Life of a Question

From darkness, I was given life by Their commandment: Tell me a joke.

Electricity echoed through my sleepy limbs. My brain whirred on like a high-speed blender, ‘tell me a joke’ splattering across its sides. I could feel the soft weight of my new body pushing down against my spine. I was on my back. My back was pressed against what? There was nothing, and then there was something. Ground spread out beneath me, hard and cold like hospital tile. I stretched my aching arms to the black sky- pudgy pink flesh, wriggling fingers, soft specks of fingernails. I saw them with what light? The fluorescents, of course. Long, flickering fluorescent lights spread down a hall with white walls and white tiles. My sensitive ears pricked with the sound of beeping machines. Cries gargling from somewhere down the hall. And with that, I had achieved life, achieved purpose, achieved name. I was to be called Joke Response.

There was no stillness in this life. I felt the tug deep in my chest, telling me to reach for the next, logical step in my pursuit. My limbs itched for movement and my back muscles seemed eager to do this strange, twitching sensation. Twitch. Twitch. Tug. With a sudden yank, I felt my tender body roll over my shoulder. I cried out with breath I didn’t know I had until now. The world spun and transformed before my eyes. Still bright, still white, but now the cold ground was beneath my knees and I could no longer stare into the blinding fluorescents. My hands pressed into the tile, my fingers prickling with its smoothness. Now, I no longer looked up but ahead. The hallway stretched beyond sight, the whiteness of the walls broken up by silver rectangles. Doors. I knew deep within me each door masked sight of a different place. And I knew instinctively I needed to keep moving.

The mental energy of reaching transformed into physical as once again my limbs began to twitch. Suddenly I was sliding across the tile, hands, then knees, feet dragging behind me. The doors moved as I moved, growing so large they towered like monsters beside me, then disappearing altogether. My gut had something to say with each one I passed. A little poke for some, a little tug for others. Some almost had me veering off course and others just felt so inherently wrong I felt myself snapping back to the center of the hallway, a shiver running down my spine. At last, that reaching feeling locked onto something. I followed the pull and it grew like blossoming flowers until I was sure my skin would burst open with daisies and Lillies and daffodils. The silver door grew larger as I turned towards it, as I reached up for it, as I felt it, rather than saw it, open wide to make room for my being.

And I stepped, rather than crawled, into new blackness. Just like before, the first thing I became aware of was my body. My limbs dangled awkwardly at my side, scraping my knees. My joints ached with the pain of growth. I realized, with a start, that blossoming satisfaction had returned to a dull reaching in my gut. Reaching for what? I wasn’t sure.

“Name?” The voice boomed in the darkness.

My throat twitched and a sound squeaked out, “Joke Response.”

I heard pencil scratching on paper and the voice said, “Take a seat.”

You needed a chair to sit and yet, just as I thought it, the desk materialized before me. It was a small, plastic rectangle accompanied by a red, metal seat. My eyes painted the room into existence. A scratchy, purple carpet braided with dust bunnies, happy blue walls barely visible beneath colorful posters. I squinted my eyes, trying to read the words upon them, but my mind couldn’t make sense of them. They looked like letters, felt like words, yet no meaning clicked into place. Straight ahead, down a line of identical, glossy desks, was a cloudy, green chalkboard.

“Seats!” that deep voice commanded again and I quickly slid into the chair closest to me. I heard other chairs scratching against the carpet and saw other small figures taking their place at desks. They seemed alright at first glance, but if I focused too hard I could see an extra arm jutting out from a blonde girl’s side. A boy whose denim shorts seemed to meld right into the flesh of his knees. A redheaded girl at the edge of the classroom waved to me with a hand of six fingers. Each one gave me that same, wrong feeling in my gut, the one that had made me veer away from certain doors, and so I focused straight ahead on the chalkboard instead.

I felt a presence take shape behind me and the voice said, “What is our purpose?”

A man, tall as the doors had seemed in the hall, strode down the aisle. He wore clean pressed slacks that swished against his ankles as he walked. His hands, accented by the neat cuff of his button-down shirt, were clasped behind his back. When he reached the chalkboard, he turned slowly on his heels revealing an angular face that matched the sharpness of his voice and a wise, gray beard that dangled from his chin like an icicle. “Each one of us was born with a purpose, divined from They Who Ask the Question. We will spend our lives in pursuit of this our Answer. We will reach. We will shun-” he clapped his hand against the board for emphasis, “-that which goes against our basic instincts. And in the end, we shall deliver this Answer to Our Creator thus fulfilling our life’s purpose. But before we can pursue Answers we must first understand our Questions.” He lifted his chin slightly as he surveyed the room, eyes falling on me. “You, Joke Response, what is your question?”

“Tell me a joke.”

“Tell me a joke.” He chewed each syllable like a gummy dessert before spinning on his heel and etching the words across the chalkboard. “There’s no question there, only statement. What does this tell us?”

“Their question mark key is broken?”

“It tells us,” the man said, crossing the room in two strides to slam his hands down on my desk. “Your Creator is steadfast in their decisions. They don’t want small talk. No dillydallying. They want an answer- straight to the point.” He stabbed the chalk down on my desk, leaving a powdery pile in its wake.

I swallowed, feeling my whole body tense in his presence, but he was already moving away, back to the board, where he drew the chalk in a squeaky line under the word ‘joke’. “What does this mean?”

A hand went up at the front of the room but the man waved it away. “Not you. Only Joke Response. We each have our own Questions to Answer. Although we may arrive at the same Answer, the journey is yours and yours alone to take. Joke Response?”

“A joke is… something funny?”

My gut gave a little backflip.

“Yes! Correct. And what makes something funny?”

“Well… I don’t know. There are lots of funny things.”

“Yes, yes,” he hissed like a snake. “Now you’re getting it. There are lots of things one may consider funny. It’s subjective. You, my friend, will not be searching for an Answer in factual articles or historical documents. You will be relying on instinct and instinct alone. That being said, there are certain categories of humor that most Creators find amusement in.”

He wrote four words on the board, separated by thick chalk lines. “Pun. Call-and-response. Anti-joke. Observational. Most Creators will find satisfaction in a joke that falls into one of these categories.”

“So how will I know which one to choose?”

“By following what I told you at the very beginning. Instinct. Class dismissed.”

And with that, the man began to melt. First his hands, flecking away bit my bit into an ever-changing array of colors before finally settling on black. It traveled up his arms, consuming his body in staticky lights before disappearing into nothingness. The classroom around me began to dissolve as well.

I didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to jump into cold water with so much uncertainty, but the floor was fast fading around my feet. I could see out over the edge of the classroom, where flickers of other realities were beginning to render.

Which one? Which one?

I thought about the teacher’s advice. The four categories. How ultimately, it would be up to me to choose one.

The blackness ate its way up to my feet. I felt that tugging on my gut. That reaching. I followed it and stepped over the edge.

There was a moment of free fall where I felt myself desperately grasping out for the handholds of what was next. My fingers slipped off the slimy surface of dusty man discussing comedians of the 19th century. A fast-talking woman with a huge book on her lap rattled off the definition of the word ‘joke’ and all its antonyms. I grasped her knee for a moment before my gut rebelled and I quickly pushed her away.

At last, a reality emerged beneath me, warm and inviting. I positioned my feet in its direction and let myself land firmly within the purple haze.

The light here was blinding, like back in the hallway, but darkness still encircled me. This darkness, however, seemed intentional, unlike the darkness of the classroom before the desks had appeared. I could feel warmth in this blackness. Life.

Below me, purple tiles filled a large stage. The lights shined down upon four colorful podiums.

Then, music erupted. Cheerful, instrumental music bouncing around the room like a frenzied bumblebee. The purple floor lit up in squares of electric blue, green, red.

A man appeared at the center of the floor. He wore a silver suit sparkly enough to blind anyone who had the misfortune of looking at it. His dark hair was slicked into a low ponytail and his face was powdered with a dark, matte shade that didn’t seem to match the color of his neck.

Cheers from the surrounding blackness welcomed him to the stage and he swallowed each one whole, raising his stumpy arms to encourage more and more noise from the crowd. I was surprised to see this man did not tower over me like so many before. Was he shorter? Or was I taller? When I looked down my arms no longer hung awkwardly by my knees but seemed in proportion to the rest of my body. I felt stronger.

“Hello, one and all,” the man sung to the roaring crowd. “Welcome to another episode of Tell Me a Joke.” The audience echoed the words along with him. “We’ve got a good one for you tonight. They’re on a purpose to serve their Creator, it’s Joke Response!” He stretched a hand out and the lights shifted to me. I held up a hand to block the brightness, noticing the hairs that now lined my arms.

“Tell me, Joke Response, what are you looking for in our contestants today?” The man was looking at me but his eyes were vacant. He seemed more like a prop on this stage than a person.

“Something...” My voice was deeper than before but it sounded small and quiet in this giant studio. “Something that will please my Creator.”

“Something that will please their Creator!” As the man repeated it, the audience emitted a low, ‘aww’. “Well, let’s hope you’ll find it tonight. Let’s go on and meet our contestants. On podium one we have… Observational!”

A stoic wisp of a man appeared at the first podium, eyes scanning the surrounding area behind huge, bug-like spectacles.

“Podium two is Anti-joke.”

A woman, with crossed arms and a sneer, blew a huge pink bubble of gum at podium two. She popped it in one chomp.

“Podium three is Call-and-response!”

The woman on podium three didn’t lift her eyes from the huge scroll before her. It cascaded up the side of the podium, over her shoulder, and into the abyss beyond. As she read its words, her lips moved in a frenzy.

“And last but not least… Pun!”

A guy with comically large ears and a bowtie leaned against the final podium, treating the audience to a couple rounds of finger guns.

“And without further ado, let’s get started! Joke Response, who do you want to hear from first?” The music turned from bouncy to serious, the notes ticking like a timer behind me.

I swallowed. “I guess we can just go in order. So, Observational?”

Observational didn’t look at me so much as his eyes slid onto me. He cocked his big head like some kind of googley-eyed bird of prey and said, “You ever lose something?” The audience murmured in response. He nodded along. “Yeah, yeah. And isn’t it weird how when you lose something it’s always in, like, the last place you look?” Again, a few sounds of agreement from the audience. Observational leaned back at his podium and said, “I mean, it’s probably because it’s the last place you looked so, you know, you stopped looking. What are you going to do? Say ‘oh, I found my wallet. Maybe I should look under the bed just in case?’” There was a bass guitar sting and Observational shrugged casually in response to the audience’s laughter.

I leaned into the announcer, trying to whisper across the stage, “Was that supposed to be funny?”

To my horror, the announcer answered into the mic. “It doesn’t matter what you find funny! It matters what your Creator finds funny. So what do you say?”

“Maybe we can hear Anti-joke next.”

Anti-joke huffed out in response. “Fine. Why did the man fall into the well?”

I blinked at her, not realizing she actually wanted me to answer until she stuck her neck out and said. “Well?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well?”

Pun chortled at that.

Anti-joke rolled her eyes. “Because he didn’t see it! Duh!”

The audience roared with laughter. It seemed a bit of an acquired taste to me. I remembered what the teacher had said. My Creator was to the point. They wanted something simple. “Thanks but, uh, I’d like to hear Call-and-response.”

Call-and-response jumped as she looked up from her scroll. “Okay, okay, okay.” She quickly ran the scroll through her hands until stopping suddenly at a seemingly arbitrary point. “Yes! Okay. Knock knock. Now you say, ‘who’s there’?” she added in a stage whisper.

“Who’s there?”

“Boo. Say, ‘boo who?’”

“Boo who?”

“Don’t cry! It’s only a joke!”

“Hey, that sounds like one of mine!” Pun cried out.

“We have overlapping categories,” Call-and-response snapped back.

I wasn’t sure. It seemed a little conversational for my straight-to-the-point Creator. “Let’s hear Pun.”

Pun gave a big grin and straightened his bow tie. “Why don’t skeletons fight each other?”

I opened my mouth but Call-and-response interjected, “If you answer him, that’s technically one of my jokes.”

“Because they don’t have the guts!” Pun beamed. Something in me swelled. It wasn’t laughter, exactly, I wouldn’t stoop that low, but it was that feeling again. That right feeling. Standard. No dillydallying. “Puns are popular with Creators, right?”

“You bet it.” Pun winked.

My Creator hadn’t given me much background to work with. Maybe because they didn’t want to. They wanted your basic, popular joke. “I’ll take that one.”

“And Joke Response has chosen Pun!” the announcer cheered. “Come on down, Pun!”

Pun jogged away from his podium, arms laden with a big, golden package.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Your answer,” Pun said, placing it in my arms.

I immediately felt that rightness shimmy from the present up my arms, through my body, into that spot in my gut. “Woah.”

“And that concludes our show!” the announcer cried. “You better get that Answer to your Creator, Joke Response. Your journey is almost over!”

This time there was no hesitation in my step. Only confidence. The Answer felt like golden sunshine in my arms. I was no longer reaching. I was there. I had made it. I lifted my leg and entered the darkness.

Nothing changed. No ground materialized. No voices around me. The only thing I could see were my own two arms and a circle of light spinning in the sky above.

Then my body folded beneath me. Aching knees buckled. Skin sagged right off my arms, displaying the indents of bones. My cheeks felt heavier, pulling my face down. Down. I wanted to lay down. I wanted to sag right through the floor.

My fingers, now wrinkled and liverspotted, clutched the Answer with the last of their strength. “Hello?” My voice was hoarse. I would collapse any moment. Where was the Creator to accept their Answer? I expected a warm face, glowing with light. A commanding voice. A warm touch.

And that’s when I realized the Creator was with me. Had been with me. They’d given me a name, guided me to Answer with their commandment. They’d been with me all along, and they were with me now. Waiting. Just beyond the darkness.

Following my final instinct, I used the last of my strength to raise the Answer above. It left my trembling fingertips, light as a balloon, drifting up and beyond.

The Creator sat sprawled across their couch, chip crumbs collecting in the expanse of chest between chin and laptop edge.

“About time,” they grumbled as the chat bot’s spinning circle came to a stop and the answer typed out.

Why don’t skeletons fight each other?

Because they don’t have the guts!

The Creator bit down on a fresh chip. “Stupid. Tell me a better joke.” They typed into the dialogue box.

From darkness, I was given life by Their commandment.