The True Nature of the Universe (An Authorial Intrusion)

The universe — according to the man — consisted of an asteroid hurtling through darkness. A hunk of iron ore approximately a mile in diameter, possessed of liquid water and a protein paste that was manufactured somewhere in the asteroid’s milky center and then extruded — via the centrifugal force of the asteroid’s rotation — through small pores and fissures on its surface. According to the man there was nothing but this asteroid, a jejune proposition given that the man clearly possessed a vocabulary that included things other than the asteroid. How could such a vocabulary develop if there were nothing for the man to refer to or name?

Unwittingly extending this fallacy deeper into the absurd, the man sought to explain the asteroid by eliminating everything it was not. The asteroid was not a cake. The asteroid was not a fire burning in a cave. The asteroid was not a small table made of walnut or oak or pine. The asteroid was not a manuscript. The asteroid was not an infant crying in the pink light of afternoon. The asteroid was not an enormous mountain of human refuse rotting beneath a blanket of burlap. The asteroid was not a wool coat. The asteroid was not a painting. The asteroid was not the mother or the father or the siblings the man could never have. The asteroid was not a beating heart. The asteroid was not a roaring crowd. The asteroid was not a lonely woman perched at the edge of a bed in a dusk-dark hotel room, a gun held to her temple. The asteroid was not a small bird reeling across a blue sky. The asteroid was not a bottle. The asteroid was not a stub of chalk used for making illustrations on sidewalks. The asteroid was not a cup of tea or a golf tee or a T-shirt. The asteroid was not want or need or suffering. The asteroid was not artificially intelligent. The asteroid could not be exchanged for goods and services. The asteroid could not broker a better mortgage deal. The asteroid was not a woman whose dimpled smile when viewed from across the table of a chrome-plated diner could make you want to live forever. The asteroid was not a vintage automobile. The asteroid was not a tiny coffin lowered into the ground. The asteroid was not a poem. The asteroid was not a life preserver or a life raft. The asteroid was not something that could save or redeem. The asteroid was not an apartment in Brooklyn. The asteroid was not a comet or a quasar or a white dwarf or a nebula or the bright arm of a swirling galaxy or a pulsar or a solar flare or dark matter or dark energy or darkness or light or hope or fear or surrender.

It was, according to the man, only what remained after everything else was eliminated. It was an asteroid, and it produced exactly what the man required to persist and nothing more than that. He could live on its surface indefinitely and consume the bland protein-paste and never remember that he had once felt the warm fingers of a kindred soul caress the soft curve of a stubbled cheekbone. We should all be so lucky… to never wonder if the rest of the universe contained more, or less, than the very little we already have or have lost.