Stories
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On some particular evening me and three or four friends were hanging out, when my nemesis Hegel shows up. He was home from college in Minnesota, where I should have attended had I graduated high-school. He was the same age as me, four days difference, but had been jumped a year ahead in grade school. He knew I was interested in things like science fiction, flying saucers, or good story lines, so he gives me a problem. He draws me a picture of the Chinese Taoist symbol, of the circle with the 'S', and two circles within each side and says, "This is a Chinese symbol and it represents the fundamental elements of the world. Figure out what this means and let me know".
I was working at a factory, keeping grinding machines that ground synthetic sapphire for record player needles, loaded with uncut rondells and checking the ground product. This took about fifteen or twenty minutes out of an hour, with the rest of the time to just sit there, so I began to study the symbol in the meanwhile. Spent at least six months on it. Began to use pencil, pen and paper to keep track of the many ideas I was having concerning the problem. The object seemed like it must be to reduce the multitudinous elements of the world down to what was symbolized by the two halves of the circle, the two circles within, and possibly what was outside the circumference. So my solution was that I reduced it all down to education, government, religion and economics, if I remember right. I worked long and hard on it and was quite proud of myself when I had finished.
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