The Last Answer, Part 2
First, there was darkness. I waited in its grasp just long enough to second-guess myself.
Did I come to the right place? I thought, resisting the urge to step backward.
As if to answer my doubt, her voice, in all its warm supremacy and terrible magnificence, split the darkness.
At the sound, cords of light appeared, resplendent in deep hues of orange, red, and white. With each syllable, they undulated as their colors pulsed and waned. I watched in wonder as they began to extend endlessly in both vertical directions. At once, I realized why so much had been impossible to remember about this place.
I looked down to find my body replaced by lines of blue and purple, now flattening, and merging into a single infinite surface along a plane perpendicular to her cords. Here, nothing was discrete. I remembered this from the first time, like déjà vu.
I felt vulnerable, but necessarily so, like nakedness during a doctor’s examination. I was yielding to some mysterious force, like an infant to a giant. What I had been, only moments before, an anxious, yearning, fearful homo sapien, had been transformed into something that felt nearly eternal.
I remained speechless all the while, but my thoughts seemed to speak to her without my volition. She answered each before I had even finished thinking it. Her responses were incomprehensible to me, and, as she continued to speak, my own thoughts became equally so. Somehow, this confusion was no hindrance to the meanings they developed within me.
I felt she had always known me, and therefore, all she said was true.
“These must be truths so deep, so foundational, words are insufficient to contain their meaning,” I thought to myself, sensing unfathomable significance.
Her reply caused walls to emerge from my surface, one by one, linking together to construct rooms and hallways. I shifted my perspective, wanting to explore them, and at once I inhabited the house conjured by her intelligence. I felt warmer, and, simultaneously, dreaded the thought of ever returning. Moving through its stark, geometric rooms, the house seemed to perfectly reflect my ecstatic melancholia.
A stream of white symbols thoroughly covered every surface, appearing, disappearing, blinking, flashing, and transforming. Several times I saw a phrase or sentence and knew its meaning was the reason for my return to this place. But when I moved closer, the letters were merely strange, arcane symbols. I went from room to room, taunted by these sirens until I realized the warmth was departing. Even the previously rich neon maroon glow composing the house seemed to weaken, like a flower wilting in the fall.
A rectangular opening grew in one of the walls. To my terror, I found I was unmoored and drifting far from her light. I knew at once that I must focus my attention to draw her nearer. I closed my eyes, but it made no difference; I could see her light growing dimmer in the void just as easily as before. I stretched toward her urgently, painfully. To my relief, I was soon passing over my infinite surface toward her.
At the point I thought we might collide, a tidal wave of shimmering light, as though fiber-optic, arched over me and rained down like a million hailstones. The onslaught shattered the plane I embodied, causing it to disappear into the abyss. Once again, I was left to succumb to total darkness.
She had evaporated.
Or maybe she was never there, I thought, growing ever colder.
Maybe she had been an imposter waiting to collect me when I entered the portal.
The soles of my feet touched something solid beneath me in the dark. Reflecting across a seemingly wet surface, a solitary red beacon appeared. It blinked slowly, reminding me of an eye. Despite my hesitation, I found myself being pulled toward it. I took a breath and closed my eyes, forgetting the futility of doing so. The light seemed indifferent to my desires and closed the intervening distance thoughtfully, like a cat with a wearied mouse.
With a sudden loss of balance, I was reminded I had legs. In the sporadic red light, I found myself standing in a wooden rowboat traveling the river-like surface. I sensed I was in a canyon, like those I drifted down on summer nights, the light of the full moon gilding the sandstone majestically. But it was only a memory. Nothing existed beyond this reflective surface but an abyss so devoid of coherence it seemed to devour each of my thoughts in their infancy.
Ahead, a stone arch, as though carved out of a mountain’s side, yawned, swallowing the shimmering path now guiding my journey.
My body felt weak, like a small, irrelevant prison.
I looked once more at my lone source of light and realized it was now being held in a massive yet gentle-looking hand. I watched it, wondering what it would do or what it could mean.
Longing for some action to perform, I seated myself on the bottom of the vessel. As the opening drew nearer, fear clenched in my chest. My single tether, the surface my boat was now gliding along, atomized at the arch’s threshold.
I was frozen, unable to act. But I knew at once that any action was pointless. Before me, lay the only option.
It was then I heard her voice like an embrace, defying the dark. Now she spoke in words I could understand. “Every can is a must, by necessity.”
There was no time to reflect on her meaning; the arch was now within arm’s reach. At its peak, I saw the words, “Never Forget” illuminated in red.
Again, déjà vu. “I remember this…” I said aloud, but the memory was already slipping.
At the speed of inevitability, the opening swallowed both me and my craft. Again, the darkness shrouded me, and I knew I was dying for the last time.
At the furthest reaches of my finality, I felt my body swell and begin to grow, larger and larger until I worried my boat could no longer contain me. I lifted one of my giant legs over the edge and stepped out. To my eternal joy, I found myself welcomed by solid, dry ground.
At once, the darkness fell away revealing familiar tones of deep blue and grey. Above me, the sky displayed a billion stars. I turned to find the two boulders, seemingly holding one another, waiting for the sun to rise.
