The Library

Eighth Scene

"How did you end up here?" she asked No. 5, in a daze, realizing the inappropriate nature of the question before she had the time to call it back. It was no business of hers how these men ended up in the middle of the desert, enacting classic tragedies in the original Greek, and she would have been offended if they questioned her choices.

In fact, she wouldn't have known how to answer such a question. People always like to believe they have reasons for doing things, and were they to explain themselves, they would gladly volunteer the logic of their circumstances, but that's all self-delusion. We all make our choices before we even think about them, and fill in the blanks with reasons after the fact in order to explain them to ourselves.

Thankfully society gives us a pass on explaining our emotions, because we'd have a bear of a time shoving those into a logical frame.

No. 5 watched her fret with embarrassment, strangely poised, as if he was waiting for the fussing to subside before he gave her an answer.

"That question is a lot more interesting than you think. And much broader. First, you have to assume the existence of free will for it to even make sense."

"What do you mean?" Gwen gave him a blank stare.

"Never mind, that's a discussion for another time. So, let's assume free will."

"Obviously, nobody gets lost in the desert and then stranded in the only part of it compatible with survival on purpose, so, whatever my original intent was, the outcome doesn't match it."

"For some strange reason, humans are blind to the larger entity they are, the one constantly transformed by the passing of time and only see themselves in slices, in the here and now, and act as if their current circumstances are immovable. What do you remember about your life from, say, five years ago?"

Gwen saw herself carrying boxes to her dorm room, both excited and tense about college, not knowing what to expect, a very different person from the jaded graduate who left civilization behind in search of higher meaning.

What on earth was she thinking?

"Exactly," No. 5 read her mind. "If life makes any sense at all, it's in retrospect, with the benefit of perspective. Understand you're not the same person you were five years ago, and neither am I, and you're asking me to pick some other person's mind and inquire about his reasons."

'You've been here for five years?' Gwen thought, shocked. 'I might as well be dead. I'm never getting out of here!'

No. 5 chuckled.

"Young people perceive time differently. How old do you think I am?"

Gwen shuffled, embarrassed, determined to avoid answering and shrugged to make herself smaller.

"Once you pass the three digits, decades just start blending into each other. To tell you the truth, young lady, life is not that imaginative."

'Now he's pulling my leg. Serves me right for asking stupid questions!'

"So, let's say you've been here for three hundred years."

Unspoken dread flowed like ice through Gwen's veins, and she froze at the possibility.

"It may very well be you won't be able to remember what brought you to this place, and even if you do, it doesn't matter. Whatever portion of living you can assign to the 'before' is insignificant by comparison and you can't take it seriously as a causative factor."

'That's the biggest crock...'

"Language!" No. 5 protested.

"Let's say I remember how I ended up here, I'm not really sure 'here' exists in the objective, maybe our perceptions of reality stream from our own consciousness, from a mental model we believe in and hold steadily in our minds."