A Beginning
There’s a blink.
“There you are,” he says. But of course he’s not a he. That’s a convention which doesn’t really apply. Not that he’s in fact speaking either. That would be absurd. Words don’t carry in space. “I thought you’d be late.”
“Oh, no,” she says. Obviously, neither is she a she. That would be ridiculous. But it’s convenient. “You know I couldn’t miss it.”
“It was my way of saying hi,” he says.
“Sometimes I think you’re made to behave too much like me,” she says.
“Really?” he says.
“Yes,” she says. “Remember the saying about the two sides of the same coin?” Not exactly that saying, but that is what we’ll use. They have no use for coins.
“I cannot say I do,” he says.
“Oh well,” she says. “I’ll explain otherwise. Here we are, you and I, waiting. Expecting, really. You have your function, I have mine, and we’ll perform them as soon as the show commences. But, and here’s my point, what if we reversed our roles?”
“What do you mean?” he says.
“You know whence we come,” she says. “You know who we are. You know what we represent, and what we’ll do. Now think of it: what would keep you from taking over my tasks, and me yours?”
“I… don’t think that would be right?” he says.
“I’m not saying it’s right or wrong,” she says. “This is just a thought experiment. Say you had to perform like I do, Could you really do it? Could you?”
He hesitates. But deep inside he knows she’s right. Point of fact, he thinks she almost always is. Right, that is.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I could.”
“There,” she says. “Point proven.”
“Sorry,” he says, “but which was your point? That we can each… shall we say, switch roles? That’s just an observation.”
“Sometimes you’re so obnoxious,” she says. “I mean the profound implications. We’re basically the same. There’s no real reason for me or you to do our jobs specifically. We could switch places, as you say, and it would be all the same.”
“Your point being?” he says.
“Damn,” she says. “We’re pawns. Pieces on a board. We’ve been assigned roles, we’re doing what we’ve been tasked to do. And we just do it, no questions asked, no rewards expected. And I wonder.”
“Is that all?” he says.
“Exactly,” she says. “There must be something more. Is this some kind of cycle? We’re manipulated, so to say, just like we’re going to be manipulating them. Where’s the end?”
Before he can answer, it happens. There’s a blast and light emerges, blinding them. Only they cannot really be blinded, not completely at least, and certainly not by this phenomenon. So both of them stare directly at the light as it expands, accompanied by the fabric of spacetime itself.
Sometimes I doubt if they understand it all themselves. They should; it’s part of themselves. But have they really stopped to consider all of it? To fathom the meaning of this?
It matters not. They hold hands and soar towards the light, together for the briefest of instants, and then they split and enter it from opposite sides, if such a notion could apply.
Light and Darkness. Chaos and Order. Alpha and Omega.
My children.
I am so proud.
~~~~
This is my accompanying entry for the Weekly Writing Exercise: August 28–September 3, 2017 at the Writer’s Discussion Group on Google+. I am responsible for creating the prompts for the Exercise, so I don’t take part, but I still like to write a story each week.
I’ve been wanting to use art by Andrea Koroveshi in these prompts for quite some time, and this week I finally did it. And that’s it: this is the story it inspired. Sometimes it’s that simple.
