ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW YZ... a story (A To Z Challenge)

The world was once just a place where reality and abstract never really crossed.  Then, with the help of X -- himself something of a cross -- the two overlapped in a bid to grant humanity the immortality they always dreamed existed in an afterlife.  That made many of the other letters mad, and they called a meeting to determine what to do about it, but midway through the meeting it became apparent that humans were starting to come to their realm, and the letters themselves were becoming more real.  So some of the letters set off with Diana, whose dead lover started all this, to figure out what really is happening.

Each section of this story is told from the perspective of one of the letters.

A's story is here and B's here. C talks here. Here is D. E's version of events was here. F was here. Also, G, H spokehere. Then I, then J . Click here for k, and here for L.
Then there's M's story, here, 


And we pick up with N telling the tale:

 Nonsense.

It was a nonsensical idea. It was never going to work. Never! Needless to say nobody wanted to do it. Nobody!

But we did it.

Or we tried.

Or we did.

Who knows?

Nonsense: it is not just the lack of any meaning; sometimes nonsense can be the absolute meaning of truth! Nonsense is a tautology, a statement that is so true as to carry no meaning with it whatsoever, the frictionless glide of meaninglessness against itself and meaning against itself are both nonsense for it is only in context that things can have meaning, and meaning can only be measured against the background of a lack of meaning.

One thing cannot exist without another thing because if there is only one thing there is no need to number, and thus if only one thing exists, that thing is everything, but since in that case there is no count of things, no thing exists: if there is one thing it is everything and thus nothing.

And so it was nonsense as absurd as nothingness and as meaningful as the absolute truth that both led us to undertake this mission and that awaited us at the end of it.

“Tell us how you got here!” M commanded, and Diana did, or tried to.  She spoke and spoke, as long as she could, describing over and over the scene.

She had come from church, the very church where we had seen her lighting candles, the very church where we had watched her cry, the very church where the smell of incense and melting wax lingered among the cold stones and hard wood of benches.  She had come from there and had returned to her small home, where she had not turned on the lights.  In an upper room, above her own bedroom, her small, mad sister was still awake, her light beaming out onto the backyard that led to the forest that led to the wilderness, away away away from the front walk that led to the street that led to the highway that led to the city.  

On the one side: peace and nature and solitude and quiet and green, scented flowers drooping into the night and curling up, nocturnal birds beginning to swoop, the sun’s last lingering green hallucinatory blink flickering-and-leaving.  

On the other: chaos and sound, lights, movement, horns honking and people clapping and silver clanking and lovers kissing and buildings towering and movement movement movement, people entertwining in a curious dance of their own, as similar to our own as it was different than our own.

Diana left the one and went to the other, each as true as the other, each as false as the other. She entered her house, paying no mind to the light of her sister’s room above.

“She sometimes sits up all night, writing,” Diana said.

“What does she write?” I asked her.

Diana said “She does not show me. She hides them, her papers. She puts them in locked boxes, tucks them into books, eats them if she feels they will be found. I asked her once what she writes and she said this: I write worlds.”

That was our first clue!

I write worlds.

When one thing only exists, nothing exists in the midst of everything.  But once more than one thing exists, then everything exists!

Creation is the act of multiplication: creation means multiplying.  What do you get when you multiply by one? The thing, again.

1 x1 =1 , but 2 x 1= 2 and 3 x 1 = 3 and every time you multiply by one you have made that thing again, again, again!

I write worlds, her sister said to her and Diana had paid little attention to the mad ravings of her younger sister, writing day after day after day in her solitary room, never leaving it, asking only for paper, and pens, and some bread and soup.

“She eats only tomato soup, and only rye bread. Sometimes she will take some butter.  She does not read the books she has, so far as I can tell. Rather, she hides them in her closet, or puts them in the boards of the wall.  She does not leave the room, has not since she moved in there after our mother died.  She writes and writes and will not show me what she writes.”

But we know what she writes, do we not? We are what she writes, we are!

We!

Are!

That was our first clue, and we made Diana go over and over it again.

I write worlds.

Have you read them? We asked her.

I tried, but she threw herself on the ground and screamed, howled, roared, and I left off trying to read them. She does not like me to even enter her room, and I make her leave it only to bathe, each day, during which time she insists that I stand outside the bathroom, door ajar so she can see me. When I change her bedclothes, I find papers folded a dozen or more times, tightly sealed, and I must ignore them and make the bed and later when I come to look at her, they are gone again.

Does she talk about them? We asked her.

No. She does not talk unless she must and then it pains her.

If only one thing exists then nothing exists, and if humans were only one thing they would not exist after all . They must have been both mortal and immortal, for only in the context of one can the other be.  How can one be mortal without an immortality to compare it to? How can one die if there is no life, how can one end unless there is something that one could have kept going into? 

Nonsense is the lack of context to surround truth: truth, on its own, makes no sense. When I say 1 x 1 = 1 it is both true and absolutely meaningless.

But when I say that the existence of one thing means that it has necessarily multiplied into another thing, leaving itself as the original creation, and another thing to compare it to, you can see what I mean.

So I suppose our first clue was, in fact, Diana’s tautology: If my soul is eternal, his is, too.

To be mortal means there must be an eternity against which mortality is measured.

To be human means there must be a soul.

If there is a body that is mortal and a soul that is immortal, then that soul does not end any more than the body continues.

We agreed to help Diana find David, and if our first clue that there was a David to find was the nonsensical truth Diana spoke, then our first clue of where to find David was when Diana told us her mad sister spent her days locked in a finite room, creating universes and then hiding them from herself.