Untitled (Past, Present, Future) Draft One
A short(ish) story about everything, in three parts and an introduction.
PART ZERO:
In the beginning, there was the future.
Big Bang, immediate and ultra-rapid expansion of quarks and subatomic particles. Extreme, unthinkable heat. At this exact moment, smaller than anything, so small that it cannot be subdivided, so small that as soon as it begins it ends, there becomes the present. As soon as this instantaneous moment ended, The past was made. And there we have our Brothers Three.
The first word ever spoken in any language was the first brother’s name. It has been lost to all but the third brother, who has never spoken it aloud within earshot. Ab Aeterno, the Infinite Past, In Aeternum, the Infinite Present, Ad Infinitum, the Infinite Future.
When and Where does our story take place? Not important. There is no adequate setting or location or temporal chronological complex in which to describe to you. There is only What Was, What Is, and What Will Be.
PART ONE: What Was
For a second there, it all made sense.
Cascading semiotic cybernetics. Feedback loops of feedback loops. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Now it’s just vice versa.
I do not feel as if I have anything to do. I know someday I will have even less to do, but even now I feel as if I am the God of nothing.
My name is Futurum. Ab Aeterno. La Futura, Y muchas más. The Present Moment liked to call me Futch, sometimes pronounced Fewtch, sometimes pronounced Futch, when he wants to be funny. Wanted.
The Present Moment is dying, dead. There will be no replacement. Prayer, Present’s name for my other brother of the distant past, will know soon. Maybe he has already put the pieces together. He will be angry at me for not telling him, but if I was to tell him — no, I feel sick just thinking it. What was I supposed to do? I can’t change what I see. I can’t change him being angry at me. I can’t change him yelling “Yes you fucking can! You could always change it, you’re just too chickenshit to even try! All you had to do was say a word! But I guess the Infinite Future is too good to speak to us now! You’re nothing but a great silence! Nothing but a Great Silence!”
I won’t have it in me to argue. I know he’s scared. I know he knows that this is the start of the Collision. No matter how far apart we may drift from each other, we both know that we will come back together. For better or for worse.
I don’t remember things once they happen. It slips out of my sight. One day the universe will have worn out it’s welcome, and Death And Taxes, and War and Pestilence, and everybody else that claims to be so high and mighty, will have turned out the lights and mopped the floor and locked up to an eternal bliss of silence. And then I will be blind. Dementiatic. I will call it “The Deep Goodbye.”
There is one thing that I will never forget. Because it will never let me forget. The Present Moment went down to the people below to announce us as the true rulers of the world. The people didn’t look shocked. They had seen part of the trinity of time, and they acted as if they had stepped on an anthill. Aeternum, as he wanted to be called by them, demanded to be taken to the smartest person on the entire planet. He was everywhere at once, speaking to everyone, to discover why his magnificent appearance was greeted by such general malaise.
Upon returning to us, he told us of only one meeting, with a daughter who he refused to name. The only thing she said to him was “You’re a lot shorter than I would have imagined.”
I’m going to miss him. I’m going to miss everything.
PART TWO: What Is
I think that if I do this, something very bad will happen. I feel strange. I don’t feel as in control as I once believed. I am not lucid. I do not think that I am what I am anymore. Why do I sometimes find myself reaching for a Lord that I know is not there? What am I supposed to do?
It is written. It is written. It is written. It is written. It is written. It is written. It is written.
I see nothing. I am blinded. I see everything. I am all-seeing. I see what is. I see it. I see the great beyond. There is nothing that can not happen.
I am slicing eyes open. I am pulling out my lungs from my body. I am stilling my beating heart. I am cutting out my tongue. I am piercing my eardrums. I am cutting off arms limbs and torso. I am Godhead. I am gone.
PART THREE: What Will Be
My brother died a second ago. I saw it with my own eyes. I’ve been betrayed by both brothers in one action. I’ve been good to you, oh brothers, but now it is my time to plunge my own dagger into your backs.
Futch didn’t like to keep records. He was scared of interfering. He has no idea how lucky he is. I would give it all up just to be able to change the slightest thing. Everything I have is set in stone, as the saying went.
But now, dear brother, I know something you don’t!
Seven days before the destruction of the final civilization to ever exist, a man got it right. So right, that the moment that I saw it, I knew everything about everything. I had the benefit of a lot more context than that man did, but I know that he knew much more than my other brother gave him credit for.
That man saw the future in the past, and the past in the future.
He saw the great collision, he saw the death of the present.
He wrote like a demon. He did not stop to eat or drink, he wrote and wrote and wrote until he stopped, and when he stopped he got up and fell down dead, and when his wife came to check on him, and after the grief had subsided, she looked upon his manuscript.
She said only one sentence:
“You’re a lot shorter than I imagined.”
And I was there. I looked over her shoulder. And I read those meager sentences.
There are three parts. The past, the present, the future. But what is the present? As soon as the present begins, it ends. And as soon as it ends, it begins. But what are the past and future? In the beginning, there was only the future. And the future was everything. And then, later, the past will be everything. Everything will have already happened. But what if nothing ever ends? And what if nothing ever began?
What he wanted to say was irrelevant. The context of the society at large was meaningless to me. I knew what he truly meant.
“In the beginning, there was the future
And in the future, there will be a beginning.”
There will be a point where my brother can no longer see, and there will be a point where everything I know is so far away from when it happened that I will be left gasping for memory. But this was not the first time the universe has started, and my brother has not died for the first time. One day everything will start again, and again, and again.
what a great idea for a story, and what a great execution of that idea. i really enjoyed this. you're an amazing writer i'll have to read more of your work