Very little is known about the birth of Rev. Xmos. It is thought that he was born in the early eighteenth century, but no documents exist to verify these speculations. Nothing is known about Rev. Xmos's family or his childhood. No one even heard of him until 1750 when he published a book that was supposed to teach illiterates how to read. The book, like all of his works that followed it, was printed in the common language in most of the European countries. For some odd reason, the book did not sell. Unfortunately, no copy exists today so modern scholars have not been able to figure out why his work failed. The failure of his first book did not stop Rev. Xmos. A few years later he published a very popular book, reportedly titled Why the King is Such a Weenie, that explained in very simple terms why monarchs were such tyrants. It is said that the book was so direct and to the point that it was only a paragraph in length. No copy of this work exists today because the kings of Europe ordered all copies of the book destroyed, and ordered Rev. Xmos executed. However, this proved to be difficult: five countries claim to have executed Rev. Xmos.
All the commotion about Why the King Is Such a Weenie brought one question to the minds of the top thinkers in Europe: who is this Rev. Xmos, and where did he come from? All the universities in Europe checked their records and discovered a startling fact: Rev. Xmos had been enrolled in every single one at the same time, and was still attending three of them. Now this was very interesting because even though there were not many universities in the eighteenth century, they were separated by several hundred miles.
While the great minds of Europe pondered this problem, Rev. Xmos was busy at work on a new project. His third book was not published until 1770, long after the great minds of Europe had given up on figuring out who he was. The work was titled Poems from the Everyday, and contained poems that he had written over the last twenty years. Most modern scholars think that he wrote the poems almost daily because the book contained so many of them. These were not the typical long epic poems with deep symbolism and inner meaning, but silly four line poems. These poems commented on events from every day life, made fun of the state of the world, and actually predicted the future. An example of one of his poems is:
All your work for three years
Is condensed into a number.
The bigger that the number is,
The more that you are dumber.
This magnificent poem predicted that in the future there would be class rank. By writing about class rank, Rev. Xmos was commenting on something that would become part of everyday life. The poem also makes fun of the meaning of the class rank.
Like his previous books, this book had a tragedy associated with it too. After only a few copies of the book were sold, the warehouse containing the books was destroyed during one of the many battles between the British and the French. Rev. Xmos, having spent his life savings publishing the book, could not afford to publish any more copies.
Rev. Xmos is thought to have lived the rest of his life writing pamphlets for the common folk about various scientific and mathematical concepts. The exact date of his death is unknown because between the years 1780 and 1790 no fewer than ten European countries recorded the death of a Rev. Xmos. The prevailing scholars of the time did not write anything about Rev. Xmos after his death, and seemed to prefer that he be forgotten because of his silly works, and, even more importantly, because of the unexplained multiple Rev. Xmoses.
So the world forgot about Rev. Xmos until 1940 when a copy of Poems from the Everyday was found in a British university library. During a search through old records to find out who this unknown person was, the old questions about him resurfaced. This lead to a large historical investigation of his life which uncovered the facts presented above. However, since the world was in the middle of a war, very few people heard about the discovery and it was, and still is, known to a very select group of scholars. During the 1950s, another copy of Poems from the Everyday was discovered in America, and was purchased by a scholar who knew about Rev. Xmos. He founded the Poem of the Day Foundation, which is dedicated to researching the life of Rev. Xmos and spreading the word about his works.
The research of the Poem of the Day Foundation has uncovered some unusual facts. Some ancient clay pots from the American Indians and the Middle East have been found which have Xmos written on them. Manuscripts from 1000 BC China have been found which refer to a Xmos. Several United States patents from the Industrial Revolution were issued to a Rev. Xmos. In order to explain this, and the unanswered questions from two hundred years ago, the Poem of the Day Foundation has come up with a theory. Perhaps Rev. Xmos is not a single person, but the every-person. In this way, Rev. Xmos would exist as the collective entity of every person's knowledge and existence, who appears when ever a large amount of knowledge is being generated. This would explain how he could attend all the universities of Europe at one time, and why no one knows when was born, and when he died. He exists during the future and the past, which is why his poems were so prophetic, and why he was observed 3000 years ago.
Regardless of who or what Rev. Xmos is, he is still one of the most under-rated philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. Because his works were targeted towards the common man, not the well educated, they deserved to be known, which is why the loss of so many of them is tragic.