by Vincent Culp

Created on: January 31, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

Shadows of Infinity

'My name is Vincent, and I am the last.'

He stood and leaned out over the edge to look down as the waves crashed on the jagged rocks that loomed below, smiling, for he felt no fear. He laughed as the wind bellowed in his ears, pushing him back, attempting in its dismay to drive him away from the edge.

'My name is Vincent, and I am the last.'

He spoke again, but this time he shouted the words over the howling wind; over the crashing waves. His eyes full of triumph he started to take a step forward, the wind buffeting him, but unable to prevent his advance. Inch by inch his feet rose and fell as if in slow motion, his arms held out aside him like a tightrope walker.

'My name is Vincent, and I am the last.'

He whispered.

A dreadful silence descended as he stood unfettered by gravity, untouched by laws or nature, smiling down at the rocks below. Held up by force of will alone, or was it something more? At once he had claimed his hold on the reins of reality. By taking that one step he had forced infinity into submission.

'I knew the answer before I was born.' Conversing with the sky he sat cross-legged in mid air. 'I am the last, how could I not have known?' A single white dove fluttered down from the clouds above to sit on his shoulder, not because it represented anything more than ears to hear him. 'I choose to be the last because I have learned all I can.' Grinning he took the bird from his shoulder and made a show of whispering into its ear. 'I have grasped the length and breadth of your infinity. I have wandered every inch of your cosmos; have seen every star in your sky.' He blew at the bird and it became as a whiff of smoke, and he watched it as it drifted away on the breeze. 'Together we have told a great story, but that story must end, for that was the very nature of it; a beginning, an ending, and in between a struggle. We came together and we parted, we danced in the vaccuum like lovers, and fought in the very depths of hell.' Sighing he regained his feet. 'It is going to be strange for a while, getting used to being separate again. It's going to be hard not to think back on all of the wondrous times we have had; hard not to flex my fingers, hard not to turn my head.' He looked then at his fingers which had already begun to unravel as soon all of reality would. 'In the end neither of us has learned anything, nor have we found anything we sought. Two, or two billion, we are still alone.' His arms were gone now, the space that they once occupied just that now, space. 'I have given you a chance to speak with my voice, and in return you have given me the ears to hear it. I have given you the substance you lack; you have given me a reason to be. Every shape I have taken, every form I have become, I could not have even imagined were it not for you.' He shuddered then as the shackles of his preprogrammed mind slipped away leaving him at once everything, and at the same time nothing at all. If any eyes still existed they would be blind, if any ears still listened in the emptiness they would be deaf. Substance and absence hung together in formless oblivion; Shadows of Infinity.

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