From the Fiery Depths to Starpara
Book One in the Metagopolis Tetralogy
by NEAL SILVESTER
Chapter 1
Gregor Townsend exists for a wise and glorious purpose.
With those words imprinted on his brain, the white-haired young man at the center of our story woke out of his dream and into a nightmare. He arrived in a panic, gasping and choking, as if he had just emerged from the sea after almost drowning. The world he found himself in contrasted harshly with his dream, as different as the depths of an ocean would be to a creature of the sky. Indeed, this was not far from the truth.
He sat upright in a bed, adrenaline flowing through him thick as blood, knowing nothing, remembering nothing, except that he had to be somewhere, had to rush out the door and get there as quickly as possible. He looked down and all around, finding himself naked and alone, the room around him lit a low, cool blue like just before dawn.
That Sentence that had accompanied him into this new reality held him in its clutches, repeating itself over and over again as consistently as the tide.
Gregor Townsend exists for a wise and glorious purpose.
He looked in consternation around the room, searching for answers, taking everything in as the overarching question of WHY? raged and slashed through him. He recognized nothing. Not even himself. All that populated his mind now was his memory of the dream world he had awoken from. But as second after second passed, the water of memory slipped through his careless fingers. And so a desperation to retain the sights and sounds he still remembered rose. And still he knew he had to get somewhere on time, very soon.
He bolted out of bed and over to a desk. There he found a pad of paper and a pen, which he took in his hands. He scribbled furiously the first three words that came to him.
soar
sky
light
That was it. Only those fragments remained. And soon, they too had gone away. He stared at the paper desperately, his mind totally empty. And knowing nothing but a compulsion to leave this little cottage and get there as quickly as possible, he set about getting ready.
He scrambled about the room, finding clothes, putting them on, and impulsively stuffing his notebook and pen into his satchel. He burst out the door and into the dawning world giving only brief mental mention to the notion that this wise and glorious purpose of Gregor Townsend had something to do with his need to get to this place, wherever it was, on time.
Outside he ran down a beaten brown path that led out from the door of his cottage and bisected a vast green field. His surroundings hardly changed from minute to minute. He paid little attention to them in any case; nor did he give any thought to where it was that he was going. His mind was fixated on his goal of getting there, and his body seemed to know where “there” was. He did not question it. Just continued to run.
After a while he heard the song of a bird. He checked the sky and found a little blue songbird flying just above him, matching his pace. Turning back to his path, he found he was shortly to come upon a fork in the road. As he drew nearer his steps slowed and the adrenaline that had been pumping through him seemed to fade away. He finally came to a full stop where the path diverged.
To the right it led north between two mountains. To the left, south into nothing. After a mere four seconds, he was promptly pounced upon.
The thing that pounced turned out to be a cat, but he did not realize this immediately. Totally overcome by surprise, he simply fell over. The cat, an autumn-colored calico, managed to hold onto his shoulder, where it had landed, by inserting its claws deep into the skin. In his pain and confusion, the young man wrenched the cat, and subsequently some of his own flesh, away from him.
He sat there absurdly in the dust, staring at the arrogant cat as it started licking dust and human oil from its fur coat. Eventually it stopped its elitist bathing and stared back at him, calm and straight. It had green, unblinking eyes. To the cat our white-haired young man said his first spoken words.
“So, what’s your explanation for all this?”
The thrill of urgency that had fueled his journey had all but tuckered out. Only a nervous churning in his stomach remained. He sensed that he was already late.
But late to what?
This simple question kicked off many more; it triggered a veritable onslaught of uncertainty, doubt, darkness and mystery. And for the first time he was able to truly take in the full existential crisis he was experiencing. He sat there, covered in dirt and dust, realizing he had no idea who he was, where he was going, or why he existed at all.
A wise and glorious purpose?
Questions zoomed again and again through his mind, all the questions one would ask upon finding oneself in the middle of nowhere, with no memory and no sense of identity, only an implicit driving desire to reach some unknown destination for some unknown reason.
A wise and glorious purpose...
His wandering eyes, following the little blue songbird still in the sky, found something else. Way high up in the middle of the blue was a lone black cloud. It did not bear the exact appearance of a cloud — it seemed to be stationary, solid, and solitary, no other clouds around it, completely out of place. Not quite a cloud, but some dark mass hanging there in the clear blue sky, watching over the world below.
The bird landed next to him in the dust. The cat rubbed against his legs. Its purring quelled his anger.
“Don’t attack the bird, okay?” he said to the cat as his breathing calmed. “You can come along if you promise that.”
The cat looked directly at the bird, then sounded a shrug with a mew. The bird, meanwhile, seeming to be as curious as a cat, hopped forward until it was near the cat, who bridged the rest of the distance. They touched noses. The bird let forth a cheerful chirp and flapped back into the sky.
After being assured of the cat’s admittedly reluctant commitment to refrain from eating the bird, the white-haired young man’s journey continued, his curiosity concerning his own mystery burning and propelling like fuel. The cat trotted at his feet and the bird flew overhead. The grassy fields grew thicker with foliage and shrubbery. He walked, then walked, and then continued to walk.
...a wise and glorious purpose. The meaning of that Sentence would give reason to everything. It had to be connected with his sense of urgency, his rush to get out the door and run north along the path. He had awakened with both of those things, and almost nothing else. That was why he kept walking. To understand. To discover. To know.
And soon a town entered his sights, nestled right between the two mountains. This, as he would come to find out, was Middleton, northernmost town on the central island of Pentasma. Cobblestone streets, quaint wooden homes, smoke pillowing out of forges, steam sighing from vents, a market based on shipping and minerals unearthed from nearby Mt. Oniz, all accented by the crisp salty air of the sea.
The town breathed, it laughed, it sang. Children gamboled about, chasing each other, playing games, getting in the way of their parents, who in turn went about casually doing their daily chores and discussing the latest gossip or news with friends and neighbors. Smiles greeted smiles and happy voices filled the air, creating a relaxed, carefree atmosphere for all. It almost made the young man want to smile, too.
A child bumped into him, and he heard words that made his would-be smile vanish:
“Sorry, Gregor!” and the little girl ran off, giggling.
Gregor Townsend. That was his name. The one who existed for a wise and glorious purpose. As he had suspected, even assumed. At last he had something concrete. And in hearing it he found that he had always known his name, though it had not existed in his mind until this very moment. A puzzle piece fit snugly into place. One of thousands left to connect.
He fluttered a forgiving wave at the girl and continued passing through the homes until he came upon the commercial heart of the town, where the dusty road turned to cobblestones, where he found even more busy, bustling crowds. Some of the townspeople dragged carts around, others dragged children; many, including Gregor, seemed to travel to and fro with no particular goal in mind. Conversations of differing tones and volumes between seller and buyer or betwixt customers gave the town a happy, buzzing murmur. Most of the stores around him stood strong as relatively permanent structures. For example, currently before him stood a hardware store whose shape was like that of a giant turtle shell. But today being a festival day shops and stalls of a more temporary nature had sprung up, capitalizing on the crowds.
He ambled eagerly through the streets. Somewhere in this town lay his destiny. The “wise and glorious purpose” for which he presumably existed. It was his own duty to find it. Find where he was meant to be.
“Hey!” cried a young boy, pointing at Gregor. “You didn’t have him yesterday.”
It took Gregor a moment to realize that the boy wasn’t pointing to him exactly, but to the cat who had been perched on his shoulder this whole time.
“Didn’t I?” Gregor said, his head tilted and a quizzical look on his face.
This confirmed his existence before this morning. He was a real person. He had a life in this town. That was certainly something to go on.
But the cat had not been with him.
“Did I have anybody else with me yesterday?” Gregor went on. Here he could start his pursuit of truth.
The boy shook his head.
“Did you see where I went?”
The boy shrugged. Gregor frowned. There were probably better ways of going about this than interrogating a child.
“Is he one of Caroline’s?” asked the boy, again indicating the cat.
This time it was Gregor’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know,” he said. “Just a new addition.”
His empty answer reminded him of his empty mind, which made his heart feel empty. Then he felt ashamed of his emptiness and quieted down, his burning curiosity doused. But his stomach continued to churn.
The boy looked at Gregor as if he didn’t know what to say, and ran off with his friends. Gregor stared after him and watched as he met up with some friends. Gregor wondered if he had friends, too....
Then something happened to make him realize the answer was Yes, he did indeed have friends too. The cat, out of nowhere, dug in its claws deep into his shoulder and gave a slight yowl. Gregor turned to face the cat to ask an irritated why? — but then he saw what the cat had been warning him of: about five feet away from his face, and covering ground fast, was some sort of giant reptile pulling a heavy, awkward cart behind it. One does not ordinarily stop in the way of a swiftly-trotting dragon, and the cat had reminded Gregor of this fact in case he had forgotten it along with everything else, because that’s what friends do.
Gregor jumped twice; the first in fright and the second to get out of its way. No driver directed the beast; it seemed to know its way around town. And, in fact, the rest of the townspeople stepped casually out of its way as if this were a normal occurrence. It was.
Now safely in the wake of the uncaring animal, Gregor had time to examine it more carefully, albeit from a rapidly-increasing distance. It was a dragon if he’d ever seen one. But compared to the dragons he knew (but could not remember ever seeing), it was like a lapdog to a wolf. The only remnants of wings were flaps of green skin hanging from its arms; the head was crowned by small, red, webbed fins and its claws looked filed off. Perhaps this dragon, if such it could be called, had had all its potentially dangerous qualities, both in disposition and in physicality, bred out.
As the “dragon” disappeared into the crowds Gregor gave the cat a pat on the head and a word of gratitude.
“Thanks,” he said. The cat purred graciously and nudged its head further into Gregor’s scratching fingers. The little blue songbird landed on a rooftop corner and let out a tweet only Gregor could hear. It was then Gregor decided to name his animals.
“Macata,” he whispered, looking at his cat. And then, looking at the bird, “Buzby.”
Just then a loud, hearty voice rang out, and a hand gripped his catless shoulder.
“Gregor Townsend! Your head is in the stars, young man. We certainly have a job ahead of us today.”
Chapter 2
An enthusiastic mustache and a pair of wide-open crazy eyes invaded Gregor’s vision.
“We are going to glean what afflicts you,” the hearty voice said. “Oh yes...oh yes oh yes oh yes. Notice, Gregor Townsend — if that is who you truly are — those four ‘Oh yes’es. What could that mean, exactly? Does it have to mean something? Everything means something. The question is, however, how much does the underlying meaning actually matter? These questions must be answered, and that is what I do. I will help you in your quest free of charge.”
Gregor was at first quite startled, and then thoroughly nonplussed.
“I’m sorry...I don’t — ”
“You don’t recognize me?”
“N — ”
“Not even a little bit?”
“I — ”
“A smidgen?”
“ — ”
“A hair? One of your white hairs? You don’t recognize me even in the slightest?”
“No, I do not.”
“Then right-o, young man! My detecting skills have finally hit their stride. Clooney is my name. Detective Daniel Clayton Clooney. I detect. I analyze. I solve. That is what I do.”
Detective Daniel Clayton Clooney wore a long, buttoned-up overcoat and a pair of dirty brown boots. His small eyes changed color in differing degrees of light. His eyebrows matched his mustache; big bushy things that were either threateningly intense or unexpectedly disarming, depending on his mentality at any given time. Unkempt black hair adorned his very animated face. He was the kind of man whose mouth flung spittle with every other word. It made Gregor blink a lot and feel very uncomfortable.
He put his hand on Gregor’s back as if they were old friends and started leading him through the throngs. Macata jumped down from Gregor’s back and navigated the forest of feet, only straying from Gregor’s shoes long enough to sate his feline curiosity on various random smells and things.
“Notice, Gregor Townsend, how here, in the markets, there are no decorations for the festival. No posters or banners or statues or games for the little ones. All the Vanos stuff is way up over there, in the central town square and beyond.” He motioned in a northerly direction.
“The what stuff?”
“Vanos. The Great Bird. The point of this whole town. The purpose of this place and its people.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Oh, I am getting ahead of myself. Vanos, the Great Bird, blessed with four wings, a veritable god among men. Or a god among birds, really. Saved humanity by taking a man and woman from a plagued continent to a plague-free continent. Many celebrate the damned myth still, though as you can see there aren’t any of the outward showings of festivity here, down in the markets. Just plain and simple bartering. But notice the crowds! Notice the commerce, the trading, the business! And take note of this, young Townsend: they aren’t this busy at any other time of the year! The town uses Vanos to promote its own economic growth. So they have all the decorations and nice things in their own nice little places, but no one cares down here in the markets. The decorations don’t matter except for garnish. The garnish of the Great Bird. Unnecessary for the most part, unnecessary for economic growth, unnecessary for wealth and riches! Do you see what I mean about the town? It exists to continue its existence. And not only to do that, but to flourish! To expand its boundaries and to enlarge the wallet! And you can see how it does. That is the reason for this town: to compound itself. It works for the holiday. The Day of Vanos is the point. All of these, the shops and stalls, your hardware store, all the vendors and all the soliciting that goes on down here —
“All of them, abusing the concept of growth. Which would not be a terrible crime; people have to eat and people have to build, but that is what drives their life. That is why they exist. Material things! Some of us, though, know different things. Some of us understand that there is more. The call, Gregor, the call. The call to attain something greater, some other higher purpose, or at the very least something higher than making money and growing economically. I myself have not had much opportunity to go elsewhere, and so I stay here, honing my deduction skills and growing ever sharper, day by day. That is my purpose.”
Given the subject matter, these words made a great impression on Gregor Townsend, and he stood there contemplatively for some time. It was in that twinkling moment that something inside Gregor... changed. A hidden trait...amplified.
“Thank the sky for them, though, huh?” Clooney went on. “Without all those characters who do real work for a living and don’t really care about the finer things in life, we wouldn’t have those finer things at all. Being an intellectually honest analyst, I must admit this.”
Gregor waited until he was sure Clooney was done before speaking.
“Okay, uh, Mr. Clooney, sir...you said you were going to help me understand things, help me figure out — ”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Townsend! Good heavens, we walked two paces and I was already off on another of my tangents. That’s what the detective does, though. Detect. Analyze. Solve. Look at every single thing from every possible perspective. The analyst’s mind will go where it pleases. But sometimes, I agree, it needs to be restrained.
“Now obviously the mission with you here is to bring you back to your senses. Although I would wonder what for. All you have to go back to is the hardware store. Aha!”
This made little sense to Gregor, but Clooney took out a small pad of paper from one coat pocket and a pen from another and jotted something down, presumably the rhyme he had stumbled upon.
“Well then, Gregor,” said Clooney, tucking away his things, “Let’s get you going on this recovery process.”
“I do have a question, though.”
“Fire away.”
“How did you know — how did you know to come talk to me? What about me did you analyze — ”
“I first saw it in your movements,” Clooney answered, cutting Gregor off. “The way you were so shocked at the existence of Legole. The cat helping you get out of Legole’s path. A cat I haven’t seen before. Also in your hair. Your white hair is unusually messy today. And in your eyes. Detached, wondrous. You looked lost. It all happened very rapidly, and I acted on instinct. Now, explain your dilemma a bit further, please.”
“There really isn’t much to tell. I woke up this morning without any memory.”
“None?”
“Nothing.”
“No memory. What about memory of memory?”
The dream world came to mind. A dream he couldn’t remember one whit of, except for the process of awakening and trying to keep it from slipping through his figurative fingers.
“I remember having a dream. But I don’t know what happened in it.”
“Then we shall have to determine who you are, Gregor Townsend. I know who you were; I had spoken with you on occasion in yesterdays past, but I think it should be crystal clear that today is not yesterday. Today I’ll help as much as I can in the retrieval of your yesterdays, but you are going to have to make up the tomorrows yourself.”
They stopped by a shop called Vognettle’s Battle Wares. A big bald man stood behind the counter. Clooney pushed Gregor forward and presented him as if displaying a product he was trying to sell.
“Who do you think this young man is, Mr. Vognettle? What do you see in him? Check his eyes,” he said sagely. “Those are the most important.”
“I see Gregor Townsend,” said the man in a mean voice and a matching expression. “The white-haired kid. What of it, Clooney? Clooney loony?”
“Now there’s a man who does not know subtlety,” Clooney said, leaning in close to Gregor as if he were giving him valuable advice. “Best leave him out of our journey.”
The reference to his hair made Gregor glance around self-consciously. No one else in the entire crowd had hair like his.
The detective guided Gregor to a spot just a few yards away from a fruit seller, who was surrounded on three sides by carts and baskets full of apples, bananas, and cherries.
“Observe these times, Gregor. This fruit, that man....notice his hawk-like eyes over all of his produce. The eyes are the most important. Small, beady brown eyes. Hovering over, constant vigilance; the fruit is his and he will not let it be stolen. His hands, look at his hands: if not dealing directly with a customer then they are floating over the fruit. Almost like an extra pair of eyes, standing guard. Now, let’s see if we can shake things up a bit.”
He turned left and right, looking for something. Or someone.
“Ah, here we are. Perfect timing.” He reached out his hand to touch the shoulder of a small but belligerent-looking boy passing right by them. “Nicholas Halladio, stay here a moment.”
“My name’s Nick, Clooney,” snapped the boy.
Clooney knelt on one knee to speak at the boy’s level. “Nicholas, I want to make a deal with you. I will give you three coins —”
“What kind of coins are they?”
“Unimportant. I will give you three coins if you manage to snatch an apple without getting caught.” He indicated the barrel full of apples on the far side of the stand.
“Is the apple mine afterward?”
“Also unimportant. But yes.”
The boy went immediately about this business, and ducked into the crowd.
“Or no,” said Clooney as an afterthought. “Would it be his? The apple.... Gregor, tell me what you think.”
“I’m not sure — ”
“Would that imply relativity then? That the apple would be his if he stole it. I suppose by nature it is relative... If there is more than one opinion, more than one judgment, then, by logic and by Vanos, it would be a relative situation.”
Clooney drifted away, lost in thought. Gregor took the time to think back on Clooney’s words of purpose, of the existence of this town, and the words of his own awakening. He found them, that Sentence, still repeating in the back of his mind, but much more softly now, like simmering cider, or a babbling brook.
Gregor only half-watched as the clever boy handed over one coin to the seller and picked up an apple at the same time. It took him a moment before he realized what he saw. The boy then drew back into the crowd for a moment before popping up right next to Gregor and Clooney.
“I have reached a conclusion,” stated the detective out of his stupor, looking down at Nicholas. “The apple would be yours.”
“Of course it’s mine. See?” He tossed it in the air and caught it again. “I want my three coins.”
“I’ll give them to you out of my good nature and intellectual honesty,” said Clooney.
He reached into his pocket, withdrew three of the same kind of coin the boy had paid one of to the fruit-seller, and dropped them one at a time into the boy’s open, waiting hand. Gregor, smiling, noted the boy’s cleverness but Clooney remained unaware.
“So how does that help me regain my mind, Mr. Clooney?” Gregor asked after Nicholas had run off.
“It helps you thus: that boy learned from his father those tricks of the trade we just witnessed. Slyness. Subtlety. Thievery.”
“And cleverness,” Gregor added.
“No doubt. So we can tell who that boy is and what he will one day become by looking at his parents. He will look like his father and act like his father. You wonder who you are. You wonder why you are here. Look to your progenitors, Gregor Townsend. It is they who you will be like, and thus who you are.”
“Progenitors?”
“Parents. Ancestors. Your heritage. Kittens grow up to be cats, and pups into dogs.” At this moment, Macata leaped up onto Gregor’s shoulder. “The offspring of a cat will always grow up to be a cat. You want to find your source? You want to know who you are? Look to your parents.”
“I wasn’t aware I had parents to look for. Don’t I live alone?”
“Well yes. I suppose you do.”
The conversation stalled for a moment. Gregor broke the silence.
“What are the coins?”
“Money,” said the detective.
“I sort of figured that out on my own.”
“Oh, yes. I had forgotten about your forgetfulness. Anyway, those coins were rences. Five rences make up a lontai. Twenty lontais make a namenah. A hundred namenahs is a cenamenah. To put it in perspective, one rence could buy one apple.”
Despite his own words, Clooney remained oblivious to what little Nicholas Halladio had done, and they continued on. They stopped at a little shop selling jewelry.
“And here, Gregor, we see a perfectly practical object lesson,” he said, opening the door for him.
“May I help you find something?” said the round and small jeweler behind the counter.
“No, we’re just looking,” said Clooney as he picked up a navy blue bracelet from a display and showed it to Gregor.
The jeweler eyed them something fierce, Clooney in particular. He seemed, for whatever reason, to be on the verge of throwing them out of the store.
“See this ornament,” Clooney said, “decorated with this stone, this particular precious stone. To use the system of currency we just established, it’s worth about six or seven namenahs.”
“It’s worth — fifteen namenahs by my judgment, at least” said the jeweler in a blustery, upset, offended manner.
Clooney let forth a laugh. “No, I’m fairly certain this is worth seven. Eight is the highest I, or anybody else, would ever go.”
The jeweler’s face began to turn red, not in embarrassment but in a kind of barely-restrained rage. Clooney either did not care or did not notice.
“What makes it interesting, Gregor Townsend, is this gem. A tiny sapphire suffused with zultaire, which is of course mined from the quarry on Mt. Oniz, just a few miles away to the east. You saw it on your way here. The quarry was originally for ordinary minerals, but just a few years ago they found zultaire in abundance underneath the mountain, and they’ve been mining underground ever since. This kind of gem was once most valuable, most precious. Now everybody has them, and what was once unique and beautiful has now become common and even vulgar to many’s tastes. To mine, certainly.”
The jeweler turned ever redder and his breathing became tense and short, puffing in and out, his blood pressure indubitably rising.
“But if you were to cross the sea, in any direction, to whatever land you so chose, and carried with you a sack full of these, it would profit you much. Sir,” Clooney said, turning to the jeweler, holding the bracelet. “May I suggest seeking employment across the sea? Over on the Ganothran continent, perhaps, or even Metagopolis, for instance — ”
Macata, who had been sitting nonchalantly at Gregor’s feet, suddenly hissed in Clooney’s direction, interrupting him and making all three pause suddenly, staring downwards. Seconds passed before Clooney brought them back by finishing his sentence.
“ — you could make a fine living. Much better than here.”
“No,” huffed the jeweler, red in the face, eyes bugged, and his whole person flustered with fury. “You may not suggest anything of the sort.”
Clooney set the bracelet down on the counter and once again put his arm around Gregor’s shoulders in a fatherly manner. “The stubbornness of some people is staggering,” he said as they walked out. “I give some business advice and get thrown out. How’s that for justice?”
Gregor tried to throw an apologetic look behind him at the jeweler, but the door swung shut too soon.
A reasonable distance away, Daniel Clayton Clooney faced eastward and pointed.
“That is Mt. Oniz,” he said.
The image of Mt. Oniz, once a quarry, now a mine, struck Gregor and burned into his empty memory. No, it did not look familiar, but he was sure he would not forget it very soon. The greater part of the quarry was on the opposite side of the mountain, looking like a grand staircase of stone. But at the very top it curled partway around the summit, giving the inhabitants of Middleton a brief view of the silver-colored core of the mountain. From where Gregor and Clooney stood it dominated the landscape like a great behemoth craning its neck around to watch over the town.
“They are using tools and technology from lands across the sea to mine it. Very advanced. It helped make Middleton what it is. Which isn’t much, not yet, but with huge amounts of potential. On its way to much growth.
“And over there,” he said, pushing Gregor around and pointing westward, “is Mt. Oblaid. No mines, no quarries. Left in its natural state. Now it is merely a pleasant hike. Farmer Ajay’s vineyard is over there. A nice little tourist attraction. He makes green wine.”
A rather ordinary but pleasant mountain covered in trees. Much bigger than Oniz but much less visually striking.
“I find it interesting,” Gregor said, indicating Oniz with a jerk of his head, “that so much violence could lead to so much progress.”
“Violence! Who said anything about violence?”
At that moment they heard a loud BOOM from the distant quarry.
“Ah, violence to stone and ear,” said Clooney, nodding his head in understanding. “And I suppose yes, there have been a few injuries...and one or two deaths....”
“Then would you say it has been worth it?”
“Well, if one were to calculate how much better off the great majority of the town is, and that nothing worthwhile is ever without risk, even to life and limb, and to say that the greatest victories are the ones fought the fiercest, with the greatest rewards upon winning and the most hellish consequences upon losing...then sure, I would agree that it was worth it.”
A short pause as both contemplated.
“But there is more I think!” said Clooney with a start. “That mountain is being carved out, like a statue that was once a block of stone. The path to progress is paved with pain.”
Gregor let this sink in. Then, while they were on the subject of pointing to distant things, he said, “I have another question.”
“One of many, I’m sure.”
“What’s that dark thing up there in the sky?” Gregor pointed up at what he had called in his mind the black cloud.
“Another mountain, of course!” said the detective, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Gregor narrowed his eyes on Clooney in a frown, then bit his lip and tried to forget it.
By now they had reached the far end of the markets and were now rounding the path back to the point at which they had first met.
“So have I helped at all, Mr. Townsend?”
“Well, I don’t think we’ve ‘gleaned what afflicts me’. But you have given me a lot to think about in the meantime. And who knows, maybe it will lead to — ”
“Then we’re not finished. We must glean. We must!”
Clooney stopped a passing woman.
“Do you know who this young man is?” he asked with a heretofore unseen zeal that more matched a revolutionary than a poor, greasy literary detective.
“Sure, Danny, that’s Gregor from Tom Basket’s you’ve got there. I think Tom’s been asking about you...” she said to Gregor. And then, closer to Gregor’s ear, “You’re a good boy to humor the detective. He’ll let up soon enough, you’ll see.”
Clooney, not having heard the aside, pulled Gregor in something of an overenthusiastic way over to a small group of conversing old men, all sitting on logs or stumps in the shade of a large tree off the main path. Like Clooney and Gregor, these men had apparently nothing better to do with their time than talk. Clooney, leaving Gregor slightly behind him, entered their circle without a word, and stared intensely at each of the men in turn as they spoke. All of them noticed the intrusion (and the intense glares), but did not show it (excepting, of course, the current speaker’s slight faltering of words, which was immediately followed by his quick hop back onto his train of thought). Otherwise, they didn’t react much to Clooney’s presence. The detective, following their conversation with both eyes and ears, did not breathe a word — not until one man used the phrase “worlds without end.”
“Worlds without end?” Clooney said in a strangely accusatory voice, as if he were chief prosecutor in a criminal trial. “What do you mean by that in your context, sir?”
“I mean the idea of lives,” said the man with a hint of impatience, as if he were answering a child’s question. “We are all each centers of perception, sense perception, and the viewpoint we see the world from is us, ourselves. Each of us is in a wholly different world from the other. The act of murder is to snuff out one of these worlds. Without a ‘me’ there is nothing. By ‘worlds without end’ is meant the idea of little worlds being created every day, and that we have the capacity to continue life on forever. Every time a child is born, a whole new world is created. And if one were to kill a person, and in so doing destroy a perceiver, you also destroy a world. A world that could have created more worlds. Worlds without end.”
“But that only holds true,” interjected one of the circle, “if every one of those centers of perception actually perceived.”
“What do you mean?” said another. Soon many were speaking.
“What I mean is this: How do we know that everybody else is as human as we are? What if, say, I was the only real being, and the rest are just soulless props?”
“Just random organic matter that could or could not have its own center of perception.”
“That’s a fairly egotistic philosophy.”
“Just an idea, and an interesting one.”
“Not to mention frightening. In that case, the only world that exists would be that which we perceive from moment to moment.”
“So it’s not whether the tree, falling alone in the forest, makes a sound, but if the tree exists at all, if there is nobody there to see it.”
“Do things only exist if they are perceived?”
“There’s no way to prove or disprove that idea. If we ever tried to measure such a thing it would be instantly self-defeating.”
Clooney pulled Gregor back to the path.
“Those men are totally pointless,” he said. “Their words are totally pointless. No, Gregor, you need something more material to go on. Come, let’s talk to this gentle lady here...”
As Clooney interrogated the poor woman, Gregor stood distantly to the side, pondering over everything he had seen and heard in the last few minutes with Daniel Clayton Clooney. As his ears heard the noise and bartering all around him, and as his eyes observed the frenzied peoples and their busy, self-continuing ways, he remembered the Awakening Words. At first they spoke softly to him, but as they repeated, it gradually grew to the power of thunder.
Gregor Townsend exists for a wise and glorious purpose.
“Useless, again, useless!” Clooney cried in his energetic way, departing from the woman and again wrenching Gregor along by the arm. “These people can’t help us with anything. Who needs them! They know nothing. Funnily enough, the same goes for you. That was, most indubitably, another object lesson. And that’s proof that you belong here! They know nothing and you know nothing. Have we found a solution at last? Ah, here we are.”
The turtle-like structure of the hardware store stood before them.
TOM BASKET’S HARDWARE EMPORIUM
“We have finally found where you belong. You should know, Gregor, that your hardware store is not exempt from my earlier condemnation.”
“Wait wait wait. My hardware store?”
“Yes, of course. The one you work in. That Tom Basket is a nice enough fellow, but still nothing matters to him more than sales. And so we arrive! Here is your place, where you shall make your money and earn your bread. And if I’m not mistaken, where you should have been half an hour ago.”
And down, down, down went Gregor Townsend, plummeting from wise and glorious heights into the depths of mundanity and mediocrity as he realized...everything. Who he was, where he was going, and why he was desperate to get into Middleton as quickly as possible.
He had been late for work. That’s all.
No, no, no, it couldn’t be. He had a destiny. He had a purpose. As sure as he knew anything, he knew that. He knew there was more. This couldn’t be it. There had to be a reason he had lost his memory in the first place. And a reason those words, that Sentence, kept ringing in his head. There had to be.
Right?
Gregor stared into the blackness of the store’s entrance, defeated. Clooney went on without skipping a beat, not noticing the dumbstruck and deflated persona of his makeshift student.
“As to how I make my living, which I’m sure is the next question you were going to ask, I say... my boy, I beg. It is my place in the world to ask questions that nobody else does — ”
“Nor anyone else cares about,” interjected a passerby.
“Lovely,” said Clooney, looking a little tired.
Gregor had not heard a word after Clooney’s revelation. He said, his eyes narrow and his nostrils flared, “Why did you try to help me so much?”
Clooney smiled sadly and gave a helpless shrug.
“You were the only one who listened to me before.”
Gregor just stared at him, feeling a bit uncomfortable.
“Okay, thanks...” he said wearily as he walked away from Clooney into Tom Basket’s Hardware Emporium, into his drudgery, into his doom.
