Aether

Aether1

"What,” said Paul to the emptiness, “am I doing here?”2

The words that left his lips were to Paul both quiet and deafening at the same time. For although the words were spoken in a manner most people would describe as quiet, there was nobody else there to pronounce them quiet. And so, in the silence, the volume of this sentence transformed as a wave between being quiet and being deafening, just as the meaning and the reason behind this sentence transformed as well until the sentence was gone, meant nothing and may as well have never been spoken.3

And so Paul forgot about it. The question dissipated from his mind, and he walked forward. He walked for no reason; he had not made a conscious decision to walk and he had never commanded his legs to move or his arms to swing back and forth as they do naturally when one walks. The hallway in which he walked was brightly lit by several elegant chandeliers hanging almost fifteen feet down from a narrow, vaulted ceiling with several renaissance-style paintings on them. The walls appeared to be golden, though in reality they were only made of wood and painted with rich gold paint. There were marble statues lining the hallway and a red carpet placed directly in the middle of the wooden floor, which Paul’s contrasting sneakers now tread over.4

At the end of the hallway, Paul took the only door to the right, which led him into a similarly lavish room with several comfy armchairs, a fireplace, a pool table and a bar with a nice little mirror behind it. Here he sat down in one of the armchairs to stare at the fire. The fire, which had been there as long as Paul had, flickered, never dying out, staying at the same level of brightness and heat as it had always been. 5

He tried once more to think of how he had ended up in this place, and failed. All he knew was that he had simply found himself lying on the floor of the entranceway one day, remembering nothing of where he had come from or who he was. He vaguely remembered a few faces, and he knew how to speak, read and write English. But other than that, he was clueless.6

At this time, Paul had simply seen words appear before him, hanging in the air. They said, simply, “Your name is Paul. Welcome to Aether.”7

Since then, Paul had simply wandered around the enormous palace. At first, he tried in vain to find somebody else in the Palace that could tell him where he was or why he was there. When that failed, he had tried to search for an exit, but all the doors and windows were locked. Paul even tried to bash the doors down with some of the furniture, but every impact was as if Paul was hitting the heaviest, densest matter in the world, with not so much as a hint of anything giving in, on the door’s part or on the furniture’s part. Paul had then tried to break the windows, with the same results.8

In fact, it seemed as if things in the Palace were simply incapable of being broken or harmed in any way. Whenever Paul tripped over a rug, the rug would be found later perfectly unruffled. When he first saw this for the first time, a pang of curiosity struck him. He went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and took it back to the entranceway, searching for something to test his theory on. There were several couches sitting in the entranceway. Paul crossed to the one closest to the door, turned the knife around in his hand, and thrust it into the couch. The knife pointed into the material, leading Paul to believe he had actually made a hole in the couch. But upon drawing back the knife, the couch was completely intact, with no hole, mark or tear in it where he had stabbed it.9

Perplexed, Paul then went back to the kitchen, threw the knife onto the floor, took a drinking glass and threw it with all of his force onto the ground. The glass hit the ground, bounced once with a thud, and landed. He picked up the glass to find no cracks or scratches in it. Suddenly, he remembered the fire in the billiard room. He took the glass to the sink and filled it with water. Paul then ran to the billiard room where the fire stood crackling and threw all of the water into the fire. The fire spluttered, spit, and continued. It was the same height and brightness as before. Frustrated, Paul let out a cry and threw the glass across the room at a mirror hanging on the wall. The glass, however, made no noise.10

Confused, he walked across the room to the mirror to see nothing different about it, the polish perfect and yet, somehow, without streaks from any sort of cleaning. The glass was also nowhere to be found. Paul returned to the kitchen to find the glass sitting neatly in its cupboard just as he had found it, and the knife he had left on the floor sitting back in its drawer.11

And so Paul did nothing. He walked about, sometimes speaking words to the emptiness, sometimes singing nonsense at the top of his lungs, sometimes, peering out of the windows into the endless fields of grass that surrounded the palace. The skies were always cloudless, and the sun rose and fell complacently every day, just as the moon did every night, always full, never waxing or waning. Paul tried to keep track of the days, but there was no pencil or paper, and he could not mark on anything with anything else in the establishment, so he lost count. Every night when he woke up, his hair was clean, his clothes were unwrinkled, and a plate of medium-cooked steak with mashed potatoes and green beans sat next to a glass of milk nearby. Another plate of the same sat waiting for him several hours later.12

Sometimes, Paul fancied that he saw or heard things. A drop of some distant object, a grand creaking of the house, compressing as night cooled the air. The conceived sounds of objects hitting the ground was the most vexing to Paul. After all, if there was no wind, no movement and no other living being in the whole place other than Paul, then how could something possibly be dropping? So he would rush past the gold-painted walls, the marble statues (which he had found out were hollow) and the stuffed armchairs (whose structures were made of rigid cardboard and whose stuffing was actually random cloths) to where he had thought he had heard the noise, but there was never anything.13

Soon enough, Paul decided to test his predicament. He didn’t go to sleep for three days, always waiting to see who was bringing him food. The first time he attempted to look like he was going to sleep to coax whoever it was to bring the food out, he accidentally fell asleep. When he woke up, the food was sitting on the end table a few feet away, just as always. Paul stood up, took a look at the plate, and walked away.14

That was when he decided he wasn’t going to eat. Every time he found a plate of food, he took it to the kitchen and dumped it in the garbage can there, pouring the milk down the sink (the garbage can was always empty when he went to throw away another plate of food, and the sink was always clean). Paul became hungrier and hungrier, thirstier and thirstier, but never got any weaker. After ten days, Paul decided that he could not live like this. He finally ate one of the meals and drank the milk ravenously to satiate his hunger and thirst. When he was done, he went back to the kitchen. He opened the drawer to find the knife he had tried to cut the couch with at first sitting there neatly with all the other utensils. He stared at it, admiring its simple beauty before picking it up. He stared at his distorted reflection in the knife’s steel for a good minute before pointing at his chest. He stabbed the knife into his chest as hard as he could, directly into his heart.15

Although Paul was expecting pain and blood, he felt only a pressure and sting against his chest. The knife had not even cut his shirt. He could not kill himself. He tried to kill himself several more times, jumping from high points, attempting to slit his throat and wrists, and holding his head underneath water. But he simply landed when he fell, the knives could never cut him, and although the symptoms of asphyxiation became unbearable, Paul never drowned.16

And so, eventually, Paul became complacent. He often found himself sitting in the same chair in the billiard room, staring at the fire as he was now. The question came back to him, and so he repeated it aloud, “What am I doing here?” Again, he found no answer, and no meaning behind the question. The meaning of the question, the volume of his voice, the length of time it took him to speak, even the fact of the words ever having been spoken at all were lost in the absence of another being present to receive and interpret the sentence, just as it was with Paul. The fact of the matter was, Paul wasn’t doing anything. He was just living.17