After watching the war between Egypt and the Hittites, Adam finally accepted something he had resisted for centuries.
He could not keep changing the world simply because he possessed the ability to do so.
Every improvement he introduced seemed to create consequences he could not predict.
Stronger bodies had produced stronger armies.
Better knowledge had created envy.
His attempts to help Egypt had turned him into a figure that people wanted to possess rather than understand.
Even his efforts to strengthen the Hittites had contributed to a conflict that he could only watch unfold.
So Adam made a decision unlike any he had made before.
He would stop.
Not permanently, and not because he had lost faith in humanity, but because he needed to understand himself before he continued trying to shape everyone else.
For the first time since he had realized what he was, Adam would place humanity’s advancement on the back foot.
He would no longer wander from civilization to civilization looking for something that needed improving.
He would not seek out suffering simply because his connection to humanity allowed him to feel that something was wrong.
He would wait until people came to him.
Adam and Zakiti eventually settled in a remote stretch of wilderness, far enough from the major settlements that few people knew they existed.
There Adam built a cabin with his own hands.
It was not a palace, nor did he want it to be.
It was small, warm, and practical, with a fireplace, a handful of tools, a bed, shelves for books and objects gathered during his travels, and enough space for him and Zakiti to live comfortably.
It became the closest thing Adam had ever had to a permanent home.
He adopted a new way of life.
He became a wandering sage who happened to have a cabin.
People who found him could ask questions.
Adam would answer if he knew the answer, provided they were willing to offer something in return.
The payment did not need to be valuable.
Food, tools, cloth, stories, information, craftsmanship, or knowledge from another region could all serve as trade.
Adam was not interested in becoming wealthy.
He wanted to learn as much about humanity as he was willing to teach it.
There was another rule he established for himself that was far more important.
He would only use his healing abilities on someone who asked him to help.
For centuries, Adam had acted whenever he sensed suffering through his connection to humanity.
He would travel toward disasters, intervene, improve people who had never met him, and alter the species as a whole because he believed he knew what humanity needed.
Now he would restrain that instinct.
If a wounded traveler came to his door and asked for help, Adam would heal them.
If a mother arrived carrying her sick child and begged him to save them, Adam would help.
If a warrior asked him to mend a broken body, he would do it.
But if he passed an injured person on the road who had never asked for his assistance, Adam would continue walking.
The rule was painfully difficult.
Adam could still feel humanity.
He could still sense suffering.
He could still know when someone was dying somewhere beyond the horizon.
But now he had to ask himself whether knowing that someone needed help gave him the right to decide that he should intervene.
Often, the answer was no.
Zakiti understood why he was doing it, even though she did not always agree with it.
She continued to learn and practice her healing and combat skills, but she respected Adam’s decision.
She knew that her son had spent centuries acting as though every problem in humanity was somehow his responsibility.
He needed to discover who he was when he was not constantly trying to solve the world’s problems.
For 55 years, Adam lived this way.
Those 55 years became some of the most important of his life.
People began finding the cabin.
At first, it was travelers who had heard rumors of a strange man living alone in the wilderness.
Then came hunters, craftsmen, merchants, warriors, healers, rulers’ messengers, priests, and scholars.
Some came because they were desperate.
Others came because they were curious.
A few simply wanted to see whether the stories were true.
Adam answered questions.
A traveler from the south might ask how to reach another kingdom.
A farmer might ask about a crop failing in an unusual season.
A craftsman might ask why a particular metal kept cracking.
A healer might ask about an illness they had never seen.
A warrior might ask how to defeat an unfamiliar fighting style.
Someone else might simply sit by the fire and ask Adam what the world looked like beyond the lands they had known all their life.
Adam answered what he could.
Sometimes he had the answer immediately.
Sometimes he had to think.
Sometimes he admitted he did not know.
Those moments were unexpectedly valuable to him.
For centuries, Adam had been accustomed to knowing more than the people around him.
Now he encountered travelers from cultures he had never studied, bringing customs, languages, stories, techniques, and ideas that were completely unfamiliar.
Instead of immediately trying to improve them, he listened.
That was becoming the purpose of his life.
He learned from the people who came to him as much as they learned from him.
Through them, Adam’s knowledge spread naturally across a vast portion of the ancient world.
Travelers carried his answers back home.
A craftsman who learned a better method might teach it to his apprentices.
A healer might remember one unusual treatment and pass it to the next generation.
A ruler might receive advice about a problem and use it to reorganize a small part of his kingdom.
Adam no longer deliberately pushed civilizations forward, yet his influence continued to travel.
He simply wasn’t the one deciding where it went.
By the time 55 years had passed, Adam had answered questions from people belonging to many different cultures, including the peoples of the Aegean and the lands that would eventually become associated with Greece.
These were not yet the philosophers and city-states that later generations would associate with classical Greece.
They were peoples living in a much older world, carrying their own traditions, kingdoms, rivalries, and ambitions.
Adam learned from them just as he had learned from Egypt and the Hittites.
Eventually, stories about him began spreading farther.
A man who could answer questions no one else could answer.
A man who had apparently lived unchanged for generations.
A man who could tell travelers how distant lands functioned.
A man who could solve problems that kings and priests had struggled with.
And, perhaps most dangerously, a man whose reputation had acquired a simpler description as it traveled from mouth to mouth.
Ittasal.
The Bearer of Progress.
The man who made people’s dreams come true.
Adam had never claimed to be any of those things.
But legends did not require permission.
In Greece, the story changed particularly quickly.
The more his reputation spread, the less interested people became in the quiet man himself and the more interested they became in what he represented.
To some, he was proof that greatness could be obtained through knowledge.
To others, he was a treasure that belonged in the hands of the powerful.
To others still, he represented the possibility of surpassing every rival civilization simply by possessing the right teacher.
And that was where pride began to enter the story.
The desire was no longer simply to learn from Adam.
The desire was to have Adam.
A Greek ruler did not want another ruler to have access to the sage’s knowledge.
A city did not want its rivals to benefit from his answers.
A noble family wanted him to solve their problems exclusively.
Each thought that possessing Adam would make them greater than everyone else.
They looked at the civilizations around them and saw a man capable of giving them an advantage.
Adam looked at them and saw something he had already encountered in Egypt.
But this time, there was something different.
The Egyptians had coveted his knowledge.
The Greeks were beginning to covet what possessing him would say about themselves.
They did not simply want progress.
They wanted to be the people who possessed the man who could provide it.
Adam had spent 55 years trying to become passive.
He had finally succeeded.
And somehow, humanity had found another way to turn his existence into a source of conflict.
By the end of his 55 years as a wandering sage, Adam had begun to grow tired of humanity’s endless ability to turn everything into a conflict.
He had tried improving civilizations directly.
That had led to greed, envy, and war.
He had tried doing nothing more than answering questions.
Even that had somehow resulted in people competing over who deserved access to him.
So, rather than waiting for Greece to come looking for him, Adam decided to go there himself.
Perhaps, he reasoned, if they wanted the great sage so badly, he might as well walk through their doors and see what they actually intended to do with him.
Zakiti thought the decision was amusing.
“You are deliberately going somewhere because people are bothering you.”
Adam shrugged.
“They are already bothering me. At least this way I get to choose where I sleep.”
When Adam arrived in Greece, he did not hide who he was.
He allowed himself to become the very figure people had been whispering about.
He introduced himself as Adam when speaking privately, but he accepted the name the Greeks had begun using for him: Ittasal, the Bearer of Progress.
He allowed the stories surrounding him to exist, though he never confirmed the more fantastical parts.
More importantly, he established his terms immediately.
Greece would have access to him.
But access would come at a price.
The exchange rate was higher than what he had demanded from the travelers who had visited his cabin.
The reason was simple.
The Greeks wanted exclusivity.
They wanted Adam to remain within their sphere of influence and wanted his knowledge to benefit them rather than their rivals.
Adam had no problem with that arrangement, provided they understood what they were paying for.
He would answer their questions, teach them techniques, solve problems they brought before him, and heal those who personally asked for his assistance.
But if they wanted privileged access to him, they would have to provide something worth the privilege.
Adam expected them to adapt.
At first, they did.
The Greeks brought him craftsmen’s work, rare materials, food, manuscripts, maps, stories, and knowledge gathered from distant lands.
Adam was fascinated by much of what they offered.
He learned more about their languages, traditions, mathematics, warfare, philosophy, navigation, and crafts.
He answered questions and occasionally offered solutions that made a dramatic difference.
The people who could afford his price became increasingly successful.
And that was when the problem began.
Those who could afford Adam’s exchange gained an advantage over everyone who could not.
The wealthy became wealthier.
The influential became more influential.
Rulers who gained his counsel began displaying him almost like a symbol of their greatness.
They brought him to ceremonies.
They spoke proudly of the fact that the great sage had chosen their city.
Artists depicted him.
Poets wrote about him.
Stories spread about the mysterious immortal who supposedly possessed answers to questions that even kings could not solve.
Adam watched all of this with growing irritation.
He had agreed to exclusivity as a practical arrangement.
The Greeks transformed it into a status symbol.
It was no longer enough to know Adam.
You had to display that you knew Adam.
And the more they displayed him, the more people wanted him.
Those who could not meet his price began asking why the price was so high.
Adam would answer the same way every time.
“You are paying for knowledge that took me centuries to acquire.”
But eventually, that explanation stopped satisfying them. Get faster updates on g.com.
The wealthy began believing that they deserved more access because of their wealth.
The powerful began believing they deserved more because they ruled.
Scholars began believing they deserved more because they were intelligent.
Priests began believing they deserved more because they served the gods.
And those who had nothing to offer began developing an even more dangerous belief.
They deserved the knowledge anyway.
Adam started hearing arguments that made his skin crawl.
“Why should knowledge belong to one man?”
“Why should a secret be withheld from those who need it?”
“If he can save us, why should we have to pay?”
“If he knows how to improve our people, why should he choose who receives it?”
At first, Adam sympathized with some of these arguments.
Then he realized that the people making them had fundamentally misunderstood the arrangement.
Adam was not a god.
He did not owe them miracles.
He was not obligated to reveal everything he knew simply because someone wanted it.
He had spent centuries learning through travel, experimentation, observation, failure, and experience.
He had learned from Egyptians, Hittites, Inhumans, and countless other people whose names would eventually disappear from history.
His knowledge had a cost because acquiring knowledge had a cost.
But the Greeks increasingly rejected that idea.
Their pride had become entitlement.
They could see that Adam was capable of giving them extraordinary things, and therefore they concluded that he should give them those things.
The distinction between “I want this” and “I deserve this” gradually disappeared.
Adam began seeing wealthy men who could not afford his exchange staring at him with resentment.
He saw nobles angry because another noble had gained access to him.
He watched scholars become furious when Adam refused to answer a question because they had not provided an adequate trade.
He heard people claim that denying knowledge was itself an injustice.
The strangest part was that some of them genuinely believed they were being reasonable.
From their perspective, Adam possessed the ability to make their dreams real.
Why would he ever say no?
That question followed him everywhere.
One evening, Adam sat outside the place where he was staying, watching a crowd gather beyond the road.
Someone had announced that Ittasal would be appearing.
They had come simply to see him.
Not to ask a question.
Not to trade.
Not to seek healing.
They had come because the great sage had become a spectacle.
Adam watched them shouting his name.
“Ittasal!”
“Bearer of Progress!”
“Teach us!”
“Show us!”
He closed his eyes.
Zakiti sat beside him.
“They seem excited.”
“They seem entitled.”
She smiled.
“That too.”
Adam looked toward the crowd.
“I came here willingly.”
“I know.”
“I gave them exactly what they asked for.”
“I know.”
“And somehow they are angry because I won’t give them everything.”
Zakiti looked at her son.
Adam was silent.
He had imagined kings boasting about themselves or warriors believing themselves superior to everyone else.
Instead, he was beginning to see a subtler form.
A civilization could become so convinced of its own importance that it began to believe the world owed it something.
The Greeks did not merely admire Adam anymore.
They believed they were entitled to him.
And because Adam represented knowledge, progress, and possibility, that entitlement extended beyond the man himself.
They believed they were entitled to the future.
Adam looked at the crowd again.
For the first time, he understood that his experiment had brought him exactly where he had been trying not to go.
He had wanted humanity to learn that he was not its god.
Instead, Greece was beginning to behave as though he were a god who was simply being unreasonable about granting miracles.
Adam sighed.
“Perhaps I should have just stayed in the cabin.”
Zakiti laughed softly.
“You would have gotten bored.”
Adam considered that.
“…Probably.”
Then he stood.
The crowd immediately grew louder.
Adam looked at them for a moment before walking toward them.
He would answer their questions.
He would honor his bargains.
He would help those who came to him honestly.
But he would not surrender his knowledge simply because people had convinced themselves they deserved it.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, Adam understood the lesson Greece was teaching him.
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