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              Outbreak Magazine Issue #13 - Article 6 of 15
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A Treatise on Reading
by: Reuban O'Neill


If you find yourself reading these words, you will certainly think to yourself, 
"Why am I reading these words?"  Because certainly, the written language has 
not been invented yet, you poor soul.

Hello, My name is Reuban O'Neill, and I've written this scroll so that you 
can learn the truth.  In the time that I come from, approximately ten thousand 
years in your future (My apologies, I know that you haven't developed notions 
such as "ten-thousand" and "future" yet, but trust me, I'm from there), I was 
sitting at my desk one evening, wondering where it all went wrong, and that is 
when I decided that you and your kind are the ones to blame.  So in order to 
smooth the transition you have had from the current savagelikes you currently 
are to the genius people like myself, I have written this document on the finest 
vellum for your benefit, then transported said document into your time through 
means you likely wouldn't understand, being incapable firstly of understanding 
time and all, but trust me - this will all make sense in a few thousand years.

Now I must beg of you, if you have not realized by this point that you are 
looking at a written language and not a bunch of meaningless and purposeless 
messy blotches on a piece of parchment, please stop right now and take a few 
moments to learn the English language.  In my time, English is a very popular 
language and nearly everyone who reads my most important documents is capable 
of understanding it.  I considered writing variant forms in Latin, French, 
Italian, and Chinese too, but upon further consideration, I believed that it 
would be best if I could alter the course of history so that English was the 
only language, so as not to cause confusion when asking for directions in other 
countries.  Also, this will destroy the livelihoods of all people who are 
currently employed as translators, creating an influx of labour power that can 
be used in the public sector for menial tasks such as serving as members of 
parliament.  These are jobs that need to be held by people who can translate 
bad news of cuts to public spending into good news about tax cuts.  However, 
this is not so much a matter of translation so much as it is a matter of not 
revealing who the majority of the tax cuts go to and how those are not the 
same people as those who are benefited by public spending (ironically those 
most hurt by tax cuts for the rich and decreased spending on the working class 
comprise the majority of the population and could elect a socially democratic 
government if they so chose to).  But I am straying from my topic - such matters 
are doubtlessly of little concern to one such as yourself, who has only begun to 
comprehend the basics of human language by this point in my scroll.

***

I am assuming that by now you have practiced the introductory paragraphs many 
times over and are now well-acquainted with the English language.  
Congratulations!  You are what we in my time call a civilized human being.  
This will protect you from war, as it seems that English-speakers are free from 
being attacked by other English speakers.  It is an elite club, and like any 
elite club that I am a member of, I am proud to be a part of it, and I would 
like to invite you to join as token pre-civilized human beings.  You will be 
the first to join such a social organization, but I do not believe that you 
will be the last.

Now that you have learned to read, what I urge you to do is of the greatest 
importance.  That is, develop language and use it to your advantage.  Language 
will give you and your kind the ability to dominate and enslave the other 
animal creatures.  With such power, it will be short step from your current 
position of sleeping in caves and scratching pictures on walls to owning 
corporations and taking high-quality snapshots with your own kodachrome colour 
cameras.  The journey of a thousand feet begins with a hundred feet and ends 
with another hundred feet, and there are eight hundred feet in between.  Or 
maybe I'm thinking of kilometres and metres.  It is not too important.

Do not allow this document to fall into the hands of other animals or persons 
from other lands.  If this happens, they will all learn to become a being of 
super intelligence such as myself and you will have no distinct advantage over 
them.  You may ask why you would want to have an advantage over others when it
seems most kind and reasonable to enable all creatures on your ball of rock and 
plant and water to have as good of a life as possible.  This is because you, 
in your time, have not yet discovered the wonderful benefits that can be 
attained by contributing to and directly causing suffering in others.

Think of it this way.  Imagine that a human being needs one cubit of food to 
live (I used to know what a cubit was).  If each human being needs one of these, 
each will be well-fed and satisfied.  However, if you take someone else's cubit 
then you will be able to eat twice as much and become fat and twice as happy.  
The other person will die, but this is ok.  Sometime, if you ever decide to eat 
fish, it may take the lives of several fish to satisfy your hunger for a day!

There is a slight problem with this, and it is that there are not enough people 
to kill.  If you did this every day, you would no longer have anybody to hunt 
and cook for you.  So what I suggest is that you create a set of complex rules 
in your new language that nobody else can understand, and then tell them that 
they have to do whatever you say or you will have to kill them.  Then they will 
be nice to you and hunt for you and cook your food for you.  Tell them that they 
each have to give you a little bit more food and then give nothing back to them 
in return.  This is called a capitalist utopia.

The only problem with this capitalist utopia is that it is really only good for 
one person or a small group of people.  For everyone else it is very bad and they 
will all hate you, and they will try to kill you and steal your food and your 
language.  So what you must do is create a will, meaning that when you die all of 
your food and language will be given to someone else.  This way, even if they kill 
you they will still have nothing.  This will keep you alive for many more years 
than you deserve.

Make certain to write down in your new language that when you and your descendents 
meet a person named Reuban O'Neill you will all share your food and other things with 
me.  After all, I taught you everything your know.  
