Iteration

Once there was, and once there was not. Stor­ies start, safe in the know­ledge that they must — at some inde­term­in­ate time and some unspe­cified place — end. That’s their way. For every expos­i­tion, there is a denoue­ment. That’s their raison d’être. In between times, we scrape our heels in a slow tide of human­ity that never stops reach­ing for the shore, but which loses the plot on an almost daily basis. [And If truth be told, los­ing the plot is quite the best part.]

Take Was and Not, for instance. Merely another two amongst many.

Was had a secret love of point­less­ness, spend­ing whole days on end fuel­ling ice in the fur­naces, in the hope of becom­ing some form of mod­ern alchem­ist who could cre­ate tan­gible won­ders from melted snow. Bears and build­ings, pen­guins and pigeons, even motor­cycles and pops­icle sticks that glow — everything seemed pos­sible, just as long as the hands of the tick­ing clock stayed stuck fast at right angles to each other. [And if truth be told, she had fixed them in place with the strongest glue she could buy.]

“I wanted fairy lights for din­ner,” exclaimed Was, excitedly unveil­ing her latest cre­ation. Work­ing dili­gently, deep in con­cen­tra­tion and with barely a mur­mur, she had fash­ioned a chain of col­oured bulbs from the finest recon­sti­t­uted icicles, which she now sus­pen­ded proudly across the bal­cony for all the city to see. Through the dusk, mock chan­deliers in far-flung living-rooms flickered their acknow­ledge­ment, and street lamps respon­ded with a warm­ing flour­ish of their phos­phorus glow.

Not whiled away his weeks liv­ing high up in the clouds, listen­ing for the sound of scattered showers rat­tling the see-through ceil­ing of his glass globe. On hear­ing the first sig­na­ture notes of rain on the rooftop, he would press his face to the mis­ted win­dows and roll his eyes down­wards until they hurt. This was the only way in which he could sur­vey the mech­an­ical beasts swish glide down city streets, spray­ing water in their wake. Com­muters, cars and com­mo­tion — all bewildered him. [And if truth be told, although none were exactly rocket sci­ence, he had long ago decided that it was much more enjoy­able to feign incomprehension.]

Not fre­quently com­plained of an empty head. “I am blank,” he sighed, as he tore up sheets of lined paper for the sake of tear­ing up paper.

“Is that a meta­phor?” asked Was, watch­ing the fairy lights absent­mindedly. [And if truth be told, secretly hop­ing that they would never melt back into icicles, back into snow.]

“No, it’s torn paper,” answered Not, cling­ing to his con­vic­tion that if he pieced these scraps of evid­ence back together, they would make some sort of sense. And soon. Cer­tainly before the clock came unstuck and he was thrown unwill­ingly out of the door, para­chuted back into enemy ter­rit­ory to land amidst row upon row of drones with their incess­ant buzz­ing and inter­mit­tent beeping.

At this point, time should pass. Whether it does or not is com­pletely irrel­ev­ant. How­ever, you can ima­gine it doing so. If it helps.

“Have you noticed that the hands of that clock aren’t mov­ing?” wondered Not aloud, as he glanced down to see if his wrist­watch was sim­il­arly report­ing that the world had indeed stopped turning.

“Has it?” replied Was, idly. “I won­der how that could have happened? How very strange.” [And if truth be told, think­ing that it wasn’t at all pecu­liar. Or odd. Or any­thing else, for that matter.]

Halfway through the story — between the start and the end, at some inde­term­in­ate time and some unspe­cified place, and on a mean­der­ing course to some­where or other — there was and there was not. This is just a moment, more or less, in the plot that so many of us have gone to such great lengths to lose.