Zeno
There was an old man from Greece
Who thought how distance could decrease
He set Achilles in a race
That trapped him in liminal space
And never left his poor tortoise at peace
It was only meant to be a theory. It was a mathematical thought experiment, a puzzle for the mind, an obvious contradiction between reality and logic. He had only meant to inspire further thought on the matter.
He hadn’t expected this.
The ground beneath him was plain dirt, solidly packed. He was growing steadily more familiar with every particle as he stared downward, inching forward. Less than inching forward. The name for the distance he was moving each second hadn’t been invented yet.
The day was hot and the path was clear. His fellow philosophers had retired to the shade of the distant trees to think their great thoughts in peace. He had been heading there too, until he had seen the tortoise.
He wished he never had.
He craned his head to look at the sky above him, already desperate to see something other than the dull browns of dirt and tortoise shell. It felt like moving through sap, the air thick around his head with languid heat and languid time. There were a few puffs of cloud scattered in the vast blue sky. They stood still, but he knew that they must be moving on an unimaginable scale, just like him. He didn’t feel like a cloud, though. He felt more like a rock.
A drop of sweat began to roll down his forehead. He reached up to brush it away, but his hand slowed as it approached his forehead. He closed half the distance… half again… half again. It was no use. It was just like the tortoise.
The tortoise itself seemed completely unperturbed by the whole situation. It was just minding its own business and crawling slowly across the road. He had seen it lying there in the dust and assumed it was stuck. Carrying it across the road so it wouldn’t be struck by a chariot just seemed like the right thing to do. Now he was the one in danger.
It wasn’t the tortoise’s fault, he supposed. It must not be pleasant to have an old man looming over you, reaching down for what now must be nearing an hour. The poor thing was just trying to get away… hence the problem.
More sweat dripped down his forehead. He didn’t bother to reach for it this time.
In the space of another hour, the tortoise made it to the grass at the side of the road and decided to take a break. It tucked its limbs and head into its shell and settled down. If he had thought he was moving slowly before, this was a whole new level. With the tortoise no longer moving and him still closing half the distance each time, he was slowed almost to a stop.
The group of philosophers under the tree had finished their deep thoughts and wandered past him. They spoke to him, probably, but he couldn’t think fast enough to process the sound. Everything about him was slowing down while the tortoise rested. It was like a state of hibernation.
He closed his eyes. Almost all the way.
Time passed.
He kept reaching, even with his eyes closed. In his slowed state, he had no idea how much time was passing. It could be hours or days. It was almost relaxing to let everything slip away but his arm and the tortoise and the infinitesimal space between. He let himself drift.
When he opened his eyes, everything was different. The dirt road was mud and icy rain pelted down around him, but he could barely feel it. He was too far inside himself. The tortoise was tucked inward too, a damp shell at the base of a tree, just out of his reach. The leaves were gone now. He closed his eyes again.
Aside from the times that the tortoise was awake and moving, he was pinned in space, but afloat in time. As soon as he wondered how something could reach him, it stopped being able to. The hand of a fighting man, then a flurry of snowflakes, then sound, then light. There was nothing but Zeno and the tortoise.
Children danced around Zeno and tossed flowers at him, laughing with glee as they slowed in the air and snatching them back to toss again. A tired mom paused her phone call and pulled them away by bribing them with sweets from a nearby stand. It didn’t matter to Zeno. Nothing had, from the skyscrapers being built around him, to the scientists poking and prodding close to him, to the yearly festival held in his honor. He still reached, inexorably, for the tortoise.
