by Gann, Myles
“What does this mean? I asked him that same question. His answer was so sublime, so simple, that I just wrote it down and allowed it to drift from my mind. The more I looked and the more I thought, the more I realized he wanted me to think. Allow me to read a quote from his answer: ‘The world has kept spinning without itself, and to the sky they’ve been screaming why, why, why, but the question that has always needed its answer will rain back with a steady fall.’ I suddenly found myself here, and I realized I was always here and always questioning. In this case, I didn’t even understand the question. I realized that was the point. It wasn’t about asking the question or seeking an answer. The only reason that this man was across from me is because he truly had no need to be anywhere else, which is unheard of in the world of psychology. He answered me in that fashion to ease my burden; he knew that it didn’t matter if I understood or not. He knew he was going to do the right thing either way, to save the world, no matter what.
“This is a man that said ‘I truly hope you have heard this before, but perhaps it is for the best that you have not,’ and he said that because he knew it was the right thing for everybody to hear. Thank you.”
The crowd stood and applauded with slight enthusiasm. Kain looked out past the first row to see many confused faces and absent stares for a few moments, but as he stepped from behind the podium, all eyes snapped back up to him and the applause grew slightly. He nodded and waved to them, to his proud wife, and found his eyes drawn to the back of a couple walking towards the exit in the aisle way; the man on the left wearing a brown coat and hat and the slightly shorter woman hugging onto his arm, brown hair flowing atop the back of a red hooded jacket.
Epilogue
June 6th, 2088
Nature saw itself glisten against a nacreous black in thirteen-foot by twenty-five mile snapshots. Along one direction the photographer moved; the lens never focused for more than two seconds, and never compiling more than thirty photos an hour. Fourteen photos clicked and passed. The fifteenth froze.
Latched metal released into the weightless air and didn’t fall. A wooden obelisk, half of thirteen long, slid from under fifteen and into two hands. Fifteen couldn’t enjoy its view: the high maples, large in its image, to the small path between low brush, and the tiniest glimpse of a daisy, four stalks of lavender, and the sways of willows that combed the wind as it blew. Between the scene and its final print stood black and white and light brown; blue, lightly colored air disturbed the swirl inside the void, and darker shades circled nature and found a new way for it to create.
Black, white, blue, and brown moved gently into the background. They did not saunter, gangle, waddle, speed, or cruise. They walked.
“Why are we here?”
“To do the right thing.”
“This is right?”
They stepped into the meadow. “This is how she lived. This is how she loved. She did not live for herself, and not for anybody else. Not confined in a room or open to nature’s bounty. She didn’t have the divine spark. She couldn’t always tell the truth, but never lied.” Their feet stopped at a hole. Their arms began lowering. “She never traveled east or west, never looked up or down. All the world was a level plane, and at her basest level, she was a pair of eyes, a voice, and a beating heart. Nothing more.” They went to their knees. The obelisk disappeared slowly into the hole. “She had everything a person was supposed to have. She did not shout or flutter her eyes or bear her heart. She simply told the world that they existed, showing it the greatest love in the smallest of ways. In the end, she was what saved the world. Not a single person ever knew about that, and that has made all the difference.”
Bottom had struck. Both hands released and stood the bodies again. Blue lifted its clasp, carrying an earthly comforter without a grip. The white hand clutched a noble copper. From his hand it gently placed along the flat summit of the wood. The comforter tail was gently tucked before the rest of the brown bubbled clumps fell gently. “Sleep now. What did it say?”
“It is not that my heart is cold, or my world is split, or that my feet will travel no more. It is that I have found through my endless march a path I must travel alone, and where your warm hand cannot reach. Farewell, farewell to Everybody, although Nobody will miss you so.”
Nature was caught in the meadow with them, breathing against its shallow lungs while offering nothing but trustful sighs; the last waft of sadness left sensation, and they were suddenly caught in a moment without air, and here the collection of all that remained stood.
“But….”
“No.”
“She….”
“Is how she is.”
“We….”
“Will be what we are. No matter how much we loved her.”
Nature caught its breath again, and suddenly the world moved. Trees wavered against an early season, gentle clouds covered the worst of the penetrating sun while fleeting into the pointed ocean, all the while the many feet on the many plains of the one world felt neither chill nor pause in their hastening of day light’s game.
“What about us?”
“What was started will be finished. The end will never come. The world will never know the many things done. The right will be forever protected because it is right. Death will not come until it is meant to. Nobody will be here.”
They walked back.
“What about them?”
“They won’t shed a tear, or raise a candle, or shovel a scoop, or pay a pound. They will live as she has died.”
“Would you join her?”
“Only if it was the right thing to do. She will be waiting and smiling, as everybody should.”
They walked more, never realizing that the hidden photographer had captured every bit of this, from beginning to end.