The End of Mr. Y

Epilogue

It's impossible to say how long it takes us to get to the edge. There is no time anymore. We've been camped here for days now, at the edge of consciousness, wondering what to do next. It's like being on the edge of a cliff, but the edge is thinner than any cliff I've ever seen.

It doesn't feel like the edge of something: It feels like the middle.

But somehow there is an edge. You can walk to it and it seems as if you can look down, but you can't. And there's something that looks like an electric fence: a wavy line crackling around the whole thing, like electricity.

We've made love here at the edge of consciousness; we've done it thousands of times. And we've told each other everything we know. And sometimes it feels as if we are in fact on a cliff top, and that there may even be sea down below, and the ground is sandy underneath us, and little wildflowers grow in clumps. But other times it feels as though we are stuck here on the head of a pin, and the void isn't just below us, but all around us, and it's impossible to turn back because there is no back. There's no forwards, backwards, up, or down.

Today, we've decided (although this place is one long day), we'll actually make the choice, because the problem when you go to the very edge is that the console seems to break down, and there's static and crackle when the voice says, You now have infinite choice. And when we hear that we retreat, because we can't make that choice.

It's as if we're looking at something that has never been looked at before.

You now have infinite choice.

We've already been everywhere in the Troposphere: We had to, to get here.

So we look at each other and, holding hands, we walk towards it.

And today, yesterday, whenever this moment is: We walk through it.

And now I thought we'd be falling (and I hoped for the void).

You now have infinite choice.

But we carry on walking, anyway. We don't have to say anything.

And all the choices are there in front of me. Every single one.

But what we walk into is a garden. The most perfect garden that I have ever seen, with more trees than I have ever seen, and a river shimmering like a mirror running down the edge of it. I think that this makes sense, for consciousness to have begun in a garden, because consciousness evolved from plants, after all. And I look at Adam, but I can't speak anymore. I'm not sure I can even think. And there's one tree, standing by the river, and we walk towards it.

And then I understand.