Ugauga
The Ugauga sound echoed through the air.
“Ur, snap out of it!”
“Ur, Ur, please open your eyes! You bastard!”
My mind was slipping away.
***
Ugauga!
Ugauga!
No way.
Cold, hungry, exhausted, smelly, and naked—
Shit! Stop dangling like that. This civilization is completely fucked. It’s so chaotic.
It’s been nine days since I woke up here.
In that time, I’ve figured out three things.
One, this isn’t Korea.
Two, this isn’t the 21st century.
Three, this is probably around 10,000 BC.
The third one I’m pretty confident about. Even if I dozed off watching history documentaries, it’s my hobby. Of course, I didn’t watch all of them. I always fell asleep within five minutes. So I know about five minutes’ worth of knowledge.
The problem is that the knowledge I need right now is exactly that five minutes’ worth.
Anyway, let’s summarize the situation.
I’m Ur now. I had a different name originally, but it started confusing me from the third day, and by the fifth day, I just gave up. After all, no one here would call me by that name.
When I woke up, I was already Ur. My body was Ur’s body, my hands were Ur’s hands. The muscles are no joke. This is really good. I’ll admit it. In my previous life, I registered at the gym for three years and went eight times, but suddenly my back muscles are torn.
The problem is that they don’t give me clothes to wear.
These people wear nothing.
Well, exactly, they just tie a leather strap around their waist. That’s it. That strap isn’t for covering anything. It’s for hanging things. Spears, shells, stone knives. The world’s first utility belt. They have no intention of covering up.
So everywhere you look, it’s dangling.
Both men and women, old and young, just live like that. No one cares. The only one who cares is me. For nine days, I’ve been the only one handling the stares, so my neck is stiff. My lower body is stiff too. Everyone’s bodies are all…
Because I kept staring at the sky, people started worrying about me. Yesterday, an old woman came over and touched my forehead. She seemed to be asking if I had a fever. No, I was just a civilized person.
And the smell.
This is really beyond words.
On the first day, I threw up. I really threw up. Human smell, animal smell, animal shit smell, flies tangled in animal shit, and the smell of twenty-eight people who hadn’t bathed in days.
But there’s something strange.
On the ninth day, today, that smell isn’t coming out.
Exactly, it’s there but not bothersome. Human sense of smell gives up after a few days. If they can’t win, they evolve to not smell it. I wonder if this was the secret to human survival.
Instead, now something else is bothering me.
I’m hungry.
And water is chasing me.
***
This is a water shortage.
At first, I thought it was just a flood. But this water isn’t receding.
For nine days, we’ve been walking uphill. Yesterday’s short valley is now a lake this morning. At first, I thought it was a flood.
This is that thing, right? After the ice age, ice melted and sea levels rose. Why is it so cold, fuck. The five minutes of documentary knowledge here is hitting me. But even if I know, what can I do? I’m not Noah, no ark, not even panties.
Our group is twenty-eight people.
And there are nine of those creatures.
*
I have to tell you about the first time I saw them.
It was the day I woke up. I was sitting there dazed when the ground shook.
It really shook. Like a truck passing by. Then the grass split and a gray mass appeared.
A hippopotamus.
Not just any hippopotamus. A hippopotamus, but bigger than I knew. About one and a half times the size of modern ones. Its shoulders were above my eye level. Later I learned that in this era, hippos were like this. Today’s hippos are the diet version.
I backed away as fast as I’ve ever done in my life.
I know hippos are dangerous animals. The meme that hippos kill more people in Africa than lions has been seen by anyone who browsed the internet. More than lions.
One of those was walking toward me.
I said “help me” in Korean.
At that moment, an old man next to me poked me. It was an elder with only two front teeth. I later learned his name was Mar.
The elder grabbed my hand and pressed it to the hippopotamus’s neck.
I thought I was going to die.
But I didn’t.
The hippopotamus closed its eyes.
That huge thing, which could chew up a person like yawning, kept its eyes half-closed and stood still when my hand touched it.
The elder gave me a sharp shell in my hand. Then pointed to the hippopotamus’s back.
There were ticks stuck there. Small things the size of fingernails were embedded between the leather folds, sucking blood.
Ah, I understood.
I was the one responsible for scratching their backs.
*
The system of this group is like this.
One person, one beast. They’re paired.
People remove ticks from the beasts’ backs. Sweep away fly eggs on their eyes. Pull out stones from between their claws. Hippos have thick necks and short legs, so they can’t reach their own backs. That’s why people are needed.
In return, the hippos don’t step on people.
This is like the crocodile and the crocodile bird. The one we learned in elementary school. Symbiosis.
But when I actually tried it, it was a bit different.
In textbooks, it looks like a contract, but in reality, it’s not a contract.
My assigned hippopotamus’s name is Umba. This name wasn’t made by me; it’s what it’s called originally. Umba was born when Ur was a baby, I think. So he and Ur grew up together.
The problem is that it’s not Ur who came here, but me.
On the third day, I missed removing the ticks once.
That evening, Umba didn’t come to me.
The group members all slept next to their own beasts, but I slept alone. I woke up in the morning from the cold. If I slept next to the hippopotamus, it would be really warm, but that day there was no warmth.
The next morning, I scratched Umba’s back twice as much as usual.
Umba finally closed its eyes.
Shit, what the hell is this kid. Did it get angry?
That day, I learned one rule of this world.
Relationships don’t work with words here. They work with not missing it every morning.
That’s what “to worship” means here.
On the fifth night, they came.
The sound of laughter started first. A giggling, mocking human sound.
Hyenas.
Not the cute, dumb ones from Disney cartoons, but the real deal. Shoulders higher than their hips, jaws that crush like breaking a bean with a thighbone. About ten were seen, but they said they come in double the number that are visible.
I grabbed a spear.
After grabbing it, I realized I don’t know how to use a spear. I know how to ride a delivery motorcycle, but I can’t throw a spear.
But no one grabbed a spear.
The ground shook.
Nine of them stood up.
They surrounded the sleeping area of the people, pressed their rumps together, and put their heads outward. It wasn’t anyone who told them to. They just did it.
That was their formation to protect their own young.
So, they had long ago placed us inside their own young group.
Umba opened its mouth.
The lower jaw dropped to the ground. The throat opened like a red cave. Two lower teeth the size of my forearm were revealed white in the darkness.
And it made a sound.
It wasn’t barking or crying. It was a sound rolling from its belly. The valley echoed the sound back.
The hyenas stopped.
One turned sideways two steps. Looking for a gap. Toward the baby hippopotamus.
The mother closed the distance in three steps and whipped its head sideways. The hyena flew like a straw and hit a rock.
The rest backed away.
I put down the spear. My hand was shaking, so I couldn’t hold it.
Then I crawled next to Umba and pressed my forehead to its thick side.
Brother.
From now on, I’ll scratch your back every day. Twice a day, morning and evening. I’ll dry up the tick babies.
Please spare me, brother.
On the ninth day, the real crisis came.
There was no water.
This is the curse of this group. We’re running away from water, but there’s no water on the way.
Hippos can’t last long without water. Without fur on their skin, they crack when they dry. When they crack, flies come in, and when flies come in, they rot.
Running away from water and dying from lack of water. What a twisted scenario.
That afternoon, the baby sat down.
His name is Coco. Born last autumn, he still can’t get out from under his mother’s belly and dips his whole body in puddles when he sees them. He’s the smallest and the biggest problem among our nine.
Sitting in the middle of the gravel field, his back was raised white.
The mother was pushing the baby with her nose from the side. The big one looked helpless, and the trembling of its back showed it.
I opened the water skin.
Two deer hides. The entire water for twenty-eight people in our group for today.
Someone called me from behind. I pretended not to hear.
The first one I poured on Coco’s back. When water touched it, the white turned blackish red. The second I received in my palm and applied to the back of the ear, the eye area, and the folded leg. That was the first place to crack. This I learned while removing ticks for nine days.
When the water ran out, Coco stood up.
And pushed me.
With its blunt nose tip, very carefully, just enough to knock over a person.
I tumbled on the gravel field, my back aching from the stones, but I laughed.
You have to show them well, so that’s why. Pay it back.
That evening, Elder Mar pulled me inside the adults’ seating area.
What that meant here was that the outer seats were for kids and those who hadn’t yet taken beasts. The inner was the adult seats. Promotion.
“Today, you gave the entire group’s water to one beast.”
“…Yes.”
“If you can’t find water tomorrow, it’s your fault.”
“Yes.”
“If you find it, it’s your merit.”
Elder Mar revealed his two front teeth and smiled.
“Your beast pushed you. That means you paid the price. Beasts don’t have debts. Only humans do.”
At that moment, I first thought this elder was cool.
And I learned one more thing.
There is no “thank you” in this language.
It’s funny that the group’s language has six water names and four mud names. Drinking water, bathing water, rotten water, flowing water, water from the sky, water from the ground. But no word for “thank you.”
When I asked why, the elder looked at me disdainfully.
“If you’re grateful, what do you do? Why talk?”
…It was the right answer, so I couldn’t refute it.
People’s words here are roughly understandable. Because my body is Ur’s body, my ears pick it up. But there’s something I don’t understand with my head. Things without concepts because there are no words.
“Tomorrow” exists. “Next winter” exists.
“Next year” doesn’t.
These people don’t look that far ahead.
And on the ninth day today, we crossed the ridge.
As soon as we crossed, I stopped walking.
Beyond the ridge was all yellow.
Wheat.
Wild wheat. Knee high, waist high, as far as the eye can see. When the wind blows, that vast field sways to one side and then stands up again.
In the middle of it, one round hill rose. Like a navel.
Where did I see that hill?
In a documentary. It was in the five minutes of knowledge.
A huge stone pillar ruin in some place in Turkey, built before people even started farming. The place called the world’s first temple. What was the name again?
Göbekli Tepe…?
The moment I was about to say that name out loud, Elder Mar reached out and stopped me.
The wheat field was already trampled.
Wider than ours. There were things about twice the size of our hippos’ footprints. There were also ones with only three toe prints.
And something rose above the wheat field.
A mountain of brown fur. On top of it, two curved tusks longer than a person’s height split the sky.
Then another. Another. Twelve. Sixteen.
On the opposite slope, those with flat backs like a wall and two horns in front and back on their noses pushed forward.
Mammoths and woolly rhinos.
Hey, wait a minute.
This isn’t just a place with hippos.
Elder Mar put his own spear on the field. Then looked at me.
“Ur. Put down the spear.”
“…Yes?”
“Those are also the ones carrying beasts.”
Elder Mar’s good eye scanned across the field.
“From now on, everything we do will be seen by the beasts over there.”
At that moment, I didn’t understand.
Now I do.
When a person shows teeth to another person, the animals behind them also agree.
And calming an angry beast is unbelievably difficult.
Then animals fight among themselves, and the primitive guys who are no different from beasts fight, and everyone dies.
We twenty-eight all put our spears on the field and went down. Without anything in our hands, only a waist strap, all dangling.
The most undignified diplomacy in human history.
And that was the first summit in human history. The aftermath was dirty, but.