It all changed tomorrow.
Now we are at the precipice of understanding eternity - an unenviable position for any life form – with no apparent method of assuaging our sanity.
Oh, I've tried wishing it away. It was the first thing I attempted. And the second. On each occasion the universe would blink for a moment before returning to how it was, or what it will be, or what they all wanted it to be. I figured the problem was that their opposing wishes were coinciding with mine, that every wish would be cancelled by another's instantaneous counter-wish in some weird race condition. Then I met up with other desperate, wretched fools; brothers and sisters in pain. I thought if we could band together, stagger our thoughts, we would prevail and this whole catastrophe could be averted. Better, it could never have happened.
But my understanding was off. The mechanics of the glitch were more nuanced than I had imagined. This is what I've learnt:
Every wish is treated equally, whether by man or woman, rich or poor, rhinoceros or alien. (Are there actually aliens? Or was that just an idle wish? I can't tell what is real any more. There is no real. Just whimsy.)
So how does this work in practice? What of casino goers who want to win big, versus the casino owner who wants to pillage their pockets? Or of the person who desires the warm sunshine versus the neighbour who aches for the cool night air? How does it handle those cases? Not very well. The flashes are a result of that. As are the constant changes in our stimuli. When those haven't been wished away.
I can't stand these changes much longer. There is no rest. I can wish for rest but it will simply be incorporated into the millions of other wishes of excitement on a grand scale, like meteors impacting on the planet or galaxies colliding at massive speeds. Solace is defeated by the masses.
Perhaps if we were all limited to just one wish then life would be saner. Not much, but bearable...perhaps? I wish I knew. Boom. See? That didn't work. Someone else has already wished a certain level of ignorance of our predicament. Or is it something more hard wired in the process, a rule? If I weren't so ignorant I'd know what's real and what's not. I'd remember a time before all this. Or after this. Which way is time moving today? Which way will it move yesterday?
When it starts it will be hailed as the most important thing to happen to mankind since our forebears stretched out of the primordial soup. No more hunger, no more war. But human kind is never that altruistic. The dream was for technological and theological advances beyond our comprehension. We would become gods. The only thing worse than thinking yourself a god is having the power to match the hubris.
I know the day it will happen. It will be on the thirty third of some month. I think that's tomorrow. I wished it to be tomorrow. But this knowledge wasn't simply my own fancy. There are signs. You just need to know where to look. On each flash, if you concentrate, if you focus, you sense the numbers. You might not see them if sight is wished away, you might not hear them if hearing is gone, you may not taste or feel them; but they're there. This is the thread, and our only hope is pulling at it until there's nothing left.
The others say that thirty three is wrong. They've tried making up stories and telling lies. They even tried to convince me it was a wish, that it was my wish. Why would I do that? Thirty three holds no significance for me! Why would I make up a number like that? Unless they wished me to. Unless that was their plan all along, to let this thing continue, to ride it to the end. If there is an end.
This is what else I know:
Every wish is treated equally, no matter when it was wished. There is no priority, no queue, no latest-wish-trumps-the-lot. None of that. It all seems to happen simultaneously. Not overridden by another wish, but joined, merged.
So the more we wish, the more the universe becomes what we collectively want it to be. It's like if we yell loud enough it will drown out the other voices. So that's my plan: convince enough people to wish that others were convinced. If we all think that tomorrow is the thirty third, and we all think that tomorrow is when it all started, then there may be hope. There'd still be other life forms continuing to make their wishes, but it'd be controllable. We might find it's best to kill off anything we can't reason with, to remove dissension. But we won't wish it. We will maintain our control and we'll finally get to the point where we can make one final wish. With everyone agreed, we will, at once, wish that it never happened. We will wish that there really is no thirty third of the month. At least, that's my wish.
Unless enough people wish for the rules to change...
© 2012 Ben Safta
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Australia License
