Paradox (307 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Stagger Lee (View user info) at 2006-12-05 08:24:16 EST
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Through the passage of time, (though the passage of time is hard to pinpoint; the sky here never wavers in its dull glare and I have taken to marking out days whenever I succumb to unconsciousness), I have become accustomed to this landscape. The hardened, cracked earth, the unchanging clear sky with no discernible sun, the jagged cliffs and the occasional dead tree. Contact is infrequent out here and mostly undesired, as most of the company I have entertained recently has done nothing but perplex me.
Consider the advances of the Falcon Man. On my second (day?) in this wilderness, he approached me, a dark figure in a stark grey landscape. He wore a suit of some strange black material that shimmered in the strange, directionless light as he moved. Once, I saw lamp oil scattered across the surface of a pond; the fabric of the Falcon Man's suit displayed the same vibrant yet somehow sickening colours, moving slickly across the deceptive darkness. His face was jovial, unassuming, and his eyes dark but sparkling. He walked with the casual assurance of a born warrior or wealthy merchant.
I had been walking aimlessly, not even sure I was not revolving pointlessly about my own axis. I had no craft in the matter of such a journey, through such a hostile environment. No doubt my mind was filled with self-pitying thoughts, bemoaning my plight and other nonsense of a similar nature.
And there he was. I glanced to my left, and when my gaze returned to the miles in front of me, he had appeared. I saw nowhere he could have come from, he was merely there, and as much as a fact of the world as the stunted tree nearby or the gravity that bound me to its surface. He was comparatively distant to me at the time of his appearance, but he approached rapidly and was soon upon me, despite the fact that I had stopped in my tracks at spying another figure in the landscape.
He came close to me, close enough to make me uncomfortable. His eyes were a clear, unremarkable brown. His nose jutted, bladelike, from his face; it lent the overall impression of a bird's beak protruding from his otherwise normal face. His skin was weathered and tanned a deep brown, though clearly not from this sunless sky. He examined me closely, and I dared not move nor speak, such was his regard. I perceived him as a tightly coiled spring.
Then he stepped backwards and looked me up and down one final time. When he spoke, his voice brimmed with certainty and palpable good cheer.
"Not been here long?" he enquired.
I did not reply. I could not reply. He stared at me intensely, and sighed.
"No matter," he proclaimed, "It is of no great consequence. Surely it is intended for us to meet here. This means we have things to share with one another. I suspect we can learn from each other."
Again, no reply found my tongue. I was adrift; stuttering my way around a slate-grey, changeless world, and the contact with another reasoning, speaking being had confounded my voice and silenced my social mechanisms.
Noticing my lack of fortitude, and adapting to it, he continued on his own. "My dear boy!" he exclaimed. He smiled, and the smile was one of trusting companionship. "I see you have not the inclination to address me at this time. That is fine; respond when you are able. In the meantime perhaps you will not mind if I continue to speak?"
I nodded, and he flashed me another of his broad, relaxing smiles.
"Excellent! Now, may I ask, have you given any thought as to your purpose for being here? A nod will suffice." I bobbed my head up and down again, feeling foolish. "Man has always questioned his lot. This is nothing new, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of."
A minor miracle; from somewhere, I discovered my voice.
"Of course I have wondered! I have been adrift on this plain for some time. At least -" I hesitated "- at least I think I have. It is...hard..."
The Falcon Man chuckled. "Indeed," he said. "I must confess, I still don't quite have the working of it; it seems far too confusing. I believe I have been here quite some time, yet I cannot be sure."
His words deflated me. The confidence that he had exuded had led me to believe that he would somehow teach me something; give rise to enlightenment in my mind. But with his cheerful admission of his own ignorance, he had sent my hopes crashing into the muck.
Perhaps some of this dismay registered on my face; he waved a hand nonchalantly in the air.
"Take heart," he proclaimed, "All is not unknown. I have learnt things during my time here, and it would do you good to listen to them. Will you not sit upon the plain with me awhile?"
I accepted his offer. I had no real option. This was my only chance of understanding, or beginning to understand, the situation that I found myself in.
We sat, he and I, under the changeless sky, on that discouraging landscape, where the horizon stretched out, surrounding us completely. I felt as though the pair of us were truly alone, cut off from any semblance of society or humanity.
"Bear in mind," he told me, "that most things I shall tell you, I was merely told myself. A few others I discovered on my own, but the vast majority is mere hearsay." I accepted this with an eager nod of my head. "Perhaps you shall one day speak with the men that have instructed me."
I let this pass, for now. I decided that I might ask him about these men at a later point.
"The first thing I was told about this place is that we all come here because we have lessons to learn. This may seem vague to you, but it is a starting point. We are all in this place for a reason. None of us can claim innocence. The second thing I was told is that in order to escape, we must truly understand this place; yet you cannot gain full understanding without first escaping."
"Surely that is a paradox?" I said, puzzled and slightly annoyed. Where I was promised understanding, I was being presented with vague, apocryphal mutterings.
"I am assured that it is not. I do not pretend to understand such things myself." He seemed vexed by my challenge; for the first time, he was slightly knocked out of his cheerful stride. My question had not been particularly ill-tempered, yet his face was flushed and his jaw tightened noticeably. "I was also assured that this was far from impossible."
"I fail to see how that can be."
Now the anger was even more noticeable. "Ignorance! You have a great deal to learn. And you will shortly be given the opportunity to...progress."
He stood, without preamble, and gestured to his left, pointing in a direction that was apparently like all the others. I watched from my seat on the hardpan plain.
"On your feet!" he exclaimed. "I have not the time for your dallying!"
I rose, not exactly slowly, but exhibiting an air of unhurriedness that was not to his liking. His eyes narrowed.
"Cast your gaze yonder," he said.
I turned my head and looked in the direction he had pointed. When I did so, it was all I could do not to gasp. Before me, where there had been empty plain, there was now a town, sprawling across the landscape. Behind the town were the foothills of a vast range of mountains. None of this had been there (five minutes?) ago.
"Just remember to think in human terms," the Falcon Man told me. I looked at him. He still appeared displeased with me, but his temper seemed to be abating. "That is the limit of what I can tell you." I looked at the town once more, and when I turned back to Falcon Man, he was gone.
I walked towards the town for what seemed to be a short time, and suddenly it loomed upon me. I passed the first building, some sort of residential cottage, and I was seized with a sudden, yawning sense of unreality, that a man-made structure could exist out here, under a changeless, timeless sky.
There were very few signs of life in this town. A few chimneys puffed smoke into the featureless sky, but that was all I could discern. Nobody was travelling the streets, and nobody appeared from their homes to challenge me or speak to me. I made my way to the centre of town, noting the shuttered windows, the locked doors. Had I come to a dawning of false hope? Was the oasis in the desert nothing but a sham, an empty parody of human contact?
It was with these thoughts weighing upon my mind that I entered the central town square, an area almost completely enclosed, slightly different to the rest of the town. The rest of the town was very open, with large gaps between buildings. This square had only two gaps in the wall of buildings; the entrance where I found myself, and a path that appeared to begin the winding ascent into the mountains.
It was then, with the unnatural quiet of the town all around me, that I heard a faint noise. At first, I could not identify the sound; it was distant and elusive. I began walking towards the centre of the square, where a large well was situated. The sound was so faint that I could not hear it over my own footfalls. I stopped and waited, and it was not long before I heard the sound again. This time, I recognised it; sobbing, low and persistent. And I was fairly certain it was coming from the well.
I made haste to the well, placing my hands on the thick stones and peering into the depths. I should not have been able to see into the well, but the strange light of this place somehow enabled me to do so. Floating at the bottom of the well was a small child; a boy, I thought.
"Hello down there!" I called to him. The well made my voice echo in a strange manner.
His head snapped upwards. He paused his sobbing for a moment, and then began crying once more. I looked around. The well's bucket and rope were close at hand. I took up the bucket and cast it into the well.
"Grab a hold of that bucket, young man!" I shouted. He looked at me, and I could not see his expression clearly; but I thought it was disbelief. He fastened his hands on the bucket, and I hauled from the well, soaking wet and shivering with fright and cold. He could not seem to stop staring at me, with that same expression of disbelief.
"Why?" he asked, between teeth that chattered unnaturally loudly in the silent square.
"Why? Why did I help you?"
He nodded, hugging skinny arms across his own chest.
"You were stuck down in the well...why should I not help you?"
"They say that unless I die in the well, the town water goes bad. Sour, they said, sour. It happens every year. If they don't put someone down the well, the water kills people."
I stared at him. Could this possibly be true? If so, how could I justify removing the town's salvation, whatever the personal cost to the boy?
Think in human terms, the Falcon Man had said. But what were human terms? Was it the good of the town? Or the good of the child?
Could I bring myself to put him back in the well?
I could not.
"Would you like to travel with me?" I asked him; as a complete stranger who was dooming his town to possible destruction. But under this changeless sky, everything was beginning to seem normal to me.
He shook his head, and turned away from me, his saviour. He ran, utterly silent, from the square, back into the thick of town.
As for me, I squared my shoulders and left the town by the other exit, beginning my trek into the mountains. At least I now had a trail to follow, and it was an obvious road, leading into the ranges. I paused to rest, beside a large, rounded boulder. I could have sworn that I rested but a moment, but when I opened my eyes, a new surprise presented itself.
The formless sky had given way to a black vista, covered in shining, countless stars. Change had finally wrought itself upon my new world. I rose from the dust, and realised that I could feel the first pangs of hunger stab into my stomach. I realised I had not felt hunger for some time.
And so it was that I resumed my ascent into the mountains, hungry, aching, and alone, but filled with an inexplicable sense of rebirth. The Falcon Man said that I had a great deal to learn. I was beginning to suspect he was right.
User Reviews
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-06-04 23:36:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You know which travel story I really like, despite the piss-poor reviews?
http://www.ubersite.com/m/94845
When I read it again it's all alive in my head and I realize how well I captured it, no matter how uninteresting it may be.
Strange days...
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-06-04 23:22:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Road-off you say?
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-06-04 22:55:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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