“That’s the economic version of Bigfoot,” Milo said on TV.
And he went around talking about cryptoeconomics and making a lot of rich people mad, until one day two strange things happened. One: A lot of economists (in the employ of big companies run by rich people) got together and said that Milo was full of shit. And then two: Milo was on a private-jet flight when the emergency door by his elbow blew out and popped him out of the plane. A farmer who saw him fall out of a clear blue sky did not see the jet, just this guy in an awesome suit who came down in his wheat field.
The big companies became the resource cartels that almost cannibalized the human race.
There are things out there that certain people don’t want you to learn.
—
Milo had one of those lives where he just couldn’t get ahead. He worked at Subway, and made car payments, and paid rent, and had to buy food and pay the electric bill.
You have to learn a trick or two to live like that. You almost get some money to put aside for school, and the car breaks down. You finally save enough to pay the electric bill, and you get pulled over for having a taillight out.
Milo learned how to use thrift stores and learned how not to have any kids until he got his degree and—
Pow! He had a kid. Happened just like that.
Sometimes the things we learn, Milo noted, don’t help us very much.
—
Sometimes Milo learned simple things that were sort of like poetry.
He was ten years old, and his gramma taught him how to take care of plants.
“You get a rock,” she told him, shuffling around her greenhouse, “and you put it in the dirt beside where the plant sprouts up. And when you go to water the plant, you pour the water over the rock instead of straight into the soil. That way the water sprinkles gently all around inside the pot and doesn’t kick up the soil and disturb the roots.”
“You water the rock,” said Milo.
“You water the rock,” said Gramma.
INDIA, 500 B.C.
Long ago, there was a tiny Indian village called Moosa.
Moosa was not an exciting or remarkable place in any way. In fact, the village and its people had a reputation for lacking any particular shining qualities. They were honest enough, and good enough, but generally not too bright, ambitious, charismatic, or lucky.
It was Milo’s fortune, good or bad, to be born in this place. He did not, predictably, stay there, and the thing that propelled him out into the world was a man named Horsa Chatturjee.
Horsa Chatturjee, true to the spirit of Moosa, was not a scholar or an athlete or a great warrior. He was not an inspiring man in any way. He was a man who fell into a hole and broke his leg.
This was a big, important event for the village.
The local elders had gathered around, and were discussing how the hole had gotten there and why Horsa hadn’t been looking where he was going, when someone suggested they actually lift Horsa out of the hole and carry him someplace where he could be helped. And that voice came from little Milo Raj Ram, who had a habit of offering unwelcome advice to his elders (Milo already suspected that Moosa was not the seat of a future empire. As he stood by and watched the older men treating Horsa Chatturjee’s leg, this suspicion deepened).
“Pull on his leg,” said the eldest, a shirtless old fart with a gray topknot, “until the bone slips back under the skin. Pull until it pops into place. Then pack goat shit around the torn flesh until the bleeding stops.”
Milo was pretty sure that putting goat shit on an open wound was a terrible idea. He tried to say so but was boxed on the ear for his trouble.
He went up a tree to sulk, as boys will do.
While he was up in the tree, three things happened.
One, some voices in his head told him not to mind the old men, who were foolish and stubborn. Milo had been hearing these voices for some time and understood that they were the voices of lives he had lived. He had great respect for them.
Two, he began to feel short of breath. This wasn’t uncommon; he’d been having these little attacks all his life. They usually abated once he quit running around, climbing, or feeling upset.
This time, however, he kept feeling worse and worse, until the world began to swim around and Milo fell out of the tree.
That’s when the third thing happened.
A traveling healer walked into the village.
The healer, a holy man, wore a beard so long it had to be braided into ropes and tied off in six places to his belt.
When Milo fell out of the tree and landed at his feet, the healer frowned and probed at him with a long, beaded stick. Milo stared up at him, blinking and catching his breath. At this same moment, a terrible cry arose from the eldest elder’s hut.
“Aaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaa-aaagaaaaah!”
“What’s that?” asked the healer.
“That’s Horsa Chatturjee,” Milo told him. “The elders put goat shit on his broken leg.”
“Ah,” said the healer. “This must be Moosa.”
By now others had noticed the healer and gathered around.
“I will examine your friend,” offered the healer, “if you like. In exchange for supper.”
“Aiiiii-iiiii-iiiii-iiiii-iiiii-iiiii-iiiii-iiiii-ii!” screamed Horsa Chatturjee.
The healer was fed and made welcome.
—
Milo watched the procedure from outside the hut, peering over the windowsill.
The healer washed away the goat shit, revealing a very red, angry, evil-smelling leg. He burned the wound with a torch, nearly sending Horsa into orbit. Then he knelt at Horsa’s feet and prayed, waving a torch. Milo hunched at the window, enraptured, thinking, This is the way they do things in the big city!
He was still there when the healer shuffled out of the house and said, “Alas, a demon has been at work here. Someone fetch an ax. The leg will have to go.”
They fetched him an ax, and he performed the surgery himself.
After, the healer would accept no payment, taking only the goat that had produced the offending goat shit, saying, “I’m doing you good country people a favor.”
“With a teacher like this,” Milo mused, enraptured, “a diligent student could launch a golden age!” And he swore that when he came of age, he would seek out such a master, if it meant he had to search the whole wide world.
—
The day after his coming-of-age ritual, still wearing his yellow prayer cord, Milo showed up at his parents’ breakfast table and said, “Goodbye. I’m going off into the world to seek knowledge. God knows I won’t find it here.”