THE LITTLE ELEVATOR BOY
"Tell me about this elevator," asked the overly serious young girl. "Why is it so different from the others? Why does it seem to talk to me? Why don't grownups like to ride in it?" This was all addressed to the Professor. But he was silent, standing there.
The small boy, the one holding the Professor's hand spoke then. "It talks to me too. Let's take a ride in it, and maybe we'll hear a story." Together, they entered the elevator, the Professor left behind. As the doors closed, they heard a voice saying:
Once, long ago, before grownups came into the world, it was spring every day. There were no parents or schools or rules, no one telling children what to do. There were only the simple pleasures of their lives. They played all the time. They ate when they were hungry. They slept when they were tired. They were happy, until the strangers came into their world.
No one knows where they came from. One day, they just appeared and never went away. They said that they had been children once themselves, but the children didn't believe them. They weren't happy, and they never played. Oh, they said they did, but instead they created what they called games. They even organized and scheduled their play. They also assigned themselves what they called tasks. Worse, they made the children follow their schedules and help them with these unnecessary tasks.
They insisted that the children eat by what they called the clock. They insisted that they eat what they decided they should eat. They did the same with their sleeping, making them sleep when it became dark - the most fun part of the day! Also, according to them, most play was a waste of time. The children were introduced to work, which, as near as they could tell, involved doing unnecessary things that weren't fun.
Once they rebelled. They imprisoned all of these strangers deep within the Earth. You have probably heard the story about the Gods of the Greeks and how they imprisoned their parents, the Titans. The children were those Gods; the grownups, those Titans.
But the curse that had created the grownups continued to plague the children. They began to grow up themselves. And, as they did so, they forgot to play - or rather they decided not to play until they had finished their work. They began to make schedules and tasks for themselves so that they wouldn't waste their valuable time. Usually though, they were too tired to play afterwards. I think they began to realize at this time that they wouldn't be here forever. They saw that Death had come to visit.
However, there remained those who did continue to play, although their bodies still grew, until they looked the same on the outside as those of the grownups among them. They had a plan. First they needed an elevator, and for this they choose me. They said that if I would keep their stories for them, telling them to those they brought to me, I would become a child myself.
I have lived here ever since then. I play all the time. I eat when I am hungry. I sleep when I am tired. Here, look at me. And, with that, a child of indeterminate sex appeared. "Will you play elevator with me?" he asked. "I would like that."
The children, who had almost become grownup themselves - teetering on the edge of that abyss - began to play with the magical elevator boy. They played ups and downs. They played non-stop. Their favorite game though was falling. It was really scary!
"But what about the Professor?" asked the children. "Won't he be worried?" The elevator boy, for he was really a boy, laughed. "Oh, don't worry about him. He's one of us."
"Can I tell you children, a secret?" When they answered yes, he went on. "If we keep on doing what we want to do whenever we want to, we will never grow up, never die. Our bodies will continue to grow and will eventually die of course. Death is amongst us - but we won't die. Life is just a game. If we ever get tired of it, we can always leave. And it's so easy to come back to the game - just let ourselves be born again."
By Eugene Marks