XXXIII
In the instant it took to dive through the door and appear on the other side, The Young Cripple felt as if she had been fragmented, rearranged a dozen times, and then finally pieced back together, in a somewhat better fashion than she had ever been in her life. She felt charged and her body tingled, from her head down to her toes.
“I can never get used to this.”
“I remember the first time I died,” said T. “It was a mouth-watering experience.”
“How did you die?”
“I drowned,” said T.
“Was it scary?”
“That time it was. I had no idea what to expect. I panicked. Looking back, I made quite a lot of fuss, and in the end, I caught the thorn instead of the flower. It was in your world you know, or a parallel version of your world. But the dynamics were the same. I left the world how I entered, submerged in my own thoughts.”
“I was shot in the head,” said The Young Cripple. “By Delilah.”
The Young Cripple again remembered the sound of the chamber turning.
“Are you mad that you died?”
“I was a little before she did it. But so much has happened since then, I haven’t had much time to miss anyone or anything. I remember how scary it was, though, knowing I was about to die. It was just so sudden.”
“Endings always are. I lived in a world once where the only thing we lived for was our deaths. And our purpose was to ensure that this dream became a reality, that we died in the manner that most suited our beliefs and our ideals. A celebrated life, in that world, was one that best built the stage towards their death. And then, I’ve lived in worlds where fear inspires one and all to turn away from their deaths and spend their entire lives trying to outrun it; only to be caught short at the end. And in worlds like those, it always amazes me how we are so perturbed when the very wrong and unsettling kind of death becomes us. But that in the end is the beauty of existence. There is but one equation at its core, and its possibilities are boundless.”
“What is your story?” asked The Young Cripple.
“My story?”
“You said we all have a story that we have to tell to the boy at the door. So what is your story? What would you tell him?”
“Well, that’s the beautiful rule of chance. Whatever story I told you now would be nothing like what I would tell the boy.”
“You think the whole truth will offend me?”
“Not at all. My version of the truth, of what I remember and what I can piece together, it is affected by unknown variables. That’s what makes existence so special. If I were to tell you my story, of the world from which I came, whatever cornerstones I remembered would be dependent on how I felt right now, speaking to you. And how I feel is dependent entirely on how you feel about me. So, the ink that I use to write this story is the warmth from your soul. It is the attention in your stare. And it is the passion in your heart. So the story I tell you will be a far cry from the story I tell any other soul that I encounter, and nothing like the story that I will, when we find and return him, tell the boy. This is the energy of the omniverse. Our difference in how we tell the same story is what keeps the boy inspired to create more universes and imagine more worlds. The fact the seven billion humans could all live the same event, and yet each could tell the story in their own words, this is the incalculable constant which has ensured, all this time, that the boy never became aware of his omniscience.”
“But what if he did? What would be so bad about that?”
“If there were nothing left to imagine, why imagine at all?”
“So he just gives up?”
“He grows up. And then he gets old and dies.”
“What happens to all the worlds?”
“Some expand until they snap while others retract into themselves. And then the rest just drift away from anyone’s imagination. But it’s what happens to the Light, and to the souls aboard each interplanetary vessel. With no boy, there are no more worlds, and no more universes for them to be born into.”
“So? What happens?” asked The Young Cripple, hanging on the end of T’s every word.
“We’ll see, I guess.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“I’m not so mad now, about Delilah. I figure she really wanted to be on that stage, and as for me, it didn’t bother me all that much. But I don’t want her to be blamed for the way she felt, or for what she did.”
“That’s noble.”
“The thing is…do you think there’s a hell?”
The two were standing in front of a grey door. Beside it was a bank of plastic seats that were joined together by a long metal bar underneath. The arm rests looked like they had been picked at and dug into by bored or anxious fingernails, and most of the cloth covering on the seats had frayed away.
The sign on the door said, ‘Ward Number Five’.