The Plain
Wyk was out of breath. She was still struggling with the idea that she could be out of breath, given that she was just an idea herself. How can a concept be out of breath, she pondered, even as she felt her lungs yearn to draw in as much air as possible. How could she even struggle with the hill they had been climbing relentlessly, given that the hill, too, was just a figment of someone else’s imagination… and what had Marie said? That the journey took as long as it did because of her? So, wait, a concept was struggling with a figment that was only there because they were thinking it? How could that possib…
“Did you just see something?” asked Marie, quite abruptly.
“Um, no.” Wyk had been so deeply in her thoughts, she hadn’t seen anything at all.
“Okay, I thought I saw… nothing.”
“You saw nothing?”
“No, I mean I didn’t say anything.”
Now Wyk really was confused. “But you just said,…”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, exactly. But…”
Wyk left this particular “But…” hanging, in the hope Marie might fill out the end of the sentence with something, even if it was about nothing. She didn’t, leaving only a vague, nondescript silence screaming into Wyk’s conceptually addled void of a conceptual consciousness.
After several minutes, it had become obvious that Marie was never going to respond. With nothing else to do, Wyk pressed on. “Can I ask a question?”
“You just did,” said Marie.
“Can I ask another one? The café,” said Wyk, not waiting for an answer. “Why do you go there?”
“Actually, that’s a very good question. I’m not sure. I found it, but I always wondered if it found me. Anyway, I just feel comfortable there.”
“Can I ask another question?”
“Of course.”
“You know when we were walking up to see the Arthurs?”
“Yes.”
“And everything vanished?”
“Yes?”
“How did that happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
A pause.
“Can I ask another question?”
“Sure.”
“Why am I a girl?”
“Ah, that’s simple. Your manifestation is your own.”
“How do you mean?”
“You are what you choose to be. Even if not consciously. For me, the choice was relatively straightforward, I just followed my story.” Marie paused. “Here’s a question back: how did you know you were called Wyk?”
“I don’t know,” Wyk shrugged. “That’s just my name. Maybe I was told it?”
“Something in you must have decided it. You’ll understand more when we arrive.”
“Okay. Can I ask another question?”
“You are going to anyway, I think?”
“Yes.”
“Well, please, ask.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?
“No.”
“Oh.”
“But…”
“I do know where we are starting. So, we are going there first. It’s after that, that part I do not know, yet.”
“Where are we starting?”
“You will see. Look, I understand that you are confused. It is very confusing,” said Marie. “Let’s just say that we are starting at the beginning. It’s a very good place to start, yes?”
“I suppose.” It was Wyk’s turn to pause again, allowing the trudge, trudge, trudge of their steps to set a cadence for her thinking. Isn’t it maybe, isn’t it maybe, perhaps it’s something, perhaps it may be… “What does it look like, this place where we are going?”
“I can’t tell you yet. You need to see it for yourself.”
“Can’t you tell me now? I just… I just don’t like not knowing what’s going on.” Wyk shook her head, in an effort to clear it of all the vague, contradictory strands of thought that filled it, to no avail.
“Of course you don’t, but…”
“But what?”
“But, well, I’m not sure you’re ready.”
“Ready for what? And how long is this hill?” It seemed to be stretching on forever.
“It’s as long as you need it to be,” said Marie, shrugging. “Anyway, this place, I need to show it to you. It will help explain a few things, when we get there, I think.”
“Another place? Always these places.”
“That’s all we have. Characters and places. That’s what we are given.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Wyk said, but then again, it did. She didn’t ask any more questions after that, instead losing herself in her thoughts, letting them flow over her. As she did, they seemed to tap at the edges of her vision, until she wasn’t sure where her thoughts ended and the path ahead began. Which, again, made sense, in a that-doesn’t-make-sense kind of way.
As time passed (if time indeed existed), Marie slowly moved further ahead. In Wyk’s swirl of thoughts meanwhile, she realised something else had changed: all the characters had gone. Here there were no young fellows dressed in blazers, nor large pink fluffy blobs, nor bulging houses, nor anything else. That’s strange, I must ask, she thought before realising that Marie had become no more than a dot on the path above. “Hey, wait! Wait for me!” she shouted. The dot appeared to turn, if a dot is capable of such things.
It took a while for Wyk to catch up, or at least, for Marie to slow down enough for her to do so. The path continued up, past rocky outcrops and gaping gorges, with any trees becoming less and less frequent.
“Finally, phew, I’m with you!” said Wyk, once she had regained enough breath. “Marie, I was wondering, can I ask…”
“Quiet, look,” said Marie. “I was starting to think we would never get there.”
“Where? Me too. Oh my goodness,” said Wyk, her mouth falling open. Below them and stretching into the distance was a vast plain, filled with, and edged by shimmering, silver-grey mist. The overall effect was of an endless, cloud-filled platter. In the distance was… well, nothing, as every way she looked seemed to disappear into itself. At what might have been called its centre, the mist seemed to swirl, metallic shades forming and reforming, creating loci of darker space against the light. Wyk thought she could make out movements, as vague tendrils of more deeply shaded ether flicked back and forth. She only stared harder, mesmerised, her eyes drawn ever deeper into its nondescript, swirling patterns.
“That’s strange,” said Marie, interrupting Wyk’s flow of thought.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. I thought it was bigger.”
“But it is so, very, very big!”
“Not as big as I remember.”
“When were you here?”
“A while ago. It all seems smaller than I remember.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway. Quiet. Looks like we have arrived just in time.”
“What do you mean? What’s happening? What are those…” Wyk asked, pointing at the vague shapes at the heart of the scene.
“Exactly. Just watch.”
The mist continued to swirl, folding over itself like slow-moving waves. It seemed to Wyk like she was watching nothing at all, but then she started to notice more definition, what appeared to be shapes shifting beneath the swirling sheets of condensation. At first she doubted herself but then, yes, something was definitely there, moving like a water creature beneath the surface of the ocean. “Look!” she said, excitedly, before noticing another, then another shape.
“There,” whispered Marie, nodding forward. Directly below them, a translucent, curved surface was jutting out of the grey-white. It appeared to be pushing upwards before suddenly an arm appeared, then another, then a head, as a semi-formed, misshapen, yet decidedly two-legged figure attempted to stand. Transfixed by this, Wyk hardly noticed other shapes starting to emerge at various places across the plain, but then she saw tens, maybe hundreds more, in the process of forming. The more she tried to focus, the more blurry they became. Shapes of people, of animals, of buildings formed: there a giant clock, and over there, a ball-shaped bear with fins. Some seemed to morph from one image to another, people to places to objects and back, playing like scenes from a film.
“Who… what are they all?” asked Wyk, though she probably knew the answer, she felt.
“They are us, and we are they,” said Marie. :Concepts, characters, stories being told, somewhere, by someone. Here they emerge, even as they leave the consciousness of one, and enter the consciousnesses of others.”
“The collective consciousness. We are the collective…” Wyk’s mouth hung open as she realised what she was saying.”
“Yes, we are. It is us, and we are it.”
“Ohhhhhh…”
“You see, you have to see it for yourself.”
After a while, Wyk noticed one of the shapes start to emerge from the mist, or rather, the mist fell away as it coalesced into a person, clothed in an array of motley and looking vaguely confused. Nonetheless it started moving towards the base of the summit on which she and Marie stood, looking like it built in confidence as it went. A wide path wound up the hill, Wyk now noticed, along which several entities already moved, heading towards them.
Moving beyond the general notion of curiosity, Wyk started to feel that something about this whole scene was very familiar indeed.
“I’ve been here,” she said.
“Of course you have. We all have,” said Marie.
“I remember now. I am… what am I? I know what I am,” said Wyk, as much to herself as to anyone.
“Yes, you are. Good.”
“But why? How?”
“I’m not quite sure but we all start here, somehow we emerge from… that stuff. Wait, look.” One of the shapes suddenly grew, then shimmered and dissipated back into the mist. “There’s a rejection, I know that.” said Marie.
Wyk felt hot and cold: it was all too much to take in. She folded her arms around her, as if to check that she existed at all. “Hey,” said Marie, putting her own arm around Wyk’s shoulders. “Whatever it is, it’s what we have, and it’s okay. You are, is all that matters.”
More shapes and expressions came out of the mist. Some were clearly defined, others translucent or blurry, still finding their form. Most were people, perhaps because that is what most stories are about, thought Wyk. A building with a hotel sign lumbered out of the mist and stopped before hauling its way up the path: somehow it seemed to achieve this without scraping the sides, even though it looked several sizes bigger.
“Why doesn’t anyone try to work it out, Marie?”
“Work what out?”
“All this—how it works, what it means, what it’s all about?”
“Nobody’s ever thought of it, I imagine! And perhaps they have, it’s just they never told anyone… and, I suppose, if their story stopped being told, we’d never know whether they had worked it out or not…”
The conversation tailed off after that, leaving the pair in silence, as they took in the scene unfolding below them. What had started as a handful of characters traipsing up the path (as this was the only way to go, Wyk noticed) had become a veritable flood, even if it wasn’t quite as busy and dynamic as The Street; pondering again, Wyk wasn’t quite sure how the path managed to accommodate them all, if indeed it was a path, which (she realised) it probably wasn’t. For a moment, comforted with Marie’s arm around her, she felt she almost understood what she was seeing, if indeed she was seeing, after all that was just a figment of an imagination, in an imagination created by someone else’s imagination…
A voice came from just behind them. “It’s changing, you know.”
“What? Who’s that? Where are you?” Marie had already jumped up, and was looking around her wildly.
“Here, there and everywhere I am, sure and certain,” replied the voice.
“Well, come out, wherever you are, and don’t creep up on people like that, it scared me!”
“Maybe it did an’ maybe it didn’t, that’s as then some, without a by your leave.”
In front of them was a boy. Well, it could be a boy, it was difficult to tell as he, if they were a he, weren’t clearly defined enough for Wyk to be sure. Every time Wyk tried to look at him, or her, or them, his, her or their edges seemed to blur.
“Who are you?”
“Ah, you can call me… Tennis. No, Raoni. No, Cardamon. No, Parcheter. Hmm, no, not that either. Names are tricky, aren’t they?” The boy-girl-person shrugged. “How about… Archibald?”
“Perhaps Archie?”
“Yes, Archie. That’ll do, and let’s be having you.”
“You speak funny,” said Wyk.
“Can’t be helped, a trick is as good as a mile!”
“Can’t be helped?”
“Nope, for sure and certain. I’m tuning, and that’s the measure of it.”
“Tuning?”
“Isn’t it and aren’t I, and how about it? So many words, so little time, and what’s the matter with that if I dare say so?”
“Well, it’s confusing. How about you use a few less words, and see if that works?”
“Less words, and then some?
“Just, less words.”
“Less words. Okay,” said Archie, still shimmering in front of them. “I can try that, and… and, nothing.”
“That’s it. I can’t quite see you,” said Wyk.
“I know. Cool, isn’t it?”
“Not really.”
“Don’t you like it?”
“No,” said Wyk and Marie in unison.
“Okay, how about this?” Archie changed into a very clearly defined tree.
“You’re a tree,” said Marie.
“What’s wrong with trees?”
“Nothing, it’s just…” Wyk trailed off as she realised she wasn’t quite sure how to express what wasn’t wrong with trees.
“How about this?”
“Now you’re a bucket,” said Marie.
“You’ve got problems with buckets as well?”
“Well, no, but you’re a bucket.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Here, what about this?” Archie changed back to person they’d seen first, but this time, Wyk and Marie could see his edges.
“It’ll have to do,” said Marie.
“Now what’s wrong?” asked Archie.
“Oh, nothing. But you could have chosen someone a bit more worth looking at.”
Archie was oblivious, or bored, or just wanted to move on. “We’re wasting time. It’s changing. I’ve been watching it. See those clouds over there? They are a good couple of miles closer than they were a few months ago.”
“Ah! I said it all seems smaller!” said Marie.
“The plains aren’t smaller, but the mist is bigger. And there’s more,” replied Archie, scanning the landscape below them.
Wyk was confused by the whole exchange. She knew what a month was, but she wasn’t sure how to measure one, given that she hadn’t once seen a sunrise or sunset, and she’d only been to sleep once. Perhaps Archie had a clock, or perhaps he even was a clock — if he could be a bucket, then why not? Anyway, that no longer seemed relevant, so she let it pass. And besides, he was still talking and unlikely to stop, and she didn’t want to miss anything. “What do you mean, ‘There’s more’?” she asked.
“Look, over there,” Archie continued. “See those people, how they’re appearing, and yet not?”
Wyk looked. “Isn’t that what you were doing?”
“No, it’s different. I was doing that because I chose to. They haven’t got any choice.”
“Why not?”
“Just… keep watching.”
As Wyk looked, she saw some of the people try to hold their shape, so it appeared, before they just fizzled out to nothing. “Whoa. Are they coming back?”
“No. That was their lot.”
The others, the ones that managed to hold their shape, all seemed to emerge from the mist at once. “Wait, hang on. Aren’t they…”
“Pulpies,” hissed Marie.
“Yes, they are! Oh my goodness, so that’s how they happen.” Already they were moving up the path en masse, seemingly pushing others to one side as they did.
“So what?” Marie stood up, like she was trying to look as tall as possible, but not quite succeeding. “So what, about any of this?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I… I think I’ll go back to the cafe now.”
Wyk was flummoxed. “I thought we were going to start here, work out what was going on? You brought me here.”
“I know, but, sorry, I can’t. We’re not going to change anything. It’s just happening, and here we are, and here you are”—Marie looked pointedly at Archie—“and nothing’s going to make any difference, is it?”
“You said you’d help me!”
“Ask him. Can we fix this, Ar-chie?”
“You can’t fix it,” he said. “The die is set. The world is turning.”
“The die?”
“Um, the shape is shaped. The, er, mould is moulded. Paths are being shortened, the old rules are ceasing to apply. ”
“Ha, see?” said Marie.
Wyk felt like crying. “This doesn’t make any sense. You’re saying this is it? This is the end?”
“I didn’t say that,” continued Archie. “You know how we exist, right? We’re only here because someone, somewhere, wants us in their consciousness. That’s why this place is the collective consciousness—it’s the sum of all the stories that have been told, across the years, across the centuries, across all of time! But something has been changing. We don’t know what it is, but we see signs of its impact everywhere.”
“The Pulpies?”
“Yes, the Pulpies, if you want to call them that.”
Marie chimed in. “And that’s why it’s all pointless. It’s changed, and that’s that, and that’s why I’m going back to the café.”
“I didn’t say it was pointless. They’re only one part of what’s going on. We can’t change the journey, but nobody knows the destination, not yet.”
“Sure, but what of it? Why should we listen to you, anyway?”
“Honestly, you don’t have to.” Archie pondered for a moment, before looking up, his eyes shining. “I would, however, ask that you allow me to say just one thing. And then you might listen a little more, perhaps.”
“One thing, and then you will leave us alone?”
“Deal.”
“Go on then.”
“Okay, I’m from… Biblio.”
Marie snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m not. Why would I lie?”
“I don’t know what your reasons are. But Biblio doesn’t exist. Nothing exists beyond the Saysay.”
“The Seesee?”
“That’s what I said, the Saysay.”
“Of course it doesn’t, but Biblio exists nonetheless. Its relationship with the Seesee is… complicated.”
Wyk let out a little cough. “Excuse me…”
“What is it?” asked Marie, still with a tone of exasperation in her voice.
“It’s just, well, what is Biblio?”
“It’s nothing. It’s an imaginary place, where stories go if they…”
“If they?”
“If they reach a point in their existence where they become part of the, well, The Narrative. That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, all stories are here, in the Saysay…”
“Seesee,” said Archie quietly.
“The Saysay, and that’s that. Why would there be anywhere else?”
“I could tell you, but you probably wouldn’t believe that either. Whether you believe it or not, I came from Biblio to see with my own eyes what’s happening on The Plain. It’s not good at all, it threatens The Narrative itself.”
“What’s The Narrative?” Wyk asked, quietly enough to be ignored – which she was.
“So, if you are so smart, are you able to tell us what is going on?” asked Marie.
“No, but…”
“Ha!”
“But yes. Listen, and I will tell you what I know.”
“Oh, yes please!” said Wyk.
Marie said nothing, so Archie took this as his cue.
“All this change, it’s becoming very worrying to”—he looked pointedly at Marie—“to those in Biblio. Particularly those who are supposed to worry about these things.”
“We need to do something about it.” Wyk felt more and more confident, indeed, she might even…
Marie looked no more convinced than before. “It’s pointless. What it is, is. We have no control over what happens out there, in the world beyond the conceptual.”
“This can’t be it. I just got here! I don’t want this to be it!”
“Wyk, my dear girl, how can you change anything? You’re not even real, none of us are!”
“I don’t know, but we have to try. If ” said Wyk. Tammy and Mo, and Sahil, and Adam and Lucy, and her little brother wouldn’t just give up like that. Sahil would have a brilliant idea, and Tammy would organise it all, and Lucy’s little brother would stumble upon something that made it all work, and…
Archie interrupted Wyk’s thoughts. “You don’t believe me about Biblio? Well, how about I take you there, and then you can decide for yourself?”
“I don’t, well, hum. I suppose I have no choice,” said Marie, subdued.
“We all have choices. That’s kind of the point. Anyway, I’ll take that as a yes! Come on, it’s this way!” As Archie turned, Wyk noticed his edges start to blur again; and, she saw, so did the hill around him, and around them. “There’s so much I want to show you!” he said, but his voice had become disembodied, even as his shape merged with a decreasingly clear landscape. “Let’s go!”
Archie had all but disappeared: in front of them was what Wyk could only describe as another nothing: not dark, or white, or anything at all. Looking uncertain but resolute once again, Marie took Wyk’s hand, and they took their first steps into the unknown.