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[WP] It’s the year 5000 BC. You have just invented an artifact that will improve people’s lives. You call it “wheel”. But the Union of Lifters is decided to sabotage your creation for the fear of being replaced and lose their livelihood


The air inside the Hall Elevaria was electric with anticipation.

All two hundred of the long stone benches encircling the center of the domed chamber were filled to cracking. Hundreds of men – men with hulking thighs and biceps, monstrous chests and backs, studded with rocky muscle – sat shoulder to shoulder and whispered excitedly to one another, like giddy school girls.

Far above them all, the Trifecta Elevariaei sat in their granite seats. Though ancient, each of the elder Lifters was still thrice larger than the average man. The decades of their toil had won them the highest honor the Lifter’s Guild could bestow, but it had also destroyed their bodies. Each wore a perpetual grimace – a rigor of gritted gums so certain an outcome for a lifelong Lifter, that it had been given a name: The Lifter’s Smile.

Above the trifecta, carved by hand into a marble edifice, the sigil of the Lifter’s Guild – the image of Elevartus The Maximum foisting the flat circle of the globe above his head with arms wider than the Earth itself.

All breaths were bated as the tall stone doors to the chamber slowly opened without fanfare, and the figure of Bruton The Tinkerer walked calmly to the center of the room. In his right hand, he held a long, slack rope, which he pulled along with him, leaving it like a thin tail on the ground in his wake.

Silence lingered as all present waited to see if the rumors were true.

“My brothers!”

Bruton raised his enormous arms above his head and turned slowly left to right, encompassing the entire space with his eyes. Then Bruton lowered his arms and, focusing now only on the trifecta, began to speak, his voice filling the enormous chamber with ease.

“I am known to you all, am I not? The Tinkerer, I am called. It is a title I have born proudly, working tirelessly in the furtherance of our great and honorable craft.”

The crowd muttered in approval. Indeed, many of the men present wore the now ubiquitous wide leather support harness around their waist, of Bruton’s design. All knew of his many advances in their ancient art, and all had benefited in some way from them. That Bruton was respected and had well earned that respect was beyond reproach.

Bruton continued, as though all this had been said aloud.

“I bring you an extraordinary thing.”

With gusto, he turned and gestured toward the still open doors of the chamber with the hand which held the rope.

“Behold!” he exclaimed, “the Wheel!”

With three giant strokes, Bruton pulled the rope taut, and then, with great dramatic flair, hand over enormous hand, he dragged from within the shadowy veil of the open chamber doors a great wagon of enormous size. A dozen giant men pushed the wagon as Bruton pulled. Upon the wagon was a solid granite pillar, laid flat, twenty feet tall and six feet wide.

At first, the audience of Lifters were confused – what, they thought, was so special about a sled? But, quickly, they realized this was no sled. The wood of the wagon rode upon four circular objects. More amazing still, there was no grinding of stone sled against stone floor – only a high pitched creak. That creak filled the space totally, until the wagon came to rest beside Bruton.

Bruton again peered around the room, almost as if brazenly making eye contact with every man there. Eventually, he fixed again on the high Trifecta and broke the amazed silence.

“The simplest solution evaded the best of us. Four circles of stone, two wooden spokes, and a Lifter’s power is expanded beyond imagination!”

Bruton leapt bodily up onto the wagon and laid one hand on the granite pillar and raised the other in an arc to the audience, beckoning them. “What single man would move these edifices? Come to the center and try, brave Lifters!”

Each man in the room balked internally at the challenge. Even at a distance, each could readily see that the pillar could not be lifted without ropes and pullies. Perhaps a dozen men could, with their bear hands, heave it some distance. But no single man could ever hope to budge them, no matter their strength.

Still, Lifters were stubborn and prideful and from the crowd several men rose from their seats and, stretching and pulling at their wrists, swinging their mighty arms to warm the joints of their shoulders, they approached the wagon.

One by one, the men climbed up beside Bruton and, sparing no effort, seemingly heedless of the impossibility of the task, bent down and attempted to lift the pillar. Each man tried until sweat beaded from every pore of their skin. Each failed.

At last, only one man remained, a true giant known as Porton The Heavy. He bent low, placed his super human hands upon the stone, and gave it an exceptional try. He heaved with all of his four hundred pounds of near pure muscle, pushing every fiber of his being into the task.

Bruton’s eyebrows lifted in subtle amazement as the pillar shifted a centimeter.

Porton the Heavy rose up to his full height, his entire body blood red with exertion, tore off his robes, soaked through with sweat, and revealed his herculean abdomen, now pockmarked with horrific bulges. In agony, racked from dozens of hernias, he roared at the room once, and died.

Every man rose from his seat and roared approval. Even the trifecta, in the highest show of respect, their shattered shoulders and elbows screaming in pain, each raised a swollen hand into the air and joined their voices in the harmony of masculinity.

When the tumult died down, four men retrieved Porton’s enormous corpse, wrapped it in a purple silk, and removed it from the wagon.

Bruton said nothing. With somber air, he stepped slowly down from the wagon, moved to it’s far edge, placed his hands upon the wood, and began to push.

The stone wheels creaked to life, at first with uncertain speed, and then with a smoother motion. Again, every man went silent but for the sound of those wheels, as Bruton, singlehandedly pushed the wagon across the great chamber, until at last it came to a slamming stop against the stone wall beneath the Trifecta.

Bruton, breathing heavily, sweating profusely, but proud beyond description, lifted up his head, stood up tall, and, bowed.

A long, troubled silence filled the hall.

For the first time since entering, Bruton was put off balance. He had expected rapturous applause – and had received stony quiet. With less confidence, but still a booming voice, he began.

“My friends, do you see? With these devices, our labors need no longer destroy us! With these devices, our hands are no mere mortal things,” Bruton gestured to the sigil far above, “but the hands of Gods!”

Again, not a voice could be heard in response. Silence thick with foreboding settled onto the huge space, and lingered for what felt like an eternity, until, at last, a clarion voice shattered the spell.

“Heresy!”

High above all, the center Trifectum’s mouth hung open beneath his formidable beard. With incredible effort, he mustered the remains of his shattered body and rose to his feet. The enormity of pain caused by his efforts sent cascades of autonomic quivering through every fiber of his being. For a Trifectum to rise, unassisted, should not have been physically possible, yet all gaped in awe as the impossible was achieved.

At last, the ancient had risen to his fullest height, fully a foot lower than he’d once stood half a century before. A Lifter’s Smile sat with deathly rigor upon the tortured mask of his face. Still, despite his agony, when he spoke, his voice did not betray him, but echoed with baritone authority.

“Heresy!” he declared, once more, with utter finality and total malice – and all in the room understood in an instant what the word signified: a wail; a warning; and, ultimately, a command.

His energy utterly spent, the ancient Trifectum could not control his fall. Eyes wide, he tumbled forward head first over the stone wall in front of him. Every eye in the chamber followed his silent descent. He landed noiselessly in a heap at Bruton’s feet and a ripple of reproach coursed through the crowd, as every man rose in an instant and Bruton at last perceived with clarity his fatal error.

He swallowed a dry mouthful of fear and stood edificial before the boiling crowd. Already, men had slammed shut the enormous chamber doors and closed in upon him in a frothing circle, ready to rend him limb from limb to preserve the pride of their identities.

Wearing a Lifter’s Smile all his own, Bruton steadied himself for the coming onslaught. He gave no thought to pleading for his life. The threat he posed was now laid bare to him. All that was left was to die well.

With stoic pride, he pronounced quietly, “I have made a true thing.”

And they fell upon him.

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