Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

Before I could formulate an answer, I felt two materializations and Dwendra marched back in with Tom.

Of course the others were shocked by Tom’s appearance. It didn’t help he was dressed in dirty rags. I later discovered he’d been sneaking around sephir Quandaric trying to find a way to stow away on an XT starship.

“This is Tom,” said Dwendra. “He’s from an isolated group who’ve preserved knowledge about Yoho’s avatar most people don’t have.”

“Er, hi,” said Tom, sitting down. “So what do you want to know?”

“You think there’s anything you can tell us that we haven’t already heard?” asked the old priest.

“Another boyfriend?” asked Frawnnil. “And you managed to get him through the time warp and out of Nuhar Zorg’s palace and he just happened to be waiting outside.”

“I’m not her boyfriend,” said Tom. “I’m not sure what you’ve heard about Yoho’s avatar.”

“Perhaps we can concentrate on things they have problems with,” I said, “or we’ll be here forever.”

“The first thing you need to understand,” said Tom, “is a lot of people have been turned against Yoho’s avatar and Winemakerism because those who claimed to follow him have misinterpreted his teachings or didn’t know them very well or something. Some just claimed to follow him while not really doing so, the false prophet Nuhar being a prime example of that. Bits of other religions have been incorporated into Winemakerism, such as observing the birthday of the sun god on the winter solstice, and much of your Scripture’s ignored, although Yoho’s avatar told his followers to obey it. False doctrines have been passed down through many generations of those who claimed to follow Yoho’s avatar.”

“But you know the truth?” asked Frawnnil, sarcastically.

“My ancestors turned against false doctrines and went to great lengths to restore their religious practices to what was taught in scripture.”

Tom proceeded to go into a detailed account of Yoho’s avatar’s life and teachings. I’d always imagined Yoho’s avatar as a bearded, faharni man standing alone among the glowing, radioactive ruins of a great city with many towers of metal, ceramics, polymers and geodeserines, which had been horribly burnt and twisted by nuclear explosions. Tom painted a totally different picture of a man with friends, family and followers who lived in a low tech community that had never had advanced technology and followed a religion similar to early Yohoism (the sort Tianamet had practiced). This was basically what was recorded in Winemaker scripture so I won’t bother to record the details here. Of course, the Yohoists pointed out there were serious logistical problems with this but Tom argued these could be explained by miracles, proving Yoho’s power and his avatar’s authenticity. Tom claimed Yoho’s avatar may well have been born in a low tech society in order that the miracles couldn’t be explained by technology.

“Or it could just be somebody got tech from the advanced civilization or maybe from XT’s,” said Frawnnil.

“That’s so difficult and unlikely as to still constitute a miracle,” said Tom.

“You claim some of Yoho’s avatar’s followers left Earth and managed to spread his teachings even to Midbar, although there’s no reliable reports of human starships arriving since the Landing,” said Frawnnil. “Presumably starships could have left tech in this low tech community there’s no record of.”

What I’d heard was some anavim, including Yoho’s avatar himself, had teleported to other sephirot to spread his teachings. Some of those sephirot had starships which allowed the message to be spread to other planets, they also took some anavim with them who could travel to different sephirot of those planets.

Dwendra was squirming around, clearly uncomfortable about this.

“This low tech community didn’t get many visits by starships,” said Tom, “so that’s still very unlikely.”

“Or it didn’t really happen at all,” sneered Frawnnil, sensing a serious flaw in Tom’s story.

“So if it’s impossible it didn’t happen,” said Tom, “and if it’s possible it wasn’t a miracle, the atheist’s heads-I-win-tails-you-lose argument.”

“What?” asked Frawnnil.

“My people,” said Tom, “used to use coins with a picture of the head of a leader on one side and something else on the other, which was referred to as ‘tails’.”

The other young priests and the nibeyah Holy Woman sniggered at that.

“They sometimes made decisions or betted on which side of the coin would be up when it landed after being tossed in the air. ‘Heads-I-win-tails-you-lose’ became an expression for an unfair situation where both options somehow gave victory to the same person. You know the way Nuharas say Nuhar was the last psychic so his teachings override those of earlier prophets but they dismiss any subsequent prophets because there can’t have been later psychics, in spite of good evidence to the contrary. Atheists, people who didn’t believe in any gods or paranormal, would argue there was no evidence of gods and then find arguments to dismiss any evidence that was presented. Of course, when psychic powers and parallel universes were proven to exist, atheism became a clearly absurd position and died out. You’re not atheists are you? You believe in Kindras’s miracles for example?”

“I think Dwendra has something to say,” said the old priest.

“Didn’t some people from our ancestor’s civilization escape to Yoho’s avatars land?” Dwendra asked.

I’d heard anavim who were living in Binah at the time of the nuclear war had teleported to other Earth sephirot.

“That happened about thirteen thousand years before Yoho’s avatar was born,” said Tom. “Even if technology had survived and was used to create Yoho’s avatar or perform his miracles, it would still have been so unlikely as to be a miracle.”

“There’s always time travel,” smirked Frawnnil.

“I’ve witnessed time travel related miracles,” said Dwendra. “Also thirteen thousand years is a very long way to travel through time.”

“Of course you have,” said Frawnnil.

“She’s shown me things I’m bound to keep secret,” said the old priest, “that proves she’s traveled through time. I can read her mind, of course, but that still leaves the possibility she’s mistaken or deluded but I know that isn’t the case.”

“What’s very important, that even many Winemakers don’t realize,” said Tom, “is Yoho’s avatar practices the religion of his people and insisted on following their scriptures. There were some people who claimed to be this religion who added their own teachings to the scriptures, much as the Book of Scholars does. He was very critical of such people and said the Scriptures should be the only guide.”