Free Dave The Penguin by Nick Sambrook Page A

nobody knew what they actually looked like or were.
    This had caused lots of
fights long ago in the ancient past, w ith
the need to make sacrifices to it to make it feel better about
itself, and to fend off bad storms.
    Curiously the shape and nature
of the Penguin God always changed into the form defined by whoever
won the fights.
    Then, over time, it had
changed to become multiple penguin gods all existing at the same
time. They all did different things, and had different
personalities and roles.
    They also had different
feelings, and represented lots of ideas, and far away things.
However they all knew what they were doing and had a hierarchy.
There were male and female ones too, and they were all there to do
different special ‘jobs’. But they didn’t seem to have much of a
clue about real people, and used the
World as a sort of board game.
    Which sounded exciting
and made good stories that Dave liked to read about and watch in
films.
    Years later, after many
more fights, it had all changed again, and the god had become just
one giant penguin that lived on top of the highest mountain on a
throne made of pure, smooth, shiny nesting stones.
    There had even been a lot of
fights about what colour the stones were, and what the Penguin God
had said and revealed. There were also lots of numbers and symbols
used, and promises of things being better, and a sense of
urgency.
    It was eventually agreed that
there were lots of different coloured stones, and that there were
fifty different shades of them between white and black.
    Then some time ago, some
hero penguin named ‘Dave’ had climbed the mountain to say ‘Hello’,
and found that their god wasn’t there at all.
    God had obviously moved, and
had even taken the throne and the stones too.
    Now it was an all-seeing,
all-knowing, almighty penguin god, who lived up high in the clouds.
However, Dave knew quite a bit about clouds, and their capacity for
supporting large penguins and thrones, and he also knew about the
painful nature of gravity.
    He had tried to explain these
fundamental scientific and practical problems to some of the
penguin clan elders, and had been confronted with a hail of abuse
and ridicule, along with a few small stones.
    He was also about to ask the
obvious question that nobody else seems to have thought to ask -
the “Yes - but what is it?” one, but after the initial response, he
thought better of it.
    Clearly these were special
magic clouds, and he should not question the existence or the
nature of the great Penguin God. The situation was a bit like one
of his favourite Monty Python films, but in this instance it didn’t
seem very funny.
    What really confused Dave
though, was the fact that no one had ever mentioned that they were
magic clouds, or explained how they worked. It then struck him that
there was somewhat of an evolutionary pattern forming here, which
was also in line with a lot of the evolution of all the other areas
he had studied, especially Biology. Something of a
trend.
    He also asked what had happened
to all the other gods - the ones that they had been so sure were
there long ago - and asked why they had changed. He had also
explained to the elders that it was all a never ending
self-adapting belief and control structure for the scientifically
unexplainable, a childish protective mental bubble developed in the
unconscious psyche. One which still made no logical sense.
    Then he was really told
off….. very loudly.
    They didn’t agree with him.
Obviously whatever it was, wasn’t that keen to evolve or change,
and had quite a strong resistance to nosey smartarse penguins.
    So he went off and
trawled through his collection of 1980’s video documentaries, and
behind his mint condition set of David Attenborough ones, he found
a set called The Day the
Universe Changed . They had been made in
1985 and were written and presented by James Burke, but Dave
realised that he had never seen them, which was curious as he liked
the previous