this story is a sequel to Nothing and Nowhere, I suggest reading it first
Amidst unending darkness he paced, tracing ceaseless circles around the hole because here was where he was. As best he understood, he might have walked in a straight line or a zigzag or turned backflips for all the difference it would make. He remained here, inasmuch as ‘here’ was a place to remain, because here there was company. It didn’t make sense to walk away even if it was possible.
One eye saw light; two eyes saw depth.
One eye alone could show you anything, but two were required to discern how to reach it.
By that logic, and if it were true that the mind gave meaning to what the eyes saw, then two minds—
“I don’t wish to do this anymore.”
Beloshi turned to face the person seated on the ground behind him. “Do what?”
“Sit here watching you think.”
“I thought you didn’t want to walk.” He gestured toward the muted glow low to the ground against one distant horizon. “You said our promise is here.”
“Here is nowhere,” Another reminded him.
“Then how can anything be here?”
“Nothing is here but us.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Another cocked his head. “It doesn’t matter whether we’re nowhere or somewhere. We might come or go and it would make no difference. The promise will always lay on the horizon wherever we are, because we carry it with us.”
He didn’t understand this, either, but he understood very little of what Another said. “You want to walk, then?”
“No.”
He waited.
“I don’t want to think about horizons. I don’t want to spend all of time staring into darkness wondering why it isn’t light.”
“What is the alternative?”
Another held up a hand, making points on his fingers. “I want light. Not the light of the imagination: real light. I want something solid to stand on. I want purpose, tasks to fill my time and give me meaning. I want a place where I may do all this while you think. A real place.”
“Very well.”
“You know how to find these things?”
“I will make these things.”
“Why did you not do this before?”
“There was no reason to.”
“No reason? Shadows stir in the darkness.” Another looked around as if The Nothing made him nervous.
“How can there be shadows when there’s no light?”
Another shook his head.
“I’ll make a place for you where there are no shadows,” he promised. A thought occurred to him. “You told me time in nowhere is meaningless, but if I make somewhere, does time not have meaning after all?”
“That seems to trouble you.”
“You might not always be there.”
“Why would I wish to leave?”
“You will stay there forever?”
“Forever,” Another repeated.
“Then I will make a place to occupy your mind where shadows cannot reach you.”
Squatting, Beloshi placed both palms on the surface upon which he stood. He would have called it the ground, but Another said not; according to him, they were the only real things here, and this meant any other things that appeared to be here weren’t the input of their senses but rather the creation of their minds. It was hard for him to conceptualize.
And perhaps it wasn’t entirely true. When he lifted his hands from the solid earth now beneath them, bare soil spread in every direction. It wasn’t perfectly featureless: the hole remained.
Another had noticed, too. He rose to his feet and edged closer cautiously, peering into its depths. Beloshi came to stand beside him, then stepped past him so he could look straight down. If it had any bottom, it wasn’t possible to see it in the darkness.
This made it obvious what his next move ought to be. He looked at what appeared to be the dark sky above them, and perhaps now there was a ground it made sense to speak of a sky. Before he could do anything, a hand closed ‘round his upper arm. Another pulled him back a few steps from the hole as if he might fall into it with his attention fixed elsewhere. Beloshi gave him a nod, then turned his face up again.
Above them, brightness grew. The darkness faded into light beneath a dully blue ceiling. In every direction, between the brown ground and the new sky, a margin of Nothing remained visible. Now there was light by which to see, Beloshi stepped back to the verge of the hole and looked down. Light there might be, but it was directionless and faint and did not illumine the hole. Its nadir might have been the length of his arm below the surface and he wouldn’t have been able to perceive it. It was as if the hole refused to be penetrated by his senses or his powers.
Another sat down well away. He propped an elbow on one knee, propped his chin on his fist. He, too, considered the hole.
“What is it?” Beloshi asked at last.
“I was wrong,” Another told him decisively.
“Wrong?”
“When I said we’re the only real things here. That’s real, too.”
“What is it?” he asked again.
“Time.”
Beloshi had turned to regard him. Now he looked at the hole. “Time,” he repeated. “Is not time… Should time not be…” He floundered. Tried, “How can time be a thing in a place?”
Another thought about this. “Before there was anything, there was nothing, but this hole was already present. When there was nothing, there was something, which was time. Before there was anything, time was everything. This is why you could walk indefinitely even though you were nowhere. Now…”
“It’s a hole in the ground.”
“I believe this is where time is… tethered to this something you made.”
“‘This something’ is a promise we made to each other.”
Another nodded, conceding the point.
They were both silent, then Beloshi pointed out, “The hole was here before there was a place for it to be connected to.”
“You believe this suggests design? There was meant to be something here? Meant by who?”
He was quiet while he studied Another. “You’re the one who wanted something to be here. I found you sleeping beside the hole.”
“You found me because you were here first,” Another reminded him quickly.
“Where? You told me the place where I found you wasn’t a place. Now you say it was a time.”
“You woke and were and walked through time until you found me.”
“I didn’t make time. It must have been before me, else how could I wake and know I hadn’t previously been? You’re the one who wished to tie time to a place and you’re the one who chose this place to do so. Which was where I found you sleeping and waited for you to wake.”
Another turned his face up, gazing on the blue-beige plane above them. “The sky is too low. It looks as if The Nothing is pushing it down on our heads.”
Beloshi watched him, wondering why he’d changed the subject. It was as if he did not wish to ask these questions or have them answered. If they didn’t understand where they had begun, how could they grasp where it was they wished to go? Where they wished to go was, of course, the promise they both saw on the horizon, which Another claimed lay in their desires. This must mean that understanding what they were was the first step in realizing their dream.
Could Another have decided he didn’t want the promise? Did he no longer see it on the horizon? After all, if time was real then things could change, including minds. Perhaps it didn’t matter, though; he had promised he would remain in this place forever.
This reminded Beloshi that he had made a promise too. “Perhaps, if I raise the ground in places, it might push the sky up?”
Another folded his hands in his lap and looked at him expectantly.
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