Volume II, Number 13 – Content Warning: Language and Horror

One day, at about 6:07 Eastern Standard Time, everybody forgot everything.
          At first there was mass death, as the people driving cars and planes and trains forgot how to do those things. Later there was mass starvation, as crops failed or went unharvested, animals went unslaughtered, and the global supply chain vanished. After some time, as a few bright folks deciphered some languages and experimented their way into subsistence, to the annoyance of their neighbors, there was mass violence.
          For Phillip, on that day, first there was confusion. He didn’t know he was Phillip, in the first place. His heart beat, his lungs breathed. His fingers felt along his body and around what was not his body. His space was empty of other moving things. Easily he knew what was him and what was not him. One thing that was not him moved. It didn’t alarm him. It moved when he moved. He never really thought it was something else like himself. He knew it was an image of himself, and it, let’s just call it a mirror, because that’s what it was, was that. Also, in the stuff covering himself, his space and in his space, objects. These objects with smaller objects inside them. Things are big and small, things can be inside other things. One thing with a sense of dimension flatter than other things (things can be flatter than other things) reflected his image. It did not move when he moved but some images of you move and other images stand still, Bob reasoned. Why do some images of you move and other images stand still?
          An object in space moved. He had thought of it previously (previously was about, let’s call it sixty seconds ago) as a border of space, not an object. Now it revealed itself as a flat thing (flat things can be up and down and large, not only back and forth and small), and an image of himself walked out. But its image was incorrect: shorter, rounder. Something about the image smelled (he had no word for this) good and was familiar (he had no word for this). He moved to meet the object and enfold his •••• in the arms he had no word for.
          Later, quite some time later, Phillip and his •••• addressed questions to a gathering of peers. There were no non-peers: non-peers as a concept had not developed yet. The two of them (there were two of them: a reflection is not two, only one doubled, Phillip reasoned: there has been a thing called reason now) had organized a space for answers.
          What happen us? Phillip’s •••• asked the crowd.
          One opinion was: Us happen us.
          Another opinion was: God happen us.
          (God and Us were both acceptable terms that existed now; what they meant inside the peers might be uncertain, but when peers said them to each other, we all nodded.)
          Phillip reasoned equally on both sides but wasn’t satisfied. Objects that are not I reason together in space, and stink, and in the relationship of the reasons within space I cannot tell which one is larger than the other (because proportion in space is now a thing that exists). But another thing that is not reason is not satisfied (dissatisfaction is a thing that exists now).
          Phillip stepped forward to speak above his crowd of hot peers. His dissatisfaction was strong, and words inside him that he didn’t have a name for bubbled and farted and threatened to stain him. He looked at his ••••. •••• looked at him and Phillip did not know that look.
          Listen! he spoke loudly. Happen happen us! Happen happen us!
          A man in the hot peers was angry. A small girl jumped and was hot happy. Phillip’s •••• looked and was looked at by Phillip.
          He reasoned bigger until the peers, who stank hotter now and reasoned big in space in parallel with him (and this sort of parallel existed now) and repeated along with him, because he and they existed in parallel now:
          Happen happen us! Happen happen us! Happen happen us!
          Phillip turned to •••• in joy. (There was joy now.)
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