I wake up with a warm sensation surrounding my entire body and most of my face. As if peeking out of a cocoon, I lie on my back and stare up at an impenetrable gray sky.
“Where am I?” I think to myself, though I am not too eager to discover the answer. I sniff like a dog looking for something that it just lost moments prior. The humid air enters and exits my nostrils, it smells as if it has recently rained. Not quite yet daring to look around, I begin wiggling my fingers and toes. They trudge in the directions I choose, lightly hindered by what I now recognize as water surrounding me.
“Okay, so I’ve got an infinite gray sky overhead and I am lying in a pool of water, reminds me of Seattle,” I state without a hint of irony. Encouraged by the familiarity I gained from this bit of context, I finally venture to sit up. As I do this, the warm water releases me into the humid air, making the transition quite seamless. Looking around, I note that I have gained no new information by taking this extra step, in the sense that the closest thing to infinity is nothing at all.
An ankle-deep body of water stretches seemingly forever and reflects the aforementioned gray sky back at itself. Though, looking between the sky and water, it is difficult to determine which of the two this gray hue originates from. Beneath the water’s surface was a perfectly kempt layer of sand, it looked as if it knew that I would eventually tarnish its perfection. For now, I chose to leave it be. Looking to the horizon, I see no end in sight. Wedged between these two slices of infinity, I realize that I have no incentive to take any action in this situation. So I settle back down into my cocoon and think the kind of thoughts that come with accepting futility. A sense of peace floods over me as the water takes me back into its warm embrace.
Time passes, though as to how much it is impossible to say, until suddenly a voice rings out through the silence, barely reaching my submerged ear drums. I sit up with a jolt as if hoping to catch the sound waves before they disappear, but they’ve already long forgotten me.
“Guess there’s someone else out there huh? Hope you’re enjoying your stay!” I say aloud, not fully believing my senses.
I look around again. Still grey and infinite, how dull. Though it does feel appropriate, given how dull the inner workings of my mind have been as of late. It seems that any memory involving other people have up and vanished from my psyche. It is pretty shocking how many of your memories actually involve others. All I really have left are trips to the bathroom, and car rides to locations I no longer can recall.
Instead of returning to my cocoon, I decide to make an effort to stay upright. After all, what if some other ominous voice decides to speak up? Maybe god himself is stumbling across this infinite void, looking for a buddy to shoot the shit with. I remained upright as time crept onward, eventually, my patience was rewarded.
An echo came from who knows where, “ I am here, and you are you,” he whispers, breathless from his long journey.
So someone is out there, that wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me. Though he is a little pretentious for pointing out that I am me, I never really doubted that much. I sigh.
“I guess it’s time to go find them, nothing better to do.”
As such, I make a mental note of the volume in which the voice grazed my ears. If next time I hear the voice it is quieter, I will walk the opposite way, and if it is louder, I will continue in my current direction. Reinvigorated by my new plan, I call out to the omnipotent voice.
“Listen up you cryptic son-of-a-bitch, I am coming to find you. If you don’t want me to find you then say something short and cryptic so it can be a little game between us. Deal?”
I start walking in any direction, but not before apologizing to the sand for the inconvenience. I shamble through the water leaving behind a path of destruction, stamping my footprint to make sure I got the credit. Time passes without hearing anything in response, so I start coming up with ways to pass the time. My favorite is “Simon says”, which when played by yourself is particularly embarrassing when you lose and –
“Deal,” I hear in a voice hardly amounting to even a whisper.
“Time to go in the opposite direction I suppose”, I say out loud as I twirl around and continue walking. Though even further from my goal, my pilgrimage has exposed some new facts regarding my position. For one, as I suspected from the onset of my stay, it does, in fact, rain here. It comes in bursts, and with seemingly no pattern or indication to boot. The grey sky remains entirely stagnant, but suddenly rain will begin to pour out from the void. When this happens, I stare straight up at the sky and wait for it to stop. The rain is ignorant of my presence and rushes past me as best it can, headed for the body of water below which will become its final resting place.
Secondly, my current self has no need for things such as water, food, or rest. You’d think I would have noticed this sooner, but you’d be surprised how quickly you forget the bare necessities when they are no longer needed. So this naturally raises the question, what even am I? The voice says I am me of course, but shambling across an endless, hazy void for eternity sure does wonders in convincing me otherwise.
Deep in the pits of contemplation, I try to derive which memory is the most recent, but it seems to be an impossible task. They all blend and mesh together, with no characters to decipher the time period from whence they came, and no recollection of the thoughts which must have occurred during. Memories without any substance, just flashes from a past which I supposedly lived. As I mull this all over, eventually landing on futility once again, I continue walking and time allegedly moves onward. Suddenly the voice speaks, much louder than before.
“Look Down.”
I rapidly shift my gaze to the ground only to discover my bare feet as the only notable presence. Just my feet, sand, and the grey hue which permeates all of my surroundings.
“This guy’s fucking with me isn’t he?”
Continuing onward in the same direction, I am not satisfied by the voice’s last interjection, but am reassured by the increase in volume accompanying it. Once again, I walk for an imperceivable amount of time. I glance at my feet to see if anything has changed occasionally and stop to stare at the sky when it rains. Many moments later, I have a realization.
“I haven’t even bothered to look at my reflection, have I?”
I look down, not with the voice’s previous message in mind, but instead purely to see what my current self looks like. Focusing my eyes, I gaze at the shifting image of a man on the water’s surface, altered every moment by the tiny waves caused by my movement. The man who stood before me had long, brown hair that splayed out in a multitude of directions, likely frizzy due to the humidity. His eyebrows were drawn together in concentration and his jaw was clenched, he looked quite serious which is understandable given the circumstances. He looked youthful, determined, and even somewhat handsome. Oh and also, he was naked. Looking at him, I decided that this was in fact, me, and had always been me. The second conclusion I didn’t have any particular evidence towards, but it just felt right.
I continue to look at myself for some time. It really is fascinating how long you can ignore your reflection, but every now and again, you well and truly see yourself. Suddenly, I feel compelled to touch my reflection. I reach out my hand, and my reflection, of course, does the same. My fingers make ripples in the water as they pass the water’s surface, and eventually, my entire wrist is submerged with little resistance. Looking at my other self, our arms outstretched, eyes locked, I feel five fingers clasp around my wrist.
Faster than I can react, I am violently dragged below the water surface. The warm water curls around my body as I hurdle through an expansive sea, my screams carrying bubbles to a surface that may no longer exist. My arm is stretched above my head with five fingers still firmly planted on my wrist; it feels as if my shoulder might be dislodged from its socket with the speed that I am being rocketed through the water. I try to look up at what is dragging me to my doom, but whiplash prevents me from doing so. Just as I am convinced that my arm is about to well and truly come off, a greyish light penetrates the blue expanse. Flying upwards, my air reserves finally reach their limit and water forces its way into my lungs. The grey light grows brighter and brighter until suddenly I launch upwards into a familiar grey void, propelled by the change in pressure accompanying my ascent. Those five fingers graciously releasing their grasp, I lie on my back, close my eyes, and proceed to have a coughing fit.
“This is NOT how you invite a man to shoot the shit with you, God!”, I stammer out between coughs.
“God?”, he said, clearly confused.
What did I expect. I think a small part of me was hoping for some sort of congratulations when I found him, something along the lines of; “Well done! You found me after all this time, now here’s the answer to life.” Sadly, the mind has a dirty habit of building expectations only for reality to tear them down. You’d think it would know better after a while. I open my eyes with reality setting in and my expectations in check.
There I am. Standing right over me is none other than myself. No wonder he’s been so pretentious. The other me has similar long, brown hair, but it is notably even longer than mine. While mine goes a bit below shoulder level, his hair nearly touches the ankle-deep water. The look on his face expresses relief as if a weight has finally been lifted off his shoulders. This confuses me, as all I feel anything but relief at the sight of my other self.
“Follow me.”
He turns in the opposite direction and starts walking, seeming to be in somewhat of a rush. I get on my feet and start following; the bastard probably knows I have nothing better to do. Trying to ease the awkward silence, I decided to ask him a question.
“So, are you the real me, or am I the real me?”
“You are you, and I am me.”
“Well yes, I suppose that’s true,” I say, trying to sound as if I understood
Seeming to notice my confusion, he chooses to elaborate.
“We both come from the living world, and we may have even lived similar lives, though to what extent we’ll never know. We are each alternate versions of ourselves, leading different lives but ultimately meeting the same end.”
“So we’re dead, not what I expected the afterlife to be like, and what is this ‘same end’ we’re meeting?”
“You’ll see”, when he said this, he looked back at me with a grim, knowing smile.
We walked for a while, though, what I consider “a while” has absolutely no meaning at this point. Eventually, in the grey expanse, I see a dark rectangle in the distance. I intuitively knew that this was the “same end” he was referring to, I didn’t feel ready even though I had nothing to not live for. At the same time, I knew that no matter what I would eventually end up back here, walking towards this black rectangle, so I continued on in spite.
Although I would have expected the black rectangle to develop details as we approached, quite the opposite effect was actually occurring. The closer and closer we neared, the more it appeared to be a truly black void with no features to speak of. Finally, we arrived, myself and I, on the verge of a new infinity contained within a black rectangle the size of a door.
It sat in the ankle-deep water and stopped a few feet above our heads, water poured over the precipice endlessly. It looked as if the waterfall led into deep space, where even the light of dying stars failed to reach. A small tug in the water simulated a current as if the water’s intention was to pull someone gently to their end. My other self turned around and looked me in the eyes.
“This is where we part,” he said.
“I don’t know if I’m ready yet”, I began, “There’s so much I don’t know, like, where are we going? Is that the gateway to heaven or just a flat, definitive end?
As I rambled away, he quietly laid on his back and submerged himself within that warm water I awoke in. He had probably had all these doubts once before as well. Gently, the current took him towards the precipice, I shut up as he clearly readied himself to speak.
“No one wants to die alone,” he said weakly as if regretting the situation he was leaving me in.
And just like that, head first, he plunged into nothingness, the waterfall carrying him to some sort of end. Standing there, watching him float peacefully into nothingness, I felt vaguely proud and simultaneously pissed. I contemplated joining him, sometimes walking over to the black void, and careful not to accidentally fall, (now that would be a tragic end) would peak inside. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Perhaps I was clinging to the past, desperate to remember how I died and who comprised my life. I doubt it though, how I see it, it doesn’t matter what events led me here. I stopped thinking too hard about the significance of it all and found a new pass time. Instead, I loafed around saying vague, cryptic things periodically, hoping to find another me to see me off into my inevitable end. After all, who wants to die alone?
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