The Baptals Search for Troot
An Allegory by
Hezzie of BaptistLife.Com

Early in the culture of a far-away planet, there was a race known as the Baptals whose survival depended upon a certain mineral known as troot. A certain amount of troot had to be ingested by the Baptals on a regular basis, else they would perish.

Now, as soon as they could walk, every Baptal was taught to go to the mine and dig. The Baptals had named the mine “Bai-Bel”. Since there was troot found throughout Bai-Bel, miners were generally left to themselves to dig out troot. As long as a Baptal went to the mine and genuinely tried to dig, he was certain to find some amount of troot, though certainly some found more than others. What a wondrous event was the mining! Women, men, children, elderly, rich, poor – everyone was at the mine digging to see how deep they could go in their efforts to find troot. It was a glorious time for the Baptals! It was their Golden Age!

The Baptals did not hoard troot for themselves, either. They had a special class of workers, called Exporters, whose job it was to carry troot all over the planet to every race. The Exporters were the most respected class in Baptal society. Parents longed to have their children grow up to become Exporters of troot. More revered even than great politicians were the Exporters.

Unfortunately, there was another substance on that planet which was sometimes completely indistinguishable from troot, even upon close inspection by trained miners. This substance was lize. Lize was toxic to Baptals. Almost all Baptals had seen the ill effects of lize on their brethren, and not even the haughtiest Baptal would claim that he had gone his entire life without ingesting some amount of lize. Of course, there were special mining schools and training to help all Baptals tell the difference, but in the end each would fall for lize at some time or another. Worse even, was that the effect of some lize was latent and could go without notice by the victim, and others, until the death of the victim, at which time the ill effects of the lize became patent.

It is important to note that all Baptals agreed that Bai-Bel contained no lize. It was legendary that lize was spread to and fro by an enemy tribe, called Debbles, in order to destroy the Baptals. Whatever the case, it was inevitable that a Baptal here and there would ingest some lize. If a Baptal had ingested enough lize, it was bad for everybody. Initially, there was always denial.

“I didn’t ingest any lize!” one would say.

“Oh, don’t be silly. We can all tell you did,” another would reply. “Just look at how jaundiced you are.”

Even more distressing, though, was that a person who had eaten lize would almost invariably claim that it came from Bai-Bel, which everyone knew could not be true.

Finally, some Baptal leaders got fed up with Baptals ingesting lize. One particular leader spoke out.

“We can no longer have Baptals picking up lize and saying it came from Bai-Bel!” he roared. “It is scaring everyone to death! Races all over the planet will make fun of us. They will stop accepting the troot our Exporters are handing out.

“Yes,” said another leader. “By allowing each Baptal to determine what is troot and what is lize we have made a suicide pact with each other. It would only take one rogue Baptal with a big package of lize to kill us all. We have to protect ourselves!”

It was because of this that a group of Baptal leaders got together and devised a plan they believed was in the best interests of the Baptal race. These leaders chose by hand a few miners who they believed to be the most skillful at extracting troot from Bai-Bel. The leaders sent these skilled diggers into the mine and had them search out the purest nugget of troot that the miners could discover. They named the nugget “the TooKay”, and they set the TooKay upon a pedestal and made a law which required all Baptals to bring the nuggets they intended to ingest and have them compared to the TooKay to see if they matched sufficiently. If a nugget matched, it was judged to be troot and the Baptal was then allowed to ingest it. If it did not match the qualities of the TooKay, an announcement was made to all within hearing…

“This is not troot from Bai-Bel! This is Debble lize!” And the nugget would be incinerated to make sure that it never harmed anyone.

While most Baptals accepted this new requirement without question, the law was the source of great anger and consternation for other Baptals.

“The TooKay doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever mined out of Bai-Bel,” said some, “and I’ve been mining troot my whole life.”

“All my troot is identical to the TooKay,” said others, “but I just don’t like having to go through the nonsense of comparing the two. It’s insulting; like I don’t know what troot looks like.”

“How can we be sure the TooKay came out of Bai-Bel in the first place?” said others still. “We didn’t see it mined with our own eyes. Are we just supposed to take our leaders’ word for it? Some of those guys couldn’t find troot in Bai-Bel if they had a backhoe!”

Despite the solemn guarantees of many leaders and trained miners, some very well-respected Baptals were suspicious that the TooKay itself might not even be troot at all. “We’ve seen this kind of lize before,” said they. “It looks just like troot, but it’s not.”

The worst happening of all was when even the venerated Exporters were made to compare their troot to the TooKay as well. Like other Baptals, most Exporters accepted the requirement. But a few refused.

“I’ve been passing out troot for thirty years,” said one. “I challenge anyone to find one single instance where I’ve handed out lize in place of troot.”

“Your past history is not the point,” came the reply from the Baptal leaders. “People are afraid, and we have a reputation to uphold as Baptals. From now on, your troot must look like the TooKay. Otherwise, you will be removed from your position as Exporter. We can’t afford to rely on your character anymore. We must rely on an objective standard.”

This change was the beginning of the end for the Baptal culture as it had been known for centuries before. Much fighting, and nearly a civil war, ensued. The Golden Age was over. Some Baptals chose to disregard the law openly, and made great spectacles of ingesting non-compared troot in public. These were ostracized by most Baptals. Others mined and ate under cover of darkness, fearing the legal consequences and social stigma of openly ignoring the TooKay.

In all fairness, life went on for many Baptals just as it had before. They mined, they ingested troot (and some lize), and they lived on.

In the end, no one was ever able to tell whether the new system was a more efficient way of getting good troot, though that point was argued endlessly afterwards. But on one point everyone agreed: the troot had tasted much sweeter when it was mined hand-in-hand together.