A Matter of Life and Death or Something

by Ben Stephenson

  My room is reddish purplish navyish, a dark kind of colour that it has been ever since I existed, and that I didn’t choose, but I kind of like anyway. When you come in the door you see my desk in the back corner on the right and my bed on the left. My bedsheets are usually the ones with space all over them, they’re all navy and black with the constellations and other galaxies. In another galaxy, I think, there would be another room exactly like mine, right down to every little detail, except everything was mirrored backwards, and an extraterrestrial boy named Ruhtra lived in it instead. The universe is so infinitely big that that galaxy’s gotta be somewhere.

  In the corner next to where my closet sticks out is my igloo. That’s one good thing Simon did. For Christmas he’d got me this igloo building kit that I really wanted. It’s from the science store downtown, and it’s just basically this huge box, full of all these styrofoam bricks, white bricks like snowblocks that don’t melt. And they all have a little number on the bottom and you put it all together using this big diagram page. The thing is that the bricks never really fit perfectly even though the kit costs about a million dollars so that it’s your main Christmas present and it doesn’t even work that well. I’d been trying to build the crazy thing for like four months, but I just couldn’t do it all at once. So instead, almost every day, when I remembered, I’d work on another brick. I’d break them a bit and cut them with a ruler and a knife from the kitchen to make them fit, and then carefully add them in. But then every once in a while, or all the time, it would just fall in on itself completely, ’cause maybe by accident I forgot not to breathe on it or something, and then I couldn’t try it again for weeks because it was so annoying. I’d stomp down to the basement for the vacuum and settle down my emotions about the stupid igloo by sucking up all the foam particles off my floor. Once I asked Simon if we could get some crazy glue to help it stick together but he said glue wouldn’t work on foam, and besides did I have any idea how toxic that stuff was? I thought if the igloo ever actually did work, it would be amazing: all the whiteness inside surrounding me. The light coming in through the cracks. I could curl up into a ball and sleep forever.

  My desk is another pretty important thing. That’s where I do a lot of the things I do when I’m not in the woods or at school beside the kitchen. I’ve got this nice white desk with red drawers on the right side and it’s pushed up against the wall. In the top drawer I have:

  –pens and pencils and paper for drawing

  –paperclips

  –pushpins

  –duct tape, masking tape, and electrical tape

  –a can of golden spray paint that’s mostly empty

  –a bunch of elastics

  –blank cassette tapes

  –a pad of tracing paper (even though I never trace because I don’t have to)

  –some fingernails I should throw out

  –a magnifying glass

  –the chunky black tape recorder Simon once bought me at a yard sale that actually works.

  In the bottom drawer I just keep piles of drawings, old lists I don’t need hung up anymore, letters from Aunt Maxine and other stuff. Anyway, that’s enough about my room, I think. It’s kind of boring stuff.

  Before I went for breakfast that morning I tried to start my routine. I checked a few things off some of my lists, and then I added another brick to the igloo, brick #17, which took eternities because I had to saw it a ton first. I swept all the styrofoam shavings from my desk into my hand and threw them out. I was about to open my door and go check Rosie’s website again but that was as long as I lasted making myself not think about Phil. I got the book out from my pillow and opened it up. I read it for a long while, not skipping around so much, until I had read the whole thing, right up to Page 43. It was easy to read it for a couple of hours. I mean, I could barely stop. Then I read Page 43 again.

  “Maybe it’s not so bad,” my brain said, “maybe we could just put it back in the woods where we found it and live happily ever after.”

  “It is pretty bad,” Page 43 said, “it’s really bad.”

  Inside me, my heart felt stuffed up. It felt all swollen and stuffed, like it had the worst cold ever and just wanted to lie in bed all day. I shut the book again. I sat there waiting to see if my heart would tell me a message about what the heck I was supposed to do now. I waited and waited forever but it said nothing. I waited so long I could tell the next ice age would come at any second, and my room got excruciatingly cold and my heart got icicles hanging off it and I had no clue what to do, and I opened my door but my life was buried under a kilometre of snow and there was no way out.

  September 27th

  She’s gone. I went to her house and she was just

  October 21st

  SNOW

  I need this. This is what I need. I’m coming at this at breakneck speed because I need to just I need to get this down. Because it will help.

  I need to get this down, how the snow was there for me. I’m going so fucking crazy.

  Start with tonight. I went to the store. I was in a good mood. (This is how crazy I am.) I was in a good mood, and it’s only just barely officially fall but already the air smelled of tree bark and ice. I hurried to the 24-hour on the other side of the park, jogging in the dark on the frozen-stiff grass fields with my hands in my pockets. It’s hands-in-pockets time again.

  Keep going, I entered the store, and the lady at the counter who talks too much said Hello and I returned it, making sure not to give her enough eye contact as to appear to be searching for conversation. I scanned the aisles and picked out the things I needed. Oatmeal. Eggs. Milk. Had I wanted to I could have also very easily purchased: sports drinks, birthday cards, white bread, brown sugar, gambling scams, an entire chicken carcass, an orange toque, motor oil, baby wipes, lung cancer, fresh breath, The Best of AC/DC, overpriced cereal, the leftover bits of every part of various animals ground together into a paste, pencils, UV protection, several books of pictures of men putting their penises inside of multiple women, and many other items.

  Then I saw this notebook. I mean I saw the two stacks of notebooks that look exactly like this notebook, the one I am writing in, which I bought from that exact specific unchanged shelf like three months ago. This notebook, which I haven’t used like I told myself I would.

  Dear Journal I’m sorry I neglected you and couldn’t guess your real worth. If I could have written, I would have. I need you now—do you forgive me? I can’t explain but I just feel every single muscle of me tilting towards you now and this is fun, Journal, this is good, to talk to you.

  Nice to meet you. I’m Phil. At least for now. Other times I look at me and I’m really not certain. I wonder how I would know. Let’s not get into it—I’m getting sidetracked.

  Tonight I got sidetracked. I stared at the notebooks. I’ve always loved the cover on these—it’s so beautifully disorienting. And so iconic. Anyway I suddenly knew keeping a journal would be a good idea. Like it would be necessary. It felt like a solution—something about the stack of all those composition notebooks, and just how many there were. I’ve tried this before, as you probably recall—or I’m just going to go ahead and assume you recall, because I don’t think I can go on living in a world where a person’s past journals don’t telepathically communicate with their current ones. I tried a while ago and gave up. Now you remember me.

  So. I brought the stuff to the counter. The talkative lady said Is that everything? Yes. Eleven dollars, eleven cents. Make a wish. I gave her the money and with all my will I wished she wouldn’t get into it, as she does. She started to hand me my change, but then she was staring at it instead, and then smelling her hands and smiling, as if she hoped their scent might transfer to my money?

  I’ve got this new cocoa butter, she said.

  Ohh, awesome.

  It might be too strong, but I just lov
e the smell.

  Yeah, it smells great. (And I wasn’t lying. It smelled exactly like both cocoa and butter.) I can smell it from here. (I was in a good mood.)

  I used to have mint stuff, but this is much better. So rich.

  Mmm-hmm.

  She laughed.

  O... K.......

  I opened the door and started to move outside.

  It’s cold out there tonight.

  I turned around in the doorway.

  Yeah, so cold.

  They’re calling it a cold snap. Yesterday was pretty bad, but I think today’s even worse.

  Whoa, probably.

  I took a step through the doorway.

  It’s so strange. Radio said it might get to minus ten!

  Wow. No way. OK, see ya!

  Have a good night!

  You too, I said, but made the fatal mistake of turning around as I spoke. I have to just stop answering. I have to find a less convenient store.

  Oh look, it’s snowing! she said, looking past me. I turned my head, nodded, and finally made it out.

  It was the first snowfall of the season. It shouldn’t be snowing yet. “Cold snap.” It shouldn’t snow again for months. Of course I didn’t expect it, so I had my little white shoes on, and I was sliding all over the slanted parking lot. There was only the thinnest layer of fluffy snow forming on the ground, and my feet melted through and exposed the dark pavement below. I left a trail of fresh black tracks behind me.

  Walking home, I began to look back at my trail every once in a while, almost with some strange form of very recent nostalgia. My footprints were the only ones around, and I found them so endearing. They meant I was actually going somewhere: that I had started in one place and could show concretely and precisely how I’d proceeded to my destination. Or that I had finally started moving. No, it was that I’d travelled in such a straight forward way—not how I would have pictured them. My footprints didn’t falter or wonder at anything, they had purpose and kept straight and true—simple. I appreciated them how they were, but then I wanted to push them a little. I started to play with them.

  I leapt forward and my slippery landing drew two black lines, the right twice as long as the left. I headed back through the park on the pavement pathway, and there was no one around: it was Wednesday at 3:00 AM. I started walking a symmetric zig-zag evenly across the path, turning around now and then to check its aesthetic value. Perfect. I walked rigidly straight for a while, determined, but then pulled a loop-de-loop and spiralled insanely before continuing in the same direction. I zigged more and zagged more and made longer loops. I got so into it that I wasn’t even thinking. I watched myself draw the most futile line possible through the park. The Phil I watched was having a great time. He hopped on one foot for a while. He backtracked and carefully added a third leg in one section. At one point he noted the only other prints of the trip, some animal’s, maybe canine, and he veered off to follow its route before returning to his own. Each step and each gesture—tangential, calculated, improvised—was recorded. He looked back occasionally and took joy in his madman’s map. The end couldn’t have possibly accounted for the means.

  It was childish, but soon he wished he might have had an audience. Not necessarily right then, but soon after. At least somebody. Someone to laugh at the process. Would she have liked it? I could never predict her. I shouldn’t even try.

  As the snowflakes got bigger and more frequent, it became clear that my dark trail would be filled in and bleached white before long. Nothing stays. (The hardest and blandest truth.)

  I walked in a heart shape, and once I’d made the whole outline I considered it a while, then trod through the middle and broke it in two. That one was so cheesy it made me feel dirty, so I kept walking and trying for greater things. In a large area where two paths met, I set my grocery bag down—I set my whole self down, and I walked out a masterpiece.

  It was way out of character, how much time I spent on it. It felt right at the time, but now it doesn’t seem like something I would ever do. It was simple enough; it was footprints after all. But I made her huge, fifteen times the size of the original. I outlined her and then sort of framed her in a rectangle. I couldn’t remember the background, so I improvised and filled in what seemed right: a rudimentary tree, a mountain.

  It was unmistakably the Mona Lisa, although highly simplified. But my Mona didn’t seem as happy. Everyone knows about how long he supposedly spent on the lips. I didn’t have the patience or the eye for detail, so mine looked more... concerned?

  Of course I hoped someone might see it. I checked around the giant park again but still there was no one. I was alone in the falling snow. The park looked brilliant then, some kind of big aquarium filled only with a wide darkness, its floor sprinkled with lamp posts turning the water near them pale yellow in the midst of all the dark dark purple. The yellow-white flakes sinking down lazily, drifting back and forth and settling to the bottom.

  I admired my masterpiece for a final moment, as every second it vanished more and more.

  Then I picked up my bag and walked home, mostly in straight lines from then on: my feet were numb. And now I’m writing this.

  Whatever this is.

  Because I realized on the walk home that I actually felt fine? If I was honest with myself, it was fine that no one might notice what I made, and probably that was the fun of it—it existed either way, in its own right, because I know it did, and that’s what I was trying to say. And I’m making it sound like it was some out-of-body thing, like I was once again just watching myself do some distant thing—but this was different. This was, it was like I was watching not someone doing something way out of character, no, it was actually the opposite of that. For at least half an hour, I was almost completely free of thought. It was like something pure. It sounds insane but that was Phil. I knew for sure that whoever I saw making that thing was real. I was really there—I swear.

  UNIVERSE

  The way it all came to exist can be very clearly explained, these days, in our infinite wisdom. (It’s simple, really):

  Everything in the universe just exploded from some cold and random point, at some random time before “time,” for a random reason before reasons. Before this, there was nothing. An inconceivable black nothingness filled every corner of nothing, except that there were no corners, and there was no “black.” Then suddenly, out of this non-situation, this absolute nothing, before a “thing” was even imaginable in any terms, suddenly everything burst forth. A non-existing pin pricked through the enormous tension of the nothing, and all the matter banged through the massive void, tearing the nothing wide open, erupting into existence. In a fraction of a tiny fraction of time, nothing became everything. This was not a miracle.

  Massive planets and balls of burning gas were hurled from this exploding point. They bumped into one another, socialized, flirted, split up, ran away, kept moving; they were thrown far far far into an emptiness out of which they carved space for themselves, and to this day they continue along these same paths. No force propels them, other than the initial bang, which was of course not a miracle.

  The waitress just called me “honey.” When I came in she acted like she knew me, like we were pals. It’s kind of nice, actually, they’re starting to know me here. In the kitchen they’re laughing about how I’m wearing the same clothes as yesterday. The crazy guy in white clothes who gets nine hundred coffees and sits scrawling in his little book until close. That’s funny—I just noticed everyone in here is eating alone. It’s so quiet. Where else would we all go on a day like today? Off topic.

  The matter fell into groups along the way. Some of the planets found other planets and stuck together for a time, since they were headed the same way anyway. Some of the luckier groups found great glowing suns. They were pulled from their drifting, and were slowly reeled in. They were spun around and
warmed, drawn close to new caretakers.

  On one of these lucky rocks, an even luckier thing was about to take place. The planet happened to be held a certain distance from its sun, and happened to contain all the necessary ingredients so that, when held there, and with enough time, the perfect energy from the planet’s sun allowed something to emerge—something which would later call itself “Life.” And so it did emerge. First, in a tiny but enormously consequential way—similar to the initial bang, and most things—in little groupings of molecules that did something when they merged, something foreign and cyclical and self-perpetuating. This something they did continued and continued, and Life spread its way around the planet timidly but unquestionably. It was wiped out and it began again. It kept on. The details were a bit fuzzy (unlike all the details previous to this point) but this something became dinosaurs, became nothing, became amoebas again, became fish, became crawling fish, became billions of other animals, became almost-monkeys, then monkeys, then a-bit-more-than-monkeys, then humans.

  It stopped at humans, because the humans told it to.

  (The humans wrote a book about this whole process a while after it happened, and they wrote it in the proper order, and they had fun writing it, and they called it Genesis. But the book was a bad book, and eventually everyone hated it, because although it had the order basically right, it forgot about the dinosaurs, and it played around too much, and it used silly characters and metaphors that weren’t necessary to the central plot, so it lacked sense.)

  Oh I think they’re closing in like fifteen minutes. Shit.

  The humans were now conscious of what had happened. They put their penises inside their vaginas and created more and more Life. They talked about Life, often. For a while it was all they talked about, because it was all that was worth talking about, even though it was truly so bland. It was merely the luck of the cosmic draw. After all, any other planet in the universe which was positioned the proper distance from its sun, and which housed a similar system of proper elements, could also create Life. The odds had nothing to do with it, even though they were incredibly rare (some humans calculated less than a 0.01% chance over a span of four billion years) because Life was simply the exception to the universal rule—special, but not that special. And it wasn’t a miracle, because a miracle had to both happen, and not make sense. And although all of this happened, it, of course, made perfect sense.