Short Stories
Safe Word
Two Friends sat at a bar of ether. Known as Isis and Osiris (and by a multitude of other names), the two floated in a soothing bath of nothingness, without want or fear, desire or dread, in a state of eternal interaction between elements of the same primal, universal force. Isis and Osiris sipped the ethereal wine of imagination as they spiraled about each other in free communion. A fragment of one of their cosmic dreams gave rise to the following:
"Wouldn't it be interesting if time were stretched out in a line instead of just existing?" Osiris asked.
"Another game!" Isis said.
Isis watched time form a ribbon through the infinite dimensions and perceived Osiris as a separate entity speeding alongside her through time. "We’re disturbing the eternal wholeness and peace of the cosmos," Isis said.
"I see we are, and it is good," he responded.
"It disturbs me, too, but I’ll watch."
And energy became trapped in the current of time and began moving at its constant speed. “Let’s create a place for these new identities to dwell in," Osiris said, and energy fell into patterns and the illusion of three dimensions.
"This," said Osiris, "is evolution, watch!"
Isis watched on as nebulous flames burst forth into the newly created space and exploded outward in all directions. Twirling clouds of gas, white, red, blue, purple, and pink pushed out. Points of blinding light soon illuminated the nebulas congealing in a spray of activity, making elements and compounds. “A spectacle to be sure,” Isis said, “but not yet serious.”
"Force and form, power and vibration!" Osiris exclaimed. "On a tiny sphere, that one over there, spinning around a little yellow star, fascinating things will come into being for us to see," he shouted, pointing.
An undulating blue ocean with a bent horizon appeared, and soon tiny animate objects began crawling from the waves onto land. Male and female elements emerged, and one beast begat another becoming yet a third. Innumerable creatures appeared and disappeared, from tiny, squirming protozoans to vicious, thundering reptiles that shook the ground. The horizon grew tangled with trees and animals. Isis and Osiris watched, quite entertained by the dramas of survival and competition, procreation and death until Osiris suddenly become bored with his evolving creation. "Let's add a creature that can not only sense the environment but wonder about it."
They looked about and saw squirming worms, perched eagles, foraging rodents, wind-blown palm trees and found some funny chattering beings on two feet. "They’ll do," Osiris said, and granted these two-legged monsters a crude intelligence barely able to perceive reality beyond their immediate needs. "They’ll provide more of interest."
"This is getting serious,” Isis said, “because now they’re a tiny bit like us, yet subject to the crudest and most uncaring elements of this illusion we have created. The four-legged beasts were already beginning to think and feel, but these others will cause much greater mischief and suffering."
"We can put a stop to this whenever we like," Osiris said confidently, "Let it be so."
The hairy two-legged beasts lost most of the hair, multiplied between periodic plagues and wars and began to manipulate and destroy their environment. With feverish seriousness, they set about building and demolishing, conceiving and executing. They went forth in a fury to explain why they existed and to formulate theories about a higher meaning. They came up with a nearly infinite range of explanations, all of which amused Isis and Osiris and made them understand how limited human perception really was. They constructed cities, governments, and armies. Billions lived and died and were reborn only to die again. Rolling steel boxes, flying aluminum containers, and tall concrete dwelling projections soon littered the once pristine horizon.
In the faces of the people, Isis could see their suffering. "Let’s stop this and go back to ourself," she said.
But Osiris had become too intrigued to let his creation go just yet. "We’ll undo this after we see what happens next," he said.
Wars were fought, sex performed, and the environment further fouled in a trillion shouts, cries and laughs. Osiris marveled as the multitudes prayed to him, their creator, but he was still not satisfied. He could only observe his handiwork from a safe distance. "I see it all, but I can’t feel any of it. If for a moment, I could experience what I have done, then we could undo everything."
"Become a two-legged yourself for a moment," Isis said.
"That's it - what a brilliant idea. I can experience the sensation as one minute mortal drop of rain – wonderful, and that will complete the experiment."
"Go down. When you want out, just say my name and knock on the veil of the illusion, and I will answer and let you out," Isis said.
"This is my best fancy of all - I will do it. You watch. I'll only need a second, and then we’ll be back as one."
"Let it be so," Isis and Osiris said, and Osiris instantly had senses and a body.
A young woman ran across a vast newly plowed field holding her balling infant in her left arm and clenching her husband’s hand to her right. Along with the baby, her backpack weighed her down. The bright sky, hot wind and intense sunlight overwhelmed her as she remembered both herself as a refugee in a civil war and a God making an arrangement with a Goddess just moments earlier, thrilled to see light, feel solid ground, sense her heart sending blood through her veins and her lungs expanding with air, but her feet hurt, and a sickly fear burned in her stomach. Shells began whistling down close behind, and soon came thundering explosions and the tattering of machine gun fire. The government forces were closing in.
Terrified, she found new energy to surge forth, lugging the infant and pulling her injured husband along. She loved him dearly, but he had been shot in his right leg which was wrapped in a blood-soaked rag and was holding her and their daughter back as he stumbled and tripped over the field’s deep furrows. He could collapse at any moment from loss of blood, forcing her to decide whether to stay with him in the field of fire and face being hit or being captured, tortured and executed, or to leave him behind to die alone. He groaned with every step. Her baby cried for milk, but she could provide nothing. They limped toward a dead horse as a jet fighter roared overhead and fired its cannons on a farmhouse a few hundred feet ahead of them. The stench of the rotting horse gagged her as they maneuvered around it, trying to push toward friendly lines somewhere ahead. A bomb or shell set the farmhouse ablaze, and her husband collapsed. Her hope collapsed with him. With eyes fixed on a distant range of snow-capped mountains, she pulled her husband to his feet and forged ahead growing ever wearier.
On the edge of her mind, she again recalled his recent deal with the Goddess. "Knock on the veil of the illusion," she recalled, "I have experienced enough." She dragged herself, the infant and husband into a smoking bomb crater and fell down, panting. What had the Goddess told her, what had she said? To say her name, but she could no longer remember her name. "Get me out of here! Can't you hear me?" she cried to the grey sky. She lifted her right fist and knocked against the clouds and saw a lone star suspended in a gap of infinite blackness and could perceive the Goddesses’ beautiful face looking down at her. The star faded and the gunfire went silent. "Please!" she muttered as an old truck pulled up next to the small family in the crater and several men in mismatched, faded uniforms jumped out and lifted them out of the depression and up onto the truck's tailgate. "Save me! Take me home!" She cried to the sky.
"This is your wife?" the rebel soldier asked.
"Yes," her husband said, barely conscious, “she’s delirious.”
“We'll get you to a field hospital away from the front," the soldier promised.
Twitching her right fist, Osiris knocked over and over against the veil whispering "please Goddess, please, please," barely able to sense the peace and wholeness just beyond. Isis did not save him.