Finished 16 August 2017
Published 31 March 2020
I was just an ordinary guy.
Lived in an ordinary house.
Had an ordinary wife.
Ate some ordinary pasta.
And then.
One day.
I came to have the revelation of
A lifetime.
Stepping outside my house one morn
Crouching on the rain-spattered stoop
I squinted down at my hand and said
“Heck, there’s a dent—
—in my hand!”
That was news to me
And yet, it was
True.
So I dug my fingernail
Deep into the skin
To feel around
For the source of this nick.
By the time I sensed an unusual feel
Red had cracked about my wrist
Veins coursing faster than
A pyrolytic needle.
But
Despite the gore, sweat, and steam
I managed to pluck out some treasure agleam.
It was a computer chip, or so
It seemed.
Stained in flesh and fogged in sheen
It displayed two words, engraved in the steel.
Press
Here.
After glancing left, then right, I concluded the coast clear
And pressed lightly down onto the hard material.
To my shock and delight, a sound rang out clear.
A voice—
A message—
A confidence sequestered through the years, finally making its debut:
“By the time you hear this
You may already know
Of the fact that your life
Was mechanized by
A sun-charted solenoid.”
A lengthy pause.
“But if this is not the case
I’d venture you to listen closely
To the historian of
Astrionics
In Nullarbor Plain.”
By the time the message was through, I was thoroughly confused
Until one more sentence
Cinched the spiel:
“This message is about to
Self-annihilate.”
“Nur!”
A woman shrieked, just as bits of metal
Exploded in my face.
“Lord, have you gone insane?”
My wife thundered over to me
and like a supersonic asp
Had my hand wrestled beneath the flow of tap water
Under less than
A Planck.
“I can explain!” I tried, as her hands scrubbed mercilessly at the wound. “Do you know of Nullarbor Plain?”
My wife grew red in the cheeks. “Don’t tell me my husband is to be
A felo-de-se.”
“No, not at all!” I pleaded, wrapping my hand in a towel. “My love, my dear—
Listen to me, closely – it was a message which I have procured!”
“From whom? Your hand?” Her eyes bored deep into my head. “From the blood? Are you mad?”
“From a mysterious chip,” I answered. “That was in my hand.”
“What did it say?”
“It said I am to find a historian of astrionics,” I explained, pausing for a brief
Retrospection.
“They reside in Nullarbor Plain.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I cast a grin upon my wife, and her expression crumbled
In forfeit.
“I’m going to find out.”
I coasted my truck to a stop.
Glancing out onto the landscape was the equivalent of
Rorschach vacillation;
Was the earth ebbing into a set-sun colorant, or—
Brain-dead corrosion?
The road signage above the plain caught my attention:
“We border on the
Unbelievable.”
Yes.
This was the place.
When I exited my truck, I was greeted by a lean, light man who
Whispered rather than
Expounded.
“It’s about time,” he murmured, gently taking hold of my hand. “They should not have planted
It so deep.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
My question went ignored.
“Us,” the stranger breathed. His eyes darkened as they dipped to the ground. “Back, back, and
Back.”
In attempt to avoid a conversational cul-de-sac, I ventured once more:
“Who is ‘they’? And why bury a chip in my flesh and risk the
Gore?”
“‘They’ is me. I am one of the
Ask-Jak-Sis-Insk-Cilen-Bajsh. But you can call me
‘Ask.’”
I stayed silent, knowing full-well that
A strange dialogue was about to
Proceed.
“See, the truth rests not in your thoughts, but in your
Body.”
The man bent towards the earth, hand clawing into the ground
To fish out a large, sleek chip
As silt spouted redder than the
Carmine clay.
“On the surface, you see red. What lies within is a machine.”
“A portal.”
“A dream.” The man smirked, dusting off the piece of metal with his sleeve. “You’re getting it.”
“Tell me everything.”
Ask lifted the metal chip to the sky. “The Ask-Jak-Sis built Earth long ago as a
Teleportation spaceship.
It was a detour, a service stop
A place of refuge and
Metallic sustain.
We built it as a city, and
It died as a
Mirage-spilling Abaddon.
We thought we had done
So well.”
I blinked.
My thoughts had scattered at the mention of
‘Spaceship.’
“So, what you’re saying is,” I began, “Earth is not a planet?”
“Indeed. It is a mishap of over-tried alloys and
Inklings of pneuma.
An accident waiting
To happen.”
I narrowed my eyes up at the metal chip. Then back
Down. Then back
Up.
“So, you’re saying,” I continued, “that you’re my extraterrestrial ancestor.”
The man nodded.
“And that Earth is just an abandoned space hubbub.”
The man smiled widely, eyes dripping static beads of
Roentgen rays.
“Huh.”
I squinted back down at the bloodied
Earth.
Ask blinked.
I blinked back.
“So what’re you doing in
Australia?”
Ask folded his hands below his chest.
“So many questions.”
I had not noticed that the chip he had wrought
Was now hovering, stuttering
In the air between us.
With a click of the metal, and a shake, and a quell
The sky above shattered
And all fell
Into darkness.
“Why don’t you inquire the one whom you came to witness?”
Ask’s skin slithered off his bone, and his words
Floated
Ringing.
I was scared, palms bleeding
Trickling like the tears down my throat
My wife’s voice chiding
Why had I come all this way?
A figure emerged, particle by particle from the void.
Within moments I recognized this new stranger to be someone who looked
Exactly
Like me.
“What do you want to know?”
My lips seemed to be severed from my jaw as I tried to speak
To my reflection.
It was not an easy thing, to converse with one’s fermion.
Nur chuckled, heartily and true
He was wise unlike the brain that sat churning
In my skull.
“I am the historian,” I breathed, eyes glazing over as pinpricks of silver light bore down from the Colorless sky.
“The historian of astrionics is nothing more than
Me.”
“That’s right,” my reflection said, lips curling into a smirk. “You are the historian, Nur.”
No matter how many times I arrived at the conclusion, I still could not see the
Practicality
Of this.
“Now ask away.”
I looked back at myself, and took in a deep breath.
“If I am the historian,” I began, unsure of the word, “then what is Ask?”
“You know who Ask is,” my reflection snapped, the threads of light creeping across its
Skin.
“He’s my ancestor,” I answered. “But why is he here? Why Australia? Why me?”
“Why Australia?” The other me gave out a hearty chuckle. “Why anywhere? Come.”
A shining green light sprinkled down from the dark heavens, a holographic
Shock
Enveloping me, cradling my limbs, the light filtering down in continuous streams from
The chip that sat, still, hovering, where Ask had left it.
“Why you?”
I was a rocket, my feet suddenly being thrust upward as wings, my head thrown toward starry
Space.
A million balls of energy spun past me, my lungs filling with the forceless aether.
Earth, threshing below me
A thousand miles submerged in
Nothing.
A hundred times smaller than
That chip,
That pesky little life-changing
Speck.
“You know the basics,” I heard my own voice sailing through my veins, “You’re no
Earthling. Not anymore.”
The light of the sun pierced my eyes. Looking up, I saw Ask standing before me.
Just the way I left him.
“Well?” He tightened the knot of his tie. “What did you learn?”
I was taken aback by the start of this rather
Abrupt inquisition.
“I learned that I must be going mad!” I huffed, partly because I was out of breath, and
Partly because
I just
Who knew, anyway?
It was the spectacle of the infinite night that had taken my breath
Away.
“I know that you know what you saw,” Ask said, jabbing a crooked finger at my nose.
He wanted me to recite an exposition of my little
Impromptu excursion past
The stars.
Which was not possible to do, because how could one define an experience so thick with
A single word, a single sentence that
Could never do it justice?
“The Earth was growing smaller,” I began apprehensively, “and I was growing taller, or farther. And it appeared to be that I was the
Astronomer.”
“Why?”
I blinked at him.
Ask blinked back.
“Why?” The word seemed to me the answer in of itself. “Because it could. Because I could.”
Ask’s eyes brimmed with light. “Exactly!”
“Please explain,” I said quickly, to let the alien know that I was not so keen on his
Lesson.
“Remember, your skin is your façade, your words an illusion,” he chanted, “but what’s inside is Representative of the clarity of this
Universe.
That chip that was inside your hand is proof that
From the start
You were part of a transatlantic machine that is
Greater than us.”
Transatlantic machine, thought I. I found sense in these two stifling nouns the way
Lightening could cut one’s sickness
Clean.
“The Earth is indeed a lost ship out in space, abandoned, though not forgotten,”
I
Recounted.
“Yet there is more to it than simply a myth that fosters a
Relic.
It is the multi-dimensional, quasi-physical illustration of
A reality, the reality, our reality
That cannot be manipulated because
It’s in our heads.”
Ask’s eyes twinkled. “What did I tell you, O brave historian?”
A beam crossed my lips. “Not much.”
I’d not felt this elated, this
Cherished
Since I was coaxed into that thousand lumen
Birthing grave.
I really hated the fact that hospitals are
Places of birth and death.
So euphemism is what I resort to
To speak the word.
“You see, what you think is ordinary,” Ask sang, “is only so until you look further, until you
Look
Inward.
Like the Earth, there is more to you
To humanity than simply
Flesh.
The catch is, that sometimes doing so
Requires one to
Rise above and
Gaze down upon all that
Never was
In order to embrace what
Truly
Could
Be.”
The moment seemed to last for an eternity, looking into the alien’s
Eyes.
“So.” My voice was a wisp, a remnant of
Sudden melancholy that
Only comes when
Greater knowledge is gained.
“What now?”
Ask’s lips pressed into a wise, sullen grin.
Behind him
The sun’s bloodiest aurora
Tinted his
Skin
Though so sallow
In rainbow reflections.
“Ekpyrosis,” he whispered, mere syllables of the darkening breeze. “The cycle must be
Crowned.”
I turned slightly, my eyes watering. I could not bear the sight
The one key to my past was
Frittering away
Away, away
With the gloaming.
“Thank you,” I returned, shuffling back toward my truck.
At the last moment, I turned to face that
Strange being
Once
More.
His irises hovered before me, swirling mirrors of my own.
“What do I do now? Everything is—
Changed.”
The eyes fluttered, the threads of light within them thinning, spinning into the
Sky.
“You know what to do, Nur.”
I nodded, a little weepy-eyed
My lungs on fire
Fire like my mind
Reeling out
Into nothing
That vast, glorious nothing that is simply a
Road back to what we know
Best.
I was just an ordinary guy.
Lived in an ordinary house.
Had an ordinary wife.
Ate some ordinary pasta.
And then.
One day.
I came to have the revelation of
A lifetime.
We are all part of a greater
Thing.
A transhumanistic
Celestial, nail-biting
Spiritual holon.
And each one of our deviant minds, with our past kept close in our pockets, will
Nurture it.
Continue it.
Mold it, with wonder into something
Raging.
We may not look farther out, because
They gave it to us, wrapped it in this preciousness called
Life
And brought it
Here.
Right
Here.
Yes, this fragile, warring globe.
One made of metal, cells, dirt and
Steam.
No higher historian need say that
Our imperfect world
Is enough.