The Reality Scribe

The whole universe is based on rhythms. Everything happens in circles, in spirals.

John Hartford

I crossed the aureolin sands, the desert sun heat crisping my fast depleting fat. Exhaustion had long made its home in my body, a waste floating in the wasteland. Above my head the clear blue cloak of the merciless golden god, below me his hateful carpet to spite my naked feet. Why I had come so far from all that I had loved and owned? What quest had dragged my into the wilderness I could no longer say, as I could no longer say what it was that I had loved and owned. I was here, but all memory, all traces of a personality had dissipated, the one thought that filled my mind, that single word that filled, no! had become my mind: reason. It was for that sole purpose that I strove forward, the reason, what was the reason?

With no will and knowledge of where I was going I carried on, my skin baked and my feet cracked, insect poisonous and large stung me, but that single thought drove me forward, and I became immune to all trespasses.

The sun fell and the cold cataract gazed at me from her velvet brow. I felt no cold, and knew of no sleep. To march forever until my soul departed to march without corporeality was that my reason? Maybe. If I could have thought I could (should?) have laid down and waited for death, but reason kept pushing me forward.

Suddenly a flare appeared over the horizon. A flickering. Then another, I made no attempt to walk towards these phenomenon, but as they were in my trajectory they slowly came closer. A weird music filled the air, a sickly pipe of odious melody angular and spiky. Before me now a fire burned, raging red, yet still as if frozen or sculpted. In the middle of the petrified fire danced the piper of the strange melodies that now floated around me, almost perceptively.

Naked was she ,except for a green cloak which covered her modesty as she played and capered, with a mane of red hair that billowed and flowed as if mocking the still flame. I recognised her immediately, although I could not say who she was. She stopped still as she saw me.

“You have made it at last,” her voice was that of a costermonger’s wife. I had heard it so many times before, yet from where I had no further recollection. “I knows what you seek, you want to find the reason don’cha?”

I nodded in agreement. Yes the reason. What was the reason behind all this. What was the reason that I had set out on this quest?

“I don’t know the reason,” she smiled sadly. “But I can help you… come.” I made no move but came forward bringing the fire with her and soon I was swaddled in both her cape and the still flames. They filled me with sensation, which I had thought I had lost. For the first time  I could remember I closed my dust scraped eyes.

When I awoke I found myself in a library. Books of every description filled the infinite shelves. The library, I could discern, was circular, although it stretched into the infinite spheres of the heavens. Huge, long tapering ladders disappeared into points of nothing, and occasionally the odd leaf would fall from on high accompanied by an expletive. The expletive would have come from one of the monkeys that clambered up and down the ladders. The librarians I assumed. They were dressed in red and white dungarees and wore strange hats which denoted their status. I watched as they went about their business in complete ignorance of me.

There was no door to this infinite repository of all knowledge so how I had entered I had no idea. Yet I knew that here was the answer to the quest. The answer to myself and who I was and why I started this. I would find here the answer. I would find here the reason. Ignored, I crossed the black and white checked floor towards a monkey seated at a high desk in the middle. He was robed in black and purple and appeared a scribe for in his paw he held a quill which scraped into vellum scroll which spewed over the edge of the desk. Upon his desk was a bronze name tag engraved in a strange script which read: Master of Reality.

Reason, what is the reason? These were my only thoughts, as had been since I could first remember, as I approached the monkey scribe. He made no sign of my presence but continued to write. I knew, I could feel that this writing would hold the answer, the reason to all this. He made no motion as I held the edge of the vellum that had fallen over the end of the desk.

I froze, and horror mounted in me. I screamed soundlessly as I read what this monkey master of reality had written and the full horror of my reason became clear:

I crossed the aureolin sands, the desert sun heat crisping my fast depleting fat. Exhaustion had long made its home in my body, a waste floating in the wasteland. Above my head the clear blue cloak of the merciless golden god, below me his hateful carpet to spite my naked feet. Why I had come so far from all that I had loved and owned? What quest had dragged my into the wilderness I could no longer say, as I could no longer say what it was that I had loved and owned. I was here, but all memory, all traces of a personality had dissipated, the one thought that filled my mind, that single word that filled, no! had become my mind: reason. It was for that sole purpose that I strove forward, the reason, what was the reason?…