A huge picture on a museum wall. Not hung on the wall--on the wall. It's an ancient mural! Two panels. At the foot of each are the code numbers the archeologists wrote when they dug them up. No, not dug up--the plaque says the wall stood here before this civilization arose! The museum was built around it. A visitor says "This is the oldest surviving wall in the world. It dates back 15,000 years--to around 2000 A D. The painter was also an author."

The three contemporary people touring the museum, talking about the ancient mural, turn away at last to the next exhibit. It's a cube of air, with three ancients frozen in time. It dates from only a little later than the wall, when civilization collapsed in war or eco-disaster. Not a mock-up: three real people who tried a desperate time-experiment and froze. They're still in their own space and time... they've never reacted to outside events.

The three look close at their frozen ancestors... and the ancients' eyes flicker. Follow them! Slowly their time-cube MELTS. No one ever looked at them closely enough before, to wake them! Now their timeberg thaws and melts into mist. They slump out of stances they've held for millenia. Glance around--and realize their world is gone. Time-castaways, with no way back.

And I realize I'm one of them. A time-savage. The moderns show us around. I'm surprised--San Francisco is still a city, there still are cities, and even cars! well, ground-level vehicles. Amazing. We even travel on a road, south along the old path of Bayshore Freeway through town to the low pass near Candlestick Point. There's a red warning light on the right side of the dashboard. I wonder if it's a seat-belt warning, but they seem okay. I check and check for what's malfunctioning, and realize at last it could be inherent, nothing I'm DOING: the light may be warning there are wild animals in the car.

Wild animals like me.

Down to Brisbane... and the road ends at the sandy shore of the Bay, which has risen a little, covering the flats. A line of eucalyptus stands in the water: this flooding is recent. I remember I walked along the path under those trees once. It's disturbing to think that was 15,000 years ago, that these are distant descendants of those trees, that it's drowning now... yet our ancient path is still there. The road ends. From here, cars drive on the sandy beaches, bare of houses and hotels. We get out and walk up a canyon into the hills around San Bruno. Ahead the canyon ends in a near-cliff that oozes with water and weird color. Mushroomy flower bushes. Like soft coral, or big tastebuds in many colors. They glisten with moisture. I stoop to read a plaque at the foot of the slope. Whack! Someone throws a clod of mud at me. Another. Another. It's the bushes. They're aliens who have naturalized here. The Mushroombush People.

Do they sense I'm a savage too, or do they just hate humans in general?

Do they have good reason for that?

I look sharply at them and they quiet. Only resort to mudslinging behind my back, do they? These Mushroom Bushes are a little too old-style human for my taste.

Back in town, I notice that modern devices may regard us with alarm and hostility, but the modern PEOPLE seem to like us savages from the past. They say we have passion. When the boyfriend of the modern girl is away, I give in to my attraction to her, and shyly kiss her. To my astonishment she responds with delight! For my shyness, extreme in ancient times, seems like nothing to her: she sees me as wild and spontaneous.

We have a wonderful affair.

Her boyfriend returns, a Greek god, with black curly hair and strong perfect features... intelligent, knowledgeable, big-hearted, flawless. I know she won't stay with me, though for a dangerous moment I want to try to compete with this god from the future. I don't even know why she had even a fling with me--I can't compare.

And he comes up to me, grabs my head in his hands... and kisses me on the forehead and says "Take my blessing. I knew I could never keep her love, once she'd met you. A savage with true passion." He's wry, a little bitter, but sees no point in trying to change her mind: he can't compete with imperfection.

With the kiss of a time-savage.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• The future = I just reread Cordwainer Smith's sf tale The Dead Lady of Clown Town, his version of Joan of Arc's story, making her a dog-girl in an animal rights march 14,000 years from now. My dream's full of echoes from it.
• Painter who's also a writer = me.
• Red light: 1: In The Dead Lady, the guitarist ignores a danger light warning that Elaine was misprogrammed, made into a person with no place in the plastic modern world. 2: My car has a red warning light that's wrong, goes on when it shouldn't.
• The mushbush people = in Dead Lady, the Underpeople have no rights at all; they must kill some human intruders to keep their secret refuges. I also read Meredith Ann Pierce's Birth of the Firebringer: could be the odd monsters that Aljan slowly recognizes as people.
• I'm a savage compared to these godlike people = in The Dead Lady of Clown Town, the underpeople often feel inferior to "true men" despite the facts. I feel this way when I want to ask a girl out. I'm a strange, primitive creature after all. Not a real man!

  When being savage is a blessing. In our processed world.

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