East and West -- Fiction; Giants -- Fiction; Science fiction
"We did not know, of course, what his final size would be. We kept
careful records of his growth, but even after the first year he was not
more than ten times the normal height. But year by year we had to
revise our estimates, for his growth soon accelerated beyond our wildest
expectations. For a time indeed we feared that it would never stop and
that he would die of starvation when the world could no longer feed him.
For a time also we were sure that he would never be able to stand,
through the action of simple mechanical laws relating to weight and the
size of bones, but apparently nature has provided a marvelous
compensation, for his bones, as revealed by X-rays, are of a density and
strength equal to that of steel.
"His feeding was always a problem, although fortunately its increase was
not beyond our ability to organize and plan. At first we supplied him
from plantations on Yat and on neighboring islands. Then we were forced
to organize Neo-Buddhism as an implement to solicit contributions of
food and money. Perforce we took many into partial confidence, but the
complete story was known only to those on Yat.
"On his first birthday Kazu was 29-1/2 feet long and weighed 30,100
pounds. By his second birthday he could walk, and now surpassed all land
animals save the monsters of the Jurassic age, with a height to 51 feet
and a weight of 158,000 pounds. During 1949, while the communists were
overrunning China, our Buddha grew from 70 to 82 feet. In June of 1950,
while the world watched the flames of war kindle in Korea, we saw him
exceed the capacity of our million pound scale. In the year of 1950 also
we built his first schoolroom and developed the system of projected
pictures and letters used in his education.
"In 1951, Buddha's increasing appetite combined with the inroads made by
the communists upon our territory brought a crisis. He was now 200 feet
tall, weighed seven million pounds and ate as much as 75,000 men. In
spite of all our efforts, his food supply was dwindling and, worse, the
communists were becoming suspicious. And so we were forced to a
decision. We had to appeal to the western world. But to whom? To
America, or to Russia? You all know the situation in 1952, the time of
the false peace. We turned to Russia. They sent a commission to
investigate, and then acted with dispatch. Russia would feed our Buddha,
but on a condition: Neo-Buddhism must sponsor communism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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