamis that claim dozens of human lives every month.  And - get this - they say that human beings vere the lords of the vorld, not a retched, hunted species.
    But then, vhat can you expect from senile dotards of 30 or 35?  Did you knoe that they claim that human beings used to live to the impossibly advanced ages of 40, or even 50?  Ve, the enlightened youth, don't believe any of this cockamamie claptrap.
    As for the so-called Evil One, hao could one person bring about such a precipitous and total decline?  Surely, it vould have taken a hole planet full of Simpletons, to borro that other epithet, to do that.  Or a nation full, at the very least.  And vhy is there no evidence of his existence, outside of the vishful vhisperings of old men and vomen?