by Michael Battaglia
It starts, as it always does, with an infant's cry.
Every single time.
Who are you to claim otherwise? With your tunnel
vision, your cramped, painful sight, restricted to such
a small space. It's only a pinprick, this time. Merely a
moment: A light that flares and goes out. And if you blink
you won't even have time to witness the lingering tendrils
of the afterimage.
Just a moment.
Beginning with a baby's cry and ending with an exhalation
that isn't reversed.
Only a too brief moment.
But it's everything.
It's everything.
Not seeing the whole thing, you can't know. You won't
know. How much is the same. How much is completely different.
But that's okay. Because it's not important.
He's just a man. That's what they told him. Just a
man. No one special at all.
Disbelief is what starts it. But how can you know the
day you'll be proven wrong? A life's brazen delusions disintegrated
in a moment. No matter what you believe, some things will
never change.
Facts, of course. Facts never change. But facts are not
always true things. And the facts are always changing.
"If you want to put a word to it . . . then you're
our host. Call it that, if it makes you happy."
Out there in the world beyond the sky and beyond the fabric
itself, it's beyond anything you'd want to conceive.
All the fantasies are real, somewhere. All the lies and
the truth and the ideas that there isn't any room for, it's
out there.
The darkness between the bright points can hold brilliance,
or unspoken terror.
There's history out there, layers and overlapping layers,
floating, rubbing together, causing friction where it touches,
clashing, contracting, expanding again.
It breathes, you know. Even where the air has gone away,
it still inhales.
But the moment is too short. You can't know. Someone has
to tell you. In a way that's why he's here. Because someone
has to be told.
And the problem with history, it's forever and it has nothing
to do with you. You're only a small piece, your gravity
negligible, and your influence impotent.
But what if that wasn't true? What if you wanted to make
a difference, no matter what the Universe says to you?
The tunnel is so small and cramped and it's so big
and his brain doesn't want to process it. And it's roaring
now with unfamiliar blood all over it, and there's only
him and it wants to kill him and he doesn't know what to
do because it's charging now it's charging.
Where to start then? Even the smallest piece has a moment
to affect. And even the smallest effect has to mean something.
Out there beyond the world there's nothing that can bend
you.
He's got history on his side, you see, millions and millions
of individuals just like him, chosen by chance, given a
fleeting moment to do what he wants and make what he will
of this second's span. So what's that like, to be a symbol
of a thing older than everything you know, to be a symbol
of something you don't even understand? How can you deal?
How do you fit it all into your head?
"I've got it all in my head, dammit, I've got things
in there that don't make any sense and I think they're always
been there . . . and it's not just knowledge, it's not just
languages. The other night, yesterday, I think, I don't
even remember anymore, someone tried to hurt me, tried to
stop me and I . . . I hurt him back. I was never able to
do that before, how can I do it now?
What happened to me? What the hell did you do to me?"
"Why, the obvious thing, of course. We've made you
ready."
"For what? For what?"
"For whatever you want."
What does it do to a man, then? To give him the knowledge
and not a goal? To give him the sword without showing him
the enemy? What happens when you let a man decide for himself
just what his life is going to be?
There's no true freedom in this world, not for anyone,
but you'll see the closest a man can come. He can't be straitjacketed
by entropy, not the way that we can.
Any direction is viable, any direction is possible. Which
way will a man jump, when he can go any place at all?
And they ask him where he's been and what he's been
up to and he can't say because nobody would believe him
and if by some freak chance they did, it would be over.
Who can be friends with a person like that? Is it even
possible? To live side by side with a figment you won't
even understand?
The air out there is scant, but it's purer than anything
you'll ever breathe, a single puff might just distort your
lungs. But it's his natural world now. And they never tell
him, they never told him that the mirror is only one way.
And you can look through him and see him and he's not the
same man even though he looks the same, he's melted glass,
blurred beyond recognition, the shape is the same but the
man himself just doesn't look right. It's not anything you
can touch. How do you talk to a man like that, when his
very motion could cut your understanding in two? How can
we watch him try and not wait for his eventual detachment,
spinning free of this world and moving onto a place that
we can't see?
"So you're saying, my God, what are you saying here
... are you trying to tell us that ..."
"Yes. Whatever you're thinking. It's all true.
Everything you've ever imagined. It's all real."
And that's just the point, right? Who can be with him, and
not let the stress flatten them, until the fractures become
too serious to sustain.
Can anyone love a person like that?
"You've seen it, all right? What I attract? It hurts
everyone, I know somehow it does, and it's not going to
stop. Do you know what it's like, how much I want to be
here and what it's costing me to stand here and not get
any closer and-"
"Just . . . shut up. Please. I'm trying to . . . shut
up."
"Okay. All right. Okay."
Maybe, maybe not. But a man like that can have friends,
of course, because he's not alone. There are others who
share the world, can share his view. Few and far, but how
many of these people can a man need before he truly considers
himself whole. They will never be far, ever, and even if
he refuses to see, out of spite, out of fear, they'll still
be there. Facts do not change. And he will try to change
it all. He will start at the smallest point and work his
way outward and maybe he'll never be able to expand but
he might be able to change just that one part, just that
little slice and if he can make that work then maybe it
becomes all worth it.
The hole in his chest seals up first, a mouth slowly
closing and the color returns to his body and even as he
wakes up he's already grinning, this reeling eternal man.
"You know, if I keep doing this," he says, with
a mad laugh, "it stops becoming a miracle, right?"
Stretch out a life and no matter how far it goes, it's
just not enough. There's not enough years in this world
and he'll manage to cram it all in whatever scant days are
allotted to him. What can you do, when the world is so big
and you're racing against a fate you can't see? Where do
you go, when the only option is everywhere? Who do you go
with, when your life keeps you separate? He'll make friends
and lose them, find them again and perhaps lose them forever.
You can keep looking for a plot, but who plots out a life?
It's what we do when we're trying to do other things and
no matter what we do it won't stop happening to us.
"Just for the record, what does it take for you
to give up?"
If you start out wanting to change, what happens when it
doesn't conform? Do you keep going anyway? Or do you just
try harder, pushing against escalating failure? If there's
a point to this life, maybe that's it. Maybe that's what
you want to hear. Because that's what he's trying to find,
in the end. Trying to reconcile the reality that there's
no point to anything with the conflicting ideal that you
have to keep going anyway, because there's always hope?
Which is true? Maybe neither. Maybe nothing is true. Or
everything.
That's what he's trying to find out, you see?
And it will take him through the streets of his town, the
skies beyond the stars, through tenements and starships,
planets and prisons, he'll discover friends and let go again,
both human and alien, it will make him a killer, a hero,
a mercenary and a thousand other things he can't find names
for, in wars and bars, in warrens and warehouses, from one
end of existence to other, until he comes so close to the
edge of reality itself that his fingers might just brush
up against it. He'll go down and up and through and in the
end he might not understand any of it anymore than you do.
But this is his life. And all we're asking you to do is
bear witness.
How does it start, you ask? You were told already. A baby's
cry. That's how it starts But not how it begins.
Come now. Listen.
". . . and, in conclusion, based on the evidence
I've shown, we can clearly see that there is no compelling
reason to believe in the existence of extra-terrestrial
life . . ."
You want a name then?
Tristian.
Remember him.
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