The Jub-Jub Tree: A Creation Myth

“The Jub-Jub Tree: A Creation Myth”
A short story

         
          On the seventh day, God rested.
                   
          But He didn’t rest the whole day – nobody ever said that. By two in the afternoon, God had already begun to grow antsy. He was a Type A personality, after all. Slacking wasn’t in His nature.
         
          “Now what?” He asked.
         
          God contemplated His creations of the past week – all twenty-seven thousand, four hundred forty-three billion billion billion billion billion billion billion (to the billionth power) of them. Of these, God most impressed himself with the creation of the concept of Time, because before doing so, He’d never had any means of measuring His efficiency.
         
          He examined the watchband on His wrist. Now He did.
         
          Time was abstract, though, and abstractions were difficult to admire for very long, even for God. Seeking a more concrete, tangible attraction, He found His attention drifting back to a small, primarily sea-covered planet that He had named Earth, in honor of the sphere’s prevailing hues. God had always been a big fan of earth tones, and He thought He had done well in creating this place with so many of them. He stepped back and admired the fledgling world, like an art critic admiring a painting.
         
          The development of life on this planet, however, was progressing quite slowly – too slowly. God grew tired of watching. The problem with this planet – and with all of the planets in this corner of the Universe, for that matter – was the progression of time itself. It moved more slowly here.
         
          This had occurred because, after inventing the concept of Time, God had decided – to amuse Himself – to experiment with it. In one corner of the Universe, God made time pass rapidly. In another, He decreed that it progress at a glacial pace. He soon began to tweak it in other sectors, eventually settling mostly for progressions in between. By the time He had gotten around to setting the celestial clock for the Milky Way and its surrounding galaxies, He was still getting it right. Even God, He figured, was entitled to the notion of trial and error.
         
          So Earth, despite God’s pleasure in creating it, was unfolding a bit dully for Him at the moment. Down below, two naked humans were copulating for the fourteenth time today. How boring, He thought. He turned His attention to a planet far across the universe from Earth – the planet of Cyclodon.
         
          Cyclodon was one of the original planets that God had created, and had likewise been exposed to one of His earliest incarnations of Time, a rather rapid-moving one. Whereas Earth was just into its seventh day now, Cyclodon was already well into its ten thousandth millennium. A millennium would pass on Cyclodon, in fact, in exactly the same amount of time that it took for an Earthling minute to pass. A human could practically blink in the length of a Cyclodonian decade.
         
          As a result of this, the varied species that inhabited Cyclodon had already lived a rich and complex history. Dominant creatures had come and gone hundreds of times here already, their prominent hierarchies and civilizations progressing much the same. God took notice – with some surprise – that one civilization on this planet appeared to have an inordinate amount of staying power, though. They had been present here since the beginning of time, and had presided over their fellow inhabitants now for the last few hundred centuries, with no signs of stopping.
         
          The creatures who established this ongoing, apparently intransient civilization called themselves Profolactites. The Profolactites had succeeded on this planet where all of their rivals had failed – they had devised a way to eat, and to avoid being eaten.
         
          In the beginning of time – which this still was by Earthling standards – eating was what all of survival depended upon in the Universe. In order to live, creatures had to eat. In order for them to die, they had to be eaten. There was no deviation from this pattern. All creatures, big or small, short or tall, whether they had hands or petals or wings or paws, were simply born for these two reasons: to eat and be eaten.
         
          The Profolactites, however, had developed a means to disrupt the living and dying digestion continuum, which is what God entitled this process in His Journal of Creations. God had designed the system as a method of checks and balances, a way to keep the population of all of His creatures under control. It also prevented any particular species from dominating their habitat for too long a period of time, since all organisms were in a constant state of adaptation to enhance their chances of survival. Eventually, any species formerly considered prey to another would evolve and develop traits that would eliminate their chance of being eaten by the former predator, and likewise strengthen their ability to eat other organisms, as well. It was a good system, and it seemed like a fair one, God thought. And it had worked quite well. Until now.
         
          Now, it appeared that the Profolactites had figured out a way around this system. With their exceptionally developed appendixes, they had at last been able to outwit the rival creatures of their planet in the quest for, and their avoidance of being, food. They had, in effect, thrown a wrench into the Cosmic Machine.
         
          God worried now for the first time about these appendixes, these organs that served as reservoirs for the ever-expanding capabilities of Profolactite knowledge and thought. Not by His design, but by sheer coincidence, God recalled that He created Profolactites with almost exactly the same traits and characteristics of those two naked copulating creatures on Earth who called themselves “humans.” The only differences between the two species, in fact, were that unlike Adam and Eve, Profolactites were uniformly tall and thin with stubby green appendages, and they possessed tongues that were decidedly forked in nature.
         
         Other than these few minor variations, though, the two species were identical. Each could walk upright, each could talk, and each was given a heart for circulation, kidneys for excretion, gonads for reproduction, a brain for conscience and morality, and – most notably – an appendix for knowledge, thought, and calculation.
         
         It was the last of these organs, the appendix, which was given a primary role in these two organisms’ survival. It regulated, conducted, and oftentimes overruled the functions of all of their other body parts. It was a great carbon-based computer that ultimately directed all of the species’ actions.
         
          It seemed that almost immediately from the moment of their inception, the Profolactites had set about on enhancing the abilities of their appendixes. Their first leader, a woman by the name of Lucy Firr, had mysteriously risen to power and decreed to her fellow citizens that this organ was the key to their long-term survival, and that they should do everything within their power towards the goal of developing it. As their only purpose for living at this point was digestion – and the subsequent avoidance of being digested – Ms. Firr therein saw her solution.
         
          The Profolactites went right to work, eating everything in sight in a frantic search for some means to enhance the capabilities of their appendixes. With utensils in hand, they dove into the surrounding landscape like refugees at a church picnic, sampling every object they could find, in search of any substance that might provide enriching qualities for their cherished organ. Many Profolactites perished from this venture, either through poisoning, unmitigated constipation, or simple lack of nutrition. Eventually, though, a group of them had discovered another organism that seemed to increase the powers of their appendixes. This organism was called the Jub-Jub Tree.
         
          The Profolactites found that eating the Fruit of the Jub-Jub Tree seemed to magnify the already more than capable abilities of their appendixes. As a result, the citizens who had partaken of the Fruit of the Tree began to behave in astonishing ways. One began to speak in a multitude of foreign tongues, able to even communicate with other species on the planet. A second Profolactite pointed to the stars in the sky and communicated a system of navigation and mapmaking to his neighbors, at last providing a way for them to reliably get from one point to another (they had heretofore been walking around rather aimlessly). A third citizen introduced his fellow Profos (as the Profolactites called themselves for short) to the concept of music. He designed and created a number of woodwind and string instruments for them to play, inscribing musical notes for them to reference.
         
          More innovations followed: the wheel, the alphabet, the concept of zero, literature, drama, chemistry, physics, differential equations, electricity, water power, and even how to program the timer on a video cassette recorder. In a short period of time, the Profos had devised all of these ideas, and hastened to seek how they could apply them to digestion.
         
         Some Profos were skeptical, of course. While most Profolactites had viewed the recent flurry of inventions as an act of genius, others saw them as nothing more than insanity. These Profos argued that the Fruit of the Jub-Jub Tree had poisoned their eaters’ thinking, causing them to concoct what they felt were essentially nonsensical and needless advancements. To appease these naysayers (and more so to frighten future opposition), Lucy Firr ordered an action that was half sacrificial ritual and half scientific experiment – namely, that the first one hundred Profolactites to have eaten from this tree be slaughtered and then split in half, their remains to be dissected. The instructions were quickly carried out, and the remnants of the massacred bodies were examined to determine what exactly the benefits of the Jub-Jub Fruit had been for them. It didn’t take long to figure out.
         
          Upon inspection of the cadavers, it was immediately noted that the dead Profos’ appendixes had expanded to at least three times their normal sizes. In some cases (such as that of the Profo who had determined how to program a VCR), the expansion was nearly ten times the ordinary rate. Clearly, the Fruit of the Jub-Jub had provided some sort of direct sustenance to the organ, and the Profos were now eager to partake of it in an effort to increase their capacities for knowledge and, subsequently, their continuing desire to eat and avoid being eaten.
         
          From that point forward, they descended upon the planet’s Jub-Jub Trees like a swarm of locusts upon a fertile plain. They greedily hoarded the Fruit, snarfing it down, devising new means and methods for which to eat and avoid being eaten. For the former, they developed irrigation, horticulture, agriculture, herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, and varied forms of genetic crossbreeding and botanical engineering. To avoid being eaten, they constructed walls around their cities, created repellant for insects, vaccines for viruses, antibiotics for bacteria, and doused themselves with colognes and perfumes that not even the heartiest of organisms could withstand. In time, they had constructed what was in effect a perfect civilization. With just one problem:
         
          Overpopulation.
         
          It was an inevitable outcome. By so markedly enhancing their abilities to eat, and likewise all but eliminating the likelihood of their being eaten, the Profolactites began to multiply at an alarming rate. They soon covered the planet. To accommodate this population boom, Profo engineers and architects constructed high-rise buildings that nearly scraped the sky. Still, as quickly as these buildings were erected, the residential units within them were already occupied. At last, when the skyscrapers were reaching into the upper levels of the atmosphere, threatening to leave the planet’s biosphere altogether, the Profolactites realized that something needed to be done to finally address their burgeoning numbers. The pattern simply could not continue this way. There wouldn’t be any room remaining for them on Cyclodon.
         
          Even worse, their ever-expanding population required more and more Jub-Jub Tree Fruit to sustain it. Despite their once prodigious bounties, hardly any trees existed now from which fruit still freely hung. The minute any appeared, it was instantly harvested and shipped to a Profo grocer for distribution. Despite genetic manipulation, grafting, crop dusting, and any other number of agricultural techniques employed by the Profos to expand the Tree’s production, it simply couldn’t keep up. There wasn’t enough Jub-Jub Fruit to feed everyone anymore.
         
          As she made this announcement to her people, Lucy Firr smiled coldly. “We are in the midst of a Jub-Jub Fruit shortage,” she told them, “You must now find other means of sustaining yourself.” As she returned to her palace, she opened her pantry door and gazed upon an obscenely expansive warehouse-like room that contained hundreds of thousands of bushels of preserved Jub-Jub Fruit, likely enough to endure until the end of time. “Which is where I intend to be,” she said. She reached out her stubby arm, plucked a piece of fruit from a pallet, and took a bite from it, the sweet succulent texture subtly dispersing through her entire mouth. “Mmm…” she said, swallowing lustfully, “Knowledge.”
         
          Rioting followed Ms. Firr’s speech: in the streets, in the buildings, in everywhere the Profos could be found. “Not enough Jub-Jub Fruit?” they cried, “Something must be done!” Protests ensued; a thirty million member Profo procession marched in circles around Lucy Firr’s palace. She gazed out her window and laughed icily, closing the curtains behind her.
         
          The Profos demanded that something be done – they simply couldn’t go on without their Jub-Jub Fruit. “How,” they implored, “Can we reasonably be expected to live upon vegetables, and grains, and poultry, and creatures of the sea?” It was unfathomable, they said; they had appendixes to sustain, after all. They couldn’t imagine a world without the knowledge their special organs provided them.
         
          They put forth their considerable intellects to solving the task, and at last, a system of rationing was devised – each Profo would receive an allotted amount of Jub-Jub Fruit per week. It was a good idea in theory, but in effect it pleased no one. While an equal share of Jub-Jub Fruit was given to each citizen, no one had the amount to which he or she was accustomed, or desired. Soon, a black market appeared, and illicit Jub-Jub Fruit was being sold and purchased by Profos at exorbitant costs. It enriched the pockets of a growing organized-crime minority, while casting into peril those unfortunate citizens who transacted with it.
         
          A societal structure began to develop from this, consisting of three classes – those who had unlimited access to Jub-Jub Fruit, those who had moderate access to Jub-Jub Fruit, and those who had little to none at all. The former class was much smaller than the other two, and consisted mainly of corrupt citizens with undisclosed – and often questionable – connections to the Profolactite ruler. It was a reciprocal relationship – Lucy Firr made special arrangements to keep this small minority happy, and they in turn responded by keeping the rest of the Profo masses in line, through any means necessary.
         
          This Jub-Jub Fruit-rich minority always made certain to never reveal the connection to their leader, however. Instead, they made a regular display of publicly disdaining her, and claimed that it wasn’t fair that they should have to share any of their Jub-Jub Fruit with the masses. Furthermore, they fabricated a connection to those citizens who received a moderate amount of Jub-Jub fruit by claiming that they shouldn’t have to share any of their Jub-Jub Fruit with less fortunate Profos, either. Inordinately, these citizens – no matter how desperate for Jub-Jub Fruit others less fortunate than them may have been – responded as intended to this ploy. Subsequently, no Profo – regardless of his or her economic status – wanted to share any of his or her Jub-Jub fruit with anyone who had less than him or her. So, instead of resenting the Jub-Jub Fruit-rich for not sharing, most Profos ended up turning their hatred towards the Jub-Jub Fruit-poor, for having to share with them.
         
         This had been the majority’s reaction in most instances, but thankfully, some of the citizens among the masses occasionally saw through the deception. At such times, these Profos recognized and pointed out the greed of the Jub-Jub Fruit-rich class, as well as their leader, for what it was. They rebelled against it, sometimes violently, in an effort to persuade those in control to redistribute the Jub-Jub Fruit more fairly among the remaining members of society. They periodically succeeded, but rarely with any lasting success. Inevitably, the same old inequity would return, and the cycle of rebellion and revolt would continue.
         
          Eventually, at last, the Jub-Jub Fruit-rich decided to stop sharing with their fellow citizens at all. The remaining Profos were therefore left without any Jub-Jub Fruit to eat. They took desperate measures in an effort to continue their intake: most planted miniature Jub-Jub bonsai trees in their tiny indoor skyscraper gardens, from which one or two pieces of mangled, undernourished fruit might appear annually. Still, they wouldn’t share this fruit, no matter how wretched it was, with anyone. If a neighbor or visitor dared to ask them for a bite, they were met with resounding anger, and sometimes violence. It didn’t take long for this lack of goodwill to create an unending animosity between all Profos. Soon, the whole populace was warring amongst themselves, desperate to gain even the smallest, most malformed piece of the fruit of the Jub-Jub Tree, regardless of what it entailed, no matter what happened.
         
         
          God gazed down upon the planet of Cyclodon at this moment, upon the self-exterminating behavior of the Profolactite inhabitants below. He shook His head slowly and sighed. “I knew I shouldn’t have given so much power to their appendixes,” He said.
         
          He breathed in deeply, and with one great exhalation, blew the buildings, the Profos, and all of the other inhabitants of Cyclodon away from the planet, scattering them far and wide across the Universe. They landed in disparate galaxies, all of them needing to devise new means of survival in their future habitats. Individual Profolactites in particular were crestfallen to find themselves in their new locales with no trace of the Jub-Jub Tree whatsoever. They soon adapted, though, and within time, they even became quite happy. It appeared to God that the balance of eating and being eaten had been restored to all of Creation. He was pleased.
         
         And it was good.
         
          Seeing this, God returned His attention to the planet Earth, to those beautiful shades of blue and green and brown that He so admired. At this very moment, having finished copulating, a man named Adam and a woman named Eve walked up to a tree in the middle of a garden there. “This tree wasn’t here before,” Adam mused. No wonder, God thought – it had just blown in from across the Universe. It was a Jub-Jub Tree.
         
          Adam and Eve stared at the tree, transfixed, admiring its fruit. A moment later, each of them cringed; a dull pain had settled in their abdomens.
         
          “What- what’s going on?” they asked one another.
         
          The pain quickly disappeared. Shrugging their shoulders, they focused their attention back upon the Tree.
         
          “I’d stay away from there if I were you,” God said.
         
          They looked up. “Oh, sorry,” said Eve, “It’s just- it’s just so tempting.”
         
          “I know,” said God, nodding. He rolled his eyes. “I know.”
         
          “We can’t even have a little bite?” asked Adam.
         
          “Not even a little bite,” God answered. “This is the Tree of Knowledge. You are forbidden to partake of its fruit.”
         
          “Oh. Okay,” they said, in unison.
         
          A moment passed.
         
          “God?” asked Adam.
         
          “Yes?”
         
          “Do you know what that pain was before? The one we felt in our stomachs?”
         
          “Oh, that,” said God, “I was just making a minor revision, shuffling some things around inside. Don’t worry – it was nothing major.”
         
          “Oh.”
         
         The couple walked away.
         
          God contemplated their newly modified appendixes, all pink and purposeless inside them now. I knew I should have combined thought and conscience in the first place, He thought. After all, they’ll stand a better chance this way. He breathed a deep sigh of relief.
         
         Crisis averted, He figured.
         
         
          As Adam and Eve ambled off to another part of the garden, God noticed a rustling amidst the leaves of the Jub-Jub Tree. “Oh?” He said, “What’s this?” He leaned in more closely to watch.
         
          There, slinking her way slowly down through the boughs of the Tree, was the former Profolactite ruler, Lucy Firr. She wriggled against the bark, scraping away the cosmic dust that had settled upon her during the journey here. She blinked her eyes rapidly, adjusting them to the bright earthling light. In the distance, blurry, she could see the first human beings.
         
         She smiled.