A Naked Singularity: A Novel (85 page)

When I looked up from the floor I found I could see Everything. I saw the fundaments of the universe; quarks and neutrinos in visible ubiquity, jittering and bouncing, off each other and onto me. I saw Time itself, the fourth dimension, naked and enormous in its full horror, neither flowing nor frozen, and beside it the relativistic Elsewhere, lifeless and defunct. I saw Music, not the notes or the sounds but what it verily was. I saw incomplete but beautiful Math, its integers and the rules they obeyed, and I understood it all.

I saw minds. I saw thoughts, disembodied but clear. I stared at consciousness itself, saw what it looked like, and became frightened. Concepts were visible; I saw Justice and Cowardice, Enmity and Envy. I saw leprous bodies piled high, discarded by what had animated them and seemingly congealing into a single mass of fibrous muscle and cartilage. I saw the unborn and the dead as they clawed at the living. And the living weren’t healthy. They were diseased and deformed, with arms where legs should be and skin peeling to expose ambiguity where distinction was needed. I watched flesh devour flesh and heard bones crack from weight and from that moment on I started hearing everything as well. I heard colors and circles, trees and triangles. I heard Fear lick the face of Hate accompanied by a final whispered scream. Then I heard, felt, and saw the world begin to crack open to admit, little by little, the return of Light. The light dispersed everything else as I watched it grow and fill the room.

I saw Angus on the sofa and watched the breath leave his nose. I stood up. The sun rose and the room shone. Then the artificial light began to return as if responding to its father. One by one its sources came to life casting a plastic brightness on what had hid in the dark. The heat began clicking furiously and I dropped to its level inches away. Television came on and Angus opened his eyes.

“We’re going to be all right,” he said.

“No,” I said. “But we’re going to live.”

Angus stood and walked to a basket. He took out a control of the remote variety and began to reprogram his HDVDCR. I couldn’t move yet.

“I had a dream,” he said. The heat began to fill the room. “Our thoughts during dreams are often more lucid, I feel good.” For the first time in over a day I took off my jacket. Angus saw this and took his off. “And I don’t give a cow’s dick what Hume said, science rules! Smell that heat? That’s what science smells like, that’s science baby.”

“Cows don’t have dicks.”

“What?”

“Bull.”

“Exactly, that’s bull!”

“No, bulls have dicks.”

“Fine, have it your way; but I still don’t give a bull’s vulva about Hume.”

My car wouldn’t start. Everyone was everywhere. I took the A to Times Square. Toad’s response to the blackout had been to decree that every light in the square had to be placed on TITS (or the non-acronymic
Temporarily Illuminatorily Trebled Status
) even during daylight and it was hard to make out people or structures in that brightness. Giant digital soda cans poured their would-be liquids near skeletal human underwear holders and a morning news program aired on the giant screen turning the area into the world’s largest living room and us into passive viewers. Arrows illuminated in succession toward neon women and Disney characters handed out free previews to their parents’ movies. I looked around confused. I needed a bus. I was desperate and lost. A guy in a van said he went where I needed to go provided I had the two dollars he needed. Everyone in the van talked about the blackout except me. The van dropped me off two blocks from my mother. I walked and found that the unmitigated cold of the last two days had made me more susceptible to losing my warmth so that by the time I got to the house I was shaking again.

There were no cars in the driveway and I feared I would be alone. The door was locked but I thought I heard voices inside. I climbed in through the window. I walked into the living room. My mother was there with others. Alana was there, Timmy and Mary. Flames cracked in the fireplace. They said Marcela was still in the hospital but doing well along with the baby and both would be coming home any minute. I walked to the fire as my face stung from the new heat. No one talked about the blackout and Mary filled the room with words.

Will you read this to me? Please?

—Mary

THE STORY

Garrapata Nahyuv-McDunnit

A New Translation by Nestor del Tobón

The agèd Queen two princes begat; her newer half-young

As Elder was old. Until, as mothers wont do,

She urged the younger where travel and likewise what bring.

Thusly did it come to pass that this younger of two

Did alight onto our world from the openest sky

Feebly armed and with only sense slight of where he’d go,

What he would do once there and why.

The sky he quit was soft and warm

Yet the low land he saw draw nigh,

Growing steadily in his eyes, seemed frigid and hard,

With poorer air than the home he’d departed and less

Room where he might hope to safely ensconce his heart.

For where he then landed was densely forest

Where aught the tallest trees were small

And truly the roundest circles seemed square.

Of this forest he deemed study all.

Looking first up before down

Then side to side with scant awe.

But not without adding to his face a mounting fearful frown

For well he understood he was not rightly of that place

And also did he perceive an encroaching darkness then.

One that would blind him to leafy trees,

The slight creatures extant and home,

And the very ground that supported his

Weight and pushed up against his own

Feet ensuring he could not take flight

To ascend from that darkening globe

And return whence he left.

Thus did his princely mind

Resolve that ere Day went

He would endeavor, through sight,

To find his way out of that

Tangled brush and unchecked grime

Which had entwined his heart,

Rooted him to heavy Earth,

And obscured his purpose from the start.

To begin, the resolute prince first

Traveled eastward where he found

The forestry slighter yet thicker,

The pull greater from the ground,

And a harshly disfigured beast,

Enormous in both sight and sound,

Blocking any passage he might attempt

While addressing him thusly:

“Only one who is truly lost,”

Spake the beast, “would dare appear before me

In such a manner wholly unarmed

So that thy certain and grievous defeat

Would occur in and of slightest momentum

And in every possible event

With greatest attendant harm.”

Only when the young man spoke naught

Did the creature hastily quod,

“Or is yet my speech intemperate?

For could not the sight of thou naked

Yet calm portend the terrible truth

Of a strength and power greater for being well-hid?”

Nor to this either did speaketh

The young prince, well aware

He of his dearth of strength

Both hidden or evidently clear.

Choosing instead sudden flight

So eager he to abscond from there.

And with expanding black night

Cloaking the fearsome still beast

Did the young prince then decide

To travel farthermost west

In ardent search of method

For retrieving what he’d lost.

So he traveled toward the sinking sun

The horrors of the eastern creature

No dimmer by virtue of being done,

The approaching horizon as if afire

But aglow with the promise

That the answer somehow lay near,

Visible to all, yet in expectant wait only for his

Discovery. Thereat went the young man

Hopeful that second would be last of his voyages.

But his hope did dim much when

Arriving at length at the New

He found a chasm, widened without end

By long sad years, into which the sun now

Disappeared entire taking what meager light

And warmth the new world had theretofore known.

Descending into that hole complete

He found others in appearance as him

Tearing at each other in scattered effort

To raise themselves and sowise climb

(Supported by the massive weight

Of others) but undone by a fall each time.

And the heaven-descended prince eyed the replacement

Moon seeing what he thought the lovely face

Of his mother and entreating it to reveal his fate.

But while the moon’s light did soothe his eyes

Not far had th’orb truly bade

To answer his doubtful sighs.

And presently from the moon’s appearance did fade

The reassuring visage of his mother

So that the young prince was in solitude forced

To seek his means of homeward return,

Out of that world of empty dread

And once again to that of his noble mother,

Through the use of Thought, for surely it had

Been the greatest of the intentionally few

Gifts with which he had obediently traveled.

So quickly did he move away

From that yawning earth

To let his troubled mind weigh

Thoughts of how he might at last depart

That ruinous place. Upon themselves

Those learned thoughts did build, the true

Of them supporting novel ones

And emerging from those

The strongest for corners.

Building through such means

A ladder, ethereal but true,

And able to support his corpse

Thought he. Yet learning instead too

That as he would attempt to elevate

The insubstance of the ladder would

Rebel against his body’s weight,

Keeping him lower than he wished

With dreams of Mother still frustrate.

And though the ladder grew its best

With success eventual

Still imbued with promise,

The young prince grew so impatient with it all,

The progress so deliberately slow,

So often seeing the moon rise then fall,

That he soon sought a newly improved route,

One that would re-wed him to the heavens

With rungs that ought repel his feet until home.

Accordingly did he construct magic vines

Which vines he tied to each step

Of the ladder as up he would steadily rise.

And not until he felt a slight drop

In his climb did he look below

To see the wroth eastern beast rising up

In pursuit, alternating each ascending paw,

Baring its many demonic teeth,

Intent fully on reaching its prey.

The young prince did then raise his speed

Only, in his hurried frantic haste,

To see distance shrink twixt him and beast.

Until, from mere distance at last,

He saw in approach the cloud

That segued to the world of his past.

And in a final leap conducted in the highest above

Did the young prince presently and safely land

Beyond the portal cloud past which the beast dared not run.

Content instead on the ladder to stand

And wait, in vain if need be,

For the return of the princely man.

Who now searched in that safety

For the mother he did not see

Unaware that her end had been deadly,

Just the shortest of measured time since,

At the sullied hands of a brother jealous

That the younger’s journey did not include he.

And now did that elder brother seize in his hands

The limp body of their heavenly mother

To pull on her head by the lifeless hairs

Until only the severed head of her

Remained in his bloodied grasp,

The better with which to deceive his brother.