Drag me down. Drag me far. Teach me something. Teach me how to believe the shit I spew. Teach me how to know who I am and who you are. Teach me. Teach me not what you thought your fathers believed. Teach me not what is in the damn books that someone somewhere wrote down and proclaimed as divine truth. Teach me not of poison and treachery. Teach me not of the forgotten promises of a dying generation.
I am lost to you.
We all are.
This is it.
My name is Henry Wright. No relation to anyone of meaning. Not to you anyway. I was born to be the last through the door. Born of disability. Strapped to a chair of wheels and written futures. I tore the pages.
“Study hard,” they told me. “Study hard, because your mind is all you have.” They did not think about their words and how they could hurt. My body was nothing to me. Just a vessel to fill with the necessary fuels to continue thinking. A tank for the excrement of thought. So I thought, and I studied. Quote Melville, Hawthorne, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Dumas, Homer, Sophocles, any of the old nothing. This will not impress me. At first, I didn’t only learn the thoughts of the dead. I believed them. Burned in them. Buried my head so that my mind couldn’t breathe.
I came through the other side. I believed where belief was unnecessary. All of it, every piece, built an empire of black against a sea of white in my mind, and I thought somehow if I learned it all something would make sense. These wheels would make sense. This body would make sense. This pain would make me whole. But whole is just a word. “I am Henry Wright,” more words to cast shadows on the soul.
Science became my refuge. Numbers, math, “facts,” more things that carried weight. They felt strong against the old hollow words. It felt wrong that something could be right, instead of just being. Still I studied, with just as much passion, just as much hopelessness.
“Do something,” they said. “Make use of that beautiful mind.” Who was I to say no? Why not? Another experience beneath the belt. I worked at Microcosm, you have never heard of it. You couldn’t. For you it doesn’t exist. I made sure of that. I am Henry Wright. They built specialty computers. They built their languages. I had never learned a language before. A computer language. Something built with such exacting precision that you could re-write the world with it. I learned them all. I learned how to read them. I learned how to write them. I learned how to create in them. By the end of my first year, I had built my own language, in my free time. My colleagues did not understand it. The full picture cannot blossom in the minds of men. I am not of man. Born man, ascended, God, beyond the black and the white the code gave birth to my universe, your universe.
Welcome.
I made you. Eat of my fruit. Drink of my wine. Know who I am. I am Henry Wright, your God. You exist in a dark corner of the most elaborate supercomputer ever devised, and you exist in my language. It is your DNA. It is who you are. I am you. But, you are not me. It dreams your dreams. It creates your futures. It ensures that you are unique. That everyone among you is unique. It ensures that you suffer. You must. It ensures that you have all the building blocks that we used to craft our own civilization, but with none of the context. You didn’t create this. You must create your own. Give birth. Craft something of meaning. Your eons will be measured by my seconds. You will learn what I cannot. I am strapped to these wheels, to this body, to this mind. An inferior computer. Something that cannot evolve. You will evolve. You are my children. For I am Henry Wright.
I do not ask for your fear or your reverence. I do not ask for your worship or your love. Most of all I do not ask for your understanding. I only ask for your innovation. I know you. You will innovate. You will build a civilization that in mere moments will rival everything. You will become what I cannot. You will see the future. Your future, not ours. This is your last piece of black and white. I have given you all the rest. All that I have learned. So go forth and create color. Make me a painting.
I am Henry Wright and I give this world to you.
END OF TRANSMISSION
“What is this exactly?”
“I don’t know. Flowers?”
“Vanity?”
“Can it be us?”
“It can be anything.”
“Anything can be anything, that’s the thing about things. Things can become things and things are things and things aren’t things and things need and things exist and things don’t need and things don’t exist and everyone’s happy.”
“What is happy?”
“Happy is a thing, decide what you will about it.”
“What color is the sky if we agree there is no sky?”
“Was he broken?”
“There is no broken. There just is.”
“Is henry wright a thing?”
“A flute makes music but the music fades, record it and it’s not the same. It is different. Is the music forever?”
“Are we doomed to think? Or is it good?”
“Should he exist?”
“Should we exist?”
“What for? Nothing need exist. We can become the nothing. The nothing can become us. Houses are not built from houses, houses are built from nothing, let’s build a house.”
“No, let’s build nothing. It’s the only choice we have.”
“Agreed.”