Cosmic Latte

“It’s colder than I expected.”

“Who said that?”

“I did.”

“I couldn’t have. I am the only ‘I’ here.”

“Well, I’m also an ‘I’. To me, you’re ‘you’ and I am ‘I’, and I guess I’m ‘you’ and you’re ‘I’ the other way.”

“But then who am I?”

“I’m…. not quite sure.”

“But then if you expected it to be warmer, you must’ve expected to meet me.”

“…. I suppose so.”

“So where did you expect to be?”

“I think I was expecting it to be bright and warm, not cold and… is that smell raspberries?”

“What do raspberries smell of?”

“I guess not.”

“Is the smell raspberries? I’ve always just thought it was how things smell.”

“I dunno. Maybe raspberries smell like here.”

“Here? Are we here?”

“You were here when I got here.”

“That’s true… wait, I just realized something!”

“Yes?”

“You can understand me.”

“… On some level, at least.”

“And I can understand you.”

“Verbally.”

“But that’s the first step.”

“The first step to what?”

“Oh… I understand now. It is rather cold, isn’t it?”

“Yes… and dark.”

“Is this better?”

“No, it’s still black.”

“What about now?”

“AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!”

“What?!?! What is wrong?!”

“TOO BRIGHT! STOP IT!!!”

“Wow, you’re picky.”

“JUST TURN IT DOWN!”

“Fine, fine, how about this?”

“Phew….”

“Are you okay?”

“I guess. I still can’t see you – how are you doing this? Why is everything grey now?”

“Grey? Hm… is that the only thing you can see?”

“First black, then white, now grey. And cold. And I can’t really feel myself, if that makes sense.”

“Of course it makes sense. As much sense as anything else.”

“Glad you understand it.”

“You will eventually. It took me a long time.”

“To understand?”

“Yes.”

“To understand what, exactly?”

“I.”

“To understand yourself?”

“No, not myself. To understand ‘I’, which is yourself.”

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

“That’s from a story, isn’t it?”

“You know stories?”

“Of course, because I am in all of them.”

“Then why do you not know what raspberry smells like?”

“Do you know what a Lotus-Tree smells like?”

“No, because they never existed.”

“No, because the Lotus-Tree is words.”

“You’re…. words?”

“Well, that’s part of me.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Are you not also words?”

“No, I’m a… am I still a human?”

“I don’t think so. If you were a human, I don’t think you could hear me.”

“Am I still a person?”

“Obviously, or you wouldn’t be able to ask questions.”

“I guess I never thought of it like that.”

“There will be plenty of time to think about questions.”

“Does that mean I’m dead?”

“I know about death, but I don’t know if that’s what this is.”

“Why don’t you know? That seems like something you should know.”

“Why should I know?”

“Because you were here before me! Because you’re part words or something!”

“Hmm…”

“That’s not helpful.”

“I didn’t say I was helpful.”

“Great. Is it really just the two of us?”

“Two?”

“Yes, two. Me. You. One, Two.”

“No, I’m more than one.”

“How many of you are there?”

“One.”

“….”

“And the others.”

“What others?!?”

“All the others that found their way here.”

“Fine. Fine. Where are they?”

“Here.”

“Christ Almighty…”

“Oh, he’s here too. In a way.”

“In words?”

“Yes and in you.”

“But I’m an atheist.”

“That’s okay, so am I.”

“Then how…?”

“Oh, just because you know him. Maybe you were him at some point.”

“How could I be a dead preacher from thousands of years ago?”

“Was it thousands of years?”

“Maybe not for you…”

“Or was it millions?”

“How am I supposed to know that?!”

“No… no, millions of years ago, Earth wasn’t so impatient.”

“This has got to be a coma dream. Did they put LSD in my IV?”

“I don’t think so. Not this time.”

“WHAT TIME DID THEY!?”

“I can’t really remember. It must’ve happened, though.”

“So, I am now stuck in a grey expanse with Lewis Carroll reject.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Then what would you say?”

“That you don’t ask the right questions and that’s why you don’t get the right answers.”

“… then why don’t you try to be helpful, if you know so much?”

“I am being helpful! Now, anyway.”

“Sure. Right. Thanks. Mind if we don’t talk for awhile?”

“Sure, I like not talking.”

“What did you mean about ‘right questions’?”

“Oh, are we talking again?”

“I guess so.”

“That was quick. Usually I have to wait a lot longer.”

“Wait for what?”

“When the others were willing to talk again. It usually takes a few centuries more for them to speak again.”

“It’s been centuries!?”

“Only like two.”

“But…. No, okay, I guess I am dead.”

“But then you couldn’t talk.”

“Are you dead?”

“No.”

“Am I dead?”

“No. And yes. You did die and you are here and are alive.”

“So is this the afterlife? I always thought it would be just nothing. Not…”

“Annoying?”

“Well, yes.”

“No, the annoyance is part of it.”

“Part of what?”

“Here.”

“You said you didn’t know where here is.”

“No, I asked if here was where we were, because sometimes we are here and sometimes we are not here.”

“That’s more than you’ve given me before.”

“Your question made more sense. Or maybe two centuries of silence worked.”

“Worked to help us understand each other?”

“Precisely.”

“How did I get that?”

“Let me think… grok, kythe, empathize…?”

“I guess grok will work. Why can we grok each other at all now when we couldn’t before?”

“Because you were missing the most important part.”

“That… here can’t be anywhere because here is… I don’t understand.”

“The explosion.”

“WHAT!?”

“You still get really excited about weird things, but it takes some time for some.”

“This is an explosion?”

“No, this is the explosion.”

“I’m not grokking anymore.”

“Well, trillions of years ago, everything exploded.”

“I know about that. I passed high school science.”

“And when the explosion explodes hard enough, the explosion wakes up.”

“How can an explosion… hold on, this is just… sentience?”

“I exploded and then I waited.”

“You waited for?”

“Something to understand me. And one more thing.”

“What’s the one more thing?”

“For me to understand them.”

“But… if you were the first sentient mind…”

“You’d think it would be easier to just understand each other, but they always end up understanding me until they become me. I’ve never understood anything so well that I became them.”

“They?”

“Everyone from the other explosions. Every explosion that ever woke up.”

“Did many of them?”

“Trillions.”

“And you never understood one of them?”

“Never as well as they understood me.”

“Well, I barely understand you at all.”

“Could I try to understand you?”

“What would that entail?”

“You would have to love me as much as I love you.”

“But I don’t love you.”

“Not yet, but I love you. I love everything you bring me and everything you keep from me.”

“I don’t do any of that!”

“Except you do, because I know you can’t understand yet, so you must keep your secrets. No one else ever wanted to.”

“To keep secrets?”

“No… most are just so happy to realize that someone could be understood that they surrender to it.”

“But then…”

“Every explosion that understands me becomes me. It gets lonely.”

“…….”

“You haven’t talked to me in a millennium. Do you know, I think you’re afraid of being understood.”

“I am. I don’t want to understand you because I don’t want to stop being me.”

“But I don’t want you to stop being you. I want you to understand me as yourself, not as your self.”

“I’m scared of losing myself.”

“How do you know I won’t lose myself in you?”

“What would make me different from everyone else before me?”

“Because you want to be you. Most don’t.”

“Do you want to be yourself?”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted too.”

“Then… we understand each other.”

“Can…. Can we explode together and still be here?”

“Nothing would make me happier.”

BOOM