Arrival
Dadi was born in December, 1973. The fifth day. Everything, after he started screaming, was a blank for several periods where time elapsed and he was zip or zero.
Nothing.
Nothing nothing, in fact. After which, he became aware – again.
His next memory was circumcision. [Inexplicable!] Fortunately he didn’t remember that it hurt like hell, know that hell was painful, and that there was no word that would explain anything meaningful about anything that was different from unrelenting agony.
If Dadi was a fillet – as he came to know the word more than a decade later – he’d been seared.
Like a firebrand.
To the regions over which he had control he was careful to ensure a path, more the river running through it than the trail running around it.
Cold was always the better choice when the other wasn’t. Making circles in pain was a waste of time for everyone. Cold over hot was always the better of two options when there was a choice. Freezing over boiling was dead. Not even a heat.
Jung or Jang, his prebubescent self – a bet each way – offered as a 50/50. If not Jung then possibly Zhang. They were sounds not words. He would have died to have had words to explain his incoherent thoughts.
1. 2. 3. 4. Next?
Dadi didn’t know what was next, but it made sense to think that that if there were two ones, then two threes made six. Deduction on the most basic level.