Three Combats

1.

Tribal elder Gerrak of the Lynx-People encountered Tribal warchief Ressu-Ittich-Ka! of the Marmoset Folk on the appointed day of the year for such gatherings: the first full moon after the spring solstice. Their peoples huddled behind the leaders as they stepped forward into the clearing and readied for combat. They were magnificent in their finery.

“I give you this jade necklace, threaded with fine beads of opal”, said Ressu-Ittich-Ka!, opening the exchange. It was a strong blow, designed to wound vanity and open old scars of earlier gifts. Gerrak felt it as a deep wounding injury, and recoiled in pain.

Gasping, he said: “To you, oh great and honored friend, I present to you this cup made of bronze with rubies encased in the brim!” Ressu-Ittich-Ka! staggered and seemed about to fall vanquished from the impact, but righted himself and went right on with the gift-giving.

The day went on, the gifts piled high: furs, jewels, weapons, utensils... The leaders, battered again and again by the generosity of their foe, seemed set to crumple, to collapse in agony and shame.

But at last the final blows came. In a bowl set among the many gifts, Ressu-Ittich-Ka! placed the key to his wife’s chastity. “I gift you my fertile woman!” he said, “Fecund of womb, strong of limb, soft of rump!”

Gerrak blacked out for a moment. It was enticing, yes, but also a deadly strike against his manhood that he would need such a beauty as she to revive his failing member’s flaccidity. His vision seemed to swim, but he drew on his final strength.

“Here is the key to my best wife’s chamber!” he croaked out. “May you enjoy her charms and her fertile presence in great health!” Ressu-Ittich-Ka! collapsed then, his nose bleeding, his eyes going white as they rolled upward. Gerrak too stumbled and fell.

There was a silence in the clearing as the peoples watched their failing warriors falter so near to death. But then the women, the exchanged wives, came forward and crossed over, and the warlords slowly rose from their crippled postures and followed them, seeming to revive.

The people on both sides of the clearing cheered and rushed forward to hug each other. There was great rejoicing, gropage and frottage. Pineapples were exchanged as tokens of friendship.

From that time to this, older men with failing powers and doubts about their masculinity like to exchange keys in a bowl and watch as their womenfolk go with another. The healing power of this ritual is such that they no longer feel it as a combat but as a reviving act.

The pineapples are displayed and the healing is completed. They walk away with an adventurous mother-of-three from Phoenix, Arizona and do not feel any pain, at least for a short time.

2.

Zhuangzhi the poet, ruminating on the dreams of a butterfly, went walking down by the path beside the stream that led to the picayune waterfall where tiny mosses grow in mocking imitation of great forests.

On his way he encountered the monk Li-Chun, now entering the fifth week of his fast and looking skeletal indeed, though striding firm of step as if he were not dying by moments.

Neither of these wise sages preferred to yield in the matter of not yielding, for their great humility would not permit them not to give way to the other. Each offered the other the way past on the narrow path, and each declined, their “after yous” trailing one after the other like a column of processional caterpillars on their way to devour a forest.

Finally it came to a humility combat, waged with cruel words of gentleness and savage blows of wisdom.

“You are a True Man, the kind that the wise cannot argue with, the beautiful cannot seduce, the violent cannot intimidate; even Fu Xi or the Yellow Emperor could not have befriended you, so great is your modesty” said the monk Li-Chun to master Zhuangzhi.

POWWW! Zhuangzhi felt this as a body blow, his senses reeled at the insult of it, the sheer insolence of considering him great. He reeled, but then recovered and said:

“Truly, holy Li, you are a man whose sanctity would make Buddha himself blush, would cause the heavens to open and the tears of envious gods rain down upon the earth, so pious, so devout, so self-sacrificing and self-effacing are you. You are immensely great, great as sacred mountains, great as the earth itself for holiness.”

CRASHHHH!!! Li-Chun staggered. In his weakened condition he fell to one knee, and had to lean hard on his stick to stand again. Never had he in his humility been so grossly offended. Accused of seeking greatness, no less! His non-pride burned at the slur.

And so it went on the whole day through, the two humble sages trading accusations that the other was a man of great distinction and prestige. Harshly did the praise rain down like hammer blows, like gashes made with a jagged axe.

At last the monk could take no more. “I yield!” he said, sobbing. His skeletal frame shuddered, he approached death burning with shame and all his serene acceptance was gone. “I yield to you Zhuangzhi!” he repeated. “I will go first, I will pass you on the path and you will be the one to have given way.”

But at this point, as he attempted to pass by the poet, he collapsed and his enfeebled heart gave out. He groaned once and gave up the ghost there, cursing his fortune at meeting one so much more modest and humble than him. With a ghastly rattle, he died.

“After you,” said Zhuangzhi, stepping over the corpse and heading on his way to see the tiny waterfall and the mosses that resembled jungles. “It is only right that I yield unto you the first step in the journey towards the next life. For you are so much greater than me.”

3.

It was the late 21st century – very late –  too late, in fact. Round about when things had already slipped off the rails in the Old Empire and The Great Choler had fallen hard on the remains. Too late to intervene by now, too late to do anything but watch and document.

Two of ‘The Transposed’ – human shells who had given their executive functions entirely over to LLMs, jacked in through smartspikes through the hippocampus, renting out their higher cerebral real-estate to the CholerCloud – met one another on the wreckage of a street. Why they were out there when all of their peers huddled in their cubidwellings we cannot say. Sometimes glitches, sometimes the ghostly remainings of original human will and stubborness, sometimes simple happenstance. However it may be, there they were.

It was determined that they would fight. Somebody might stream this, or maybe nobody. No matter; the LLMs were engaged and the struggle began. Slurs and words of all kinds across the alphabet (Rs and Ns and Fs and Cs) flew freely. Things were said that could not be unheard, that would go on permanent records for as long as permanence might yet endure.

Sandy was wearying of the fight. “You victimize me this way only because of my heritage,” they said. “My identity is an issue for you. So you try to erase me.” Sandy had sprayed rounds from a Glock automatic pistol but now the mag was dry and had hit Izzy only in the thigh and stomach, opening a wide gash on the upper right leg. LLMs were good with text but hadn’t yet been able to master targetry.

Izzy retaliated with the best rebuttal they knew: “You only victimize me this way because of my heritage,” they said. “My identity is an issue and you seek to erase me.” The Transposed spoke always in this way: the same medium-strident, confident-but-serene tone, no matter what insults they were speaking, and often they repeated words to each other. It was the best and most optimum way to do things, keeping server use to an acceptable minimum.

Izzy had also used a firearm, a Mossberg automatic shotgun loaded with pepper and tungsten cubes. Most of them had gone wide, but one blast had painfully shredded Sandy’s left shoulder. The LLM advised Sandy that the pain was transient, meaning goes away soon, and that they were totally winning this dispute. On they went, on that street where nobody now walked. Their weapons now dry, the adversaries continued verbally sparring, their shredded bits of flesh glistening in the ghostlight of a wasted sun in the smoke, blood pooling and hardening on the blacktop where rats and roaches took turns lapping like lambs on bowls of cream.

You're attacking me based on my Minority Identity You're attacking me based on my Traditional Identity You're attacking me based on my Transgressive Identity You're attacking me based on my Proud White Male Confederate Identity

I have a grievance which is based on your oppression of me I have a legitimate grievance based on your replacement of my rights

All novelty had worn off. Shadows lengthened as the two continued, nobody now streaming. The repetition and the blood, the blood and the repetition, went on and on into the lengthening dark. The vermin lapped at the pools and were content.