On the Shoulders of Giants

by Charles Chin

I was born a T12. Sure, it was the lowest of the thoracic vertebrae, but it was higher than any of the lumbars. I should be thankful to have been born high enough to see above the clouds. The L2s and L3s that climb beside me spent most of their youth in the haze below, unable to see the sun, not knowing how much more of the giant there was left to climb. But not me: fortunate me.

I grasp at rocky outcroppings and pull myself up the well worn stairs, carved into the ground by those who came before me. Moss hangs from the edges where feet avoid stepping, lest they slip down into the endless void of white below. The wall to my left rises as a sheer cliff of granite, or perhaps marble. It is difficult to know from the amount of lichen and foliage that hang down like curtains. But through the small holes cleaned out by the hands of travelers before, I can sometimes see the glint of the giant who breathes underneath.

Another step, another step. I hang my free hand into the air and feel the breeze, looking out to a flat horizon. I squint at a dark object in the distance. Another giant, perhaps. Impossible to tell, as they never get close enough to truly see. I turn back to the stairs and find a small cavern ahead, a respite from the daily climb.

A few other travelers have already taken shelter, gathering around a small fire in the center of the cavern. I find an empty place and sit, taking a moment to rub the calluses on my bare feet.

“Hail, traveler,” one says. “I am an L1. What are you?”

“I am a T12.”

“Ah, a young Thora, I see. Sturdy legs, Thoras. By the look of your feet you have made good progress, yes?”

I smile weakly at him as I place my hands near the smoldering fire. “Yes, good progress.” I glance around at weary faces, dimly lit with orange and red. I wonder if my face shows the same sunbaked features as theirs, or if perhaps I still had the luster of youth that seems to fall away with every step up the giant. In the silence, I feel compelled to fill the air. “Do you wonder what stands at the top? Or think about why we climb?”

“Because we must,” he says in a voice that tells me there will be no further elaboration, and that asking for such would be pointless. The others around the fire nod in agreement, repeating the phrase in a murmur.

I drop the subject and look around at my surroundings, finding at the back of the cave a figure hunched in the darkness, the texture of her skin blending in with the rocks around her. If not for the faint movement of her breathing, I would have not noticed her.

“Who is that?”

He glances over briefly. “An old L5. She does not speak, and has been here since before any of this group entered the cave. This will be her final place, back to the stone of the giant.”

I look to the others around the fire, but none react. “We should help her climb,” I offer to no one in particular.

They chuckle amongst themselves. Another traveler with a stick points it at me. “Young Thora. You can be forgiven naivety now, but you must learn quickly if you are to make it to the top.” He lowers the stick and plunges it into the fire, embers crackling at the disturbance. “If you stop to help every traveler on the way, they will keep you from your potential. Some are not worth saving.”

The others around the fire nod. I smile and nod along. Perhaps they are right. They have been climbing much longer than I have, and I should heed their words, lest I become waylaid like the old woman. But the advice does not sit well in my stomach. I rest for a few moments more before excusing myself and returning to the climb.

On this side of the giant, the sun sets early. I see the path curve up and around, light gray against the darkness of weathered rock and greenery. In the days since I first started, I find my legs continue to gain strength as they pump against the solid path beneath me. Another traveler climbs with me, leading the way while pointing out better handholds to grasp and loose bricks to avoid. She is a lumbar, strong in her legs and sure of her grip. She must be to have gotten this far so quickly. On the way, she regales me with stories of her time below the clouds, where she struggled and persevered against great odds. I do not know why she has taken me under her wing, but I relish every moment.

I listen intently, trying to absorb her wisdom while keeping up with her advanced technique. She offers her thoughts of the giant, how we are born of its stone and return to stone when spent. How the measure of our existence is a measure of our distance traveled. I admit I never gave much thought about the end of the climb and what it would mean to me, but I was happy to find a traveler that thought like her.

I learn as much from her as I can, but she begins to outstrip my stamina despite my youth. When she notices, she turns and pats me on the back.

“We will meet again farther along the climb. I see strength in you, young one. Don’t forget what I have taught you.”

I rest against the wall as I watch her move on, disappearing into the light haze of early dusk. I realize in our time together, I never once spoke.

Even though my legs are stronger each day than the day before, I tire more quickly. It seems the air does not fill my chest as it did lower on the giant, but I take that as a sign that I am making good progress. There are no caves on this section of the climb, so I nestle into a small alcove in the rock, deep enough for me to sit with my legs outstretched, but not to block the path. I doze while watching the stars blink into existence, their shine the only thing to mark the invisible horizon. Thoughts of the giant I lean against fill me with wonder and dread. Does it wander with purpose? Does it notice us struggle up its body, or are our births and deaths as insignificant as dust falling through shafts of sunlight, visible for just a moment before being lost into forever? I fall into a dreamless sleep, unanswered questions swirling in my mind.

I awake to a knock at my foot. An older looking traveler with waxy hair drags a net made of woven vines past me, one filled with well-worn boards and dried rope seemingly pried off from some structure. The net catches my foot, and she looks back to me with disdain in her eyes.

“Move your foot, boy. You are in the way.”

I wiggle free and stand. “Apologies. But what is that you are carrying?”

“It is of no concern to you what I carry,” she says as she grabs at the netting, examining whether my foot had inadvertently injured her baggage.

Upon closer inspection, I recognize the coloring of several boards in her possession. “Are those from the stairs by the right Lat?”

“I told you it is not your concern!”

Out of disbelief or anger, I am not sure which, I snatch a board from the tangle of vines. “It is! Why would you take these? They are not yours!”

She reaches for it while trying to keep the rest of her pilfered goods contained. “I need them, so I took them. This side of the giant is cold at night, and I must have fire to sleep.”

“But how will others make it up that slope now? Those stairs were built for a reason!”

“The others can climb the way they did before. It is not my concern. I am reaching the top of this giant and I will do what I must. You young-born should learn to do what is necessary, not laze around in the shade all day. It is no wonder your kind are so few and far between this high on the giant.” Without waiting for a response, she slings the net over her shoulder and continues on, leaving me with the weathered piece of wood in my hands.

I debate for a moment whether to double back and see what damage has been done, somehow reattach this singular board, but I set it down in the alcove and move on. I can only hope another traveler will find use of it here when they happen upon it in their climb.

The sun’s warmth spurs my feet, giving my chest vigor with every breath. I approach several travelers who have gathered on a large ledge, staring up into the blue expanse. My temper flares for a moment as I worry the crowd will delay my climb, wasting precious daylight on some ephemeral thing in the distance. I push my way into the crowd, but before I get through, pointed hands and excited shouts fly out, directed at a looming object casting a great shadow on the clouds below.

The giant’s arm comes into view, the same rocky texture of the wall behind me. It seems to hang in the air, but continues to grow larger, beyond comprehension. Despite my feelings, I find myself joining in the excitement of the others. The last time I saw an arm, I was barely above T11, just starting the climb on my own. It was a rare sight, to be on the right side of the giant at the right time to witness the passing of an arm.

We brace and grab for the vine-covered wall when the arm falls across us, the air pulled with a fury stronger than any storm. I fight to keep my eyes open against the blowing dust, and through the slits I think I see travelers on the passing limb as well, latched to the green and gray stone with splayed arms and legs. To think that others are also climbing from over there. I wonder if they were born upon the fingertips, or fell from above and caught themselves on the mossy surface.

Just as it came, the spectacle went, disappearing into the hazy sky above. The other onlookers linger for a moment longer before setting their feet and turning up the path. My anger is a distant memory, replaced with the shame of misplaced impatience. I follow behind at a distance, watching as the group slowly spreads apart until they are once more individuals traveling in the same direction.

This high on the giant, it becomes difficult to judge distance. I’ve lost track of the steps since I first fell out of the stone, and all these mossy rocks and hidden pathways look the same. I cross a cairn topped with a flat stone, a faint “T7” carved into its face. Not even halfway to the top. I look at my callused hands and wonder how many more holds they will have to grasp before the end. I can see the wear of climbing the past five vertebrae in the wrinkles of my palms, age catching up to me faster than I can catch up to the top of the spine.

I notice a traveler ahead stumbling downward, against the grain of several others. Before he reaches me, he turns off the path and pauses at the edge of an overhang, staring listlessly at the hazy gray expanse below. I walk past, but turn back and slowly step up behind.

“Hail, traveler.”

He does not respond, lightly rocking like an unbalanced pendulum, eyes unfocused on the clouds below.

I hesitate, but deign to move closer. “You are coming down the giant, friend. Unusual, to say the least.”

“It does not matter. Nothing matters.”

The frankness catches me off guard. “What do you mean?”

“L1, T12, T5, it does not matter. It does not matter because there is no top to get to.”

I swallow a response as I try to process his words. “No, this giant must have a top, should we be in his image.”

He continues to stare into the abyss below, feet less steady than just a few moments ago. “We climb and we climb and still the walls continue to reach into the sky. We work all our lives striving to reach T1, only to be mocked by the existence of C7. None of us will reach the top. Why? Why climb at all?”

“Because we must,” is all I can offer, failing to put into words the need deep inside me to end the day higher than the day before.

He laughs, the first reaction he has offered in our exchange. “Because you must. I must do no such thing. I am free to leap from this ledge, am I not? That would certainly be something, yes? To discover what this giant walks upon under the clouds. Perhaps he too walks upon a larger giant. Our lives would be less than meaningless, a speck to a grain of sand set on a mountain.”

I do not respond. I cannot. The idea has never presented itself to me, but now with its existence revealed, it clings to my mind like lichen.

He turns away from the ledge, locking eyes with me for a moment. I see a melancholy I have never known, eyes worn down by sights I may never see. Without another word, he walks past me, continuing down the path the way I came.

I step to the ledge where he once stood, glancing down to the white below. Waves of mist ebb and flow against the wind, the wake of the giant’s massive body spreading into the unknowable distance. I roll new thoughts around in my mind, but decide to toss them off the ledge instead of myself. Turning, I find a rather sturdy walking stick and set myself back onto the path, heading up.

It has only been a few days since the stiffness in my side began, but already I can feel it slowing my movements. The other travelers look at me with eyes that betray disbelief that someone of my station could have climbed so high.

“A T12?” they would say. “I have never seen such a distinguished traveler up here at T3.” It is the intonation. It cuts like obsidian.

I work from one step to another, gripping handholds with fingers more callus than bone. Working methodically, my speed is often deemed too slow for younger, more vibrant T6s and T5s, who work themselves by me with varying levels of disdain. I do not begrudge them. They know not the struggles of the lower back, but then again, how could they?

I come to a place where the path diverges, one which wraps around into the distance under where the arm attaches to the shoulder, the other which extends up at a steeper angle, more a fissure in the wall than a proper path. The shorter route, were it more usable, would cut days off the climb, something I now understand to be a fleeting commodity.

Others file past onto the path winding to the giant’s left, but I stare above me. Mortality always felt as distant as the top of the giant, something to worry about the next day. But as the stiffness becomes more noticeable across my chest, the calculus of every step upwards changes. I sigh and look at the tangle of vines that mats the surrounding walls and begin untangling it.

Methodically I work, weaving twine from strips of foliage, weaving rope from bits of twine. I lash them to rocky outcroppings where I can, and where I cannot, I make my own anchors. Slowly a ladder forms, in the most crude of senses. But it is sturdy, and it allows me to climb just a bit higher to continue weaving.

A traveler stops and beckons me from below. “Hail, friend. What are you doing?”

I turn back, and lower myself the few ropey rungs I have made. “Hail, traveler. I am clearing this path so that it may be usable.”

He looks up the fissure and to the sky above. “The path around left is easy. The time you spend building a path up this wall will not be returned.”

“That is true, but perhaps I will not be the only one to find it of use.”

He looks back, perplexed. “Do you not wish to reach the end of the climb?”

I stifle a laugh. “What are you, young one?”

“I am a T6,” he says with an air of pride.

“Well, T6, you may one day learn that the end of the climb does not come only with reaching the top. You may find that the end of the climb reaches down to you.” I tap my side, letting the hollow knock of stone reverberate out. “I know I will not reach the top. But I choose to make the climb just a little easier for those who follow.”

I smile and nod to him, returning to the vine wall to collect more material. As I pull tangled masses loose from the wall, another pair of hands begins pulling in kind. I look to find the young traveler, face hard with concentration.

“I thought you believed this a foolish endeavor?”

“I believe it foolish for you, good traveler. But I still have strength in my hands to reach the top, and have made my own choice that perhaps my time is better spent bringing as many travelers up as I can, rather than sitting alone at the top.”

I feel a renewed vitality in my chest. Together, we knot and lash ropes, carve out of the stone footholds and handholds with our hardened fingers, press landings into the walls where the giant’s skin allows. One or two other travelers join us, contributing effort where they can before moving on. It heartens me to see travelers work together, even though our journeys are such individual affairs.

A sheer rock face obstructs the last section of the fissure, locking the new path away from the old. It is too hard to carve, and too high for a single traveler to climb. As my companion contemplates the predicament with rope in hand, I sigh and pat his back.

“It is all right, young one. This is not all in vain. I will be the last step.”

He looks to me confused as I sit against the wall at his feet. “What do you mean? We have but a small distance to T2 from this ledge. I will find a way to climb and then pull you up after me. There —”

I wave at him to silence his words. “There will be no need for all of that. I can already feel the stone settling in my chest. Soon, I will become one with the giant once more. Better to be of use in my final resting place than not.” I bring my knees up and place my arms across them. “Here, I will help you reach the top.”

“But you are so close. We cannot give up now.” His eyes plead, unsure of what the next action should be.

“You are not giving up. You will continue and see the top. And I am not giving up. I will continue to help others see sights I will never see. It is not giving up to help others reach farther than yourself.” I lay my head back against the wall, the cool rock comforting to my weary neck. “I hope you find what we were all looking for up there.”

The young traveler stares into my eyes for a moment before placing a hand on my shoulder. Without another word, he steps upon the platform I have created with my arms and reaches up, disappearing out of sight.

The view from my perch is wonderful, to say the least. I see the sun set in the distance, brilliant orange bursting into crimson threads. The clouds take on a purple hue, shifting about like a raging storm from above. I realize it has been many days since I took the time to look out into the vastness of the world and take in the beauty.

I feel the stone retake my legs. It crawls up my arms and settles into my stomach like a satisfaction. I wonder if my eyes will still be able to see when I return to the giant. I would certainly like to see where we all end up. That would be a great gift, indeed.

Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “On the Shoulders of Giants” by Charles Chin, and although it’s his first time on an EA show—though hopefully not the last—there’s more stories linked from his website, if you enjoyed that. Make your merry way over to charleschinwriting.com where you’ll find links to stories you can read online for free, or anthologies you can buy with his work in.

There is so much to work through here that I could be talking at you for as long as Eric just did. There’s the systemic drive to push ever onwards even though you don’t know what’s at the top, the capitalist rat race with no finish line that leaves literally the richest people in history still clambering to get more at the cost of everyone else, never satisfied, never sated, dismantling the stairs they themselves climbed so they can burn the wood for one night of warmth.

There’s the ugly urge to individualism dressed up in the language of “meritocracy”, that if people can’t climb higher than this then that is their own failure: never a systemic one, of course, where you started on the spine doesn’t matter, all you have to do is climb, and everyone can climb so if you were strong enough you’d be able to climb to the top regardless of how far you had to drag yourself up in the first place just to make it to where some folk started through no more merit than the circumstances of their birth.

Which, of course, we see manifest in the real world both as the mind-shatteringly stupid idea of trickle-down economics, the idea that the folk up top will let any of their wealth slip through their fingers to be hoovered up as scraps by the rest of us, when in fact what the 40 years since Reagan and Thatcher has shown us is they clench their fists tight and let none of it go, except to deploy it building barriers between us and them to keep us in our place and them in theirs; and we also see it in the ableist notion that disability is a punishment from the universe, a manifestation of inner evil and/or unworthiness, an idea so anodyne and accepted it forms a large part of the roll call of Disney villains, stories watered down and sanded of any other sharp edge that might upset or offend except, apparently, the ones that might upset and offend disabled folk.

Most damningly of all, we see it manifest as a self-policing divide-and-conquer, where climbers leave someone behind out of fear they would be a burden to their own potential; where the working class blame the immigrant class for their ills, or blame those forced out of work and onto benefits due to disability they never asked for. They tell us that anyone can make it to their rarefied heights, and distract us from all the obstacles they put in our way by pointing to the folk climbing up behind us, and convince us they’ll pull us back down. It’s the crab-bucket mentality, making sure we keep each other in the bucket out of envy, fear, or a misguided notion of zero-sum success. I can’t remember where I read this recently, apologies, but the most important part of the crab-bucket analogy is the unspoken part: crabs don’t put themselves in buckets. It’s an unnatural situation forced upon them by those with more power. Hmmm. Hmmmm.

And there’s the synthesis of both the rat-race and the individualism into the idea of “potential”, and that you should discard or avoid anything which might hold you back from achieving it. “Potential” is a word I have a pretty visceral reaction to these days, to be honest, looking back at how often it was wielded as a weapon against the undiagnosed child I was, but even setting that aside—for once—I’ve long been suspicious of it. I came through an academically-selective education system that was often little more than brainwashing for pushing yourself above all other considerations, so obviously about forcing you to strive higher and higher whatever the emotional or mental cost that even my oblivious adolescent self could pick up on the scent of bullshit, a school that pushed me straight out into a university education that was itself built around “career opportunities” and “marketable skills” rather than, oh I don’t know a simple love of learning for its own sake.

And that treadmill has always exhausted me, and confused me. What am I striving for? Why? Why flagellate myself with long work hours and stressful positions and cultivate that gaping, aching void of “never good enough” through all the best years of my life just to end up with a job title they won’t even carve on my gravestone and a bunch of money I can’t take advantage of without my health and my youth? And if you take it to the logical extreme, it’s a position that tells you not to have kids, because why spend time and money nurturing and protecting them when you could instead put it towards your potential?  Maybe that whole long line of ancestors was there just so that you could be the best you could be. Not that any of this stops people trying to do both, of course, it just results in the re-assertion of traditional gender roles for the emotional and physical labour of raising kids but that’s a whole other outro rant.

And what is “potential”? How do you identify it? Quantify it? Unless you’re holding someone over a long drop there’s no potential energy you can actually measure. If we were honest with ourselves we’d admit that “potential” is just the currently acceptable way to pronounce “destiny” and that is, and always has been, nonsense, and nonsense frequently used to justify atrocities both personal and global, and any discussion of such “destiny” to remain in epic fantasy alone and no further.

That’s a thousand words, anyway, of me supposedly summarising the topics I could talk about in this story as introduction to something else, but maybe I ought to wind up for everyone’s sake here. And I think I ought to end, as the story did, on something better: on solidarity. On working together to achieve more than anyone could alone; on building something you know you won’t benefit from yourself, but others will; on accepting that despite standing on the shoulders of giants with all of human history behind you, that you are not the culmination of that process but just one more step along the journey, and that if we walk in the right direction there will never be a destination, a culmination, but only ever the journey, only ever our children and their children and their children climbing upwards, to the top of the giant, to the stars, to the future. If you believe yourself unique and individual you will only be disappointed and frustrated by the world: but there is power in accepting that you are part of a whole, both socially and temporally, and that it was never about you but about us, all of us, the us that includes you too.

Plant the trees that will outlive you; build the foundations of the cathedral that will never be finished; push the ideas that will shape the world into a better place for those coming up behind, one that won’t hurt them like it’s hurt you.