Wonder Pen — 4. At Professor Edd’s Home

“Amazing, oh my God, this is just amazing!”

A short, 69-year-old man tutted and shook his head while looking at the stick through a microscope. His hair is messy, pink face is covered with thick beard, all silver white. nose is notably narrow and high, like his ancestor Anglo-Saxon.

Professor Edd’s office room is also his personal library, packed with books — — language, history, philosophy, politics, physics, astronomy, occult, all scattered in shelves, sofa, desk. At window, stands a telescope; some dirty broken pots and rocks at the floor, they were bought from a small stand in Kenya when he was working with his students on an anthropology project in the Great Rift Valley, where it is said the natives reported giant foot prints.
Jim travelled his eyes around, then fell on a Terra Cotta Warrior beside, what makes him want to laugh is, the warrior is holding a 50s’ NASA astronaut’s helmet at its right hand.

Professor Edd is inspecting every detail on the stick, as if he is studying an unearth object from Middle Asia. To be exact, southern Mesopotamia!
He could not hold the excitement. “Cuneiform is one of the earliest writing systems, originally created for the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia, the modern Iraq. nowadays, only a few out-and-out archaeologists understand cuneiform, my friend professor Jone K. in Stanford, professor Bret in University of Pennsylvania and…”

“And you, professor Edd,” Jim chimed in.

“Of cause, can’t agree more!” Professor Edd is very proud of being a few human being left in the Morden age, that being able to read such an ancient and impressive language, “tell me, Jimmy boy, How did you get this… stuff?”

Jim then recalled what had happened 24 hours ago, Professor Edd listened carefully, crossing arms and pacing in the office. He walked to the window, looked outside till Jim finished. But there is a thing invoked his interest.
He turned to Jim. “so you just said Darwin found this stick at bedroom, is that right?”

“That is what I said.”

“Well, coming out of nowhere won’t make any sense to a scientist.” Professor Edd walked to book shelf, “to me, it was dropped on the floor, since dog has very sharp sense, I reason right at the same time, Darwin saw it. The most mysterious thing is, Darwin totally neglected the dropper as if there was not even a shadow.”

“The Invisible Man?!”, that truly scared Jim.

Professor Edd raised his arms in the air, declared in proud, “I would believe this stick is not a prank, but something profound! First of all, cuneiform characters is an ancient and lost language, I don’t think there exists other people capable of making sentence with it. Second of all, I would say the engraved words must have something to do with the ancient extraterrestrial civilization! “

Jim was sitting in the couch with Darwin on his lap, both were attracted.
“God sent angels to watch human on earth, these angels are called ‘Watchers’, they have another name ‘Fallen Angel’, because they disobeyed God’s command that, angels shall not marry human. Besides, they taught forbidden knowledge to human like cosmetics, astrology, meteorology, war. There is an angel named Penemue, he taught human how to write with ink and paper, and the secrets of wisdom. It is said from Sumerian old stories that, Penemue had a wonder pen, when you write with it and read it aloud, you will be taken into what you have written immediately!”

Professor Edd stopped there, then Darwin gave a loud bark, seemed to prompt professor to continue — Professor Edd and Jim were amused.

“If that was true, then we can create a NEW WORLD with this — wonder — pen.” Jim socially responses, “I bet Darwin would definitely love it.”

Jim is the top one student in UC Berkeley computer science, compared to sci-fiction, fair tale is not that attractive, at least no enough to dig into even a bit more.

“Then what you are going to do with your NEW World?” Professor Edd made a quirky smile.

Jim searched word in the mind. “I don’t know, it would be a nice place for people, where everyone works for interest instead of wasting time on struggling for living. No hate, no war.”

“Cool! “ Professor Edd puts off book, “come on, let’s have a walk outside.”
He opened a wooden round door — the hobbit-style-like, a short corridor leads them into backyard. Early January is the raining season, Lilac, California vervain, purple needle grass, Oat Grass are all in green, pulsating with life. At the edge, a teak tree strangled in veins and studded with tiny hibiscus blooms. Spring is coming!

“What a beautiful day!” Professor Edd took a deep breath, Intoxicated in the humid chilly air.

They strolled through some scrubbed grass, Professor Edd took out a glass bottle, and carefully flipped an ant into it.

“Don’t get me wrong, Jimmy, I respect all the pioneers for our civilization advancement, but sometimes I was thinking to myself, that how far could we perceive as human being.” He raised this bottle, so that both of them could see the ant cycling inside clearly.

“Ant crawls from bottom to the top, this is called geography; it studies around, decides this world is made of Silicon, this is called Chemistry; by taking a turn round, he learnt a constant number Pi, which is called math;” he continues. “oops, our Captain Cook dropped off from top to the bottom, that is called … “
“Physics!” Jim answered.

Professor Edd took Jim by one shoulder, staring at the ant in bottle, as if looking down at a whole world. “Ants look through the transparent brown Wall, everything turns twisted, fuzzy and brown. Some of them speculate they are living in a small bottle, unfortunately, they got marginalized. This is called theology”

He continues with a satisfied content. “generation by generation, ants have accumulated tons of knowledge. However, all the knowledge points to the bottle-inside. The rest ants finally ended with thinking this little brown bottle is the whole world.”

“Do you think ants can understand human’s A380s engine? They have been living on earth for 140 million years, how long do they need to make gun powder which The Chinese invented around 3000 years ago?”

“What you mean, Professor Edd? They are just — Ant.”

“Then what if we are the ‘ant’?”