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Ellen Bonnifield
Paul Bonnifield
Jodi Foy Buchan
Judith Carol Day
Tony Crawford
Kathleen Guler
John Grassby
Harriet Freiberger
Karen Leslee
Edith Lynn Hornik Beer
Graydon D Hubbard
Michala Miller
Joyce Phillips
Cesare Rosati
Sandra Sherrod
William D. Skees
Bill Stocks
Susan de Wardt
Bonnie McGee
Marian Tolles
Glen Poulter
Tina Weintraub
Robert Howe
Todd Kelly

John Grassby has practiced law in Steamboat for over 30 years. He was born in Calcutta, India, and grew up in Mexico City. This tri-lingual, tri-cultural background has enabled him to pursue a wide variety of unusual opportunities in international law. In early 2000 he began writing columns and feature pieces for The Denver Post, primarily but not exclusively on international issues. To date sixteen have been published. Two years ago he finished a novel, "Calcutta Sunrise," set in post WWII India, then started a sequel set in Mexico. Recently he put that aside temporarily (he says) to pursue the subject of human origins and likely future scenarios in a third novel, "Link," the prologue of which follows:

©jGrassby, 2005
South Central Iraq, circa 5,000 BC

It had been ninety millennia since the emergence in Africa of the first anatomically modern humans, sixty since the species had been rendered all but extinct by massive volcanic eruptions, twenty since the passing of the Neanderthals, three since the great ice completed its glacial retreat northward. 5,000 kilometers to the northwest, Cro-Magnons had lived, hunted, cared for one another, and created elaborate cave paintings, but their less robust, smaller brained descendants were in decline.

A full moon cycle trek from the great sea, a tribe was camped on the sandy banks of a wide, fast-running river. In eons to come, the then ascendant species would call the great sea, the Persian Gulf; the river, the Tigris; the area, the Fertile Crescent, or simply meso po tamia---land between the rivers.
In front of a domed shelter measuring sixteen hands across and consisting of animal skins stretched over a rough latticework of reeds and branches, a squat, hairy, powerfully built male, a slighter but comparably built female, and two of their offspring sat with their hands extended over a small fire. Other similar shelters and fires defined the boundaries of the camp. Next to most shelters, stacks of meat lay drying on wood racks. Wicket-like covers weighted with mud bricks protected it from animals and carrion birds, but not flies.

Tethered dun-colored onagers---the biblical "wild asses"--- grazed nearby. They stood four feet at the shoulder, putting them and the men almost eye-to-eye. Used as beasts of burden, the time was still far off when the horse, a more easily domesticated species, and one that could carry man as well as his cargo, would replace them. Ragged packs of dogs, goats, sheep, and pigs roamed in and out of the shelters and through the camp at will. Excrement, human and animal alike, was everywhere, but the camp would soon move on.

Unnoticed on the distant horizon, in the direction of the setting sun, a fiery meteor-like arc fell toward earth. At point of impact, a swirling, luminescent cloud began forming. Nothing resembling such a phenomenon had ever before been observed by any member of the tribe, nor told about by any ancestor. It was utterly outside any individual frame of reference and thus failed to register with any individual brain. As the cloud neared, however, its looming presence became impossible to ignore. In a sudden moment of revelation, it caught the attention of the tribal mind and, wordlessly, they left their individual fires to huddle closely together in a half circle, transfixed, watching.

The sun moved toward completion of its daily journey and the dense cloud continued on its path directly toward them, growing larger, swirling faster, glowing brighter. In an eerie silence, communal fascination became communal fear. As the species was already wont to do, they began chattering to ease both the silence and the fear. But when the cloud was a stone's throw away, even the chattering stopped. Small unknowns were always cause for fear. Huge unknowns could only mean disaster.

A young male they called Tarak, at eighteen already fully grown and the tribe's most accomplished hunter and warrior, summoned his courage, grabbed a flint-tipped spear in one hand, a stone ax in the other, and strode forward to defend his people against this encroaching enemy. But there was nothing tangible to either attack or defend against.

Moments later, the cloud's leading edge reached, then enveloped, the camp. It resembled a thick fog, but was harder to see through, and the light suffusing it grew ever more intense. With no prelude, against every expectation, fear vanished. In a state of unprecedented bliss, tribe members felt compelled to lie down, close their eyes, and abandon themselves to extraordinarily soothing feelings of warmth and safety.

Dawn broke the following day. One by one, the tribe members stirred. None had moved from where they had stretched out the previous evening. Their sleep had been both dreamless and longer than ever recalled. The awe was still palpable. But there was more. They were somehow changed. In lieu of the physical discomfort and fear inherent to their everyday lives, a sense of well-being hitherto unknown washed over them in waves. It seemed they were completely different. When they exchanged tentative glances, clearly all had been touched equally. Perhaps most importantly, a sense of profound connection with their world and everything in it replaced their former acute sense of isolation. With distaste leavened by amusement, they began critically examining their rough camp, makeshift shelters, and crude implements and food. A veil had lifted. Their minds were working in ways never before imaginable.

As the inexplicable, breathtaking miracle sank into consciousness, Tarak let out a whoop, then a great belly laugh of pure joy. It was contagious. Soon the entire tribe joined in. Such things had never before happened. It occurred to several in passing that appropriate sacrifices should be made for this gift from the gods, but such practices, driven by age-old fears---the first, if not only, mother of the gods---were already receding into an unfathomable past.

The sun had risen on a new species. Myths of isolation and superstition and fear would, of course, eventually recapture the upper hand. For now, however, anything was possible. Birth pangs of the age of metals, agriculture, the wheel, and writing were imminent. Spontaneous emergence of the fully-formed Sumerian civilization---the planet's first---was now only ten generations in the future.

By then, small bands in areas that would come to be known as the Nile Valley, Northern India, Central Cambodia, and Mexico would have had identical experiences.

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