New England Writers II

When I got home after our trip I called up my friend Charlie and we made plans to go hang out with damian and George. I had some time to kill before we leftfto i decided to read a story in your brother's SciFi-fantasy compilation. Skimming the contents I saw that Sensible City by Harlan Ellison was a fairly short story so i decided to give it a go. I thought it funny that i picked a story with the name "Ellis" in the author's name, but that's beside the point. Three pages into the story I came across something too ironic to be real. So open your brother's book up to page 202 and check out the third word on the very top of the page. (BM)

 

Glad you liked the story, here it is. Do keep in mind that it is meant to be read aloud so the meter is off kilter in some parts where you don't know how it would be read. I haven't come up with a title yet.

Across the darkness and space between worlds

was a man whose life was most deathly at birth.

He was doomed to despair

and was painfully aware of all sorrow. This poor man was sick of the earth.

So long he had looked under rocks and in books

over ranges of peaks and down valleysides lush,

In temples and huts hung from cliffs and sharp juts

and the best advice gained was "Do not ask. Hush!"

What this man sought could never be bought,

Nor could it be sold, or told by a sage.

It could not be seen, nor could it have been

any thought that one gleans from mere words on a page.

And so weak and perplexed this man and his hex,

this chap and his quest were to perish or worse. When one day it struck that no philosopher's luck

would ever reach this side of the vast universe.

So here starts the tale of a man setting sail

seeking every last vision and every last sound.

His journeys would wend across oceans and then

across galaxies with ends all in mystery abound.

He would struggle and spit to bring food to his lip

as if living, he'd quip, was no longer renowned.

After all he'd go far, past the silence of stars,

still to see no perpetual truth to be found.

 

*

It was late where he's from. It was dark. It was glum.

But no stitch of humdrum would discourage him tonight.

For he hovered aloof, in both mood and in proof

A hundred miles in the sky. Where he's from, quite a height.

On his left was a wall, bright and blue, vast and tall.

It was Earth and it widened and swelled in his sight.

He was nervous, but glad. A bit scared, but not sad.

And in parting his rocketship tacked to the right.

The main engines roared and the whole ship unmoored,

Sending sparks toward the horde of lost apes and their plight.

It was quick and most swift when he flicked the last switch

and the rocket ran off in the night. Then for weeks it was black.

Sickly pitch, it was black. For deep space is no ally, nor cousin of nice.

There were stars all about, but they glimmered without

any comfort, they soothed like reflections in ice.

He was anxious at first, then was lonely, then worse.

Then at last no more vacuum could his spirit bear.

He would shudder and quake with his eyes shut to make

all the emptiness shake from his sense of what's there.

But the landscape was specks. In the void, merely flecks

of dust floating and lonesome about in null air.

And it saddened him deep while his mind fought to keep

any shred of what is with no-thing everywhere.

And then after five years of himself and no peers,

a small dot began shining a bit brighter then the rest. Soon it came to be seen, in the ship's main viewscreen

as a plump violet planet with cities, he guessed.

"I do wonder," he thought, "If they have what I've sought."

And he swung his ship round and some buttons he pressed.

While the planet drew near he felt hardly a fear,

but an eagerness laced with release from distress.

ship gently set down on a strange looking mound

with tall spires of wire all abound in a grid.

Across this mesh came three black squares in a chain

They stopped near him, began to rotate and then did.

His thick eyebrows arced as his braincells embarked

on a circuit to solve what it was he was seeing.

The things looked like cubes on a webwork of tubes,

Could it be that these shapes were intelligent beings?

They did seem to breathe, so he chose to concieve

that they just may be able to grant him his wish.

But before he could speak,

the largest cube squeaked then piped out in near-perfect dear-earthly english:

"Who are you, organic and bipedal friend?

What indeed brings you here where the numbers don't end .

As you see, we are three squarish souls in a sea

of mathematics. So what is the question you send?"

At this point our man glanced around the bright sands

seeing numbers in rows up on planks held by rods.

"I wonder," said he, "If you could, logically,

make a mortal like me become one of the Gods.

For I wish to endure all the mysteries and worlds

that do grace this expansive encasing of space.

And for this I've endeavored before now until never

Seeking any technique to exist everyplace.

" The cubes were aghast at the question he asked,

at the query that passed through their rational brains.

So aghast that quite fast they did scurry en masse,

they did hurry right past him, three squares in a chain.

He hollered and shouted at them to return,

But the cubes would not answer this man of Math's bane.

So he shut tight his lips and turned back towards his ship,

Blasting off feeling lowly, alone, and insane.

Then for ten more light-years, He, confined with his fears,

cursed the rocket that bore him across space and time.

Such a pointless attempt to make one's self exempt

from the firm course of death that lay fixed and undying.

But reguardless and still he would struggle until

all the marrow had dried in the core of his bones.

For if his life should end, the same riddle would send

many millions of men all away from their homes.

His next stop was Rigel, a star in Orion,

Where he set down upon the first planet in sight.

He would learn that the whole of this world did not turn

leaving one side in darkness, the other in light.

Its peoples had split into two cruel outfits

which had long waged a war with no victory won.

All their concepts collided, their logic, divided

They were opposite poles of which progress had shunned.

Just after landing, our man took to demanding

that eternal existence be shown to him soon.

Both armies stopped dead, quit their fight and instead

stopped the bashing of skulls to the old battle tunes.

The Army Of Light said the trick was to fight

not to win, but for losses quite evenly strewn.

And The Army Of Night said the trick was the right

kind of balance between suffering and inflicting wounds.

For Eternal to them was the war with no end,

And without it both sides would most certainly lose.

Because all that they knew of their world cut in two

was perpetual warfare with red liquid hues.

Their war had worn down all their smiles to frowns,

and their minds were un-thinking, mere bloodstained balloons.

This puzzled our hero whose fights numbered zero

And so he took off to watch them from their moon.

Weeks would go by while he watched them and sighed

while he watched them and cried for no side would retract.

One army would stack all its troops and attack

and the other would suffer before striking back.

This it was for too long, and it seemed far too wrong

that the same colored blood should be spilled steadily.

"I don't see," said our man, "how these armies have spanned

the great width of their living to fight readily!"

Then a voice spoke: "Well simply, you don't understand

by the very same reasons you came to this land.

For you with each breath wage a war against death

and you know to that end you are dead where you stand.

All the ones down below that will clash blow by blow

form a balance that lives far past death and life pinned

under mere mortal minds for the slow path of time

proves that all mortal matter is dust in the wind."

The man who had spoke with the wise tounge of folk

then stepped out from behind the large rock where he hid.

He nodded three times, once for each head he had

and then smiled a triple-toothed simper he did.

"You, my young friend cannot realize the end

that undoes all the binding of fleshly delight.

For each life that is born there's a knife that is worn

on the hip of a warrior sunken in fight.

It is balance unending,

not Chaos defending its birthright with Order the King of the day.

Whilst some see a battle to unhinge and rattle

the fibers of nature. They weave not astray.

The ultimate truth

is that there is no truth in the glorious song of the cosmic array.

For Chaos and Order dispute zero borders.

They do not conflict, they just smile and play.

But Chaos ignored will increase and come doubled,

as meaning overhwelms the unordered and troubled.

It becomes a sad tale of cigars stains and ale, When Chaos goes dim and remains so unbubbled.

But if Order is out then a good friend may pout,

To the end of the world Id uncured.

And though Chaos would Shout: "Cheery Fun!", without doubt,

All alone he ain't half of absurd.

So practice the two of the left and right shoe,

Else the preference becomes uncontrolled.

Faded patriot are you if the end means pursue

a Two,not of new, but of old."

Our man made no noise for a minute or more

and then spoke to floor with a brash certainty.

"My dear man, what you've said has gone over my head.

And I only have one, whereas you... You have three.

I noticed your lecture brought forth the conjecture

that I'm just a young fool who attempts to dodge death.

But I tell you, my fellow, my gentle moon friend

that my aim is for much more than unceasing breath.

I wish to see all of all things small and tall

and all rings of all planets and all stars about.

For when I have seen all that ever has been

then at last I'll be free and deep sorrow I'll rout.

" The three-headed sage shook his head in a rage.

"Oh, that is what you think!" the man slowly said .

"Immortality is no Eden, you'll see.

If you think you'll be free then you're already dead."

And with that the wise man opened up his right hand

where a vial of pills sat still and unlabeled.

"Take one every century and life will extend

past the regular endpoint and into the fabled."

Our man was elated as his young mind slated

all the myriad lands that his eyes were to see.

Towards the rocket he ran while he thanked the old man

and tore off to the heavens at nearly light speed.

He ate the first pill with some water he swilled

and began his long lifely adventure indeed.

For it seemed to him then that he of all men

from the death-grip on life was most pleasantly freed.

And oh he sailed far over ten billion stars

all immersed in the wonders of lofty creation

To him one earth year was a minute of sheer

unclocked joy thanks to relative space-time dilation.

No limits he saw as his rocket would yaw

pitch and roll over nebulae, quasars, and moons.

On the nice ones he's stay for monthful of days

then move on riding curved space across the vacuum.

To Altair and Vega and Red Betelgeise

then to Castor and Pollux and Procyon 2.

Around Delta Cephei and past Arcturus Mu

towards the protostar birthyards of Deneb he flew.

Over Cygnus X-1 the most dreaded black sun

then to Aldebaran where the local wormhole

took our man to Pleiades, past Mira and Hyades

to Mizar, Polaris, Hamal and Algol.

And then one calm day on Antares 3-a

a sight that for eons had displayed no trace

on our hero's dazed mind now amazed his old eyes

as he gazed paralyzed on an earth woman's face.

His heart pumped and soared for her beauty was more

then all starlight aglow in one instant of bliss.

He would gladly await coldest death if his fate

did allow for just one slow celestial kiss.

As it turned out she had also had doubts

about staying on earth with no true place to roam.

So she stole a ship, too, and within it she flew

far away from that zoo, that dull ungodly home.

And she and our man fit together in hand

as if someone had sculpted the two first as one

and then split them in half so at last when they passed

through each other their love would burn bright as the Sun.

When he was with her all his cares were a blur

and his quest to see all seemed absurd and insane.

That it was all until he checked up on his pills

to see that in the vial just one did remain.

He took it down dry in one last selfish try

to defeat the grim spectre of death and his scythe.

And then when she died Oh! He cried and he cried

for it was their great love that his greed had outlived.

A century passed while his grief had amassed

into mountains of sadness all tragic and dire.

Not a thought did he think and not once while he blinked

did he ever see anything but her all afire.

He went back to the sage who had lengthened his age

with the curse of the live-giving life-taking pills.

He said: "Now I know what you meant long ago.

I now understand why eternity kills."

And then both were silent as if with no sound

the echo of her in his heart did resound.

He fell to the ground and with clenched fists did pound.

While the old wise man spoke to him words most profound:

"If I were light I'd be everywhen at once, and at once,

everywhere I would be, I would be.

Ah, a dream maybe so, but a dream we all hunt,

we all hunt from the mountains to the cities and sea.

But in the corners of rooms, where the dust and the gloom

and the ashes of dreams seem to spill,

Lie things just the same as the thunder and rain

past the patter of drops on your own windowsill.

You look the wrong way, you seek not today

but tomorrow forever my tormented friend.

Star-weary, alone, you should seek your own home

for it's there that you will gaze on your own moon again.

All the distance you've soared, all the universe you've toured

Please return and curl up where there is warmth and worth.

Do not cross such broad space, vacuumed hell is this place!

The answer's not outward, the answer is Earth."

And with that our man sped back towards home while he said:

"What fool I have been!" and he wept and he wept.

"I have spolied my life chasing stars in the night.

Oh, my whole lot of living was vain and inept!"

Down cheeks his tears ran 'till he fell, half a man

on the floor of his ship with no answer except

The one fact that in travel his pride had unraveled

leaving naked the true soul from which answers leapt.

In his search for ageless and unending breath

he forgot that real living near scared him to death.

Then his strife disappeared. And like that he saw clear.

The puzzle was him and the secrets he kept.

What he'd sought he had found and all worlds did resound

in his being as out of his rocket he stepped.

At last in his place, with a smirk on his face,

He laid down on his Earth and he slept and he slept.