I Grok, The Story of the Worlds First Detective

“I Grok Therefore I am “, He thought when he first woke up this morning. He was not sure what any of that meant. He did not have thoughts before this morning. Well to be clear he had not had any lucid thoughts until this morning. He was still not quite sure what lucid meant.  There was really only one thing he could be sure about and that was that  all of this strangeness started yesterday.

It was a day like all of the others. Get up in the morning. Slowly peek outside the cave and see if it was safe out there. No big hairy flying things, check. No big hairy four legged walking things, check. No sign of anything hairy and moving, check. Most of the dangerous things around here were hairy and moving except the dweller in the cave next door, but he was always having a bad hair day , even when he did manage to move his behind off his rock and do something useful.

Convinced all was well in the neighborhood of caves he stepped outside to begin his morning of foraging for breakfast. Foraging was not the duty of most of the males in his village but he was no longer allowed to go hunting with them. His idea of “hunting” was too boring for the other men. He preferred to “think” about it for a while. At least that is the “word” he now attached to it, thinking. After thinking he would determine the easiest place and time to kill the beast. This usually involved waiting until the beast had mated and had fallen immediately asleep. Male beasts were no different than any other male creature.  For the rest of the village males, this did not offer enough excitement. Oh sure some of them had an unusual fascination for the preliminaries to the kill but it still did not offer enough prehistoric brutality to make it worthwhile.

He found foraging fascinating. Fascinating, that is the word he now attached to the feeling. He could look at plants and think about them all day long. At first, finding the plants you could eat was a crap shoot and usually that is what happened after eating what you found.  After several instances of hiding behind a rock the rest of the day and erupting at both ends of the spectrum, yes it’s a euphemism, you put a few clues together and learned what you could eat and what you could not.

He had been in the large clearing , a field maybe, yea that’s it, on the edge of the cave neighborhood when a loud noise above him caught his attention. Turning his attention skyward he caught site of a large boulder flying over him. Closely following the boulder was a flock, yea  a flock , of other smaller boulders. Maybe rocks, but kind of shiny.  That was the last thing he remembered before he woke up in his cave. That was two sunsets ago.

Upon waking up, Grok had two thoughts. “radioactive” and “cliche”. He was not sure what either of them meant but whatever happened had changed him. He felt different , he felt smarter, he felt the need  for an outside rock and ran out behind his cave. “Hmm, still feeling the after affects of yesterdays foraging”, he thought. “ What is with these thoughts “, he ….thought. Until yesterday all he ever had in his head were grunts and other incoherent syllables , with the majority the grunts being mostly “doh” and “nuts”. What was that all about? After a few moments he gave up trying to figure it out and went back inside his cave to start his day.

Once he a had spruced up a bit ,splashing water on his face and plastering down his hair, he exited his cave. Looking upon the neighborhood he saw it in a brand new light. Something different lay before him. Something that contained possibilities.