The Zeno-Socrates dialogs
Chapter 1
By Exia, a servant in Zeno's house and future grandmother to Eudoxus of Cnidus.
The setting is a stone and wood building. It is surrounded by a broken circle of olive trees. Inside the walls is mainly open ceiling, with some side areas where someone can sleep and where a wall filled with scrawls in chalk can be kept dry.
In the middle of this series of open rooms is a small pool which drains the room and in which some small carp swim, some of which are periodically dinner fixed in a kitchen area off to one side. The furniture shows that the owner is moderately well off. A sundial marks the passage of the day, it shows XII, it is about noon.
A young, athletic 19 year old saunters through the front door without knocking and flops on a couch. He sees an "old man", perhaps in his mid 50's with his head on his crossed arms, a piece of chalk still clasped in one hand. The writings on the wall are inscrutable. The man lifts his head slightly, exposing a red rimmed eye from either over drinking or perhaps staying up all night writing on the wall by a tallow (there are neither electrical wires, lights, or electricity other than the Egyptian battery on one of the tables and the occasional bolt of lightning.
"What's shaking Z?" the young man asks. "You don't look so good."
"I'm depressed."
"Depressed? Your in the Greek revival, man! We rule the world and probably will for a million years. Science is at its peak for all time and you're one of the great scientists of our age. The world is your oyster...I need to write that down." This last part he mumbles to himself. Socrates pulls out a small, flat stone and makes some marks on it with a stylus. "I know, me and some friends are going to the cheerleader tryouts for the Olympics. You should come. We are going to try to find some not so vestigial not virgins to play with."
"You'd best be careful Socrates. Those girls come from good families. If you don't watch yourself you or one of your friends are going to find yourself with a cup of poisoned wine in your hand."
"Ooooo, I'm so scared. So what's wrong Z?"
"I just invented non-linear time."
"Wow," the younger says looking at the hour glass. "What's non-linear time?"
At this point a woman, perhaps half the age of either of the men walks in with a tray of fruit.
"Hey," says Socrates, "who do you have to sleep with to get a drink around here?"
"Get the young man some water please," Z asks the woman who leaves with a glare at Socrates.
"I'll bet she spits in my water."
"You should treat her with respect."
"Huh! I'm going to write that you are gay when I put together your biography."
"Don't do me any favors." Z clearly doesn't see Socrates as finishing anything.
"Anyway, you should be excited. Inventing things can make you famous!"
"No one will know about it after I die. I'm the first physicist and I don't know I want to burden anyone else with it. When I die, these scriblings," he indicates the wall, "will wear away and there will be nothing to discourage those who come after me."
"You should learn how to use a stylus," Socrates says brandishing his long writing implement. "They, with a little Egyptian Papyrus, are all the rage, you can make whatever you say last forever!"
"I'm not into that new-fangled technology. I will stick to my wall and chalk and let those who would make something of my work do with it as they would."
"Well, tell me about it." Z is thinking to himself that Papyrus is over 1000 years old.
"Do you think you could make heads or tails of what is written there?" Zeno (for that is his name) asks the young man. "It is calculus and won't be fully invented for hundreds of years."
"Maybe you could just give me an idea of what it is and that way people will know you got there first."
"You don't want to know what it is, it is just depressing. It means there is no apparent purpose to life or the universe. He extends his arm to the room around them and the sky above."
"Oh don't worry, life has meaning. Come to the cheerleader tryouts and you'll see."
"No thank you, Socrates. I'll leave it to you to figure out what the meaning of existence is." Zeno says this with exasperation, but Socrates gets out his pad and scribbles a note to himself nonetheless.‘Figure out reasons for existence.’
End of Chapter 1
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