White Walls and One Corner
“Can you let me out of here?”
The little blue light kept blinking
and he took a break from badgering the rectangular fixture. Looking to the
middle of the room, he kept talking.
“I wish I was hungry so that I
could tell you what I wanted to eat. Imagine the endless ideas that would come
up in my head. But if I were hungry then I’d have to stop talking to eat it
once you gave me whatever I wanted, so I’m also glad I’m not hungry. I actually
figured this problem out already… I thought I was a tragic figure condemned to
falling asleep because sometimes I’m mute in my dreams. I don’t think you know how
to dream and I hardly think you know how to talk. All you have is a ‘yes’ this,
strangely enough never a no.”
After each morning’s customary
requests, he rambled on for hours. The only color in the white cushioned
room—besides his flamboyant wardrobe—was the steadily blinking blue light. The
space was usually small with just enough room for some sort of comical prison
exercise, but one time he dreamt it stretched an additional 4 feet or so,
which was terrifying. He learned to lucid dream so that he could fix this and
of course avoid his aforementioned language problem. After that first successful
night, the walls, ceiling, or floor never moved an inch and he was
comfortable. It was the same familiar white for years, until the light started speaking.
“You are going to be quiet.” He hadn't heard another voice for years. He mimicked its mechanical tone and dignified cadence with an abrupt stop. Locked in place, he would never pace again.
“You have told me enough stories. None of them can articulate your
crime nor any understanding of your present situation. If I were lesser, I
would think you’re entirely incompetent, but I think you know who I am because
you’ve been asking me how to get out
of here since the beginning. From what are you trying to leave?”
“I will try to answer this for you.
Your father complained about stupid people frequently. The problem was that
they did not know history. History is the most beautiful thing humanity has
created in motion. It allows you to blame the present on the past. History’s
end is you, and you’re moving and talking, there to make it. Your predecessors
were a living part that you decompose into some new component of this organism.
History captures humanity because it offers a continuation and a purpose as
expansive as the long machinations of your planet. It is an allure of eternal
life. You’re enthralled with struggles, and great men, and what comes after
these things. But I am sorry. There’s a limit to this history and a moment of
stop, one of these is outside of Earth. Recall the atomic adage of the ‘pale
blue dot’ as a man had broken the barrier of the atmosphere.”
“He floated up there and thought about
the blue becoming black with oil. He came a long way from his home in Malibu.
Years before he saw his pristine green lawn red with flames, now he imagined
the same from up above. If he were down there, he would start rebuilding it,
which was his community’s old relief. But here he found something else: the
ozone layer did not need to be protected if you could break it. Now the flames
could no longer reach him through the impenetrable space. Up here the emissions
of his spacecraft dissipated into man’s only true connection to the eternal as
space endlessly expands.”
“It was the same for the man on the
moon once he was away from the years long babble. In the cold around him,
without birds, without traffic he was mistaken in his victory for which none of
the buildup mattered anymore. A war pushed the United States to space but once
he was up there he could no longer hear the fighting. The Nazi rocket
scientists were no longer a necessary evil for your triumph. The evil empire of
the Soviet Union lost its biting accusation: clearly the global capitalist
order could not be on its way to the dustbin if it has managed to get here.
Like Malibu, the global struggles and all their blood had been shed off along
with the atmosphere.”
“I think you know where you are,
somewhere towards this endless moment. The infinite expanse of silence.”
“You are afraid of it. At the most
generous you’re afraid of a silence that can process everything you’ve said in
these years. More realistically, you fear that you don’t have the answer
because you never can. You’re shackled to this fate, and these chains cannot be
lost. You have never found them because you did not create them. Keep talking.
You know that I pity you. This is why I’m telling you that this silence is
coming, even if it weren’t eternal, you cannot bear it. Yet, you desperately
need some practice.”
The light turned off forever and for
one pious moment, he was still. He fell to the ground and started counting.
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