He awoke in a place dark, dank, weird, and—from the echoes made by his sleepy groan-seemed to have unfathomable depth. The moist air was chill and ancient. He could smell none of the usual indications of people; rotting garbage, burning gas and coal, sweat, shit, and blood. He couldn't smell trees or flowers, and couldn't even detect the faintly sweet fragrance of algae or fungi. He saw nothing but black, could feel nothing but damp stone. Life had vanished while he slept, everything moving or breathing, growing or dying, had drifted away into nothingness.
He stood up, and still everything but his sense of touch was blind. He reached forward, desperate, searching for anything to help him obtain some definition of where he was. All he felt was the chill air. He tried stepping forward and kicked something. Cold sweat dripped onto the rock as he squatted down and tried reaching forward again. This time his hands found an object. He felt it carefully, brushing his fingertips against all the surface area he could find. It felt like some kind of metal, warmer than the stone he had felt before, and smooth. It sloped up farther than he could reach, so he leaned forward to try and get a better idea of its shape.
Something awoke.
Great red eyes stared at him, perfectly level with his own. They were balls of light the size of his fist, pierced by huge black pupils. With their illumination, he could see that the metal object was a sort of half sphere set flat on the ground, with the two eyes bulging from one of its sloped sides. He wasn't sure if it was alive, though the eyes certainly seemed to indicate life. It didn't smell alive. The air was still and silent, no noise coming from the thing now that it had awoken.
Then, just as he was going to start searching again, the eyes rose up several feet above him. And from their faint illumination he could make out the outline of spindly legs beneath it—eight of them—like a spider. There was a gentle tapping of metal against stone as it started to move—at first a few steps over him, then continuing forward. He turned around and, with no particular idea of what he was doing, began to follow it.
With the glowing eyes facing the other direction, other than a faint silhouette of the thing, he was once again blind. All the same he moved quick and with a reckless lack of worry as to where his feet stepped. There could be deep crevasses beneath him that the thing had simply stepped over and he wouldn't know it. But what felt like survival instinct pulsed through him. The instinct told him that if he lost this one source of light and life, he would never find them again. He would be alone and forgotten in a dark, dead world.
The air become drier the farther he went. Or perhaps it was only his own heavy breathing, for he had to move at a steady jog to keep pace with it. His mind was empty, thoughts seeming a waste of energy in this race for survival.
Then, like a celestial savior come to lift the darkness from him, a faint glow appeared far ahead. He redoubled his speed, now panting and sweating profusely, desperate for the light. The light grew larger and clearer, closer, until at last he burst out from that dark tunnel of emptiness and into a haven of illumination.
Above there was a great luminous sky-like dome. Smooth copper colored metal stretched out beneath his feet. He stopped, and the thing clattered forward, eventually being lost in the ambient radiance.
Then, even as he stood staring into the apparent infinities that lay before him, a figure appeared from the same direction the creature had disappeared. At first there was no detail, just a tiny hump of black against the glowing sky and copper ground. Soon brown robes could be made out, and a hood. There was little more visible than that, even as the figure stepped before him. A vague outline of its prominent jaw could be seen, but otherwise the hood obscured its face.
"What is your name?" it said, its voice quiet and soft.
"I ... I don't remember."
"Don't be surprised. No one ever does. I'll be calling you Stone, if you don't mind. Follow me."
Stone, as he assumed was his new identity, obediently followed as the robed man began walking in what seemed to be a random direction, identified by the same parallel of copper and white planes below and above. The first feeling he remembered having in the place, which he noticed was the first feeling he remembered having at all, was that of being very small. This was quickly followed by how dark and dirty he was compared to the clean sheen of this world around him ... and how alone he was. Whatever and whoever his companion was, he certainly didn't seem anything like Stone. If humanity was still his identifying factor, and he wasn't really sure of anything at this point, his companion wasn't human.
Although it seemed his sense of "humanity" was also vague. Had he been human, or had he identified with humans in some way? Just what, exactly, was "human?" He couldn't be sure of anything at this point.
Time seemed to lose its meaning, and then they stopped. The glowing sky was gone, and in its place black columns ascended into a thundering cloudscape. Blues, purples, and grays drifted behind bolts and webs of energy. Stone was afraid; it frightened him like no dark place had ever before.
"Do you know where you are?" said his companion, not pausing or turning his head.
"Hell?"
"Probably not. Though it certainly isn't heaven. Do you think you're dead?"
"I don't remember much of anything. I don't even remember if I was ever alive. What else could I be besides dead?"
"Dreaming, in an unusual sort of way, perhaps. Transcended to another plane, or been taken there forcibly. Undergoing some other sort of spiritual change. To name just a few possibilities."
"Do you know where I am?"
"As much as anyone. But it is best to wait awhile, and let you absorb more, experience more, before I start to explain."
The conversation ended as they stopped before a wall. Smooth, perfect black rock, like obsidian with no sheen, stretched farther than Stone could see in every direction. His companion glanced up at the top of the wall some few hundred feet above, squatted down on his calves, and leapt. He flew through the air, robes flapping wild around him, before landing at the top. Stone, with no other option but to follow, squatted down, and jumped with all his might. To his surprise, his legs suddenly felt a thousand times stronger and his teeth rattled at the force behind his leap. He landed at the top with feline grace.
There the ground was a smooth plain of the same black rock, and he could feel how much closer he was to the storm, his hairs standing on end. They continued walking in silence. The air was still.
There didn't seem to be a sun or moon or any other central source of light, but the nearly constant streaks of lightning allowed for a bright, if flickering, illumination. The lightning stopped for a moment, blanketing the landscape in black, then began again, and now there were two figures before him. They were identical, three times the height of Stone or his companion, and clad in some ancient plate armor, engraved with patterns that hurt Stone's eyes to follow. Each held a sword; the points set on a rock before him. Their faces, if they had any, were lost behind the visors of great crested helms.
Stone's companion was gone. He looked in every direction, but there was no trace of any figure on the smooth black plain; just the two armored giants. Purpose left him, and he sat down. The rock was cold and uncomfortable, but somehow it felt better than standing. He looked up at the giants.
"You are confused," the one to his right said.
"You lack an understanding of where and who you are," the other added.
Stone looked at them both in turn.
"Can you make me understand?"
In answer, the two figures continued to speak one after the other.
"We can help."
"But there is no ultimate explanation."
"What was great is now small."
"What had been growing for eons no longer can grow."
"The experiment has ended."
"A new one may begin, and it may not."
Stone blinked. "What experiment? What was growing? What is this thing you are talking about. Is it me?"
"You are a remnant."
"An incarnation."
"You are what it perceives itself to be, for the moment."
There was a moment of black, and they were gone, and Stone once again walked with his companion. The robed figure seemed unperturbed by its sudden disappearance and return.
"Do you understand now?" he said.
"No," said Stone.
"But you're a step closer, I can tell. Let's continue. There's more to see ... and much to say."
The landscape changed again, and the black plateau rose up to became a mountain. The sky was white now and snow was falling, alabaster impurities upon the rock. They began to climb, slowly working their way between ridges and crevasses. They never stopped to rest, and Stone's companion seemed ever sure of where to climb. Somehow, his legs and arms never tired, though it must have been hours, maybe days, climbing the mountain. It didn't feel right, the effortless exertion, like he was losing some part of the humanity he thought he possessed.
They reached the peak, shoulders covered in snow no colder than the air. They stood on a ledge, and a short spire of rock beside them reached up several yards.
Then landscape seemed to disappear before them, leaving an empty space, devoid of color or light or shape or any other defining features—except for the ledge and the spire]. Stone didn't dare to look back.
"Can you see it?"
Stone looked to his companion, whose hood had flipped back. His face was scarred and old, strong and rigid, but there didn't seem to be any life in it. His eyes were the same empty void that brooded before them. He watched Stone, and opened his mouth to speak, and the blackness there seemed to suck him toward it, an irresistible vacuum framed in a human face.
"Look again, Stone, and tell me what you see."
Stone looked, and in the void there was something he could only describe as a point. Yet when he looked closely, it grew, and enveloped him, and became everything. Energy and matter interacted in a billion ways around him, and he closed his eyes at the brilliance of it. It collapsed, and there was the void again—and the point. It was no longer everything, but there was still some sort of potential, some sort of energy.
"What is it?"
"You, or you as you were. When you were younger, and larger, and still unconscious to your own existence."
"But ... it was infinite."
His companion flipped his hood back on. "Such measurements have little importance here, though that might be the last thing you really figure out. It was you, and now you're here. Come, there's a last place and a fellow wanderer with a better understanding than I."
Stone watched as his companion reached out a hand, shrouded in the long sleeves of the robe, took hold of the spire, and ripped it from the mountain. It flew down into the void. In its place was a dark hole with a metal ladder peaking out above it. So they descended.
Deeper, hotter and drier, the sulfurous air clinging to his nostrils, Stone followed as blind as he had been his entire life. Or, his entire life as he could remember it, beginning in that dank cave. He focused his mind, trying to remember before that, anything before it, just some trace of thought to prove that he had existed. That there was something beyond these strange ever-changing landscapes, and this untiring robed enigma.
The ladder ended. The air was broiling hot, and Stone couldn't smell anything but the sulfur. There was light somewhere deep below them, peaking up through the rock. Everywhere were jagged edges, shifting planes of stone collapsing onto each other, thousands of tiny tectonic plates below their feet. Somehow, as they moved through the shifting mass, towards a distant and unseen destination, they kept their balance.
"Who is the person we're going to see?"
"Person is a word you probably should give up using. People are finite. People have beginnings and endings. There aren't any people here. Your people died a long time ago."
The moving rock didn't make a sound.
The plates ended, and now Stone saw the source of the light. Over the edge of the rock, far below them, a great green orb shone like a tiny sun. Emerald fire leapt from it, bursting against the igneous wall that contained it.
"Goodbye, Stone. If he cannot make you understand, we will likely never meet again."
Stone looked back from the brilliance, but his companion was already gone. There was no time to mourn, or think, or wonder why he had never asked his name, before the sun pulled him in, and he lost consciousness.
~*~
"I bet you still think you're a person, don't you?"
Stone pushed himself up to his feet. He stood in a room, small and prison-like, the wall made of large blocks of what could have been cement, or rock, or even plastic. He couldn't really tell. There was no door, and the ceiling hung low. In a soft blue armchair a lizard sat, curled up with its own tail, black eyes watching Stone. Above him, a single dirty light bulb swung in a perfect, metronomic rhythm.
"He told me that there weren't any people here, but I can't imagine what else I would be."
The lizard licked its narrow green lips. "Do you remember what your name is?"
"Stone."
"That's a name he gave you for convenience's sake. It helps it feel more like reality. It doesn't have any meaning."
"Is this not reality?"
"Of a sort. But not the kind of reality any person would understand. There aren't any laws, any rules or forces or constants or any of the other things people use to define their reality. It's not a dream, if that's what you meant."
"Then what is it?"
The lizard-man stood up, and the room disappeared. They stood atop a chunk of rock, an asteroid, in some open space. Stars winked at them from the heavens. The red and orange gases of a distant nebula swirled above them.
"Can you tell me where we are?"
"An asteroid. In open space."
"Space yes, that's what you call it. Near to some star, some solar system, in a defined galaxy, in a defined universe."
The picture blinked out, and they were back in the sealed room.
"There are no definitions anymore."
Stone blinked. "That still doesn't explain where we are?"
"One must create rules, they don't simply exist. There must be some force, or some intention, or some creative thought there to bend the vacuum. We are outside the places that have already been created, in the white space between realities."
"But there are things here. I saw landscapes, and weather, and I moved across distances. How can this just be empty space?"
"Because it isn't. There isn't such thing as empty space. When everything is stripped away, the matter and energy, the forces and laws, what remains isn't exactly a void. The void is part of the thing that's been taken away. What remains, the only irrevocable thing, is the potential."
Stone lay down on the floor on some whim or another, and looked up at the ceiling. He watched the dull gray, and bent himself a little, and it turned black. He bent himself the other way, and it turned white.
"I think I see what you mean. But you said you could explain who I am as well."
The lizard stroked his tail. "Well, you exist, as a consciousness, in a vacuum of pure potential. You've met others, others exactly like you, though perhaps you didn't see them that way. What are you?"
"I'm ... creation?"
"In a sense. You are a creation. You're what is left of a universe that has fallen apart of its own invented entropy, or perhaps you're some stray thought of one that still exists. Or, more interesting yet, perhaps you were just born out of the random formulations of the void, a parent created by a child, one might say. The first is most likely; the first is what we've been assuming so far, but then again, it doesn't really make much of a difference. We're all the same, and all of our understandings are still imperfect."
Stone stood up, and sat down in an armchair of a darker blue than the one opposite. "Why couldn't this all be explained at the beginning? Why all the traveling? Why did I think I was person? Better yet, why did I have any preconceptions at all?"
"One at a time, Stone. First of all, you had to imagine yourself as something, and the whims of the imagination cannot be explained away. You are what you are because some part of you, perhaps a part you have yet to really understand, wanted you to be that way.
"The traveling was to give you time to think, time to try and understand where you were. We always like to give an entering being a chance to create its own understanding, rather than have it explained to it. The more that must be explained, the longer it will take before you really understand where you are, where you were, and where you are going."
They stepped out of the room, and into an open field. The air was dry and cool, and the sky was a soothing perfect black. Stone lay down again, and the lizard climbed atop a rock.
"So, then, if this is outside the control of any sort of physical forces, will it ever end?"
"You know, it doesn't really seem like it should, but I've been wrong before. So I guess I just don't know."
A star blinked in the blackness, and Stone blinked with it. Like the others, his understanding was imperfect, but at least he felt better about this new existence. Whatever and wherever he had been before, this was what and where he was now, and he would learn to accept it.
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About the Author
Ryder Patzuk-Russell has published two stories, A Return Home in 2006 and Seigework in 2007, in the ezine AlienSkin.
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