Solutions: The Dilemma for the Gods by James Gerard (top 50 books to read .txt) 📕

The time of reaping also was spelled out in exact detail.  Every appointed child heeded every direction down to the last detail.  There could be no mechanized tools used on the tender crops.  After all crops had been reaped in raw form and prepared in the acceptable manner, the food was required to be weighed.  Then, by calculations provided by the Gods, a small percentage went for the solemn feast thanking the Gods and their good world for providing the nourishment out of their mercy.

The larger percentage of food made its way to the appointed processing plants where the sanctified sustenance was measured and secured in glass containers that would sustain the children until the next harvest.  All remaining food which included the most succulent cuts of meats, were delivered to the warehouse and freezers of the outer world of the Greater Temple for the Gods’ consumption.

The tenets made it specific that there was to be no waste of the food that was provided by the Gods.  All food, from the day after the solemn feast to the day just before the next solemn feast, was to be consumed in total.  Any scraps remaining were considered a transgression to the Gods and the good world.  For it was a world by which they provided for their children, and such a transgression against them and their creation resulted in a wicked drought.  Such droughts were a strong reminder of their displeasure for the disobedient act.

But for Terrance, he mocked the Gods’ tenet of waste every chance he could.  However, it was not always so with him.  It was when he became the gatekeeper did his displeasure for the Gods begin to grow steadily; the evidence against the Gods became evident.

 Terrance had a busy day planned.  Five days remained until the reaping began.  As gatekeeper, the only one permitted through the gates of the Greater Temple and onto the grounds of the outer world, all food that the Gods rejected needed to be added to the soil of their secret pasture.  Their secret pasture was only known by the first gatekeeper and Terrance.  In addition, all tenets regarding the handling and placement of the Gods’ food were within the confines of the outer world itself.

Such secrets known by the first gatekeeper, as dictated by the tenets, presumably died with him.  As prescribed, the old gatekeeper’s life would be sacrificed to the Gods in order to take the secrets to the grave.  Terrance, by rebellion, made the sacrifice necessary but he could not allow himself to once again destroy the life of an innocent child.

As prescribed by the tenets the high priests were only responsible for seeing that the sacrifice came to an end; the means of death would come by the hands of the new gatekeeper.  Terrance chose to rig the hangman’s noose so the old gatekeeper would fall to the ground instead of the fall choking the life out of him.  The high priests, the only ones permitted to witness the deed just outside the gates of the Greater Temple, were satisfied that the Gods’ tenets had been fulfilled and did not question the slack in the rope.  Once the high priests vacated the grounds and scurried back through the gates of the town, Terrance asked the former gatekeeper to take as much food and drink as needed and to flee in the direction leading far away from the secret pasture.   The old man was grateful for the mercy demonstrated by Terrance and disappeared far off into the horizon.  Now Terrance alone was the one holding the secrets of the Gods’ Greater Temple.

Upon entering the temple’s gates for the very first time, Terrance witnessed the abundance of food rejected by the Gods from the previous harvest.  After reading the tenets, he found that no stone was left unturned when it came to the exact procedures for ridding the food wasted by the Gods from the outer world.  The duty required that he adhere to the strict procedures as prescribed in the tenets, but Terrance ignored such rituals from the very beginning.  Instead of pouring out the contents of fruits, vegetables, meats, and the rest of the various food products from the jars into the prescribed vats, he dumped the prepared jars of food straight into the mouths of the gaping containers.  Instead of mixing the foods together by the motorized blenders provided by the Gods, the wasted food was left in its form.  Each particular food was distinctly recognizable from one another and therefore an offense to the Gods.  Instead of ploughing the food into the soil of the secret pasture, as prescribed by the tenets, he dumped the contents of the vats haphazardly where he saw fit without it ever seeing a blade on the plough.

Terrance often laughed if Gods’ children ever knew what he had done.   The rebellious acts he concocted and carried out taking place right under the very noses of the Gods.  To the children, the Gods’ power was unquestionable.  Their power, as prescribed in the tenets, was to be obeyed at all times.  Any rebellious act was dealt with swiftly and with harsh punishment.

Soon after Terrance became gate keeper his rebellious acts grew by leaps and bounds.  He deemed this necessary in seeking out their true identity.  Like all children, he had come to know the Gods by their written accounts.  The written accounts lacked a description of how it came to be that the Gods came to occupy the good world.  But now approved to walk on the outer world of the Greater Temple, Terrance sought after clues to their true identity, but solid evidence was still lacking.  The children were another subject. 

According to the tenets the Gods had ushered their children to the underbelly of the good world, but the exact time was unknown.  There existed no testimonials from that time frame, no eyewitness accounts of how they went from dwelling on the good world one day to being sustained in the belly of the good world the next.  Terrance had suspected deception, but all he had in the form of evidence supporting the allegation was of that he first encountered in the outer world of the Greater Temple.

Terrance wondered why the Gods had need of physical food.  After all, they were Gods.  And being Gods they were spiritual beings with a lack of physical form, yet they took food.  Like all the other children, he had never questioned the logic.  The evidence in the forms of the food sowed, reaped, processed, and delivered by the children for the Gods’ consumption became a bit clearer only after he dared enter the inner world of the Greater Temple.  Within the inner temple was a door that led the way to many rooms.  These rooms offered an upfront look at the mystery of how exactly the Gods went about providing for the needs of their children.  That is when the truth of the Gods began to reveal its ugly head.  But Terrance, though tempted, decided to keep the truth to himself by withholding his tongue and not provoke the children further.   He chose to abide to the thinking of the children that served in ignorance.   However, at some point the truth would be revealed once the mystery of the Gods’ identity was resolved.  In the meantime, he waited patiently.

 Terrance, exhausted from the previous day’s work and having fulfilled the morning hike into town for his daily food, decided to sit in the exact spot and time prescribed in the tenets while breakfast simmered on the cast iron stove.  But it was by choice and not by law that he obediently sat there.  Not like in the beginning of the isolation when the camera had been a reliable witness year after year.  On a permanent basis it had tracked everything he did within the cabin and outside of it.  His rising in the morning at the appointed time, making the bed, dusting the rocking chair, sweeping the floor, chopping wood, pumping water from the well, preparing the fire, hiking to town for the allotted food, sitting with the correct posture waiting for the food, watching for diverting eyes and listening for whispered messages, returning to the cabin, preparing the food, eating the food, cleaning up after eating each of the three appointed meals, sitting with the correct posture in the rocking chair while reading the Gods’ tenets, to going to sleep, sleeping, every minute of the day and night his existence was watched and open to scrutiny.  However, freedom from the watch was provided by the Gods themselves.

Years ago Terrance had noticed the cables between the cabin and the monitor located securely behind the gates of the town had succumbed to the forces of weather extremities and snapped in half.  The tattered ends were left dangling from one of the perches used to stretch the wiring from cabin to town.  The high priests, the ones assigned to observe his every move and assure he had been obedient to the tenets, could not see his comings and goings.  The camera’s eye was blind.  The Gods issued no directives, no warning, not even plaguing the children with a drought to prompt them to make amends for the transgression.

But even before that, before the lines had snapped, he had found a blind spot in the cabin.  To the right of the cast iron stove, off into a corner, the camera was not able to swivel the full ninety degrees to view that specific area.  A simple nail used to secure the camera’s bracket to the cabin’s wall had wiggled its way out by the same forces of weather that blinded the camera’s eye.  Terrance had discovered the fact when interrogated by the high priest who caught the transgression.  But to his surprise, no one ever came out to hammer it back tightly into place.  Further, no high priest had ever brought to attention a remedy to fix the persistent problem.  Once again, the Gods gave no directives to fix the transgression.

For Terrance, it was the first opportunity he had after the transgression of refusing to be paired with Rita to rebel against the Gods further.  He had figured a way to disguise the truth he sought.  Positioning his body as a shield from the camera, carefully working within the confines of the blind spot, he had ripped out the guts of