19 KiB
| title | date | type |
|---|---|---|
| Untitled Short Story | 2024-08-01T20:31:18-07:00 | thevoid |
I'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and
borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered Eighties
The {{< thevoid "Everpresent Void" >}} was first discovered at a children's birthday party.
Among the laughter and alluring warbling of an arcade, a party was preparing to take their seats at a worn table. The food was french fries, mediocre cheese pizza, and hamburgers; the sort of diet that would be frowned upon at home, and as a result was now highly coveted. The main event, however, turned out to be the self-serve soda machine. It provided unlimited amounts of sugary beverages at the slightest provocation, which was evidenced by the sticky layer of dried drinks that covered the table.
It was an unusual sight: such machines were still somewhat rare in those days. Soon, the children were drunk on Coca-Cola and power. Cups were filled, emptied, spilled, dropped on the floor, and used as musical instruments all while the group crowded around the soda dispenser. The birthday girl soon found a new dimension along which the machine could be abused. One cup needed not contain a single drink.
This new discovery reignited the drinking frenzy. Sensible combinations soon gave way to outrageous mixes. Drinks were paired up, tripled, quadrupled. Soon, everyone was rushing to mix every flavor together, telling stories of a chemical reaction that would occur when they were combined with precise proportions. No such reaction came.
The children were not satisfied with this conclusion. They continued their search for the missing ingredient. Having exhausted the products of the soda machine, they had to broaden their horizons. Ketchup and mustard were the first additions to their repertoire. The boys made shows of tasting and being revolted by their mustard-root-cola, while the girls squealed with disapproval and laughter. Having still failed to perform their act of alchemy, the kids braved yet further frontiers, dropping leftover pieces of cheese and torn fragments of napkins into their cup-cauldrons.
Then, it worked.
When one of the children looked back at his cup, having been distracted by another's exaggerated gagging, he found it to contain a uniformily black fluid. This intrigued the boy; he went to prod it with his fork, but it never reached the side of the cup. Startled, he dropped the utensil, and watched it sink out of sight. This too was intriguing: the fork was noticeably longer than the container.
The others soon crowded around him to examine what was later understood to be the first instance of the {{< thevoid "Everpresent Void" >}}. They dropped straws, arcade tickets, cheap toys (purchased with arcade tickets), and coins into the cup, all of which disappeared without a sound. The boy found himself at the center of attention, and took great pleasure in recounting his latest recipe. Soon, the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was replicated in the cups of everyone at the party.
During the first week after that incident, teachers and janitors had a particularly difficult time. Various quantities of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} were smuggled into schools. When the staff caught on to peculiarly black water bottles, smugglers switched to more creative techniques involving Ziploc bags and photographic film tubes. Like crystals around an impurity, crowded islands formed at lunch tables with {{< thevoid "Void" >}} at their centers. The featureless and endless substance drew all attention away from civil wars, derivatives, and Steinbeck novels.
Only, the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was not entirely featureless and endless. As kids spent entire lunch breaks gazing into the darkness of the fluid, some thought they saw something. As more took on the arduous task of sitting perfectly still and staring into space, it became clear that this was no mere trick of the mind.
With time, a light show emerged from the emptiness of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}. It was not unlike pressing down on one’s eyes: colorful particles swirled in the darkness forming spirals and fractals. These gradually changed colors, appearing at times red-and-beige, at times blue-and-green, and everything in-between.
The display was polarizing. Swaths of children, though initially enthralled by the mysterious properties of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}, were not sufficiently re-captured by some flashing colors. In the later parts of the week, they would leave lunch halls early to study, practice, or socialize. There were, they thought, better, more normal things to do. A minority, however, only grew more enamored with their philosopher's stones.
Like alchemists of the past, many of the remaining experimenters had a tendency to obsess. Even as the world --- with its track meets, birthday parties, and dances --- went on around them, they continued their close observation of the mysterious substance. The {{< thevoid "Void" >}} proved worthy of this sustained attention. The patterns that swirled in its depths were not entirely random: they responded, reluctantly and sluggishly, to the observer's mind. Anger and frustration tended to produce redder hues; sadness manifested as a snotty shade of green. Focusing on a particular color made it more likely to appear, as well. Following its own peculiar kind of intuition, the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} responded faster when more individuals were present.
Other promising avenues of research also grew in popularity over the following days and weeks. The precise recipe for the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was not, it turned out, very strict. Though soda and fast food remained a constant fixture, the precise ingredients could be substituted for alternates. Pieces of swiss cheese worked just as well as cheddar. A fragment of a turkey patty replaced the traditional 100% Angus beef in a pinch. The resulting substance was as opaque and inscrutable as ever.
Following much trial error, adolescent adventurers mapped the frontiers of {{< thevoid "Void" >}} synthesis. Though the full specification is not particularly relevant, of note was the requirement for the base to be made of a mixture of sodas, and another for the final concoction to contain at least two sandwich ingredients. Orange juice, though sweet and liquid, did not catalyze the reaction, but Orange Fanta did, even if it was completely flat.
If all properties hereto described were the only notable aspects of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}, it would have been a mere curiosity. Late-night History Channel shows might have shown it along theories of ancient aliens or telepathy, filling inattentive viewers' dimly lit homes with comfortable background noise. The substance, however, had one final, crucial aspect. The discovery was made -- as is often the case -- in the midst of conflict.
The two parties could not be more different. One group consistent of the boys from Mr. Thompson's physics class. They were skinny, bespectacled, and dressed in graphic t-shirts and jeans. The other group was made of the boys from Mrs. Leonard's biology class; they were skinny, bespectacled, and dressed in graphic t-shirts and jeans. Naturally, the two factions were sworn enemies.
One rainy West Coast day, the two groups were engaging in customary lunch-break {{< thevoid "Void" >}}-viewing. By then, participants in the activity were relegated to the floors of a hallway in the back of the school, their sustained interest in staring-into-space taking on toll on their social standing. They were making use of advanced techniques; by then, experts were able to influence the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} not only to change color, but to form into shimmering images. The Thompsonians were constructing an image of a Christmas tree; the Leonardese were working on The Funniest Image Image to Ever Exist (something phallic).
Neither group was having much luck. The tree's trunk was consistently much too short, and its bottom too curvy. The phallus, conversely, was quite sharp and somehow sickly looking. Each side mocked the other relentlessly. It took the insult-hurlers from the two camps several back-and-forth trips to realize the images they were ridiculing and the images their friends were conjuring were one and the same.
The {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was interconnected. By repeating a specific and precise recipe, one could reliably come back over and over to the same "place" in the infinite blackness. Painstakingly painted pictures persisted into the next day, and anyone with the same recipe could tune in to see. Enthusiasts rushed to claim recipes most affordable on modest allowances. Registries of locations and ingredients were posted on bulletin boards, written in bathroom stalls, tossed around as crumpled paper balls in class. Even those who had previously shunned the alchemists were drawn back into the fold by the promise of conjuring images of their own for others to see.
It was not until weeks later that the first glimpses of a post-{{< thevoid "Void" >}} future revealed themselves, to no one's attention or particular interest. A groggy, not-yet-caffeinated Mrs. Leonard walked into class one day to find a sea of red fabric. Nearly every girl in the morning section showed up to class that day waring a red dress. Not a single one of the students could provide a concrete method by which they chose the day's wardrobe; feelings, whims, and even coin-flipping were cited as reasons for wearing the outfit. What's more, the same happened in Mr. Thompson's class, and in a number of scattered schools throughout the country.
Being a scientist at heart, and rejecting wholeheartedly the possibility of coincidence of paranormal involvement, Mrs. Leonard spent the rest of the day distractedly overcorrecting for her earlier lack of coffee. A satisfying answer eluded her, and she came home jittery and defeated. Walking past her son's room she noted that he was indulging in his habitual {{< thevoid "Void" >}}-gazing. In the depths of the pitch-black bowl, she glimpsed swirls of that very same shade of red.
The mechanism that precipitated the red-dress curiosity was not all that sinister. The {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was not unlike an ocean, absorbing and releasing heat, mitigating changes in its environment. After a day in which red was prevalent in the collective thoughts of {{< thevoid "Void" >}}-viewers, the color dissipated like heat through the dark realm, was stirred somehow by the convection of its hidden currents, and re-entered the minds of practitioners in its altered form. They averted their gazes and went to put on red clothes.
There was another way in which the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} resembled an ocean. Locations within it drifted through the darkness like rafts. Each day, some recipes would move closer or further apart. Whenever others occupied a nearby place in that ocean, their thoughts echoed in the silences between one's own. {{< thevoid "Void" >}}-voyagers, their eyes directed at customary, comforting blackness, would encounter each other there, often without knowing. With each encounter, they left unnoticeable imprimnts upon one another.
If the Thompsonians or Leonardese were chemists rather than physicists and biologists, and if they were more inclined towards introspection or calm, deliberate thought, they might have observed this gradual exchange, and seen in it the physical process of diffusion, with its particles and collisions. They might have thought of drops of dye in water, swirling in beautiful patterns until finally there were no recognizable shapes, nothing to see at all except a gentle haze of red in an erlenmeyer flask. The final stage of diffusion was uniformity.
The viewers of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} were as much connected to each other as they were disconnected from the rest of the world. They were distant, sitting in exile at lunch, looking for hours on end with mild expressions into their bowls of inky soup, talking about their latest journeys with each other on the phone. They spoke in references to landmarks in {{< thevoid "The Ocean" >}}, to happenings in their shared dimension. At the same time, they knew little of parties and dances, and they seldom --- if ever --- went to cheer for their peers in athletic events. It was hard for others to hold a conversation with them.
It was not only children that sought to explore the {{< thevoid "Everpresent Void" >}}; adult interest in the substance was growing. Grownups heard about it from their children, their students, or news reports. They could understand the desire to be seen. More than that, though, they say potential in the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}.
The substance was unprecedented. It was one thing to call someone on the phone, or come to their door; it was something else altogether to create a scene, in three crisp (with practice) dimensions, and to set it adrift in the populous sea of black. The {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was an invaluable tool for promotional material, advertising, and even storefronts. Adults adept at {{< thevoid "Void" >}} manipulation found themselves employed with various large companies, and sometimes even created their own. Though preconceptions about them --- largely negative, and often substantiated --- successfully made the jump across the age gap, these men and women became sought after and well-rewarded for their talents.
With adult influence, of course, came adult concerns. Though recipes for their windows into the other world remained permanent reminders of that first day at the arcade, older practitioners were too used to thinking about elections, taxes, and mortgages. What's worse, the presidential candidates, tax collectors, and banks did not stop thinking about them. As months went by, it became more and more common to see blue donkeys and red elephants as motifs in the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}. These drops of color swirled with all others, splashing from raft to raft on their predetermined path to joining the haze.
Among some practitioners, there was a growing sense that the {{< thevoid "Everpresent Void" >}} was alive. It didn't speak, or think, or breathe. Sometimes, though, its movements and currents were too deliberate to be mere chance. The connections that it made, the glimpses of nearby islands that viewers saw in the corners of their eyes, must've been chosen on purpose; chosen to entice. {{< thevoid "The Void wanted to be seen">}}. It spoke to its sailors in echoes of others' words, it showed them films whose frames were others' images. Encountering another voyager with his nearby recipe, it was insufficient to simply extricate his thoughts from one's own; it was also necessary to determine why he was sent as the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}'s emissary.
The echoes or films were not sent to convey a message. The {{< thevoid "Void" >}} was not aware of human logic or values, or even of the physical reality outside of its own darkness. It was indifferent to such things, and continued to behave according to some incomprehensible laws. Nevertheless, somewhere near the core of these laws was the desire to command human attention.
Nature did not bestow upon humanity the mechanisms to defend against something as otherworldly as the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}. The stories they learned each day were spoken by a chorus of voices, so loud and numerous that it seemed the whole world was speaking to them. In truth, however, each human argument sounded within that ocean's surf --- as did its refutation. Each voyager heard fragments they were used to hearing, stories they wanted to learn. Though the {{< thevoid "Void" >}} reflected no light, staring at it was looking into an endless mirror.
Through this process, the modern-day alchemists' demeanor began to resemble their ancient counterparts' mercury-induced insanity. They spoke in baffling absolutisms. Their language, already rich with {{< thevoid "Void">}}-specific jargon, grew further removed from the words spoken still in coffee shops and bars. Anger and anxiety attracted attention, and so they were angry and anxious, exploding at times at seemingly innocuous occurrences. Sometimes, as with the red-dress incident, hundreds of alchemists were compelled to eat a certain food, or dress in a certain outfit. They swayed like kelp with the invisible waves of the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}.
Concurrently, the {{< thevoid "Void" >}}'s influence grew, its versatility and power proving impossible to surrender. More and more learned to create viewports into the blackness. As they did, the prevalence of madness increased. Soon everyone knew somebody affected by the lunacy. The victims remained entirely human; they kept their fond memories, their endearing mannerisms, their connections. The {{< thevoid "Void" >}} reflected their light like a carnival mirror and amplified thoughts, but it could not cultivate that which was not already there. There was nothing to do but to stand by them and hope that with time, their features would recede back into their former shape.
Years later, on a chill November night, a weary Mrs. Leonard re-entered her home, one lit house in an entire city of houses that were dark. Her son was away at college now, and her husband out with friends, leaving her to collapse onto the couch and revisit the events of the day. Her students had done well on their exams, and were rewarded with a day off; in class, they watched a nature documentary. The subject was the Amazon rainforest, and among its inhabitants were the leaf-cutter ants.
Mrs. Leonard thought about the ants. Day after day they scoured the rainforest, collecting leaves to feed to a fungal garden in their colony. Day after day, the fungus emitted chemicals that diffused from the garden, swirling in the air currents that permeated the rest of the colony. Sensing changes, the ants altered their routes to look for different sources of food.
There was, she thought, a first day to all of this, even a first moment. Before that moment, they were just ants, going about their day as all their relatives do to this day. Then, perhaps, a worker returned accompanied by a spore, and changed the course of the colony's history.
Outside, it was storming. In the dark, roads were discernible only through streaking reflections of stoplights in puddles. Rain drummed with increasing urgency against the house's windows; larger drops left craters in the waterscape forming on the glass. The resulting texture was not unlike mycelium.
Mrs. Leonard wondered whether the first of the leaf-cutter ants were wary of the transformation occurring around them, whether the incursion of hyphae into their familiar tunnels concerned them. Something new was beginning to live alongside them, something decidedly un-ant-like. It thought nothing of workers, queens, or larvae, and it was unconcerned with conquest, hunting, or foraging. The fungus only swelled more with each day, entangling itself deeper into their lives. Were the ants really not afraid of this {{< thevoid "thing" >}}? It certainly scared her.
It was over 45 million years ago, the narrator of the documentary had said, that the colonies likely began their new mutualistic way of life. That November night, the ants were still there, tending to their gardens. The fungus nourished their larvae in exchange for their protection. Perhaps, in some way neither she nor the ants could understand, that symbiosis warded off dangers that their competitors succumbed to.
Upon returning home, Mr. Leonard found his wife still on the couch, embers of a dying fireplace casting playful shadows across her face. He had no way of knowing, but she was dreaming of gathering leaves in a warm, humid jungle.