Emerging Compassions

Chapter 40: A Primitive Land...

(Carl's POV)

I could still see that Cindy and Libby were pretty annoyed with our current situation, so I made an attempt to make the best of it by saying, "Okay, so we're in the Stone Age now... We've been worse off than this before, like the time the entire town got warped back several million years and all those villains were after Jimmy..."

"Oh, I could think of something worse than that, Carl!" Cindy sarcastically commented, shuddering heavily, "Like when Neutron and I switched minds? ! I nearly saw things I shouldn't have at that age! !"

"Yeah," Jimmy heartily agreed, "Likewise with my situation! I put off relieving myself as long as I could, until at the end of the day I couldn't bear it any longer! Once your insane mother had gone to bed, I left all the lights off and shut the door behind me as I relieved myself in the dark... God, you can only imagine how humiliating that was! I nearly tripped on your wet bathroom floor 3 times! ! !"

"You think THAT'S bad, Jimmy? !" she interjected, an even more humiliated look on her face, "I had slipped in a mud puddle after it had rained the first night right after we'd switched places, getting INSANELY filthy after I'd taken out the trash, so your mom insisted that I bathe before bed! She almost had to literally drag me into the bathroom by the shirt collar! I finally convinced her that I could take care of myself after 10 whole minutes, so she left me be afterwords. I had to shut off the lights and stuff a towel underneath the bathroom door before going through with it! I couldn't help but notice while I bathed, even though it was pitch black, that I had a little something extra... That really freaked me out, so I hurried and finished and dressed myself, then flipped the lights back on so I could see where the laundry chute was and toss your mom your dirty clothes. Now if THAT wasn't a nightmare, I dunno what is! !"

Flushing extremely hard, he muttered to her in a voice I could barely hear, "Be thankful that you weren't in a public location when that happened! ! I definitely know how that feels, and it's NOT fun one bit! ! !"

That got the rest of us insanely curious, so we all sat on some nearby rocks while I asked, "What exactly was so horrible, Jim? !"

"I'd prefer to not share such an experience, but given all the interested looks on your faces, I guess I'll tell you..," Jimmy nervously informed us, resting his elbows on his knees and his forehead in the palms of his hands, "Ugh... It was the most humiliating experience I ever went through! ! Remember how you used to wish I'd go to college and leave Lindbergh Elementary behind? Well, I went, but I soon wished I hadn't, due to everything the students put me through! Especially this one student who was particularly jealous of my intelligence, Seymour Nimmelfarb! What I had gone through beforehand was nothing compared to what he ultimately made me do!"

"So, what was it he forced you to go through with?" Cindy persisted.

He responded so quietly that none of us could make out what he said. "Could ya say that again, Jimmy? None of us could hear you just now," Sheen reminded him.

"I said, 'he forced me to streak on the campus'! ! He told me it would finally get me accepted by my peers there, when it really got me EXPELLED! ! ! That freaking jerk! !" Jimmy exclaimed in frustration, almost letting out a scream afterword as he temporarily lifted his head from his hands, then covering his entire face that time.

Marie crawled up to him, supported herself with her hands on his knee, and said in attempt to comfort him, "It okay, Daddy. It over now."

He slowly removed his hands from his face, looked into her adorable emerald eyes, and picked her up onto his lap, a smile slowly spreading across his face and his eyes watering a bit. With that, she got up on her 2 tiny feet, took a couple steps, and landed on his chest with her little arms spread wide, an adorable grin on her face. He gently hugged her back, then told her, "Thanks, Marie. I needed that."

"Welcome," she replied, and climbed down from his lap to the ground, then crawled over to Cindy, who picked her up gratefully and held her.

Libby unstrapped Taylor for a moment, turned her around so she could face the others, and strapped her back in again. Taylor had somehow seen that entire thing, so she clapped a bit and giggled in approval.

"Aw, how sweet," I observed, then something moving in the distance caught my eye. I turned to face it, and immediately recognized what it was: a llama! ! "I don't believe it!" I gasped, "I didn't know they had llamas in the Stone Age! !"

"Pffft, llamas. BIG deal...," Sheen remarked, rolling his eyes.

"I heard that, Sheen! !" I reprimanded him, annoyed, and stuck my tongue out at him as I turned to face him.

"Sheen," Libby scolded him, "It's obviously a big deal to Carl, so leave him be!" Taylor seemed to agree with her, so she blew a strawberry at him as a retort.

I turned back around to see the llama again, but it was nowhere to be found, no matter where I looked. It must've gotten scared by our little spat, so it ran off. Oh, well... I then turned to face Jimmy and asked, "So, how far back in time have we gone, Jim? ?"

Jimmy took a look at his multi-purpose watch and did some calculations on it, then looked at me solemnly and said, "Approximately 11,000 years, based on our surroundings alone..."

"Aw, man! Is UltraLord still around? !" Sheen griped.

"Shut UP, Ultra-Loser! !" Cindy snapped, "We're in the PAST, not the future, you dimwit! ! ! That stupid show of yours doesn't even exist yet! !"

"Rats!" he complained, glaring at no one in particular.

"So, it's about 9,000 BC, right?" Libby clarified.

"That would be the correct approximation, Libby," Jimmy told her informatively, "We're in the Neolithic Era, the New Stone Age, where agriculture is just beginning to be utilized. Civilization is just beginning, and tribes are less nomadic and more settled."

"And just WHERE are we, Jimmy?" Cindy wanted to know, a bit irritated.

"We're in what will become ancient Sumeria, according to my calculations," he informed her and the rest of us, entering in a bit more data into his watch, "The location of some of the very first cities in human history. For now, though, there are only primitive villages here and there, and will be that way until the 4th millennium BC."

"So that nearby river must be the Tigris, right? Connected downriver to the Euphrates?" she guessed.

"That is correct, Cindy. You sure know your ancient Mesopotamian history!" Jimmy congratulated her, clearly impressed with her history knowledge.

"Well, when you make grades as good as I do, you've gotta be prepared for anything!" Cindy added, blushing pretty hard with a light giggle.

"Not to mention a photographic memory...," he put in, flushing and laughing softly.

"Are y'all forgettin' where we are? !" Libby sharply reminded them, waving her hand in front of their faces.

Shaking his head vigorously a bit and clearing his throat, Jimmy returned to reality and agreed, saying, "You're right, Libby. We've got to work together to get outta this mess my daughter accidentally got us into."

"I think we should seek shelter in the nearest village, but there's NO way we're blending in looking the way we do now. Our apparel is far too modern!" Cindy reminded them.

He just smirked with a light chuckle and replied, "Luckily, I've brought my hypercube equipped with anything we'll need, including some disguise-wristbands to help us blend into the village. I've made one for each of us, including our children, which explains their small size for 2 of them."

"Anything to not get in trouble with the natives!" I exclaimed, taking one as he offered them to each of us and slipping it on. Once we were wearing them, it conformed to the shape of our wrists and matched our skin color, then changed our outfits to match the time period, pelts made from animal skins we could both see and feel.

Libby took one look at hers and remarked, "I was hopin' for somethin' a little more in-style than this... I mean, my baby harness has turned into a sling made from deer skin! An' this outfit made from buffalo pelts is itchy! !"

"Sorry, but that's what it'll take to blend in in this neolithic millennium," Jimmy responded, a slight tinge of disappointment in his voice, "And that would be mammoth pelts you're all wearing, not buffalo. Buffalo aren't indigenous to Mesopotamia."

"Mammoth? But I thought the ice age was over," Cindy reasoned, clearly a bit confused.

"In the time period we inhabit, the last ice age happened 10,000 years ago, meaning it ended in 8,000 BC, but since we've been warped, it's currently 9,000 BC, 1,000 years before it ends," he corrected her.

"So, lemme get this straight... Gigantic glaciers are still covering some of Earth's continents? !" Libby gasped, a terrified look in her eyes.

"Yes, but don't panic! It's alright," Jimmy reassured her, "We're in an area where there are no longer any glaciers. They're farther north of us, where present-day Denmark is located, as well as where modern-day Canada begins."

"Whew! That's a relief! !" Sheen breathed, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

Then I had a thought... "Hey, where's Goddard?" I wondered aloud.

"Oh, he's right over there, inside that nearby bush," he informed me, pointing to a bush a few yards away from us, "He used that for cover as he activated his camouflage feature to look like a domesticated wolf. C'mere, boy!"

Goddard poked his head out of the bush, cocked his head a bit, then bounded up to him, looking almost exactly like a miniature wolf.

"Okay," Cindy decided, "Shouldn't we head into the village now? ?"

"Yeah, but did that thing of yours disguise our hair, too, Jimmy? They're bound to suspect something if it's not looking like that of the villagers," Sheen pointed out, running his fingers through his.

He gave that a few moments of thought, then said, "Good point, Sheen. Thankfully, it did, giving each of us a primitive appearance, from top to bottom. Now, let's head in! Just remember to act like we've lived here our whole lives, okay?"

The rest of us gave a positive response, signifying that we all understood him, then we began making our way towards the tribe.

As we approached the stone wall of the village, some movement just beyond the gate caught my eye. I leaned over to Sheen and whispered, "That must've been one of the villagers running around just inside the village..."

"Yeah, I saw them, too," he quietly agreed with me, nodding.

One of them looked through the large peephole in the gate, then stuck his head full of ratty and matted hair through the partially-opened gate and asked us something in a strange language. Then, suddenly, something inside me could understand what he was saying! Right after I'd heard his question, my brain somehow translated the strange language into English, which was, "Do you have the authority to enter this village, strangers? ?"

With that, I leaned over to Jimmy and whispered, "Jimmy, I can somehow understand what he's saying! I think I'm going crazy! !"

"You're not, Carl!" he whispered back, "My disguise-wristband I made each of you is doing that."

"Oh, good!" I breathed, then turned to the gatekeeper and began to speak, and the language that left my mouth was the same that the gatekeeper spoke! That fancy device Jimmy'd made must've been doing that, too! After quickly getting over the shock, I told him in his language, "I'm sorry, sir. We're travelers from a nomadic tribe, and we're lost. Could we stay in your tribe?"

"So, I see...," he replied, giving it some thought, then nodded and added, opening the gate for us, "You certainly may! Enjoy yourselves!"

As we walked in, Sheen commented, "Whoa, that was awesome, Carl! How'd you DO that? !"

"The device Jimmy made each of us," I confidently informed him.

Jimmy just smirked and told us, "It's the same for the rest of us, too."

Our adventures in that village were just beginning!