We'll see if this works
I wrote a short story for an assignment a while ago, in the style of Jorge Borges. Read it, if you have the time, it's the best fiction I've ever written by far. Writing wise, at least. And then tell me what you think. But don't give me any crap about the lack of detail or dialogue, because that's how Jorge Borges writes.
Edwardo Guiseppi was a man of relentless and staggering genius. From his seventh birthday, a day which Edwardo consistently referred to as the magnificent and mysterious date upon which his eyes opened to the fundamental simplicities of the world, he was increasingly respected- and feared, to his chagrine- for an intellect declared monstrous by the people of his village. They were mistaken in this, however- his genius did not arise from an overabundance of brainpower, but from an essential perception of perception, an understanding of understanding. For reasons which were perhaps the only which Edwardo could not divine, he had been gifted with the key to learning, the secret of memory.
By adolescence Edwardo had learned all that his teachers had to teach, and all that was recorded within the volumes of the village library. He became proficient in all the craftsmen’s trades which did not require great physical strength (for his strength of mind was found inversed in his weakness of body). He dabbled in the arts, or at least he called it dabbling, for his creations to all other eyes appeared the works of a dedicated savant. Every available truth was ascertained, and even falsities were not rejected, but benevolently and gently sorted into a catalog of misinformation with the certainty that these falsities would one backwards day have their use.
Having exhausted the resources of his town, Edwardo set about making his own discoveries, and the townsfolk benefited greatly from his efforts. Labor was made easier by his mechanical inventions, harvests more plentiful by his agricultural theories. Many a life, on the edge of death, was saved by a furious night of medical pondering. Edwardo’s village was truly blessed by his unceasing love of the unknown, and his people were rightfully grateful for it. He lived well by this gratitude, and built himself (with some assistance) a moderately sized mansion on a hill overlooking the village.
Unfortunately, gratitude, which piles like dunes composed of favors and kindnesses, is liable to be leveled from any height when exposed to the sandstorm of philosophical controversy. Edwardo would come to learn this too late when, well-intentioned, he made the mistake of threatening his people’s most sacred principles.
The townsfolk were glad of Edwardo’s generous nature, and it came as no surprise when he began to share his findings in philosophy and religion along with science, history, and the rest. Indeed, though they disliked what they could understand of his speeches, they reacted at first amicably, politely. Then, as his speeches gained momentum and became more radical, with tolerance. Eventually, with reproach, for what he spoke of was clearly blasphemous. He had already claimed that the stars were suns- a doubtful theory, but not particularly bothersome. Now he dared to name the unnamable angels, to draw lines and boundaries between the unknowable spheres, and in contrast to question the few religious dictums which were certain and recorded. He was attempting to destroy a trusted tradition, to rewrite the poetry of the universe, and this was utterly unacceptable. Edwardo was forbidden to speak further of such things.
This of course did not stop him, but rather spurred him on. He only wished to help his people see the truth, after all, how could they wish to remain blind? And how could they demand a compassionate soul to watch them silently in their blindness? What he once saw as ignorance- nothing more than an absence of knowledge- was now a cataract on the eye of the populace, a blight in need of treatment. He became insistent, frenetic, a preacher of the streets desperate to influence a defiant flock. Soon he was a nuisance to the people, and they ostracized him to his mansion on the hill, where he was to remain until he abandoned his heretical ramblings.
He shouted his messages now from his windows to folk who passed by less and less frequently. Men scorned him, and in the town’s tavern often laughed over his eccentricities with vindictive merriment. Women found him disturbing, their suspicions ever fed by their daily gossip circles, which were quiet and cruel. Children, despite their mother’s warnings, challenged one another to knock upon his door or windowsill, though few achieved this proximity for a fear they could not justify. All thought him a madman- even himself, for the stubbornness and spite of his people had done much to drive him mad.
Madness did not stick in him long however, for Edwardo knew better than to be mad. He refocused himself with a new purpose- since the people of this world had forsaken him, he would travel to another whose inhabitants might be more welcoming of him and his ideas. He could not be certain that another world existed, but he had never felt as if he belonged in his own, so it became his hope- and his single irrational belief, hypocrite though he felt- that somewhere there was another world waiting for him, a world as proportionally large and complex as his mind was to the minds of those who had banished him. In this imaginary world he could be truly content, for he would have no need to fear the point at which there might be nothing more for him to learn.
Edwardo determined that, if such a world were to exist, the only way to have a chance of finding it would be to first fully understand one’s own. He set about with new inspiration to the discovering of the world’s greatest truths, he experimented, observed and contemplated with unparalleled fierceness. The man waiting for execution, mind racing franticly for the words or actions which would save him from the insistence of the axe or the tenacity of the noose, would have been put to shame by the desperate pace and intensity with which Edwardo thought.
Edwardo’s first task, self-assigned, was to find patterns- patterns within patterns, between patterns, cycles and repetitions, designs, the art within the mundane and the order within chaos. He began by staring at the carpet on the floor of his study. Once a combination of night black and vibrant red, it had been dulled by an age of dust and continual pacing, as it was Edwardo’s habit to match the speed of his mental peregrinations with his twiggish but enduring legs. The first patterns were easy to comprehend, the delicate swirling and weaving of red and black were broken down to a depth greater than the weaver had ever had in mind. Beyond this were the patterns of perception, lines and loops which drew themselves across the fibers and yet had no physical substance, some which leapt into the eye and others which required searching for. To hold these lines still enough for any kind of analysis was no small challenge, but it soon became second nature. Once this study was completed, Edwardo looked deeper yet, following the curve of the very fibers, accounting for every thread in relation to every other, and simultaneously became aware of another pattern: The imprints and disturbances of his lifetime’s pacings. As he continued his study, which descended eventually to the molecular level, he paced backwards over the millions of footprints written into the carpet, in precise order from the last to the first. Coincidentally, the moment he retraced his first step, at the doorway of his study where the carpet was now curiously restored to its original jet-and-ruby brilliance, he finished his study of the carpet, and for a fleeting moment perceived infinity. He considered this coincidence a pattern in itself.
Edwardo exited his study to find the world buzzing with clarity. Upon squinting at an object, the object would unravel itself, giving up its secrets at his will. Walls, once separated into trillions of individual molecules, were semi-transparent. He found an old ring he had lost many years ago, and the nostalgia it brought him carried him back into reality, where he realized that he could not remember eating during the many months-or years- he had spent in his study. Perhaps he had eaten while he slept, subconsciously, so as to keep his thoughts uninterrupted, but he could not remember having slept.
Edwardo’s second experiment involved variable amounts of water, which were dropped from no particular height onto a flat but indeterminate surface. The procedure was purposefully irregular, for the study was chaos. The water, on impact, would spread into random islands and channels across the surface. The question Edwardo asked was why. He did not search for a mathematical explanation; he felt that though mathematics were reasonably reliable, they were overly simple, and quite uninteresting. He searched for reasons beyond the physical.
Eventually, he found them. First, he found art. Design. Purpose. The water had a will. Then he found themes. Repetitions. The water had a message. Finally, Edwardo deciphered a language. The water had a story. Whether it was the water telling the story or another entity telling the story through the water was unimportant for the time being. Also unimportant were the stories told. A handful of water thought the assassination of a powerful leader significant, a shallow spoonful felt that the summary execution of a speckled trout was more meaningful. A bucket of water rambled an incoherent and voluminous warning, a single droplet stated concisely that the bucket was to be ignored. The wishes of water were confused and contradictory. The fact that water wished, and that Edwardo could understand it, was of great importance. This had implications, for if water could speak, what else could? Soon, thousands of languages took shape in the world around him.
It had come to the point where Edwardo could no longer look without learning, and for fear that the often frivolous information bombarding his mind would push out knowledge of greater value, he began to keep a journal. The journal plays only a small part in this story, but is notable for the nature of the notes therein. As Edwardo wrote in the journal, his notes gradually grew more and more condensed, he required fewer words to encapsulate ideas of increasing complexity. In its later pages, words could not be found, only small intricate symbols, which would have held no meaning to an outside observer but which held an ocean of meaning for him. The journal’s pages, finite in number, were for him infinite and inexhaustible due to the shrinking of his shorthand.
Edwardo had grown weary of investigating space and physical phenomena, he turned his attention now to matters of life an death. For this study he brought an unlit candle nightly up the dusty, creaking stairway to his attic, which was overrun run by moths- though it was devoid of spiders, for he had never abided by them, and the spiders were wise enough to exodus. In the darkness Edwardo observed the moths- for he no longer required light to see- and wrote of their lives. He catalogued the life of many a moth from birth to death, and when he could predict their motions without error he proceeded to light the candle with a spark generated from the snapping of his fingers (a technique which had taken him three attempts to master). He then observed as the moths fluttered through the flame to the afterlife. He watched for the flickering of what souls they might have, though it pained him to see them suffer, until finally he caught a glimpse of a ghost. perched atop the flame, it seemed to be unsure of whether it was destined for heaven or hell. Upon seeing it, Edwardo’s world lit up with souls- those of the moths, the villagers in the town outside his attic window, his own soul- a shimmering myriad of colors pulsing within his body. He was suddenly inspired- as the remaining moths flew recklessly into the candlelight, he captured their souls before they could escape, sewing them to his own. The moths, having little preference in the matter, accepted this forced spiritual symbiosis complacently, and Edwardo was soon orbited by a veritable swarm of winged lights.
Within the next few weeks, Edwardo discovered that, through the connection between his soul and those of the moths, he could extend his spirit to influence that which he could not physically reach. In short- Edwardo was becoming a magician, and though this was not his intention, the possibilities that it suggested made him excited for one of the first times since his banishment.
Edwardo continued his studies in this matter. He would choose something unknown and confront it until revelation. He watched the layering of dust, and came to understand time and how it might be tampered with. He put his ear to the floor and lay there until he could hear the heartbeat of the earth. He learned to weave illusions out of shadow, to give them substance by manipulation of the elements, and to give them life by imbuing them with spirit. His powers and his mind grew, until the boundaries between what he thought and where he was collapsed. He wandered the halls of his house to find himself in rooms he had never seen, recognizing them as the very chambers of thought. He wandered through ballrooms of philosophy, and trespassed in corridors of secrecy. The deeper he ventured, the more labyrinthian things became, and the passageways followed the conventions of reason less frequently. He once opened a door and walked through to find himself exiting rather than entering, and then he turned around and opened it again to find a stairway leading down to an underground ocean, where he sat at the shore and listened to whalesong. Mirrors, which he did not have in his own home, were plentiful in these halls, though some of them were not mirrors. He was perplexed by the face he saw in them, for he did not recognize it as himself. Never-the-less, he consulted the face, to see if any long forgotten insights had been etched in lines across it. A few had, but for the most part the lines were simply wrinkles.
Edwardo was careful not to get lost in the maze his mansion had become, though it occasionally got the better of him. This was humiliating, but the loss to his pride was well made up for by the innumerable opportunities for discovery that his new home presented. He was content to wander these warping halls for many more years, until one day a frightening thought occurred to him: his compulsion to discover had nearly led him to forget his original purpose! What if all of this had been a distraction, so that he might never find the new world he searched for? He decided then that his directionless journeying was over, he would set about looking for his new world the next morning.
When the morning broke, he awoke and stood at the door of his home. His eyes fixed straight ahead, he began to walk forward. The first thing he reached was the fireplace, perpetually lit by a spirit of flame he had created to tend it. He stood there, commanded passage, and waited patiently for a moment. The fireplace stretched upward, and he walked through the flame into a long hallway. He walked the hallway until he came to a point where he was forced to turn either left or right. But instead, he again commanded passage and waited until the hallways turned around him, and the path to his left now lay directly in front of him. He walked, and came upon a stairway up and a stairway down. He waited, and the stairway down crumbled to dust. He walked up the stairway, seemingly endless, until he walked upon a cloud. From the cloud leapt a hundred rainbow pathways, twisting and twirling through the sky with stunning beauty. He took the path directly ahead. Many miles down the path it ended abruptly, and he unhesitatingly walked over the precipice and fell to the ground, where he dusted himself off and continued. He walked like this for days and nights, never changing course but allowing the world to shift around him. Distractions called to him from all sides: fantasies glimmered in his peripheral and nightmares loomed ahead, but he declared them visions and waved them away. A dragon challenged his passage with its fiery breath and temperament, and he defeated it with icy solemnity. A sphinx threw riddles at him, he answered and posed one of his own, but declined to devour the sphinx when it could not answer. This world was as new as any he was likely to find, yet he sought the horizon with unswerving singularity of purpose.
Finally, he reached the edge of the world. The boundary of the world was a blankness, neither black nor white, but a clear that stretched into eternity. It was not a wall, or a force field, simply a point beyond which nothing could exist. The only thing there, at the edge of the world, was a mirror. Eight feet tall, ten feet wide. The mirror reflected perfectly, except for one tiny detail. Edwardo’s notebook, a dark amber in his hands, was a puzzling shade of silver in the mirror. And it was because of this that Edwardo knew the mirror was not a mirror, but the world that he had hoped for throughout his life.
Edwardo cried out in rage and anguish. He had spent his entire life building to this moment, working for this moment, learning and stretching and challenging himself so that one day he might be worthy to find a universe other than his own. Now he had found it, and what was it but a cheap mockery? The only difference was the color of a notebook. The people of that other world would be no more accepting of him than the people of his world. Reminded of them, he was overwhelmed by a wave of hatred. In his single-minded pursuit, he had forgotten sadness and anger, and now they rushed back to him as twin floods bursting forth from their dams. In his fury and sorrow, he forget what he knew, he forgot sense and felt only an urge to destroy. Facing the hated mirror world, he conjured a weapon, a mace, in his right hand. He leapt at it, and swung.
Edwardo saw too late the frustration and desperation in his twin’s eyes. He saw too late the contents of the strangely-colored notebook, which held the same collected knowledge of the many decades of his life. He saw too late the mace in the mirror, swinging towards his world with heart-stopping velocity.
Edwardo felt the cracks spread through his weapon, through his body, into the sky and earth. He felt the universe he had abandoned splinter into a hundred million shards. Looking into the broken reflection of himself, he muttered a fractured apology, and simultaneously felt himself forgiven.
Edwardo Guiseppi was a man of relentless and staggering genius. From his seventh birthday, a day which Edwardo consistently referred to as the magnificent and mysterious date upon which his eyes opened to the fundamental simplicities of the world, he was increasingly respected- and feared, to his chagrine- for an intellect declared monstrous by the people of his village. They were mistaken in this, however- his genius did not arise from an overabundance of brainpower, but from an essential perception of perception, an understanding of understanding. For reasons which were perhaps the only which Edwardo could not divine, he had been gifted with the key to learning, the secret of memory.
By adolescence Edwardo had learned all that his teachers had to teach, and all that was recorded within the volumes of the village library. He became proficient in all the craftsmen’s trades which did not require great physical strength (for his strength of mind was found inversed in his weakness of body). He dabbled in the arts, or at least he called it dabbling, for his creations to all other eyes appeared the works of a dedicated savant. Every available truth was ascertained, and even falsities were not rejected, but benevolently and gently sorted into a catalog of misinformation with the certainty that these falsities would one backwards day have their use.
Having exhausted the resources of his town, Edwardo set about making his own discoveries, and the townsfolk benefited greatly from his efforts. Labor was made easier by his mechanical inventions, harvests more plentiful by his agricultural theories. Many a life, on the edge of death, was saved by a furious night of medical pondering. Edwardo’s village was truly blessed by his unceasing love of the unknown, and his people were rightfully grateful for it. He lived well by this gratitude, and built himself (with some assistance) a moderately sized mansion on a hill overlooking the village.
Unfortunately, gratitude, which piles like dunes composed of favors and kindnesses, is liable to be leveled from any height when exposed to the sandstorm of philosophical controversy. Edwardo would come to learn this too late when, well-intentioned, he made the mistake of threatening his people’s most sacred principles.
The townsfolk were glad of Edwardo’s generous nature, and it came as no surprise when he began to share his findings in philosophy and religion along with science, history, and the rest. Indeed, though they disliked what they could understand of his speeches, they reacted at first amicably, politely. Then, as his speeches gained momentum and became more radical, with tolerance. Eventually, with reproach, for what he spoke of was clearly blasphemous. He had already claimed that the stars were suns- a doubtful theory, but not particularly bothersome. Now he dared to name the unnamable angels, to draw lines and boundaries between the unknowable spheres, and in contrast to question the few religious dictums which were certain and recorded. He was attempting to destroy a trusted tradition, to rewrite the poetry of the universe, and this was utterly unacceptable. Edwardo was forbidden to speak further of such things.
This of course did not stop him, but rather spurred him on. He only wished to help his people see the truth, after all, how could they wish to remain blind? And how could they demand a compassionate soul to watch them silently in their blindness? What he once saw as ignorance- nothing more than an absence of knowledge- was now a cataract on the eye of the populace, a blight in need of treatment. He became insistent, frenetic, a preacher of the streets desperate to influence a defiant flock. Soon he was a nuisance to the people, and they ostracized him to his mansion on the hill, where he was to remain until he abandoned his heretical ramblings.
He shouted his messages now from his windows to folk who passed by less and less frequently. Men scorned him, and in the town’s tavern often laughed over his eccentricities with vindictive merriment. Women found him disturbing, their suspicions ever fed by their daily gossip circles, which were quiet and cruel. Children, despite their mother’s warnings, challenged one another to knock upon his door or windowsill, though few achieved this proximity for a fear they could not justify. All thought him a madman- even himself, for the stubbornness and spite of his people had done much to drive him mad.
Madness did not stick in him long however, for Edwardo knew better than to be mad. He refocused himself with a new purpose- since the people of this world had forsaken him, he would travel to another whose inhabitants might be more welcoming of him and his ideas. He could not be certain that another world existed, but he had never felt as if he belonged in his own, so it became his hope- and his single irrational belief, hypocrite though he felt- that somewhere there was another world waiting for him, a world as proportionally large and complex as his mind was to the minds of those who had banished him. In this imaginary world he could be truly content, for he would have no need to fear the point at which there might be nothing more for him to learn.
Edwardo determined that, if such a world were to exist, the only way to have a chance of finding it would be to first fully understand one’s own. He set about with new inspiration to the discovering of the world’s greatest truths, he experimented, observed and contemplated with unparalleled fierceness. The man waiting for execution, mind racing franticly for the words or actions which would save him from the insistence of the axe or the tenacity of the noose, would have been put to shame by the desperate pace and intensity with which Edwardo thought.
Edwardo’s first task, self-assigned, was to find patterns- patterns within patterns, between patterns, cycles and repetitions, designs, the art within the mundane and the order within chaos. He began by staring at the carpet on the floor of his study. Once a combination of night black and vibrant red, it had been dulled by an age of dust and continual pacing, as it was Edwardo’s habit to match the speed of his mental peregrinations with his twiggish but enduring legs. The first patterns were easy to comprehend, the delicate swirling and weaving of red and black were broken down to a depth greater than the weaver had ever had in mind. Beyond this were the patterns of perception, lines and loops which drew themselves across the fibers and yet had no physical substance, some which leapt into the eye and others which required searching for. To hold these lines still enough for any kind of analysis was no small challenge, but it soon became second nature. Once this study was completed, Edwardo looked deeper yet, following the curve of the very fibers, accounting for every thread in relation to every other, and simultaneously became aware of another pattern: The imprints and disturbances of his lifetime’s pacings. As he continued his study, which descended eventually to the molecular level, he paced backwards over the millions of footprints written into the carpet, in precise order from the last to the first. Coincidentally, the moment he retraced his first step, at the doorway of his study where the carpet was now curiously restored to its original jet-and-ruby brilliance, he finished his study of the carpet, and for a fleeting moment perceived infinity. He considered this coincidence a pattern in itself.
Edwardo exited his study to find the world buzzing with clarity. Upon squinting at an object, the object would unravel itself, giving up its secrets at his will. Walls, once separated into trillions of individual molecules, were semi-transparent. He found an old ring he had lost many years ago, and the nostalgia it brought him carried him back into reality, where he realized that he could not remember eating during the many months-or years- he had spent in his study. Perhaps he had eaten while he slept, subconsciously, so as to keep his thoughts uninterrupted, but he could not remember having slept.
Edwardo’s second experiment involved variable amounts of water, which were dropped from no particular height onto a flat but indeterminate surface. The procedure was purposefully irregular, for the study was chaos. The water, on impact, would spread into random islands and channels across the surface. The question Edwardo asked was why. He did not search for a mathematical explanation; he felt that though mathematics were reasonably reliable, they were overly simple, and quite uninteresting. He searched for reasons beyond the physical.
Eventually, he found them. First, he found art. Design. Purpose. The water had a will. Then he found themes. Repetitions. The water had a message. Finally, Edwardo deciphered a language. The water had a story. Whether it was the water telling the story or another entity telling the story through the water was unimportant for the time being. Also unimportant were the stories told. A handful of water thought the assassination of a powerful leader significant, a shallow spoonful felt that the summary execution of a speckled trout was more meaningful. A bucket of water rambled an incoherent and voluminous warning, a single droplet stated concisely that the bucket was to be ignored. The wishes of water were confused and contradictory. The fact that water wished, and that Edwardo could understand it, was of great importance. This had implications, for if water could speak, what else could? Soon, thousands of languages took shape in the world around him.
It had come to the point where Edwardo could no longer look without learning, and for fear that the often frivolous information bombarding his mind would push out knowledge of greater value, he began to keep a journal. The journal plays only a small part in this story, but is notable for the nature of the notes therein. As Edwardo wrote in the journal, his notes gradually grew more and more condensed, he required fewer words to encapsulate ideas of increasing complexity. In its later pages, words could not be found, only small intricate symbols, which would have held no meaning to an outside observer but which held an ocean of meaning for him. The journal’s pages, finite in number, were for him infinite and inexhaustible due to the shrinking of his shorthand.
Edwardo had grown weary of investigating space and physical phenomena, he turned his attention now to matters of life an death. For this study he brought an unlit candle nightly up the dusty, creaking stairway to his attic, which was overrun run by moths- though it was devoid of spiders, for he had never abided by them, and the spiders were wise enough to exodus. In the darkness Edwardo observed the moths- for he no longer required light to see- and wrote of their lives. He catalogued the life of many a moth from birth to death, and when he could predict their motions without error he proceeded to light the candle with a spark generated from the snapping of his fingers (a technique which had taken him three attempts to master). He then observed as the moths fluttered through the flame to the afterlife. He watched for the flickering of what souls they might have, though it pained him to see them suffer, until finally he caught a glimpse of a ghost. perched atop the flame, it seemed to be unsure of whether it was destined for heaven or hell. Upon seeing it, Edwardo’s world lit up with souls- those of the moths, the villagers in the town outside his attic window, his own soul- a shimmering myriad of colors pulsing within his body. He was suddenly inspired- as the remaining moths flew recklessly into the candlelight, he captured their souls before they could escape, sewing them to his own. The moths, having little preference in the matter, accepted this forced spiritual symbiosis complacently, and Edwardo was soon orbited by a veritable swarm of winged lights.
Within the next few weeks, Edwardo discovered that, through the connection between his soul and those of the moths, he could extend his spirit to influence that which he could not physically reach. In short- Edwardo was becoming a magician, and though this was not his intention, the possibilities that it suggested made him excited for one of the first times since his banishment.
Edwardo continued his studies in this matter. He would choose something unknown and confront it until revelation. He watched the layering of dust, and came to understand time and how it might be tampered with. He put his ear to the floor and lay there until he could hear the heartbeat of the earth. He learned to weave illusions out of shadow, to give them substance by manipulation of the elements, and to give them life by imbuing them with spirit. His powers and his mind grew, until the boundaries between what he thought and where he was collapsed. He wandered the halls of his house to find himself in rooms he had never seen, recognizing them as the very chambers of thought. He wandered through ballrooms of philosophy, and trespassed in corridors of secrecy. The deeper he ventured, the more labyrinthian things became, and the passageways followed the conventions of reason less frequently. He once opened a door and walked through to find himself exiting rather than entering, and then he turned around and opened it again to find a stairway leading down to an underground ocean, where he sat at the shore and listened to whalesong. Mirrors, which he did not have in his own home, were plentiful in these halls, though some of them were not mirrors. He was perplexed by the face he saw in them, for he did not recognize it as himself. Never-the-less, he consulted the face, to see if any long forgotten insights had been etched in lines across it. A few had, but for the most part the lines were simply wrinkles.
Edwardo was careful not to get lost in the maze his mansion had become, though it occasionally got the better of him. This was humiliating, but the loss to his pride was well made up for by the innumerable opportunities for discovery that his new home presented. He was content to wander these warping halls for many more years, until one day a frightening thought occurred to him: his compulsion to discover had nearly led him to forget his original purpose! What if all of this had been a distraction, so that he might never find the new world he searched for? He decided then that his directionless journeying was over, he would set about looking for his new world the next morning.
When the morning broke, he awoke and stood at the door of his home. His eyes fixed straight ahead, he began to walk forward. The first thing he reached was the fireplace, perpetually lit by a spirit of flame he had created to tend it. He stood there, commanded passage, and waited patiently for a moment. The fireplace stretched upward, and he walked through the flame into a long hallway. He walked the hallway until he came to a point where he was forced to turn either left or right. But instead, he again commanded passage and waited until the hallways turned around him, and the path to his left now lay directly in front of him. He walked, and came upon a stairway up and a stairway down. He waited, and the stairway down crumbled to dust. He walked up the stairway, seemingly endless, until he walked upon a cloud. From the cloud leapt a hundred rainbow pathways, twisting and twirling through the sky with stunning beauty. He took the path directly ahead. Many miles down the path it ended abruptly, and he unhesitatingly walked over the precipice and fell to the ground, where he dusted himself off and continued. He walked like this for days and nights, never changing course but allowing the world to shift around him. Distractions called to him from all sides: fantasies glimmered in his peripheral and nightmares loomed ahead, but he declared them visions and waved them away. A dragon challenged his passage with its fiery breath and temperament, and he defeated it with icy solemnity. A sphinx threw riddles at him, he answered and posed one of his own, but declined to devour the sphinx when it could not answer. This world was as new as any he was likely to find, yet he sought the horizon with unswerving singularity of purpose.
Finally, he reached the edge of the world. The boundary of the world was a blankness, neither black nor white, but a clear that stretched into eternity. It was not a wall, or a force field, simply a point beyond which nothing could exist. The only thing there, at the edge of the world, was a mirror. Eight feet tall, ten feet wide. The mirror reflected perfectly, except for one tiny detail. Edwardo’s notebook, a dark amber in his hands, was a puzzling shade of silver in the mirror. And it was because of this that Edwardo knew the mirror was not a mirror, but the world that he had hoped for throughout his life.
Edwardo cried out in rage and anguish. He had spent his entire life building to this moment, working for this moment, learning and stretching and challenging himself so that one day he might be worthy to find a universe other than his own. Now he had found it, and what was it but a cheap mockery? The only difference was the color of a notebook. The people of that other world would be no more accepting of him than the people of his world. Reminded of them, he was overwhelmed by a wave of hatred. In his single-minded pursuit, he had forgotten sadness and anger, and now they rushed back to him as twin floods bursting forth from their dams. In his fury and sorrow, he forget what he knew, he forgot sense and felt only an urge to destroy. Facing the hated mirror world, he conjured a weapon, a mace, in his right hand. He leapt at it, and swung.
Edwardo saw too late the frustration and desperation in his twin’s eyes. He saw too late the contents of the strangely-colored notebook, which held the same collected knowledge of the many decades of his life. He saw too late the mace in the mirror, swinging towards his world with heart-stopping velocity.
Edwardo felt the cracks spread through his weapon, through his body, into the sky and earth. He felt the universe he had abandoned splinter into a hundred million shards. Looking into the broken reflection of himself, he muttered a fractured apology, and simultaneously felt himself forgiven.