a reoccurring recursive cliffhanger conversation original draft
"It is quite complicated to explain!" I/he/she/they all blurted out, in chorus, each in their own context, timeframe and story.
Each of them said it to the side-kick characters that they said it to, because I, (The Narrator), had once said the same to them (The Main Characters). And they had reacted then, very much in the same way the side-kick characters they said it to reacted to it later, with silent incredulity.
Time dilated with a pregnant pause... With skeptical yet stoic faces, each side-kick glared at their main characters with a telling side eye, saying without words, "Try me."
Answers expected are rarely the answers given.
"Duality and non-duality are not mutually exclusive, but rather they co-create each other. They commingle and coexist in superposition imposition entanglement with one another. Paradox and counter~paradox. The way "Up" is separate from "Down", and yet they are... inseparable.", I had originally replied.
A clear and palpable sense of dissatisfaction on everyone's faces.
After a long and awkward while... everyone spoke up at once, "Start at the beginning," they each cleverly suggested in near-perfect unison.
"But, that's the thing!" I blurted automatically, "There is none! Self~Recursive~Recursion being what it is... Or, rather, perhaps... there are way too many!"
That attempt at humor bombed.
"Tough crowd," I muttered to myself.
And then one of them, out of the many, asked the one question neither I nor anyone else expected...
"Start with me. Start with my beginning, and then work your way around."
I, for once, was flabbergasted. Dumbfounded.
You see, Dear Audience... I did not know that beginning.
Or at least did not think I did.
But before I could manage to declare my ignorance, that same character then said something else quite unexpected.
"Better yet... Start, right here. Right Now. With all of us." These words carried magic. Rendering results unexpectedly... and with delightfully satisfying audio-visual special effects!
The disparate, and hitherto presumably separate collection of individual characters, all living in their moment, the unique context of their storyline, found themselves inexplicably gathered together in one present localization of a shared set and setting. Without having moved a step, they wound their worlds suddenly intertwined and sharing context side by side in a circle. Pie-wedge slices of various realities co-existing in a moment of conjunction and concurrence. Worlds colliding quietly, there stood a circle of fictional characters from different books, familiar and yet unknown to one another. Each of them having never met the other. Each of them having read the other's stories and imaged them in their own Theatre of The Imagination in their own minds.
All eyes searched the circle of faces... eventually almost all of them landed on the lone figure standing in the center.
The Incorrigible MrZeppo.
Me, Myself, and I.
Bifurcated. Duplicitously standing beside himself/myself, quite literally. For each of them, The Characters, Side-Kicks, and Mains; had each known him/me in different forms, wearing different visages, and many various faces. To each, their own, their sight did see. A trick of the mind's eye.
"You see... " I/he/they all said in a central coral voice of many voices, "It is indeed, quite complicated to explain."
[QUE: Mysteriously Dramatic Cliffhanger Face to Black Theme Music]
[Cliffhanger END]
YOU ARE READING
zero hour
Action"Set in an experimental sci-fi comic book action adventure literary world-building project universe of multi-book series nested within other book series, 'The Zeppoverse' may be a bit disorienting to navigate at first... but you kind get used to it...
