WEBVTT

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"Practical questions that
bore directly on the village

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and subsistence-level quality
of life, such as for instance,

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where it was the best place to
find a certain kind of cassava

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root, and why were the
migrations of the certain

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species of elk or dik-dik--

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a species which the village
depended for its very life

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on hunting effectively-- more
predictable in the rainy season

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than in the dry season, and why
were certain types of igneous

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rock better for
fashioning sharp edges

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or striking together
to produce fire

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than other types of
igneous rock and so on.

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And then, of course,
subsequently,

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in a rather predictable
trial-and-error heuristic

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evolution, it emerges in the
action of the protasis that

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the child's preternatural
brilliance in fact extends even

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to those questions that are
considered by the village

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supremely important,
in other words,

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almost religious-grade
questions, questions which--

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inserting my friend's
own terminology

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for that of the
analytical younger

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man on the United flight--

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involved not just celebration
or raw IQ, but actual sagacity

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or virtue or wisdom or,
as Coleridge would have

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had it, esemplasy.

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And soon the child
is being called upon

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to adjudicate very complex
and multifaceted conflicts,

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such as if to
gathering-caste villagers

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both happened on the
same breadfruit tree

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at precisely the same time,
and both claim the breadfruit,

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who should get the breadfruit?

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Or for example, if a
wife failed to conceive

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within a certain specified
number of solar cycles,

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did the husband have the right
to banish her altogether?

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Or did his rights extend
only to no longer sharing

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food with her, and
so on and so forth.

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Evidently, the
passenger up ahead

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provided any number of exemplary
questions, some of which

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were very involved and
difficult for either my friend

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or his acquaintance
to reconstruct.

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The point, however, is that
the exceptional child's answers

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to these sorts of questions
were, without fail,

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so ingeniously apposite and
simple and comprehensive and

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fair, that all sides
felt justly treated

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and often the
litigants could not

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understand why they had not
thought of such an obviously

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equitable solution themselves.

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And in short order, a great
many long standing conflicts

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are settled and perennial
social conundrums resolved.

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And by this time,
the entire village

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had come to revere the child
and had collectively decided

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that the child must, in fact, be
a special emissary, or legate,

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or even incarnation of
the primitive dark spirits

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on which their pantheistic
religions primarily based.

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And some of the village's
shaman and midwife castes--

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members of what
would later become

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the new social structure's
professional consultant caste--

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claim that the
child had, in fact,

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come spontaneously
into incarnated form,

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deep in the
circumambient rainforest,

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and have been
suckled and protected

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by divinely mollified Jaguars.

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And that the child's putative
mother and father had,

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in fact, simply stumbled
onto the child while

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out gathering cassava
roots, and were

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lying about it having
been conceived and born

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in the usual protomammalian way.

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And were therefore, of
course also by extension

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lying about their
own legal paternity.

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And after a great deal
of discussion and debate

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the village exarchs
vote to remove the child

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from the parents' custody,
and to make it an,

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as it were, ward or dependent ex
officio of the entire village.

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And to invest the
child with some sort

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of unique, unprecedented,
legal status

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that was neither minor nor
adult, nor member of any caste,

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nor a village exarch nor a
thane, nor a shaman per se,

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but something entirely else.

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And with the
biological "parents"

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granted certain special
rights and privileges

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to compensate them for
their supplantation

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by the village in loco--

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the exarchs, apparently
having come in secret to none

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other than the child
itself to help them

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structure this whole
delicate compromise.

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And they construct for the child
a special sort of raised wicker

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dais or platform in the
precise geometric center

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of the village.

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And they designate certain
extremely rigid and precise

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intervals and arrangements,
whereby once every lunar cycle,

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the villagers can all come
to the village's center

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to line up before
the dais, according

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to certain arcane hierarchies
of caste and familial status,

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and to one by one come before
the seated child with questions

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and disputes for him to
resolve by an ethical fatwa,

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and are in return to compensate
the child for its services

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with an offering of a
plantain or dik-dik haunch,

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or some item of
recognized value.

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Which offering was what the
primitive the complex legal

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arrangement provided
for the child

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to live on and support
himself instead

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of being his alleged
parents quote

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"dependent," close quote."