ETA – before publication – I was going to edit this to start with book based talk, but decided to leave it as is.

Do we really know what our history is? Do we really know if it’s serving an agenda of the ones in control and who own these states, countries, planet even? How do we know what truly is fact and not, when a history book has to be edited by someone and could so easily be altered. A term paper must pass through eyes with corrective pens. Editing a book is easy. Burning a few pages practically effortless.

This evening (this is posting long after that “evening,” bear it in mind), I was listening to CraftLit, which is the podcast I’ve been listening to. I started from the beginning, and I’ve been working my way through. Right now it’s working through Flatland. The prologue to be exact. Beginning for this podcast = over 10 yrs ago. Think it may have began 12 yrs ago.

Side note – I imagine many may see that title and assume they know what this is about so I’ll be curious if people take the time to read before commenting. Most of my readers do here, which is fabulous and I love you for that, but I’ve noticed a theme (I bet you have to) online. Folks commenting before they read the article, or thoroughly take in a post, and assume their thoughts into it. See title. React. I’ve been guilty of this myself on occasion and try to catch myself, try to do better, but it’s gotten real bad as of late on social networks. Also, on more than one occasion friends have tested it by linking to a very outrageous article. Read the tons of comments and go geez, what’s with this so you click, only to get a white screen with something like, “There’s nothing here, this was just a test to see how many react to titles and don’t click through to the article to read.” Then ya go back to the still outrageous comments and giggle.

So lemme make clear – this is all about fiction. Just throwing it out there, throwing it in the midst of a paragraph. Doing my part. All made up, all about fiction and the thoughts it makes one think. Okedokes? Totally false. However, I do like to make people think. To question is to know true faith, to question makes us human, to think expands our minds and what is possible. I love those things and try to provide them in my work. Well, I don’t usually try. Most comes naturally. Now. Let’s have some fun letting our minds wander and play based from what inspired this, and my own work that brought on these thoughts. Or, the notes for the work, it’s not in the book. I may include some but not all. So again, none of this is real. Completely false information based on fiction novels, all of this is made up based off those thoughts and ideas FOR said book world.

So this evening (wrote this days ago – Monday Oct 21, 2019 or so?) I was listening to the CraftLit podcast and working through the prologue of Flatland. The woman who hosts the podcast, Heather Ordover, is an English Lit teacher (get it Craft . . . Lit?) who discusses knitting, crafting, and . . . books. As a fiction writer I am really enjoying the podcast because of how deep she’ll go into writing, history, the writers themselves. It’s not just, “here’s the audio book, enjoy.”

As she was discussing the story (episode 149 – prologue for Flatland) and history for her own perceptions of the past, I realized it intermingled with things I often ponder on, as well as what I did for my history in the newest book I’ve been working on, Scorched Silence. The comments on her side which triggered me to write about this were her [somewhat] surprise at the usage of certain things back then. 1800s I believe. Basically the premise of the past people not knowing certain things, and using certain ideas around that time, she’d considered more of a discovery many many years later. The specifics aren’t important, but you can look up the episode if you want to hear the exact wording (episode 149).  I should point out she’s not looking down on the past people for being dumb, it’s as she puts it, it surprised her they knew and used the stuff, but in reality it shouldn’t have because the individual she referenced didn’t discover those things, they’d been known for a long time. Super general, sorry. The words she used went out of my head so I don’t want to misquote what she referenced.

But because of it, it triggered my brain to leap to the place it sometimes goes. The one which is our belief that we can hold as a “future and more advanced civilization.” In many ways we’re smarter and more advanced as human beings versus the past humans who existed. Who is to say those who lived in the past weren’t smarter and it’s been hidden? Interestingly enough, a lot of her conversations were even speaking on evolution and Darwinism so that too was triggering my brain. I mean we do see it plenty and I even used to believe it, right? That because we exist now and have all these advancements now that we’re the smarter ones. We’re more advanced than those who came before us. It’s an arrogant belief that we’re better in many ways, correct? No judgment, just a thought and perception we can hold at different times. Maybe you learned this before I did, maybe this will spark you to give it thought. Dunno.

But have we considered we’re not smarter? I mean consider what they lived through, went through. We may have cures for the common cold symptoms, may be able to help it pass quicker, but at the same time how many of us could survive in the past? I watched a documentary on the Egyptians of ancient times. Some of them actually had implants for teeth. Yeah, implants. They wired the “new” tooth into the teeth on either side, but it allowed them to actually have “implants.” I was as surprised as the host. I didn’t realize implants went THAT far back. Certainly not as good as ours these days, but in ancient times they’d figured out how to replace a missing tooth (believe it was made out of wood, but don’t quote me on that.) Like whu? Could you handle hunting for food (right now as you are) and surviving day to day life that way? Could you take down a bear if necessary? Things like that. In many ways we’ve become soft and vulnerable little babies compared to what once existed.

Which then spurs me into another and deeper realm. We know what they wish us to know. We know what helps them (them = whoever controls information at any time, not a specific who) to tell us. Watch me go down the rabbit hole now, yeah? Hold on, I’m about to take a dive. Remember – all based on fiction, and Scorched Silence. So this is based around their past, not ours. This is based on allowing my brain to go off the rational and onto “what if,” territory for their world. Hold onto yo butts friends.

What makes us so arrogant to believe that we are advanced? Because we see what they want us to see? We have the books they want us to read? How easy it would be to drop a book from the past down a fire pit. How easy it would be for someone to tear a few pages out, or rewrite a few sentences, translate a text wrong, and suddenly “they cured diseases,” would turn 500 years from now into, “they didn’t cure diseases.” We rely on editors and writers to be honest, to be truthful, to be virtuous. Brain is taking slower to process as I get more tired-er, lol.

Anyhoo, let us examine today. We all know who is the leader of the US. Tomorrow it could be a completely different name written in history books. Just a wee lil white out. Little erase mark here, scratch out there, delete button over there. Ten years from now, that name won’t be there. 100 years from now that name (this isn’t about reality {fiction, remember} so I’m not wasting the trolling energy that will come with his name on this post) will have been rewritten. 1000 years from now, someone will be gingerly checking the archives for 2019 and maybe its electronic, maybe by then they’ve all gone back to books (who knows?), but the name they search for? Completely different all because of a lil white out and changeroo.

The name could become anything anyone wanted. And 1000 years from now NONE of us would be the wiser. 10,000 years from now our family lines would be gone, nobody to mention the truth. They could be looking back on us as the “dumb,” folks, or “smart,” folks just from a little change in the templates. Our current, present day, which is gonna be history one day, can be whatever someone wants it to be. May have some scientists and history buffs who find something real, they may say no, believe me, look at this! Then you’ll get those who (like before) say to people speaking of a round earth, “you are such a liar, you know 2019 was ___ as leader like all our history books tells us! Why would you believe that person to be them. Wow, conspiracy theorist much?”

Funny, yeah? I think so, lol. We’ve all seen people get criticized for finding one thing that’s different, and from being that voice. But what if that one paper were the truth? What if that random little journal in the rocks told the truth and not what we’d been told? What if the real history was dropped in a cave and buried, only to have those letters all that’s left? What if our current books, which 10000 years from now are their history books, were rewritten? Dump the evidence that didn’t fit what you wanted someone to believe, and poof. You and I? Never existed.

I’m getting to where this goes. Again, all fiction. I ponder this stuff, but do I walk around going oh my GAWD it’s all lies!! No. No, I don’t. That’s the beauty of fiction writing. Letting my brain roam free. Before I was very afraid to do things like that. I was afraid to let my brain go and go where it wanted. But it’s also the fun part of following all sorts of accounts online and social networks. I see the wild thoughts some can have, and I see some very conservative. Also religious, non religious, you name it. Then . . . I let the brain percolate.

The point is – they COULD do that. Even if they did, meh. I like thinking about it but I’m not one to freak out over things like that. I live in now. Now is where I exist. I also consider the other side – the future. What the future may look like. I go deep there too, but again, meh. So hopefully I am not freaking you out. It’s just worth seeing we aren’t the ones in control of things like that. Only what we believe. And whatever a person does? Let em! There are some these days who believe the earth is flat. What harm does it do to let them unless they are trying to harm? Let em believe what they like. Doesn’t bother me that some believe it’s flat as long as they’re not out there harming folks and pushing their beliefs on me. My goodness I once believed Santa came down my chimney and left little things in his wake (my mother left bits of cotton as his beard, or something like that). No harm.

Moving on. So those thoughts really echoed home for me while building the history for Scorched Silence. See?! I told you it tied in and was about my book! I didn’t even plan it out. What I was doing for the novel was trying to change the story world. The original story was inspired by something, but I didn’t release my brain and learn yet how to (like I did above? Oooo you’re seeing what I did there, hmm?) let it fllllllyyyyyyyyy with going off the deep end and into where in the heck is this coming from territory. I’d keep it locked down. Use this story world, do this in the story world, don’t you dare step over the line, oh my gawd what will they think of you?! So I didn’t really do “inspire” well. All from fear, but now? Shoot, come join me on the ride if you enjoy it. The story wasn’t as unique as I could’ve made it back then. So when rewriting the story, I said to self, I really need more.

I can’t remember now how in the hey I went from living on this planet to having migrated from another planet (not continent as we did in our history, but planet) to live here. Maybe I’m tired. Maybe when I edit this to post tomorrow or whenever, I remember, but I can’t think of how I got the idea. Dunno. (Nope, still don’t remember how I got the idea of planetary migration, lol.)

It’s what happened for my people and their history. Draachen began to overtake the planet (draachen = dragon = lizard beast w two wings, two legs) and the folksies thought they’d leave to save themselves, and humanity. Because they wanted that past to die, they reinvented their history. They made draachen a myth, something that was pure fantasy. Not real. They hoped by destroying them from history, removing their existence, that they could rewrite history and make a new future for humankind. Make a new world for humankind. One the Gaiaans made up.

The Gaiaans migrated from the original home planet where they began – Gaia to Gaia 2. A planet they found that would support them, that would support life, which matched Gaia, where they were from. This was in fact a better planet because their planet was so full of ash and stuff in the air from the draachen and their fire constantly burning that they were beginning to struggle to breathe. Almost like an infestation of the draachen by that time. They needed to leave or die. So they left.

Without giving away too many details, what happened was that there came a time they decided it was best to destroy the past and where they’d come from. They thought they were doing good by doing so. Hoping that by completely removing all traces of the migration and remaking the past, rebuilding where they’d been, who they were, that they could make it better. That somehow it would change their future and make a better one. They had this beautiful new planet to rebuild on, they were starting anew, so the ones who came decided they would rename it from Gaia 2, to Earth. From there, they came up with a new term for themselves too – human. They never spoke again about draachen, never again the large monsters who lived among their planet, and instead turned it into fairytales to tell their children, who then would pass that on.

Did it fail? Did it work? Well, that I’m not giving away. You’ll have to read the books to find out what happened and realize that I’m giving away some here that’s not gonna be mentioned as completely as this is. But also that some of this won’t be mentioned, but eluded to until the second book too. But that podcast really made my brain go down that train again – are we SURE we’re smarter than the past? I’m not meaning computer against no computer. I’m referring to human against past human. We may know math, but would we know how to build a fire? Some of you do, I do too, please don’t take that and run with “anyone who doesn’t is stupid,” as some aren’t even taught how to build one in a fireplace if they don’t have them. There are people out there who haven’t even stepped foot in the ocean. Your upbringing and life isn’t the same experience as another’s. Just consider that for a moment though. I find it fascinating to consider. Look at the pyramids, look at those underground buildings of the past. They didn’t have computers to build things by or figure stuff out. They had to. If that is . . . they did. 😉