Reaves 1

John Reaves
Ms. Todd
English II-5 PreAP-GT
17 September 2014
Pursuit of Knowledge
My journey was one of knowledge. I had set out, as all men do, to find something that no
one else knows. We are a knowledgeable people, my tribe, so it became more and more difficult for
the youth in my day to find new things to know. Yet I had set off in a direction where none had
gone before, for it was dangerous. I was young, so I scoffed at my elders' concerns.
The skies were a river with puffy bits of white cotton stuck in the drift. I walked in a field
where the grass grew up to my ankles, and I saw the soft viridescence move with the undulations of
its inhabitants; the insects themselves were invisible phantoms. As I crested the hill, I saw a
building in the distance across a cracked stream of weeds and a substance whose name I knew
not, it stood in semi-ruin.
I walked across the trail, the stream of black and brokenness, and toward the structure. As I
approached it, I noticed a few odd things that I hadn't seen near my village; there were odd metal
containers with glass and wheels embedded within. They were of different colors, some greens,
reds, and yellows, and even blacks, but all were faded. On some, the filthy glass was broken and I
could see inside. Within were pictures in a few, some sort of decayed matter in others, and in one,
words of some sort inscribed on other bits of decaying stuffs. I could just make out the symbols
forming one; they looked like mea. Maybe this was some sort of prayer-vessel. I looked back at
the crumbling, immense building with a new view. This was a temple, I bet; maybe people in the
past came here to pray. I looked back at the broken, dented, gray and worn capsules. These were
probably moved to those who couldn't come. Maybe people left their prayers in them, and the

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priests would help elevate their concerns to the gods. I stepped into the temple, where birds graced
the roof with their holy presence and a mysterious pole with tattered strips of fabric bleached white
by the sun stood guard outside. There were faint, pinkish stripes, like the brush-strokes of sunset, on
what remained of the fabric. A plain of broken, jagged ground stretched in a near-ring around the
building. I creaked open the heavily immense wood-and-glass-and-red-metal door.
The unmistakable odors of matter in varying states of decay assailed my senses as I searched
for a way to keep the door open. I used a piece of something hard that lay just within the gloomy
shell of a structure. The interior of the place was dark, so I had to find a way to let in the light.
There were rock-chunks, some broken into gravel and others still as large as the hole in the wall
which birthed them, scattered along the ground; too, I noticed that this area had a smooth surface on
which to walk holy ground, perhaps? It shone faintly in the soft, enforced twilight. I carried on.
Walking into the center of the large area which conjoined the entrance, I could see tables and chairs
scattered (yet still relatively stable-looking, as though they hadn't moved in years) and the
occasional piece of broken glass scattered in amongst the rocks. I also noticed, when I backed a bit
more towards the entrance, two hallways that led in opposite directions. Through one side's wall,
unblocked, pure light streamed in through an area where glass had once been; on the other side, it
was dark as the moonless sky at night. The muddy windows, letting in nearly nothing, lent
everything an aura of demonic proportions. I walked toward the lit hallway.
In the passageway, room followed room followed room; some of their doors were
unopenable, others willing if one leaned into them, and others simply ajar to begin with. The open
ones were pictures of disorder; there were filthy tables and shattered, black, light-yet-durable chairs
scattered everywhere, with odd writing that I didn't recognize scrawled on white sections of the
walls. There was a layer of dust and grime over everything, which was caked so thickly it didn't
budge even when I rubbed the substances with my palms. The rooms whose doors I had to push

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open were different, though. One was filled with tables in neat rows, another was smaller and
contained strange equipment (sticks with bristles or rope on the end; divination tools, perhaps?
Empty pails might have been used to focus visions), and yet another contained row after row of
boxes and tablets. Well, these weren't typical, clay, tablets, that is. They were black and hard with
black-grey borders, and had strange button-bordered devices connected by a thin rope to them. The
boxes were devoid of most features, except for a circle containing a strange symbol, like another
circle with a line from the middle outward. Perhaps these were used for tracking materials; a
temple this size must need this many things to write on. But how did they write on them? I was
mystified. Moving on, I came to a set of steps, relatively clear of waste and rock; so, naturally, I
traveled up them.
Up the steps was a hallway like the one I had already passed through, but with far fewer
windows. Some of these rooms had a couple (now that I noticed) of the strange tablet-like devices,
the boxes, and the other strange devices. Back above the entrance (at the end of the hallway) I found
myself facing a drop-off the likes of which I'd never encountered before. Sure, there were
mountains that were taller, whose edges I'd stared off with no fear, the clear azure sky and emerald
pastures below a comfort to my tired eyes; but this was a clean drop-off, no chance of slowing
down before one hit the bottom. These priests must have been masters of architecture. Too, though,
I noticed a large, dusty, glass-and-metal dome over the atrium-esque area I had first entered into.
Little light streamed in, and so I had not noticed it. Turning around, I was surprised to find a wall of
grime. The glass underneath was nearly impossible to see through. Then I noticed the vestiges of
where a handle might once have been. I jimmied the door open, slowly and carefully. As opposed to
some of the rooms I had entered before (the more chaotic were likely used for physical training and
the more orderly for meditation or study, I assumed), this room was large and had rows and rows of
shelves. On these shelves were...well, they were of varying thickness and color, but the few I picked

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up had symbols of some type of writing on them. They also had thin sheafs of a yellowish material
with more symbol-writing bound within. The symbols were black within, but on the outside of the
things they were all colors, as well as the background; some turquoise, others a rich black, and more
still red, like the setting sun. There was one that I picked up in particular, that had a symbol I
recognized. Well, it was a series of symbols. They looked like this: 1984. They were numbers.
One, nine, eight, four.
Flipping through the sheafs of the thing, I began to notice a pattern. Not a pattern, really,
more like a set of rules. Different combinations of symbols, I realized mean different things. Maybe
there is one who knows how to decipher these symbols. Maybe I can learn. The similar things
around me looked not as strange artifacts, but as a potential trove of knowledge.
I picked my way back down the dusty steps toward my home, sidestepping as much white
rubble as I could. Outside, the wheeled, portable shrines beckoned me; and so, carefully opening
one entrance by the fragile handle, I prayed and left a fragment of my clothing. And so, as I
returned across the ocean of grass to my village, with a vestige of ancient culture in hand, I had
found my new knowledge, my gift to my people; I had become a man. I held, potentially, the path
to future knowledge.