Bored Again

“I’m bored again,” They announced into the empty void where they lived.

It wasn’t just a room that happened to be so empty that it was practically a void. A room with matte black walls so one couldn’t tell if they were walls or just the endless darkness. It wasn’t a metaphor or hyperbole.

It was actually a void, where They lived. “They” of course, wasn’t their actual name, but we may as well capitalize it because They didn’t have a name. They was just — well — there. Maybe. It’s all rather confusing, to be honest, and neither you nor I have the vocabulary to actually articulate anything of value.

Suffice it to say that something or someone who we’ll call “They” was alone with themselves in an endless, empty void. And if we suspend all knowledge of physics, we can agree that They announced (in what could be conceivably described as a “voice”) that They was bored. Again.

If it matters to you, as it does to me, the void was not black as you might be attempting to imagine it. It would make sense if the void were black. Space is black. What we see when we close our eyes, which is the closest to an empty void we’ll experience in our lives, is black. But the void that They existed in was not black, it was bright, blinding white.

You could tell yourself — if you’d like — that the blinding white void is same white that people claim to see during near-death experiences. It isn’t, of course. But you can tell yourself it is if it will make you happy. I won’t stop you.

I am stalling. I am trying to find the vocabulary necessary for this tale, but vocabulary was never my forte. So let us push forth with what paltry words I have.

Let’s start over, shall we?

“I’m bored again,” They announced into the empty void. We can assume that the words echoed around dramatically as though the void were a giant, empty church. There was no echo though, because there are no edges to a void, no walls. Sound cannot reflect across an infinity. But, for dramatic effect, let us pretend that their words echoed wildly around them.

They began to take a visible form, but not a solidified one. They morphed through bodies and faces and species and genders. They grew tall and short and became an elephant and became an ant.

As this transformation continued, They thought out loud. “Let’s see, let’s see,” their hollow voice rang (ringing added for dramatic effect, of course) out. “I’ve been a gardener of course — that was fun for a bit. Furniture design? I enjoyed it, of course, but it’s such old hat now — you make one beautiful leather chair and the appeal disappears. Knitting? Oh, I remember the stupid sweater now. Woodworking, yoga, harpsichord, metallurgy. Ugh.”

They despaired.

“Tried it all, haven’t we? Wait, beekeeping? Have we done beekeeping yet?”

A beehive materialized in front of them. The sound of buzzing surrounded them as the little bees fluttered their wings in a frantic search to figure out where and why they were.

They groaned. “Right,” they said, “those are bees. I forgot. Annoying little buzzy things, aren’t they?”

They waved a hand and the bees, as well as the hive, went back to non-existence as quickly as they had materialized. The bees, naturally, never had the chance to figure out where or why they were. But, that’s fairly standard for bees anyway. As far as we know.

A leather chair materialized and They sat down in it hard. Currently, They had settled on the visage of an old man with a long gray beard. They were clothed in drab, tan linens that almost melded into the white of the void. The linens didn’t meld into the white void, of course, because nothing exactly matches “void white” except for more void.

Sitting slumped on the chair, legs draped lazily over the arm, They stroked their long grey beard thoughtfully. “There’s just nothing to do. I’ve done it all a thousand times over and then a few hundred more times. I could just take a nap for a few millennia, I suppose.”

“Ugh, but then I’d wake up and be bored again.”

They stood up suddenly. They grabbed the chair, lifted it effortlessly overhead, and threw it into the void where it spun and flew forever. Just for fun.

But it wasn’t much fun, so They snapped their fingers. It came back (or an identical chair, I suppose, but it being the same chair feels more romantic. Don’t you agree? The same chair. Just for them.) and rematerialized underneath them as they sat.

In an instant, or perhaps a hundred years, They had a brilliant idea. All this power and all this time. Why not make something? Bigger than the chair. Something with a little bit of everything.

A smile crossed their wrinkly, whiskered face. “In the beginning,” They said, “there was darkness!”

The void instantly went from bright, blinding, void white to deep, empty black. Similar to, but at the same time entirely different from, the blackness you see (or don’t see, I suppose) when your eyelids close and your eyes roll uselessly back into your skull where there exists no light for the rods and cones to perceive. I bring this up because I know that you’d want to know what the void looked like at this important juncture in the story.

And also because I’m stalling. Again. Sorry about that.

They began swirling their hands around in the emptiness, and things began to appear: the cosmos, to be exact. Stars, planets, nebulas, galaxies exploded out of their mind and splattered across the black velvet canvas of the void. That was a metaphor, of course, it wasn’t a canvas made of black velvet, or even a white canvas covered in black gesso. It was nothing. Made of nothing.

The stars and planets and things were massive, of course, because they are. But as They waved them out of nothing and into something, they all appeared quite small. As small or even smaller than they look from your backyard at night.

The planets are what interested them most as They began crafting them. An astronomical handful of them were considered special in their mind. They had all the carbon they’d need. All building blocks of creating little bees and elephants and ants and more. All the necessary materials to create little beings with the potential to be as bored as They tended to be. But not for so long. They wasn’t cruel. But They did decide to scatter this handful of planets far and wide, so they’d probably never know of each other. That was maybe a little cruel.

They wondered how long it would take for the process to complete, for the little beings to be made. How long before the planets would be full of woodworkers and knitters, and gardeners and furniture designers. Billions of brief, bored little things trying desperately to find something to fill all the time. Just like They.

A stopwatch displayed itself in the void, where They could see it from their chair. It started ticking up, so They could know just how long. On a whim, They materialized a second, synchronized clock. One for the creation of hobbies. One for how long until all the bored little things destroyed their worlds. After all, They knew what it was like to be bored.

They sat there, watching. The clocks ticked incessantly up.

“Ugh,” They said, “I’m bored again.”