Bathroom Monologue: The Six

One of the popular religious groups in the jail worshipped entities called “the Six.” It was an ancient pantheon, one from the tribal regions. The worshippers didn’t even consider The Six to be gods until the imperial theologians explained the concept to them. To the tribes (and to the prisoners), The Six were merely thieves who carried off land, sea, sky and life from the oppressive creators of the universe. Two thieves carried off land, understandable as the religion was developed before sea-travel explained that oceans weren’t merely oblong lakes. A third thief carried off the sky (considered to be very light despite its size; hence why it floated up there), while a fourth carried all the water, and a fifth carried off life, which she then pumped into everything else. The imperial theologians were perplexed that the worshippers kept reverence for all six thieves despite none of them knowing what the sixth carried off. Theories that he stole the afterlife, stars or fire were all suggested by those same theologians; the tribes didn’t seem to bother about it. The shaman dismissed the sixth stolen item as something to be figured out later. It was only the prisoners who realized this was not a copout; the sixth stolen thing was actually what came later. It was the future. After centuries of scholarly tradition, it took people with nowhere to go and nothing to do to figure it out.