Chapter 3

 

Zorba Micó

 

1,111 b.c. to 1,072 b.c.

 

This is the story of Zorba Micó, who made one of the greatest contributions to the development of civilisation of any man of his times.

 

Zorba was a man of great vision, a thinker, a philosopher, a writer, and a dance instructor.  Apart from the dancing, I could very well be his re-incarnation, 442 generations later.

 

He would correspond with friends of like mind.  Those friends whom he called collectively "pen friends", would write to each other to stimulate each others minds, asking questions, making observations, describing new dance steps, and so on.  At that time as there was no postal service, so regular correspondence with his pen friends was quite difficult.

 

Zorba would write a letter to a friend who lived say fifty miles away.  Jump on his horse and gallop over to his friends house to delivery the letter.  Then race back home where he would sit by his post box, eagerly awaiting a reply.

 

Zorba had a brother, Plastikoktopous, a name that really grabs you isn't it.   Plastikoktopous bred pigeons, for food, they were quite a delicacy in Greece, with White Sauce, or Pie, or flattened with a club and fried.

 

Zorba, being a great observer of things natural, noticed that the birds would fly about quite freely but always return home.

 

"Hmm," he would mumble to himself "How do they know which house to fly to ?"

 

Zorba sometimes failed to see the obvious, in this case that the only place the pigeons could find food was at Plastikoktopous's place.  He decided to study the birds more closely.

 

Suddenly the obvious jumped up and bit him, or rather one of the pigeons did.  He had a pimple on the end of his nose that looked just like grain, an inbound pigeon saw it sticking out of Zorba's hiding place and tried to eat it.

 

"Eureka!" cried Zorba "they come back to be fed."

 

Soon he started to train them by taking half a dozen birds up to Mount Olympus and letting them fly home.

 

Then he took some to his closest friend, thirty miles away.  They came back home.

 

Soon the birds were all trained, some to fly to his house, and some to each of his friends.

 

Zorba and his friends could send messages to each other at any time of day or night, without leaving home.

 

Zorba realised almost straight away that there was huge commercial potential for the service, and soon he had built a network of pigeon lofts throughout the land.  At each loft a servant would be at hand to swap messages from bird to bird, and to feed them.

 

The service, Pigeon mail, P-mail as it became known, was an instant success.

 

At this point I should explain the jargon that grew around P-mail.

 

Birds carried the messages in Philes (Pigeon Held Internal Letter Exchangers).

 

A servant who looked after the pigeons and was responsible for routing mail was called a Phile Server.

 

The place that pigeons flew to or from became known as a Pigeon Operations Point, or POP.  So all Users of P-mail had POP addresses.

 

Sheets of paper on which letters where written became known as bits of paper.

 

Pigeons were rated according to the number of bits of paper they could carry.  For example an eight bit pigeon could carry eight sheets of paper, and a sixteen bit pigeon could carry sixteen sheets of paper. The bits of paper were inserted into Philes which were then tied to the pigeons legs.

 

One had to be careful not to overload the birds as they often crashed when overloaded, resulting in lost or damaged Philes.

 

A bite is what you got if you were a little slow at feeding time.

 

Pigeons suffered from two diseases that threatened at one time to wipe out the entire P-mail operation.

 

The first was a leg sector virus.  The infected bird would seem quite normal until suddenly in mid flight a leg would drop off, resulting in lost Philes.  Quite often the infected bird would crash on landing damaging the remaining Philes.

 

The second virus slowed down one of the birds wings, so that it flew round in circles.  This virus was more prevalent and was tracked to polluted bird baths.  This later became known as the Ring around the Tub Virus.   Normally the pigeon managed to land so that no Philes were lost, but the birds never recovered, so they were recycled as pies.  Rumour had it that if the bird couldn't land it would fly in ever decreasing circles until it suddenly went blind, followed by a loud pop.  Then, save for a few feathers it would disappear completely.

 

Back to the plot.

 

Like most good ideas the military soon heard about P-mail and wanted to control the media.  A company of soldiers arrived at Plastikoktopous's pigeon breeding farm, and promptly requisitioned all the birds.  Plastikoktopous became hysterical.  After a couple of hours he managed to get a grip on himself, and went off to find Zorba.  It took Zorba four hours to release the grip.

 

Zorba Micó, staring bankruptcy in the face, thought up a plan to recover the birds.  He would go before the General and beg for his birds to be returned.

 

The General had a good laugh and promptly measured Zorba and Plastikoktopous for uniforms.

 

Time went by and the military use of P-mail was very successful.  Plastikoktopous was promoted to Major after training the birds to carry rocks and act as dive bombers.  An art that pigeons have retained to this day.

 

Zorba was transferred to a coastal fort to set up a new POP and train the garrison to line dance.  Line dancing was a variation of a religious dance Zorba had studied while on holiday at Luxor.  There were no columns in a fort for the soldiers to dance around, so Zorba got them to dance while they were lined up on parade, hence line dancing.

 

The Captain in charge of the fort was a man called Phicous, well known for his cruelty toward his men.

 

One morning Zorba got up and went to start work as usual, sailing into the harbour were forty-two ships.

 

"Oh Shit!  Sound the alarm" yelled Zorba, "the Persians are here."

 

Phicous roused his troops who were soon lined around the walls of the fort.

 

The Persians landed and set up camp on the beach, well it was a nice sunny day and it was the weekend.

 

The leader of the Persians, Darius I, sent a messenger to Phicous demanding the surrender of the fort.  Of course Phicous sent a cruel reply, pointing out that no Persian had defeated a Greek since the quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup in 1146 b.c..  But that was not enough for Phicous, he also cut off the messenger’s right foot.

 

As the poor Persian crawled back toward the beach, Phicous called out to him.

 

"I say, one legged Persian chapy."

 

"Yes?" the Persian managed to gasp.

 

"Hop it."

 

The whole garrison erupted into laughter.  That seemed to please Phicous who declared a night of celebration.

 

As any soldier knows, a night of celebration normally needs two ingredients, booze and women.  There were neither in the fort, and any way booze was out of the question with the Persian army camped outside.

 

Zorba was ordered to arrange for a dance to be held that evening.  To make it more exciting he decided he would persuaded half of the garrison to dress up as ladies.

 

"Now then lads" he asked "all those who fancy dressing up as ladies for the dance put up one hand?"

 

"Ah, o.k..  Sorry B company, you'll have to stay dressed as men."

 

Those who dressed as ladies wore hats, colourful waistcoats, white skirts, white tights, and shoes with pom-poms on the toes.  The dance was a great success, so much so that dressing up in these Micó designed outfits, on special occasions became a tradition throught out Greece.  (Editor’s Note: Morris Micó later exported the idea and similar dress to England.)

 

The Persian siege of the fort went on and on.  Zorba sent P-mail everyday to Athens, keeping the military command up to date with the situation.  Every day Athens would send a reply, and extra dive bomber pigeons arrived regularly.

 

P-mail did not exist in Persia, so Darius I could not understand why birds kept flying into the fort.

 

He asked his second in command, "Cyrus, why do all those birds keep flying to the fort ?"

 

"I don't know, but I expect the gods send them as gifts to the Greeks." Cyrus answered.

"Hummm."

 

Another month passed.  The Persians had now been camped on the beach for nine months.  Darius I was beginning to get worried, the beach was looking untidy, his men were getting sunburn, and, worst of all, someone was pinching the deck chairs so there was nowhere to sit.  To make matters even worse, a small tribe of Aussie Battlers were continually riding planks of wood in the surf.  This made it very difficult to get needed supplies from the ships, as a cry would be heard "Hey you, get off my wave…. "

 

Darius I summoned Cyrus to his tent.

 

"Cyrus, what we need is a plan to get us into the fort."

 

"Ah," Cyrus answered, "do you remember that business with the Trojans?"

 

"What? oh! I told that woman to keep her mouth shut." barked Darius I.

 

"No sir, not that, I meant the business with that giant wooden horse.  Er, what's that about a woman?"

 

"Ah, oh, er, forget the woman, you didn't hear a thing, understand?"

 

"Yes sir."

 

"Now Cyrus, go and build me a giant wooden horse."

 

"No no sir, that won't work here, the Greeks know about the Trojan Horse, they'll know its a trick."

 

"Oh yes, you'd better build a giant wooden er, er, er, whatitsname."

 

"Sir, what about all those birds ?" Cyrus was beginning to introduce are sarcastic tone into his voice.

 

"Pigeons Cyrus, they're pigeons."

 

"Pigeons from the gods." Cyrus said pointedly.

 

"Ah, yes, we'll build a giant wooden pigeon." proclaimed Darius I gleefully.

 

"Oh well done sir, what a splendid plan. The Greeks will think it's a gift from the gods.  We can hide our best men inside. When the Greeks wheel us in we'll wait until dark and then open the gate for our army."

 

And so the giant pigeon was built, and the Persians covered it in Ostrich feathers to make it look real. Darius I, Cyrus, and the fifty best Persian soldiers hid inside.  That night the wooden pigeon was pushed up to the fort, right in front of the gate.

 

Phicous was aroused at dawn by a blonde.

 

"Hello sweetie," he said laying on the old charm "how did you get into the fort?"

 

"Ah hum." the guard bleated as he blushed. "It's me sir Diaphanous, the guard."

 

"Diaphanous what are you doing here at five in the morning, and why are you still wearing those ridiculous women's clothes?"

 

"Er, excuse me sir, but there seems to be something wrong with one of the pigeons." the guard whispered.

 

"What? It's five o'clock in the morning man. What's wrong with the pigeon?"

 

"Well, it's sort of, er, bloated, sir."

 

"Bloated, how do you mean bloated?"

 

"Well sir, it's about forty feet tall and ever so fat, sir.  You'd best come see for yourself sir, we've brought it into the fort."

 

"If you've been drinking I'll have your head off."

 

Phicous went to look.

 

"Well well well." remarked Phicous.  "It's not one of ours, there isn't a number on it's wing.  It must be a gift of food from the gods.  Set fire to it lads we're having a barbecue."

 

“Put another pigeon on the barbie..”

 

Oh, shut up!”

 

And so once again the Persians were beaten by the Greeks.  Darius I, Cyrus, and all the other Persians inside the wooden bird perished.  The remainder of the Persian army fled back to Persia taking with them the last of the deck chairs.

 

Seven years later a new pigeon virus hit Zorba's stock..  PSE, also known as mad pigeon disease.  Tragically Zorba Micó died after being mauled by two mad pigeons, and soon the entire stock was wiped out.

 

The birds died, and with them P-mail.  But on his death bed Zorba said, "One day, somewhere, somehow, P-mail will return."

 

And what of Plastikoktopous Micó.  Well he got fed up with breeding dive bomber pigeons, and boosted by tales of a forty foot pigeon landing near a coastal fort, he decided to breed a super pigeon that could be used as a troop transport.  Alas he died when the prototype crashed on it's maiden flight.