A Collection of Short Stories

Everything and Nothing

I'm walking along the beach with Matt and Michael as dusk falls, over the soft white sand, heading North. The melody of the waves and the sweetness of the present fill my senses. The sand is soft and cool beneath my feet. Footsteps surround us in the sand of all shapes and sizes, of those that were here before us. Every now and then we see the transparent blob of a washed up jellyfish.

"Let's look for a shell," I say. "A purple one."

The boys look down at the ground as we walk. The wind whips my hair around my face.

Matt picks up a big greyish-purple shell. Its cracked and broken, not perfect. But what is perfect?

"Are we walking on the beach?" Matt asks, turning the shell over in his palm. "Top side of the shell is no, underside is yes."

He tosses the shell in the air and we watch as it falls into the sand, topside up.

"The shell never lies," Matt says, in mock seriousness.

"What if none of this is real," I say. "It's all just a projection of our minds."

"And those streetlights," Michael says, pointing back at the buildings of the city along the coast. "Those lights are the projectors."

"This isn't real," Matt decides. "In none of the alternate realities are we walking on the beach. We are simply imagining it."

"Wow," I breathed. "I feel so tripped out."

"Should we turn back now?" Michael says. "We've walked so far already."

"Let's ask the shell," Matt says. "Let me define again; top side is yes, underside is no. Should we keep walking?" He tosses the shell. It lands top side up.

"Well, I guess we'll continue," I say.

We continue along the sand, until I feel the muscles in my leg thrumming with warmth.

"Let's ask the shell..." Matt starts. "Is this reality? Underside is no, topside is yes."

He tosses the shell and it lands underside up.

I dive into the sand and grab the shell before he can reach it. "This place is everything, and it is nothing," he says.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I ask.

"It means that this place exists only within our minds. It is everything we know, but really, it's nothing," Matt elaborates.

Michael stops walking and turns towards us now, fascinated. "That's a cool concept."

"It's not a concept," Matt insists. "It's just how it is."

I turn, stare out over the rolling sand dunes ahead. The horizon shimmers in the distance, as though this beach goes on forever. As though the virtual simulation is glitching. I look down at my hands, and wonder if I'm simply imagining this all. "We're locked in underwater tanks, in simulations," I suggest. "This is all we know."

"Exactly," Matt replies.

"We are all of the same mind," Michael says. "We are everyone, and we are no one."