Snow Tha Product Says She Has Artistic Freedom On Her Label

    San Diego, California native Snow Tha Product is currently in the midst of her “F#*k Your Plans, Come Kick It Tour” and during one of the stops she caught up with the media to catch up.  

    Recently speaking with The NEHip-Hop, Snow talked about the artistic freedom she has since signing with Atlantic Records two years ago.

    “I guess in a sense they tell artists whatever but not really me because I think me, they’re very aware I’m in a very different situation,” she said when asked about artistic freedom. “Like I said with all the indie support I have, if you look at my social media stuff. It’s popping for a reason because people really fuck with me and my personality and not so much what a label does for me. I feel like with the freedom I can do whatever I want because if they were to say anything I’d be like, ‘What? Why?'”

    When asked about her major label debut project, Snow Tha Product says she’s working on an EP and while she has freedom with what she wants to create, Atlantic wants her to focus on putting out a product.

    “I’m working on my debut right now and because I do so much of a different type of music, they’re like, ‘Ok, we feel you but you’ve got to decide what you want to do with this one,’ she said. “I want my EP to be really special and I don’t want it to be oppressed by what I’m doing because I actually care so I think it’s going to be really good.”

    Snow also talked about not signing with Tech N9ne as he called her about signing to Strange Music just a day after she inked a deal with Atlantic Records.

    “Tech is so dope and that’s no pun intended,” she said when asked about her relationship with Tech N9ne after signing to another label. “He really is because, that’s not even a lie that he called me a day after I got signed. It’s so crazy that he’s calling me [about signing to his label] and I signed. You should have called me yesterday. It’s really cool, it’s genuine, it’s always an honor. It’s always surprising, like really, he’s doing an interview with these people and he’s talking about me like that’s crazy.”

    Snow Tha Product signed to Atlantic Records back in February, 2012. Since then she hasn’t released a studio album via the label.

    Watch the full interview with Snow Tha Product below:

    RELATED: Snow Tha Product – Interview with Snoop Dogg on GGN

    18 thoughts on “Snow Tha Product Says She Has Artistic Freedom On Her Label

    1. My homie used to rap with her in san diego. She can forsure spit i just cant get into female rapppers unless its lauryn hill, mc lyre or the lady of rage. I hear rapsody is real dope tho imma peep that

      1. shut the fuck up u bitch ass nigga, nobody fuckin asked u bout ur faggot ass music taste, go suck a cock bitch nigga

      2. @NUHH ‘San Diego, CA native’
        I lived in south county San Diego in high school and she use to preform at house parties…speak what you know

    2. So what they gave you freedom? It ain’t like niggaz give a fuck about u enough to buy your records

    3. yall blind, thirsty as fuck, or have low ass standards if u think this bitch hot… she’s 95% make up, that shit is so caked on here face and them fake sharpie eyebrows are NOT fine AT ALL

    4. So, there’s a man crawling through the desert.

      He’d decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a big rock, and then he couldn’t get it started again. There were no cell phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family, his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few friends had no idea he was out here.

      He stayed with the car for a day or so, but his one bottle of water ran out
      and he was getting thirsty. He thought maybe he knew the direction back, now that he’d paid attention to the sun and thought he’d figured out which way was north, so he decided to start walking. He figured he only had to go about 30 miles or so and he’d be back to the small town he’d gotten gas in last.

      He thinks about walking at night to avoid the heat and sun, but based upon
      how dark it actually was the night before, and given that he has no flashlight, he’s afraid that he’ll break a leg or step on a rattlesnake. So,
      he puts on some sun block, puts the rest in his pocket for reapplication
      later, brings an umbrella he’d had in the back of the SUV with him to give
      him a little shade, pours the windshield wiper fluid into his water bottle
      in case he gets that desperate, brings his pocket knife in case he finds a cactus that looks like it might have water in it, and heads out in the
      direction he thinks is right.

      He walks for the entire day. By the end of the day he’s really thirsty. He’s
      been sweating all day, and his lips are starting to crack. He’s reapplied the sunblock twice, and tried to stay under the umbrella, but he still feels sunburned. The windshield wiper fluid sloshing in the bottle in his pocket is really getting tempting now. He knows that it’s mainly water and some ethanol and coloring, but he also knows that they add some kind of poison to it to keep people from drinking it. He wonders what the poison is, and
      whether the poison would be worse than dying of thirst.

      He pushes on, trying to get to that small town before dark.

      By the end of the day he starts getting worried. He figures he’s been walking at least 3 miles an hour, according to his watch for over 10 hours. That means that if his estimate was right that he should be close to the
      town. But he doesn’t recognize any of this. He had to cross a dry creek bed a mile or two back, and he doesn’t remember coming through it in the SUV. He figures that maybe he got his direction off just a little and that the dry creek bed was just off to one side of his path. He tells himself that he’s close, and that after dark he’ll start seeing the town lights over one of these hills, and that’ll be all he needs.

      As it gets dim enough that he starts stumbling over small rocks and things,
      he finds a spot and sits down to wait for full dark and the town lights.

      Full dark comes before he knows it. He must have dozed off. He stands back
      up and turns all the way around. He sees nothing but stars.

      He wakes up the next morning feeling absolutely lousy. His eyes are gummy and his mouth and nose feel like they’re full of sand. He so thirsty that he can’t even swallow. He barely got any sleep because it was so cold. He’d forgotten how cold it got at night in the desert and hadn’t noticed it the night before because he’d been in his car.

      He knows the Rule of Threes – three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food – then you die. Some people can make it a little longer, in the best situations. But the desert heat and having to walk and sweat isn’t the best situation to be without water. He figures, unless he finds water, this is his last day.

      He rinses his mouth out with a little of the windshield wiper fluid. He waits a while after spitting that little bit out, to see if his mouth goes numb, or he feels dizzy or something. Has his mouth gone numb? Is it just in
      his mind? He’s not sure. He’ll go a little farther, and if he still doesn’t
      find water, he’ll try drinking some of the fluid.

      Then he has to face his next, harder question – which way does he go from here? Does he keep walking the same way he was yesterday (assuming that he still knows which way that is), or does he try a new direction? He has no idea what to do.

      Looking at the hills and dunes around him, he thinks he knows the direction he was heading before. Just going by a feeling, he points himself somewhat to the left of that, and starts walking.

      As he walks, the day starts heating up. The desert, too cold just a couple of hours before, soon becomes an oven again. He sweats a little at first, and then stops. He starts getting worried at that – when you stop sweating he knows that means you’re in trouble – usually right before heat stroke.

      He decides that it’s time to try the windshield wiper fluid. He can’t wait
      any longer – if he passes out, he’s dead. He stops in the shade of a large
      rock, takes the bottle out, opens it, and takes a mouthful. He slowly
      swallows it, making it last as long as he can. It feels so good in his dry
      and cracked throat that he doesn’t even care about the nasty taste. He takes
      another mouthful, and makes it last too. Slowly, he drinks half the bottle.
      He figures that since he’s drinking it, he might as well drink enough to
      make some difference and keep himself from passing out.

      He’s quit worrying about the denaturing of the wiper fluid. If it kills him,
      it kills him – if he didn’t drink it, he’d die anyway. Besides, he’s pretty
      sure that whatever substance they denature the fluid with is just designed to make you sick – their way of keeping winos from buying cheap wiper fluid for the ethanol content. He can handle throwing up, if it comes to that.

      He walks. He walks in the hot, dry, windless desert. Sand, rocks, hills,
      dunes, the occasional scrawny cactus or dried bush. No sign of water.
      Sometimes he’ll see a little movement to one side or the other, but whatever moved is usually gone before he can focus his eyes on it. Probably birds, lizards, or mice. Maybe snakes, though they usually move more at night. He’s careful to stay away from the movements.

      After a while, he begins to stagger. He’s not sure if it’s fatigue, heat
      stroke finally catching him, or maybe he was wrong and the denaturing of the wiper fluid was worse than he thought. He tries to steady himself, and keep going.

      After more walking, he comes to a large stretch of sand. This is good! He
      knows he passed over a stretch of sand in the SUV – he remembers doing
      donuts in it. Or at least he thinks he remembers it – he’s getting woozy
      enough and tired enough that he’s not sure what he remembers any more or if
      he’s hallucinating. But he thinks he remembers it. So he heads off into it,
      trying to get to the other side, hoping that it gets him closer to the town.

      He was heading for a town, wasn’t he? He thinks he was. He isn’t sure any more. He’s not even sure how long he’s been walking any more. Is it still morning? Or has it moved into afternoon and the sun is going down again? It must be afternoon – it seems like it’s been too long since he started out.

      He walks through the sand.

      After a while, he comes to a big dune in the sand. This is bad. He doesn’t
      remember any dunes when driving over the sand in his SUV. Or at least he
      doesn’t think he remembers any. This is bad.

      But, he has no other direction to go. Too late to turn back now. He figures
      that he’ll get to the top of the dune and see if he can see anything from
      there that helps him find the town. He keeps going up the dune.

      Halfway up, he slips in the bad footing of the sand for the second or third
      time, and falls to his knees. He doesn’t feel like getting back up – he’ll
      just fall down again. So, he keeps going up the dune on his hand and knees.

      While crawling, if his throat weren’t so dry, he’d laugh. He’s finally
      gotten to the hackneyed image of a man lost in the desert – crawling through
      the sand on his hands and knees. If would be the perfect image, he imagines, if only his clothes were more ragged. The people crawling through the desert
      in the cartoons always had ragged clothes. But his have lasted without any
      rips so far. Somebody will probably find his dessicated corpse half buried in the sand years from now, and his clothes will still be in fine shape –
      shake the sand out, and a good wash, and they’d be wearable again. He wishes his throat were wet enough to laugh. He coughs a little instead, and it hurts.

      He finally makes it to the top of the sand dune. Now that he’s at the top,
      he struggles a little, but manages to stand up and look around. All he sees
      is sand. Sand, and more sand. Behind him, about a mile away, he thinks he
      sees the rocky ground he left to head into this sand. Ahead of him, more
      dunes, more sand. This isn’t where he drove his SUV. This is Hell. Or close enough.

      Again, he doesn’t know what to do. He decides to drink the rest of the wiper
      fluid while figuring it out. He takes out the bottle, and is removing the
      cap, when he glances to the side and sees something. Something in the sand. At the bottom of the dune, off to the side, he sees something strange. It’s a flat area, in the sand. He stops taking the cap of the bottle off, and tries to look closer. The area seems to be circular. And it’s dark – darker than the sand. And, there seems to be something in the middle of it, but he can’t tell what it is. He looks as hard as he can, and still can tell from
      here. He’s going to have to go down there and look.

      He puts the bottle back in his pocket, and starts to stumble down the dune.
      After a few steps, he realizes that he’s in trouble – he’s not going to be able to keep his balance. After a couple of more sliding, tottering steps, he falls and starts to roll down the dune. The sand it so hot when his body hits it that for a minute he thinks he’s caught fire on the way down – like a movie car wreck flashing into flames as it goes over the cliff, before it ever even hits the ground. He closes his eyes and mouth, covers his face with his hands, and waits to stop rolling.

      He stops, at the bottom of the dune. After a minute or two, he finds enough
      energy to try to sit up and get the sand out of his face and clothes. When
      he clears his eyes enough, he looks around to make sure that the dark spot
      in the sand it still there and he hadn’t just imagined it.

      So, seeing the large, flat, dark spot on the sand is still there, he begins
      to crawl towards it. He’d get up and walk towards it, but he doesn’t seem to
      have the energy to get up and walk right now. He must be in the final stages
      of dehydration he figures, as he crawls. If this place in the sand doesn’t
      have water, he’ll likely never make it anywhere else. This is his last
      chance.

      He gets closer and closer, but still can’t see what’s in the middle of the
      dark area. His eyes won’t quite focus any more for some reason. And lifting
      his head up to look takes so much effort that he gives up trying. He just
      keeps crawling.

      Finally, he reaches the area he’d seen from the dune. It takes him a minute of crawling on it before he realizes that he’s no longer on sand – he’s now crawling on some kind of dark stone. Stone with some kind of marking on it – a pattern cut into the stone. He’s too tired to stand up and try to see what the pattern is – so he just keeps crawling. He crawls towards the center,
      where his blurry eyes still see something in the middle of the dark stone
      area.

      His mind, detached in a strange way, notes that either his hands and knees are so burnt by the sand that they no longer feel pain, or that this dark
      stone, in the middle of a burning desert with a pounding, punishing sun
      overhead, doesn’t seem to be hot. It almost feels cool. He considers lying
      down on the nice cool surface.

      Cool, dark stone. Not a good sign. He must be hallucinating this. He’s
      probably in the middle of a patch of sand, already lying face down and
      dying, and just imagining this whole thing. A desert mirage. Soon the
      beautiful women carrying pitchers of water will come up and start giving him
      a drink. Then he’ll know he’s gone.

      He decides against laying down on the cool stone. If he’s going to die here
      in the middle of this hallucination, he at least wants to see what’s in the
      center before he goes. He keeps crawling.

      It’s the third time that he hears the voice before he realizes what he’s
      hearing. He would swear that someone just said, “Greetings, traveler. You do
      not look well. Do you hear me?”

      He stops crawling. He tries to look up from where he is on his hands and
      knees, but it’s too much effort to lift his head. So he tries something
      different – he leans back and tries to sit up on the stone. After a few
      seconds, he catches his balance, avoids falling on his face, sits up, and
      tries to focus his eyes. Blurry. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hands
      and tries again. Better this time.

      Yep. He can see. He’s sitting in the middle of a large, flat, dark expanse
      of stone. Directly next to him, about three feet away, is a white post or
      pole about two inches in diameter and sticking up about four or five feet
      out of the stone, at an angle.

      And wrapped around this white rod, tail with rattle on it hovering and
      seeming to be ready to start rattling, is what must be a fifteen foot long
      desert diamondback rattlesnake, looking directly at him.

      He stares at the snake in shock. He doesn’t have the energy to get up and
      run away. He doesn’t even have the energy to crawl away. This is it, his
      final resting place. No matter what happens, he’s not going to be able to
      move from this spot.

      Well, at least dying of a bite from this monster should be quicker than
      dying of thirst. He’ll face his end like a man. He struggles to sit up a
      little straighter. The snake keeps watching him. He lifts one hand and waves
      it in the snake’s direction, feebly. The snake watches the hand for a
      moment, then goes back to watching the man, looking into his eyes.

      Hmmm. Maybe the snake had no interest in biting him? It hadn’t rattled yet –
      that was a good sign. Maybe he wasn’t going to die of snake bite after all.

      He then remembers that he’d looked up when he’d reached the center here
      because he thought he’d heard a voice. He was still very woozy – he was
      likely to pass out soon, the sun still beat down on him even though he was
      now on cool stone. He still didn’t have anything to drink. But maybe he had
      actually heard a voice. This stone didn’t look natural. Nor did that white
      post sticking up out of the stone. Someone had to have built this. Maybe
      they were still nearby. Maybe that was who talked to him. Maybe this snake
      was even their pet, and that’s why it wasn’t biting.

      He tries to clear his throat to say, “Hello,” but his throat is too dry. All
      that comes out is a coughing or wheezing sound. There is no way he’s going
      to be able to talk without something to drink. He feels his pocket, and the
      bottle with the wiper fluid is still there. He shakily pulls the bottle out,
      almost losing his balance and falling on his back in the process. This isn’t
      good. He doesn’t have much time left, by his reckoning, before he passes
      out.

      He gets the lid off of the bottle, manages to get the bottle to his lips,
      and pours some of the fluid into his mouth. He sloshes it around, and then
      swallows it. He coughs a little. His throat feels better. Maybe he can talk
      now.

      He tries again. Ignoring the snake, he turns to look around him, hoping to
      spot the owner of this place, and croaks out, “Hello? Is there anyone here?”

      He hears, from his side, “Greetings. What is it that you want?”

      He turns his head, back towards the snake. That’s where the sound had seemed
      to come from. The only thing he can think of is that there must be a
      speaker, hidden under the snake, or maybe built into that post. He decides
      to try asking for help.

      “Please,” he croaks again, suddenly feeling dizzy, “I’d love to not be
      thirsty any more. I’ve been a long time without water. Can you help me?”

      Looking in the direction of the snake, hoping to see where the voice was
      coming from this time, he is shocked to see the snake rear back, open its
      mouth, and speak. He hears it say, as the dizziness overtakes him and he
      falls forward, face first on the stone, “Very well. Coming up.”

      A piercing pain shoots through his shoulder. Suddenly he is awake. He sits
      up and grabs his shoulder, wincing at the throbbing pain. He’s momentarily
      disoriented as he looks around, and then he remembers – the crawl across the
      sand, the dark area of stone, the snake. He sees the snake, still wrapped
      around the tilted white post, still looking at him.

      He reaches up and feels his shoulder, where it hurts. It feels slightly wet.
      He pulls his fingers away and looks at them – blood. He feels his shoulder
      again – his shirt has what feels like two holes in it – two puncture holes –
      they match up with the two aching spots of pain on his shoulder. He had been
      bitten. By the snake.

      “It’ll feel better in a minute.” He looks up – it’s the snake talking. He
      hadn’t dreamed it. Suddenly he notices – he’s not dizzy any more. And more
      importantly, he’s not thirsty any more – at all!

      “Have I died? Is this the afterlife? Why are you biting me in the
      afterlife?”

      “Sorry about that, but I had to bite you,” says the snake. “That’s the way I
      work. It all comes through the bite. Think of it as natural medicine.”

      “You bit me to help me? Why aren’t I thirsty any more? Did you give me a
      drink before you bit me? How did I drink enough while unconscious to not be
      thirsty any more? I haven’t had a drink for over two days. Well, except for
      the windshield wiper fluid… hold it, how in the world does a snake talk?
      Are you real? Are you some sort of Disney animation?”

      “No,” says the snake, “I’m real. As real as you or anyone is, anyway. I
      didn’t give you a drink. I bit you. That’s how it works – it’s what I do. I
      bite. I don’t have hands to give you a drink, even if I had water just
      sitting around here.”

      The man sat stunned for a minute. Here he was, sitting in the middle of the
      desert on some strange stone that should be hot but wasn’t, talking to a
      snake that could talk back and had just bitten him. And he felt better. Not
      great – he was still starving and exhausted, but much better – he was no
      longer thirsty. He had started to sweat again, but only slightly. He felt
      hot, in this sun, but it was starting to get lower in the sky, and the cool
      stone beneath him was a relief he could notice now that he was no longer
      dying of thirst.

      “I might suggest that we take care of that methanol you now have in your
      system with the next request,” continued the snake. “I can guess why you
      drank it, but I’m not sure how much you drank, or how much methanol was left
      in the wiper fluid. That stuff is nasty. It’ll make you go blind in a day or
      two, if you drank enough of it.”

      “Ummm, n-next request?” said the man. He put his hand back on his hurting
      shoulder and backed away from the snake a little.

      “That’s the way it works. If you like, that is,” explained the snake. “You
      get three requests. Call them wishes, if you wish.” The snake grinned at his
      own joke, and the man drew back a little further from the show of fangs.

      “But there are rules,” the snake continued. “The first request is free. The
      second requires an agreement of secrecy. The third requires the binding of
      responsibility.” The snake looks at the man seriously.

      “By the way,” the snake says suddenly, “my name is Nathan. Old Nathan,
      Samuel used to call me. He gave me the name. Before that, most of the Bound
      used to just call me ‘Snake’. But that got old, and Samuel wouldn’t stand
      for it. He said that anything that could talk needed a name. He was big into
      names. You can call me Nate, if you wish.” Again, the snake grinned. “Sorry
      if I don’t offer to shake, but I think you can understand – my shake sounds
      somewhat threatening.” The snake give his rattle a little shake.

      “Umm, my name is Jack,” said the man, trying to absorb all of this. “Jack
      Samson.

      “Can I ask you a question?” Jack says suddenly. “What happened to the
      poison…umm, in your bite. Why aren’t I dying now? How did you do that?
      What do you mean by that’s how you work?”

      “That’s more than one question,” grins Nate. “But I’ll still try to answer
      all of them. First, yes, you can ask me a question.” The snake’s grin gets
      wider. “Second, the poison is in you. It changed you. You now no longer need
      to drink. That’s what you asked for. Or, well, technically, you asked to not
      be thirsty any more – but ‘any more’ is such a vague term. I decided to make
      it permanent – now, as long as you live, you shouldn’t need to drink much at
      all. Your body will conserve water very efficiently. You should be able to
      get enough just from the food you eat – much like a creature of the desert.
      You’ve been changed.

      “For the third question,” Nate continues, “you are still dying. Besides the
      effects of that methanol in your system, you’re a man – and men are mortal.
      In your current state, I give you no more than about another 50 years.
      Assuming you get out of this desert, alive, that is.” Nate seemed vastly
      amused at his own humor, and continued his wide grin.

      “As for the fourth question,” Nate said, looking more serious as far as Jack
      could tell, as Jack was just now working on his ability to read
      talking-snake emotions from snake facial features, “first you have to agree
      to make a second request and become bound by the secrecy, or I can’t tell
      you.”

      “Wait,” joked Jack, “isn’t this where you say you could tell me, but you’d
      have to kill me?”

      “I thought that was implied.” Nate continued to look serious.

      “Ummm…yeah.” Jack leaned back a little as he remembered again that he was
      talking to a fifteen foot poisonous reptile with a reputation for having a
      nasty temper. “So, what is this ‘Bound by Secrecy’ stuff, and can you really
      stop the effects of the methanol?” Jack thought for a second. “And, what do
      you mean methanol, anyway? I thought these days they use ethanol in wiper
      fluid, and just denature it?”

      “They may, I don’t really know,” said Nate. “I haven’t gotten out in a
      while. Maybe they do. All I know is that I smell methanol on your breath and
      on that bottle in your pocket. And the blue color of the liquid when you
      pulled it out to drink some let me guess that it was wiper fluid. I assume
      that they still color wiper fluid blue?”

      “Yeah, they do,” said Jack.

      “I figured,” replied Nate. “As for being bound by secrecy – with the
      fulfillment of your next request, you will be bound to say nothing about me,
      this place, or any of the information I will tell you after that, when you
      decide to go back out to your kind. You won’t be allowed to talk about me,
      write about me, use sign language, charades, or even act in a way that will
      lead someone to guess correctly about me. You’ll be bound to secrecy. Of
      course, I’ll also ask you to promise not to give me away, and as I’m
      guessing that you’re a man of your word, you’ll never test the binding
      anyway, so you won’t notice.” Nate said the last part with utter confidence.

      Jack, who had always prided himself on being a man of his word, felt a
      little nervous at this. “Ummm, hey, Nate, who are you? How did you know
      that? Are you, umm, omniscient, or something?”

      Well, Jack,” said Nate sadly, “I can’t tell you that, unless you make the
      second request.” Nate looked away for a minute, then looked back.

      “Umm, well, ok,” said Jack, “what is this about a second request? What can I
      ask for? Are you allowed to tell me that?”

      “Sure!” said Nate, brightening. “You’re allowed to ask for changes. Changes
      to yourself. They’re like wishes, but they can only affect you. Oh, and
      before you ask, I can’t give you immortality. Or omniscience. Or
      omnipresence, for that matter. Though I might be able to make you gaseous
      and yet remain alive, and then you could spread through the atmosphere and
      sort of be omnipresent. But what good would that be – you still wouldn’t be
      omniscient and thus still could only focus on one thing at a time. Not very
      useful, at least in my opinion.” Nate stopped when he realized that Jack was
      staring at him.

      “Well, anyway,” continued Nate, “I’d probably suggest giving you permanent
      good health. It would negate the methanol now in your system, you’d be
      immune to most poisons and diseases, and you’d tend to live a very long
      time, barring accident, of course. And you’ll even have a tendency to
      recover from accidents well. It always seemed like a good choice for a
      request to me.”

      “Cure the methanol poisoning, huh?” said Jack. “And keep me healthy for a
      long time? Hmmm. It doesn’t sound bad at that. And it has to be a request
      about a change to me? I can’t ask to be rich, right? Because that’s not
      really a change to me?”

      “Right,” nodded Nate.

      “Could I ask to be a genius and permanently healthy?” Jack asked, hopefully.

      “That takes two requests, Jack.”

      “Yeah, I figured so,” said Jack. “But I could ask to be a genius? I could
      become the smartest scientist in the world? Or the best athlete?”

      “Well, I could make you very smart,” admitted Nate, “but that wouldn’t
      necessarily make you the best scientist in the world. Or, I could make you
      very athletic, but it wouldn’t necessarily make you the best athlete either.
      You’ve heard the saying that 99% of genius is hard work? Well, there’s some
      truth to that. I can give you the talent, but I can’t make you work hard. It
      all depends on what you decide to do with it.”

      “Hmmm,” said Jack. “Ok, I think I understand. And I get a third request,
      after this one?”

      “Maybe,” said Nate, “it depends on what you decide then. There are more
      rules for the third request that I can only tell you about after the second
      request. You know how it goes.” Nate looked like he’d shrug, if he had
      shoulders.

      “Ok, well, since I’d rather not be blind in a day or two, and permanent
      health doesn’t sound bad, then consider that my second request. Officially.
      Do I need to sign in blood or something?”

      “No,” said Nate. “Just hold out your hand. Or heel.” Nate grinned. “Or
      whatever part you want me to bite. I have to bite you again. Like I said,
      that’s how it works – the poison, you know,” Nate said apologetically.

      Jack winced a little and felt his shoulder, where the last bite was. Hey, it
      didn’t hurt any more. Just like Nate had said. That made Jack feel better
      about the biting business. But still, standing still while a fifteen foot
      snake sunk it’s fangs into you. Jack stood up. Ignoring how good it felt to
      be able to stand again, and the hunger starting to gnaw at his stomach, Jack
      tried to decide where he wanted to get bitten. Despite knowing that it
      wouldn’t hurt for long, Jack knew that this wasn’t going to be easy.

      “Hey, Jack,” Nate suddenly said, looking past Jack towards the dunes behind
      him, “is that someone else coming up over there?”

      Jack spun around and looked. Who else could be out here in the middle of
      nowhere? And did they bring food?

      Wait a minute, there was nobody over there. What was Nate…

      Jack let out a bellow as he felt two fangs sink into his rear end, through
      his jeans…

      Jack sat down carefully, favoring his more tender buttock. “I would have
      decided, eventually, Nate. I was just thinking about it. You didn’t have to
      hoodwink me like that.”

      “I’ve been doing this a long time, Jack,” said Nate, confidently. “You
      humans have a hard time sitting still and letting a snake bite you –
      especially one my size. And besides, admit it – it’s only been a couple of
      minutes and it already doesn’t hurt any more, does it? That’s because of the
      health benefit with this one. I told you that you’d heal quickly now.”

      “Yeah, well, still,” said Jack, “it’s the principle of the thing. And nobody
      likes being bitten in the butt! Couldn’t you have gotten my calf or
      something instead?”

      “More meat in the typical human butt,” replied Nate. “And less chance you
      accidentally kick me or move at the last second.”

      “Yeah, right. So, tell me all of these wonderful secrets that I now qualify
      to hear,” answered Jack.

      “Ok,” said Nate. “Do you want to ask questions first, or do you want me to
      just start talking?”

      “Just talk,” said Jack. “I’ll sit here and try to not think about food.”

      “We could go try to rustle up some food for you first, if you like,”
      answered Nate.

      “Hey! You didn’t tell me you had food around here, Nate!” Jack jumped up.
      “What do we have? Am I in walking distance to town? Or can you magically
      whip up food along with your other powers?” Jack was almost shouting with
      excitement. His stomach had been growling for hours.

      “I was thinking more like I could flush something out of its hole and bite
      it for you, and you could skin it and eat it. Assuming you have a knife,
      that is,” replied Nate, with the grin that Jack was starting to get used to.

      “Ugh,” said Jack, sitting back down. “I think I’ll pass. I can last a little
      longer before I get desperate enough to eat desert rat, or whatever else it
      is you find out here. And there’s nothing to burn – I’d have to eat it raw.
      No thanks. Just talk.”

      “Ok,” replied Nate, still grinning. “But I’d better hurry, before you start
      looking at me as food.

      Nate reared back a little, looked around for a second, and then continued.
      “You, Jack, are sitting in the middle of the Garden of Eden.”

      Jack looked around at the sand and dunes and then looked back at Nate
      sceptically.

      “Well, that’s the best I can figure it, anyway, Jack,” said Nate. “Stand up
      and look at the symbol on the rock here.” Nate gestured around the dark
      stone they were both sitting on with his nose.

      Jack stood up and looked. Carved into the stone in a bas-relief was a
      representation of a large tree. The angled-pole that Nate was wrapped around
      was coming out of the trunk of the tree, right below where the main branches
      left the truck to reach out across the stone. It was very well done – it
      looked more like a tree had been reduced to almost two dimensions and
      embedded in the stone than it did like a carving.

      Jack walked around and looked at the details in the fading light of the
      setting sun. He wished he’d looked at it while the sun was higher in the
      sky.

      Wait! The sun was setting! That meant he was going to have to spend another
      night out here! Arrrgh!

      Jack looked out across the desert for a little bit, and then came back and
      stood next to Nate. “In all the excitement, I almost forgot, Nate,” said
      Jack. “Which way is it back to town? And how far? I’m eventually going to
      have to head back – I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive by eating raw
      desert critters for long. And even if I can, I’m not sure I’ll want to.”

      “It’s about 30 miles that way.” Nate pointed, with the rattle on his tail
      this time. As far as Jack could tell, it was a direction at right angles to
      the way he’d been going when he was crawling here. “But that’s 30 miles by
      the way the crow flies. It’s about 40 by the way a man walks. You should be
      able to do it in about half a day with your improved endurance, if you head
      out early tomorrow, Jack.”

      Jack looked out the way the snake had pointed for a few seconds more, and
      then sat back down. It was getting dark. Not much he could do about heading
      out right now. And besides, Nate was just about to get to the interesting
      stuff. “Garden of Eden? As best as you can figure it?”

      “Well, yeah, as best as I and Samuel could figure it anyway,” said Nate. “He
      figured that the story just got a little mixed up. You know, snake, in a
      ‘tree’, offering ‘temptations’, making bargains. That kind stuff. But he
      could never quite figure out how the Hebrews found out about this spot from
      across the ocean. He worried about that for a while.”

      “Garden of Eden, hunh?” said Jack. “How long have you been here, Nate?”

      “No idea, really,” replied Nate. “A long time. It never occurred to me to
      count years, until recently, and by then, of course, it was too late. But I
      do remember when this whole place was green, so I figure it’s been thousands
      of years, at least.”

      “So, are you the snake that tempted Eve?” said Jack.

      “Beats me,” said Nate. “Maybe. I can’t remember if the first one of your
      kind that I talked to was female or not, and I never got a name, but it
      could have been. And I suppose she could have considered my offer to grant
      requests a ‘temptation’, though I’ve rarely had refusals.”

      “Well, umm, how did you get here then? And why is that white pole stuck out
      of the stone there?” asked Jack.

      “Dad left me here. Or, I assume it was my dad. It was another snake – much
      bigger than I was back then. I remember talking to him, but I don’t remember
      if it was in a language, or just kind of understanding what he wanted. But
      one day, he brought me to this stone, told me about it, and asked me to do
      something for him. I talked it over with him for a while, then agreed. I’ve
      been here ever since.

      “What is this place?” said Jack. “And what did he ask you to do?”

      “Well, you see this pole here, sticking out of the stone?” Nate loosened his
      coils around the tilted white pole and showed Jack where it descended into
      the stone. The pole was tilted at about a 45 degree angle and seemed to
      enter the stone in an eighteen inch slot cut into the stone. Jack leaned
      over and looked. The slot was dark and the pole went down into it as far as
      Jack could see in the dim light. Jack reached out to touch the pole, but
      Nate was suddenly there in the way.

      “You can’t touch that yet, Jack,” said Nate.

      “Why not?” asked Jack.

      “I haven’t explained it to you yet,” replied Nate.

      “Well, it kinda looks like a lever or something,” said Jack. “You’d push it
      that way, and it would move in the slot.”

      “Yep, that’s what it is,” replied Nate.

      “What does it do?” asked Jack. “End the world?”

      “Oh, no,” said Nate. “Nothing that drastic. It just ends humanity. I call it
      ‘The Lever of Doom’.” For the last few words Nate had used a deeper, ringing
      voice. He tried to look serious for a few seconds, and then gave up and
      grinned.

      Jack was initially startled by Nate’s pronouncement, but when Nate grinned
      Jack laughed. “Ha! You almost had me fooled for a second there. What does it
      really do?”

      “Oh, it really ends humanity, like I said,” smirked Nate. “I just thought
      the voice I used was funny, didn’t you?”

      Nate continued to grin.

      “A lever to end humanity?” asked Jack. “What in the world is that for? Why
      would anyone need to end humanity?”

      “Well,” replied Nate, “I get the idea that maybe humanity was an experiment.
      Or maybe the Big Guy just thought, that if humanity started going really
      bad, there should be a way to end it. I’m not really sure. All I know are
      the rules, and the guesses that Samuel and I had about why it’s here. I
      didn’t think to ask back when I started here.”

      “Rules? What rules?” asked Jack.

      “The rules are that I can’t tell anybody about it or let them touch it
      unless they agree to be bound to secrecy by a bite. And that only one human
      can be bound in that way at a time. That’s it.” explained Nate.

      Jack looked somewhat shocked. “You mean that I could pull the lever now?
      You’d let me end humanity?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “if you want to.” Nate looked at Jack carefully. “Do
      you want to, Jack?”

      “Umm, no.” said Jack, stepping a little further back from the lever. “Why in
      the world would anyone want to end humanity? It’d take a psychotic to want
      that! Or worse, a suicidal psychotic, because it would kill him too,
      wouldn’t it?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “being as he’d be human too.”

      “Has anyone ever seriously considered it?” asked Nate. “Any of those bound
      to secrecy, that is?”

      “Well, of course, I think they’ve all seriously considered it at one time or
      another. Being given that kind of responsibility makes you sit down and
      think, or so I’m told. Samuel considered it several times. He’d often get
      disgusted with humanity, come out here, and just hold the lever for a while.
      But he never pulled it. Or you wouldn’t be here.” Nate grinned some more.

      Jack sat down, well back from the lever. He looked thoughtful and puzzled at
      the same time. After a bit, he said, “So this makes me the Judge of
      humanity? I get to decide whether they keep going or just end? Me?”

      “That seems to be it,” agreed Nate.

      “What kind of criteria do I use to decide?” said Jack. “How do I make this
      decision? Am I supposed to decide if they’re good? Or too many of them are
      bad? Or that they’re going the wrong way? Is there a set of rules for that?”

      “Nope,” replied Nate. “You pretty much just have to decide on your own. It’s
      up to you, however you want to decide it. I guess that you’re just supposed
      to know.”

      “But what if I get mad at someone? Or some girl dumps me and I feel
      horrible? Couldn’t I make a mistake? How do I know that I won’t screw up?”
      protested Jack.

      Nate gave his kind of snake-like shrug again. “You don’t. You just have to
      try your best, Jack.”

      Jack sat there for a while, staring off into the desert that was rapidly
      getting dark, chewing on a fingernail.

      Suddenly, Jack turned around and looked at the snake. “Nate, was Samuel the
      one bound to this before me?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate. “He was a good guy. Talked to me a lot. Taught me to
      read and brought me books. I think I still have a good pile of them buried
      in the sand around here somewhere. I still miss him. He died a few months
      ago.”

      “Sounds like a good guy,” agreed Jack. “How did he handle this, when you
      first told him. What did he do?”

      “Well,” said Nate, “he sat down for a while, thought about it for a bit, and
      then asked me some questions, much like you’re doing.”

      “What did he ask you, if you’re allowed to tell me?” asked Jack.

      “He asked me about the third request,” replied Nate.

      “Aha!” It was Jack’s turn to grin. “And what did you tell him?”

      “I told him the rules for the third request. That to get the third request
      you have to agree to this whole thing. That if it ever comes to the point
      that you really think that humanity should be ended, that you’ll come here
      and end it. You won’t avoid it, and you won’t wimp out.” Nate looked serious
      again. “And you’ll be bound to do it too, Jack.”

      “Hmmm.” Jack looked back out into the darkness for a while.

      Nate watched him, waiting.

      “Nate,” continued Jack, quietly, eventually. “What did Samuel ask for with
      his third request?”

      Nate sounded like he was grinning again as he replied, also quietly,
      “Wisdom, Jack. He asked for wisdom. As much as I could give him.”

      “Ok,” said Jack, suddenly, standing up and facing away from Nate, “give it
      to me.

      Nate looked at Jack’s backside. “Give you what, Jack?”

      “Give me that wisdom. The same stuff that Samuel asked for. If it helped
      him, maybe it’ll help me too.” Jack turned his head to look back over his
      shoulder at Nate. “It did help him, right?”

      “He said it did,” replied Nate. “But he seemed a little quieter afterward.
      Like he had a lot to think about.”

    5. Anon:
      So, there’s a man crawling through the desert.

      He’d decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a big rock, and then he couldn’t get it started again. There were no cell phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family, his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few friends had no idea he was out here.

      He stayed with the car for a day or so, but his one bottle of water ran out
      and he was getting thirsty. He thought maybe he knew the direction back, now that he’d paid attention to the sun and thought he’d figured out which way was north, so he decided to start walking. He figured he only had to go about 30 miles or so and he’d be back to the small town he’d gotten gas in last.

      He thinks about walking at night to avoid the heat and sun, but based upon
      how dark it actually was the night before, and given that he has no flashlight, he’s afraid that he’ll break a leg or step on a rattlesnake. So,
      he puts on some sun block, puts the rest in his pocket for reapplication
      later, brings an umbrella he’d had in the back of the SUV with him to give
      him a little shade, pours the windshield wiper fluid into his water bottle
      in case he gets that desperate, brings his pocket knife in case he finds a cactus that looks like it might have water in it, and heads out in the
      direction he thinks is right.

      He walks for the entire day. By the end of the day he’s really thirsty. He’s
      been sweating all day, and his lips are starting to crack. He’s reapplied the sunblock twice, and tried to stay under the umbrella, but he still feels sunburned. The windshield wiper fluid sloshing in the bottle in his pocket is really getting tempting now. He knows that it’s mainly water and some ethanol and coloring, but he also knows that they add some kind of poison to it to keep people from drinking it. He wonders what the poison is, and
      whether the poison would be worse than dying of thirst.

      He pushes on, trying to get to that small town before dark.

      By the end of the day he starts getting worried. He figures he’s been walking at least 3 miles an hour, according to his watch for over 10 hours. That means that if his estimate was right that he should be close to the
      town. But he doesn’t recognize any of this. He had to cross a dry creek bed a mile or two back, and he doesn’t remember coming through it in the SUV. He figures that maybe he got his direction off just a little and that the dry creek bed was just off to one side of his path. He tells himself that he’s close, and that after dark he’ll start seeing the town lights over one of these hills, and that’ll be all he needs.

      As it gets dim enough that he starts stumbling over small rocks and things,
      he finds a spot and sits down to wait for full dark and the town lights.

      Full dark comes before he knows it. He must have dozed off. He stands back
      up and turns all the way around. He sees nothing but stars.

      He wakes up the next morning feeling absolutely lousy. His eyes are gummy and his mouth and nose feel like they’re full of sand. He so thirsty that he can’t even swallow. He barely got any sleep because it was so cold. He’d forgotten how cold it got at night in the desert and hadn’t noticed it the night before because he’d been in his car.

      He knows the Rule of Threes – three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food – then you die. Some people can make it a little longer, in the best situations. But the desert heat and having to walk and sweat isn’t the best situation to be without water. He figures, unless he finds water, this is his last day.

      He rinses his mouth out with a little of the windshield wiper fluid. He waits a while after spitting that little bit out, to see if his mouth goes numb, or he feels dizzy or something. Has his mouth gone numb? Is it just in
      his mind? He’s not sure. He’ll go a little farther, and if he still doesn’t
      find water, he’ll try drinking some of the fluid.

      Then he has to face his next, harder question – which way does he go from here? Does he keep walking the same way he was yesterday (assuming that he still knows which way that is), or does he try a new direction? He has no idea what to do.

      Looking at the hills and dunes around him, he thinks he knows the direction he was heading before. Just going by a feeling, he points himself somewhat to the left of that, and starts walking.

      As he walks, the day starts heating up. The desert, too cold just a couple of hours before, soon becomes an oven again. He sweats a little at first, and then stops. He starts getting worried at that – when you stop sweating he knows that means you’re in trouble – usually right before heat stroke.

      He decides that it’s time to try the windshield wiper fluid. He can’t wait
      any longer – if he passes out, he’s dead. He stops in the shade of a large
      rock, takes the bottle out, opens it, and takes a mouthful. He slowly
      swallows it, making it last as long as he can. It feels so good in his dry
      and cracked throat that he doesn’t even care about the nasty taste. He takes
      another mouthful, and makes it last too. Slowly, he drinks half the bottle.
      He figures that since he’s drinking it, he might as well drink enough to
      make some difference and keep himself from passing out.

      He’s quit worrying about the denaturing of the wiper fluid. If it kills him,
      it kills him – if he didn’t drink it, he’d die anyway. Besides, he’s pretty
      sure that whatever substance they denature the fluid with is just designed to make you sick – their way of keeping winos from buying cheap wiper fluid for the ethanol content. He can handle throwing up, if it comes to that.

      He walks. He walks in the hot, dry, windless desert. Sand, rocks, hills,
      dunes, the occasional scrawny cactus or dried bush. No sign of water.
      Sometimes he’ll see a little movement to one side or the other, but whatever moved is usually gone before he can focus his eyes on it. Probably birds, lizards, or mice. Maybe snakes, though they usually move more at night. He’s careful to stay away from the movements.

      After a while, he begins to stagger. He’s not sure if it’s fatigue, heat
      stroke finally catching him, or maybe he was wrong and the denaturing of the wiper fluid was worse than he thought. He tries to steady himself, and keep going.

      After more walking, he comes to a large stretch of sand. This is good! He
      knows he passed over a stretch of sand in the SUV – he remembers doing
      donuts in it. Or at least he thinks he remembers it – he’s getting woozy
      enough and tired enough that he’s not sure what he remembers any more or if
      he’s hallucinating. But he thinks he remembers it. So he heads off into it,
      trying to get to the other side, hoping that it gets him closer to the town.

      He was heading for a town, wasn’t he? He thinks he was. He isn’t sure any more. He’s not even sure how long he’s been walking any more. Is it still morning? Or has it moved into afternoon and the sun is going down again? It must be afternoon – it seems like it’s been too long since he started out.

      He walks through the sand.

      After a while, he comes to a big dune in the sand. This is bad. He doesn’t
      remember any dunes when driving over the sand in his SUV. Or at least he
      doesn’t think he remembers any. This is bad.

      But, he has no other direction to go. Too late to turn back now. He figures
      that he’ll get to the top of the dune and see if he can see anything from
      there that helps him find the town. He keeps going up the dune.

      Halfway up, he slips in the bad footing of the sand for the second or third
      time, and falls to his knees. He doesn’t feel like getting back up – he’ll
      just fall down again. So, he keeps going up the dune on his hand and knees.

      While crawling, if his throat weren’t so dry, he’d laugh. He’s finally
      gotten to the hackneyed image of a man lost in the desert – crawling through
      the sand on his hands and knees. If would be the perfect image, he imagines, if only his clothes were more ragged. The people crawling through the desert
      in the cartoons always had ragged clothes. But his have lasted without any
      rips so far. Somebody will probably find his dessicated corpse half buried in the sand years from now, and his clothes will still be in fine shape –
      shake the sand out, and a good wash, and they’d be wearable again. He wishes his throat were wet enough to laugh. He coughs a little instead, and it hurts.

      He finally makes it to the top of the sand dune. Now that he’s at the top,
      he struggles a little, but manages to stand up and look around. All he sees
      is sand. Sand, and more sand. Behind him, about a mile away, he thinks he
      sees the rocky ground he left to head into this sand. Ahead of him, more
      dunes, more sand. This isn’t where he drove his SUV. This is Hell. Or close enough.

      Again, he doesn’t know what to do. He decides to drink the rest of the wiper
      fluid while figuring it out. He takes out the bottle, and is removing the
      cap, when he glances to the side and sees something. Something in the sand. At the bottom of the dune, off to the side, he sees something strange. It’s a flat area, in the sand. He stops taking the cap of the bottle off, and tries to look closer. The area seems to be circular. And it’s dark – darker than the sand. And, there seems to be something in the middle of it, but he can’t tell what it is. He looks as hard as he can, and still can tell from
      here. He’s going to have to go down there and look.

      He puts the bottle back in his pocket, and starts to stumble down the dune.
      After a few steps, he realizes that he’s in trouble – he’s not going to be able to keep his balance. After a couple of more sliding, tottering steps, he falls and starts to roll down the dune. The sand it so hot when his body hits it that for a minute he thinks he’s caught fire on the way down – like a movie car wreck flashing into flames as it goes over the cliff, before it ever even hits the ground. He closes his eyes and mouth, covers his face with his hands, and waits to stop rolling.

      He stops, at the bottom of the dune. After a minute or two, he finds enough
      energy to try to sit up and get the sand out of his face and clothes. When
      he clears his eyes enough, he looks around to make sure that the dark spot
      in the sand it still there and he hadn’t just imagined it.

      So, seeing the large, flat, dark spot on the sand is still there, he begins
      to crawl towards it. He’d get up and walk towards it, but he doesn’t seem to
      have the energy to get up and walk right now. He must be in the final stages
      of dehydration he figures, as he crawls. If this place in the sand doesn’t
      have water, he’ll likely never make it anywhere else. This is his last
      chance.

      He gets closer and closer, but still can’t see what’s in the middle of the
      dark area. His eyes won’t quite focus any more for some reason. And lifting
      his head up to look takes so much effort that he gives up trying. He just
      keeps crawling.

      Finally, he reaches the area he’d seen from the dune. It takes him a minute of crawling on it before he realizes that he’s no longer on sand – he’s now crawling on some kind of dark stone. Stone with some kind of marking on it – a pattern cut into the stone. He’s too tired to stand up and try to see what the pattern is – so he just keeps crawling. He crawls towards the center,
      where his blurry eyes still see something in the middle of the dark stone
      area.

      His mind, detached in a strange way, notes that either his hands and knees are so burnt by the sand that they no longer feel pain, or that this dark
      stone, in the middle of a burning desert with a pounding, punishing sun
      overhead, doesn’t seem to be hot. It almost feels cool. He considers lying
      down on the nice cool surface.

      Cool, dark stone. Not a good sign. He must be hallucinating this. He’s
      probably in the middle of a patch of sand, already lying face down and
      dying, and just imagining this whole thing. A desert mirage. Soon the
      beautiful women carrying pitchers of water will come up and start giving him
      a drink. Then he’ll know he’s gone.

      He decides against laying down on the cool stone. If he’s going to die here
      in the middle of this hallucination, he at least wants to see what’s in the
      center before he goes. He keeps crawling.

      It’s the third time that he hears the voice before he realizes what he’s
      hearing. He would swear that someone just said, “Greetings, traveler. You do
      not look well. Do you hear me?”

      He stops crawling. He tries to look up from where he is on his hands and
      knees, but it’s too much effort to lift his head. So he tries something
      different – he leans back and tries to sit up on the stone. After a few
      seconds, he catches his balance, avoids falling on his face, sits up, and
      tries to focus his eyes. Blurry. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hands
      and tries again. Better this time.

      Yep. He can see. He’s sitting in the middle of a large, flat, dark expanse
      of stone. Directly next to him, about three feet away, is a white post or
      pole about two inches in diameter and sticking up about four or five feet
      out of the stone, at an angle.

      And wrapped around this white rod, tail with rattle on it hovering and
      seeming to be ready to start rattling, is what must be a fifteen foot long
      desert diamondback rattlesnake, looking directly at him.

      He stares at the snake in shock. He doesn’t have the energy to get up and
      run away. He doesn’t even have the energy to crawl away. This is it, his
      final resting place. No matter what happens, he’s not going to be able to
      move from this spot.

      Well, at least dying of a bite from this monster should be quicker than
      dying of thirst. He’ll face his end like a man. He struggles to sit up a
      little straighter. The snake keeps watching him. He lifts one hand and waves
      it in the snake’s direction, feebly. The snake watches the hand for a
      moment, then goes back to watching the man, looking into his eyes.

      Hmmm. Maybe the snake had no interest in biting him? It hadn’t rattled yet –
      that was a good sign. Maybe he wasn’t going to die of snake bite after all.

      He then remembers that he’d looked up when he’d reached the center here
      because he thought he’d heard a voice. He was still very woozy – he was
      likely to pass out soon, the sun still beat down on him even though he was
      now on cool stone. He still didn’t have anything to drink. But maybe he had
      actually heard a voice. This stone didn’t look natural. Nor did that white
      post sticking up out of the stone. Someone had to have built this. Maybe
      they were still nearby. Maybe that was who talked to him. Maybe this snake
      was even their pet, and that’s why it wasn’t biting.

      He tries to clear his throat to say, “Hello,” but his throat is too dry. All
      that comes out is a coughing or wheezing sound. There is no way he’s going
      to be able to talk without something to drink. He feels his pocket, and the
      bottle with the wiper fluid is still there. He shakily pulls the bottle out,
      almost losing his balance and falling on his back in the process. This isn’t
      good. He doesn’t have much time left, by his reckoning, before he passes
      out.

      He gets the lid off of the bottle, manages to get the bottle to his lips,
      and pours some of the fluid into his mouth. He sloshes it around, and then
      swallows it. He coughs a little. His throat feels better. Maybe he can talk
      now.

      He tries again. Ignoring the snake, he turns to look around him, hoping to
      spot the owner of this place, and croaks out, “Hello? Is there anyone here?”

      He hears, from his side, “Greetings. What is it that you want?”

      He turns his head, back towards the snake. That’s where the sound had seemed
      to come from. The only thing he can think of is that there must be a
      speaker, hidden under the snake, or maybe built into that post. He decides
      to try asking for help.

      “Please,” he croaks again, suddenly feeling dizzy, “I’d love to not be
      thirsty any more. I’ve been a long time without water. Can you help me?”

      Looking in the direction of the snake, hoping to see where the voice was
      coming from this time, he is shocked to see the snake rear back, open its
      mouth, and speak. He hears it say, as the dizziness overtakes him and he
      falls forward, face first on the stone, “Very well. Coming up.”

      A piercing pain shoots through his shoulder. Suddenly he is awake. He sits
      up and grabs his shoulder, wincing at the throbbing pain. He’s momentarily
      disoriented as he looks around, and then he remembers – the crawl across the
      sand, the dark area of stone, the snake. He sees the snake, still wrapped
      around the tilted white post, still looking at him.

      He reaches up and feels his shoulder, where it hurts. It feels slightly wet.
      He pulls his fingers away and looks at them – blood. He feels his shoulder
      again – his shirt has what feels like two holes in it – two puncture holes –
      they match up with the two aching spots of pain on his shoulder. He had been
      bitten. By the snake.

      “It’ll feel better in a minute.” He looks up – it’s the snake talking. He
      hadn’t dreamed it. Suddenly he notices – he’s not dizzy any more. And more
      importantly, he’s not thirsty any more – at all!

      “Have I died? Is this the afterlife? Why are you biting me in the
      afterlife?”

      “Sorry about that, but I had to bite you,” says the snake. “That’s the way I
      work. It all comes through the bite. Think of it as natural medicine.”

      “You bit me to help me? Why aren’t I thirsty any more? Did you give me a
      drink before you bit me? How did I drink enough while unconscious to not be
      thirsty any more? I haven’t had a drink for over two days. Well, except for
      the windshield wiper fluid… hold it, how in the world does a snake talk?
      Are you real? Are you some sort of Disney animation?”

      “No,” says the snake, “I’m real. As real as you or anyone is, anyway. I
      didn’t give you a drink. I bit you. That’s how it works – it’s what I do. I
      bite. I don’t have hands to give you a drink, even if I had water just
      sitting around here.”

      The man sat stunned for a minute. Here he was, sitting in the middle of the
      desert on some strange stone that should be hot but wasn’t, talking to a
      snake that could talk back and had just bitten him. And he felt better. Not
      great – he was still starving and exhausted, but much better – he was no
      longer thirsty. He had started to sweat again, but only slightly. He felt
      hot, in this sun, but it was starting to get lower in the sky, and the cool
      stone beneath him was a relief he could notice now that he was no longer
      dying of thirst.

      “I might suggest that we take care of that methanol you now have in your
      system with the next request,” continued the snake. “I can guess why you
      drank it, but I’m not sure how much you drank, or how much methanol was left
      in the wiper fluid. That stuff is nasty. It’ll make you go blind in a day or
      two, if you drank enough of it.”

      “Ummm, n-next request?” said the man. He put his hand back on his hurting
      shoulder and backed away from the snake a little.

      “That’s the way it works. If you like, that is,” explained the snake. “You
      get three requests. Call them wishes, if you wish.” The snake grinned at his
      own joke, and the man drew back a little further from the show of fangs.

      “But there are rules,” the snake continued. “The first request is free. The
      second requires an agreement of secrecy. The third requires the binding of
      responsibility.” The snake looks at the man seriously.

      “By the way,” the snake says suddenly, “my name is Nathan. Old Nathan,
      Samuel used to call me. He gave me the name. Before that, most of the Bound
      used to just call me ‘Snake’. But that got old, and Samuel wouldn’t stand
      for it. He said that anything that could talk needed a name. He was big into
      names. You can call me Nate, if you wish.” Again, the snake grinned. “Sorry
      if I don’t offer to shake, but I think you can understand – my shake sounds
      somewhat threatening.” The snake give his rattle a little shake.

      “Umm, my name is Jack,” said the man, trying to absorb all of this. “Jack
      Samson.

      “Can I ask you a question?” Jack says suddenly. “What happened to the
      poison…umm, in your bite. Why aren’t I dying now? How did you do that?
      What do you mean by that’s how you work?”

      “That’s more than one question,” grins Nate. “But I’ll still try to answer
      all of them. First, yes, you can ask me a question.” The snake’s grin gets
      wider. “Second, the poison is in you. It changed you. You now no longer need
      to drink. That’s what you asked for. Or, well, technically, you asked to not
      be thirsty any more – but ‘any more’ is such a vague term. I decided to make
      it permanent – now, as long as you live, you shouldn’t need to drink much at
      all. Your body will conserve water very efficiently. You should be able to
      get enough just from the food you eat – much like a creature of the desert.
      You’ve been changed.

      “For the third question,” Nate continues, “you are still dying. Besides the
      effects of that methanol in your system, you’re a man – and men are mortal.
      In your current state, I give you no more than about another 50 years.
      Assuming you get out of this desert, alive, that is.” Nate seemed vastly
      amused at his own humor, and continued his wide grin.

      “As for the fourth question,” Nate said, looking more serious as far as Jack
      could tell, as Jack was just now working on his ability to read
      talking-snake emotions from snake facial features, “first you have to agree
      to make a second request and become bound by the secrecy, or I can’t tell
      you.”

      “Wait,” joked Jack, “isn’t this where you say you could tell me, but you’d
      have to kill me?”

      “I thought that was implied.” Nate continued to look serious.

      “Ummm…yeah.” Jack leaned back a little as he remembered again that he was
      talking to a fifteen foot poisonous reptile with a reputation for having a
      nasty temper. “So, what is this ‘Bound by Secrecy’ stuff, and can you really
      stop the effects of the methanol?” Jack thought for a second. “And, what do
      you mean methanol, anyway? I thought these days they use ethanol in wiper
      fluid, and just denature it?”

      “They may, I don’t really know,” said Nate. “I haven’t gotten out in a
      while. Maybe they do. All I know is that I smell methanol on your breath and
      on that bottle in your pocket. And the blue color of the liquid when you
      pulled it out to drink some let me guess that it was wiper fluid. I assume
      that they still color wiper fluid blue?”

      “Yeah, they do,” said Jack.

      “I figured,” replied Nate. “As for being bound by secrecy – with the
      fulfillment of your next request, you will be bound to say nothing about me,
      this place, or any of the information I will tell you after that, when you
      decide to go back out to your kind. You won’t be allowed to talk about me,
      write about me, use sign language, charades, or even act in a way that will
      lead someone to guess correctly about me. You’ll be bound to secrecy. Of
      course, I’ll also ask you to promise not to give me away, and as I’m
      guessing that you’re a man of your word, you’ll never test the binding
      anyway, so you won’t notice.” Nate said the last part with utter confidence.

      Jack, who had always prided himself on being a man of his word, felt a
      little nervous at this. “Ummm, hey, Nate, who are you? How did you know
      that? Are you, umm, omniscient, or something?”

      Well, Jack,” said Nate sadly, “I can’t tell you that, unless you make the
      second request.” Nate looked away for a minute, then looked back.

      “Umm, well, ok,” said Jack, “what is this about a second request? What can I
      ask for? Are you allowed to tell me that?”

      “Sure!” said Nate, brightening. “You’re allowed to ask for changes. Changes
      to yourself. They’re like wishes, but they can only affect you. Oh, and
      before you ask, I can’t give you immortality. Or omniscience. Or
      omnipresence, for that matter. Though I might be able to make you gaseous
      and yet remain alive, and then you could spread through the atmosphere and
      sort of be omnipresent. But what good would that be – you still wouldn’t be
      omniscient and thus still could only focus on one thing at a time. Not very
      useful, at least in my opinion.” Nate stopped when he realized that Jack was
      staring at him.

      “Well, anyway,” continued Nate, “I’d probably suggest giving you permanent
      good health. It would negate the methanol now in your system, you’d be
      immune to most poisons and diseases, and you’d tend to live a very long
      time, barring accident, of course. And you’ll even have a tendency to
      recover from accidents well. It always seemed like a good choice for a
      request to me.”

      “Cure the methanol poisoning, huh?” said Jack. “And keep me healthy for a
      long time? Hmmm. It doesn’t sound bad at that. And it has to be a request
      about a change to me? I can’t ask to be rich, right? Because that’s not
      really a change to me?”

      “Right,” nodded Nate.

      “Could I ask to be a genius and permanently healthy?” Jack asked, hopefully.

      “That takes two requests, Jack.”

      “Yeah, I figured so,” said Jack. “But I could ask to be a genius? I could
      become the smartest scientist in the world? Or the best athlete?”

      “Well, I could make you very smart,” admitted Nate, “but that wouldn’t
      necessarily make you the best scientist in the world. Or, I could make you
      very athletic, but it wouldn’t necessarily make you the best athlete either.
      You’ve heard the saying that 99% of genius is hard work? Well, there’s some
      truth to that. I can give you the talent, but I can’t make you work hard. It
      all depends on what you decide to do with it.”

      “Hmmm,” said Jack. “Ok, I think I understand. And I get a third request,
      after this one?”

      “Maybe,” said Nate, “it depends on what you decide then. There are more
      rules for the third request that I can only tell you about after the second
      request. You know how it goes.” Nate looked like he’d shrug, if he had
      shoulders.

      “Ok, well, since I’d rather not be blind in a day or two, and permanent
      health doesn’t sound bad, then consider that my second request. Officially.
      Do I need to sign in blood or something?”

      “No,” said Nate. “Just hold out your hand. Or heel.” Nate grinned. “Or
      whatever part you want me to bite. I have to bite you again. Like I said,
      that’s how it works – the poison, you know,” Nate said apologetically.

      Jack winced a little and felt his shoulder, where the last bite was. Hey, it
      didn’t hurt any more. Just like Nate had said. That made Jack feel better
      about the biting business. But still, standing still while a fifteen foot
      snake sunk it’s fangs into you. Jack stood up. Ignoring how good it felt to
      be able to stand again, and the hunger starting to gnaw at his stomach, Jack
      tried to decide where he wanted to get bitten. Despite knowing that it
      wouldn’t hurt for long, Jack knew that this wasn’t going to be easy.

      “Hey, Jack,” Nate suddenly said, looking past Jack towards the dunes behind
      him, “is that someone else coming up over there?”

      Jack spun around and looked. Who else could be out here in the middle of
      nowhere? And did they bring food?

      Wait a minute, there was nobody over there. What was Nate…

      Jack let out a bellow as he felt two fangs sink into his rear end, through
      his jeans…

      Jack sat down carefully, favoring his more tender buttock. “I would have
      decided, eventually, Nate. I was just thinking about it. You didn’t have to
      hoodwink me like that.”

      “I’ve been doing this a long time, Jack,” said Nate, confidently. “You
      humans have a hard time sitting still and letting a snake bite you –
      especially one my size. And besides, admit it – it’s only been a couple of
      minutes and it already doesn’t hurt any more, does it? That’s because of the
      health benefit with this one. I told you that you’d heal quickly now.”

      “Yeah, well, still,” said Jack, “it’s the principle of the thing. And nobody
      likes being bitten in the butt! Couldn’t you have gotten my calf or
      something instead?”

      “More meat in the typical human butt,” replied Nate. “And less chance you
      accidentally kick me or move at the last second.”

      “Yeah, right. So, tell me all of these wonderful secrets that I now qualify
      to hear,” answered Jack.

      “Ok,” said Nate. “Do you want to ask questions first, or do you want me to
      just start talking?”

      “Just talk,” said Jack. “I’ll sit here and try to not think about food.”

      “We could go try to rustle up some food for you first, if you like,”
      answered Nate.

      “Hey! You didn’t tell me you had food around here, Nate!” Jack jumped up.
      “What do we have? Am I in walking distance to town? Or can you magically
      whip up food along with your other powers?” Jack was almost shouting with
      excitement. His stomach had been growling for hours.

      “I was thinking more like I could flush something out of its hole and bite
      it for you, and you could skin it and eat it. Assuming you have a knife,
      that is,” replied Nate, with the grin that Jack was starting to get used to.

      “Ugh,” said Jack, sitting back down. “I think I’ll pass. I can last a little
      longer before I get desperate enough to eat desert rat, or whatever else it
      is you find out here. And there’s nothing to burn – I’d have to eat it raw.
      No thanks. Just talk.”

      “Ok,” replied Nate, still grinning. “But I’d better hurry, before you start
      looking at me as food.

      Nate reared back a little, looked around for a second, and then continued.
      “You, Jack, are sitting in the middle of the Garden of Eden.”

      Jack looked around at the sand and dunes and then looked back at Nate
      sceptically.

      “Well, that’s the best I can figure it, anyway, Jack,” said Nate. “Stand up
      and look at the symbol on the rock here.” Nate gestured around the dark
      stone they were both sitting on with his nose.

      Jack stood up and looked. Carved into the stone in a bas-relief was a
      representation of a large tree. The angled-pole that Nate was wrapped around
      was coming out of the trunk of the tree, right below where the main branches
      left the truck to reach out across the stone. It was very well done – it
      looked more like a tree had been reduced to almost two dimensions and
      embedded in the stone than it did like a carving.

      Jack walked around and looked at the details in the fading light of the
      setting sun. He wished he’d looked at it while the sun was higher in the
      sky.

      Wait! The sun was setting! That meant he was going to have to spend another
      night out here! Arrrgh!

      Jack looked out across the desert for a little bit, and then came back and
      stood next to Nate. “In all the excitement, I almost forgot, Nate,” said
      Jack. “Which way is it back to town? And how far? I’m eventually going to
      have to head back – I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive by eating raw
      desert critters for long. And even if I can, I’m not sure I’ll want to.”

      “It’s about 30 miles that way.” Nate pointed, with the rattle on his tail
      this time. As far as Jack could tell, it was a direction at right angles to
      the way he’d been going when he was crawling here. “But that’s 30 miles by
      the way the crow flies. It’s about 40 by the way a man walks. You should be
      able to do it in about half a day with your improved endurance, if you head
      out early tomorrow, Jack.”

      Jack looked out the way the snake had pointed for a few seconds more, and
      then sat back down. It was getting dark. Not much he could do about heading
      out right now. And besides, Nate was just about to get to the interesting
      stuff. “Garden of Eden? As best as you can figure it?”

      “Well, yeah, as best as I and Samuel could figure it anyway,” said Nate. “He
      figured that the story just got a little mixed up. You know, snake, in a
      ‘tree’, offering ‘temptations’, making bargains. That kind stuff. But he
      could never quite figure out how the Hebrews found out about this spot from
      across the ocean. He worried about that for a while.”

      “Garden of Eden, hunh?” said Jack. “How long have you been here, Nate?”

      “No idea, really,” replied Nate. “A long time. It never occurred to me to
      count years, until recently, and by then, of course, it was too late. But I
      do remember when this whole place was green, so I figure it’s been thousands
      of years, at least.”

      “So, are you the snake that tempted Eve?” said Jack.

      “Beats me,” said Nate. “Maybe. I can’t remember if the first one of your
      kind that I talked to was female or not, and I never got a name, but it
      could have been. And I suppose she could have considered my offer to grant
      requests a ‘temptation’, though I’ve rarely had refusals.”

      “Well, umm, how did you get here then? And why is that white pole stuck out
      of the stone there?” asked Jack.

      “Dad left me here. Or, I assume it was my dad. It was another snake – much
      bigger than I was back then. I remember talking to him, but I don’t remember
      if it was in a language, or just kind of understanding what he wanted. But
      one day, he brought me to this stone, told me about it, and asked me to do
      something for him. I talked it over with him for a while, then agreed. I’ve
      been here ever since.

      “What is this place?” said Jack. “And what did he ask you to do?”

      “Well, you see this pole here, sticking out of the stone?” Nate loosened his
      coils around the tilted white pole and showed Jack where it descended into
      the stone. The pole was tilted at about a 45 degree angle and seemed to
      enter the stone in an eighteen inch slot cut into the stone. Jack leaned
      over and looked. The slot was dark and the pole went down into it as far as
      Jack could see in the dim light. Jack reached out to touch the pole, but
      Nate was suddenly there in the way.

      “You can’t touch that yet, Jack,” said Nate.

      “Why not?” asked Jack.

      “I haven’t explained it to you yet,” replied Nate.

      “Well, it kinda looks like a lever or something,” said Jack. “You’d push it
      that way, and it would move in the slot.”

      “Yep, that’s what it is,” replied Nate.

      “What does it do?” asked Jack. “End the world?”

      “Oh, no,” said Nate. “Nothing that drastic. It just ends humanity. I call it
      ‘The Lever of Doom’.” For the last few words Nate had used a deeper, ringing
      voice. He tried to look serious for a few seconds, and then gave up and
      grinned.

      Jack was initially startled by Nate’s pronouncement, but when Nate grinned
      Jack laughed. “Ha! You almost had me fooled for a second there. What does it
      really do?”

      “Oh, it really ends humanity, like I said,” smirked Nate. “I just thought
      the voice I used was funny, didn’t you?”

      Nate continued to grin.

      “A lever to end humanity?” asked Jack. “What in the world is that for? Why
      would anyone need to end humanity?”

      “Well,” replied Nate, “I get the idea that maybe humanity was an experiment.
      Or maybe the Big Guy just thought, that if humanity started going really
      bad, there should be a way to end it. I’m not really sure. All I know are
      the rules, and the guesses that Samuel and I had about why it’s here. I
      didn’t think to ask back when I started here.”

      “Rules? What rules?” asked Jack.

      “The rules are that I can’t tell anybody about it or let them touch it
      unless they agree to be bound to secrecy by a bite. And that only one human
      can be bound in that way at a time. That’s it.” explained Nate.

      Jack looked somewhat shocked. “You mean that I could pull the lever now?
      You’d let me end humanity?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “if you want to.” Nate looked at Jack carefully. “Do
      you want to, Jack?”

      “Umm, no.” said Jack, stepping a little further back from the lever. “Why in
      the world would anyone want to end humanity? It’d take a psychotic to want
      that! Or worse, a suicidal psychotic, because it would kill him too,
      wouldn’t it?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “being as he’d be human too.”

      “Has anyone ever seriously considered it?” asked Nate. “Any of those bound
      to secrecy, that is?”

      “Well, of course, I think they’ve all seriously considered it at one time or
      another. Being given that kind of responsibility makes you sit down and
      think, or so I’m told. Samuel considered it several times. He’d often get
      disgusted with humanity, come out here, and just hold the lever for a while.
      But he never pulled it. Or you wouldn’t be here.” Nate grinned some more.

      Jack sat down, well back from the lever. He looked thoughtful and puzzled at
      the same time. After a bit, he said, “So this makes me the Judge of
      humanity? I get to decide whether they keep going or just end? Me?”

      “That seems to be it,” agreed Nate.

      “What kind of criteria do I use to decide?” said Jack. “How do I make this
      decision? Am I supposed to decide if they’re good? Or too many of them are
      bad? Or that they’re going the wrong way? Is there a set of rules for that?”

      “Nope,” replied Nate. “You pretty much just have to decide on your own. It’s
      up to you, however you want to decide it. I guess that you’re just supposed
      to know.”

      “But what if I get mad at someone? Or some girl dumps me and I feel
      horrible? Couldn’t I make a mistake? How do I know that I won’t screw up?”
      protested Jack.

      Nate gave his kind of snake-like shrug again. “You don’t. You just have to
      try your best, Jack.”

      Jack sat there for a while, staring off into the desert that was rapidly
      getting dark, chewing on a fingernail.

      Suddenly, Jack turned around and looked at the snake. “Nate, was Samuel the
      one bound to this before me?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate. “He was a good guy. Talked to me a lot. Taught me to
      read and brought me books. I think I still have a good pile of them buried
      in the sand around here somewhere. I still miss him. He died a few months
      ago.”

      “Sounds like a good guy,” agreed Jack. “How did he handle this, when you
      first told him. What did he do?”

      “Well,” said Nate, “he sat down for a while, thought about it for a bit, and
      then asked me some questions, much like you’re doing.”

      “What did he ask you, if you’re allowed to tell me?” asked Jack.

      “He asked me about the third request,” replied Nate.

      “Aha!” It was Jack’s turn to grin. “And what did you tell him?”

      “I told him the rules for the third request. That to get the third request
      you have to agree to this whole thing. That if it ever comes to the point
      that you really think that humanity should be ended, that you’ll come here
      and end it. You won’t avoid it, and you won’t wimp out.” Nate looked serious
      again. “And you’ll be bound to do it too, Jack.”

      “Hmmm.” Jack looked back out into the darkness for a while.

      Nate watched him, waiting.

      “Nate,” continued Jack, quietly, eventually. “What did Samuel ask for with
      his third request?”

      Nate sounded like he was grinning again as he replied, also quietly,
      “Wisdom, Jack. He asked for wisdom. As much as I could give him.”

      “Ok,” said Jack, suddenly, standing up and facing away from Nate, “give it
      to me.

      Nate looked at Jack’s backside. “Give you what, Jack?”

      “Give me that wisdom. The same stuff that Samuel asked for. If it helped
      him, maybe it’ll help me too.” Jack turned his head to look back over his
      shoulder at Nate. “It did help him, right?”

      “He said it did,” replied Nate. “But he seemed a little quieter afterward.
      Like he had a lot to think about.”

    6. Anon:
      So, there’s a man crawling through the desert.

      He’d decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a big rock, and then he couldn’t get it started again. There were no cell phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family, his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few friends had no idea he was out here.

      He stayed with the car for a day or so, but his one bottle of water ran out
      and he was getting thirsty. He thought maybe he knew the direction back, now that he’d paid attention to the sun and thought he’d figured out which way was north, so he decided to start walking. He figured he only had to go about 30 miles or so and he’d be back to the small town he’d gotten gas in last.

      He thinks about walking at night to avoid the heat and sun, but based upon
      how dark it actually was the night before, and given that he has no flashlight, he’s afraid that he’ll break a leg or step on a rattlesnake. So,
      he puts on some sun block, puts the rest in his pocket for reapplication
      later, brings an umbrella he’d had in the back of the SUV with him to give
      him a little shade, pours the windshield wiper fluid into his water bottle
      in case he gets that desperate, brings his pocket knife in case he finds a cactus that looks like it might have water in it, and heads out in the
      direction he thinks is right.

      He walks for the entire day. By the end of the day he’s really thirsty. He’s
      been sweating all day, and his lips are starting to crack. He’s reapplied the sunblock twice, and tried to stay under the umbrella, but he still feels sunburned. The windshield wiper fluid sloshing in the bottle in his pocket is really getting tempting now. He knows that it’s mainly water and some ethanol and coloring, but he also knows that they add some kind of poison to it to keep people from drinking it. He wonders what the poison is, and
      whether the poison would be worse than dying of thirst.

      He pushes on, trying to get to that small town before dark.

      By the end of the day he starts getting worried. He figures he’s been walking at least 3 miles an hour, according to his watch for over 10 hours. That means that if his estimate was right that he should be close to the
      town. But he doesn’t recognize any of this. He had to cross a dry creek bed a mile or two back, and he doesn’t remember coming through it in the SUV. He figures that maybe he got his direction off just a little and that the dry creek bed was just off to one side of his path. He tells himself that he’s close, and that after dark he’ll start seeing the town lights over one of these hills, and that’ll be all he needs.

      As it gets dim enough that he starts stumbling over small rocks and things,
      he finds a spot and sits down to wait for full dark and the town lights.

      Full dark comes before he knows it. He must have dozed off. He stands back
      up and turns all the way around. He sees nothing but stars.

      He wakes up the next morning feeling absolutely lousy. His eyes are gummy and his mouth and nose feel like they’re full of sand. He so thirsty that he can’t even swallow. He barely got any sleep because it was so cold. He’d forgotten how cold it got at night in the desert and hadn’t noticed it the night before because he’d been in his car.

      He knows the Rule of Threes – three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food – then you die. Some people can make it a little longer, in the best situations. But the desert heat and having to walk and sweat isn’t the best situation to be without water. He figures, unless he finds water, this is his last day.

      He rinses his mouth out with a little of the windshield wiper fluid. He waits a while after spitting that little bit out, to see if his mouth goes numb, or he feels dizzy or something. Has his mouth gone numb? Is it just in
      his mind? He’s not sure. He’ll go a little farther, and if he still doesn’t
      find water, he’ll try drinking some of the fluid.

      Then he has to face his next, harder question – which way does he go from here? Does he keep walking the same way he was yesterday (assuming that he still knows which way that is), or does he try a new direction? He has no idea what to do.

      Looking at the hills and dunes around him, he thinks he knows the direction he was heading before. Just going by a feeling, he points himself somewhat to the left of that, and starts walking.

      As he walks, the day starts heating up. The desert, too cold just a couple of hours before, soon becomes an oven again. He sweats a little at first, and then stops. He starts getting worried at that – when you stop sweating he knows that means you’re in trouble – usually right before heat stroke.

      He decides that it’s time to try the windshield wiper fluid. He can’t wait
      any longer – if he passes out, he’s dead. He stops in the shade of a large
      rock, takes the bottle out, opens it, and takes a mouthful. He slowly
      swallows it, making it last as long as he can. It feels so good in his dry
      and cracked throat that he doesn’t even care about the nasty taste. He takes
      another mouthful, and makes it last too. Slowly, he drinks half the bottle.
      He figures that since he’s drinking it, he might as well drink enough to
      make some difference and keep himself from passing out.

      He’s quit worrying about the denaturing of the wiper fluid. If it kills him,
      it kills him – if he didn’t drink it, he’d die anyway. Besides, he’s pretty
      sure that whatever substance they denature the fluid with is just designed to make you sick – their way of keeping winos from buying cheap wiper fluid for the ethanol content. He can handle throwing up, if it comes to that.

      He walks. He walks in the hot, dry, windless desert. Sand, rocks, hills,
      dunes, the occasional scrawny cactus or dried bush. No sign of water.
      Sometimes he’ll see a little movement to one side or the other, but whatever moved is usually gone before he can focus his eyes on it. Probably birds, lizards, or mice. Maybe snakes, though they usually move more at night. He’s careful to stay away from the movements.

      After a while, he begins to stagger. He’s not sure if it’s fatigue, heat
      stroke finally catching him, or maybe he was wrong and the denaturing of the wiper fluid was worse than he thought. He tries to steady himself, and keep going.

      After more walking, he comes to a large stretch of sand. This is good! He
      knows he passed over a stretch of sand in the SUV – he remembers doing
      donuts in it. Or at least he thinks he remembers it – he’s getting woozy
      enough and tired enough that he’s not sure what he remembers any more or if
      he’s hallucinating. But he thinks he remembers it. So he heads off into it,
      trying to get to the other side, hoping that it gets him closer to the town.

      He was heading for a town, wasn’t he? He thinks he was. He isn’t sure any more. He’s not even sure how long he’s been walking any more. Is it still morning? Or has it moved into afternoon and the sun is going down again? It must be afternoon – it seems like it’s been too long since he started out.

      He walks through the sand.

      After a while, he comes to a big dune in the sand. This is bad. He doesn’t
      remember any dunes when driving over the sand in his SUV. Or at least he
      doesn’t think he remembers any. This is bad.

      But, he has no other direction to go. Too late to turn back now. He figures
      that he’ll get to the top of the dune and see if he can see anything from
      there that helps him find the town. He keeps going up the dune.

      Halfway up, he slips in the bad footing of the sand for the second or third
      time, and falls to his knees. He doesn’t feel like getting back up – he’ll
      just fall down again. So, he keeps going up the dune on his hand and knees.

      While crawling, if his throat weren’t so dry, he’d laugh. He’s finally
      gotten to the hackneyed image of a man lost in the desert – crawling through
      the sand on his hands and knees. If would be the perfect image, he imagines, if only his clothes were more ragged. The people crawling through the desert
      in the cartoons always had ragged clothes. But his have lasted without any
      rips so far. Somebody will probably find his dessicated corpse half buried in the sand years from now, and his clothes will still be in fine shape –
      shake the sand out, and a good wash, and they’d be wearable again. He wishes his throat were wet enough to laugh. He coughs a little instead, and it hurts.

      He finally makes it to the top of the sand dune. Now that he’s at the top,
      he struggles a little, but manages to stand up and look around. All he sees
      is sand. Sand, and more sand. Behind him, about a mile away, he thinks he
      sees the rocky ground he left to head into this sand. Ahead of him, more
      dunes, more sand. This isn’t where he drove his SUV. This is Hell. Or close enough.

      Again, he doesn’t know what to do. He decides to drink the rest of the wiper
      fluid while figuring it out. He takes out the bottle, and is removing the
      cap, when he glances to the side and sees something. Something in the sand. At the bottom of the dune, off to the side, he sees something strange. It’s a flat area, in the sand. He stops taking the cap of the bottle off, and tries to look closer. The area seems to be circular. And it’s dark – darker than the sand. And, there seems to be something in the middle of it, but he can’t tell what it is. He looks as hard as he can, and still can tell from
      here. He’s going to have to go down there and look.

      He puts the bottle back in his pocket, and starts to stumble down the dune.
      After a few steps, he realizes that he’s in trouble – he’s not going to be able to keep his balance. After a couple of more sliding, tottering steps, he falls and starts to roll down the dune. The sand it so hot when his body hits it that for a minute he thinks he’s caught fire on the way down – like a movie car wreck flashing into flames as it goes over the cliff, before it ever even hits the ground. He closes his eyes and mouth, covers his face with his hands, and waits to stop rolling.

      He stops, at the bottom of the dune. After a minute or two, he finds enough
      energy to try to sit up and get the sand out of his face and clothes. When
      he clears his eyes enough, he looks around to make sure that the dark spot
      in the sand it still there and he hadn’t just imagined it.

      So, seeing the large, flat, dark spot on the sand is still there, he begins
      to crawl towards it. He’d get up and walk towards it, but he doesn’t seem to
      have the energy to get up and walk right now. He must be in the final stages
      of dehydration he figures, as he crawls. If this place in the sand doesn’t
      have water, he’ll likely never make it anywhere else. This is his last
      chance.

      He gets closer and closer, but still can’t see what’s in the middle of the
      dark area. His eyes won’t quite focus any more for some reason. And lifting
      his head up to look takes so much effort that he gives up trying. He just
      keeps crawling.

      Finally, he reaches the area he’d seen from the dune. It takes him a minute of crawling on it before he realizes that he’s no longer on sand – he’s now crawling on some kind of dark stone. Stone with some kind of marking on it – a pattern cut into the stone. He’s too tired to stand up and try to see what the pattern is – so he just keeps crawling. He crawls towards the center,
      where his blurry eyes still see something in the middle of the dark stone
      area.

      His mind, detached in a strange way, notes that either his hands and knees are so burnt by the sand that they no longer feel pain, or that this dark
      stone, in the middle of a burning desert with a pounding, punishing sun
      overhead, doesn’t seem to be hot. It almost feels cool. He considers lying
      down on the nice cool surface.

      Cool, dark stone. Not a good sign. He must be hallucinating this. He’s
      probably in the middle of a patch of sand, already lying face down and
      dying, and just imagining this whole thing. A desert mirage. Soon the
      beautiful women carrying pitchers of water will come up and start giving him
      a drink. Then he’ll know he’s gone.

      He decides against laying down on the cool stone. If he’s going to die here
      in the middle of this hallucination, he at least wants to see what’s in the
      center before he goes. He keeps crawling.

      It’s the third time that he hears the voice before he realizes what he’s
      hearing. He would swear that someone just said, “Greetings, traveler. You do
      not look well. Do you hear me?”

      He stops crawling. He tries to look up from where he is on his hands and
      knees, but it’s too much effort to lift his head. So he tries something
      different – he leans back and tries to sit up on the stone. After a few
      seconds, he catches his balance, avoids falling on his face, sits up, and
      tries to focus his eyes. Blurry. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hands
      and tries again. Better this time.

      Yep. He can see. He’s sitting in the middle of a large, flat, dark expanse
      of stone. Directly next to him, about three feet away, is a white post or
      pole about two inches in diameter and sticking up about four or five feet
      out of the stone, at an angle.

      And wrapped around this white rod, tail with rattle on it hovering and
      seeming to be ready to start rattling, is what must be a fifteen foot long
      desert diamondback rattlesnake, looking directly at him.

      He stares at the snake in shock. He doesn’t have the energy to get up and
      run away. He doesn’t even have the energy to crawl away. This is it, his
      final resting place. No matter what happens, he’s not going to be able to
      move from this spot.

      Well, at least dying of a bite from this monster should be quicker than
      dying of thirst. He’ll face his end like a man. He struggles to sit up a
      little straighter. The snake keeps watching him. He lifts one hand and waves
      it in the snake’s direction, feebly. The snake watches the hand for a
      moment, then goes back to watching the man, looking into his eyes.

      Hmmm. Maybe the snake had no interest in biting him? It hadn’t rattled yet –
      that was a good sign. Maybe he wasn’t going to die of snake bite after all.

      He then remembers that he’d looked up when he’d reached the center here
      because he thought he’d heard a voice. He was still very woozy – he was
      likely to pass out soon, the sun still beat down on him even though he was
      now on cool stone. He still didn’t have anything to drink. But maybe he had
      actually heard a voice. This stone didn’t look natural. Nor did that white
      post sticking up out of the stone. Someone had to have built this. Maybe
      they were still nearby. Maybe that was who talked to him. Maybe this snake
      was even their pet, and that’s why it wasn’t biting.

      He tries to clear his throat to say, “Hello,” but his throat is too dry. All
      that comes out is a coughing or wheezing sound. There is no way he’s going
      to be able to talk without something to drink. He feels his pocket, and the
      bottle with the wiper fluid is still there. He shakily pulls the bottle out,
      almost losing his balance and falling on his back in the process. This isn’t
      good. He doesn’t have much time left, by his reckoning, before he passes
      out.

      He gets the lid off of the bottle, manages to get the bottle to his lips,
      and pours some of the fluid into his mouth. He sloshes it around, and then
      swallows it. He coughs a little. His throat feels better. Maybe he can talk
      now.

      He tries again. Ignoring the snake, he turns to look around him, hoping to
      spot the owner of this place, and croaks out, “Hello? Is there anyone here?”

      He hears, from his side, “Greetings. What is it that you want?”

      He turns his head, back towards the snake. That’s where the sound had seemed
      to come from. The only thing he can think of is that there must be a
      speaker, hidden under the snake, or maybe built into that post. He decides
      to try asking for help.

      “Please,” he croaks again, suddenly feeling dizzy, “I’d love to not be
      thirsty any more. I’ve been a long time without water. Can you help me?”

      Looking in the direction of the snake, hoping to see where the voice was
      coming from this time, he is shocked to see the snake rear back, open its
      mouth, and speak. He hears it say, as the dizziness overtakes him and he
      falls forward, face first on the stone, “Very well. Coming up.”

      A piercing pain shoots through his shoulder. Suddenly he is awake. He sits
      up and grabs his shoulder, wincing at the throbbing pain. He’s momentarily
      disoriented as he looks around, and then he remembers – the crawl across the
      sand, the dark area of stone, the snake. He sees the snake, still wrapped
      around the tilted white post, still looking at him.

      He reaches up and feels his shoulder, where it hurts. It feels slightly wet.
      He pulls his fingers away and looks at them – blood. He feels his shoulder
      again – his shirt has what feels like two holes in it – two puncture holes –
      they match up with the two aching spots of pain on his shoulder. He had been
      bitten. By the snake.

      “It’ll feel better in a minute.” He looks up – it’s the snake talking. He
      hadn’t dreamed it. Suddenly he notices – he’s not dizzy any more. And more
      importantly, he’s not thirsty any more – at all!

      “Have I died? Is this the afterlife? Why are you biting me in the
      afterlife?”

      “Sorry about that, but I had to bite you,” says the snake. “That’s the way I
      work. It all comes through the bite. Think of it as natural medicine.”

      “You bit me to help me? Why aren’t I thirsty any more? Did you give me a
      drink before you bit me? How did I drink enough while unconscious to not be
      thirsty any more? I haven’t had a drink for over two days. Well, except for
      the windshield wiper fluid… hold it, how in the world does a snake talk?
      Are you real? Are you some sort of Disney animation?”

      “No,” says the snake, “I’m real. As real as you or anyone is, anyway. I
      didn’t give you a drink. I bit you. That’s how it works – it’s what I do. I
      bite. I don’t have hands to give you a drink, even if I had water just
      sitting around here.”

      The man sat stunned for a minute. Here he was, sitting in the middle of the
      desert on some strange stone that should be hot but wasn’t, talking to a
      snake that could talk back and had just bitten him. And he felt better. Not
      great – he was still starving and exhausted, but much better – he was no
      longer thirsty. He had started to sweat again, but only slightly. He felt
      hot, in this sun, but it was starting to get lower in the sky, and the cool
      stone beneath him was a relief he could notice now that he was no longer
      dying of thirst.

      “I might suggest that we take care of that methanol you now have in your
      system with the next request,” continued the snake. “I can guess why you
      drank it, but I’m not sure how much you drank, or how much methanol was left
      in the wiper fluid. That stuff is nasty. It’ll make you go blind in a day or
      two, if you drank enough of it.”

      “Ummm, n-next request?” said the man. He put his hand back on his hurting
      shoulder and backed away from the snake a little.

      “That’s the way it works. If you like, that is,” explained the snake. “You
      get three requests. Call them wishes, if you wish.” The snake grinned at his
      own joke, and the man drew back a little further from the show of fangs.

      “But there are rules,” the snake continued. “The first request is free. The
      second requires an agreement of secrecy. The third requires the binding of
      responsibility.” The snake looks at the man seriously.

      “By the way,” the snake says suddenly, “my name is Nathan. Old Nathan,
      Samuel used to call me. He gave me the name. Before that, most of the Bound
      used to just call me ‘Snake’. But that got old, and Samuel wouldn’t stand
      for it. He said that anything that could talk needed a name. He was big into
      names. You can call me Nate, if you wish.” Again, the snake grinned. “Sorry
      if I don’t offer to shake, but I think you can understand – my shake sounds
      somewhat threatening.” The snake give his rattle a little shake.

      “Umm, my name is Jack,” said the man, trying to absorb all of this. “Jack
      Samson.

      “Can I ask you a question?” Jack says suddenly. “What happened to the
      poison…umm, in your bite. Why aren’t I dying now? How did you do that?
      What do you mean by that’s how you work?”

      “That’s more than one question,” grins Nate. “But I’ll still try to answer
      all of them. First, yes, you can ask me a question.” The snake’s grin gets
      wider. “Second, the poison is in you. It changed you. You now no longer need
      to drink. That’s what you asked for. Or, well, technically, you asked to not
      be thirsty any more – but ‘any more’ is such a vague term. I decided to make
      it permanent – now, as long as you live, you shouldn’t need to drink much at
      all. Your body will conserve water very efficiently. You should be able to
      get enough just from the food you eat – much like a creature of the desert.
      You’ve been changed.

      “For the third question,” Nate continues, “you are still dying. Besides the
      effects of that methanol in your system, you’re a man – and men are mortal.
      In your current state, I give you no more than about another 50 years.
      Assuming you get out of this desert, alive, that is.” Nate seemed vastly
      amused at his own humor, and continued his wide grin.

      “As for the fourth question,” Nate said, looking more serious as far as Jack
      could tell, as Jack was just now working on his ability to read
      talking-snake emotions from snake facial features, “first you have to agree
      to make a second request and become bound by the secrecy, or I can’t tell
      you.”

      “Wait,” joked Jack, “isn’t this where you say you could tell me, but you’d
      have to kill me?”

      “I thought that was implied.” Nate continued to look serious.

      “Ummm…yeah.” Jack leaned back a little as he remembered again that he was
      talking to a fifteen foot poisonous reptile with a reputation for having a
      nasty temper. “So, what is this ‘Bound by Secrecy’ stuff, and can you really
      stop the effects of the methanol?” Jack thought for a second. “And, what do
      you mean methanol, anyway? I thought these days they use ethanol in wiper
      fluid, and just denature it?”

      “They may, I don’t really know,” said Nate. “I haven’t gotten out in a
      while. Maybe they do. All I know is that I smell methanol on your breath and
      on that bottle in your pocket. And the blue color of the liquid when you
      pulled it out to drink some let me guess that it was wiper fluid. I assume
      that they still color wiper fluid blue?”

      “Yeah, they do,” said Jack.

      “I figured,” replied Nate. “As for being bound by secrecy – with the
      fulfillment of your next request, you will be bound to say nothing about me,
      this place, or any of the information I will tell you after that, when you
      decide to go back out to your kind. You won’t be allowed to talk about me,
      write about me, use sign language, charades, or even act in a way that will
      lead someone to guess correctly about me. You’ll be bound to secrecy. Of
      course, I’ll also ask you to promise not to give me away, and as I’m
      guessing that you’re a man of your word, you’ll never test the binding
      anyway, so you won’t notice.” Nate said the last part with utter confidence.

      Jack, who had always prided himself on being a man of his word, felt a
      little nervous at this. “Ummm, hey, Nate, who are you? How did you know
      that? Are you, umm, omniscient, or something?”

      Well, Jack,” said Nate sadly, “I can’t tell you that, unless you make the
      second request.” Nate looked away for a minute, then looked back.

      “Umm, well, ok,” said Jack, “what is this about a second request? What can I
      ask for? Are you allowed to tell me that?”

      “Sure!” said Nate, brightening. “You’re allowed to ask for changes. Changes
      to yourself. They’re like wishes, but they can only affect you. Oh, and
      before you ask, I can’t give you immortality. Or omniscience. Or
      omnipresence, for that matter. Though I might be able to make you gaseous
      and yet remain alive, and then you could spread through the atmosphere and
      sort of be omnipresent. But what good would that be – you still wouldn’t be
      omniscient and thus still could only focus on one thing at a time. Not very
      useful, at least in my opinion.” Nate stopped when he realized that Jack was
      staring at him.

      “Well, anyway,” continued Nate, “I’d probably suggest giving you permanent
      good health. It would negate the methanol now in your system, you’d be
      immune to most poisons and diseases, and you’d tend to live a very long
      time, barring accident, of course. And you’ll even have a tendency to
      recover from accidents well. It always seemed like a good choice for a
      request to me.”

      “Cure the methanol poisoning, huh?” said Jack. “And keep me healthy for a
      long time? Hmmm. It doesn’t sound bad at that. And it has to be a request
      about a change to me? I can’t ask to be rich, right? Because that’s not
      really a change to me?”

      “Right,” nodded Nate.

      “Could I ask to be a genius and permanently healthy?” Jack asked, hopefully.

      “That takes two requests, Jack.”

      “Yeah, I figured so,” said Jack. “But I could ask to be a genius? I could
      become the smartest scientist in the world? Or the best athlete?”

      “Well, I could make you very smart,” admitted Nate, “but that wouldn’t
      necessarily make you the best scientist in the world. Or, I could make you
      very athletic, but it wouldn’t necessarily make you the best athlete either.
      You’ve heard the saying that 99% of genius is hard work? Well, there’s some
      truth to that. I can give you the talent, but I can’t make you work hard. It
      all depends on what you decide to do with it.”

      “Hmmm,” said Jack. “Ok, I think I understand. And I get a third request,
      after this one?”

      “Maybe,” said Nate, “it depends on what you decide then. There are more
      rules for the third request that I can only tell you about after the second
      request. You know how it goes.” Nate looked like he’d shrug, if he had
      shoulders.

      “Ok, well, since I’d rather not be blind in a day or two, and permanent
      health doesn’t sound bad, then consider that my second request. Officially.
      Do I need to sign in blood or something?”

      “No,” said Nate. “Just hold out your hand. Or heel.” Nate grinned. “Or
      whatever part you want me to bite. I have to bite you again. Like I said,
      that’s how it works – the poison, you know,” Nate said apologetically.

      Jack winced a little and felt his shoulder, where the last bite was. Hey, it
      didn’t hurt any more. Just like Nate had said. That made Jack feel better
      about the biting business. But still, standing still while a fifteen foot
      snake sunk it’s fangs into you. Jack stood up. Ignoring how good it felt to
      be able to stand again, and the hunger starting to gnaw at his stomach, Jack
      tried to decide where he wanted to get bitten. Despite knowing that it
      wouldn’t hurt for long, Jack knew that this wasn’t going to be easy.

      “Hey, Jack,” Nate suddenly said, looking past Jack towards the dunes behind
      him, “is that someone else coming up over there?”

      Jack spun around and looked. Who else could be out here in the middle of
      nowhere? And did they bring food?

      Wait a minute, there was nobody over there. What was Nate…

      Jack let out a bellow as he felt two fangs sink into his rear end, through
      his jeans…

      Jack sat down carefully, favoring his more tender buttock. “I would have
      decided, eventually, Nate. I was just thinking about it. You didn’t have to
      hoodwink me like that.”

      “I’ve been doing this a long time, Jack,” said Nate, confidently. “You
      humans have a hard time sitting still and letting a snake bite you –
      especially one my size. And besides, admit it – it’s only been a couple of
      minutes and it already doesn’t hurt any more, does it? That’s because of the
      health benefit with this one. I told you that you’d heal quickly now.”

      “Yeah, well, still,” said Jack, “it’s the principle of the thing. And nobody
      likes being bitten in the butt! Couldn’t you have gotten my calf or
      something instead?”

      “More meat in the typical human butt,” replied Nate. “And less chance you
      accidentally kick me or move at the last second.”

      “Yeah, right. So, tell me all of these wonderful secrets that I now qualify
      to hear,” answered Jack.

      “Ok,” said Nate. “Do you want to ask questions first, or do you want me to
      just start talking?”

      “Just talk,” said Jack. “I’ll sit here and try to not think about food.”

      “We could go try to rustle up some food for you first, if you like,”
      answered Nate.

      “Hey! You didn’t tell me you had food around here, Nate!” Jack jumped up.
      “What do we have? Am I in walking distance to town? Or can you magically
      whip up food along with your other powers?” Jack was almost shouting with
      excitement. His stomach had been growling for hours.

      “I was thinking more like I could flush something out of its hole and bite
      it for you, and you could skin it and eat it. Assuming you have a knife,
      that is,” replied Nate, with the grin that Jack was starting to get used to.

      “Ugh,” said Jack, sitting back down. “I think I’ll pass. I can last a little
      longer before I get desperate enough to eat desert rat, or whatever else it
      is you find out here. And there’s nothing to burn – I’d have to eat it raw.
      No thanks. Just talk.”

      “Ok,” replied Nate, still grinning. “But I’d better hurry, before you start
      looking at me as food.

      Nate reared back a little, looked around for a second, and then continued.
      “You, Jack, are sitting in the middle of the Garden of Eden.”

      Jack looked around at the sand and dunes and then looked back at Nate
      sceptically.

      “Well, that’s the best I can figure it, anyway, Jack,” said Nate. “Stand up
      and look at the symbol on the rock here.” Nate gestured around the dark
      stone they were both sitting on with his nose.

      Jack stood up and looked. Carved into the stone in a bas-relief was a
      representation of a large tree. The angled-pole that Nate was wrapped around
      was coming out of the trunk of the tree, right below where the main branches
      left the truck to reach out across the stone. It was very well done – it
      looked more like a tree had been reduced to almost two dimensions and
      embedded in the stone than it did like a carving.

      Jack walked around and looked at the details in the fading light of the
      setting sun. He wished he’d looked at it while the sun was higher in the
      sky.

      Wait! The sun was setting! That meant he was going to have to spend another
      night out here! Arrrgh!

      Jack looked out across the desert for a little bit, and then came back and
      stood next to Nate. “In all the excitement, I almost forgot, Nate,” said
      Jack. “Which way is it back to town? And how far? I’m eventually going to
      have to head back – I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive by eating raw
      desert critters for long. And even if I can, I’m not sure I’ll want to.”

      “It’s about 30 miles that way.” Nate pointed, with the rattle on his tail
      this time. As far as Jack could tell, it was a direction at right angles to
      the way he’d been going when he was crawling here. “But that’s 30 miles by
      the way the crow flies. It’s about 40 by the way a man walks. You should be
      able to do it in about half a day with your improved endurance, if you head
      out early tomorrow, Jack.”

      Jack looked out the way the snake had pointed for a few seconds more, and
      then sat back down. It was getting dark. Not much he could do about heading
      out right now. And besides, Nate was just about to get to the interesting
      stuff. “Garden of Eden? As best as you can figure it?”

      “Well, yeah, as best as I and Samuel could figure it anyway,” said Nate. “He
      figured that the story just got a little mixed up. You know, snake, in a
      ‘tree’, offering ‘temptations’, making bargains. That kind stuff. But he
      could never quite figure out how the Hebrews found out about this spot from
      across the ocean. He worried about that for a while.”

      “Garden of Eden, hunh?” said Jack. “How long have you been here, Nate?”

      “No idea, really,” replied Nate. “A long time. It never occurred to me to
      count years, until recently, and by then, of course, it was too late. But I
      do remember when this whole place was green, so I figure it’s been thousands
      of years, at least.”

      “So, are you the snake that tempted Eve?” said Jack.

      “Beats me,” said Nate. “Maybe. I can’t remember if the first one of your
      kind that I talked to was female or not, and I never got a name, but it
      could have been. And I suppose she could have considered my offer to grant
      requests a ‘temptation’, though I’ve rarely had refusals.”

      “Well, umm, how did you get here then? And why is that white pole stuck out
      of the stone there?” asked Jack.

      “Dad left me here. Or, I assume it was my dad. It was another snake – much
      bigger than I was back then. I remember talking to him, but I don’t remember
      if it was in a language, or just kind of understanding what he wanted. But
      one day, he brought me to this stone, told me about it, and asked me to do
      something for him. I talked it over with him for a while, then agreed. I’ve
      been here ever since.

      “What is this place?” said Jack. “And what did he ask you to do?”

      “Well, you see this pole here, sticking out of the stone?” Nate loosened his
      coils around the tilted white pole and showed Jack where it descended into
      the stone. The pole was tilted at about a 45 degree angle and seemed to
      enter the stone in an eighteen inch slot cut into the stone. Jack leaned
      over and looked. The slot was dark and the pole went down into it as far as
      Jack could see in the dim light. Jack reached out to touch the pole, but
      Nate was suddenly there in the way.

      “You can’t touch that yet, Jack,” said Nate.

      “Why not?” asked Jack.

      “I haven’t explained it to you yet,” replied Nate.

      “Well, it kinda looks like a lever or something,” said Jack. “You’d push it
      that way, and it would move in the slot.”

      “Yep, that’s what it is,” replied Nate.

      “What does it do?” asked Jack. “End the world?”

      “Oh, no,” said Nate. “Nothing that drastic. It just ends humanity. I call it
      ‘The Lever of Doom’.” For the last few words Nate had used a deeper, ringing
      voice. He tried to look serious for a few seconds, and then gave up and
      grinned.

      Jack was initially startled by Nate’s pronouncement, but when Nate grinned
      Jack laughed. “Ha! You almost had me fooled for a second there. What does it
      really do?”

      “Oh, it really ends humanity, like I said,” smirked Nate. “I just thought
      the voice I used was funny, didn’t you?”

      Nate continued to grin.

      “A lever to end humanity?” asked Jack. “What in the world is that for? Why
      would anyone need to end humanity?”

      “Well,” replied Nate, “I get the idea that maybe humanity was an experiment.
      Or maybe the Big Guy just thought, that if humanity started going really
      bad, there should be a way to end it. I’m not really sure. All I know are
      the rules, and the guesses that Samuel and I had about why it’s here. I
      didn’t think to ask back when I started here.”

      “Rules? What rules?” asked Jack.

      “The rules are that I can’t tell anybody about it or let them touch it
      unless they agree to be bound to secrecy by a bite. And that only one human
      can be bound in that way at a time. That’s it.” explained Nate.

      Jack looked somewhat shocked. “You mean that I could pull the lever now?
      You’d let me end humanity?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “if you want to.” Nate looked at Jack carefully. “Do
      you want to, Jack?”

      “Umm, no.” said Jack, stepping a little further back from the lever. “Why in
      the world would anyone want to end humanity? It’d take a psychotic to want
      that! Or worse, a suicidal psychotic, because it would kill him too,
      wouldn’t it?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “being as he’d be human too.”

      “Has anyone ever seriously considered it?” asked Nate. “Any of those bound
      to secrecy, that is?”

      “Well, of course, I think they’ve all seriously considered it at one time or
      another. Being given that kind of responsibility makes you sit down and
      think, or so I’m told. Samuel considered it several times. He’d often get
      disgusted with humanity, come out here, and just hold the lever for a while.
      But he never pulled it. Or you wouldn’t be here.” Nate grinned some more.

      Jack sat down, well back from the lever. He looked thoughtful and puzzled at
      the same time. After a bit, he said, “So this makes me the Judge of
      humanity? I get to decide whether they keep going or just end? Me?”

      “That seems to be it,” agreed Nate.

      “What kind of criteria do I use to decide?” said Jack. “How do I make this
      decision? Am I supposed to decide if they’re good? Or too many of them are
      bad? Or that they’re going the wrong way? Is there a set of rules for that?”

      “Nope,” replied Nate. “You pretty much just have to decide on your own. It’s
      up to you, however you want to decide it. I guess that you’re just supposed
      to know.”

      “But what if I get mad at someone? Or some girl dumps me and I feel
      horrible? Couldn’t I make a mistake? How do I know that I won’t screw up?”
      protested Jack.

      Nate gave his kind of snake-like shrug again. “You don’t. You just have to
      try your best, Jack.”

      Jack sat there for a while, staring off into the desert that was rapidly
      getting dark, chewing on a fingernail.

      Suddenly, Jack turned around and looked at the snake. “Nate, was Samuel the
      one bound to this before me?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate. “He was a good guy. Talked to me a lot. Taught me to
      read and brought me books. I think I still have a good pile of them buried
      in the sand around here somewhere. I still miss him. He died a few months
      ago.”

      “Sounds like a good guy,” agreed Jack. “How did he handle this, when you
      first told him. What did he do?”

      “Well,” said Nate, “he sat down for a while, thought about it for a bit, and
      then asked me some questions, much like you’re doing.”

      “What did he ask you, if you’re allowed to tell me?” asked Jack.

      “He asked me about the third request,” replied Nate.

      “Aha!” It was Jack’s turn to grin. “And what did you tell him?”

      “I told him the rules for the third request. That to get the third request
      you have to agree to this whole thing. That if it ever comes to the point
      that you really think that humanity should be ended, that you’ll come here
      and end it. You won’t avoid it, and you won’t wimp out.” Nate looked serious
      again. “And you’ll be bound to do it too, Jack.”

      “Hmmm.” Jack looked back out into the darkness for a while.

      Nate watched him, waiting.

      “Nate,” continued Jack, quietly, eventually. “What did Samuel ask for with
      his third request?”

      Nate sounded like he was grinning again as he replied, also quietly,
      “Wisdom, Jack. He asked for wisdom. As much as I could give him.”

      “Ok,” said Jack, suddenly, standing up and facing away from Nate, “give it
      to me.

      Nate looked at Jack’s backside. “Give you what, Jack?”

      “Give me that wisdom. The same stuff that Samuel asked for. If it helped
      him, maybe it’ll help
      “He said it did,” replied Nate. “But he seemed a little quieter afterward.
      Like he had a lot to think about.”

    7. Anon:
      So, there’s a man crawling through the desert.

      He’d decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a big rock, and then he couldn’t get it started again. There were no cell phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family, his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few friends had no idea he was out here.

      He stayed with the car for a day or so, but his one bottle of water ran out
      and he was getting thirsty. He thought maybe he knew the direction back, now that he’d paid attention to the sun and thought he’d figured out which way was north, so he decided to start walking. He figured he only had to go about 30 miles or so and he’d be back to the small town he’d gotten gas in last.

      He thinks about walking at night to avoid the heat and sun, but based upon
      how dark it actually was the night before, and given that he has no flashlight, he’s afraid that he’ll break a leg or step on a rattlesnake. So,
      he puts on some sun block, puts the rest in his pocket for reapplication
      later, brings an umbrella he’d had in the back of the SUV with him to give
      him a little shade, pours the windshield wiper fluid into his water bottle
      in case he gets that desperate, brings his pocket knife in case he finds a cactus that looks like it might have water in it, and heads out in the
      direction he thinks is right.

      He walks for the entire day. By the end of the day he’s really thirsty. He’s
      been sweating all day, and his lips are starting to crack. He’s reapplied the sunblock twice, and tried to stay under the umbrella, but he still feels sunburned. The windshield wiper fluid sloshing in the bottle in his pocket is really getting tempting now. He knows that it’s mainly water and some ethanol and coloring, but he also knows that they add some kind of poison to it to keep people from drinking it. He wonders what the poison is, and
      whether the poison would be worse than dying of thirst.

      He pushes on, trying to get to that small town before dark.

      By the end of the day he starts getting worried. He figures he’s been walking at least 3 miles an hour, according to his watch for over 10 hours. That means that if his estimate was right that he should be close to the
      town. But he doesn’t recognize any of this. He had to cross a dry creek bed a mile or two back, and he doesn’t remember coming through it in the SUV. He figures that maybe he got his direction off just a little and that the dry creek bed was just off to one side of his path. He tells himself that he’s close, and that after dark he’ll start seeing the town lights over one of these hills, and that’ll be all he needs.

      As it gets dim enough that he starts stumbling over small rocks and things,
      he finds a spot and sits down to wait for full dark and the town lights.

      Full dark comes before he knows it. He must have dozed off. He stands back
      up and turns all the way around. He sees nothing but stars.

      He wakes up the next morning feeling absolutely lousy. His eyes are gummy and his mouth and nose feel like they’re full of sand. He so thirsty that he can’t even swallow. He barely got any sleep because it was so cold. He’d forgotten how cold it got at night in the desert and hadn’t noticed it the night before because he’d been in his car.

      He knows the Rule of Threes – three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food – then you die. Some people can make it a little longer, in the best situations. But the desert heat and having to walk and sweat isn’t the best situation to be without water. He figures, unless he finds water, this is his last day.

      He rinses his mouth out with a little of the windshield wiper fluid. He waits a while after spitting that little bit out, to see if his mouth goes numb, or he feels dizzy or something. Has his mouth gone numb? Is it just in
      his mind? He’s not sure. He’ll go a little farther, and if he still doesn’t
      find water, he’ll try drinking some of the fluid.

      Then he has to face his next, harder question – which way does he go from here? Does he keep walking the same way he was yesterday (assuming that he still knows which way that is), or does he try a new direction? He has no idea what to do.

      Looking at the hills and dunes around him, he thinks he knows the direction he was heading before. Just going by a feeling, he points himself somewhat to the left of that, and starts walking.

      As he walks, the day starts heating up. The desert, too cold just a couple of hours before, soon becomes an oven again. He sweats a little at first, and then stops. He starts getting worried at that – when you stop sweating he knows that means you’re in trouble – usually right before heat stroke.

      He decides that it’s time to try the windshield wiper fluid. He can’t wait
      any longer – if he passes out, he’s dead. He stops in the shade of a large
      rock, takes the bottle out, opens it, and takes a mouthful. He slowly
      swallows it, making it last as long as he can. It feels so good in his dry
      and cracked throat that he doesn’t even care about the nasty taste. He takes
      another mouthful, and makes it last too. Slowly, he drinks half the bottle.
      He figures that since he’s drinking it, he might as well drink enough to
      make some difference and keep himself from passing out.

      He’s quit worrying about the denaturing of the wiper fluid. If it kills him,
      it kills him – if he didn’t drink it, he’d die anyway. Besides, he’s pretty
      sure that whatever substance they denature the fluid with is just designed to make you sick – their way of keeping winos from buying cheap wiper fluid for the ethanol content. He can handle throwing up, if it comes to that.

      He walks. He walks in the hot, dry, windless desert. Sand, rocks, hills,
      dunes, the occasional scrawny cactus or dried bush. No sign of water.
      Sometimes he’ll see a little movement to one side or the other, but whatever moved is usually gone before he can focus his eyes on it. Probably birds, lizards, or mice. Maybe snakes, though they usually move more at night. He’s careful to stay away from the movements.

      After a while, he begins to stagger. He’s not sure if it’s fatigue, heat
      stroke finally catching him, or maybe he was wrong and the denaturing of the wiper fluid was worse than he thought. He tries to steady himself, and keep going.

      After more walking, he comes to a large stretch of sand. This is good! He
      knows he passed over a stretch of sand in the SUV – he remembers doing
      donuts in it. Or at least he thinks he remembers it – he’s getting woozy
      enough and tired enough that he’s not sure what he remembers any more or if
      he’s hallucinating. But he thinks he remembers it. So he heads off into it,
      trying to get to the other side, hoping that it gets him closer to the town.

      He was heading for a town, wasn’t he? He thinks he was. He isn’t sure any more. He’s not even sure how long he’s been walking any more. Is it still morning? Or has it moved into afternoon and the sun is going down again? It must be afternoon – it seems like it’s been too long since he started out.

      He walks through the sand.

      After a while, he comes to a big dune in the sand. This is bad. He doesn’t
      remember any dunes when driving over the sand in his SUV. Or at least he
      doesn’t think he remembers any. This is bad.

      But, he has no other direction to go. Too late to turn back now. He figures
      that he’ll get to the top of the dune and see if he can see anything from
      there that helps him find the town. He keeps going up the dune.

      Halfway up, he slips in the bad footing of the sand for the second or third
      time, and falls to his knees. He doesn’t feel like getting back up – he’ll
      just fall down again. So, he keeps going up the dune on his hand and knees.

      While crawling, if his throat weren’t so dry, he’d laugh. He’s finally
      gotten to the hackneyed image of a man lost in the desert – crawling through
      the sand on his hands and knees. If would be the perfect image, he imagines, if only his clothes were more ragged. The people crawling through the desert
      in the cartoons always had ragged clothes. But his have lasted without any
      rips so far. Somebody will probably find his dessicated corpse half buried in the sand years from now, and his clothes will still be in fine shape –
      shake the sand out, and a good wash, and they’d be wearable again. He wishes his throat were wet enough to laugh. He coughs a little instead, and it hurts.

      He finally makes it to the top of the sand dune. Now that he’s at the top,
      he struggles a little, but manages to stand up and look around. All he sees
      is sand. Sand, and more sand. Behind him, about a mile away, he thinks he
      sees the rocky ground he left to head into this sand. Ahead of him, more
      dunes, more sand. This isn’t where he drove his SUV. This is Hell. Or close enough.

      Again, he doesn’t know what to do. He decides to drink the rest of the wiper
      fluid while figuring it out. He takes out the bottle, and is removing the
      cap, when he glances to the side and sees something. Something in the sand. At the bottom of the dune, off to the side, he sees something strange. It’s a flat area, in the sand. He stops taking the cap of the bottle off, and tries to look closer. The area seems to be circular. And it’s dark – darker than the sand. And, there seems to be something in the middle of it, but he can’t tell what it is. He looks as hard as he can, and still can tell from
      here. He’s going to have to go down there and look.

      He puts the bottle back in his pocket, and starts to stumble down the dune.
      After a few steps, he realizes that he’s in trouble – he’s not going to be able to keep his balance. After a couple of more sliding, tottering steps, he falls and starts to roll down the dune. The sand it so hot when his body hits it that for a minute he thinks he’s caught fire on the way down – like a movie car wreck flashing into flames as it goes over the cliff, before it ever even hits the ground. He closes his eyes and mouth, covers his face with his hands, and waits to stop rolling.

      He stops, at the bottom of the dune. After a minute or two, he finds enough
      energy to try to sit up and get the sand out of his face and clothes. When
      he clears his eyes enough, he looks around to make sure that the dark spot
      in the sand it still there and he hadn’t just imagined it.

      So, seeing the large, flat, dark spot on the sand is still there, he begins
      to crawl towards it. He’d get up and walk towards it, but he doesn’t seem to
      have the energy to get up and walk right now. He must be in the final stages
      of dehydration he figures, as he crawls. If this place in the sand doesn’t
      have water, he’ll likely never make it anywhere else. This is his last
      chance.

      He gets closer and closer, but still can’t see what’s in the middle of the
      dark area. His eyes won’t quite focus any more for some reason. And lifting
      his head up to look takes so much effort that he gives up trying. He just
      keeps crawling.

      Finally, he reaches the area he’d seen from the dune. It takes him a minute of crawling on it before he realizes that he’s no longer on sand – he’s now crawling on some kind of dark stone. Stone with some kind of marking on it – a pattern cut into the stone. He’s too tired to stand up and try to see what the pattern is – so he just keeps crawling. He crawls towards the center,
      where his blurry eyes still see something in the middle of the dark stone
      area.

      His mind, detached in a strange way, notes that either his hands and knees are so burnt by the sand that they no longer feel pain, or that this dark
      stone, in the middle of a burning desert with a pounding, punishing sun
      overhead, doesn’t seem to be hot. It almost feels cool. He considers lying
      down on the nice cool surface.

      Cool, dark stone. Not a good sign. He must be hallucinating this. He’s
      probably in the middle of a patch of sand, already lying face down and
      dying, and just imagining this whole thing. A desert mirage. Soon the
      beautiful women carrying pitchers of water will come up and start giving him
      a drink. Then he’ll know he’s gone.

      He decides against laying down on the cool stone. If he’s going to die here
      in the middle of this hallucination, he at least wants to see what’s in the
      center before he goes. He keeps crawling.

      It’s the third time that he hears the voice before he realizes what he’s
      hearing. He would swear that someone just said, “Greetings, traveler. You do
      not look well. Do you hear me?”

      He stops crawling. He tries to look up from where he is on his hands and
      knees, but it’s too much effort to lift his head. So he tries something
      different – he leans back and tries to sit up on the stone. After a few
      seconds, he catches his balance, avoids falling on his face, sits up, and
      tries to focus his eyes. Blurry. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hands
      and tries again. Better this time.

      Yep. He can see. He’s sitting in the middle of a large, flat, dark expanse
      of stone. Directly next to him, about three feet away, is a white post or
      pole about two inches in diameter and sticking up about four or five feet
      out of the stone, at an angle.

      And wrapped around this white rod, tail with rattle on it hovering and
      seeming to be ready to start rattling, is what must be a fifteen foot long
      desert diamondback rattlesnake, looking directly at him.

      He stares at the snake in shock. He doesn’t have the energy to get up and
      run away. He doesn’t even have the energy to crawl away. This is it, his
      final resting place. No matter what happens, he’s not going to be able to
      move from this spot.

      Well, at least dying of a bite from this monster should be quicker than
      dying of thirst. He’ll face his end like a man. He struggles to sit up a
      little straighter. The snake keeps watching him. He lifts one hand and waves
      it in the snake’s direction, feebly. The snake watches the hand for a
      moment, then goes back to watching the man, looking into his eyes.

      Hmmm. Maybe the snake had no interest in biting him? It hadn’t rattled yet –
      that was a good sign. Maybe he wasn’t going to die of snake bite after all.

      He then remembers that he’d looked up when he’d reached the center here
      because he thought he’d heard a voice. He was still very woozy – he was
      likely to pass out soon, the sun still beat down on him even though he was
      now on cool stone. He still didn’t have anything to drink. But maybe he had
      actually heard a voice. This stone didn’t look natural. Nor did that white
      post sticking up out of the stone. Someone had to have built this. Maybe
      they were still nearby. Maybe that was who talked to him. Maybe this snake
      was even their pet, and that’s why it wasn’t biting.

      He tries to clear his throat to say, “Hello,” but his throat is too dry. All
      that comes out is a coughing or wheezing sound. There is no way he’s going
      to be able to talk without something to drink. He feels his pocket, and the
      bottle with the wiper fluid is still there. He shakily pulls the bottle out,
      almost losing his balance and falling on his back in the process. This isn’t
      good. He doesn’t have much time left, by his reckoning, before he passes
      out.

      He gets the lid off of the bottle, manages to get the bottle to his lips,
      and pours some of the fluid into his mouth. He sloshes it around, and then
      swallows it. He coughs a little. His throat feels better. Maybe he can talk
      now.

      He tries again. Ignoring the snake, he turns to look around him, hoping to
      spot the owner of this place, and croaks out, “Hello? Is there anyone here?”

      He hears, from his side, “Greetings. What is it that you want?”

      He turns his head, back towards the snake. That’s where the sound had seemed
      to come from. The only thing he can think of is that there must be a
      speaker, hidden under the snake, or maybe built into that post. He decides
      to try asking for help.

      “Please,” he croaks again, suddenly feeling dizzy, “I’d love to not be
      thirsty any more. I’ve been a long time without water. Can you help me?”

      Looking in the direction of the snake, hoping to see where the voice was
      coming from this time, he is shocked to see the snake rear back, open its
      mouth, and speak. He hears it say, as the dizziness overtakes him and he
      falls forward, face first on the stone, “Very well. Coming up.”

      A piercing pain shoots through his shoulder. Suddenly he is awake. He sits
      up and grabs his shoulder, wincing at the throbbing pain. He’s momentarily
      disoriented as he looks around, and then he remembers – the crawl across the
      sand, the dark area of stone, the snake. He sees the snake, still wrapped
      around the tilted white post, still looking at him.

      He reaches up and feels his shoulder, where it hurts. It feels slightly wet.
      He pulls his fingers away and looks at them – blood. He feels his shoulder
      again – his shirt has what feels like two holes in it – two puncture holes –
      they match up with the two aching spots of pain on his shoulder. He had been
      bitten. By the snake.

      “It’ll feel better in a minute.” He looks up – it’s the snake talking. He
      hadn’t dreamed it. Suddenly he notices – he’s not dizzy any more. And more
      importantly, he’s not thirsty any more – at all!

      “Have I died? Is this the afterlife? Why are you biting me in the
      afterlife?”

      “Sorry about that, but I had to bite you,” says the snake. “That’s the way I
      work. It all comes through the bite. Think of it as natural medicine.”

      “You bit me to help me? Why aren’t I thirsty any more? Did you give me a
      drink before you bit me? How did I drink enough while unconscious to not be
      thirsty any more? I haven’t had a drink for over two days. Well, except for
      the windshield wiper fluid… hold it, how in the world does a snake talk?
      Are you real? Are you some sort of Disney animation?”

      “No,” says the snake, “I’m real. As real as you or anyone is, anyway. I
      didn’t give you a drink. I bit you. That’s how it works – it’s what I do. I
      bite. I don’t have hands to give you a drink, even if I had water just
      sitting around here.”

      The man sat stunned for a minute. Here he was, sitting in the middle of the
      desert on some strange stone that should be hot but wasn’t, talking to a
      snake that could talk back and had just bitten him. And he felt better. Not
      great – he was still starving and exhausted, but much better – he was no
      longer thirsty. He had started to sweat again, but only slightly. He felt
      hot, in this sun, but it was starting to get lower in the sky, and the cool
      stone beneath him was a relief he could notice now that he was no longer
      dying of thirst.

      “I might suggest that we take care of that methanol you now have in your
      system with the next request,” continued the snake. “I can guess why you
      drank it, but I’m not sure how much you drank, or how much methanol was left
      in the wiper fluid. That stuff is nasty. It’ll make you go blind in a day or
      two, if you drank enough of it.”

      “Ummm, n-next request?” said the man. He put his hand back on his hurting
      shoulder and backed away from the snake a little.

      “That’s the way it works. If you like, that is,” explained the snake. “You
      get three requests. Call them wishes, if you wish.” The snake grinned at his
      own joke, and the man drew back a little further from the show of fangs.

      “But there are rules,” the snake continued. “The first request is free. The
      second requires an agreement of secrecy. The third requires the binding of
      responsibility.” The snake looks at the man seriously.

      “By the way,” the snake says suddenly, “my name is Nathan. Old Nathan,
      Samuel used to call me. He gave me the name. Before that, most of the Bound
      used to just call me ‘Snake’. But that got old, and Samuel wouldn’t stand
      for it. He said that anything that could talk needed a name. He was big into
      names. You can call me Nate, if you wish.” Again, the snake grinned. “Sorry
      if I don’t offer to shake, but I think you can understand – my shake sounds
      somewhat threatening.” The snake give his rattle a little shake.

      “Umm, my name is Jack,” said the man, trying to absorb all of this. “Jack
      Samson.

      “Can I ask you a question?” Jack says suddenly. “What happened to the
      poison…umm, in your bite. Why aren’t I dying now? How did you do that?
      What do you mean by that’s how you work?”

      “That’s more than one question,” grins Nate. “But I’ll still try to answer
      all of them. First, yes, you can ask me a question.” The snake’s grin gets
      wider. “Second, the poison is in you. It changed you. You now no longer need
      to drink. That’s what you asked for. Or, well, technically, you asked to not
      be thirsty any more – but ‘any more’ is such a vague term. I decided to make
      it permanent – now, as long as you live, you shouldn’t need to drink much at
      all. Your body will conserve water very efficiently. You should be able to
      get enough just from the food you eat – much like a creature of the desert.
      You’ve been changed.

      “For the third question,” Nate continues, “you are still dying. Besides the
      effects of that methanol in your system, you’re a man – and men are mortal.
      In your current state, I give you no more than about another 50 years.
      Assuming you get out of this desert, alive, that is.” Nate seemed vastly
      amused at his own humor, and continued his wide grin.

      “As for the fourth question,” Nate said, looking more serious as far as Jack
      could tell, as Jack was just now working on his ability to read
      talking-snake emotions from snake facial features, “first you have to agree
      to make a second request and become bound by the secrecy, or I can’t tell
      you.”

      “Wait,” joked Jack, “isn’t this where you say you could tell me, but you’d
      have to kill me?”

      “I thought that was implied.” Nate continued to look serious.

      “Ummm…yeah.” Jack leaned back a little as he remembered again that he was
      talking to a fifteen foot poisonous reptile with a reputation for having a
      nasty temper. “So, what is this ‘Bound by Secrecy’ stuff, and can you really
      stop the effects of the methanol?” Jack thought for a second. “And, what do
      you mean methanol, anyway? I thought these days they use ethanol in wiper
      fluid, and just denature it?”

      “They may, I don’t really know,” said Nate. “I haven’t gotten out in a
      while. Maybe they do. All I know is that I smell methanol on your breath and
      on that bottle in your pocket. And the blue color of the liquid when you
      pulled it out to drink some let me guess that it was wiper fluid. I assume
      that they still color wiper fluid blue?”

      “Yeah, they do,” said Jack.

      “I figured,” replied Nate. “As for being bound by secrecy – with the
      fulfillment of your next request, you will be bound to say nothing about me,
      this place, or any of the information I will tell you after that, when you
      decide to go back out to your kind. You won’t be allowed to talk about me,
      write about me, use sign language, charades, or even act in a way that will
      lead someone to guess correctly about me. You’ll be bound to secrecy. Of
      course, I’ll also ask you to promise not to give me away, and as I’m
      guessing that you’re a man of your word, you’ll never test the binding
      anyway, so you won’t notice.” Nate said the last part with utter confidence.

      Jack, who had always prided himself on being a man of his word, felt a
      little nervous at this. “Ummm, hey, Nate, who are you? How did you know
      that? Are you, umm, omniscient, or something?”

      Well, Jack,” said Nate sadly, “I can’t tell you that, unless you make the
      second request.” Nate looked away for a minute, then looked back.

      “Umm, well, ok,” said Jack, “what is this about a second request? What can I
      ask for? Are you allowed to tell me that?”

      “Sure!” said Nate, brightening. “You’re allowed to ask for changes. Changes
      to yourself. They’re like wishes, but they can only affect you. Oh, and
      before you ask, I can’t give you immortality. Or omniscience. Or
      omnipresence, for that matter. Though I might be able to make you gaseous
      and yet remain alive, and then you could spread through the atmosphere and
      sort of be omnipresent. But what good would that be – you still wouldn’t be
      omniscient and thus still could only focus on one thing at a time. Not very
      useful, at least in my opinion.” Nate stopped when he realized that Jack was
      staring at him.

      “Well, anyway,” continued Nate, “I’d probably suggest giving you permanent
      good health. It would negate the methanol now in your system, you’d be
      immune to most poisons and diseases, and you’d tend to live a very long
      time, barring accident, of course. And you’ll even have a tendency to
      recover from accidents well. It always seemed like a good choice for a
      request to me.”

      “Cure the methanol poisoning, huh?” said Jack. “And keep me healthy for a
      long time? Hmmm. It doesn’t sound bad at that. And it has to be a request
      about a change to me? I can’t ask to be rich, right? Because that’s not
      really a change to me?”

      “Right,” nodded Nate.

      “Could I ask to be a genius and permanently healthy?” Jack asked, hopefully.

      “That takes two requests, Jack.”

      “Yeah, I figured so,” said Jack. “But I could ask to be a genius? I could
      become the smartest scientist in the world? Or the best athlete?”

      “Well, I could make you very smart,” admitted Nate, “but that wouldn’t
      necessarily make you the best scientist in the world. Or, I could make you
      very athletic, but it wouldn’t necessarily make you the best athlete either.
      You’ve heard the saying that 99% of genius is hard work? Well, there’s some
      truth to that. I can give you the talent, but I can’t make you work hard. It
      all depends on what you decide to do with it.”

      “Hmmm,” said Jack. “Ok, I think I understand. And I get a third request,
      after this one?”

      “Maybe,” said Nate, “it depends on what you decide then. There are more
      rules for the third request that I can only tell you about after the second
      request. You know how it goes.” Nate looked like he’d shrug, if he had
      shoulders.

      “Ok, well, since I’d rather not be blind in a day or two, and permanent
      health doesn’t sound bad, then consider that my second request. Officially.
      Do I need to sign in blood or something?”

      “No,” said Nate. “Just hold out your hand. Or heel.” Nate grinned. “Or
      whatever part you want me to bite. I have to bite you again. Like I said,
      that’s how it works – the poison, you know,” Nate said apologetically.

      Jack winced a little and felt his shoulder, where the last bite was. Hey, it
      didn’t hurt any more. Just like Nate had said. That made Jack feel better
      about the biting business. But still, standing still while a fifteen foot
      snake sunk it’s fangs into you. Jack stood up. Ignoring how good it felt to
      be able to stand again, and the hunger starting to gnaw at his stomach, Jack
      tried to decide where he wanted to get bitten. Despite knowing that it
      wouldn’t hurt for long, Jack knew that this wasn’t going to be easy.

      “Hey, Jack,” Nate suddenly said, looking past Jack towards the dunes behind
      him, “is that someone else coming up over there?”

      Jack spun around and looked. Who else could be out here in the middle of
      nowhere? And did they bring food?

      Wait a minute, there was nobody over there. What was Nate…

      Jack let out a bellow as he felt two fangs sink into his rear end, through
      his jeans…

      Jack sat down carefully, favoring his more tender buttock. “I would have
      decided, eventually, Nate. I was just thinking about it. You didn’t have to
      hoodwink me like that.”

      “I’ve been doing this a long time, Jack,” said Nate, confidently. “You
      humans have a hard time sitting still and letting a snake bite you –
      especially one my size. And besides, admit it – it’s only been a couple of
      minutes and it already doesn’t hurt any more, does it? That’s because of the
      health benefit with this one. I told you that you’d heal quickly now.”

      “Yeah, well, still,” said Jack, “it’s the principle of the thing. And nobody
      likes being bitten in the butt! Couldn’t you have gotten my calf or
      something instead?”

      “More meat in the typical human butt,” replied Nate. “And less chance you
      accidentally kick me or move at the last second.”

      “Yeah, right. So, tell me all of these wonderful secrets that I now qualify
      to hear,” answered Jack.

      “Ok,” said Nate. “Do you want to ask questions first, or do you want me to
      just start talking?”

      “Just talk,” said Jack. “I’ll sit here and try to not think about food.”

      “We could go try to rustle up some food for you first, if you like,”
      answered Nate.

      “Hey! You didn’t tell me you had food around here, Nate!” Jack jumped up.
      “What do we have? Am I in walking distance to town? Or can you magically
      whip up food along with your other powers?” Jack was almost shouting with
      excitement. His stomach had been growling for hours.

      “I was thinking more like I could flush something out of its hole and bite
      it for you, and you could skin it and eat it. Assuming you have a knife,
      that is,” replied Nate, with the grin that Jack was starting to get used to.

      “Ugh,” said Jack, sitting back down. “I think I’ll pass. I can last a little
      longer before I get desperate enough to eat desert rat, or whatever else it
      is you find out here. And there’s nothing to burn – I’d have to eat it raw.
      No thanks. Just talk.”

      “Ok,” replied Nate, still grinning. “But I’d better hurry, before you start
      looking at me as food.

      Nate reared back a little, looked around for a second, and then continued.
      “You, Jack, are sitting in the middle of the Garden of Eden.”

      Jack looked around at the sand and dunes and then looked back at Nate
      sceptically.

      “Well, that’s the best I can figure it, anyway, Jack,” said Nate. “Stand up
      and look at the symbol on the rock here.” Nate gestured around the dark
      stone they were both sitting on with his nose.

      Jack stood up and looked. Carved into the stone in a bas-relief was a
      representation of a large tree. The angled-pole that Nate was wrapped around
      was coming out of the trunk of the tree, right below where the main branches
      left the truck to reach out across the stone. It was very well done – it
      looked more like a tree had been reduced to almost two dimensions and
      embedded in the stone than it did like a carving.

      Jack walked around and looked at the details in the fading light of the
      setting sun. He wished he’d looked at it while the sun was higher in the
      sky.

      Wait! The sun was setting! That meant he was going to have to spend another
      night out here! Arrrgh!

      Jack looked out across the desert for a little bit, and then came back and
      stood next to Nate. “In all the excitement, I almost forgot, Nate,” said
      Jack. “Which way is it back to town? And how far? I’m eventually going to
      have to head back – I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive by eating raw
      desert critters for long. And even if I can, I’m not sure I’ll want to.”

      “It’s about 30 miles that way.” Nate pointed, with the rattle on his tail
      this time. As far as Jack could tell, it was a direction at right angles to
      the way he’d been going when he was crawling here. “But that’s 30 miles by
      the way the crow flies. It’s about 40 by the way a man walks. You should be
      able to do it in about half a day with your improved endurance, if you head
      out early tomorrow, Jack.”

      Jack looked out the way the snake had pointed for a few seconds more, and
      then sat back down. It was getting dark. Not much he could do about heading
      out right now. And besides, Nate was just about to get to the interesting
      stuff. “Garden of Eden? As best as you can figure it?”

      “Well, yeah, as best as I and Samuel could figure it anyway,” said Nate. “He
      figured that the story just got a little mixed up. You know, snake, in a
      ‘tree’, offering ‘temptations’, making bargains. That kind stuff. But he
      could never quite figure out how the Hebrews found out about this spot from
      across the ocean. He worried about that for a while.”

      “Garden of Eden, hunh?” said Jack. “How long have you been here, Nate?”

      “No idea, really,” replied Nate. “A long time. It never occurred to me to
      count years, until recently, and by then, of course, it was too late. But I
      do remember when this whole place was green, so I figure it’s been thousands
      of years, at least.”

      “So, are you the snake that tempted Eve?” said Jack.

      “Beats me,” said Nate. “Maybe. I can’t remember if the first one of your
      kind that I talked to was female or not, and I never got a name, but it
      could have been. And I suppose she could have considered my offer to grant
      requests a ‘temptation’, though I’ve rarely had refusals.”

      “Well, umm, how did you get here then? And why is that white pole stuck out
      of the stone there?” asked Jack.

      “Dad left me here. Or, I assume it was my dad. It was another snake – much
      bigger than I was back then. I remember talking to him, but I don’t remember
      if it was in a language, or just kind of understanding what he wanted. But
      one day, he brought me to this stone, told me about it, and asked me to do
      something for him. I talked it over with him for a while, then agreed. I’ve
      been here ever since.

      “What is this place?” said Jack. “And what did he ask you to do?”

      “Well, you see this pole here, sticking out of the stone?” Nate loosened his
      coils around the tilted white pole and showed Jack where it descended into
      the stone. The pole was tilted at about a 45 degree angle and seemed to
      enter the stone in an eighteen inch slot cut into the stone. Jack leaned
      over and looked. The slot was dark and the pole went down into it as far as
      Jack could see in the dim light. Jack reached out to touch the pole, but
      Nate was suddenly there in the way.

      “You can’t touch that yet, Jack,” said Nate.

      “Why not?” asked Jack.

      “I haven’t explained it to you yet,” replied Nate.

      “Well, it kinda looks like a lever or something,” said Jack. “You’d push it
      that way, and it would move in the slot.”

      “Yep, that’s what it is,” replied Nate.

      “What does it do?” asked Jack. “End the world?”

      “Oh, no,” said Nate. “Nothing that drastic. It just ends humanity. I call it
      ‘The Lever of Doom’.” For the last few words Nate had used a deeper, ringing
      voice. He tried to look serious for a few seconds, and then gave up and
      grinned.

      Jack was initially startled by Nate’s pronouncement, but when Nate grinned
      Jack laughed. “Ha! You almost had me fooled for a second there. What does it
      really do?”

      “Oh, it really ends humanity, like I said,” smirked Nate. “I just thought
      the voice I used was funny, didn’t you?”

      Nate continued to grin.

      “A lever to end humanity?” asked Jack. “What in the world is that for? Why
      would anyone need to end humanity?”

      “Well,” replied Nate, “I get the idea that maybe humanity was an experiment.
      Or maybe the Big Guy just thought, that if humanity started going really
      bad, there should be a way to end it. I’m not really sure. All I know are
      the rules, and the guesses that Samuel and I had about why it’s here. I
      didn’t think to ask back when I started here.”

      “Rules? What rules?” asked Jack.

      “The rules are that I can’t tell anybody about it or let them touch it
      unless they agree to be bound to secrecy by a bite. And that only one human
      can be bound in that way at a time. That’s it.” explained Nate.

      Jack looked somewhat shocked. “You mean that I could pull the lever now?
      You’d let me end humanity?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “if you want to.” Nate looked at Jack carefully. “Do
      you want to, Jack?”

      “Umm, no.” said Jack, stepping a little further back from the lever. “Why in
      the world would anyone want to end humanity? It’d take a psychotic to want
      that! Or worse, a suicidal psychotic, because it would kill him too,
      wouldn’t it?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “being as he’d be human too.”

      “Has anyone ever seriously considered it?” asked Nate. “Any of those bound
      to secrecy, that is?”

      “Well, of course, I think they’ve all seriously considered it at one time or
      another. Being given that kind of responsibility makes you sit down and
      think, or so I’m told. Samuel considered it several times. He’d often get
      disgusted with humanity, come out here, and just hold the lever for a while.
      But he never pulled it. Or you wouldn’t be here.” Nate grinned some more.

      Jack sat down, well back from the lever. He looked thoughtful and puzzled at
      the same time. After a bit, he said, “So this makes me the Judge of
      humanity? I get to decide whether they keep going or just end? Me?”

      “That seems to be it,” agreed Nate.

      “What kind of criteria do I use to decide?” said Jack. “How do I make this
      decision? Am I supposed to decide if they’re good? Or too many of them are
      bad? Or that they’re going the wrong way? Is there a set of rules for that?”

      “Nope,” replied Nate. “You pretty much just have to decide on your own. It’s
      up to you, however you want to decide it. I guess that you’re just supposed
      to know.”

      “But what if I get mad at someone? Or some girl dumps me and I feel
      horrible? Couldn’t I make a mistake? How do I know that I won’t screw up?”
      protested Jack.

      Nate gave his kind of snake-like shrug again. “You don’t. You just have to
      try your best, Jack.”

      Jack sat there for a while, staring off into the desert that was rapidly
      getting dark, chewing on a fingernail.

      Suddenly, Jack turned around and looked at the snake. “Nate, was Samuel the
      one bound to this before me?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate. “He was a good guy. Talked to me a lot. Taught me to
      read and brought me books. I think I still have a good pile of them buried
      in the sand around here somewhere. I still miss him. He died a few months
      ago.”

      “Sounds like a good guy,” agreed Jack. “How did he handle this, when you
      first told him. What did he do?”

      “Well,” said Nate, “he sat down for a while, thought about it for a bit, and
      then asked me some questions, much like you’re doing.”

      “What did he ask you, if you’re allowed to tell me?” asked Jack.

      “He asked me about the third request,” replied Nate.

      “Aha!” It was Jack’s turn to grin. “And what did you tell him?”

      “I told him the rules for the third request. That to get the third request
      you have to agree to this whole thing. That if it ever comes to the point
      that you really think that humanity should be ended, that you’ll come here
      and end it. You won’t avoid it, and you won’t wimp out.” Nate looked serious
      again. “And you’ll be bound to do it too, Jack.”

      “Hmmm.” Jack looked back out into the darkness for a while.

      Nate watched him, waiting.

      “Nate,” continued Jack, quietly, eventually. “What did Samuel ask for with
      his third request?”

      Nate sounded like he was grinning again as he replied, also quietly,
      “Wisdom, Jack. He asked for wisdom. As much as I could give him.”

      “Ok,” said Jack, suddenly, standing up and facing away from Nate, “give it
      to me.

      Nate looked at Jack’s backside. “Give you what, Jack?”

      “Give me that wisdom. The same stuff that Samuel asked for. If it helped
      him, maybe it’ll help me too.” Jack turned his head to look back over his
      shoulder at Nate. “It did help him, right?”

      “He said it div replied Nate. “But he seemed a little quieter afterward.
      Like he had a lot to think about.”

    8. Anon:
      So, there’s a man crawling through the desert.

      He’d decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a big rock, and then he couldn’t get it started again. There were no cell phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family, his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few friends had no idea he was out here.

      He stayed with the car for a day or so, but his one bottle of water ran out
      and he was getting thirsty. He thought maybe he knew the direction back, now that he’d paid attention to the sun and thought he’d figured out which way was north, so he decided to start walking. He figured he only had to go about 30 miles or so and he’d be back to the small town he’d gotten gas in last.

      He thinks about walking at night to avoid the heat and sun, but based upon
      how dark it actually was the night before, and given that he has no flashlight, he’s afraid that he’ll break a leg or step on a rattlesnake. So,
      he puts on some sun block, puts the rest in his pocket for reapplication
      later, brings an umbrella he’d had in the back of the SUV with him to give
      him a little shade, pours the windshield wiper fluid into his water bottle
      in case he gets that desperate, brings his pocket knife in case he finds a cactus that looks like it might have water in it, and heads out in the
      direction he thinks is right.

      He walks for the entire day. By the end of the day he’s really thirsty. He’s
      been sweating all day, and his lips are starting to crack. He’s reapplied the sunblock twice, and tried to stay under the umbrella, but he still feels sunburned. The windshield wiper fluid sloshing in the bottle in his pocket is really getting tempting now. He knows that it’s mainly water and some ethanol and coloring, but he also knows that they add some kind of poison to it to keep people from drinking it. He wonders what the poison is, and
      whether the poison would be worse than dying of thirst.

      He pushes on, trying to get to that small town before dark.

      By the end of the day he starts getting worried. He figures he’s been walking at least 3 miles an hour, according to his watch for over 10 hours. That means that if his estimate was right that he should be close to the
      town. But he doesn’t recognize any of this. He had to cross a dry creek bed a mile or two back, and he doesn’t remember coming through it in the SUV. He figures that maybe he got his direction off just a little and that the dry creek bed was just off to one side of his path. He tells himself that he’s close, and that after dark he’ll start seeing the town lights over one of these hills, and that’ll be all he needs.

      As it gets dim enough that he starts stumbling over small rocks and things,
      he finds a spot and sits down to wait for full dark and the town lights.

      Full dark comes before he knows it. He must have dozed off. He stands back
      up and turns all the way around. He sees nothing but stars.

      He wakes up the next morning feeling absolutely lousy. His eyes are gummy and his mouth and nose feel like they’re full of sand. He so thirsty that he can’t even swallow. He barely got any sleep because it was so cold. He’d forgotten how cold it got at night in the desert and hadn’t noticed it the night before because he’d been in his car.

      He knows the Rule of Threes – three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food – then you die. Some people can make it a little longer, in the best situations. But the desert heat and having to walk and sweat isn’t the best situation to be without water. He figures, unless he finds water, this is his last day.

      He rinses his mouth out with a little of the windshield wiper fluid. He waits a while after spitting that little bit out, to see if his mouth goes numb, or he feels dizzy or something. Has his mouth gone numb? Is it just in
      his mind? He’s not sure. He’ll go a little farther, and if he still doesn’t
      find water, he’ll try drinking some of the fluid.

      Then he has to face his next, harder question – which way does he go from here? Does he keep walking the same way he was yesterday (assuming that he still knows which way that is), or does he try a new direction? He has no idea what to do.

      Looking at the hills and dunes around him, he thinks he knows the direction he was heading before. Just going by a feeling, he points himself somewhat to the left of that, and starts walking.

      As he walks, the day starts heating up. The desert, too cold just a couple of hours before, soon becomes an oven again. He sweats a little at first, and then stops. He starts getting worried at that – when you stop sweating he knows that means you’re in trouble – usually right before heat stroke.

      He decides that it’s time to try the windshield wiper fluid. He can’t wait
      any longer – if he passes out, he’s dead. He stops in the shade of a large
      rock, takes the bottle out, opens it, and takes a mouthful. He slowly
      swallows it, making it last as long as he can. It feels so good in his dry
      and cracked throat that he doesn’t even care about the nasty taste. He takes
      another mouthful, and makes it last too. Slowly, he drinks half the bottle.
      He figures that since he’s drinking it, he might as well drink enough to
      make some difference and keep himself from passing out.

      He’s quit worrying about the denaturing of the wiper fluid. If it kills him,
      it kills him – if he didn’t drink it, he’d die anyway. Besides, he’s pretty
      sure that whatever substance they denature the fluid with is just designed to make you sick – their way of keeping winos from buying cheap wiper fluid for the ethanol content. He can handle throwing up, if it comes to that.

      He walks. He walks in the hot, dry, windless desert. Sand, rocks, hills,
      dunes, the occasional scrawny cactus or dried bush. No sign of water.
      Sometimes he’ll see a little movement to one side or the other, but whatever moved is usually gone before he can focus his eyes on it. Probably birds, lizards, or mice. Maybe snakes, though they usually move more at night. He’s careful to stay away from the movements.

      After a while, he begins to stagger. He’s not sure if it’s fatigue, heat
      stroke finally catching him, or maybe he was wrong and the denaturing of the wiper fluid was worse than he thought. He tries to steady himself, and keep going.

      After more walking, he comes to a large stretch of sand. This is good! He
      knows he passed over a stretch of sand in the SUV – he remembers doing
      donuts in it. Or at least he thinks he remembers it – he’s getting woozy
      enough and tired enough that he’s not sure what he remembers any more or if
      he’s hallucinating. But he thinks he remembers it. So he heads off into it,
      trying to get to the other side, hoping that it gets him closer to the town.

      He was heading for a town, wasn’t he? He thinks he was. He isn’t sure any more. He’s not even sure how long he’s been walking any more. Is it still morning? Or has it moved into afternoon and the sun is going down again? It must be afternoon – it seems like it’s been too long since he started out.

      He walks through the sand.

      After a while, he comes to a big dune in the sand. This is bad. He doesn’t
      remember any dunes when driving over the sand in his SUV. Or at least he
      doesn’t think he remembers any. This is bad.

      But, he has no other direction to go. Too late to turn back now. He figures
      that he’ll get to the top of the dune and see if he can see anything from
      there that helps him find the town. He keeps going up the dune.

      Halfway up, he slips in the bad footing of the sand for the second or third
      time, and falls to his knees. He doesn’t feel like getting back up – he’ll
      just fall down again. So, he keeps going up the dune on his hand and knees.

      While crawling, if his throat weren’t so dry, he’d laugh. He’s finally
      gotten to the hackneyed image of a man lost in the desert – crawling through
      the sand on his hands and knees. If would be the perfect image, he imagines, if only his clothes were more ragged. The people crawling through the desert
      in the cartoons always had ragged clothes. But his have lasted without any
      rips so far. Somebody will probably find his dessicated corpse half buried in the sand years from now, and his clothes will still be in fine shape –
      shake the sand out, and a good wash, and they’d be wearable again. He wishes his throat were wet enough to laugh. He coughs a little instead, and it hurts.

      He finally makes it to the top of the sand dune. Now that he’s at the top,
      he struggles a little, but manages to stand up and look around. All he sees
      is sand. Sand, and more sand. Behind him, about a mile away, he thinks he
      sees the rocky ground he left to head into this sand. Ahead of him, more
      dunes, more sand. This isn’t where he drove his SUV. This is Hell. Or close enough.

      Again, he doesn’t know what to do. He decides to drink the rest of the wiper
      fluid while figuring it out. He takes out the bottle, and is removing the
      cap, when he glances to the side and sees something. Something in the sand. At the bottom of the dune, off to the side, he sees something strange. It’s a flat area, in the sand. He stops taking the cap of the bottle off, and tries to look closer. The area seems to be circular. And it’s dark – darker than the sand. And, there seems to be something in the middle of it, but he can’t tell what it is. He looks as hard as he can, and still can tell from
      here. He’s going to have to go down there and look.

      He puts the bottle back in his pocket, and starts to stumble down the dune.
      After a few steps, he realizes that he’s in trouble – he’s not going to be able to keep his balance. After a couple of more sliding, tottering steps, he falls and starts to roll down the dune. The sand it so hot when his body hits it that for a minute he thinks he’s caught fire on the way down – like a movie car wreck flashing into flames as it goes over the cliff, before it ever even hits the ground. He closes his eyes and mouth, covers his face with his hands, and waits to stop rolling.

      He stops, at the bottom of the dune. After a minute or two, he finds enough
      energy to try to sit up and get the sand out of his face and clothes. When
      he clears his eyes enough, he looks around to make sure that the dark spot
      in the sand it still there and he hadn’t just imagined it.

      So, seeing the large, flat, dark spot on the sand is still there, he begins
      to crawl towards it. He’d get up and walk towards it, but he doesn’t seem to
      have the energy to get up and walk right now. He must be in the final stages
      of dehydration he figures, as he crawls. If this place in the sand doesn’t
      have water, he’ll likely never make it anywhere else. This is his last
      chance.

      He gets closer and closer, but still can’t see what’s in the middle of the
      dark area. His eyes won’t quite focus any more for some reason. And lifting
      his head up to look takes so much effort that he gives up trying. He just
      keeps crawling.

      Finally, he reaches the area he’d seen from the dune. It takes him a minute of crawling on it before he realizes that he’s no longer on sand – he’s now crawling on some kind of dark stone. Stone with some kind of marking on it – a pattern cut into the stone. He’s too tired to stand up and try to see what the pattern is – so he just keeps crawling. He crawls towards the center,
      where his blurry eyes still see something in the middle of the dark stone
      area.

      His mind, detached in a strange way, notes that either his hands and knees are so burnt by the sand that they no longer feel pain, or that this dark
      stone, in the middle of a burning desert with a pounding, punishing sun
      overhead, doesn’t seem to be hot. It almost feels cool. He considers lying
      down on the nice cool surface.

      Cool, dark stone. Not a good sign. He must be hallucinating this. He’s
      probably in the middle of a patch of sand, already lying face down and
      dying, and just imagining this whole thing. A desert mirage. Soon the
      beautiful women carrying pitchers of water will come up and start giving him
      a drink. Then he’ll know he’s gone.

      He decides against laying down on the cool stone. If he’s going to die here
      in the middle of this hallucination, he at least wants to see what’s in the
      center before he goes. He keeps crawling.

      It’s the third time that he hears the voice before he realizes what he’s
      hearing. He would swear that someone just said, “Greetings, traveler. You do
      not look well. Do you hear me?”

      He stops crawling. He tries to look up from where he is on his hands and
      knees, but it’s too much effort to lift his head. So he tries something
      different – he leans back and tries to sit up on the stone. After a few
      seconds, he catches his balance, avoids falling on his face, sits up, and
      tries to focus his eyes. Blurry. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hands
      and tries again. Better this time.

      Yep. He can see. He’s sitting in the middle of a large, flat, dark expanse
      of stone. Directly next to him, about three feet away, is a white post or
      pole about two inches in diameter and sticking up about four or five feet
      out of the stone, at an angle.

      And wrapped around this white rod, tail with rattle on it hovering and
      seeming to be ready to start rattling, is what must be a fifteen foot long
      desert diamondback rattlesnake, looking directly at him.

      He stares at the snake in shock. He doesn’t have the energy to get up and
      run away. He doesn’t even have the energy to crawl away. This is it, his
      final resting place. No matter what happens, he’s not going to be able to
      move from this spot.

      Well, at least dying of a bite from this monster should be quicker than
      dying of thirst. He’ll face his end like a man. He struggles to sit up a
      little straighter. The snake keeps watching him. He lifts one hand and waves
      it in the snake’s direction, feebly. The snake watches the hand for a
      moment, then goes back to watching the man, looking into his eyes.

      Hmmm. Maybe the snake had no interest in biting him? It hadn’t rattled yet –
      that was a good sign. Maybe he wasn’t going to die of snake bite after all.

      He then remembers that he’d looked up when he’d reached the center here
      because he thought he’d heard a voice. He was still very woozy – he was
      likely to pass out soon, the sun still beat down on him even though he was
      now on cool stone. He still didn’t have anything to drink. But maybe he had
      actually heard a voice. This stone didn’t look natural. Nor did that white
      post sticking up out of the stone. Someone had to have built this. Maybe
      they were still nearby. Maybe that was who talked to him. Maybe this snake
      was even their pet, and that’s why it wasn’t biting.

      He tries to clear his throat to say, “Hello,” but his throat is too dry. All
      that comes out is a coughing or wheezing sound. There is no way he’s going
      to be able to talk without something to drink. He feels his pocket, and the
      bottle with the wiper fluid is still there. He shakily pulls the bottle out,
      almost losing his balance and falling on his back in the process. This isn’t
      good. He doesn’t have much time left, by his reckoning, before he passes
      out.

      He gets the lid off of the bottle, manages to get the bottle to his lips,
      and pours some of the fluid into his mouth. He sloshes it around, and then
      swallows it. He coughs a little. His throat feels better. Maybe he can talk
      now.

      He tries again. Ignoring the snake, he turns to look around him, hoping to
      spot the owner of this place, and croaks out, “Hello? Is there anyone here?”

      He hears, from his side, “Greetings. What is it that you want?”

      He turns his head, back towards the snake. That’s where the sound had seemed
      to come from. The only thing he can think of is that there must be a
      speaker, hidden under the snake, or maybe built into that post. He decides
      to try asking for help.

      “Please,” he croaks again, suddenly feeling dizzy, “I’d love to not be
      thirsty any more. I’ve been a long time without water. Can you help me?”

      Looking in the direction of the snake, hoping to see where the voice was
      coming from this time, he is shocked to see the snake rear back, open its
      mouth, and speak. He hears it say, as the dizziness overtakes him and he
      falls forward, face first on the stone, “Very well. Coming up.”

      A piercing pain shoots through his shoulder. Suddenly he is awake. He sits
      up and grabs his shoulder, wincing at the throbbing pain. He’s momentarily
      disoriented as he looks around, and then he remembers – the crawl across the
      sand, the dark area of stone, the snake. He sees the snake, still wrapped
      around the tilted white post, still looking at him.

      He reaches up and feels his shoulder, where it hurts. It feels slightly wet.
      He pulls his fingers away and looks at them – blood. He feels his shoulder
      again – his shirt has what feels like two holes in it – two puncture holes –
      they match up with the two aching spots of pain on his shoulder. He had been
      bitten. By the snake.

      “It’ll feel better in a minute.” He looks up – it’s the snake talking. He
      hadn’t dreamed it. Suddenly he notices – he’s not dizzy any more. And more
      importantly, he’s not thirsty any more – at all!

      “Have I died? Is this the afterlife? Why are you biting me in the
      afterlife?”

      “Sorry about that, but I had to bite you,” says the snake. “That’s the way I
      work. It all comes through the bite. Think of it as natural medicine.”

      “You bit me to help me? Why aren’t I thirsty any more? Did you give me a
      drink before you bit me? How did I drink enough while unconscious to not be
      thirsty any more? I haven’t had a drink for over two days. Well, except for
      the windshield wiper fluid… hold it, how in the world does a snake talk?
      Are you real? Are you some sort of Disney animation?”

      “No,” says the snake, “I’m real. As real as you or anyone is, anyway. I
      didn’t give you a drink. I bit you. That’s how it works – it’s what I do. I
      bite. I don’t have hands to give you a drink, even if I had water just
      sitting around here.”

      The man sat stunned for a minute. Here he was, sitting in the middle of the
      desert on some strange stone that should be hot but wasn’t, talking to a
      snake that could talk back and had just bitten him. And he felt better. Not
      great – he was still starving and exhausted, but much better – he was no
      longer thirsty. He had started to sweat again, but only slightly. He felt
      hot, in this sun, but it was starting to get lower in the sky, and the cool
      stone beneath him was a relief he could notice now that he was no longer
      dying of thirst.

      “I might suggest that we take care of that methanol you now have in your
      system with the next request,” continued the snake. “I can guess why you
      drank it, but I’m not sure how much you drank, or how much methanol was left
      in the wiper fluid. That stuff is nasty. It’ll make you go blind in a day or
      two, if you drank enough of it.”

      “Ummm, n-next request?” said the man. He put his hand back on his hurting
      shoulder and backed away from the snake a little.

      “That’s the way it works. If you like, that is,” explained the snake. “You
      get three requests. Call them wishes, if you wish.” The snake grinned at his
      own joke, and the man drew back a little further from the show of fangs.

      “But there are rules,” the snake continued. “The first request is free. The
      second requires an agreement of secrecy. The third requires the binding of
      responsibility.” The snake looks at the man seriously.

      “By the way,” the snake says suddenly, “my name is Nathan. Old Nathan,
      Samuel used to call me. He gave me the name. Before that, most of the Bound
      used to just call me ‘Snake’. But that got old, and Samuel wouldn’t stand
      for it. He said that anything that could talk needed a name. He was big into
      names. You can call me Nate, if you wish.” Again, the snake grinned. “Sorry
      if I don’t offer to shake, but I think you can understand – my shake sounds
      somewhat threatening.” The snake give his rattle a little shake.

      “Umm, my name is Jack,” said the man, trying to absorb all of this. “Jack
      Samson.

      “Can I ask you a question?” Jack says suddenly. “What happened to the
      poison…umm, in your bite. Why aren’t I dying now? How did you do that?
      What do you mean by that’s how you work?”

      “That’s more than one question,” grins Nate. “But I’ll still try to answer
      all of them. First, yes, you can ask me a question.” The snake’s grin gets
      wider. “Second, the poison is in you. It changed you. You now no longer need
      to drink. That’s what you asked for. Or, well, technically, you asked to not
      be thirsty any more – but ‘any more’ is such a vague term. I decided to make
      it permanent – now, as long as you live, you shouldn’t need to drink much at
      all. Your body will conserve water very efficiently. You should be able to
      get enough just from the food you eat – much like a creature of the desert.
      You’ve been changed.

      “For the third question,” Nate continues, “you are still dying. Besides the
      effects of that methanol in your system, you’re a man – and men are mortal.
      In your current state, I give you no more than about another 50 years.
      Assuming you get out of this desert, alive, that is.” Nate seemed vastly
      amused at his own humor, and continued his wide grin.

      “As for the fourth question,” Nate said, looking more serious as far as Jack
      could tell, as Jack was just now working on his ability to read
      talking-snake emotions from snake facial features, “first you have to agree
      to make a second request and become bound by the secrecy, or I can’t tell
      you.”

      “Wait,” joked Jack, “isn’t this where you say you could tell me, but you’d
      have to kill me?”

      “I thought that was implied.” Nate continued to look serious.

      “Ummm…yeah.” Jack leaned back a little as he remembered again that he was
      talking to a fifteen foot poisonous reptile with a reputation for having a
      nasty temper. “So, what is this ‘Bound by Secrecy’ stuff, and can you really
      stop the effects of the methanol?” Jack thought for a second. “And, what do
      you mean methanol, anyway? I thought these days they use ethanol in wiper
      fluid, and just denature it?”

      “They may, I don’t really know,” said Nate. “I haven’t gotten out in a
      while. Maybe they do. All I know is that I smell methanol on your breath and
      on that bottle in your pocket. And the blue color of the liquid when you
      pulled it out to drink some let me guess that it was wiper fluid. I assume
      that they still color wiper fluid blue?”

      “Yeah, they do,” said Jack.

      “I figured,” replied Nate. “As for being bound by secrecy – with the
      fulfillment of your next request, you will be bound to say nothing about me,
      this place, or any of the information I will tell you after that, when you
      decide to go back out to your kind. You won’t be allowed to talk about me,
      write about me, use sign language, charades, or even act in a way that will
      lead someone to guess correctly about me. You’ll be bound to secrecy. Of
      course, I’ll also ask you to promise not to give me away, and as I’m
      guessing that you’re a man of your word, you’ll never test the binding
      anyway, so you won’t notice.” Nate said the last part with utter confidence.

      Jack, who had always prided himself on being a man of his word, felt a
      little nervous at this. “Ummm, hey, Nate, who are you? How did you know
      that? Are you, umm, omniscient, or something?”

      Well, Jack,” said Nate sadly, “I can’t tell you that, unless you make the
      second request.” Nate looked away for a minute, then looked back.

      “Umm, well, ok,” said Jack, “what is this about a second request? What can I
      ask for? Are you allowed to tell me that?”

      “Sure!” said Nate, brightening. “You’re allowed to ask for changes. Changes
      to yourself. They’re like wishes, but they can only affect you. Oh, and
      before you ask, I can’t give you immortality. Or omniscience. Or
      omnipresence, for that matter. Though I might be able to make you gaseous
      and yet remain alive, and then you could spread through the atmosphere and
      sort of be omnipresent. But what good would that be – you still wouldn’t be
      omniscient and thus still could only focus on one thing at a time. Not very
      useful, at least in my opinion.” Nate stopped when he realized that Jack was
      staring at him.

      “Well, anyway,” continued Nate, “I’d probably suggest giving you permanent
      good health. It would negate the methanol now in your system, you’d be
      immune to most poisons and diseases, and you’d tend to live a very long
      time, barring accident, of course. And you’ll even have a tendency to
      recover from accidents well. It always seemed like a good choice for a
      request to me.”

      “Cure the methanol poisoning, huh?” said Jack. “And keep me healthy for a
      long time? Hmmm. It doesn’t sound bad at that. And it has to be a request
      about a change to me? I can’t ask to be rich, right? Because that’s not
      really a change to me?”

      “Right,” nodded Nate.

      “Could I ask to be a genius and permanently healthy?” Jack asked, hopefully.

      “That takes two requests, Jack.”

      “Yeah, I figured so,” said Jack. “But I could ask to be a genius? I could
      become the smartest scientist in the world? Or the best athlete?”

      “Well, I could make you very smart,” admitted Nate, “but that wouldn’t
      necessarily make you the best scientist in the world. Or, I could make you
      very athletic, but it wouldn’t necessarily make you the best athlete either.
      You’ve heard the saying that 99% of genius is hard work? Well, there’s some
      truth to that. I can give you the talent, but I can’t make you work hard. It
      all depends on what you decide to do with it.”

      “Hmmm,” said Jack. “Ok, I think I understand. And I get a third request,
      after this one?”

      “Maybe,” said Nate, “it depends on what you decide then. There are more
      rules for the third request that I can only tell you about after the second
      request. You know how it goes.” Nate looked like he’d shrug, if he had
      shoulders.

      “Ok, well, since I’d rather not be blind in a day or two, and permanent
      health doesn’t sound bad, then consider that my second request. Officially.
      Do I need to sign in blood or something?”

      “No,” said Nate. “Just hold out your hand. Or heel.” Nate grinned. “Or
      whatever part you want me to bite. I have to bite you again. Like I said,
      that’s how it works – the poison, you know,” Nate said apologetically.

      Jack winced a little and felt his shoulder, where the last bite was. Hey, it
      didn’t hurt any more. Just like Nate had said. That made Jack feel better
      about the biting business. But still, standing still while a fifteen foot
      snake sunk it’s fangs into you. Jack stood up. Ignoring how good it felt to
      be able to stand again, and the hunger starting to gnaw at his stomach, Jack
      tried to decide where he wanted to get bitten. Despite knowing that it
      wouldn’t hurt for long, Jack knew that this wasn’t going to be easy.

      “Hey, Jack,” Nate suddenly said, looking past Jack towards the dunes behind
      him, “is that someone else coming up over there?”

      Jack spun around and looked. Who else could be out here in the middle of
      nowhere? And did they bring food?

      Wait a minute, there was nobody over there. What was Nate…

      Jack let out a bellow as he felt two fangs sink into his rear end, through
      his jeans…

      Jack sat down carefully, favoring his more tender buttock. “I would have
      decided, eventually, Nate. I was just thinking about it. You didn’t have to
      hoodwink me like that.”

      “I’ve been doing this a long time, Jack,” said Nate, confidently. “You
      humans have a hard time sitting still and letting a snake bite you –
      especially one my size. And besides, admit it – it’s only been a couple of
      minutes and it already doesn’t hurt any more, does it? That’s because of the
      health benefit with this one. I told you that you’d heal quickly now.”

      “Yeah, well, still,” said Jack, “it’s the principle of the thing. And nobody
      likes being bitten in the butt! Couldn’t you have gotten my calf or
      something instead?”

      “More meat in the typical human butt,” replied Nate. “And less chance you
      accidentally kick me or move at the last second.”

      “Yeah, right. So, tell me all of these wonderful secrets that I now qualify
      to hear,” answered Jack.

      “Ok,” said Nate. “Do you want to ask questions first, or do you want me to
      just start talking?”

      “Just talk,” said Jack. “I’ll sit here and try to not think about food.”

      “We could go try to rustle up some food for you first, if you like,”
      answered Nate.

      “Hey! You didn’t tell me you had food around here, Nate!” Jack jumped up.
      “What do we have? Am I in walking distance to town? Or can you magically
      whip up food along with your other powers?” Jack was almost shouting with
      excitement. His stomach had been growling for hours.

      “I was thinking more like I could flush something out of its hole and bite
      it for you, and you could skin it and eat it. Assuming you have a knife,
      that is,” replied Nate, with the grin that Jack was starting to get used to.

      “Ugh,” said Jack, sitting back down. “I think I’ll pass. I can last a little
      longer before I get desperate enough to eat desert rat, or whatever else it
      is you find out here. And there’s nothing to burn – I’d have to eat it raw.
      No thanks. Just talk.”

      “Ok,” replied Nate, still grinning. “But I’d better hurry, before you start
      looking at me as food.

      Nate reared back a little, looked around for a second, and then continued.
      “You, Jack, are sitting in the middle of the Garden of Eden.”

      Jack looked around at the sand and dunes and then looked back at Nate
      sceptically.

      “Well, that’s the best I can figure it, anyway, Jack,” said Nate. “Stand up
      and look at the symbol on the rock here.” Nate gestured around the dark
      stone they were both sitting on with his nose.

      Jack stood up and looked. Carved into the stone in a bas-relief was a
      representation of a large tree. The angled-pole that Nate was wrapped around
      was coming out of the trunk of the tree, right below where the main branches
      left the truck to reach out across the stone. It was very well done – it
      looked more like a tree had been reduced to almost two dimensions and
      embedded in the stone than it did like a carving.

      Jack walked around and looked at the details in the fading light of the
      setting sun. He wished he’d looked at it while the sun was higher in the
      sky.

      Wait! The sun was setting! That meant he was going to have to spend another
      night out here! Arrrgh!

      Jack looked out across the desert for a little bit, and then came back and
      stood next to Nate. “In all the excitement, I almost forgot, Nate,” said
      Jack. “Which way is it back to town? And how far? I’m eventually going to
      have to head back – I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive by eating raw
      desert critters for long. And even if I can, I’m not sure I’ll want to.”

      “It’s about 30 miles that way.” Nate pointed, with the rattle on his tail
      this time. As far as Jack could tell, it was a direction at right angles to
      the way he’d been going when he was crawling here. “But that’s 30 miles by
      the way the crow flies. It’s about 40 by the way a man walks. You should be
      able to do it in about half a day with your improved endurance, if you head
      out early tomorrow, Jack.”

      Jack looked out the way the snake had pointed for a few seconds more, and
      then sat back down. It was getting dark. Not much he could do about heading
      out right now. And besides, Nate was just about to get to the interesting
      stuff. “Garden of Eden? As best as you can figure it?”

      “Well, yeah, as best as I and Samuel could figure it anyway,” said Nate. “He
      figured that the story just got a little mixed up. You know, snake, in a
      ‘tree’, offering ‘temptations’, making bargains. That kind stuff. But he
      could never quite figure out how the Hebrews found out about this spot from
      across the ocean. He worried about that for a while.”

      “Garden of Eden, hunh?” said Jack. “How long have you been here, Nate?”

      “No idea, really,” replied Nate. “A long time. It never occurred to me to
      count years, until recently, and by then, of course, it was too late. But I
      do remember when this whole place was green, so I figure it’s been thousands
      of years, at least.”

      “So, are you the snake that tempted Eve?” said Jack.

      “Beats me,” said Nate. “Maybe. I can’t remember if the first one of your
      kind that I talked to was female or not, and I never got a name, but it
      could have been. And I suppose she could have considered my offer to grant
      requests a ‘temptation’, though I’ve rarely had refusals.”

      “Well, umm, how did you get here then? And why is that white pole stuck out
      of the stone there?” asked Jack.

      “Dad left me here. Or, I assume it was my dad. It was another snake – much
      bigger than I was back then. I remember talking to him, but I don’t remember
      if it was in a language, or just kind of understanding what he wanted. But
      one day, he brought me to this stone, told me about it, and asked me to do
      something for him. I talked it over with him for a while, then agreed. I’ve
      been here ever since.

      “What is this place?” said Jack. “And what did he ask you to do?”

      “Well, you see this pole here, sticking out of the stone?” Nate loosened his
      coils around the tilted white pole and showed Jack where it descended into
      the stone. The pole was tilted at about a 45 degree angle and seemed to
      enter the stone in an eighteen inch slot cut into the stone. Jack leaned
      over and looked. The slot was dark and the pole went down into it as far as
      Jack could see in the dim light. Jack reached out to touch the pole, but
      Nate was suddenly there in the way.

      “You can’t touch that yet, Jack,” said Nate.

      “Why not?” asked Jack.

      “I haven’t explained it to you yet,” replied Nate.

      “Well, it kinda looks like a lever or something,” said Jack. “You’d push it
      that way, and it would move in the slot.”

      “Yep, that’s what it is,” replied Nate.

      “What does it do?” asked Jack. “End the world?”

      “Oh, no,” said Nate. “Nothing that drastic. It just ends humanity. I call it
      ‘The Lever of Doom’.” For the last few words Nate had used a deeper, ringing
      voice. He tried to look serious for a few seconds, and then gave up and
      grinned.

      Jack was initially startled by Nate’s pronouncement, but when Nate grinned
      Jack laughed. “Ha! You almost had me fooled for a second there. What does it
      really do?”

      “Oh, it really ends humanity, like I said,” smirked Nate. “I just thought
      the voice I used was funny, didn’t you?”

      Nate continued to grin.

      “A lever to end humanity?” asked Jack. “What in the world is that for? Why
      would anyone need to end humanity?”

      “Well,” replied Nate, “I get the idea that maybe humanity was an experiment.
      Or maybe the Big Guy just thought, that if humanity started going really
      bad, there should be a way to end it. I’m not really sure. All I know are
      the rules, and the guesses that Samuel and I had about why it’s here. I
      didn’t think to ask back when I started here.”

      “Rules? What rules?” asked Jack.

      “The rules are that I can’t tell anybody about it or let them touch it
      unless they agree to be bound to secrecy by a bite. And that only one human
      can be bound in that way at a time. That’s it.” explained Nate.

      Jack looked somewhat shocked. “You mean that I could pull the lever now?
      You’d let me end humanity?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “if you want to.” Nate looked at Jack carefully. “Do
      you want to, Jack?”

      “Umm, no.” said Jack, stepping a little further back from the lever. “Why in
      the world would anyone want to end humanity? It’d take a psychotic to want
      that! Or worse, a suicidal psychotic, because it would kill him too,
      wouldn’t it?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “being as he’d be human too.”

      “Has anyone ever seriously considered it?” asked Nate. “Any of those bound
      to secrecy, that is?”

      “Well, of course, I think they’ve all seriously considered it at one time or
      another. Being given that kind of responsibility makes you sit down and
      think, or so I’m told. Samuel considered it several times. He’d often get
      disgusted with humanity, come out here, and just hold the lever for a while.
      But he never pulled it. Or you wouldn’t be here.” Nate grinned some more.

      Jack sat down, well back from the lever. He looked thoughtful and puzzled at
      the same time. After a bit, he said, “So this makes me the Judge of
      humanity? I get to decide whether they keep going or just end? Me?”

      “That seems to be it,” agreed Nate.

      “What kind of criteria do I use to decide?” said Jack. “How do I make this
      decision? Am I supposed to decide if they’re good? Or too many of them are
      bad? Or that they’re going the wrong way? Is there a set of rules for that?”

      “Nope,” replied Nate. “You pretty much just have to decide on your own. It’s
      up to you, however you want to decide it. I guess that you’re just supposed
      to know.”

      “But what if I get mad at someone? Or some girl dumps me and I feel
      horrible? Couldn’t I make a mistake? How do I know that I won’t screw up?”
      protested Jack.

      Nate gave his kind of snake-like shrug again. “You don’t. You just have to
      try your best, Jack.”

      Jack sat there for a while, staring off into the desert that was rapidly
      getting dark, chewing on a fingernail.

      Suddenly, Jack turned around and looked at the snake. “Nate, was Samuel the
      one bound to this before me?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate. “He was a good guy. Talked to me a lot. Taught me to
      read and brought me books. I think I still have a good pile of them buried
      in the sand around here somewhere. I still miss him. He died a few months
      ago.”

      “Sounds like a good guy,” agreed Jack. “How did he handle this, when you
      first told him. What did he do?”

      “Well,” said Nate, “he sat down for a while, thought about it for a bit, and
      then asked me some questions, much like you’re doing.”

      “What did he ask you, if you’re allowed to tell me?” asked Jack.

      “He asked me about the third request,” replied Nate.

      “Aha!” It was Jack’s turn to grin. “And what did you tell him?”

      “I told him the rules for the third request. That to get the third request
      you have to agree to this whole thing. That if it ever comes to the point
      that you really think that humanity should be ended, that you’ll come here
      and end it. You won’t avoid it, and you won’t wimp out.” Nate looked serious
      again. “And you’ll be bound to do it too, Jack.”

      “Hmmm.” Jack looked back out into the darkness for a while.

      Nate watched him, waiting.

      “Nate,” continued Jack, quietly, eventually. “What did Samuel ask for with
      his third request?”

      Nate sounded like he was grinning again as he replied, also quietly,
      “Wisdom, Jack. He asked for wisdom. As much as I could give him.”

      “Ok,” said Jack, suddenly, standing up and facing away from Nate, “give it
      to me.

      Nate looked at Jack’s backside. “Give you what, Jack?”

      “Give me that wisvvvom. The same stuff that Samuel asked for. If it helped
      him, maybe it’ll help me too.” Jack turned his head to look back over his
      shoulder at Nate. “It did help him, right?”

      “He said it did,” replied Nate. “But he seemed a little quieter afterward.
      Like he had a lot to think about.”

    9. Anon:
      So, there’s a man crawling through the desert.

      He’d decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a big rock, and then he couldn’t get it started again. There were no cell phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family, his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few friends had no idea he was out here.

      He stayed with the car for a day or so, but his one bottle of water ran out
      and he was getting thirsty. He thought maybe he knew the direction back, now that he’d paid attention to the sun and thought he’d figured out which way was north, so he decided to start walking. He figured he only had to go about 30 miles or so and he’d be back to the small town he’d gotten gas in last.

      He thinks about walking at night to avoid the heat and sun, but based upon
      how dark it actually was the night before, and given that he has no flashlight, he’s afraid that he’ll break a leg or step on a rattlesnake. So,
      he puts on some sun block, puts the rest in his pocket for reapplication
      later, brings an umbrella he’d had in the back of the SUV with him to give
      him a little shade, pours the windshield wiper fluid into his water bottle
      in case he gets that desperate, brings his pocket knife in case he finds a cactus that looks like it might have water in it, and heads out in the
      direction he thinks is right.

      He walks for the entire day. By the end of the day he’s really thirsty. He’s
      been sweating all day, and his lips are starting to crack. He’s reapplied the sunblock twice, and tried to stay under the umbrella, but he still feels sunburned. The windshield wiper fluid sloshing in the bottle in his pocket is really getting tempting now. He knows that it’s mainly water and some ethanol and coloring, but he also knows that they add some kind of poison to it to keep people from drinking it. He wonders what the poison is, and
      whether the poison would be worse than dying of thirst.

      He pushes on, trying to get to that small town before dark.

      By the end of the day he starts getting worried. He figures he’s been walking at least 3 miles an hour, according to his watch for over 10 hours. That means that if his estimate was right that he should be close to the
      town. But he doesn’t recognize any of this. He had to cross a dry creek bed a mile or two back, and he doesn’t remember coming through it in the SUV. He figures that maybe he got his direction off just a little and that the dry creek bed was just off to one side of his path. He tells himself that he’s close, and that after dark he’ll start seeing the town lights over one of these hills, and that’ll be all he needs.

      As it gets dim enough that he starts stumbling over small rocks and things,
      he finds a spot and sits down to wait for full dark and the town lights.

      Full dark comes before he knows it. He must have dozed off. He stands back
      up and turns all the way around. He sees nothing but stars.

      He wakes up the next morning feeling absolutely lousy. His eyes are gummy and his mouth and nose feel like they’re full of sand. He so thirsty that he can’t even swallow. He barely got any sleep because it was so cold. He’d forgotten how cold it got at night in the desert and hadn’t noticed it the night before because he’d been in his car.

      He knows the Rule of Threes – three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food – then you die. Some people can make it a little longer, in the best situations. But the desert heat and having to walk and sweat isn’t the best situation to be without water. He figures, unless he finds water, this is his last day.

      He rinses his mouth out with a little of the windshield wiper fluid. He waits a while after spitting that little bit out, to see if his mouth goes numb, or he feels dizzy or something. Has his mouth gone numb? Is it just in
      his mind? He’s not sure. He’ll go a little farther, and if he still doesn’t
      find water, he’ll try drinking some of the fluid.

      Then he has to face his next, harder question – which way does he go from here? Does he keep walking the same way he was yesterday (assuming that he still knows which way that is), or does he try a new direction? He has no idea what to do.

      Looking at the hills and dunes around him, he thinks he knows the direction he was heading before. Just going by a feeling, he points himself somewhat to the left of that, and starts walking.

      As he walks, the day starts heating up. The desert, too cold just a couple of hours before, soon becomes an oven again. He sweats a little at first, and then stops. He starts getting worried at that – when you stop sweating he knows that means you’re in trouble – usually right before heat stroke.

      He decides that it’s time to try the windshield wiper fluid. He can’t wait
      any longer – if he passes out, he’s dead. He stops in the shade of a large
      rock, takes the bottle out, opens it, and takes a mouthful. He slowly
      swallows it, making it last as long as he can. It feels so good in his dry
      and cracked throat that he doesn’t even care about the nasty taste. He takes
      another mouthful, and makes it last too. Slowly, he drinks half the bottle.
      He figures that since he’s drinking it, he might as well drink enough to
      make some difference and keep himself from passing out.

      He’s quit worrying about the denaturing of the wiper fluid. If it kills him,
      it kills him – if he didn’t drink it, he’d die anyway. Besides, he’s pretty
      sure that whatever substance they denature the fluid with is just designed to make you sick – their way of keeping winos from buying cheap wiper fluid for the ethanol content. He can handle throwing up, if it comes to that.

      He walks. He walks in the hot, dry, windless desert. Sand, rocks, hills,
      dunes, the occasional scrawny cactus or dried bush. No sign of water.
      Sometimes he’ll see a little movement to one side or the other, but whatever moved is usually gone before he can focus his eyes on it. Probably birds, lizards, or mice. Maybe snakes, though they usually move more at night. He’s careful to stay away from the movements.

      After a while, he begins to stagger. He’s not sure if it’s fatigue, heat
      stroke finally catching him, or maybe he was wrong and the denaturing of the wiper fluid was worse than he thought. He tries to steady himself, and keep going.

      After more walking, he comes to a large stretch of sand. This is good! He
      knows he passed over a stretch of sand in the SUV – he remembers doing
      donuts in it. Or at least he thinks he remembers it – he’s getting woozy
      enough and tired enough that he’s not sure what he remembers any more or if
      he’s hallucinating. But he thinks he remembers it. So he heads off into it,
      trying to get to the other side, hoping that it gets him closer to the town.

      He was heading for a town, wasn’t he? He thinks he was. He isn’t sure any more. He’s not even sure how long he’s been walking any more. Is it still morning? Or has it moved into afternoon and the sun is going down again? It must be afternoon – it seems like it’s been too long since he started out.

      He walks through the sand.

      After a while, he comes to a big dune in the sand. This is bad. He doesn’t
      remember any dunes when driving over the sand in his SUV. Or at least he
      doesn’t think he remembers any. This is bad.

      But, he has no other direction to go. Too late to turn back now. He figures
      that he’ll get to the top of the dune and see if he can see anything from
      there that helps him find the town. He keeps going up the dune.

      Halfway up, he slips in the bad footing of the sand for the second or third
      time, and falls to his knees. He doesn’t feel like getting back up – he’ll
      just fall down again. So, he keeps going up the dune on his hand and knees.

      While crawling, if his throat weren’t so dry, he’d laugh. He’s finally
      gotten to the hackneyed image of a man lost in the desert – crawling through
      the sand on his hands and knees. If would be the perfect image, he imagines, if only his clothes were more ragged. The people crawling through the desert
      in the cartoons always had ragged clothes. But his have lasted without any
      rips so far. Somebody will probably find his dessicated corpse half buried in the sand years from now, and his clothes will still be in fine shape –
      shake the sand out, and a good wash, and they’d be wearable again. He wishes his throat were wet enough to laugh. He coughs a little instead, and it hurts.

      He finally makes it to the top of the sand dune. Now that he’s at the top,
      he struggles a little, but manages to stand up and look around. All he sees
      is sand. Sand, and more sand. Behind him, about a mile away, he thinks he
      sees the rocky ground he left to head into this sand. Ahead of him, more
      dunes, more sand. This isn’t where he drove his SUV. This is Hell. Or close enough.

      Again, he doesn’t know what to do. He decides to drink the rest of the wiper
      fluid while figuring it out. He takes out the bottle, and is removing the
      cap, when he glances to the side and sees something. Something in the sand. At the bottom of the dune, off to the side, he sees something strange. It’s a flat area, in the sand. He stops taking the cap of the bottle off, and tries to look closer. The area seems to be circular. And it’s dark – darker than the sand. And, there seems to be something in the middle of it, but he can’t tell what it is. He looks as hard as he can, and still can tell from
      here. He’s going to have to go down there and look.

      He puts the bottle back in his pocket, and starts to stumble down the dune.
      After a few steps, he realizes that he’s in trouble – he’s not going to be able to keep his balance. After a couple of more sliding, tottering steps, he falls and starts to roll down the dune. The sand it so hot when his body hits it that for a minute he thinks he’s caught fire on the way down – like a movie car wreck flashing into flames as it goes over the cliff, before it ever even hits the ground. He closes his eyes and mouth, covers his face with his hands, and waits to stop rolling.

      He stops, at the bottom of the dune. After a minute or two, he finds enough
      energy to try to sit up and get the sand out of his face and clothes. When
      he clears his eyes enough, he looks around to make sure that the dark spot
      in the sand it still there and he hadn’t just imagined it.

      So, seeing the large, flat, dark spot on the sand is still there, he begins
      to crawl towards it. He’d get up and walk towards it, but he doesn’t seem to
      have the energy to get up and walk right now. He must be in the final stages
      of dehydration he figures, as he crawls. If this place in the sand doesn’t
      have water, he’ll likely never make it anywhere else. This is his last
      chance.

      He gets closer and closer, but still can’t see what’s in the middle of the
      dark area. His eyes won’t quite focus any more for some reason. And lifting
      his head up to look takes so much effort that he gives up trying. He just
      keeps crawling.

      Finally, he reaches the area he’d seen from the dune. It takes him a minute of crawling on it before he realizes that he’s no longer on sand – he’s now crawling on some kind of dark stone. Stone with some kind of marking on it – a pattern cut into the stone. He’s too tired to stand up and try to see what the pattern is – so he just keeps crawling. He crawls towards the center,
      where his blurry eyes still see something in the middle of the dark stone
      area.

      His mind, detached in a strange way, notes that either his hands and knees are so burnt by the sand that they no longer feel pain, or that this dark
      stone, in the middle of a burning desert with a pounding, punishing sun
      overhead, doesn’t seem to be hot. It almost feels cool. He considers lying
      down on the nice cool surface.

      Cool, dark stone. Not a good sign. He must be hallucinating this. He’s
      probably in the middle of a patch of sand, already lying face down and
      dying, and just imagining this whole thing. A desert mirage. Soon the
      beautiful women carrying pitchers of water will come up and start giving him
      a drink. Then he’ll know he’s gone.

      He decides against laying down on the cool stone. If he’s going to die here
      in the middle of this hallucination, he at least wants to see what’s in the
      center before he goes. He keeps crawling.

      It’s the third time that he hears the voice before he realizes what he’s
      hearing. He would swear that someone just said, “Greetings, traveler. You do
      not look well. Do you hear me?”

      He stops crawling. He tries to look up from where he is on his hands and
      knees, but it’s too much effort to lift his head. So he tries something
      different – he leans back and tries to sit up on the stone. After a few
      seconds, he catches his balance, avoids falling on his face, sits up, and
      tries to focus his eyes. Blurry. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hands
      and tries again. Better this time.

      Yep. He can see. He’s sitting in the middle of a large, flat, dark expanse
      of stone. Directly next to him, about three feet away, is a white post or
      pole about two inches in diameter and sticking up about four or five feet
      out of the stone, at an angle.

      And wrapped around this white rod, tail with rattle on it hovering and
      seeming to be ready to start rattling, is what must be a fifteen foot long
      desert diamondback rattlesnake, looking directly at him.

      He stares at the snake in shock. He doesn’t have the energy to get up and
      run away. He doesn’t even have the energy to crawl away. This is it, his
      final resting place. No matter what happens, he’s not going to be able to
      move from this spot.

      Well, at least dying of a bite from this monster should be quicker than
      dying of thirst. He’ll face his end like a man. He struggles to sit up a
      little straighter. The snake keeps watching him. He lifts one hand and waves
      it in the snake’s direction, feebly. The snake watches the hand for a
      moment, then goes back to watching the man, looking into his eyes.

      Hmmm. Maybe the snake had no interest in biting him? It hadn’t rattled yet –
      that was a good sign. Maybe he wasn’t going to die of snake bite after all.

      He then remembers that he’d looked up when he’d reached the center here
      because he thought he’d heard a voice. He was still very woozy – he was
      likely to pass out soon, the sun still beat down on him even though he was
      now on cool stone. He still didn’t have anything to drink. But maybe he had
      actually heard a voice. This stone didn’t look natural. Nor did that white
      post sticking up out of the stone. Someone had to have built this. Maybe
      they were still nearby. Maybe that was who talked to him. Maybe this snake
      was even their pet, and that’s why it wasn’t biting.

      He tries to clear his throat to say, “Hello,” but his throat is too dry. All
      that comes out is a coughing or wheezing sound. There is no way he’s going
      to be able to talk without something to drink. He feels his pocket, and the
      bottle with the wiper fluid is still there. He shakily pulls the bottle out,
      almost losing his balance and falling on his back in the process. This isn’t
      good. He doesn’t have much time left, by his reckoning, before he passes
      out.

      He gets the lid off of the bottle, manages to get the bottle to his lips,
      and pours some of the fluid into his mouth. He sloshes it around, and then
      swallows it. He coughs a little. His throat feels better. Maybe he can talk
      now.

      He tries again. Ignoring the snake, he turns to look around him, hoping to
      spot the owner of this place, and croaks out, “Hello? Is there anyone here?”

      He hears, from his side, “Greetings. What is it that you want?”

      He turns his head, back towards the snake. That’s where the sound had seemed
      to come from. The only thing he can think of is that there must be a
      speaker, hidden under the snake, or maybe built into that post. He decides
      to try asking for help.

      “Please,” he croaks again, suddenly feeling dizzy, “I’d love to not be
      thirsty any more. I’ve been a long time without water. Can you help me?”

      Looking in the direction of the snake, hoping to see where the voice was
      coming from this time, he is shocked to see the snake rear back, open its
      mouth, and speak. He hears it say, as the dizziness overtakes him and he
      falls forward, face first on the stone, “Very well. Coming up.”

      A piercing pain shoots through his shoulder. Suddenly he is awake. He sits
      up and grabs his shoulder, wincing at the throbbing pain. He’s momentarily
      disoriented as he looks around, and then he remembers – the crawl across the
      sand, the dark area of stone, the snake. He sees the snake, still wrapped
      around the tilted white post, still looking at him.

      He reaches up and feels his shoulder, where it hurts. It feels slightly wet.
      He pulls his fingers away and looks at them – blood. He feels his shoulder
      again – his shirt has what feels like two holes in it – two puncture holes –
      they match up with the two aching spots of pain on his shoulder. He had been
      bitten. By the snake.

      “It’ll feel better in a minute.” He looks up – it’s the snake talking. He
      hadn’t dreamed it. Suddenly he notices – he’s not dizzy any more. And more
      importantly, he’s not thirsty any more – at all!

      “Have I died? Is this the afterlife? Why are you biting me in the
      afterlife?”

      “Sorry about that, but I had to bite you,” says the snake. “That’s the way I
      work. It all comes through the bite. Think of it as natural medicine.”

      “You bit me to help me? Why aren’t I thirsty any more? Did you give me a
      drink before you bit me? How did I drink enough while unconscious to not be
      thirsty any more? I haven’t had a drink for over two days. Well, except for
      the windshield wiper fluid… hold it, how in the world does a snake talk?
      Are you real? Are you some sort of Disney animation?”

      “No,” says the snake, “I’m real. As real as you or anyone is, anyway. I
      didn’t give you a drink. I bit you. That’s how it works – it’s what I do. I
      bite. I don’t have hands to give you a drink, even if I had water just
      sitting around here.”

      The man sat stunned for a minute. Here he was, sitting in the middle of the
      desert on some strange stone that should be hot but wasn’t, talking to a
      snake that could talk back and had just bitten him. And he felt better. Not
      great – he was still starving and exhausted, but much better – he was no
      longer thirsty. He had started to sweat again, but only slightly. He felt
      hot, in this sun, but it was starting to get lower in the sky, and the cool
      stone beneath him was a relief he could notice now that he was no longer
      dying of thirst.

      “I might suggest that we take care of that methanol you now have in your
      system with the next request,” continued the snake. “I can guess why you
      drank it, but I’m not sure how much you drank, or how much methanol was left
      in the wiper fluid. That stuff is nasty. It’ll make you go blind in a day or
      two, if you drank enough of it.”

      “Ummm, n-next request?” said the man. He put his hand back on his hurting
      shoulder and backed away from the snake a little.

      “That’s the way it works. If you like, that is,” explained the snake. “You
      get three requests. Call them wishes, if you wish.” The snake grinned at his
      own joke, and the man drew back a little further from the show of fangs.

      “But there are rules,” the snake continued. “The first request is free. The
      second requires an agreement of secrecy. The third requires the binding of
      responsibility.” The snake looks at the man seriously.

      “By the way,” the snake says suddenly, “my name is Nathan. Old Nathan,
      Samuel used to call me. He gave me the name. Before that, most of the Bound
      used to just call me ‘Snake’. But that got old, and Samuel wouldn’t stand
      for it. He said that anything that could talk needed a name. He was big into
      names. You can call me Nate, if you wish.” Again, the snake grinned. “Sorry
      if I don’t offer to shake, but I think you can understand – my shake sounds
      somewhat threatening.” The snake give his rattle a little shake.

      “Umm, my name is Jack,” said the man, trying to absorb all of this. “Jack
      Samson.

      “Can I ask you a question?” Jack says suddenly. “What happened to the
      poison…umm, in your bite. Why aren’t I dying now? How did you do that?
      What do you mean by that’s how you work?”

      “That’s more than one question,” grins Nate. “But I’ll still try to answer
      all of them. First, yes, you can ask me a question.” The snake’s grin gets
      wider. “Second, the poison is in you. It changed you. You now no longer need
      to drink. That’s what you asked for. Or, well, technically, you asked to not
      be thirsty any more – but ‘any more’ is such a vague term. I decided to make
      it permanent – now, as long as you live, you shouldn’t need to drink much at
      all. Your body will conserve water very efficiently. You should be able to
      get enough just from the food you eat – much like a creature of the desert.
      You’ve been changed.

      “For the third question,” Nate continues, “you are still dying. Besides the
      effects of that methanol in your system, you’re a man – and men are mortal.
      In your current state, I give you no more than about another 50 years.
      Assuming you get out of this desert, alive, that is.” Nate seemed vastly
      amused at his own humor, and continued his wide grin.

      “As for the fourth question,” Nate said, looking more serious as far as Jack
      could tell, as Jack was just now working on his ability to read
      talking-snake emotions from snake facial features, “first you have to agree
      to make a second request and become bound by the secrecy, or I can’t tell
      you.”

      “Wait,” joked Jack, “isn’t this where you say you could tell me, but you’d
      have to kill me?”

      “I thought that was implied.” Nate continued to look serious.

      “Ummm…yeah.” Jack leaned back a little as he remembered again that he was
      talking to a fifteen foot poisonous reptile with a reputation for having a
      nasty temper. “So, what is this ‘Bound by Secrecy’ stuff, and can you really
      stop the effects of the methanol?” Jack thought for a second. “And, what do
      you mean methanol, anyway? I thought these days they use ethanol in wiper
      fluid, and just denature it?”

      “They may, I don’t really know,” said Nate. “I haven’t gotten out in a
      while. Maybe they do. All I know is that I smell methanol on your breath and
      on that bottle in your pocket. And the blue color of the liquid when you
      pulled it out to drink some let me guess that it was wiper fluid. I assume
      that they still color wiper fluid blue?”

      “Yeah, they do,” said Jack.

      “I figured,” replied Nate. “As for being bound by secrecy – with the
      fulfillment of your next request, you will be bound to say nothing about me,
      this place, or any of the information I will tell you after that, when you
      decide to go back out to your kind. You won’t be allowed to talk about me,
      write about me, use sign language, charades, or even act in a way that will
      lead someone to guess correctly about me. You’ll be bound to secrecy. Of
      course, I’ll also ask you to promise not to give me away, and as I’m
      guessing that you’re a man of your word, you’ll never test the binding
      anyway, so you won’t notice.” Nate said the last part with utter confidence.

      Jack, who had always prided himself on being a man of his word, felt a
      little nervous at this. “Ummm, hey, Nate, who are you? How did you know
      that? Are you, umm, omniscient, or something?”

      Well, Jack,” said Nate sadly, “I can’t tell you that, unless you make the
      second request.” Nate looked away for a minute, then looked back.

      “Umm, well, ok,” said Jack, “what is this about a second request? What can I
      ask for? Are you allowed to tell me that?”

      “Sure!” said Nate, brightening. “You’re allowed to ask for changes. Changes
      to yourself. They’re like wishes, but they can only affect you. Oh, and
      before you ask, I can’t give you immortality. Or omniscience. Or
      omnipresence, for that matter. Though I might be able to make you gaseous
      and yet remain alive, and then you could spread through the atmosphere and
      sort of be omnipresent. But what good would that be – you still wouldn’t be
      omniscient and thus still could only focus on one thing at a time. Not very
      useful, at least in my opinion.” Nate stopped when he realized that Jack was
      staring at him.

      “Well, anyway,” continued Nate, “I’d probably suggest giving you permanent
      good health. It would negate the methanol now in your system, you’d be
      immune to most poisons and diseases, and you’d tend to live a very long
      time, barring accident, of course. And you’ll even have a tendency to
      recover from accidents well. It always seemed like a good choice for a
      request to me.”

      “Cure the methanol poisoning, huh?” said Jack. “And keep me healthy for a
      long time? Hmmm. It doesn’t sound bad at that. And it has to be a request
      about a change to me? I can’t ask to be rich, right? Because that’s not
      really a change to me?”

      “Right,” nodded Nate.

      “Could I ask to be a genius and permanently healthy?” Jack asked, hopefully.

      “That takes two requests, Jack.”

      “Yeah, I figured so,” said Jack. “But I could ask to be a genius? I could
      become the smartest scientist in the world? Or the best athlete?”

      “Well, I could make you very smart,” admitted Nate, “but that wouldn’t
      necessarily make you the best scientist in the world. Or, I could make you
      very athletic, but it wouldn’t necessarily make you the best athlete either.
      You’ve heard the saying that 99% of genius is hard work? Well, there’s some
      truth to that. I can give you the talent, but I can’t make you work hard. It
      all depends on what you decide to do with it.”

      “Hmmm,” said Jack. “Ok, I think I understand. And I get a third request,
      after this one?”

      “Maybe,” said Nate, “it depends on what you decide then. There are more
      rules for the third request that I can only tell you about after the second
      request. You know how it goes.” Nate looked like he’d shrug, if he had
      shoulders.

      “Ok, well, since I’d rather not be blind in a day or two, and permanent
      health doesn’t sound bad, then consider that my second request. Officially.
      Do I need to sign in blood or something?”

      “No,” said Nate. “Just hold out your hand. Or heel.” Nate grinned. “Or
      whatever part you want me to bite. I have to bite you again. Like I said,
      that’s how it works – the poison, you know,” Nate said apologetically.

      Jack winced a little and felt his shoulder, where the last bite was. Hey, it
      didn’t hurt any more. Just like Nate had said. That made Jack feel better
      about the biting business. But still, standing still while a fifteen foot
      snake sunk it’s fangs into you. Jack stood up. Ignoring how good it felt to
      be able to stand again, and the hunger starting to gnaw at his stomach, Jack
      tried to decide where he wanted to get bitten. Despite knowing that it
      wouldn’t hurt for long, Jack knew that this wasn’t going to be easy.

      “Hey, Jack,” Nate suddenly said, looking past Jack towards the dunes behind
      him, “is that someone else coming up over there?”

      Jack spun around and looked. Who else could be out here in the middle of
      nowhere? And did they bring food?

      Wait a minute, there was nobody over there. What was Nate…

      Jack let out a bellow as he felt two fangs sink into his rear end, through
      his jeans…

      Jack sat down carefully, favoring his more tender buttock. “I would have
      decided, eventually, Nate. I was just thinking about it. You didn’t have to
      hoodwink me like that.”

      “I’ve been doing this a long time, Jack,” said Nate, confidently. “You
      humans have a hard time sitting still and letting a snake bite you –
      especially one my size. And besides, admit it – it’s only been a couple of
      minutes and it already doesn’t hurt any more, does it? That’s because of the
      health benefit with this one. I told you that you’d heal quickly now.”

      “Yeah, well, still,” said Jack, “it’s the principle of the thing. And nobody
      likes being bitten in the butt! Couldn’t you have gotten my calf or
      something instead?”

      “More meat in the typical human butt,” replied Nate. “And less chance you
      accidentally kick me or move at the last second.”

      “Yeah, right. So, tell me all of these wonderful secrets that I now qualify
      to hear,” answered Jack.

      “Ok,” said Nate. “Do you want to ask questions first, or do you want me to
      just start talking?”

      “Just talk,” said Jack. “I’ll sit here and try to not think about food.”

      “We could go try to rustle up some food for you first, if you like,”
      answered Nate.

      “Hey! You didn’t tell me you had food around here, Nate!” Jack jumped up.
      “What do we have? Am I in walking distance to town? Or can you magically
      whip up food along with your other powers?” Jack was almost shouting with
      excitement. His stomach had been growling for hours.

      “I was thinking more like I could flush something out of its hole and bite
      it for you, and you could skin it and eat it. Assuming you have a knife,
      that is,” replied Nate, with the grin that Jack was starting to get used to.

      “Ugh,” said Jack, sitting back down. “I think I’ll pass. I can last a little
      longer before I get desperate enough to eat desert rat, or whatever else it
      is you find out here. And there’s nothing to burn – I’d have to eat it raw.
      No thanks. Just talk.”

      “Ok,” replied Nate, still grinning. “But I’d better hurry, before you start
      looking at me as food.

      Nate reared back a little, looked around for a second, and then continued.
      “You, Jack, are sitting in the middle of the Garden of Eden.”

      Jack looked around at the sand and dunes and then looked back at Nate
      sceptically.

      “Well, that’s the best I can figure it, anyway, Jack,” said Nate. “Stand up
      and look at the symbol on the rock here.” Nate gestured around the dark
      stone they were both sitting on with his nose.

      Jack stood up and looked. Carved into the stone in a bas-relief was a
      representation of a large tree. The angled-pole that Nate was wrapped around
      was coming out of the trunk of the tree, right below where the main branches
      left the truck to reach out across the stone. It was very well done – it
      looked more like a tree had been reduced to almost two dimensions and
      embedded in the stone than it did like a carving.

      Jack walked around and looked at the details in the fading light of the
      setting sun. He wished he’d looked at it while the sun was higher in the
      sky.

      Wait! The sun was setting! That meant he was going to have to spend another
      night out here! Arrrgh!

      Jack looked out across the desert for a little bit, and then came back and
      stood next to Nate. “In all the excitement, I almost forgot, Nate,” said
      Jack. “Which way is it back to town? And how far? I’m eventually going to
      have to head back – I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive by eating raw
      desert critters for long. And even if I can, I’m not sure I’ll want to.”

      “It’s about 30 miles that way.” Nate pointed, with the rattle on his tail
      this time. As far as Jack could tell, it was a direction at right angles to
      the way he’d been going when he was crawling here. “But that’s 30 miles by
      the way the crow flies. It’s about 40 by the way a man walks. You should be
      able to do it in about half a day with your improved endurance, if you head
      out early tomorrow, Jack.”

      Jack looked out the way the snake had pointed for a few seconds more, and
      then sat back down. It was getting dark. Not much he could do about heading
      out right now. And besides, Nate was just about to get to the interesting
      stuff. “Garden of Eden? As best as you can figure it?”

      “Well, yeah, as best as I and Samuel could figure it anyway,” said Nate. “He
      figured that the story just got a little mixed up. You know, snake, in a
      ‘tree’, offering ‘temptations’, making bargains. That kind stuff. But he
      could never quite figure out how the Hebrews found out about this spot from
      across the ocean. He worried about that for a while.”

      “Garden of Eden, hunh?” said Jack. “How long have you been here, Nate?”

      “No idea, really,” replied Nate. “A long time. It never occurred to me to
      count years, until recently, and by then, of course, it was too late. But I
      do remember when this whole place was green, so I figure it’s been thousands
      of years, at least.”

      “So, are you the snake that tempted Eve?” said Jack.

      “Beats me,” said Nate. “Maybe. I can’t remember if the first one of your
      kind that I talked to was female or not, and I never got a name, but it
      could have been. And I suppose she could have considered my offer to grant
      requests a ‘temptation’, though I’ve rarely had refusals.”

      “Well, umm, how did you get here then? And why is that white pole stuck out
      of the stone there?” asked Jack.

      “Dad left me here. Or, I assume it was my dad. It was another snake – much
      bigger than I was back then. I remember talking to him, but I don’t remember
      if it was in a language, or just kind of understanding what he wanted. But
      one day, he brought me to this stone, told me about it, and asked me to do
      something for him. I talked it over with him for a while, then agreed. I’ve
      been here ever since.

      “What is this place?” said Jack. “And what did he ask you to do?”

      “Well, you see this pole here, sticking out of the stone?” Nate loosened his
      coils around the tilted white pole and showed Jack where it descended into
      the stone. The pole was tilted at about a 45 degree angle and seemed to
      enter the stone in an eighteen inch slot cut into the stone. Jack leaned
      over and looked. The slot was dark and the pole went down into it as far as
      Jack could see in the dim light. Jack reached out to touch the pole, but
      Nate was suddenly there in the way.

      “You can’t touch that yet, Jack,” said Nate.

      “Why not?” asked Jack.

      “I haven’t explained it to you yet,” replied Nate.

      “Well, it kinda looks like a lever or something,” said Jack. “You’d push it
      that way, and it would move in the slot.”

      “Yep, that’s what it is,” replied Nate.

      “What does it do?” asked Jack. “End the world?”

      “Oh, no,” said Nate. “Nothing that drastic. It just ends humanity. I call it
      ‘The Lever of Doom’.” For the last few words Nate had used a deeper, ringing
      voice. He tried to look serious for a few seconds, and then gave up and
      grinned.

      Jack was initially startled by Nate’s pronouncement, but when Nate grinned
      Jack laughed. “Ha! You almost had me fooled for a second there. What does it
      really do?”

      “Oh, it really ends humanity, like I said,” smirked Nate. “I just thought
      the voice I used was funny, didn’t you?”

      Nate continued to grin.

      “A lever to end humanity?” asked Jack. “What in the world is that for? Why
      would anyone need to end humanity?”

      “Well,” replied Nate, “I get the idea that maybe humanity was an experiment.
      Or maybe the Big Guy just thought, that if humanity started going really
      bad, there should be a way to end it. I’m not really sure. All I know are
      the rules, and the guesses that Samuel and I had about why it’s here. I
      didn’t think to ask back when I started here.”

      “Rules? What rules?” asked Jack.

      “The rules are that I can’t tell anybody about it or let them touch it
      unless they agree to be bound to secrecy by a bite. And that only one human
      can be bound in that way at a time. That’s it.” explained Nate.

      Jack looked somewhat shocked. “You mean that I could pull the lever now?
      You’d let me end humanity?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “if you want to.” Nate looked at Jack carefully. “Do
      you want to, Jack?”

      “Umm, no.” said Jack, stepping a little further back from the lever. “Why in
      the world would anyone want to end humanity? It’d take a psychotic to want
      that! Or worse, a suicidal psychotic, because it would kill him too,
      wouldn’t it?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “being as he’d be human too.”

      “Has anyone ever seriously considered it?” asked Nate. “Any of those bound
      to secrecy, that is?”

      “Well, of course, I think they’ve all seriously considered it at one time or
      another. Being given that kind of responsibility makes you sit down and
      think, or so I’m told. Samuel considered it several times. He’d often get
      disgusted with humanity, come out here, and just hold the lever for a while.
      But he never pulled it. Or you wouldn’t be here.” Nate grinned some more.

      Jack sat down, well back from the lever. He looked thoughtful and puzzled at
      the same time. After a bit, he said, “So this makes me the Judge of
      humanity? I get to decide whether they keep going or just end? Me?”

      “That seems to be it,” agreed Nate.

      “What kind of criteria do I use to decide?” said Jack. “How do I make this
      decision? Am I supposed to decide if they’re good? Or too many of them are
      bad? Or that they’re going the wrong way? Is there a set of rules for that?”

      “Nope,” replied Nate. “You pretty much just have to decide on your own. It’s
      up to you, however you want to decide it. I guess that you’re just supposed
      to know.”

      “But what if I get mad at someone? Or some girl dumps me and I feel
      horrible? Couldn’t I make a mistake? How do I know that I won’t screw up?”
      protested Jack.

      Nate gave his kind of snake-like shrug again. “You don’t. You just have to
      try your best, Jack.”

      Jack sat there for a while, staring off into the desert that was rapidly
      getting dark, chewing on a fingernail.

      Suddenly, Jack turned around and looked at the snake. “Nate, was Samuel the
      one bound to this before me?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate. “He was a good guy. Talked to me a lot. Taught me to
      read and brought me books. I think I still have a good pile of them buried
      in the sand around here somewhere. I still miss him. He died a few months
      ago.”

      “Sounds like a good guy,” agreed Jack. “How did he handle this, when you
      first told him. What did he do?”

      “Well,” said Nate, “he sat down for a while, thought about it for a bit, and
      then asked me some questions, much like you’re doing.”

      “What did he ask you, if you’re allowed to tell me?” asked Jack.

      “He asked me about the third request,” replied Nate.

      “Aha!” It was Jack’s turn to grin. “And what did you tell him?”

      “I told him the rules for the third request. That to get the third request
      you have to agree to this whole thing. That if it ever comes to the point
      that you really think that humanity should be ended, that you’ll come here
      and end it. You won’t avoid it, and you won’t wimp out.” Nate looked serious
      again. “And you’ll be bound to do it too, Jack.”

      “Hmmm.” Jack looked back out into the darkness for a while.

      Nate watched him, waiting.

      “Nate,” continued Jack, quietly, eventually. “What did Samuel ask for with
      his third request?”

      Nate sounded like he was grinning again as he replied, also quietly,
      “Wisdom, Jack. He asked for wisdom. As much as I could give him.”

      “Ok,” said Jack, suddenly, standing up and facing away from Nate, “give it
      to me.

      Nate looked at Jack’s backside. “Give you what, Jack?”

      “Give me that wisdom. The same stuff that Samuel asked for. If it helped
      him, maybe it’ll help me too.” Jack turned his head to look back over his
      shoulder at Nate. “It did help him, right?”

      “He said it did,” replied Nate. “But he seemed a little quieter afterward.
      Like vvad a lot to think about.”

    10. Anon:
      So, there’s a man crawling through the desert.

      He’d decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a big rock, and then he couldn’t get it started again. There were no cell phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family, his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few friends had no idea he was out here.

      He stayed with the car for a day or so, but his one bottle of water ran out
      and he was getting thirsty. He thought maybe he knew the direction back, now that he’d paid attention to the sun and thought he’d figured out which way was north, so he decided to start walking. He figured he only had to go about 30 miles or so and he’d be back to the small town he’d gotten gas in last.

      He thinks about walking at night to avoid the heat and sun, but based upon
      how dark it actually was the night before, and given that he has no flashlight, he’s afraid that he’ll break a leg or step on a rattlesnake. So,
      he puts on some sun block, puts the rest in his pocket for reapplication
      later, brings an umbrella he’d had in the back of the SUV with him to give
      him a little shade, pours the windshield wiper fluid into his water bottle
      in case he gets that desperate, brings his pocket knife in case he finds a cactus that looks like it might have water in it, and heads out in the
      direction he thinks is right.

      He walks for the entire day. By the end of the day he’s really thirsty. He’s
      been sweating all day, and his lips are starting to crack. He’s reapplied the sunblock twice, and tried to stay under the umbrella, but he still feels sunburned. The windshield wiper fluid sloshing in the bottle in his pocket is really getting tempting now. He knows that it’s mainly water and some ethanol and coloring, but he also knows that they add some kind of poison to it to keep people from drinking it. He wonders what the poison is, and
      whether the poison would be worse than dying of thirst.

      He pushes on, trying to get to that small town before dark.

      By the end of the day he starts getting worried. He figures he’s been walking at least 3 miles an hour, according to his watch for over 10 hours. That means that if his estimate was right that he should be close to the
      town. But he doesn’t recognize any of this. He had to cross a dry creek bed a mile or two back, and he doesn’t remember coming through it in the SUV. He figures that maybe he got his direction off just a little and that the dry creek bed was just off to one side of his path. He tells himself that he’s close, and that after dark he’ll start seeing the town lights over one of these hills, and that’ll be all he needs.

      As it gets dim enough that he starts stumbling over small rocks and things,
      he finds a spot and sits down to wait for full dark and the town lights.

      Full dark comes before he knows it. He must have dozed off. He stands back
      up and turns all the way around. He sees nothing but stars.

      He wakes up the next morning feeling absolutely lousy. His eyes are gummy and his mouth and nose feel like they’re full of sand. He so thirsty that he can’t even swallow. He barely got any sleep because it was so cold. He’d forgotten how cold it got at night in the desert and hadn’t noticed it the night before because he’d been in his car.

      He knows the Rule of Threes – three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food – then you die. Some people can make it a little longer, in the best situations. But the desert heat and having to walk and sweat isn’t the best situation to be without water. He figures, unless he finds water, this is his last day.

      He rinses his mouth out with a little of the windshield wiper fluid. He waits a while after spitting that little bit out, to see if his mouth goes numb, or he feels dizzy or something. Has his mouth gone numb? Is it just in
      his mind? He’s not sure. He’ll go a little farther, and if he still doesn’t
      find water, he’ll try drinking some of the fluid.

      Then he has to face his next, harder question – which way does he go from here? Does he keep walking the same way he was yesterday (assuming that he still knows which way that is), or does he try a new direction? He has no idea what to do.

      Looking at the hills and dunes around him, he thinks he knows the direction he was heading before. Just going by a feeling, he points himself somewhat to the left of that, and starts walking.

      As he walks, the day starts heating up. The desert, too cold just a couple of hours before, soon becomes an oven again. He sweats a little at first, and then stops. He starts getting worried at that – when you stop sweating he knows that means you’re in trouble – usually right before heat stroke.

      He decides that it’s time to try the windshield wiper fluid. He can’t wait
      any longer – if he passes out, he’s dead. He stops in the shade of a large
      rock, takes the bottle out, opens it, and takes a mouthful. He slowly
      swallows it, making it last as long as he can. It feels so good in his dry
      and cracked throat that he doesn’t even care about the nasty taste. He takes
      another mouthful, and makes it last too. Slowly, he drinks half the bottle.
      He figures that since he’s drinking it, he might as well drink enough to
      make some difference and keep himself from passing out.

      He’s quit worrying about the denaturing of the wiper fluid. If it kills him,
      it kills him – if he didn’t drink it, he’d die anyway. Besides, he’s pretty
      sure that whatever substance they denature the fluid with is just designed to make you sick – their way of keeping winos from buying cheap wiper fluid for the ethanol content. He can handle throwing up, if it comes to that.

      He walks. He walks in the hot, dry, windless desert. Sand, rocks, hills,
      dunes, the occasional scrawny cactus or dried bush. No sign of water.
      Sometimes he’ll see a little movement to one side or the other, but whatever moved is usually gone before he can focus his eyes on it. Probably birds, lizards, or mice. Maybe snakes, though they usually move more at night. He’s careful to stay away from the movements.

      After a while, he begins to stagger. He’s not sure if it’s fatigue, heat
      stroke finally catching him, or maybe he was wrong and the denaturing of the wiper fluid was worse than he thought. He tries to steady himself, and keep going.

      After more walking, he comes to a large stretch of sand. This is good! He
      knows he passed over a stretch of sand in the SUV – he remembers doing
      donuts in it. Or at least he thinks he remembers it – he’s getting woozy
      enough and tired enough that he’s not sure what he remembers any more or if
      he’s hallucinating. But he thinks he remembers it. So he heads off into it,
      trying to get to the other side, hoping that it gets him closer to the town.

      He was heading for a town, wasn’t he? He thinks he was. He isn’t sure any more. He’s not even sure how long he’s been walking any more. Is it still morning? Or has it moved into afternoon and the sun is going down again? It must be afternoon – it seems like it’s been too long since he started out.

      He walks through the sand.

      After a while, he comes to a big dune in the sand. This is bad. He doesn’t
      remember any dunes when driving over the sand in his SUV. Or at least he
      doesn’t think he remembers any. This is bad.

      But, he has no other direction to go. Too late to turn back now. He figures
      that he’ll get to the top of the dune and see if he can see anything from
      there that helps him find the town. He keeps going up the dune.

      Halfway up, he slips in the bad footing of the sand for the second or third
      time, and falls to his knees. He doesn’t feel like getting back up – he’ll
      just fall down again. So, he keeps going up the dune on his hand and knees.

      While crawling, if his throat weren’t so dry, he’d laugh. He’s finally
      gotten to the hackneyed image of a man lost in the desert – crawling through
      the sand on his hands and knees. If would be the perfect image, he imagines, if only his clothes were more ragged. The people crawling through the desert
      in the cartoons always had ragged clothes. But his have lasted without any
      rips so far. Somebody will probably find his dessicated corpse half buried in the sand years from now, and his clothes will still be in fine shape –
      shake the sand out, and a good wash, and they’d be wearable again. He wishes his throat were wet enough to laugh. He coughs a little instead, and it hurts.

      He finally makes it to the top of the sand dune. Now that he’s at the top,
      he struggles a little, but manages to stand up and look around. All he sees
      is sand. Sand, and more sand. Behind him, about a mile away, he thinks he
      sees the rocky ground he left to head into this sand. Ahead of him, more
      dunes, more sand. This isn’t where he drove his SUV. This is Hell. Or close enough.

      Again, he doesn’t know what to do. He decides to drink the rest of the wiper
      fluid while figuring it out. He takes out the bottle, and is removing the
      cap, when he glances to the side and sees something. Something in the sand. At the bottom of the dune, off to the side, he sees something strange. It’s a flat area, in the sand. He stops taking the cap of the bottle off, and tries to look closer. The area seems to be circular. And it’s dark – darker than the sand. And, there seems to be something in the middle of it, but he can’t tell what it is. He looks as hard as he can, and still can tell from
      here. He’s going to have to go down there and look.

      He puts the bottle back in his pocket, and starts to stumble down the dune.
      After a few steps, he realizes that he’s in trouble – he’s not going to be able to keep his balance. After a couple of more sliding, tottering steps, he falls and starts to roll down the dune. The sand it so hot when his body hits it that for a minute he thinks he’s caught fire on the way down – like a movie car wreck flashing into flames as it goes over the cliff, before it ever even hits the ground. He closes his eyes and mouth, covers his face with his hands, and waits to stop rolling.

      He stops, at the bottom of the dune. After a minute or two, he finds enough
      energy to try to sit up and get the sand out of his face and clothes. When
      he clears his eyes enough, he looks around to make sure that the dark spot
      in the sand it still there and he hadn’t just imagined it.

      So, seeing the large, flat, dark spot on the sand is still there, he begins
      to crawl towards it. He’d get up and walk towards it, but he doesn’t seem to
      have the energy to get up and walk right now. He must be in the final stages
      of dehydration he figures, as he crawls. If this place in the sand doesn’t
      have water, he’ll likely never make it anywhere else. This is his last
      chance.

      He gets closer and closer, but still can’t see what’s in the middle of the
      dark area. His eyes won’t quite focus any more for some reason. And lifting
      his head up to look takes so much effort that he gives up trying. He just
      keeps crawling.

      Finally, he reaches the area he’d seen from the dune. It takes him a minute of crawling on it before he realizes that he’s no longer on sand – he’s now crawling on some kind of dark stone. Stone with some kind of marking on it – a pattern cut into the stone. He’s too tired to stand up and try to see what the pattern is – so he just keeps crawling. He crawls towards the center,
      where his blurry eyes still see something in the middle of the dark stone
      area.

      His mind, detached in a strange way, notes that either his hands and knees are so burnt by the sand that they no longer feel pain, or that this dark
      stone, in the middle of a burning desert with a pounding, punishing sun
      overhead, doesn’t seem to be hot. It almost feels cool. He considers lying
      down on the nice cool surface.

      Cool, dark stone. Not a good sign. He must be hallucinating this. He’s
      probably in the middle of a patch of sand, already lying face down and
      dying, and just imagining this whole thing. A desert mirage. Soon the
      beautiful women carrying pitchers of water will come up and start giving him
      a drink. Then he’ll know he’s gone.

      He decides against laying down on the cool stone. If he’s going to die here
      in the middle of this hallucination, he at least wants to see what’s in the
      center before he goes. He keeps crawling.

      It’s the third time that he hears the voice before he realizes what he’s
      hearing. He would swear that someone just said, “Greetings, traveler. You do
      not look well. Do you hear me?”

      He stops crawling. He tries to look up from where he is on his hands and
      knees, but it’s too much effort to lift his head. So he tries something
      different – he leans back and tries to sit up on the stone. After a few
      seconds, he catches his balance, avoids falling on his face, sits up, and
      tries to focus his eyes. Blurry. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hands
      and tries again. Better this time.

      Yep. He can see. He’s sitting in the middle of a large, flat, dark expanse
      of stone. Directly next to him, about three feet away, is a white post or
      pole about two inches in diameter and sticking up about four or five feet
      out of the stone, at an angle.

      And wrapped around this white rod, tail with rattle on it hovering and
      seeming to be ready to start rattling, is what must be a fifteen foot long
      desert diamondback rattlesnake, looking directly at him.

      He stares at the snake in shock. He doesn’t have the energy to get up and
      run away. He doesn’t even have the energy to crawl away. This is it, his
      final resting place. No matter what happens, he’s not going to be able to
      move from this spot.

      Well, at least dying of a bite from this monster should be quicker than
      dying of thirst. He’ll face his end like a man. He struggles to sit up a
      little straighter. The snake keeps watching him. He lifts one hand and waves
      it in the snake’s direction, feebly. The snake watches the hand for a
      moment, then goes back to watching the man, looking into his eyes.

      Hmmm. Maybe the snake had no interest in biting him? It hadn’t rattled yet –
      that was a good sign. Maybe he wasn’t going to die of snake bite after all.

      He then remembers that he’d looked up when he’d reached the center here
      because he thought he’d heard a voice. He was still very woozy – he was
      likely to pass out soon, the sun still beat down on him even though he was
      now on cool stone. He still didn’t have anything to drink. But maybe he had
      actually heard a voice. This stone didn’t look natural. Nor did that white
      post sticking up out of the stone. Someone had to have built this. Maybe
      they were still nearby. Maybe that was who talked to him. Maybe this snake
      was even their pet, and that’s why it wasn’t biting.

      He tries to clear his throat to say, “Hello,” but his throat is too dry. All
      that comes out is a coughing or wheezing sound. There is no way he’s going
      to be able to talk without something to drink. He feels his pocket, and the
      bottle with the wiper fluid is still there. He shakily pulls the bottle out,
      almost losing his balance and falling on his back in the process. This isn’t
      good. He doesn’t have much time left, by his reckoning, before he passes
      out.

      He gets the lid off of the bottle, manages to get the bottle to his lips,
      and pours some of the fluid into his mouth. He sloshes it around, and then
      swallows it. He coughs a little. His throat feels better. Maybe he can talk
      now.

      He tries again. Ignoring the snake, he turns to look around him, hoping to
      spot the owner of this place, and croaks out, “Hello? Is there anyone here?”

      He hears, from his side, “Greetings. What is it that you want?”

      He turns his head, back towards the snake. That’s where the sound had seemed
      to come from. The only thing he can think of is that there must be a
      speaker, hidden under the snake, or maybe built into that post. He decides
      to try asking for help.

      “Please,” he croaks again, suddenly feeling dizzy, “I’d love to not be
      thirsty any more. I’ve been a long time without water. Can you help me?”

      Looking in the direction of the snake, hoping to see where the voice was
      coming from this time, he is shocked to see the snake rear back, open its
      mouth, and speak. He hears it say, as the dizziness overtakes him and he
      falls forward, face first on the stone, “Very well. Coming up.”

      A piercing pain shoots through his shoulder. Suddenly he is awake. He sits
      up and grabs his shoulder, wincing at the throbbing pain. He’s momentarily
      disoriented as he looks around, and then he remembers – the crawl across the
      sand, the dark area of stone, the snake. He sees the snake, still wrapped
      around the tilted white post, still looking at him.

      He reaches up and feels his shoulder, where it hurts. It feels slightly wet.
      He pulls his fingers away and looks at them – blood. He feels his shoulder
      again – his shirt has what feels like two holes in it – two puncture holes –
      they match up with the two aching spots of pain on his shoulder. He had been
      bitten. By the snake.

      “It’ll feel better in a minute.” He looks up – it’s the snake talking. He
      hadn’t dreamed it. Suddenly he notices – he’s not dizzy any more. And more
      importantly, he’s not thirsty any more – at all!

      “Have I died? Is this the afterlife? Why are you biting me in the
      afterlife?”

      “Sorry about that, but I had to bite you,” says the snake. “That’s the way I
      work. It all comes through the bite. Think of it as natural medicine.”

      “You bit me to help me? Why aren’t I thirsty any more? Did you give me a
      drink before you bit me? How did I drink enough while unconscious to not be
      thirsty any more? I haven’t had a drink for over two days. Well, except for
      the windshield wiper fluid… hold it, how in the world does a snake talk?
      Are you real? Are you some sort of Disney animation?”

      “No,” says the snake, “I’m real. As real as you or anyone is, anyway. I
      didn’t give you a drink. I bit you. That’s how it works – it’s what I do. I
      bite. I don’t have hands to give you a drink, even if I had water just
      sitting around here.”

      The man sat stunned for a minute. Here he was, sitting in the middle of the
      desert on some strange stone that should be hot but wasn’t, talking to a
      snake that could talk back and had just bitten him. And he felt better. Not
      great – he was still starving and exhausted, but much better – he was no
      longer thirsty. He had started to sweat again, but only slightly. He felt
      hot, in this sun, but it was starting to get lower in the sky, and the cool
      stone beneath him was a relief he could notice now that he was no longer
      dying of thirst.

      “I might suggest that we take care of that methanol you now have in your
      system with the next request,” continued the snake. “I can guess why you
      drank it, but I’m not sure how much you drank, or how much methanol was left
      in the wiper fluid. That stuff is nasty. It’ll make you go blind in a day or
      two, if you drank enough of it.”

      “Ummm, n-next request?” said the man. He put his hand back on his hurting
      shoulder and backed away from the snake a little.

      “That’s the way it works. If you like, that is,” explained the snake. “You
      get three requests. Call them wishes, if you wish.” The snake grinned at his
      own joke, and the man drew back a little further from the show of fangs.

      “But there are rules,” the snake continued. “The first request is free. The
      second requires an agreement of secrecy. The third requires the binding of
      responsibility.” The snake looks at the man seriously.

      “By the way,” the snake says suddenly, “my name is Nathan. Old Nathan,
      Samuel used to call me. He gave me the name. Before that, most of the Bound
      used to just call me ‘Snake’. But that got old, and Samuel wouldn’t stand
      for it. He said that anything that could talk needed a name. He was big into
      names. You can call me Nate, if you wish.” Again, the snake grinned. “Sorry
      if I don’t offer to shake, but I think you can understand – my shake sounds
      somewhat threatening.” The snake give his rattle a little shake.

      “Umm, my name is Jack,” said the man, trying to absorb all of this. “Jack
      Samson.

      “Can I ask you a question?” Jack says suddenly. “What happened to the
      poison…umm, in your bite. Why aren’t I dying now? How did you do that?
      What do you mean by that’s how you work?”

      “That’s more than one question,” grins Nate. “But I’ll still try to answer
      all of them. First, yes, you can ask me a question.” The snake’s grin gets
      wider. “Second, the poison is in you. It changed you. You now no longer need
      to drink. That’s what you asked for. Or, well, technically, you asked to not
      be thirsty any more – but ‘any more’ is such a vague term. I decided to make
      it permanent – now, as long as you live, you shouldn’t need to drink much at
      all. Your body will conserve water very efficiently. You should be able to
      get enough just from the food you eat – much like a creature of the desert.
      You’ve been changed.

      “For the third question,” Nate continues, “you are still dying. Besides the
      effects of that methanol in your system, you’re a man – and men are mortal.
      In your current state, I give you no more than about another 50 years.
      Assuming you get out of this desert, alive, that is.” Nate seemed vastly
      amused at his own humor, and continued his wide grin.

      “As for the fourth question,” Nate said, looking more serious as far as Jack
      could tell, as Jack was just now working on his ability to read
      talking-snake emotions from snake facial features, “first you have to agree
      to make a second request and become bound by the secrecy, or I can’t tell
      you.”

      “Wait,” joked Jack, “isn’t this where you say you could tell me, but you’d
      have to kill me?”

      “I thought that was implied.” Nate continued to look serious.

      “Ummm…yeah.” Jack leaned back a little as he remembered again that he was
      talking to a fifteen foot poisonous reptile with a reputation for having a
      nasty temper. “So, what is this ‘Bound by Secrecy’ stuff, and can you really
      stop the effects of the methanol?” Jack thought for a second. “And, what do
      you mean methanol, anyway? I thought these days they use ethanol in wiper
      fluid, and just denature it?”

      “They may, I don’t really know,” said Nate. “I haven’t gotten out in a
      while. Maybe they do. All I know is that I smell methanol on your breath and
      on that bottle in your pocket. And the blue color of the liquid when you
      pulled it out to drink some let me guess that it was wiper fluid. I assume
      that they still color wiper fluid blue?”

      “Yeah, they do,” said Jack.

      “I figured,” replied Nate. “As for being bound by secrecy – with the
      fulfillment of your next request, you will be bound to say nothing about me,
      this place, or any of the information I will tell you after that, when you
      decide to go back out to your kind. You won’t be allowed to talk about me,
      write about me, use sign language, charades, or even act in a way that will
      lead someone to guess correctly about me. You’ll be bound to secrecy. Of
      course, I’ll also ask you to promise not to give me away, and as I’m
      guessing that you’re a man of your word, you’ll never test the binding
      anyway, so you won’t notice.” Nate said the last part with utter confidence.

      Jack, who had always prided himself on being a man of his word, felt a
      little nervous at this. “Ummm, hey, Nate, who are you? How did you know
      that? Are you, umm, omniscient, or something?”

      Well, Jack,” said Nate sadly, “I can’t tell you that, unless you make the
      second request.” Nate looked away for a minute, then looked back.

      “Umm, well, ok,” said Jack, “what is this about a second request? What can I
      ask for? Are you allowed to tell me that?”

      “Sure!” said Nate, brightening. “You’re allowed to ask for changes. Changes
      to yourself. They’re like wishes, but they can only affect you. Oh, and
      before you ask, I can’t give you immortality. Or omniscience. Or
      omnipresence, for that matter. Though I might be able to make you gaseous
      and yet remain alive, and then you could spread through the atmosphere and
      sort of be omnipresent. But what good would that be – you still wouldn’t be
      omniscient and thus still could only focus on one thing at a time. Not very
      useful, at least in my opinion.” Nate stopped when he realized that Jack was
      staring at him.

      “Well, anyway,” continued Nate, “I’d probably suggest giving you permanent
      good health. It would negate the methanol now in your system, you’d be
      immune to most poisons and diseases, and you’d tend to live a very long
      time, barring accident, of course. And you’ll even have a tendency to
      recover from accidents well. It always seemed like a good choice for a
      request to me.”

      “Cure the methanol poisoning, huh?” said Jack. “And keep me healthy for a
      long time? Hmmm. It doesn’t sound bad at that. And it has to be a request
      about a change to me? I can’t ask to be rich, right? Because that’s not
      really a change to me?”

      “Right,” nodded Nate.

      “Could I ask to be a genius and permanently healthy?” Jack asked, hopefully.

      “That takes two requests, Jack.”

      “Yeah, I figured so,” said Jack. “But I could ask to be a genius? I could
      become the smartest scientist in the world? Or the best athlete?”

      “Well, I could make you very smart,” admitted Nate, “but that wouldn’t
      necessarily make you the best scientist in the world. Or, I could make you
      very athletic, but it wouldn’t necessarily make you the best athlete either.
      You’ve heard the saying that 99% of genius is hard work? Well, there’s some
      truth to that. I can give you the talent, but I can’t make you work hard. It
      all depends on what you decide to do with it.”

      “Hmmm,” said Jack. “Ok, I think I understand. And I get a third request,
      after this one?”

      “Maybe,” said Nate, “it depends on what you decide then. There are more
      rules for the third request that I can only tell you about after the second
      request. You know how it goes.” Nate looked like he’d shrug, if he had
      shoulders.

      “Ok, well, since I’d rather not be blind in a day or two, and permanent
      health doesn’t sound bad, then consider that my second request. Officially.
      Do I need to sign in blood or something?”

      “No,” said Nate. “Just hold out your hand. Or heel.” Nate grinned. “Or
      whatever part you want me to bite. I have to bite you again. Like I said,
      that’s how it works – the poison, you know,” Nate said apologetically.

      Jack winced a little and felt his shoulder, where the last bite was. Hey, it
      didn’t hurt any more. Just like Nate had said. That made Jack feel better
      about the biting business. But still, standing still while a fifteen foot
      snake sunk it’s fangs into you. Jack stood up. Ignoring how good it felt to
      be able to stand again, and the hunger starting to gnaw at his stomach, Jack
      tried to decide where he wanted to get bitten. Despite knowing that it
      wouldn’t hurt for long, Jack knew that this wasn’t going to be easy.

      “Hey, Jack,” Nate suddenly said, looking past Jack towards the dunes behind
      him, “is that someone else coming up over there?”

      Jack spun around and looked. Who else could be out here in the middle of
      nowhere? And did they bring food?

      Wait a minute, there was nobody over there. What was Nate…

      Jack let out a bellow as he felt two fangs sink into his rear end, through
      his jeans…

      Jack sat down carefully, favoring his more tender buttock. “I would have
      decided, eventually, Nate. I was just thinking about it. You didn’t have to
      hoodwink me like that.”

      “I’ve been doing this a long time, Jack,” said Nate, confidently. “You
      humans have a hard time sitting still and letting a snake bite you –
      especially one my size. And besides, admit it – it’s only been a couple of
      minutes and it already doesn’t hurt any more, does it? That’s because of the
      health benefit with this one. I told you that you’d heal quickly now.”

      “Yeah, well, still,” said Jack, “it’s the principle of the thing. And nobody
      likes being bitten in the butt! Couldn’t you have gotten my calf or
      something instead?”

      “More meat in the typical human butt,” replied Nate. “And less chance you
      accidentally kick me or move at the last second.”

      “Yeah, right. So, tell me all of these wonderful secrets that I now qualify
      to hear,” answered Jack.

      “Ok,” said Nate. “Do you want to ask questions first, or do you want me to
      just start talking?”

      “Just talk,” said Jack. “I’ll sit here and try to not think about food.”

      “We could go try to rustle up some food for you first, if you like,”
      answered Nate.

      “Hey! You didn’t tell me you had food around here, Nate!” Jack jumped up.
      “What do we have? Am I in walking distance to town? Or can you magically
      whip up food along with your other powers?” Jack was almost shouting with
      excitement. His stomach had been growling for hours.

      “I was thinking more like I could flush something out of its hole and bite
      it for you, and you could skin it and eat it. Assuming you have a knife,
      that is,” replied Nate, with the grin that Jack was starting to get used to.

      “Ugh,” said Jack, sitting back down. “I think I’ll pass. I can last a little
      longer before I get desperate enough to eat desert rat, or whatever else it
      is you find out here. And there’s nothing to burn – I’d have to eat it raw.
      No thanks. Just talk.”

      “Ok,” replied Nate, still grinning. “But I’d better hurry, before you start
      looking at me as food.

      Nate reared back a little, looked around for a second, and then continued.
      “You, Jack, are sitting in the middle of the Garden of Eden.”

      Jack looked around at the sand and dunes and then looked back at Nate
      sceptically.

      “Well, that’s the best I can figure it, anyway, Jack,” said Nate. “Stand up
      and look at the symbol on the rock here.” Nate gestured around the dark
      stone they were both sitting on with his nose.

      Jack stood up and looked. Carved into the stone in a bas-relief was a
      representation of a large tree. The angled-pole that Nate was wrapped around
      was coming out of the trunk of the tree, right below where the main branches
      left the truck to reach out across the stone. It was very well done – it
      looked more like a tree had been reduced to almost two dimensions and
      embedded in the stone than it did like a carving.

      Jack walked around and looked at the details in the fading light of the
      setting sun. He wished he’d looked at it while the sun was higher in the
      sky.

      Wait! The sun was setting! That meant he was going to have to spend another
      night out here! Arrrgh!

      Jack looked out across the desert for a little bit, and then came back and
      stood next to Nate. “In all the excitement, I almost forgot, Nate,” said
      Jack. “Which way is it back to town? And how far? I’m eventually going to
      have to head back – I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive by eating raw
      desert critters for long. And even if I can, I’m not sure I’ll want to.”

      “It’s about 30 miles that way.” Nate pointed, with the rattle on his tail
      this time. As far as Jack could tell, it was a direction at right angles to
      the way he’d been going when he was crawling here. “But that’s 30 miles by
      the way the crow flies. It’s about 40 by the way a man walks. You should be
      able to do it in about half a day with your improved endurance, if you head
      out early tomorrow, Jack.”

      Jack looked out the way the snake had pointed for a few seconds more, and
      then sat back down. It was getting dark. Not much he could do about heading
      out right now. And besides, Nate was just about to get to the interesting
      stuff. “Garden of Eden? As best as you can figure it?”

      “Well, yeah, as best as I and Samuel could figure it anyway,” said Nate. “He
      figured that the story just got a little mixed up. You know, snake, in a
      ‘tree’, offering ‘temptations’, making bargains. That kind stuff. But he
      could never quite figure out how the Hebrews found out about this spot from
      across the ocean. He worried about that for a while.”

      “Garden of Eden, hunh?” said Jack. “How long have you been here, Nate?”

      “No idea, really,” replied Nate. “A long time. It never occurred to me to
      count years, until recently, and by then, of course, it was too late. But I
      do remember when this whole place was green, so I figure it’s been thousands
      of years, at least.”

      “So, are you the snake that tempted Eve?” said Jack.

      “Beats me,” said Nate. “Maybe. I can’t remember if the first one of your
      kind that I talked to was female or not, and I never got a name, but it
      could have been. And I suppose she could have considered my offer to grant
      requests a ‘temptation’, though I’ve rarely had refusals.”

      “Well, umm, how did you get here then? And why is that white pole stuck out
      of the stone there?” asked Jack.

      “Dad left me here. Or, I assume it was my dad. It was another snake – much
      bigger than I was back then. I remember talking to him, but I don’t remember
      if it was in a language, or just kind of understanding what he wanted. But
      one day, he brought me to this stone, told me about it, and asked me to do
      something for him. I talked it over with him for a while, then agreed. I’ve
      been here ever since.

      “What is this place?” said Jack. “And what did he ask you to do?”

      “Well, you see this pole here, sticking out of the stone?” Nate loosened his
      coils around the tilted white pole and showed Jack where it descended into
      the stone. The pole was tilted at about a 45 degree angle and seemed to
      enter the stone in an eighteen inch slot cut into the stone. Jack leaned
      over and looked. The slot was dark and the pole went down into it as far as
      Jack could see in the dim light. Jack reached out to touch the pole, but
      Nate was suddenly there in the way.

      “You can’t touch that yet, Jack,” said Nate.

      “Why not?” asked Jack.

      “I haven’t explained it to you yet,” replied Nate.

      “Well, it kinda looks like a lever or something,” said Jack. “You’d push it
      that way, and it would move in the slot.”

      “Yep, that’s what it is,” replied Nate.

      “What does it do?” asked Jack. “End the world?”

      “Oh, no,” said Nate. “Nothing that drastic. It just ends humanity. I call it
      ‘The Lever of Doom’.” For the last few words Nate had used a deeper, ringing
      voice. He tried to look serious for a few seconds, and then gave up and
      grinned.

      Jack was initially startled by Nate’s pronouncement, but when Nate grinned
      Jack laughed. “Ha! You almost had me fooled for a second there. What does it
      really do?”

      “Oh, it really ends humanity, like I said,” smirked Nate. “I just thought
      the voice I used was funny, didn’t you?”

      Nate continued to grin.

      “A lever to end humanity?” asked Jack. “What in the world is that for? Why
      would anyone need to end humanity?”

      “Well,” replied Nate, “I get the idea that maybe humanity was an experiment.
      Or maybe the Big Guy just thought, that if humanity started going really
      bad, there should be a way to end it. I’m not really sure. All I know are
      the rules, and the guesses that Samuel and I had about why it’s here. I
      didn’t think to ask back when I started here.”

      “Rules? What rules?” asked Jack.

      “The rules are that I can’t tell anybody about it or let them touch it
      unless they agree to be bound to secrecy by a bite. And that only one human
      can be bound in that way at a time. That’s it.” explained Nate.

      Jack looked somewhat shocked. “You mean that I could pull the lever now?
      You’d let me end humanity?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “if you want to.” Nate looked at Jack carefully. “Do
      you want to, Jack?”

      “Umm, no.” said Jack, stepping a little further back from the lever. “Why in
      the world would anyone want to end humanity? It’d take a psychotic to want
      that! Or worse, a suicidal psychotic, because it would kill him too,
      wouldn’t it?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate, “being as he’d be human too.”

      “Has anyone ever seriously considered it?” asked Nate. “Any of those bound
      to secrecy, that is?”

      “Well, of course, I think they’ve all seriously considered it at one time or
      another. Being given that kind of responsibility makes you sit down and
      think, or so I’m told. Samuel considered it several times. He’d often get
      disgusted with humanity, come out here, and just hold the lever for a while.
      But he never pulled it. Or you wouldn’t be here.” Nate grinned some more.

      Jack sat down, well back from the lever. He looked thoughtful and puzzled at
      the same time. After a bit, he said, “So this makes me the Judge of
      humanity? I get to decide whether they keep going or just end? Me?”

      “That seems to be it,” agreed Nate.

      “What kind of criteria do I use to decide?” said Jack. “How do I make this
      decision? Am I supposed to decide if they’re good? Or too many of them are
      bad? Or that they’re going the wrong way? Is there a set of rules for that?”

      “Nope,” replied Nate. “You pretty much just have to decide on your own. It’s
      up to you, however you want to decide it. I guess that you’re just supposed
      to know.”

      “But what if I get mad at someone? Or some girl dumps me and I feel
      horrible? Couldn’t I make a mistake? How do I know that I won’t screw up?”
      protested Jack.

      Nate gave his kind of snake-like shrug again. “You don’t. You just have to
      try your best, Jack.”

      Jack sat there for a while, staring off into the desert that was rapidly
      getting dark, chewing on a fingernail.

      Suddenly, Jack turned around and looked at the snake. “Nate, was Samuel the
      one bound to this before me?”

      “Yep,” replied Nate. “He was a good guy. Talked to me a lot. Taught me to
      read and brought me books. I think I still have a good pile of them buried
      in the sand around here somewhere. I still miss him. He died a few months
      ago.”

      “Sounds like a good guy,” agreed Jack. “How did he handle this, when you
      first told him. What did he do?”

      “Well,” said Nate, “he sat down for a while, thought about it for a bit, and
      then asked me some questions, much like you’re doing.”

      “What did he ask you, if you’re allowed to tell me?” asked Jack.

      “He asked me about the third request,” replied Nate.

      “Aha!” It was Jack’s turn to grin. “And what did you tell him?”

      “I told him the rules for the third request. That to get the third request
      you have to agree to this whole thing. That if it ever comes to the point
      that you really think that humanity should be ended, that you’ll come here
      and end it. You won’t avoid it, and you won’t wimp out.” Nate looked serious
      again. “And you’ll be bound to do it too, Jack.”

      “Hmmm.” Jack looked back out into the darkness for a while.

      Nate watched him, waiting.

      “Nate,” continued Jack, quietly, eventually. “What did Samuel ask for with
      his third request?”

      Nate sounded like he was grinning again as he replied, also quietly,
      “Wisdom, Jack. He asked for wisdom. As much as I could give him.”

      “Ok,” said Jack, suddenly, standing up and facing away from Nate, “give it
      to me.

      Nate looked at Jack’s backside. “Give you what, Jack?”

      “Give me that wisdom. The same stuff that Samuel asked for. If it helped
      him, maybe it’ll helve too.” Jack turned his head to look back over his
      shoulder at Nate. “It did help him, right?”

      “He said it did,” replied Nate. “But he seemed a little quieter afterward.
      Like he had a lot to think about.”

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