S3E4: Peace and Love

John and Sapphire respond to their new situation in Oi, unsure whether or not it is safe or right to intervene in the city's affairs.
Rivers of the Mind was written and produced by Timmy Vilgiate, who also played the part of John. Sophia Doss played the part of Sapphire, and C.j. Hackett played the part of the prophet. Crowd voices were provided by Hugo Delgado and Michael Merriam. Bird reference sounds were collected by Josep del Hoyo, Santiago Imberti, Laurent Demongin, Carlos Gussoni, and Scott Olmstead, all contributors to the Internet Bird Collection.

As always, Freesound.org provided most of our sound effects. Sound effects in this episode included "smashing toilet" by KeyKrusher, "Glass bottle Smashing" by awholenewlife1, "Glass Breaking" by Samgd14, "Hitting in a Face" by florianreichelt, "Crowd in Panic" by ienba, "20181018.scream03.wav" by dobroide, "human male scream terrified" by natemarler, "Scream, female, x2" by peridactyloprtix, "Footsteps Running away Fading" by Rudmer Roteveel, "yell kid male help help" by benjaminharveydesign, "boulderfall1" by AGC66, "Single Rock hit Dirt" by worthahep88, "Female horror cries: Help" by AmeAngelofSin, "Arrow Impact 3" by Ali6868, "Caball galop passa i frene" by Crater RF, "Boiling Towel" by unfa, "Heavy Rain" by lebaston100, "Whoosh" and "Big water splash" by qubodup, "Big wave splash" by soundmary, "niagara falls_02052017_002" by miastodzwiekow, "20130101_221450_rattsjoen_creaking ice" by hoersturz, "Rain heard 900 meters below the sea surface" by MBARI_MARS, "18_Underwater_Waves1" by tomtenney, "01 Morning Listening" by listening to whales, "Lobster Breathing" by baryy, "Clay Pottery Drop 'n' Break" by Kinoton, "Protest01" by karymronda, "Any_Word2_ses2"" Any_Word_ses2" and "War_ses2"  by freesound, "Crowd/Mob/Riot Noise" by FillMat, "Crowd.Yay.Applause.25ppl.Long" and "Crowd.Yay.Applause.25ppl.Short" by Jesse Pash, "Water Splashes" by Phil25,  "Jump into water splash sound" by Nikhill Kumar, "OneWaveInTelukNipah" by LoopUdu, "Hydrophone-Dissolving Vitamin C Tablet" by Sonic-ranger, "Hydrophone underwater stream quiet pipe" and "Hydrophone underwater stream close pipe gurgle" by Javier Zumer, "HighflowRiver" by Cagan Celik and "cicade at nighttime animals 02" by Eelke.

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J: Within a few hours, the celebration of Sapphire’oi the Foreign Prophet and her ascension to subordinate godhood had died down. The sunless sky now flickered with uncanny distant flames, like a huge gas stove burning in the wind. People filed back into their homes, paying me respects and asking me for favor, but rarely able to talk for very long. Soon enough, a pale twilight simmered all around us, a darkness flickering against the sides of the clay buildings. In the darkness, the buildings started to grow more and more beautiful, so beautiful they made my heart ache, their walls glowed a soft purple set against rolling blue plains with a silence more pristine than anything I’d ever heard in my life. No voices, no music, no clattering of wares for sale down the cramped, winding streets, only the faint sound of the river in the distance, and the wind that carried lukewarm air into our dwelling place.

S: Now that no one was watching, I reached for John’s hand. He was staring at the foreign idols lining the walls of our designated home. When he felt me touch him, he gasped just a little bit, before weakly smiling, and turn to face me. A moment of silence. Of complete, amnesiac calm.

S: “So.”
J: “Yeah?”
S: “This is pretty fucked up, huh?”,
J:  “I don’t know. I mean, obviously by our standards.”
S: “What do you mean?”
J: “Both of us grew up with…you know. Electricity. Medicine. This sprawling global supply chain where you at least knew hey, this thing is made in, uh. China. Or Germany, or something, I guess, where you came from? I don’t know. But even then, I think we’re all still scared of new ideas. And try to preempt them.”
S: “So you’re saying its like, almost like the Soviet Union and the US almost.”
J: “Sure.”
S: “Like, I’m communism, and this is America, so…have a temple filled with idols that washed up in the river?”
J: “Yeah…or. No? Maybe. I don’t know, I don’t really know much about the Cold War thing. I’m just saying. It’s part of…part of human nature, I guess.”
S: “That doesn’t mean it’s not fucked up, though. It’s a pretty fucked up part of human nature.”
J: “…yeah. It is.”
S: “So what do we do about it? I’m not just gonna sit here and be some compliant petty god.”
J: “There’s a river. He said he picked up an idol from it. Maybe if we follow it we’ll get to another city, and maybe they’ll have some…uh…sense of where we are. And how to get back home, if there is a home to get back to.”
S: I got what he was saying. But it didn’t sit right with me—to just run away. I could see in the faces of those people out there that what I said about peace and love resonated with them. What I said about their art, about like…the value of what they were doing...mattered. And I knew if I left, their prophet would just twist what I said to make the people conform like a bunch of fucking sheep. John knew what I was thinking. He gulped, and squeezed my hand, not altogether sure of himself. I didn’t get what his problem was. His eyes darted back to me.
J: “We don’t know where we are or what’s going on here. If we’re too far in the past, anything you do could interfere with the timeline.”
S: “Yeah. Okay. (Pause) But you know what’s really gonna interfere with the timeline if we’re way back in the past or some shit? If people just keep on thinking that people who work with their hands and actually build the shit that people depend on are second class citizens. If prophets keep thinking they need to make sure people are isolated from new ideas in order to keep power. If people think that peace means order and love means being a condescending asshole. I don’t wanna sit here in my fucking temple using human nature as an excuse to not do shit. Come on, can’t you make people trip or something with your mind? Man, if you made that prophet trip…”
J: “He could what, magically gain enlightenment? Okay, sure. Or he might go insane and bring back human sacrifice, or decide to march up the river to destroy whatever city that first idol floated down from. Or, I don’t know. Maybe he gains enlightenment, but, like, who’s to say that’s gonna look like exactly what we want it to look like? I’ve tried fucking with people’s heads before, Sapphire, and it’s a coin flip. Maybe they’re changed forever, maybe they’re worse off than how they started. I don’t wanna risk it. We need to get out of whereever we are—that’s what we need to do.”
S: “Well, whatever, John. I just feel like we need to do something. I don’t know what yet but…I’ll get there, I guess. It’d be nice if you helped, but…<sighs> Look, I’m gonna go on a walk, okay?”
J: “Suit yourself.”
S: “I’m gonna see if I can find anything useful.” John kind of pissed me off, but he was right that I probably needed more of a strategy to actually fix this place. I slipped out into the night—almost pitchblack, save the dim light of a distant blue flame on the horizon. Empty rows of fantastical, cartoonish houses. I heard people snoring, faintly, from inside some of them. Some making love. Some whispering to each other. I wondered if anyone had heard me and John arguing. Our voices had gotten loud, hadn’t they? I tried not to think about it, and instead focused on tracing the source of the river. In the eerie emptiness of the city street, I crept forth. The bird flew circles around the inside of my head, seeming to draw me towards the river, though I did not know why. I felt sorry I’d killed it. But glad it hadn’t gone away. The bird seemed brave, wise in a way I didn’t know how to be, intimately close to me as it flew through the empty spaces in my ghostly form. Not totally at rest there inside of me quite yet.

        We got to the river. It was bigger than any other river I’d seen in my life, a great snake of jet black water slithering off into the distance around these empty islands and cragged rocks. IT was a parade of molten spirits of distant glaciers, spirits that didn’t just feel like distant things but that felt like my brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and grandmothers. The water appeared to me first from the top of a hill near the edge of town—I could see huge pieces of driftwood floating in the water. The wind grew stronger near the river. Off in the distance, I could perceive lightning—there on the horizon, a storm was brewing over a faraway city upriver from here, bringing the water surging to life. As I descended the hill, the river slowly vanished from sight underneath another sharp incline, but I still felt its rushing water rolling over my skin and through my body, and heard its roar inside of my eardrums. Summiting a second hill, I saw the river once again—within it floated the entirety of a small wooden house, a cabin that bobbed up and down in the water.

        The river had an immense gravity that grew ever stronger as I approached it. The bird took refuge inside of my ribcage, letting out a loud caw that only I could hear. I clutched my stomach—a sickening and dreadful feeling hit me in my chest—a kind of intense nosedive towards some kind of unknown world. The water churned as I got closer. I shrunk back, not wanting to go near something so powerful, so much bigger than me. I worried that, a single wrong move, and I’d be swept away, down the river, never to return. Shutting my eyes, I held the image of the river in my mind, bringing it to life as a blurred, celestial painting of orange and green and purple, a neon line drawing. Half drunk, I knelt down, the gravity of the river now too strong to resist, and I extended my hands towards the deep black water. I heard the tumultous sounds of the river all around me, with my legs and knees struggling to stay rooted to the gravel and sand of the shoreline. The bird grew restless, unnerved. I tried to call to it. “It’s okay birdy. It’s okay.”, The animal seemed to understand me, flapping its wings and bobbing its head up and down. I knew that it did that cause I could feel it moving. Through a strange sixth sense, I knew that the bird was there, that it felt comforted by the sound of my voice.

A mystical feeling beyond my control made me want to reach into the water, to embrace the spirits within, and so I let them, looking beyond my fear. My hands dipped into the water, and slowly lost their form. I entered the river. The river and I became one—I melted into it, and it melted into me—I spread out my fingers and the river started to lurch and churn upwards—I pulled back my hands and it came towards me, bending in my direction but continuing to flow on—its force almost knocked me over, and so I spun around to tear my hands loose from the water. Dizzy, I turned my back to the river and collapsed to the ground. I shivered and waited for my hands to start to feel like actual hands again. Once they did, and I was calmer, my eyes turned back to the river. I felt even closer now to its churning water. I felt swept away by a deep and jealous love for the river. I lifted up my hands and tilted my head up to the sky. I could feel the bird inside of my stomach soar up into my head, and around my skull, until it came into my eye. I saw it there, looking up at the sky, and knew that if I let it go, it’d go into the river. I turned back and threw my hands down. For a moment, I squinted with suspicion at this situation. For one, I had a bird in my eye. I literally had a bird in my eye. Is this a medical condition? Is this going to hurt me? No. The bird was literally two inches from my imaginary ghostly heart a few minutes ago. If this was going to damage me in someway, it probably would have already done something.

Heeding the bird’s wishes, I let it soar into the river—as it did, felt my mind sync with the immense body of water, spreading out so that I could feel the contours of each shore surrounding it, feel my body flowing around the rocks and islands and driftwood. I didn’t fight it. I went with the flow. I let my whole body dissolve into the river, let it take me under and stretch me out over what felt like miles—I became one with the water and the spirits inside of it. The pollution of faraway cities coursed through my heart, along with the life forces of fish and frogs and tadpoles and stingrays, which I felt myself feeding and cleansing and carrying away. Remembering the city of Oi, I started to grow still. The spirits, the bird, they were just as pissed off as I had been just a second ago. Without really thinking, I turned back the course of the river, and shaped myself into a towering wall of water. People in the city, beneath the light of torches, went out to see what was happening, woken up by the imposing roar of the river, whose water was now bent back like a tidal wave. I lifted up my hands, and I rose into the air as a titanic mass of water, letting the bird melt back into me and guide me into flight, to guide the edges of myself back into form. The river crashed back into itself, flooding the shoreline so that it nearly cut into the town. People below screamed and took shelter.

I gained in elevation, sommersaulting and backflipping over the tiny town, grazing the tops of buildings, cutting across wide open fields and sending the cattle there stampeding for cover. I flew overhead lost in a dance, a dance with the river that I had become—in my flight I was not simply Sapphire or Mary Ann the dead girl from the sixties, but I was the river, a force of nature scattering magic over the city like a thundercloud, blowing everyone’s minds, opening them up to this kind of wonder they had always had in the back of their minds but had never really opened themselves up to—I contemplated my edges and sculpted myself, adding form and definition to my feathers, my beak, my eyes….
J: “Sapphire, is…is that you?”
S: “Mhmmm. I’m a river. Right now I’m trying to be a bird.”
J: “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
S: “Thanks.”
J: “So…uh. Listen. I’m having second thoughts about the whole not intervening here thing.”
S: “Yeah? That’s nice. Clearly I was going along with your idea.”
J: “Look, the prophet is getting something together to cast a spell to make you go away. I’m thinking…I’m thinking we can actually weaken his authority if it doesn’t work, and maybe…maybe you can tell him…uh. Give him some laws. Make him listen. But it has to be in a language he understands.”
S: “Right. But, just to clarify, man, I’m not totally in control of what I’m doing right now. I’m just kinda going with the flow, like…I’m not actually sure how to fly exactly. And even then, I don’t think I can really talk. **gurgles ferociously** Yeah did you hear that? No one is going to take that seriously.”
J: “Huh. Alright. Well—”
S: “I said “Suck my giant river bird dick”, but--
J: “I know what you said. How about this? I’ll hide out in the crowd. Maybe I can…uh…I can make them hear your voice.” Sapphire hurtled over the city once again, this time coming near the rooves of the buildings. She bent her wings inward so as to squeeze through, hurtling towards the prophet, right as he prepared to cast three stones onto the ground

P: “…from your dwellings—a terrible beast rises from the river. Oh spirits, send it—”

J: Sapphire hit him with the full force of her body, and hurled him up into the sky. His rocks fell from his hand, as his mouth gasped for air—Sapphire coiled around him like an immense serpent, immobilizing him from the shoulders down in a great column of water. Slowly and gently she brought him to rest on the ground, calming her mind in meditation—she tried to think of the patterns she had seen in the bark of the tree the other night—the tiny winding canyons and their sap came to life across her liquid skin. “Are you ready? Do you know what to say?”
S: “I don’t think they’ll listen to a voice in their heads. I think you need to make him talk.”
J: “Well...I can try.”  I shut my eyes and concentrated, feeling the boundaries of my mind stretch and expand.
Ryan: “I told you you couldn’t make it here without using the things I’d taught you. I told this was what you are.”
J: All at once the crowd felt a faint trembling in the fabric of reality—their eyes filled with the knowledge of new colors, the boundaries between their minds momentarily weakened as their prophet—an almighty hero who they trusted with their lives—struggled to resist the clutches of some bizarre magic. The flickering of the blue flames in the night sky intensified and filled them with dread.
R:  “You really believe I’m dead? You really believe this isn’t exactly what I wanted to happen?”
J: From within the column of water, the prophet struggled to seal his mind against the alien force that now pressed in from every side. He summoned every spirit he knew of to his aid to project a wall against the overwhelming sensation of enclosure, of being cut off from his senses.
R: “You’re weak, John.”
J: The prophet’s eyes rolled back, his jaw coming loose and his senses coming entirely undone. I struggled to keep his bowels from evacuating into the living column of water that surrounded him, and then worked to form a bridge between Sapphire’s mind and his.
S: “Hey guys, it’s me, the river God.”
J: The first of Sapphire’s words trickled into me—I tried to filter them into the wording of the prophet.
P: “Behold! It is I, Nti, God of the River, Provider of Fish, Bringer of Idols and Driftwood.”
S: “So, I know that this guy here is your prophet and he’s like, okay, but he’s done some shit to kind of piss me off. Actually, your whole town’s kind of fucked up right now, so I’d just like to clear up a couple rules.” 
P: “Your prophet Oi’te’lotep has served you well, but he has done much to anger me—he has decieved you, and led you down a wicked path. I have awakened you all here to issue new laws and to right his wrongs. Such new laws you may break at your peril. I looked out into this city, Oi, meant to be the home of gods and men, and I see that some of you believe yourselves to be above others, to believe the women of lesser status, and believe the worksmen and shepherds lesser still. You distort the meanings of the words spoke to you by my prophet, the words peace and love. And so I must issue a correction to you all. I must command you to treat all men and women as equals, no matter their trade—as brothers and sisters—not speaking down to them, giving them all equal respect.

Let everyone share a part of his bounty so that all may eat, drink, and know peace and love. Peace being not order but freedom—to love, to create art, to enjoy life. Love being not deference and obedience but nurturing and gentle kindness. And… I don’t know how to say that part. I can try… What do you mean I’m saying that outloud? Oh. Sorry. Do not be afraid of people who aren’t like you. Welcome them in with open arms. Lastly, I must tell you something grave and serious. Long ago, your prophet found an idol in the river which I hoped to reveal to you on my own. Instead, haughtily, the prophet declared a temple for the god and dubbed it the temple of the foreign prophet, fearful that, if someone else discovered the idol, they might be free to learn for themselves the idol’s true nature. Many more idols I sent to you, and many more heresies he committed. I even sent you my prophet, and he consigned her to the temple to silence her. I hereby command you to strike the jewels from the crowns of this temple, and all temples in the city, and to let all men and women enter freely. Henceforth the temple shall not be the temple of the foreign prophet, but the temple of peace and love, and its got to be like a cool open space where you can do art and like express yourself, and its no big deal if you get high there, you know? And maybe you can do music there and stuff.”

J: The column of water bloomed outwards into a cascade of rings, and lifted off into the sky, before recombining before the eyes of a dumbstruck audience into another titanic bird. Sapphire soared gleefully around the city as the people cheered, flooding the streets to tear loose the jewels from the arches. The prophet panted for air, trembling and bitterly cold. The people who lived on the cities edge freely entered the town, weaving in and out of the temples and homes which they had not been allowed to enter with cheers of “Peace and Love!” In the temple of the foreign prophet, a craftsman brought a ladder that could reach into the chimney spout, urging people to climb up and, as the river god commanded, get high.
P: “No…no…“It’s all…it’s all ruined. The gods…the gods are…the gods are fleeing the city. “You did this. You and that foreign prophet. You’ve…you’ve killed my city.”
J: He pulled out a dagger and started to walk towards me before a child, his face bruised, flung a rock at his face. His mother picked another one up, and threw it at him.
P: “How dare you!”
J: He coughed up blood.
P: “How dare you do this to me!”
J: An arrow landed near him. Three hunters, riding on the backs of wild looking horses, sped down the street, preparing to chase him out of town. A crowd of people followed, shouting “Kill the prophet” and “Peace and love!” in a bloody roar. He tripped and stumbled, trying to escape. Two of the hunters grabbed him by his arms, and dragged him away from the town, letting his feet graze the sand of the riverbank. He kicked and screamed and struggled. People who’d been sleeping in their beds through the ordeal looked out with horror at the streets below as the jewels that adorned their houses were chipped away.

Sapphire flew over my head one last time, spinning in a mesmerizing dance, before tearing loose from the river water and letting herself softly glide back to the ground. She looked at me, smiling as she landed, before she looked around and saw a group of people storming the inside of one of the tall clay houses, pulling a woman out into the streets. Her smile faded.
S: “Where did the prophet go?”
J: I didn’t know how to tell her. I didn’t want to. Staring blankly off at the river, she shook her head.
S: “I thought…I thought that…”
J: Her words were interuppted by a loud crash from the distance, as blacksmiths took their hammers to the temple of the God of Wealth. A team of men carried some of the idols that had fallen out of favor to the river.
S: “Let’s just go.”
J: “Sapphire...I…”
S: “Don’t. Come on. (muttering) Fucking bird...”