Intro - Ch. 1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10 - Ch. 11 - Ch. 12 - Ch. 13

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This Moron

He'd first heard about the Ensenada manuscript while sitting in a toilet stall at the Giant Eagle truck stop in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

"I was just mindin' my own business when I overheard a coupla guys talkin' about how finally there was some proof that we was all a buncha idiots.  One a these guys, he'd just hauled some oranges up from southern Cal, and he was talkin' about the manuscript they'd found.  He was sayin' how a bunch a scientists figgered it was more'n twenny-five hunnerd years old, but the whole thing was written in Pig Latin!"

"Pig Latin?"  I asked.  "Who was speaking Pig Latin twenty-five hundred years ago on the Baja peninsula?"

"Well, duh," Elmo said.  "That's the whole point.  It's a goddam mistaree.  Anyways, it sounded interestin', so after I finished up in the john I found these guys out havin' coffee at the counter.  And I told 'em, I said, 'I heard what ya were talkin' about in the can.  I wanna know more.  I always figgered we was all messed up in the head.'  And the guy who'd been to California told me all about it.  He'd actually seen a copy a the First Insight."

"There are copies?" I asked.

"Well, there ain't supposed to be.  Mexican gurmint's comin' down pretty hard, sayin' there ain't no such thing as this manuscript, and the bible-thumpers ain't too thrilled, neither, since the manuscript don't exactly jive with their religion."

"Jibe," I said.  "It doesn't jibe with their religion."

"Ya wanna hear about the First Insight or not, college boy?"

"Absolutely," I said.

"All right then."  He took a deep breath, and when he resumed speaking it was in a hushed tone, barely perceptible over the drone of the engine.    "Ever feel like maybe yer gettin' a little stupider every year?"

"A little," I said.

"And you ever notice how stupid other people are gettin'?"

"Hell yes."

"Well, listen.  The manuscript proves we're all gettin' stupider every year.  It predicted it way the hell back then!"

"How's that?"

"Well, we're learnin' more every year, ain't we?"

"Who?  You and me?"

"No no no... all of us, the whole world.  All the knowledge we got in the whole human race doubles every ten years."

"But then... wait... we're getting smarter?"

He shook his head so hard that crumbs flew from his beard and dandruff flurried about the cab.  "Let's say I know somethin' you don't.  Who--"

"Like what?"

"It don't matter.  Who--"

"Why can't we assume I know something you don't?"

"Because that ain't the example."

"You said it didn't matter.  If it doesn't matter, let's pretend I know something you don't."

"Let's pretend that because I know somethin' you don't, I'm nice enough not to whump your ass again right here in the truck."

"Okay."

"Now, if'n I know that certain thing, whatever the hell it is, and you don't, who knows more?"

"You do."

"Why?"

"Because you know something I don't?"

"Okay, good.  Now let's say I know ten percent a everythin' there is t'know, and you know five percent.  Who's smarter?"

"You are."

"So someone who knows ten percent is smarter than someone who knows five percent?"

"Duh."

Elmo turned toward me, his eyes glowing.  "If all the knowledge we got is growin' so fast we can't keep up, then every day we know a smaller and smaller percentage a everythin' there is t'know, right?"

He was right!  The manuscript was right!  With the same knowledge I had today, I'd be more ignorant tomorrow than I was right then!  It was inevitable!   My mind reeled.  All of my previous beliefs had been shattered.  Elmo just kept nodding and smiling at me, with an expression not unlike that of a teacher,   proud of a particularly stupid child having finally done something halfway intelligent.  That's how he lost control of the truck.

I was lucky enough to be thrown from the cab before it struck the sheer granite hillside.  Elmo wasn't as lucky.   And yet despite his anguish, despite the flames that closed in on his helpless position, pinned by the twisted steel of the wreck, despite all this, still he shouted out to me a few final words about the manuscript.

"We're all idiots," he shouted, "and it's only gonna get worse.   Life don't mean diddley.  It's all a crap shoot.  It's all in th'manuscript, but that's just the First Insight, you gotta get down to Ensenada and--"  With that, the truck exploded into a great orange and yellow blossom of flame.  Elmo Wooster was no more.

(Unless you count the little shreds of fleshy pulp that rained down from the sky as a sort of abstract Elmo Wooster, in which case he actually still existed.)

But his life was not in vain: I would pick up where he had left off.  I would go to Ensenada.  I would find the Second Insight.  I would find every Insight the Ensenada Manuscript had to offer.

Either that, or get drunk off my ass.  One or the other. 

...next chapter...