Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“…”

“Well there you have it then, I think that’s everyone. Who do we pick?”

“…”

“Then we’ll do the women.”

“…”

“Bottom line is I’m going to keep talking because if I’m talking then I’m not dying. No dead man has ever talked so cogito ergo some one who is talking, in this case me, cannot die, at least not insofar as they are talking per se ad infinitum. Understand? Anyway I’m ready to vote and I vote for Gilligan Glass, father of Angus Glass and lover of beef. I’m sorry what I said before about the beer. It weren’t true father! He’s a good man, a real man. Not like I was. He woke up every morning and did something he didn’t want to do. Now as my life ebbs away I realize I did something I didn’t want to do about three percent of the time. The other ninety-three percent of the time I watched people do what I wanted them to do. What I accomplished the last couple of days was great, no question about that, and don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me that finally achieving this achievement has led to my imminent death by in effect giving me the green light to expire now that I’ve achieved greatness, but the truth remains that what I’ve done is essentially simulate my own life. And now it’s over. I guess the only consolation is that I will not experience death since death is by definition something that cannot be experienced. It’s coming though… I can’t keep talking… there’s simply nothing left to say. Goodbye.”

“Bye.”

“Although I certainly didn’t think it would end with this kind of feeble whimper that’s for sure,” he sighed and sank lower. “No I always thought it would be like the end of Scarface whereby a veritable army would be required to take me out. I thought I would be raging against death with all my final breath. I certainly didn’t think my final demise would come because Alyona’s uncle read in Landlord Magazine that he could save money by installing electric heat. I didn’t think that … father please… help me… Gilligan Glass… that’s who I vote for.”

Angus stopped talking. He was asleep. I knew this because his breathing changed. I was in the chair.

I stayed awake, diving further and further into the chair and always conscious of my eyes being peeled. So I know I was awake when I saw DeLeon come to me, from out of the darkness and into a new slight light, one without independent basis, to show me that his face had been shattered open, its skin barely clinging to the flesh it once covered; the lower cheeks swollen outward in a parody of a smile. I looked away but he wanted me to see. I called to Angus. DeLeon said his face hurt. He said it hurt more with every passing minute. That the hurt didn’t go away, that I should know it continued to exist even after everything else had ceased to. That it was true pain. That I could try to imagine what it was like and still not truly know and that wanting it to go away meant next to nothing because it was a given. He said all that, the bloody remnants of his lips moving up and down exaggeratedly, and I looked away from him and into the black frigidity knowing that Angus was right and I was going to die that night. I pushed DeLeon away and fell forward out of the chair.

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.

THE STORY